Sin (The Waite Family) (2 page)

“
’
Cause I gotta tell you, if I don’t have some down time soon
somebody’s
dick is coming off r
ight up to his nuts and then some.”

He cringed at the image.
“Where are you being deployed to?
Last I heard you were in Spain on your three week
furlough
.
Who gave the orders this time?”

There was a great deal of static then he heard
other
voices
.
When she came through again David was glad he was sitting down.

“You did.” David dropped his mug of coffee.
“Orders say we are
to go to Morocco and await
further
orders. Damn it
,
David, we just go back from a seven mouth turn.
My men are beat to hell and back.
We needed this.”

“I didn’t send you.”
He had to think. Morocco. What the hell was in
Morocco?
Nothing that he could think of that
would send
his best re-con team there.
“When do you leave? And from where?”

“We’re boarding as we speak.
Took our cells and personals.” The static was
harsher
this time, louder.
“Not liking this
,
David.
Some bullshit is going down and my men are fubared if this plays out like I’m thinking it will.”

FUBAR
—
Fucked
U
p
B
eyond
A
ll
R
ecognition.
Taking their person
al
s
meant they’d have nothing
—
no clothes, medical packs or anything.
They were being dropped. Then he realized she was speaking to someone else.

“…take a piss?
What the fuck, you expect me to hang it out the chopper bay and hope it land
s
on an unfriendly?
Fuck off
,
buddy.
I don’t have the equipment to even make that remotely possible.
I could try by pissing on your head
.” A short
,
sharp reply, then, “Yeah, I thought so too.”

Sydney was very ladylike too
,
David thought.

Her voice was low and urgent.
“We’re in Madrid. The chopper leaves in ten, unless I need a shit too.
Then we rendezvous with a ship out at sea.
You
tell me you had nothing to do with this and I’ll expect you to save my men.”

“
I didn’t, I swear it.
I’m coming. I’ll meet you in Morocco tomorrow night. Keep me informed.” He was rushing to his bedroom as he spoke. He didn’t have a lot of time.

“And just how the fuck do you expect me to do that? Carrier
pigeon
? I’ll try and send out some smoke signals. Dumb fuck.”
He heard her take a deep breath and that
,
more than anything
,
scared him.
“
Just make sure you keep your promise. If you don’t
,
then I’m fucking coming back to castrate your fucking ass.” The line went dead.

And Sydney had a way with words that made one weep.

David had left immediately for the airport. For whatever reason
,
he didn’t want to think about flying service
. He felt in his gut it
wasn’t smart.
He got the next flight to Africa then rented a chopper to
the nearest military base.
That was how he had ended up here in the middle of nowhere with a missing man.

Halfway
there
he’d heard someone over the radio saying that Captain Waite was missing and then presumed dead. He didn’t believe the latter of the two messages. He knew that she was alive.
It
was all David
could do not to jump in the
pilot’s
seat and fly himself. Now she was found and in bad shape.

“Colonel? She…she wants to speak to you.” The man hold
ing
him back stepped away and David moved forward. He could smell the blood about four or so feet from her. It wasn’t until Shipley moved for him that David saw her.

“Christ,” he hissed.

Her short hair was red, bloodied red. David could see a trickle of blood coming from her left ear.
Her left eye was swollen completely shut and a
large
cut ran the length of her brow.
It looked
to
be to the skull.
Her nose was bent at
an
angle and her cheek was opened wide.
Her right eye was open
,
but he doubted she could see much from it. It was filled with blood and it seeped from the corner.
Her mouth was moving
,
but David couldn’t understand her yet. He knelt down to her. There was a medic working on her chest.

The blood was pooling too fast for him to be sure
,
but it looked like five bullet holes along her right side and one more in her belly.
The medic was working frantic
al
ly to stop the bleeding.
Her left
arm
was
broken;
David could see her bone sticking through her forearm.
Looking down her body he could see the destruction went to her legs
,
as both were broken it appeared.
He leaned closer still when she continued to whisper.

“Promised,” she said.
“Keep promise.”

David felt tears burn his eyes. “You aren’t going to die
,
damn it. I won’t have it.
Buck up
,
c
aptain
,
or I’ll have your bars.” David could feel the tears fall.
There was no way she was going to live though this
and they all knew it.

“Promise.”

Sydney coughed then and blood poured from her mouth.
David was suddenly shoved out of the way as the medic that had come with them worked to save her.

David leaned back on his heels and did something he’d not done since his wife passed away three years before. He prayed.
Prayed to God that Sydney Waite made it.

~~~

Cain was sitting in his office looking at the file of his newest patient.
All seven pound
s,
three ounces of her.
Mary Margaret Turner had been born at two-fifteen this morning and everyone was doing fine.
Cain couldn’t help but feel pride in what he’d been able to
do.
Had he not been at the hospital when he had both mother and daughter wouldn’t have made it. The car accident they’d been in would have cut both their lives short.
Cain leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

When his phone ran
g
on his desk he let it go. He wasn’t officially here. He didn’t need to be at the office for another hour and he was taking a short nap to keep him
from falling
asleep while he did rounds.
Besides
,
if his family needed him they had his
—

The cell in his pocket vibrated.
He smiled.
Only
his wife or his sisters
were
the only ones with this number.
He hoped it was Alyssa, his wife.
He reached into his pocket and answered without looking at the caller ID.

“Hello
,
sweetheart.”

The silence at the other end startled him.
Then
he thought it was
indeed one of his sisters or maybe his brother
-
in
-
law. He grinned when he thought of Drew being called
“
sweetheart.
”

“Doctor Waite, Cain Waite?”

Cain sat up in his chair. Terror had his heart pounding. No matter who was at the other end, this could not be good news.

“Yes. Yes
,
this is Cain Waite. What’s happened?”
Silence again.

“My name is Patterson, Lieutenant Colonel David Patterson.
I’m…I know your sister, Captain Sy…Christ.”

Cain closed his eyes when he heard the man sob.

Sydney was dead. He knew it as surely as Patterson had already told him. He reached for his desk phone
to dial his wife.
He didn’t know how he’d manage it with two phones when someone knocked on his door.
Standing, he opened it as the man on the phone began speaking again.

“There’s been a…I’m not even sure what happened.
She’s hurt, your sister. She’s been beaten and shot and they’re taking her to the closest M.A.S.H. unit now. Then from there…fuck
,
I don’t know.”

Cain leaned against the door ja
m
b and felt his knees tremble.
Not dead, not dead
,
kept running through his head. He looked up at the nurse standing there and drew a complete blank on her name.