“Are you shitting me?” Kane asked through the comm. “Are his other two any better?”
“Don’t know. All I know is that Asher and I have stalled the rebels for a minute, and Raiden said that he has his sights on the sniper’s location. If you or Leo would be kind enough to flush him out, that would be really helpful,” Cullen said sarcastically.
“Raiden!” Kane snarled into the shared comm.
“Do you see the bank building to the right of the Chicking Fried Chicken shop?” Raiden asked in his normal calm tone of voice. “There’s a balcony on the fifth floor. If you could get some fire coming from the east so that he moves, I could take him out.” Why did Raiden always sound so damn polite?
Asher stabbed his finger at Cullen before he said anything. Cullen sighed.
Come on, who wouldn’t say something smartass about a restaurant called Chicking Fried Chicken? Asher’s eyes were gleaming. He was thinking that it sounded like Frickin’ Chicken too.
“We’re on it, Kane said. Give us five minutes at the most. You’ll have your diversion.”
A spray of bullets went flying out into the streets from the hospital.
“What the hell was that? I thought we were on a lull?” Kane asked.
“Ah hell, it’s the other two security guys,” Cullen groaned.
Asher started rushing to the stairs, he was hunched over so that he wouldn’t make himself a target. “I’m on it. I’ll let them in on our plan. It’d be good to have us all singing from the same sheet of music,” Asher said into his mic.
“Yah think?” Kane asked sarcastically. Kane was second-in-command of the Night Storm team, he had reason to be pissed off. As soon as the shooting calmed down, either Cullen, Asher or Hans should have been upstairs telling those other two men what the four-one-one was.
“My fault, Kane,” Cullen acknowledged.
“Fine,” Kane rumbled. “Don’t fuck up again.” He was breathing heavy; it was obvious he was moving fast.
“I’m in position,” Leo said.
“Wait for me, Perez,” Kane said over the link. “I want to make sure your ass is covered before you start shooting.”
“What’s going on?” Hans asked timidly. All he had heard was Cullen talking into his mic, he couldn’t hear anything that had been said into his earpiece.
“We’re going to take out the sniper. Then we’re going to do a front and rear assault on the RSF rebels. It’ll all be over in ten minutes or less.”
“I’ll tell Isaac,” Hans said as he fumbled for his cell phone.
Motherfucker, he had a cell phone to get ahold of his subordinates the whole time?
“Yeah, why don’t you warn Isaac to expect a Navy SEAL named Asher Thorne. How about warning both of your team members while you’re at it?”
I didn’t call him a Dumbshit. I’ll go to heaven for keeping that to myself, won’t I?
Cullen had kept his eyes trained on the street. Nobody had come close to the armored truck, they were still keeping back behind the barricades they had set up. There had been a few police who had valiantly tried to keep the RSF rebels away from the hospital, but their bodies now littered the space between the barricades and the front of the hospital.
There were fifteen hospitals around this area, but the reason they chose this one was due to the team of American, British and French doctors who had come at the request of the new prime minister. But according to what Max told them, the aides at the Embassy had explained, almost all the doctors and scientists were currently over at the University involved in a symposium.
When the RSF rebels realized they had fewer targets they were pissed off. So, they focused on the Doctors without Borders at the Hospital for the Indigent. And of course, it was their buddy Hans who had informed them of this fact.
The RSF rebels would do anything to make Hamdok look bad. What better way than to attack his hand-picked group of doctors that he had invited to help his newly formed democratic nation?
“I told Isaac to expect you. I told him to stop shooting, was that good?” Hans asked.
Cullen nodded. He was sick of talking to the man.
Hans’ phone rang. Please say they hadn’t started shooting at Asher and were injured. Asher would feel like shit if he had taken out one of the good guys.
Hans listened for a moment. Cullen continued to listen to Hans’ side of the conversation. “It’s bad here. We have some of those American special warfare types here. I think they are Delta Ranger SEALs or something. They didn’t come in time to save Roger. They came through the barriers with an armored truck.”
