First to Burn (8 page)

Chapter Seven

“Will you stop that already?” Jennifer’s annoyance caught Theresa off guard.

She jerked her eyes away from the dining hall door to her roommate’s frown. “What?”

“Stop jiggling. You’re moving the table. You haven’t sat still since Friday.” Jennifer’s eyebrows merged over her nose. “I can guess, but what the heck’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Theresa stared at her barely touched Greek omelet. When had she eaten the hash browns?

Her friend muttered a profanity at the same time that part of Wulf’s team entered the mess. Theresa’s lips and cheeks automatically stretched into a wide smile as she fixed her gaze on Jennifer. “So, what are you doing today?”

“Working. Like you. You know, at the hospital?” She leaned across the table. “Relax, my partner in crime. He’s not with them.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” So she and Wulf were playing that never-crossing-paths game again. Her spine drooped into a curve.

“You’re full of shit, Ms. Captain Promotable, but I’m the only person who knows.”

“There’s nothing to know.” She picked olives and feta out of her eggs. The situation had escalated too far during the movie. Damn if she’d think about touching that overconfident piece of man again, not after he’d left her sitting on the floor like a sack of trash. If her near-mistake with a sergeant had demonstrated anything, it was that her next job had to be a place where the vast majority of eligible men weren’t off-limits, somewhere like a big university hospital. “Last night I read about another position in New York.”

The change of subject wasn’t blatant enough for Jen. “Look, I made a mistake.”

At her roommate’s unusually serious tone, Theresa lifted her gaze from her dish.

“I shouldn’t have joked about him or pushed you.” She turned her paper coffee cup around and around. “Everything you said about fraternization, your career—I acted like it was no big deal—but you’ll be a field-grade officer in six weeks. And you need perfect references for your job search.” She took a deep breath. “Being downrange is making me crazy and bored. Teasing you seemed...” She hunched her shoulders. “Funny, I guess. But it’s not. You’re going to be a major.”

“I suppose when I get that gold oak leaf cluster, our fun has to stop.” Theresa waved at the gray-painted dining hall. “I’ll send the reality television crew home and cancel the hot tub. Sayonara Spring Break Afghanistan, hello eighty-hour work week.”

“I sooo cannot picture you in a hot tub.” Jen wrapped her arms around her waist and snorted. “You’d check if the chlorine levels met health code, or swab for bacteria on the deck.”

She wasn’t that joyless, was she? “Thank you for making me feel like a total loser.”

Jennifer stopped laughing. “I didn’t mean—”

“I’m not hungry.” Theresa stood and piled her cup and napkin on her tray.

“Sorry I—”

“See you at the office, okay?” Everything inside her twisted as she crossed the plywood floor toward the service window, but the plastic tray in her hands was indestructible. She could squeeze it as hard as she wanted.

“Aloha, Doc.”

It wasn’t Wulf’s voice, but it was familiar. She turned and saw the linebacker-size Hawaiian from Wulf’s team, the one with the daughters who liked princesses. “Sergeant K.”

“On for Tuesday?”

“For what?” They didn’t have an appointment.

“To return Nazdana, Mir and the twins. We’re free and a Black Hawk’s available.”

“Whenever.” She dropped her paper plate of food in the can. “They’re fine to travel.”

“How’s your schedule?”

“Me?” Silverware in the gray bin. Tray to the civilian contractor in the window. “Why?”

“You’ll be the guest of honor.” His teeth were blinding white in his tan face. “Boy twins are like winning the lottery to a dude like Dostum.”

“I’m too busy. My midtour leave starts Wednesday.”

“Dostum’s going to want to thank someone.”

“Colonel Loughrey did the caesarean. Invite him.” No way could she sit next to Wulf. The truth rolled around her stomach and threatened to boil up her throat. Remembering the way he’d caressed her hand still woke her some nights in a sweat. She couldn’t spend more time with him, not if she wanted to stick to the rules. “I assisted a little and cut the cords. That’s it.”

“Whoa.” Kahananui held up plate-size hands. “Our team doesn’t know that, and neither does the proud papa. He thinks Nazdana had a female doctor. She was unconscious and Mir was in the hall with me, so you’ll leave everybody sharing that happy belief, right?” He loomed closer to Theresa.

She retreated until the garbage can bumped her thighs.

“You’ll come? For her safety?” he pressed.

