What I Fight For: A Bad Boy Military Romance (Easy Team Book 1) (9 page)

              “Do you know how much acetaminophen we have?” I asked, keeping my voice calm still. “How much of the immune serum globulin?”

              Tammy flicked her eyes towards our medicinal storage area. “I can double check,” she said.

              “Okay,” I said. “Go. Quickly. We need to let everyone know what’s happening.”

              I turned to the little boy and made a ‘stay’ gesture. “Just wait right here, sweetheart,” I said gently, smiling to reassure him. I opened the protein bar for him and quickly left in search of Cooper.

              I found him outside bringing in four more kids who had managed to find their way to our camp. He had them walking in hand in hand with him in the middle like a ringmaster.

              He smiled when he saw me approaching but almost instantly, his eyes swept across my face, reading my expression. He leaned down towards the kids and pointed at the tent, saying something. The kids nodded then rushed past me towards the medical tent.

              Cooper quickly followed behind, taking my arm and pulling me aside.

              “What is it?” he asked with no preamble. “How can I help?”

              The best four words anyone could say in this situation.

              I looked up at him. “One of the kids has been confirmed with measles,” I said. I saw the look of surprise cross his features. “I’m alerting the other doctors and nurses and I’m betting we’ll find a good number of them in the early stages. At least, I hope in the early stages.” I bit my lip. If we could head this off before it became an epidemic, we could potentially save hundreds of lives.

              “With how many kids there are in the city and the refugee camp, it’s very possible that this could be spreading as we speak,” I said.

              Cooper nodded, understanding the scope of the problem. “I can bring a team to the camp to do a check there for signs of measles,” he said. “And a team can go to the city as well for the kids that didn’t make it here. Could you spare one person for each team?”

              I nodded. “Your men are all vaccinated right?” I asked as a last minute thought.

              Cooper gave me a slight smile. “We’ve been vaccinated for everything from measles to purple Amazonian river pox. We’ll be okay.”

              It was amazing how the man could make me huff a laugh even in the face of a medical emergency.

              “Okay, let me go see who I can bring out to go with your men,” I said, quickly leaving for the tent.

              Within an hour, we had sent off Tammy and another nurse to accompany the men of Easy Team to check out the town and camp for other patients. I sent them off with their own supply of medicine to treat those they found and clear instructions on quarantining those people.

              At the medical tent on base, Doc Jones, Margie, and I quickly set up three different workstations. Margie would check to see who had the virus or not. If the child was showing signs of the virus, I would immediately take them to give them a thorough examination to see how far along it had progressed. If it was in the early stages, I took them to one quarantined corner of the tent with some children’s Tylenol and made them comfortable with instructions to stay put. One of the men of Easy Team was there to make sure they understood my directions.

              If the child showed more serious symptoms, he was sent to Doc Jones who quickly assessed the child’s fever and spots and gave a shot of immune serum globulin and acetaminophen and brought them to another corner where they were given an IV and a bed to rest in.

              Five hours later, we had quarantined 22 children with measles. Ten were deemed clean and sent to rest and eat in the mess hall tent so as to avoid contact with the sick.

              I twisted my neck, waiting for that crack of relief as Margie sent me the last patient of the day.

              I smiled at the little girl. She looked to be about ten years old and was a striking beauty. With soft sandy skin and clear gray eyes, she looked like an exotic desert flower.

              “
Shallah
,” I said. “Feeling sick, are we?”

              She stared at me wordlessly. She stood silently as I checked her over. She showed the now familiar white spots in her throat—the early signs of measles.

              Dozer stood nearby. I waved him over. “Can you tell her we’re going to give her some medicine to make her feel better and that she must stay here with us for a few days?”

              Dozer nodded and translated what I had said to the little girl.

              The little girl stared at me wordlessly with those fathomless gray eyes.

              I cocked my head at her. There was something different about this girl from the rest of the kids. Of course all of them had seen a fair amount of trauma in their short lives now but this girl seemed to carry a heaviness that went beyond trauma. She seemed to carry darkness.

              “Can you ask her her name?” I asked Dozer.

              Dozer asked the little girl.

              But the girl just continued to stare at me. I could feel something tingle in the pit of my stomach. It was that feeling when I knew something was wrong. Something was off.

