WAR: Intrusion (38 page)

“What’s wrong, Commander?” Dev asked, sitting beside Lachlan. “Not enough bloodshed for a Scottish warrior?”

Lachlan pulled the wanted poster out of his pocket and held it out.

Dev whistled. “They’re really—”

Lachlan’s satellite phone buzzed in his pocket. “MacKay,” he answered, plugging his other ear to block out the noise from the rotors and his men’s raucous bantering.

The phone connection was bad. “Hospital…attack…” Kris said.

Lachlan’s blood ran cold. “What?” He pushed to his feet and walked toward the cockpit. “Repeat that.”

“Hospital…Dr. Kirk…rebels… Stand by for orders…”

The connection cut out.

Lachlan swore long and hard in Gaelic, then tried to call Kris back. But his phone had no signal. “Shit!” He slammed his fist onto the top of the rucksack at his feet.

All conversation stopped.

Lachlan looked up and found his entire team staring at him.

Dev stood up. “Bad news?”

Lachlan’s gaze snagged on the poster in Dev’s hand. Mother of God, if the regular rebels captured Helen she’d be tortured and killed. There was no telling what Natchaba’s private troops would do to her.

Yet his team wasn’t even in the same country.

“Easy, Commander.”

Startled, Lachlan looked down to see that Dev had grabbed his fist inches before he’d punched the side of the helicopter. Bloody fantastic. He hadn’t even been aware he’d lashed out. “Sorry,” he muttered. Losing his temper in front of the men was no way to keep their respect.

“What happened?” Dev asked.

“Kris said—”

“Commander MacKay,” the co-pilot said over the comm system. “I have Kris on the radio for you.”

“Thank fuck.” Lachlan strode up to the cockpit and grabbed the microphone. “Tell me you have good news,” he demanded

“I love you too, sweetheart,” Kris snapped.

“Sorry.” Lachlan squeezed his eyes shut and tried to rein in the panic that threatened to send him into a killing rage. He took a deep breath, but it didn’t help. “Did you really say that Helen’s hospital is under attack?”

“Yes. One of the doctors, a Belgian, managed to get a message to Rene via contacts at the Belgian embassy. He reported that the rebels had killed some local villagers and were nearly upon the hospital. Rene contacted Wil and also the national government.” Kris cleared his throat. “But…”

“Let me guess,” Lachlan snarled. “The blokes at the embassies decided to do nothing, leaving any rescue up to the national government.” All of the European governments had reduced or eliminated their diplomatic and military forces. The U.K. had packed up its troops shortly after the botched hostage rescue at Father MacGuinessy’s missionary school. The remaining military forces were barely strong enough to protect their diplomatic missions and evacuate those citizens who were under direct attack. Rescuing those who fell prey to the rebels was left up to WAR and other concerned groups. After all, foreigners had been warned to leave after the first wave of anti-foreigner attacks. Those that chose to stay were considered to be on their own.

“I’m sorry,” Kris said.

Lachlan’s fingers tightened on the microphone. At times like these, he was glad he no longer served in an official military capacity. He didn’t have the stomach to let innocent civilians be tortured and killed because of politics. He’d even heard Wil speculate that some leaders in the U.S. military thought that if civilian deaths reached a critical mass, or if multiple executions of American citizens were publicized on social media, only then would Congress authorize more funding to beef up their troops.

The problem was that the rebels were all too aware that publicizing their abuse of foreigners would trigger action from those foreign forces they fought to eject from West Africa. So they’d kept their actions out of the news as much as possible, which allowed the U.S. and other governments to ignore the issue.

“The good news,” Kris said, “is that you’re officially authorized to evacuate and/or rescue the staff and patients of the hospital.”

“Whoa. Officially?”

“Yeah. Rebel Tracker Radio announced that the rebels were planning to attack the hospital. They talked about how the hospital is a place of peace and healing, about to be overrun by rebels chanting anti-foreigner slogans and promising death to the local traitors. Their tweets set off a firestorm of protest and the President is afraid that people will take to the streets if the hospital is overrun. He believes that civil unrest will give the rebels another opening through which to seize territory. So he called Azumah a few minutes ago in a panic, begging him to activate WAR to help out.”