Hans listened some more. It took everything Cullen had not to rip the phone away from Han’s ear to find out who the fuck he was talking to.
“Jamal, you’ll need to go to a different hospital. Take Dr. Adams with you. Tell her it wasn’t my fault this happened.”
“What do you mean she’s not with you?” Hans asked.
Two more minutes, and Kane should make his move on the sniper at the bank. But it sounded like they had a missing doctor. This was not part of the plan. According to Max, they were now supposed to evacuate all the doctors.
“Raiden, you ready?” Kane whispered.
“Yep.”
Cullen heard a blast of gunfire. It stopped.
One shot rang out.
“Got him,” Raiden said.
“They’re spreading out. Some coming your way.” Raiden said.
Cullen heard more shots. He stood up and took aim. He got two. Hans just remained huddled where he was most useful—on the floor.
“How many?” Leo yelled.
“Probably only fifteen left,” Asher answered.
“Only four came this way. I’d say they’re cleaned out.”
“We’re going to come in slow.” Dusk was settling. Finally, Cullen heard the whomp whomp of a helicopter. He looked up. It was a police helicopter.
Really?
Finally, we’re getting more back-up from the police?
If there wasn’t someone working against Hamdok from inside the new government, Cullen would give up his new house.
“This is suspicious as hell,” Kane said over the comm. “I just contacted Max over at the Embassy. The police only arrived after the rebels were defeated. Sounds like a bunch of horseshit doesn’t it? I’d say some of the police were in on it.”
“We need to get our people out of here,” Raiden said quietly. “Unfortunately, I have some very stubborn doctors and nurses upstairs with me.”
“Fuck that noise,” Cullen said. “I’ll be up there in a minute.”
4
“Your Mama is going to be fine, Sweets.” Carys looked into the two sets of big brown eyes.
Please God, say I’m not lying.
Another ear-splitting scream pierced the walls of the tin shack, and Carys’ focus switched back to the woman she was ministering to. She saw the agony on her patient’s face, as the cords of her neck stood out, and she screamed again.
“Faizah!” Carys looked over at the nurse who currently had her hands full with a sick, screaming toddler. The child was probably two, but so malnourished he or she looked to be a year old.
“Daughter,” the woman gasped when the pain of the contraction subsided.
Carys had one hand on the woman’s forehead and the other hand on her taut belly as she gasped out a breath to talk to her eldest child. She needed to be focused on giving birth, not worried about her other children.
Carys whipped her head back to look at the two little girls who looked to be under the age of seven, but who really knew? One girl was clearly the eldest. “I need your help. You must go and get more water. You must also go to your neighbor’s and get milk.”
“But—” the girl protested in Arabic.
“Now,” Faizah said. “Go fast.”
The toddler was throwing up. At least the other two didn’t look sick, but they did look like they’d been abused. So did the mother; her face was a mass of bruising. The eldest girl g
rabbed her younger sister’s spindly arms and pulled in the makeshift door that was barely hanging by one hinge.
Carys cursed the old man who hardly stopped the car long enough for her and Faizah to disembark. Heck, she’d been lucky to pull out her bags.
The old fart! What was his problem?
As soon as the girls were out of the shack, Carys pulled up the blanket covering the woman so that she could assess her progress.
“What’s your name?” she asked gently.
“Shada,” she breathed out.
“Okay, Shada, my name is Carys. I’m a doctor. I’m here to help. Do you know how long you’ve been in labor?”
“Since yesterday morning.”
Over thirty hours, and not enough progress to show for it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that Faizah had started to boil water and had the medical bag open. Somehow, she was doing all this while holding a baby who was sick and in pain. God love the woman.
The situation was bleak. After a woman was dilated like Shada was, the risk was higher for the mother to hemorrhage. That is to say, hemorrhage even more than Shada currently had.
