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“H ow do I know you haven’t killed them already?” Sophia asked. There was no trusting a man whose only goal was death on a mass scale.

Akbar glanced at Len. “Show her.”

The mercenary grabbed her by the arm and hauled her into the refugee camp.

At this rate, she was going to have bruises on her arm for the rest of her life. That struck her as so ironic, she laughed.

“What’s so fucking funny, sweetheart?”

“You’re gonna die, asshole, and I think that’s hilarious.”

“You should be a little nicer to me,” he said in her ear. “I’m the only thing standing between you and all these sick, hungry, desperate people.”

“Well, aren’t you Mr. Good News today.”

The idiot thought that was funny.

They passed down a narrow walkway between makeshift tents and shanty-type dwellings until they arrived at a ruined collection of buildings made of rock and clay.

People drew back from Len like he was the carrier of a deadly disease.

So, he was known to the populace. That meant he’d been working for Akbar for a while, maybe even the entire length of time he’d been here. Perhaps he’d used Dr. Blairmore and his aid group as a cover.

“You do know that as soon as your usefulness ends,” she said to Len, “he’s going to kill you.”

“Only if I don’t kill him first.”

Wonderful, she was dealing with two sociopaths instead of one.

He dragged her past two men holding Russian-made rifles into a stone-walled room with a roof made of rotting wood. Four vaguely human shapes huddled against the far wall, either lying on the sand or sitting up at awkward angles.

She recognized two of them immediately. Connor and Smoke.

She surged forward, but Len yanked her back.

“Con? Smoke? Are you all right?”

“You touch her, you motherfucker, and I’ll make you hurt for a very long time,” Connor said in a voice so broken and ragged it was barely discernible as his.

Len leaned close to Sophia’s ear and said, “He’s got a thing for you.”

She ignored him, her focus on Con. The shadows created by the uneven roof made it hard to see. “Are you injured?”

“We all are,” he said.

Only Smoke moved. Were the other two so badly injured that they were unconscious or unable to move? Panic welled up, unfamiliar and uncomfortable. She shoved it down with cold logic. She couldn’t help them if she had a meltdown.

“Details,” she ordered.

“Does she give the orders in bed too, Button?” Len asked with a laugh.

“I wouldn’t know, asshole.” Con’s laugh was full of pain. “Stab wound to my left thigh and possibly a couple of cracked ribs. Smoke took a John Wayne shot to the shoulder. River caught a bullet with his arm and kept fighting. Len kicked him in the head and he’s been down ever since. Stalls got stabbed too, but he lost consciousness a little while ago.”

She finally looked at Len. “I need to check them.”

“No problem,” he said, an evil smile spreading across his face. “Just as soon as you give me a blow job.”

“You motherfucking son of a bitch,” Con yelled as he tried to get up. “Don’t you touch her.”

Len pointed his weapon at him and grinned.

Con froze with his teeth bared.

She put her face close to Len’s and said, “You put anything that close to my face, I’m going to bite it off.” She snapped her teeth a couple of times.

Len backhanded her, knocking her to the sand. Again. He came at her, violent intent turning his face into a hideous mask, and she laughed.

“How are you going to explain damaging Akbar’s prize?” she asked.

He stopped, then snarled, “I’ll tell him you tried to escape.”

“To where? We’re in the middle of a desert. If you claim I tried to overpower you, he’s not going to believe that either. I’m too small and weak for that to be a possibility.” She sat up and when that didn’t seem too difficult, she got to her feet.

“You know what your problem is?” she asked the mercenary. “You think you’re in control. You have the combat and weapons skills, so you pretend to bow down to Akbar. Until your final paycheck is in the bank, and then you think it’ll be easy to kill him and disappear.”

When he didn’t respond right away, she knew she was right. “The reality is, he’s crazy and no one’s life means anything to him. Certainly not yours, not even his own. He has no plans to let you live one second longer than necessary.”

“Shut up, you stupid bitch.”

“I’m going to examine them now,” she said. “I advise you to think about it while I’m doing that. Right now, Akbar needs me a whole lot more than he needs you.”

She checked on the unconscious men first. Stalls was dead, and from the amount of blood soaked into the sand underneath him, he’d bled out. She glanced at Con and shook her head. River was alive, but when she checked his pupils, only one reacted to light. “Concussion,” she reported softly. “A bad one.”

Smoke didn’t say anything when she looked at his shoulder. “Any trouble breathing?”

“No.”

“Good. It looks like your collarbone is broken. Try not to move around or it could pierce your lung.” She wished she could do more for him, but advice was all she could give.

He gave a short nod but never took his eerily light blue eyes off Len.

Con had his hands wrapped around his thigh, but his pants were so blood soaked she couldn’t tell where the wound was. “Is the wound on the outside or inside the thigh?”

“Outside, but it’s still bleeding like a bitch.”

He wasn’t going to be able to hold it forever.

She pulled off her shirt, leaving her in just a tank top, and tied it around Con’s leg, wadding up what she could to press against the wound he revealed when he removed his hands.

“What does Akbar want from you?” Con asked very softly.

“To make his virus easier to transmit.”

“ Fuck. ” He hissed as she tightened the fabric hard around his leg. “You know which one it is?”

“Rabies.”

Con’s mouth fell open. “Is that even possible?”

“He’s read my dissertation and has made certain assumptions. I mapped the virus’s code, so I know which changes would need to be made...” She tried to pin a confident expression on her face, but seeing him so bloody was doing something to her insides. Something painful and cold. “He says if I don’t do what he wants, you’re all dead.”

