The sun was beginning to get low in the sky, the sign that it was time to really get ready for the big show. Hector stood
up and polished off a water bottle and nodded to Mike. "Watch for my signal."
Mike nodded. Watched Hector head over to where Swanson was and then headed over to where Jet was to fill him in
on the plan. He knew Jet would go along. The SEAL would have followed Mike into hell. And that meant going there if
Mike was following someone else. He just hoped it didn't come to having to go that far this time.
And while he walked he prayed. Because they could use all the help they could get and if anyone deserved a bit of a
hand it was the English doctor from Zaire at this moment.
Though maybe he didn't quite live for this, this was his job. And lately, his job was his life. So in a weird way, he did
live for this as he looked out of the helicopter toward the bare patch they were going to land on in the cover of deep
night. They'd waited until the mountains went pitch black, and infrared goggles were passed out.
Hector was out of the helicopter before the runners had even bumped on the ground, Mike and Jet hot on his heels.
Swanson hung back with the rest of the team, ready to distract and lay down the cover fire as the packs were quickly
secured and weapons slung over shoulders. Of course, they had more weapons, smaller just as effective ones, even
if they could be picked up at a local Rite Aid. Improvisation was a key point in everyone's training.
William gave the signal for the teams to start heading out on their assignments, creeping quietly through the
underbrush, not making a sound. Not even the sleeping birds were disturbed.
Jet led them hard and fast, all three men little more than night shadows. He stopped once, signaled with a infrared and
there was a brief flash answer, invisible to anyone without those all important night vision goggles, from the branch of
one of the trees. Satisfied, Jet took them deeper, as the rest of the recon team that had arrived this morning, now
aware of them, watched their backs.
There were guards. And they were even good at their jobs. Some of them, painted white, dark skin around their eyes
like skeletal holes in skinless faces in the night shadows. Others with face paint the same dark grease that the mixed
team of Delta and SEAL wore, hiding in the shadows. Trip wires were there too. But Jet was better and in the depths
of the night, he led his companions unerringly in.
The camp was a cleared space, recent in its conquest and already well used. A camp that could, in a week, disappear
again into the mountains, leaving this spot to be overrun by jungle again. The kind of place you only found burn spots
from cook fires and mass graves in afterward. Jet already knew about at least one spot that held the latter. But that
was for another time.
Once they entered the camp things got easier despite the openness. Vigilance wasn't as strong here because it
wasn't expected to be needed with the border guarded the way it was. Jet led them along the perimeter, hugging close
to buildings and avoiding the dogs he'd noticed earlier in the day. The clinic was easy to find simply by its size. Twice
as long as the other buildings and covered in woven mats instead of simple mud.
He gestured to the doorway but shook his head. Simply letting the others know where it was so they'd know where the
guards would likely be. And because there were human hands, hanging low enough to brush anyone passing through
from the lintel. Mike's eyes narrowed but that was all and then they were around the side and Jet was lifting silently
one of the mats that created the wall.
Hector made a point not to look at the disembodied hands, and silently decided the people who ran this camp had
better hope Andi hadn't broken so much as a nail in her time here, and that was that. There would be hell to pay and
he would gleefully volunteer to be the deliverer of retribution.
When Jet lifted the mat fully, Hector slid through silently. Wounded around on the mats on the floor, all looked
relatively stable. And his eyes easily found Andi, sitting on one o f the mats on the far corner talking with one of the
other women.
They had had their thirty seconds. Forty actually. Then all hell broke loose, horns were blown, sounding an alarm and
before Hector could even cross the room over to Andi, the hut started to flood with guards, here to either retain the
red cross doctor, or worse, dispose of her.
And everything that had been boiling and roiling inside Hector since he had first received news finally became
enough, and now he had a target. A bunch, actually, as Jet took on the ones he had, and Mike secured their escape
route.
Guns weren't an option. Ricochet was always a possibility. Shrapnel bouncing off walls even if he hit the target.
Moving fast and closing in. Black shadows in the hut. He didn't even have time to warn Andi, he just prayed like hell
she'd stay down. And hopefully not watch.
Hector didn't know this particular dialect, so whatever the first man said he didn't understand. But he understood the
look in the man's eyes as Hector dispatched him with a clean slide of a knife blade into his belly, the painted man
dropping to the floor.
It took forever, and it lasted the blink of an eye. But between him and Jet, the hut had a nice pile of bodies. No
sanction was given. Hector bunched up the piano wire, sheathed his knife, stripped off his gloves and shoved them
into his cargo pocket and knelt at eye level with Andi.