              I pasted on a smile and took her limp hand. “Well, that’s fine. We can get to know each other slowly. Now come along with me and I’ll get you some medicine so you can start to feel better.”

***

              I blinked sleepily as I leaned my head against one of the tent posts. I sat in front of the tent entrance, the flaps pinned back, the night air gently blowing past my face.

              The coolness soothed my aching body after running around after the children, feeding them, medicating them, examining them, and then keeping them quarantined and monitored.

              Once the children saw that all we were doing was trying to make them feel better, most of them opened up to us, offering us toothy smiles and shy touches. I saw one of the kids touch Dozer’s bald head in utter fascination as the soldier bent over for the small hands.

              The one child that said nothing was the little desert flower. The gray eyed girl who only stared at us solemnly as we moved around the tent. She seemed too wary to let her guard down, even for a moment. It had to be exhausting, being that vigilant, but she was stubborn. She’d said not one word since arriving and looked as if she would leave without saying one word.

             
Well,
I thought stubbornly as well. I still had a few days with her before I could deem her healthy enough to leave. Maybe I could persuade her to exchange a word or two between now and then?

              I jerked awake, nearly falling out of my seat. I looked around in confusion before realizing I had dozed off again.

              I rested my head again against the post, blinking hard to stay awake. We were taking shifts in monitoring the kids, especially the ones in the later stages of the virus.

              After seeing how tired my team was, especially Tammy and the nurse who had spent the whole day out in the city and camp, I had told them to hit the hay. I would take the first shift.

              I sighed as the night breeze gently blew past me. My body relaxed again and I felt my body growing heavier and heavier.

              Suddenly, something large and warm fell across my lap and my head jerked up.

              I looked up in surprise, expecting a sick child, but instead saw Cooper standing over me, a large quilt draped over me.

              He smiled and tucked the blanket up around my neck. “Guard duty, huh?” he said sympathetically.

              I smiled back. “Something like that,” I replied. I was guarding the kids against the invasive virus. I was fighting with my sword of antibodies and my shield of medical know-how.

              He looked down at me, as if studying me. His expression turned warm in admiration. He ran a large hand over my hair, brushing away some of the loose strands that had fallen in front of my eyes.

              “You were great today, as always,” he said. “You know how to keep your head in tough situations.”

              I yawned and smiled sleepily. “All comes with the job.”

              Sleep was tugging on my eyelids like cement. I fought to stay awake, to feel his touch a little longer, to hear his voice a little longer, but it was a futile fight.

              “When will you stop surprising me, Emilia Lyon?” I heard a deep voice murmur above me as I finally gave in to the restful darkness that waited for me.

Chapter
Ten
Cooper

              “You sure he was American?” Bear asked, lifting another box of resupplies to the back of the medical tent. A UN truck had finally come with some more supplies after we had repeatedly asked them for aid. As one of the smaller camps, we were not high on their list of priorities. But after notifying them of the measles outbreak we caught, that brought them around finally.

              I nodded as I heaved another box over. “Definitely American,” I said, recounting the story of the gang from town to Bear. “It was odd. You could tell the American was in charge. But why hadn’t we heard any chatter about an American led gang? That would be huge intelligence.”

              Bear wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. He had his hands on his hips, regarding the boxes thoughtfully. “Well, maybe the American isn’t in charge,” he said. “Maybe he’s a front for something or someone else,” he offered.

              I thought about it but then shook my head. “No, that wouldn’t make sense. An American voice is so recognizable around here. Why draw that kind of attention to yourself? No, I think this guy is some kind of player around here. We need to keep an ear out for him.”

              Bear nodded. “You got it, boss. I’ll let the boys know.”

              I unloaded the last of the boxes when Emilia rounded the corner of the tent. Immediately, I smiled seeing her. I knew Bear was watching me with an amused look but fuck it, the woman just made me want to smile.

              But I noticed the harried look on her face as she rushed towards me, clutching something in her hand.

              “Oh god! I’m glad I found you!” she said, dashing towards me. I felt a ridiculous swell of pride knowing that she had searched me out specifically.

              “What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked. I noticed that the thing in her hand was a dirty red shoe. Too small for her. It must belong to one of the kids.