The photo she’d seen of a Pakistani girl with her nose cut off flashed in her mind. Similar honor crap happened in Afghanistan too. She’d have to go along to protect Nazdana from the risk of punishment for having been alone with unrelated men. Special Forces were expert at boxing people into corners, weren’t they? “What time?”

“A nice civilized oh-six-thirty Tuesday at the flight line.”

She’d have to find someone to cover her seat at the battle-update brief, which meant she’d probably have to do Monday’s brief in return. Clear her patient charts a day early. Pack for Italy. Check her battle rattle gear. Restock her rucksack with bandages, antibacterial ointment, prenatal vitamins and immunizations.

She’d also have to immunize herself against a certain Special Forces staff sergeant.

* * *

Flying from Camp Caddie to Nazdana and Meena’s home, Theresa had wedged herself between the two Afghan girls and avoided contact with Wulf. Returning, other soldiers had positioned themselves between her and Wulf so deliberately that for a second she wondered if they guarded him, but that was dumb. He wasn’t at risk from her.

Her head bobbed as she reviewed the day. She’d spent the first hour on the ground exchanging formal phrases and presents with the babies’ male relatives, and the next three in the women’s quarters giving physicals to Nazdana’s extended family. Then the serious eating had begun. Mir had guided her through the array of foods using English words and phrases she’d learned during her weeks at Camp Caddie, but Theresa hadn’t needed the girl to translate the women’s fingers-to-mouth gestures as they piled her plate with garlicky lamb kabobs and spinach-filled dough pockets. The party had been like Christmas at Nonna’s, down to the armed guards outside, but with spicy tea substituted for wine.

Each rotor turn bounced her helmet on the Black Hawk’s vibrating side. The silk-wrapped bundle in her lap contained presents from Dostum: a silver cuff bracelet, waterfall necklace and chandelier earrings. According to Wulf, the azure stones were lapis, a perfect souvenir of her deployment. Federal ethics rules required her to report gifts this valuable to Colonel Loughrey, but maybe she could keep the scarf tied around the set.

Thoughts of Meena burbled through her food coma as they blew past kilometers of dirt and rock. At goodbye the girl had reached deep into her English.
Doctors help mothers.
Her hands, skinny and chapped from labor, had cupped Theresa’s cheeks to say farewell.
Doctor!
Meena had pointed at her own chest.
Mir and Captain Key-sa!
She still refused to wear girl clothes or answer to her feminine name.
Doctor and doctor!

Against the brutal odds of Paktia Province, Meena aspired to be a doctor. Like
her.

Could she establish a fund for a girls’ school? Perhaps her old high school could become a sister school. If she could establish links to enough local women through maternity visits—

K’BOOOOM. Her body jerked against the safety harness, then slammed into the metal side of the helicopter. Black smoke erupted from the rear, choking her, and men started firing out the open side doors as the flight rerouted to hell.
We’re hit.

“Brace yourself!” Wulf shouted as the helicopter lurched and dropped.

She covered her mouth to hold in her scream or her lunch or
Holy Mary
,
Mother of God
as her butt left the jump seat. Only the harness kept her from hitting the ceiling. Then the helicopter’s landing wheels smashed hard and her world filled with the sound of metal shrieking against its maximum stress. The rotors kept spinning and the whole machine
bounced.
Her stomach freestyled away as they rose for an instant like a tethered falcon and the heaving floor jacked her legs into her chest, but then they crashed down a second time. If metal could give a death rattle, she heard it.

Men fired and moved in a blur while the crew chief sprayed an extinguisher on flames snapping from the tail section. Black smoke set her coughing, but she swept her legs out of the way of the bodies launching out both doors. Her gut screamed commands—run, hide, shout, jump, shoot, dodge—but first she had to click the fast-release buckle on her harness.

“Out, out, out!” Wulf grabbed her shoulder and flung her past the sixty gunner in the port side door. His hand never let go as he crashed on top of her.

Beneath his weight, she felt as flat as her vest’s armor plates. The
ta-ta-ta-ta
of automatic rounds merged into one roar as the door gunner swept the terraced fields ascending the hillside. Dirt geysered where his rounds hit, earthbound fireworks.

“On
go
run for the rocks and
get down.
I’ll be on your nine!” Wulf yelled.

She couldn’t nod with her cheek jammed into the dirt.