“Faizah, I’m going to need you helping me. Have you assisted on a caesarean before?”
“Yes,” was her succinct reply.
The nurse’s eyes met hers. She knew the outcome was not good. She tucked the child underneath her arm. “Tell me what to do, and I will do it.”
It was time to give the mother-to-be some hope. Because there needed to be hope in this room tonight. They needed to believe that things would work out.
“Shada, I’m from the United States. I have delivered hundreds of babies in my life.”
“You have?” she panted out. Her doubt was clear.
Carys gripped her outstretched hand.
“There is no place for lies between us, we must tell the truth. This is difficult. But I have seen worse and the mother and child are still alive and well.”
Shada took in a deep breath as another contraction began to swell.
“I need you to pant. Like this.”
Carys panted like a dog, short staccato breaths.
“Now you try, Shada. You must try to not push while I wash up so that I can examine you, okay?”
The woman nodded and loosened her hand. Carys tore loose from her grip and went to where Faizah had extremely hot water and some of the antiseptic soap ready for her to wash with. She went back and examined Shada, who couldn’t help but push during one of her contractions. Her scream caused the child in Faizah’s care to increase the volume of their never-ending-scream and then they almost struggled their way out of Faizah’s arms. Carys blocked out the cacophony and focused on the job at hand.
In less than a minute, she was able to confirm two things—the baby was breech, and alive.
Okay.
Okay.
Next steps.
Carys took all the necessary steps before she examined Shada more thoroughly. She needed to see if there was any way possible. Any way possible at all, that she could turn the baby.
Please God, let that be possible.
When she felt the baby’s foot in the birth canal, she knew it was game over. Shada and her child would both die if she continued to push. Carys would have to operate in these deplorable circumstances. Pray God the other children don’t return while I’m cutting open their Mama’s belly.
“Why the hell isn’t she answering her satellite phone?”
“There’s a reason, and we’ll find out soon.”
Cullen didn’t know whether to punch his friend or to take comfort in Raiden’s calm words.
They’d just left the clinic where Carys had departed yesterday on a wild goose chase with some cranky old man. Dr. Nazer was in no condition to give a good accounting of what had occurred. He was too sick.
Thank God he and Raiden had her position locked in from her satellite phone. She was only seventeen kilometers from the clinic, but they were traveling on one of the most Godforsaken roads Cullen had ever been on. At least when he was in the Middle East they didn’t call trails like these roads—they just aimed you in a direction and you crossed over the desert, not bothering to try to follow in someone’s previous path. But here, they needed the road so that they didn’t end up in a ditch or driving the truck up a tree. What with it being the middle of the night and only the faintest impression of tire tracks to guide them, it was a crapshoot if they were even on the right path.
“Veer left,” Raiden pointed.
“What makes you think that’s the right way?”
“Trust me.”
Cullen pulled the steering wheel and forced the truck left. One of the things he’d learned to do in the four years he’d worked with Raiden Sato was to trust the man. He never had hunches that didn’t pan out. Fuck no, that was Cullen’s schtick.
“How far away now?” Cullen asked after his teeth settled back into his gums from the rough ride over the broken clay still trying to dry out from last month’s rainy season. At least it was better than getting stuck in the mud.
“According to the locator, we have another ten klicks.”
“Try calling her again,” Cullen ordered. Luckily, Raiden didn’t bat an eyelash at his harsh tone, just placed the call.
“Still no answer.”
“For the love of all things Holy, does she not understand that I’m an older brother and I get worried about the women in my life?”
Did Raiden just laugh?
“How are the demon twins?”
“They’re not twins, thank God. If they had the ability to switch places and talk in a secret language, I would have gone insane.”
Raiden didn’t immediately respond. Cullen wasn’t surprised—his words came out garbled because of the bumpy road—but he was pretty sure he heard a chuckle.
