WAR: Intrusion (17 page)

Lachlan gave a brusque nod of acknowledgment and continued tidying up.

Shooting him a puzzled look, David and the remaining men left the room, followed by Tony. A moment later, Lachlan heard a cheer from the crowd out front. David must have given them the news that the explosives were not live. The would-be-bomber had been interrupted before he could attach the det cord. With no triggering mechanism, the explosives could be left in place until the bomb squad arrived.

Lachlan continued disinfecting the bed and the counter.

“Nasty business,” Tony said when he returned.

Lachlan tossed the rags and his soiled gloves in the hazardous waste bin and slammed the lid shut. “You think I should have listened to Dr. Kirk and told David to evacuate the village first?”

Tony studied him a moment. But instead of censure, Lachlan saw… Sympathy? Startled, Lachlan almost missed Tony’s soft, “No. You made the choice you thought would save lives fastest.”

Lachlan nodded and checked to make certain he hadn’t missed any spots.

“Do you think the prisoner was right and Natchaba will keep launching attacks until he wipes out these three villages and Dr. Kirk’s clinic?” Tony asked.

“Aye.” Lachlan understood the driving power of vengeance. He’d nearly been consumed by it after the Father’s death. “He’ll need to complete his revenge. Plus, if the prisoner is correct and Natchaba is aiming for the top spot in the rebel hierarchy, allowing witnesses to survive will be seen as a weakness.”

Lachlan glanced around the exam room, checking that he’d erased all signs of violence. “But protecting the villagers is now the job of the government.” He’d notified the regional police of the situation and had been told that a team would be dispatched as soon as possible.

Satisfied that the room was once again pristine, he and Tony walked to the front door, which David’s group had left wide open. The jubilant crowd was singing and dancing their way back to the village. Lachlan shook his head. “Appears as if David didn’t tell them the village is still under threat.”

“Can you blame him?” Tony said. “The prisoner didn’t provide any specifics regarding additional attacks.”

Lachlan shrugged as he shut and locked the door from the inside. The prisoner hadn’t cared why Natchaba ordered him to blow up the village. He’d been an angry man looking for an outlet. He’d resented the fact that other villagers were hired to restore the clinic, but not him. David had scoffed at that, pointing out that the prisoner had no construction skills and would have contributed nothing to the restoration. Still, the man had keenly resented his fellow villagers and Natchaba had turned that resentment into hatred of Dr. Kirk and all foreigners.

Lachlan stared down the empty corridor. Except for the two of them, the clinic was otherwise deserted. Dr. Kirk and her staff had fled. While he respected her decision to do no harm, he didn’t regret his actions.

Well, that wasn’t precisely true. He wished he’d been close enough to stop David from hitting her, but by the time Lachlan had pushed past the man blocking his way, David’s blow had already drawn blood.

Lachlan wanted to check on Dr. Kirk, but did not expect he’d be welcome. He’d violated her code of ethics, placing him in the enemy camp. Tomorrow was soon enough to inform her that she wasn’t rid of him yet. Since she was his best chance at identifying Natchaba, she’d be joining him and Tony on the extraction helicopter, willing or not.

“I reckon we should report in,” Lachlan said. “Then, as Dr. Kirk made it clear we’re not welcome at her bungalow, we might as well bunk here for the night.”

“I saw Dr. Kirk and Leticia wheeling a cart loaded with boxes into the storage closest. It’s possible that’s where the door to the hidden room is.”

“Brilliant.” Finally, they’d get to the bottom of this. “Let’s investigate before we call Kris.”

“Not so fast, Commander. First, let me look at your wounds. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig again.”

Lachlan scowled. “You’re turning into as much of a mother hen as Kris,” he grumbled. But since he didn’t experience the same level of fear when a non-medical professional tended him, he let Tony clean and bandage his wounds again.

“You’re going to have some nice additions to your collection of scars,” Tony commented as he swabbed the wounds with antiseptic.

Lachlan flinched, as much in reaction to the vulnerability of having his teammate see his scars as to the sting of the cleanser. Physical privacy was a luxury during a mission, so all the lads on the team had already seen the scars covering his back. Still, after he’d made it clear that he wouldn’t talk about what had happened, they’d left the matter alone. Until now. Having no intention of breaking his silence, he ignored Tony’s implied question.