              “The little girl!” Emilia started. “The gray eyed one. She’s gone! She left sometime this morning without letting anyone know. And no one saw her go.”

              With as many kids as we had on base right now, that wasn’t surprising that a child had slipped away.

              “But she’s still sick. She could still very well be contagious,” Emilia continued. She held out the shoe. “I found this down the road heading east. I think if we go down that way in a truck, we might be able to overtake her.”

              I nodded. “I’ll meet you by the trucks in ten minutes,” I said.

              Emilia nodded, her eyes looking up at me with gratitude.

              Damn. When would this woman stop making my body feel like I had been zapped by a thunderbolt whenever I came in contact with her?

***

              As we drove down the bumpy road, I watched Emilia from the corner of my eye. Her long hair had been put up into a messy bun that fell at the nape of her neck. Her face leaned against the window as she watched the desolate scenery flash by us.

              Her cheekbones were more pronounced and her face a little slimmer. She had lost some weight while in Qunar, I realized with concern.

              “Did you get a chance to have some breakfast this morning?” I asked.

              Emilia jumped a little in surprise at my sudden question. I’m sure it probably sounded pretty random to her. “Oh, err, well I had a granola bar,” she said.

              “Have you learned to subsist solely off of granola bars?” I reprimanded. “That can’t be your entire diet.”

              She smiled ruefully which only made her look more alluring. “Well, old habits die hard. In the hospital, it’s hard to always have a reliable mealtime so you fit in whatever you can when you can. And granola bars are easy to carry.”

              I followed the sharp bend in the road, keeping an eye out for the missing child.

              “Well, you’re out in the desert now,” I said firmly. “You’re already losing weight just by sweating in this heat. You don’t want to add to that by not eating right.”

              Emilia bit her bottom lip, flicking me a look from below her lashes. Damn, that woman could charm a frozen snake if she wanted to.

              “Yes, sir, Captain Hawk, sir,” she said with mock seriousness.

              “That’s right,” I said in similar mock seriousness.

              Emilia laughed, making me immediately smile again. It was almost becoming Pavlovian. Whenever Emilia was around, my body responded with something almost like giddiness. It was damn intoxicating.

              But as we continued down the road, I noticed the dirt becoming more uneven. In fact, I realized that this road should’ve ended awhile back. The road should’ve just given way to hilly dunes of rock and sand.

              Instead, now there was a crudely paved road with clear tracks of a truck having passed through recently.

              Something was off. This was all new. Very recent. Someone had been making a road to somewhere and had been doing it quickly and quietly.

              I gripped the wheel with a new sense of alertness. If someone was making some kind of move this close to basecamp, I needed to be aware.

              “What is it?” Emilia asked, noticing the change in my demeanor.

              “This road,” I said, not finished my thought. “Are you sure this was the direction the girl went?”

              Emilia nodded, still holding onto the little red shoe.

              “Is there something wrong?”

              “This road is new,” I said. Emilia looked at me in surprise. “This section of road,” I clarified. “You can tell by how uneven it is. The width is narrower than the part of the road we are on nearer to camp. And the ground has barely been tamped down.”

              Easy Team had done a thorough reconnaissance of the area once we had landed and none of this had existed then. So within just a few short weeks, someone had started road construction without our knowledge.

              And sizeable road construction, I noticed, as we continued to drive down the uneven road.

              “There! What’s that?” Emilia cried out, pointing towards something in the distance.

              I saw it too. From around a corner bend, over the tops of some rocky dunes, I saw gray fabric swinging in the hot, desert breeze.

              Tent tops.

              Those were the tops of tents that had not existed before on roads that had never been made before. This was all becoming extremely suspicious.

              My back straightened as I prepared for whatever was ahead.

              As I pulled the truck around the corner, we came into a small dusty clearing.

              “Oh my god,” Emilia breathed.

              There were about three large ragged tents that had been patched up so many times, there was no way to know what the original fabric had been. And under those tents were dozens upon dozens of children.

              Not just any children. Little girls.

              Emilia put a hand on the door, ready to step out, but I gripped her arm quickly. She turned up to me, questioning.

              “When we get out, I want you to stick close by me,” I said.

              Emilia’s eyes swept across my face. “But they’re all just children,” she murmured, confused. She obviously just saw the need that was in their faces but I saw much, much more.