“Okay. What’s the bad news?”

“As of fifteen minutes ago, Rebel Tracker Radio lost all contact with their informant. It’s likely the rebels have already taken the hospital.”

No!

By the time Lachlan’s multi-national hostage rescue team had located an informant with relevant information and moved in to liberate the missionary school, two nuns had already been killed in retaliation for the national government failing to meet the rebels’ demands.

Demands no one in the government had bothered to share with Lachlan’s team.

When Lachlan found Father MacGuinessy lying on the floor of the sanctuary, the priest had been tortured so badly, he could barely breathe. But he’d recognized Lachlan. He’d told Lachlan to deliver his bible to a man called Azumah, explaining that the text held a coded message that would help Azumah fight the rebels.

“No. You’re not going to die,” Lachlan protested.

But Father MacGuinessy just gave him a pained smile. “It’s my time to return to my Lord,” he said. “This is not your fault, Lach my boy. I am at peace.”

He’d died right there in Lachlan’s arms.

The
United African Republic

West Africa

HELEN
EYED THE measly pile of items she and her staff had used to blockade the door to the stairs. The morgue just wasn’t a good source of sturdy material. Used mainly to hold bodies until they could be retrieved for burial, there was only one exam table and a minimum of equipment needed to perform a rudimentary autopsy. The main part of the room was the body storage area, a cave-like room dug into the rock. There were currently three bodies already in there from patients who had died earlier in the week. To give herself and the others room to move while they collected their items for the barricade, Helen had ordered the patients’ gurneys to be moved into the corpse storage room. Their presence among the dead seemed a horrible form of foreshadowing.

Overhead, she heard boots pounding down the corridors. Men called out orders in the local language. Someone banged several times on the metal door to the lift. Helen held her breath, but there was no further action. A moment later, she jumped when something slammed against the door at the top of the stairs.

Helen nodded to her staff. They stepped up to the barricade and pressed their weight against whatever parts they could reach.

Once again, something slammed into the door. A foot?

The barricade held.

The muffled sound of conversation filtered through the door. Then they heard the sound of retreating footsteps.

“They were discussing what is down here,” Misi whispered. “Someone asked if the staff would really take refuge among the dead. The man I take to be their leader replied that they would finish searching the hospital then decide what to do.”

“Okay.” Helen motioned for people to step away from the barricade. “Rest your arms, everyone. We might soon have a difficult fight.”

But instead of another assault on the door, ten minutes later they heard the terrified sobbing of a man. Everyone in the morgue pressed against the barricade, trying to figure out what was going on, but all they could hear were the man’s tortured cries.

The urge to do something to stop his pain rose inside Helen, making her twitchy. But she forced herself to remember her duty. What was it Lachlan had said? Something about how the comfort of one person didn’t matter when weighed against the survival of others.

Helen squeezed her eyes shut and told herself that she would make it out of here alive and the rebels would be brought to justice.

Eileen reached for one of the items on the barricade. “We have to help him.”

Kofi pulled her back. “No. We must protect the patients that are here.”

Eileen fought him, but Helen and Tom helped Kofi restrain her. They carried Eileen down the stairs and only released her when she broke down sobbing.

Finally, the man’s voice cut off in the middle of a particularly agonized scream.

Helen winced. She met Tom’s eyes and saw there the knowledge that the rebels had likely tortured the man to death. And that each of them faced the same fate if the rebels managed to break into their hiding place.

“Did you hear that, doctors?” a man shouted through the door in English. “That is how we treat traitors.”

Another man told his comrade to shut up, that the doctors would never willingly surrender now.

“Smoke them out,” ordered a voice. “You. Find a tube that you can attach to the gas canister and slide under the door. You. Find the ventilation shaft and release two canisters inside. Once they are unconscious, then we will bring them to rebel justice.”

Helen and her staff shared horrified looks. With all the items in front of the door, they couldn’t reach it in time to block it against the smoke. Yet Helen didn’t dare tell her people to remove the blockade. The noise would alert the rebels and then they’d break down the door.