“
Go!
” He came off her to her left, already firing. “
Go!
Go!
”

She launched to her feet and raced for the goal he’d identified.

He ran alongside, rifle blasting as they bolted for the rocks.

Leaning forward past full tilt, mouth open for air, she pumped her arms to force every drop of speed that she had from her legs.

He paced her, long after the point when her legs and lungs burned for relief.

She
knew
he ran
faster.
He was
waiting
for
her.
So
stupid.
They’d
make
those
rocks
, make
them
, make
them.

As they did, a soldier grabbed her forearm and jerked her to the ground faster than she could dive. Her shoulder scraped stone as she toppled into cover, safe, and even the searing air trapped with them between the car-size boulders was a gift. Rolling to her side, she sucked in enough oxygen to cheer. “We made it!” She turned to share her exultation with Wulf.

He was sprawled on his stomach next to her, fingers spread in the dirt—slack.

“No!” She scrambled to roll him. Underneath, dust had blackened and clumped on the blood-soaked ground. “Wulf!”

His gear wouldn’t open, so she yanked the strap cutter off her vest. His chest rose, but not on both sides. Pneumothorax.

“Medic! Medic!” Screw his name. “I need a chest tube!” Dammit, she’d donated everything from her ruck to the Afghans.

Wulf’s blood covered her hands as she cut through his shirt to a palm-size exit wound on his right pectoral. A slippery red mess obscured her visual of the shredded flesh, but she knew he wouldn’t need a chest tube if air escaped the cavity on its own. The left side of his chest rose, so he had one working lung, but she heard a Darth Vader suck.

“Medic!” She tore Wulf’s hemostat bandage off his gear. Her hands couldn’t shake or the bandage would stick uselessly to itself. “Where the
fuck
is the
medic?
” Clotting adhesive would help control hemorrhaging at this spot, but she needed another for the entry point.

Chris Deavers yelled coordinates into his radio handset. Everyone ignored her and Wulf, as if they were too busy shooting to care that their sergeant was dying.

Whump-boooom
. A wave of air solidified and hammered into the back of her vest. Spinning fragments impacted above her head. Visions of shrapnel injuries terrified her, but she kept pressure on the wound.

“Deep breaths, Doc.” A young sergeant dropped to his haunches at Wulf’s feet.

“He can’t—”

“Meant you.” His Deep South accent radiated calm as he screwed a metal launch tube into tripod legs. “Don’t you worry, ma’am. Those fuckers suck with mortars.”

“Who’s the medic?” She pressed harder on Wulf’s chest.

He glanced at Wulf as he pulled a fin-tailed canister from his gear. “Wulfie don’t need help.” He spoke so slowly she wanted to punch him.

“He’s not dead!” She wouldn’t allow him to die, but he’d lost so much blood.

“Ain’t that the truth.” He slipped the rocket into the tube’s mouth. “Now you cover your ears and look away, ma’am, while I show how a Bama boy uses his ruck rocket.”

She managed to turn her head as the young soldier yelled
shot out
, but the foam earplugs she’d worn on the helicopter were more wish than protection from the sound punch.

“Splash over,” he called, saying
oh-vahr
like this was ordering up an egg. Well, screw him and this whole team.

“Inflate, dammit!” she yelled in Wulf’s face, but he didn’t move. “Keep breathing!” With the pressure bandage sealing the exit wound maybe he did need a chest tube to let the air out of the cavity between his lungs and chest wall. She wasn’t a surgeon. She treated diarrhea and flu, pulled muscles and common shit. She’d never handled a wound like this by herself.

He could die.

Where was the entry wound? So much blood, she couldn’t find the point of entry.

“Shot out!”
Boom
. Another mortar. “Splash
oh-vahr.
”

Left armpit, entry wound. She stuffed it with the bandage from her own gear but blood soaked through.

“Apaches ETA three minutes!” Chris relayed news of the attack helicopters coming to support them. “Blue Deuce and friends.”

Lives could be lost, saved and lost again in three minutes.
But not this one.

Automatic weapons, men yelling, radio static, incoming mortars landing obscenely close, others launching back from closer—the noise crushed her. She wanted to curl her arms over her head, but she kept pressure on the makeshift bandage and—
Yes!
—both sides of his chest rose. That wasn’t enough. His bleed had soaked his dressing. The bullet must’ve nicked something. He’d need a transfusion soon, and the ability to give one was another thing she didn’t have.