Once his own wounds were cleaned and bandaged, Lachlan checked that there was no new bleeding from any of Tony’s wounds or along the neat line of sutures Dr. Kirk had set in his teammate’s leg, swabbed the whole lot with antiseptic, then covered the wounds with fresh bandages.

“Look at us,” Tony said as he pulled his shirt back on. “Regular Florence Nightingales, we are.”

Lachlan snorted. “I don’t think Lance need fear for his job just yet. But aye, we’ve done all right for two blokes trained only in emergency field medicine. Now, let’s see about this hidden room.”

The storage closet was next to the staff room. Wooden shelves lined the walls of the storage closet. It took several minutes before Lachlan’s fingers found the indentation just before the right wall met the back wall. He pressed, and a panel slid open, revealing a security keypad. “Did you pack your electronics kit?” Tony had stored his rucksack in the clinic’s shed the night they’d returned from the festival attack. Lachlan hadn’t brought an electronics kit of his own, in case Dr. Kirk or one of her staff searched his bag.

“Yes.”

“Brilliant.” After retrieving the rucksack from the shed, Lachlan plugged a device into the security keypad. Less than a minute later, a light on the keypad flashed green. The back wall of the closest slid aside to reveal a dumbwaiter, a door, and another security keypad. As the door swung open, an overhead light turned on, revealing a steep set of stairs that led to one more security-protected door.

“Stay here,” Lachlan ordered. “I just changed your bandages. I won’t have you breaking your wounds open by attempting the descent on your crutches.”

Eyeing the sharp drop of the risers, Tony nodded. Then he balanced on one crutch and pulled his weapon.

Lachlan held his own weapon in his hand as he descended. Once he’d overridden the security, he toed the door open. More overhead lights went on, revealing a room lined with cabinets, shelves, and counters. Two cots were pushed up against the right wall. The cabinets and shelves held only food and medical supplies. Inside the dumbwaiter sat a cart laden with boxes of files, equipment, and some of the more dangerous medicines. A door at knee level on the far side of the room led to a long, dark tunnel barely tall enough to allow a person to crawl on hands and knees.

Either Layla’s Foundation had been very thorough in providing an escape route for its employees, or someone had set the clinic up so that it could send and receive traffic with no one the wiser.

Traffic such as weapons? He rubbed at a sudden ache in his chest. Had Dr. Kirk been lying to him the entire time?

Shining his torch into the tunnel, he saw no signs that anything had been dragged or wheeled along the dirt floor. That didn’t prove Dr. Kirk’s innocence, but it was another mark in her favor and the ache in his chest eased.

He took several photos of the space, then returned to Tony.

“Anything?” Tony asked, holstering his weapon.

“No. There’s an escape tunnel, but I saw no signs of recent use.”

“Another dead end.”

“Most likely.” Lachlan pressed the button to close the back wall of the closet, then followed Tony into the hall and down to the kitchen.

Stationing himself so he could see out the back door, Lachlan pulled out his sat phone and called HQ.

Kris listened patiently to Lachlan’s explanation. “All right. I’m not happy about what went down, but it sounds as if you made the best decision under the circumstances.”

Lachlan felt a weight lift off his shoulders.

“I’ll run interference if word of this gets back to Azumah and causes problems,” Kris continued.

“Thanks.”

“So, there’s still no sign of the weapons?”

“No. David’s prisoner admitted that he occasionally drove the lorry with the weapons away from the airfield, but he only transported them to a rendezvous point, which changed each time. He has no proof of where the weapons went from there, although he assumed that Natchaba’s men were taking the weapons up the hill to the mansion.”

“You’re lucky there weren’t boxes of ammo being stored at the mansion when it went boom.”

“Yeah.”

“Was the prisoner able to give you a headcount of Natchaba’s troops?”

“Four blokes would meet his lorry to transfer the boxes, but he was ordered to remain in the cab. He only ever saw the leader’s face, so he didn’t know if the others were the same each time or different.”

“All right. It was too much to hope for that we’d receive the precise intelligence we needed.”

Making a sound of agreement, Lachlan nodded to himself and stared out the window. “Any word on when we’ll be extracted?” Dusk was falling and the setting sun painted the bottom of the growing mass of clouds the color of blood. A rising wind stirred up dust and threw it against the side of the clinic. He’d have to use the clinic’s transistor radio to check the weather report. “It appears another storm is brewing.”

