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Alex grimaced and then glanced over at her. “The light’s as good in here as anywhere, so let’s sterilize this room as much as possible. Katie, you’ll assist me. Sylvia can handle any other patients who come in.”

Katie nodded briskly and quickly unpacked the plastic tarps they’d used for a roof last night.

Pulling out the roll of duct tape they’d brought, she tacked clear plastic over the window frame while Alex sprayed the tarps, ceiling, and floor with bleach-laced water.

She taped the second tarp across the top of the doorway, creating a curtain of sorts to help keep the space clean.

Makeshift operating theater in place, she and Alex scrubbed their hands and forearms in a bucket of dubiously cloudy water with the iodine-based soap they’d brought. Thankfully, the soap should take care of sterilizing the water, too.

They donned surgical gloves and masks Sylvia brought them. Grumbling about primitive medicine, Alex administered ether by dripping it onto a gauze pad over the man’s mouth.

Alex asked for tools tersely as he worked, and she passed them to him quickly. She was in charge of suctioning away blood so Alex could see to work and held retractors and clamps for him when he needed an extra hand.

It was the first time she’d seen him perform surgery, and she was impressed to death by how fast and precise he was. She’d worked with some excellent surgeons in the past, but he was arguably the best she’d ever seen. Not that she was surprised.

Alex stitched the man up as quickly and smoothly as he’d performed the surgery. As he snipped off the last suture thread, he commented, “This guy could use a pint of blood, but there isn’t any to give him.”

“I could donate a pint,” Katie offered. “I’m O-negative.”

“That’s a noble offer. But if you donate blood to everyone who needs some around here, you’ll be drained dry. You need the blood more, anyway. We’re going to be working long hours around here.”

Alex was not kidding. When word got out that a doctor had arrived, patients poured into the clinic, and they worked forty-eight hours straight with only short cat naps to keep them going.

They survived on bottled water and canned food gulped down as they moved from patient to patient. A hastily dug outhouse behind the clinic served much of the village, and baths consisted of sponging off over a bucket of cold water.

After the initial surge of patients, they both grabbed four hours’ sleep, and repeated the whole routine again.

Katie helped Sylvia whenever she could. They woman working tirelessly in the background, collecting scrap wood and building a fire, boiling water over it, and sterilizing towels, sheets, and surgical tools in it.

When she and Sylvia’s nursing services weren’t needed, they fed children and passed out bottles of water, and mopped blood off the floors.

Katie forgot what it felt like to sit down and rest.

As miserable and demanding as the work was, Katie was reassured to see the passionate healer she’d first met and fallen in love with still existed inside Alex’s convoluted heart.

The physician was just buried beneath the spy.

Now, if only she could uncover the man’s emotions and feelings, life would be perfect.

The fifth day dawned, and she asked Alex over their breakfast of powdered eggs and canned tomatoes, “Isn’t it about time for us to be moving on? When we were in Zaghastan, it took about three days for word to get out among the locals that we were in the area. It must work about the same, here.”

He nodded around a slug of water. “I’m counting on it working about the same.”

That wasn’t exactly an answer. She pressed, “Are we going to leave, soon?”

He shook his head and picked up his trash. “Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I’m timing how long it takes the Cuban Army to show an interest in us.”

What the heck did that mean?

“They showed quite an interest in us the night we arrived. I thought we were avoiding those guys.”

“Someone told the Army to ambush our arrival point. What I’m watching is how quickly they track down reports of a foreign doctor showing up in the area.”

“You’re using us as bait?” she squeaked.

“More or less.”

“There’s no less about it. You’re sitting here waiting for them to come after us! What exactly are you planning to do when they get here?”

He shrugged. “Evade them.”

“Just like that?”

“Yup.”

God, she hated it when he went all monosyllabic on her like this. “Won’t that be just a wee bit dangerous?”

A shrug.

Great. Now he wasn’t speaking at all. At least her vocal chords were functioning normally. “This is a lousy idea, Alex. Just because your father is in bed with the Cubans doesn’t mean they’ll embrace you like a long-lost son.”

“I’ve got to go,” he bit out.

“You’re avoiding me. I’m not done talking about this with you!” she called after him as he beat a hasty retreat to help an elderly man shuffle inside the clinic.

Alex dived into the morning’s line of patients with enough vigor for her to be certain he was dodging her.

