Wounds - Book 2 (8 page)

Chapter
9

A
t first, the rain came hesitantly in big, fat, gray drops, and then picked up speed. Now Lense stood, soaked through to the bone and cold for once, and the rain was still coming, its sound a loud, continuous hiss. The desert was gushing with sudden streams sluicing through gullies.

Saad’s men worked fast. From beginning to end, the ambush took, perhaps, ninety seconds. She watched now as one of Saad’s men hauled the seventh and last Kornak soldier from the transport, splayed the body out and started stripping off protective, sand-colored armor.

Another soldier stomped up, rifle in hand, the hump of a radio at his left shoulder and now she saw that the mystery of just how anonymous Saad expected they could be was solved. Besides the armor, the soldier wore dark protective eyewear and a helmet with a low brow that flared around his ears. Thick ropes of sodden hair straggled over his shoulders, and water cascaded over the helmet.

“You’ll have to put your hair up.” She practically had to shout to hear herself over the rain. “Why the glasses? How can you see?”

“Polarized. I see fine,” said Saad. “They wear their glasses all the time, though. A good sniper can take out an eye, of course, but the glasses stop shrapnel.”

“Seven soldiers. Seven uniforms. But I make eight.”

“Change of plans,” he shouted over the rain as Mara splashed over, though Lense could only tell it
was
her because of the jaw. “Sorry. There’s no other way.”

Lense thought something was up. When they’d been crouched atop a flat mesa before the rain, Mara slithered over, a communications device in her hand. She’d whispered into Saad’s ear, and Lense watched the color drain from Saad’s face and his expression darken. When she asked what was wrong, Saad only shook his head. Then he and Mara moved back in a low crouch from the rim. She couldn’t hear what they said, but they were arguing.

Now she said, “But what am I supposed to do?”

At that, Mara palmed her rifle in her right hand and nudged Lense with the barrel. “Exactly what you’re told.”

First, she went to check on Julian. It was the second time she’d been to the OR that day, but the first that she’d seen Julian since that morning. Julian was asleep atop green surgical sheets; another was draped over his body, and she saw by his bare shoulders that they’d removed his gown. There was a face mask over his nose and mouth to give him more oxygen, one of the things she wanted to make sure the anesthetist hadn’t forgotten. Very important.

They were just putting up the drapes to cover his torso and leave his head free. They’d prep his head with antiseptic soap while she scrubbed. When she returned, she’d have them position the remaining drapes in a tent over Julian’s face, leaving only the crown of his head exposed. Then she’d make her incision marks with a purple felt-tipped pen and then, well, she’d go to work.

She was sorry Julian was asleep. She didn’t want him to feel pain and he must’ve been worried, maybe frightened when she wasn’t there. But maybe it was better this way. He looked very strange without hair, and his scalp was much paler than his normal complexion. For some obscure reason, she cinched up the sheet to cover him just a little more. She didn’t know why. But he looked defenseless. Vulnerable.

Everything depends on me now. I’ll be as fast as I can, Julian, but I have to be careful, or this has all been for nothing.

The room was chilly. Her primary surgical nurse for this wing, not the hard-ass major, was laying out instruments. The anesthetist was there, checking over his syringes. He complained about the cooling blanket because it made the anesthesia trickier. But she was firm, and he gave up because, she figured, he knew it wasn’t his ass on the line.

As she turned to go, her gaze fixed on a glass-enclosed viewing room high on the near wall just behind Julian’s head and opposite the door that led from pre-op. There were four chairs in the viewing room, a vidcom on the wall for communications through this wing, and that was all. The room was dim and would stay that way. Like a performer on stage, Kahayn didn’t really want to see Blate and Nerrit, not too clearly. But
they
would have an excellent view. Maybe that’s why they called it a surgical theater.

In the adjacent scrub room, Arin was already lathering at a large, rectangular, metal basin. They wore identical garb: blue surgical scrubs, blue gauze cap and booties and a surgical mask that hung around their neck, the bottom ties already knotted. Arin’s gaze bounced on her and then away. “Filthy weather,” he said. He palmed a stiff-bristled brush and scoured his nails with a thick, rust-red antiseptic soap he’d dispensed with a foot pedal. “Surprised Nerrit made it at all.”

