Page 49 of Deadly Strain

Chapter Eleven

Agrin came and wenton Sharp’s face. “Wow, so you do know how to swear.”

She looked at the other soldiers on the helicopter. Most of them still wore grins, but a couple didn’t. They frowned and avoided her gaze. Great. Marshall was probably going to hear a complete report of everything they’d said here within minutes of their arrival at the base. She’d need to talk to Max ASAP to make sure Marshall didn’t get in the way of what needed to be done, rather than what one power-hungry asshole wanted done.

He was going to come at her with everything he had, which was a lot. His initial patrol infected, the helicopter crash, and her having gone over his head before she left.

Yep, he was going to attempt to tear her limb from limb.

She let one of the combat rescue medics check her over and re-dress the injuries on her left arm and leg. Sharp was lying quietly on his gurney on the floor of the aircraft, staring at the bulkhead above him or at her face. She listened as he asked the medic monitoring him how much longer until they arrived at the base.

Fifteen minutes.

Grace let her head fall back. Fifteen minutes of relative peace before having to face Marshall and the rest of Sharp’s team. Rasker and Williams had died in the crash, and so had the rest of the men with them. All of them soldiers. All of them her responsibility.

No matter how rational an explanation there was for their deaths, she was the reason they’d been in that helicopter, the reason they died.

Maybe she deserved to get yelled at, because she’d accomplished nothing. She still had the original samples, yes, but they were over twenty hours old now, and they’d had the shit shaken out of them.

She was going to have to go back to the village and get fresh ones.

Marshall wasn’t going to like that.

Something nudged her foot. She glanced down at Sharp, who tapped his headset. She checked hers and realized she’d shut it off.

“What?” she asked after she turned it back on.

“How long will it take for you to fix me up?”

Geez, he sounded like it was as easy as fixing a car. A few stitches here, a unit of blood there, and he’d be as good as new.

“You need at least one unit of blood, probably two. Your bullet wounds, large and small, need to be cleaned out and sewn up. You’ll need a complete set of X-rays to make sure you don’t have any broken bones, and you need at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. You tell me, how long will it take?”

“Too fucking long.”

She shrugged. “That sounds about right.”

His narrow gaze told her he suspected something. “What are you going to do when we land?”

“I need to go back and get fresh samples.”

“You’re not going back to that village alone.” He said it like he was the major and she was the sergeant.

“Of course I won’t. I’m sure Marshall will assign several soldiers to accompany me.”

Sharp lifted his lips in a silent snarl, showing her just how much he didn’t like that idea. She didn’t like it much either, but her list of choices in regard to how she completed her mission was getting shorter and shorter. She gave him a long, direct look that saidprotest all you want, buddy, it’s going to happen.

“Make contact with Cutter as soon as we’re on the ground,” Sharp said. “He’ll support you in whatever you have to do.”