              I held firmly onto her arm, needing her to understand me for her safety and theirs. “This looks like a holding camp for trafficked girls,” I said. I watched as Emilia’s eyes widened in horror and surprise. “That’s why they’re tucked away here, away from the city, away from the refugees, but close enough to people who would demand such commodities.”

              “Oh my god,” she said, uttering the words again. “No.”

              “Yes,” I said, wanting to make sure she understood the situation. “And whoever is the ring leader in this situation could be nearby. So stay close to me. Do you understand?”

              Emilia swallowed hard before nodding. “Okay.”

              We stepped out of the car with my hand on my weapon. Even though from where I stood, I could only see a gaggle of little girls, something felt wrong. And I never went against my instincts.

              “
Shallah
,” Emilia said hesitantly to the girls who had gathered around in a curious circle.

              I carefully assessed the girls. None of them looked injured. More than a few of them looked pale from malnourishment. All of them were dirty. They all wore some semblance of a dress from scraps of fabric. And they all had different skin tones that told me that whoever was trafficking these girls had picked them up from different tribes all across Qunar. I wouldn’t be surprised if some Pakresh refugees were also in here.

              “I-I’m looking for a friend of yours, maybe,” Emilia said in English, unsure how to continue with these silent girls who stared at us with a somber look.

              I could tell these girls had seen some shit. I recognized that distant glaze of trauma.

              Emilia turned to me, looking for help in translating.

              I nodded but instead asked in Qunari, “Where is your master?”

              I needed to know exactly what the danger was here.

              The silent and staring girls suddenly started tittering amongst each other, staring at me in surprise and suspicion. Emilia nearly jumped back at the sudden activity these girls showed.

              Well that proved it. I had obviously hit upon something.

              “Where is your master?” I asked again with firm authority.

              “He isn’t here,” a girl responded.

              The circle made way and a little girl with beautiful gray eyes stepped forward. She had striking features that spoke of the beautiful woman she would soon become.

              I studied here. Clearly, she was some kind of leader here amongst the girls. They all were looking to her.

              Emilia gasped. “There you are!” she said. “Why did you run off?”

              Emilia immediately knelt in front of the girl and placed a hand on her forehead, taking her temperature. “You’re burning up,” Emilia said as she pulled out a stethoscope from her pocket. “You need to come back with us.”

              I could see the little beads of sweat lining the girl’s forehead and her chapped lips. Yes, the girl was very ill. But clearly, she had left the safety of the medical tent for a reason. A very important reason.

              “Why did you leave?” I asked in Qunari.

              The girl licked her dry lips. “I am next. If I am not here when the master arrives, he will hurt or kill some of my sisters in anger.”

              It was always a little off putting to see a small child speak with such solemnness. I saw it a lot on various missions. Kids who grew up much too fast.

              This girl couldn’t have been more than eleven and yet she spoke like a woman who had already lived three lifetimes.

              “Next for what?” I asked, keeping a relaxed but solid grip on my gun as I kept it pointed down.

              “Next to be sold,” a familiar voice said behind us.

              Emilia and I whirled around, my gun immediately raised and pointed at whoever stood behind us.

              Standing behind us was a man dressed in a casual black suit with an unbuttoned white shirt. He wore dark sunglasses. Behind him were about half a dozen men. I recognized some of them as part of the gang from town.

              A black truck was parked behind them. I had been so deep in thought trying to figure out where these girls and this camp had come from that I hadn’t heard the truck approaching.

              I narrowed my eyes and took a step forward, putting myself squarely in front of Emilia.

              “The highest bidder gets the girl at auction,” the man continued, flashing us a brilliant grin, as if we were carrying on a normal conversation. “And I’m willing to bet we’ll be getting a nice big fat sum for this little flower. Aren’t we, Sora?”

              That voice.

              It was the same voice from the radio. The American voice.

              But it was something else. There was something else to the voice that scratched impatiently at the back of my head.

              “Who are you?” I demanded, eyeing the man carefully. He was tall and had a good build. I could tell just by the way he carried himself that he was a man who knew how to handle himself.

              The man chuckled and then lowered his head as he took off his glasses. “Ah, Hawk,” he said. “It’s good to see you again.”