Con glanced Stalls’s body, then at his own leg. “We’re all dead anyway.”

“Yeah,” she whispered. “That’s what I think too.” She was going to die, in a matter of weeks most likely. She wanted her life to count for something. Maybe this was it. Maybe she could save Con, Smoke, and River. Maybe she could take out Akbar with his own weapon.

She leaned forward and whispered in his ear, “Don’t blame yourself. I kinda knew I’d die first.”

“What the fuck are you whispering?” Len asked, his gun pointed at Con’s head.

Sophia rolled her eyes and said to Con at a normal volume, “I really, really wanted to have sex with you.” Then she was on her feet and walking away.

“Not going to happen,” Len said with a disgusting sneer on his face. He put a hand on the back of her neck and pushed her faster.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Con staring after her, the confused, irritated expression on his face reassuringly familiar.

***

R age and pain combined and roiled inside Connor until he felt like he was going to explode.

“Sex?” Smoke asked.

“Don’t fucking go there, man,” Con said with a glare at his friend. “Don’t.”

Con glanced at their jailors. Two guys who held their weapons like they’d had some training.

Probably not enough though.

Stalls was dead and River was halfway there. Their jailors likely thought this was easy duty, standing guard over a bunch of bloodied and dead guys.

Con groaned and grabbed his leg like it really hurt, then whispered to Smoke. “Collarbone?”

“Not broken,” he whispered back.

She’d lied out loud to give them an advantage. Fucking A .

Con switched to Dari and said to their guards, “I have information about an American military attack.”

They looked at him, but didn’t move.

“I want to trade this information for my life.”

One of the two men came toward him. “What attack? This is a refugee camp.”

“The United States knows there’s a terrorist group with people here. They’re going to destroy the entire camp, then apologize later and say it was a mistake.”

The man came closer, his rifle pointed at a spot halfway between Smoke and Con.

Con lunged upward, putting his weight on his good leg, to grab the rifle and push it so it was pointed up and away from anyone.

At the same time, Smoke rolled and reached for the knife strapped to the terrorist’s leg, pulled it out, then threw it at the other guard.

He fell to the ground, the knife embedded in his eye.

Con wrestled the rifle away from the other one, then bashed him on the side of the head with the butt.

He handed the rifle to Smoke. “I’ll carry River.”

“Hospital?” Smoke asked.

“Yeah, best place to hide him.”

“Wait here.” Smoke slipped out of the room, and came back with three traditional Middle Eastern robes long enough to cover up their uniforms.

“Where’d you steal these from?”

“Not far. Laundry.”

It took both of them to get River into a robe, but they managed it and Con hoisted him over his shoulder. Good thing the guy wasn’t Smoke’s size.

They walked relatively slowly to the hospital. No one paid them much attention, mostly because they weren’t the only ones. By the time they got there, they were part of a procession of about four groups taking someone to the hospital.

Con got River into a cot. “Stay with him. I’m going to look for the doctor,” he said in Dari. There were a lot of people in the hospital tent, most of them were on cots, sick or already dead, but there were still a lot of aid workers amongst the ambulatory family members taking care of the sick.

But no Dr. Blairmore. Where could he have gotten away to?

He found the good doctor behind the tarp of the staff-only area. He was sitting on a cot staring at his feet like they were fascinating.

Con limped over and crouched next to him. “Hey, Doc. I need you to check out my friend.” He spoke in English, but Blairmore didn’t seem to notice what language he was using.

“I’m sorry, your friend will have to wait his turn.” He glanced up and understanding flooded his face. “Sergeant Button? I thought you were dead. I heard gunshots and saw bodies at your camp.”

“Not quite there yet.”

Blairmore glanced around uneasily. “So you know Len is a...a murdering monster?”

“Yeah, my cracked ribs let me in on that little secret. Has he hurt you or the other aid workers?”

“No, not yet, but he says he will if we interfere with whatever he and that madman are doing.”

“That madman the same guy who told you Dr. Perry was a problem?”

“Yes.” Blairmore shook his head and his bottom lip quivered like he was going to cry. “I was a fool.”

“There’s a lot of that going around.” Con patted his shoulder. “Listen, there are only three of us left and my buddy Len kicked River pretty hard in the head. Can you take a look at him?”

“Of course, but be careful. Len comes through the hospital every so often. He might notice your man.”

“As soon as he realizes we’ve escaped, he’ll probably be too busy searching for us to bother with your patients or you.” Con smiled at him and winked. “You’re no threat to him, right?”

Blairmore stared at him, blinked, then nodded and said slowly, “Yes, of course, I’m no threat and far too busy with people who really need my help to watch for some stupid soldiers. Besides you guys are a bunch of arrogant assholes and that woman with you needs to be taken down a notch or two.”

“That sounds good. He’ll buy it sight unseen.”

Con led Blairmore to River’s cot, and the doctor did a quick exam.

“He’s got a nasty concussion, and I don’t have the equipment here to do anything about it. I can give him some medication that might help reduce the brain swelling, but that might not be enough.”

“Any help is better than none,” Con said, working hard to sound like Dari was his first language and English was an afterthought. “Do you have a way to call for more help? More medicine or machines?”

“No, I can’t seem to get a signal.”

Shit, Len must be blocking it.

“Battery dead, maybe,” Con said, then gave him a little bow and limped away with Smoke beside him.

“Now what?” Smoke asked, sticking to Dari.

“Now we figure out how to get Sophia away from Akbar before he makes her design the next great plague.”