“Mmmm.” Kahayn operated the foot pedal, squirting soap from a dispenser onto her palms and working the scrub into foam. “Nerrit wouldn’t miss this.” The rules said five minutes for each hand and arm, a minute to every finger, and Kahayn followed this procedure scrupulously. They scrubbed, not talking, the only sound the fits and starts of water splashing against metal and the rasp of bristle brushes. Then Kahayn said, “Sorry you got dragged into this.”

Arin hunched his shoulders, let them fall. “Luck of the draw, I guess,” he said, passing his now-sterilized hands and arms through a steady stream of hot, gray, filtered water. He shook water from his hands, then crooked his elbows, holding his still-dripping hands and arms up and away from his body, palms turned in. Water dripped from his elbows. “Nothing to be done about it.”

“Mmmm,” Kahayn said again. “Promise me one thing. No matter what happens, Arin, do exactly what I tell you. Nothing more, nothing less. You understand?”

His eyes narrowed imperceptibly, and she saw the questions there. “All right.” He hesitated. “Idit, if you—”

“Don’t say any more, Arin. Don’t ask questions. Just do what I say, and everything will be fine.” She butted open the door. “By the way…nice glasses.”

“Thanks,” said Arin.

The two guards, a PFC and corporal on duty at the entrance into the research wing, didn’t like it. More to the point, the corporal hadn’t heard anything about it. He eyed the phalanx of dripping wet soldiers, seven in all. “I haven’t heard anything about any prisoner.”

“Not my problem.” The master sergeant, a strapping hulk of a man and obviously SC by the insignia, looked dour enough to eat bullets. “Think we’ve got nothing better to do than cover your collective asses? You people weren’t so sloppy, you’d’ve picked her up yourself. But now we got her, and we get the credit. General Nerrit’s going to want to see this one.”

The corporal ran his eyes up and down the prisoner. She was small with a head of limp wet curls plastered to her scalp and clothes that clung in interesting places. Not half bad. But she was also very pale, and what was with those pink lips? She looked scared to death. And cold.

He looked at the PFC. The PFC simply shrugged. “Just a minute,” the corporal said, and turned to a vidcom set to the left of the containment door just above a magnetic lock. “I got to check this out with Security Director Blate.”

“You do that,” said the sergeant. He grinned. “For a prize like this? We got time.”

“Describe her again?” Blate listened carefully as the corporal talked. “Just a moment.” He muted the audio and turned to Nerrit seated to his right in the surgical theater. “One of your men seems to have apprehended another one of those,” he nodded in the general direction of the operating theater where Kahayn was gloving up, “like Bashir there.” He described the prisoner, then added, “She was caught outside the complex by your rear guard.”

“Yes?” Nerrit was rail-thin and very severe with a hatchet face. His eyes were silver today instead of green. His whisper-thin lips disappeared in a half-moon of a smile. “Do they know how she got here?”

“No. Your sergeant wants to secure her down here.” Blate made a face, shrugged. “We could interrogate her together after Kahayn’s done.”

“Excellent idea.”

“Good,” said Blate, turning back to the vidcom. “I’ll have one of the guards escort her to a holding room.”

He’d gowned and just finished gloving when Arin saw the vidcom in the viewing room come to life as a pale blue, electric glow. His eyes flicked to a clock on the right wall and noted the time. Then he stood, patiently, as the nurse reached around and fitted his mask over his nose, pinched it down, and then knotted the upper ties firmly at his crown. He saw Nerrit and Blate lean together, and then Blate turned to the monitor. He couldn’t hear what Blate said because of the glass, but it didn’t matter.

Kahayn, he saw, was directing the nurses where to place the surgical drapes around the field. “Do me a favor,” he said to the nurse. “My glasses need adjusting again, damn things. Would you just give them a good jab, right on the bridge there…a little harder, don’t be shy…that’s got it. Thank you,” he said, straightening. He wrinkled his nose. “That’s so much better.”

He heard a sudden gasp and then an exclamation. Startled, he turned just in time to see Kahayn falling in a faint, taking a tray of instruments crashing to the floor with her.

“All right,” said the corporal, stepping back from a vidcom. “We’ll take it from here.”