“What about you? Are your—”
Cullen stomped on the brake and swerved. He came within an inch of hitting something white and enormous. It didn’t flinch, except for swishing its tail.
“What is that thing? A yak? A water buffalo?” Cullen honked the horn. It still didn’t move.
“It’s a cow.”
“Nothing with horns that stick up like that is a cow. It’s an albino yak.” Cullen honked his horn again. He wasn’t sure, but he thought it might have rolled its eyes at him. Then two more of his brethren lumbered in front of the truck.
They didn’t have time for this shit. Cullen sprang out of the truck and pushed hard into the rough white hide of the ghost buffalo.
Nothing.
It didn’t move a single inch.
He shoved his shoulder into its flank, then it lifted its tail.
“Oh no, you are not—”
Raiden was going to set a record because Cullen heard him laughing again. Cullen jumped out of the way as the bleached bull almost took a dump on his boot.
“For fuck’s sake. You did that on purpose.”
The pasty bovine let out a loud fart.
Raiden’s laugh was just as loud.
“Enough! I’ve had enough!”
He took out his gun and shot into the ground a couple of feet away from the cows. Off they went.
Cullen got back into the truck.
“Don’t say a word,” he said as he pointed at Raiden.
His friend held up his hands. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Cullen found himself going even slower on the already bumpy road. Even with the brights on, he just knew that one of those damn ghost cows was bound to leap in front of the truck, and he couldn’t risk it.
“Raiden, what’s your gut saying? How do you think the doctor is?”
“Just get there as fast as you can but try to do it in one piece.”
Damn. Damn. Damn.
“He’s glorious.” Carys stared down at the baby in her arms. He was a miracle. An absolute miracle. She glanced up at his mother who was also a miracle.
“You’re wrong,” Faizah said. “They’re not the miracles
, you are. They should not be alive. I have never seen anything like what you did here today.”
She currently had Shada on an IV with a liter of saline and a piggyback of prophylactic antibiotics. She’d already done a morphine push, hoping it would numb the next part.
Carys had already started the process of pushing down on Shada’s abdomen to make sure her uterus contracted. Shada looked at her with eyes filled with pain and accusation. Carys tried to explain why this was necessary, but the young mother didn’t understand, and Carys felt like a deplorable human being.
Typically, the mother and baby would bond with skin-to-skin contact, but that wasn’t possible. So Carys had her shirt unbuttoned and the little boy was only partly wrapped up in one of her clean shirts from her backpack so that he could cuddle against the bare flesh of her chest. After doing her painful duty with his mother and having her look at her like a monster, it felt good to hold the boy close.
“This little girl is not doing well,” Faizah said as she tried to calm the wailing toddler. They had found out from her older sister that she was two-and-a-half years old, but she looked only a year old. When Faizah had examined her, she found fingerprints around her abdomen.
Carys needed to examine the child but she’d been too busy operating. When the older children came back, Faizah questioned who had done this to their younger sister and they had clammed up. But they had suffered abuse as well. It looked like the middle sister had a broken arm that had never been set correctly, and then there was all the facial bruising that Shada had. Carys was ready to kill the man who had so viciously abused this family.
“Let me see her.” Carys and Faizah worked to trade their charges. It was easier than it would have been five hours ago. Carys just wished that the girl was struggling as much as she had been when they had first arrived. Unfortunately, she had lost strength with each passing hour.
“Oh, my love,” Carys attempted to soothe little Farida, but she wasn’t having any of it. She put her down on the communal bed that the children shared. She struggled weakly when Carys examined her bruised belly. Tenderly, she touched the baby girl’s bruised flesh, and she could feel the heat emanating from it. Farida let out a loud howl just from the gentle touch. Carys turned her to her side so that she could see where she had been manhandled. It was obvious she had been squashed by large hands. The bruising exactly matched a large man’s fingerprints.
Her Tempting Protector: Navy SEAL Team (Night Storm Book 2) Page 4