Old Alex would not have taken such a risk with her life. New Alex was far too cavalier about danger for her taste.

As quickly as the deluge of patients had come, it stopped as abruptly by noon. Sylvia told the two of them to take a few hours off. They went to her little cottage next door, which was missing part of its roof, crawled wearily into hammocks draped with mosquito netting, and crashed.

It was dark when Katie roused to a hand on her shoulder shaking her awake. It was Sylvia.

“Alex, Katie, a truck just drove in with a dozen patients.”

Katie groaned and rolled out of the hammock. She ached all over even though her cell phone said she’d been asleep for nearly twelve hours. She pulled on her last clean t-shirt and followed Alex and the nurse next door.

The patients were crowded into the front room of the clinic, and they were in terrible shape. Several were barfing into bags, while several more twitched in convulsions They all smelled of excrement.

Alex swore under his breath. “Where have they come from?”

Sylvia collected answers to his rapid-fire questions while he started examining the worst-off of the bunch.

They all came from a small village to the north along the coast. They’d eaten enough different foods that he ruled out group food poisoning. Cholera would have made them all explosively empty their bowels and not just a few of them, so thankfully, that was off the table as a possibility.

Alex looked down throats, poked bellies, and took temperatures, a frown intensifying on his brow all the while. At last, he murmured, “Sylvia, I need to know exactly where these people live and how they got here.”

The nurse collected descriptions of several collective plantations clustered along the coast.

Alex asked with deceptive calm, “Ask how many have already died from this sickness.”

Sylvia stared at him in alarm. “Are we looking at an epidemic?”

Katie’s blood ran cold. This could get ugly fast if something infectious had hit the local population while the region was cut off from all assistance.

Alex merely repeated over his shoulder as he held down a convulsing woman, “How many dead?”

Sylvia asked the question.

“Taking into account that some of them may be duplicating counting some of the deaths, maybe fifteen. Several dozen have milder symptoms, and a dozen or so were too far gone to move and are probably dead by now.”

A teenaged girl barfed just then, and Sylvia bent down to wipe the girl’s mouth and give her a sip of water.

Katie sidled over to Alex. “What is it?” she murmured in English.

He muttered back without moving his lips, “Not here.”

“Can you treat them?” Sylvia asked anxiously.

He responded, “Give them comfort care. Hydrate them. Sedate the convulsers if you can spare the meds. Administer clear liquids if the patients can keep them down.” To Katie he murmured, “Come with me.”

Alarmed, she followed him into the tiny supply closet where Sylvia kept her stash of medical supplies.

“Help me find test tubes,” he ordered.

She dug into the boxes of supplies beside him. “What’s going on?” she breathed.

“Chemical agent.”

“As in nerve gas?” she blurted in disbelief.

“Keep your voice down,” he bit out. He added more gently, “I can’t be sure. We’ll need to take samples. Get them out of the country for testing, somehow.”

“Does Cuba make or stockpile chemical weapons?”

“Not that anyone in the U.S. is aware of.”

Ho. Lee. Cow. “Are you sure about this?”

He shook his head. “Can’t be until we run tests.”

She gestured to the doorway. “Is there anything we can do for them?”

“If I’m right, we can make them comfortable until they die.”

Her stomach dropped like a rock.

“In the morning, you and I are taking a trip,” he said grimly.

“Let me guess. Up the coast?”

“Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.”

“Should we tell somebody what you suspect?” she breathed.

He opened his mouth to answer, but Sylvia called his name.

Her voice was urgent and he bolted from the closet.

Katie locked the door carefully and headed toward the sound of a commotion.

Alex and Sylvia knelt over a thrashing patient, but they seemed to have protecting the patient from his convulsions under control. She retreated from the gruesome scene.

Thoughtfully, she went to Alex’s backpack in the corner of the operating room and pulled out the satellite phone he stored there for emergencies.

She turned it on and punched in André Fortinay’s private number.

It was something like three in the morning in Washington, but André would get over it when he heard what she had to say.

A sleepy voice answered on the second ring. “Hey, Alex. What’s up?”

“It’s Katie,” she said low. “We just got in a batch of patients. Alex thinks they’ve been exposed to some sort of chemical agent.”

Abruptly André sounded entirely alert. “Like a chemical weapon ?”

“Yes.”