There wasn't time for some emotional reunion, or even explanations, or apologies. Nothing. No time. "We have to go.
Now." He said firmly.
Her eyes were large in her deathly pale face. Behind her, as if she had already become their shield, the three other
women that had been in the hut, including the one she'd been talking to, were cowering and the patients on their mats
lay as still as death to keep from attracting attention. Terrified of the demons that had come at the white doctor's call
and knowing only she could save them from them. Her eyes met Hector's, blank of anything but the immediate as she
closed her slim hands on the shoulders of his flack vest.
"I can't leave them."
Mike, expecting that, motioned to Hector. It didn't matter if they spoke now. The noise outside made giving themselves
away moot.
"Take her. Take Jet. I'll hold the point and give you some cover."
Hector really didn't want to argue. And he was not above throwing her over his shoulder and running like hell. "This
hut will be secured, the wounded taken back to the red cross camp. I promise." He said and pulled her to her feet.
"But we're leaving. Right now."
She wouldn't have been Andi, if she had willingly abandoned patients. Hector knew that. But he wanted her clear of all
of this.
"We've got it, Andi." Mike assured her as he watched the door.
Now her eyes were scared. But she nodded, swallowing hard and spoke to the women hiding in the corner, voice
soothing and absolutely commanding. They all dropped low to the ground, their own eyes huge with horrors they'd
already had to live through. It was breaking her heart but she swallowed it.
She was the reason this was happening. And she knew who was coming after her.
Her eyes found Hector in the darkness. Full of despair the way they'd never been before. But she only said: "Tell me
what to do. And - don't move to fast? I can't keep up."
Not moving with speed was not an option. But he nodded and held her hands with his bare ones (his gloves not
anything he wanted to touch her with) and pulled her to her feet, not missing the wince when she put weight on one of
her ankles and grimaced himself. What he would do to get his hands on those people....
But not now.
"Don't worry about keeping up." He said and turned around. She'd have to ride on his back piggy back style. He didn’t
know when he'd need his hands until they were at the safe pick up spot.
She got the idea pretty quickly and winced again. But nodded again as well and wrapping her arms around his
shoulders pulled herself up to wrap her legs around his waist. In any other situation she would have found the humor
in this. Jet moved to the mat they'd entered in and looked out. Signaled again with the infrared as Mike's gun let out a
sudden burst that put an end to whoever had been unsuspectingly approaching the clinic. For the moment it didn't
draw return fire but only because everyone was so busy shooting at everyone else. Mike dropped his own infrared
strobe outside the door as Jet gave Hector a nod.
"It's good. I'll cover. Once you hit the trees remember the trip wires where we saw them coming in. Nasty shit on the
other end of those. Billy says he'll cover you 'till you're past his tree."
"Oh God." Andi whispered it as she lowered her face into Hector's shoulder for a moment. One quick prayer made of
two words that covered everything.
"Just hold on." Hector said as he nodded at Jet and Mike, acknowledging their words. He looked out the door and
waited for Jet to nod again, saying cover was being laid then took off running, He'd taken off his gear, except for his
firearm, and Mike had picked it up.
Physically, it was no problem. He could easily run with her on his back to the safe spot. She was light, he was in
shape. But she was shaking already, from what Jet said, and everything else she'd been through, which just made
Hector's jaw tighten with determination to get her as far from this as he could as fast as possible.
"Just hold on." He repeated again. Whether he meant literally or figuratively...okay he meant both as he took off into
the dark night that was briefly illuminated here and there with firefight.
She simply nodded again and didn't raise her face as he ran. There were two short, sharp shots close by, quiet spurts
of sound and, despite the overwhelming noise around, she heard the bodies they smacked into. That she suspected
they were some of the men that had kept her here made little difference in the way her stomach rolled. Her mind didn't
stop praying, a continuous roll of scripture since she wasn't up to forming her own coherent thoughts and she
concentrated on the man she was wrapped against. Listening to his breathing. The sound of his feet. The noise
shifted. Moved behind them. The screams and the hatred and the gunfire and the explosions... She realized she was
flinching each time someone screamed and wondered if she'd be able to stop once she couldn't hear it anymore.
Prayed to God she would, at some point in her life, not be able to hear it anymore.
And then she heard something. Or smelled the cigar smoke. Or - felt it. Somewhere... The noise was behind her but
she felt -
She thumped Hector's chest with a hand silently, lifting her face near his ear. Inhaled. Smelled the cigar smell.
Whispered the name that went with it.
"Wekesa."