Page 18 of Deadly Strain

A sound penetrated her mental haze. Screaming.

It was hard to see where the noise was coming from. Between the smoke and the jumbled debris all around, it was hard to even believe the wreck had once been a helicopter.

She crawled around a large piece of metal paneling that probably had once been part of the rear bulkhead. Her hands landed on a suit-covered boot and she felt her way up the body to search for evidence of injury.

Another of Marshall’s men. He’d been decapitated.

Horror worked its way up to choke her, freezing her in place like the day the IED went off and she’d been faced with an extremist with a weapon. Then, the only thing that saved her had been the quick actions of another soldier.

No.She wrenched her mind out of the past.

Focus.Where was Sharp?

She searched the area, but there was no sign of him. He could be hurt or dead. No, not him.She hadn’t beaten him at chess yet.

She’d find him, then she’d worry about everything else.

She discovered a second body, dead, then got to the source of the screaming. It was one of the men on her security detail. One of his arms was trapped under mangled pieces of the wreckage, pinning him to the ground.

There was a lot of blood.

Too much blood.

She began to pat him down, searching for the injury and the source of all the blood.

His left foot was missing. Completely gone.

“I need some help here,” she yelled as she jerked at a piece of harness. It came loose and she quickly used it to put a tourniquet at the end of the stump to stop the bleeding. The screaming stopped as the soldier passed out. She turned, hoping to see assistance in the form of Williams or Rasker or Sharp. No one.

Where was Sharp?

She’d have to get an IV going and push fluids into the injured soldier if there was any hope of saving him. Did they even have those kinds of medical supplies on this bird?

No one was there.

The smoke had dissipated a little, allowing her to see better, but all she saw was a dead aircraft filled with broken bodies.

Despair grabbed hold and shook her like a hunting dog with a rat. She wanted to throw up some more, then crawl into a hole and never come out, but the soldier needed her.

He was going to die if she didn’t get moving.

The biohazard container hanging around her neck bumped into her arm. It appeared intact. Thank God.

She stripped off her suit—it wasn’t any use now—then crab-crawled below the smoke and over debris and bodies toward where the emergency supplies were supposed to be stowed. Stored in a series of bulkhead cabinets in padded containers and locked to the fuselage by heavy-duty straps, some of it should be okay. As long as there were IV sets and saline, she could cobble something together to keep the soldier alive.

She dug out one case, but it was full of bandages and splints. She’d gotten her hands on another one when she heard voices and laughter. From the sound of their baritones, men. From the language, Dari or Persian, locals rather than a rescue team. From their laughter, extremists or insurgents.

The soldier started screaming again.

There was a burst of gunfire and the screaming stopped.

She didn’t have to see it to know what happened. They’d killed the soldier. Murdered him. A wounded man, pinned to the ground, who had no hope of defending himself.

Anger rushed through her system like a firestorm, heating her blood and completely clearing her head for the first time since the crash.

The men kept laughing and she could hear the crash of debris being thrown aside. Gunfire erupted for a second time and her hands curled into fists.

They’d killed her patient, then moved on to shoot someone else.