“Everyone into the storage room,” Helen said, shooing the others ahead of her. “There’s no vent inside there. The dead don’t need air.”

“Wait. Let’s booby-trap the stairs.” Tom and Kofi shared a look. While Helen escorted the women into the storage room, the men smeared the stairs with the grease that was kept for maintaining the lift. On top of that, they placed surgical implements and other loose items in order to throw off the balance of any invaders. At Helen’s approving nod, they wiped off their hands and joined the women.

Once everyone was inside the room, those who had flashlights turned them on before Helen pulled shut the heavy door. It was cool in here, and the air wouldn’t sustain them for long, but at least they’d be conscious and able to fight back when the rebels came in.

Helen and Kofi pulled one of the sheets off a gurney and shoved it along the bottom of the door. Then they sat back to wait.

“I smell blood,” Tom said a few minutes later. He shone his flashlight around the group, pausing on Eileen’s lowered head. She’d moved to the back of the space and wedged herself in between two gurneys. The light reflected off a small pool of blood between her bent legs.

“What have you done, child?” Kofi exclaimed as he hurried toward her.

“I don’t want to die at the hands of the rebels.” Eileen raised her head and stared at the group with eyes wide from fear and shock.

“Doctor!” Kofi called out. “She’s slit her wrists over the arteries. The cuts are deep.” He ripped his shirt off and wrapped it around one of Eileen’s forearms. Tom knelt on the other side of her and did the same. Helen and Misi gently laid Eileen down so Kofi and Tom could hold her arms elevated. Eileen was crying softly and murmuring how she didn’t want to fall victim to the rebels.

“Oh, Eileen.” Helen smoothed a lock of hair back from the girl’s forehead. “This isn’t the answer. There’s still a chance we can survive without becoming prisoners.” Or if there was no other choice, she had the vials of morphine.

“Doctor,” Jean, one of the French nurses said. “I smell gas.”

Helen left Eileen to the care of the others and went to the door. She sniffed. “No. I think that’s regular smoke. It must be coming through the ventilation system, since the rebels haven’t broken through the door yet.” Still, her stomach sank. Wishing she had some duct tape to fully seal off the room, she shoved the sheet tighter into the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor.

Fifteen minutes later, an odd, pungent, scent seeped into the room. Helen cursed under her breath. “Get as far from the door as you can,” she ordered. “I think the rebels have taken all the tanks of anesthesia gas and released them near the intake for the ventilation system.” She’d caught just a hint of the distinctive scent of Isoflurane in the mix.

Thud!

A heavy object slammed into the door at the top of the stairs. “They’re coming!” Jean cried.

Helen shared a worried look with Tom. The rebels must have brought in a battering ram.

“At least they’re not using explosives,” Tom murmured.

Helen gave him a weak smile, then moved with the others to the back of the room.

The rebels continued to ram the door. Each sound of impact sent a jolt of fear through Helen that she tried to hide. She looked at the faces of her staff. Some were openly terrified. A few were resigned. A couple were defiant.

She herself felt a mix of all three.

The smell of gas grew strong enough that Helen coughed. She fingered the vials.

Throwing back her shoulders, she pulled the vials and the syringes out of her pockets and placed them at the foot of the nearest gurney. Her eyes burned and she coughed again. “It appears as if the gas has found a way to get to us,” she said hoarsely. “I brought these vials of morphine in case we ended up in a position where death was preferable to life.”

A few of the others gasped. Tom met her eyes steadily. Kofi nodded at Eileen.

“My preference is to…to…” She didn’t want to make this decision. Didn’t want to decide who lived to possibly be tortured to death, and who died. She took a deep breath, but the air was tainted with gas and she ended up choking. When she finally regained the ability to speak, she rushed on. “We should decide as a group how to administer these drugs. My preference is to ease our patients into death so that they do not awaken as prisoners of the rebels. Then the rest of us can share whatever is left. Or take our chances with the rebels.”

Behind her, Jean fainted. Helen swayed and gripped the edge of the gurney. “Hurry. Decide now!”

“Agreed. Let the patients go first, then Eileen, then the rest of us,” Kofi said.