“That’s what I hear,” Kris said. “If the weather clears in time, Marcus expects to be able to land at your airfield sometime tomorrow afternoon. If, of course, you can manage to avoid explosions or confrontations with angry mobs, he’ll fly you down to the capital so Dr. Kirk can work with the sketch artist to put a face to Natchaba.”

“Brilliant. Now I just have to get the doctor to agree to accompany us.”

“Good luck with that. You’re going to need it.”

After a few more minutes, Kris signed off and Lachlan updated Tony. While they were eating a meal of the MREs from their rucksacks, Lachlan’s phone pinged with an incoming text. He glanced at it, grunted, and typed a reply.

“What now?” Tony asked.

“The bomb squad from the national government is en route. They want us to meet their helicopter at the airfield.” He paused before hitting send, then went to look out the back door. “Ah. Brilliant. Dr. Kirk left the SUV.” He sent the text, then turned to Tony. “Do you want to stay or come along?”

“What? And miss the chance to be bored out of my mind here?”

Lachlan chuckled. “Aye. That’s what I expected.”

Ninety minutes later, with Tony riding shotgun and the bomb squad technicians in the back seat, Lachlan pulled up to David’s house.

“I don’t know what makes this region so important all of a sudden,” one tech said quietly to Lachlan as David led them to the place where the prisoner had buried the explosives, “but you’re certainly keeping us busy.”

Lachlan exchanged a glance with Tony. “We have reason to believe it’s personal revenge,” Lachlan said.

“Well, then.” The tech nodded. “That would explain it.”

“Any word yet on the type of explosives used in the other attacks?” Lachlan asked.

“No, it’s too early,” the tech replied. “Your boss will get the report when it’s ready.” He knelt down beside his partner.

Lachlan and the others—Tony, David, and the two leaders from the nearby villages—moved back as the bomb techs worked. Once the techs confirmed that the device was not about to go off, they secured it in a containment unit. “This one wasn’t as interesting or as sophisticated as the others,” the tech told Lachlan as he watched his partner carry the unit to the SUV. “But the explosion would have destroyed the nearest four or five houses.” He glanced round. “How certain are you that this was the only one?”

Lachlan thought back to the interrogation. “Reasonably certain. When we informed the man that he would be held here in the village until your lads take him into custody, he was quick to insist that he’d only planted the one device. He didn’t strike me as the martyr type.” Oh, the man had spouted plenty of rhetoric, but he’d been terrified of pain. “I doubt he’d willingly blow himself up.”

The tech nodded.

“I’m sorry that we can’t offer you fellows a ride,” the leader of the bomb squad said when Lachlan and Tony dropped the men off at the airfield. “But we have barely enough room for ourselves.”

Lachlan waved off his concern. “No worries.” It would have saved time to accompany the government’s men back to the capital, but Lachlan couldn’t leave without Dr. Kirk.

Once the government’s plane took off, Lachlan and Tony drove a perimeter patrol. With night falling, and the explosives gone, the village had become one giant party.

When Lachlan and Tony pulled up behind the clinic it started to rain. As they entered and Lachlan flicked on the lights, he felt a twinge of guilt. The past few days had been hard on Dr. Kirk. Being kicked out of the place she’d worked so hard to rebuild, plus having it turned into a place of torture, had to have hurt.

The guilt continued to niggle at him as he and Tony checked that the clinic was still secure, played cards, and ate another meal. Finally Lachlan sent Tony off to get the first sleep. He cleaned his weapons, listened to the radio report the progress of the storm, and thought about today’s events.

The more he went over what had happened, the more he felt the need to check on Helen. Not that he was going to apologize. He’d done what he thought was necessary. But maybe she’d let him explain his reasoning.

And just why do you care what she thinks of you? You accused her of being a weapons smuggler.

Aye, well, he no longer believed that. If they were to move forward as allies, he needed her cooperation.

By the time Tony woke and joined him in the staff room, the rain had turned into a deluge.

“How’s the leg?” Lachlan asked.

Tony set his crutches aside and sat on the cushion they’d set up on one of the chairs for him. “Sore. Tolerable.” He raised a brow. “What’s gnawing at you?”