WAR: Intrusion (21 page)

“We’re in a war zone, doctor. Follow close behind me, stay quiet, and obey instantly if I give you an order. Your life depends on it.”

“Sorry, you’re right. You’re the expert. I have no desire to become another victim of the rebels.” She shuddered. “At my last posting, I treated enough victims of the rebels to know what horrific acts of violence they’re capable of.” She’d learned far more than she’d wanted to about the ways in which one human being could physically hurt another.

With a satisfied nod at her answer, Lachlan moved in front of her.

The clinic was worse off than her bungalow. Helen stared in horror at the destruction. The clinic’s roof was missing and flames still burned inside.

“Missile strike,” Lachlan said tightly. “How secure is your underground room?”

“It’s supposed to be able to withstand an attack like this.” But was it really possible that the floor of the clinic could have held against a missile? “There’s an air filtration system, plus food and water to last three days for four people. Jacobs should be okay. There’s an escape tunnel that connects to a similar room under my bungalow, and also to an emergency exit.”

“Where does the door to the emergency exit emerge?”

“In the middle of the jungle on the other side of the road. Far enough from the village that there’s little risk of being spotted.”

“All right.” Lachlan paced tensely along the edge of the jungle, typing something on his sat phone. “I’m letting Tony know the situation up here, on the off chance a text gets through.” He studied the burning clinic. “I need a closer look at what’s happening with the village, but I don’t want to leave you alone. There might be rebels in the woods hunting down survivors. Show me this other entrance to the tunnel. You can hide inside while I investigate.”

“Okay. We need to head back toward my bungalow, then cross the road.”

They hadn’t gone very far before she heard the sound of trucks, then men shouting. “What’s going on?” she murmured.

Lachlan shook his head. They eased forward, staying well within the protection of the vegetation until the jungle thinned to tall Guinea grass. Two trucks faced one another on the dirt road, while several men in rebel uniforms held an animated discussion. Helen could just make out the words, a mix of French and one of the dominant local languages from the Ivory Republic. She didn’t speak that language fluently, but she understood it well enough to get the gist of the conversation. She motioned for Lachlan to lean down, then said against his ear, “They’re arguing about searching for the foreigners. One group wants to leave, as there’s nothing left of interest here and they’re convinced the foreigners have fled like the cowards they are. The other group wants to locate any survivors from the village. They won’t leave without proof that the foreigners have been killed.” As she spoke, one group climbed back into their truck and roared off toward the main road. The other group started organizing itself into search parties.

Lachlan turned and the two of them moved deeper into the jungle. “We’re not going to be able to reach the other tunnel entrance until the rebels go away,” she pointed out when Lachlan finally called a halt.

“You’re right. Are there any other places within easy walking distance where you can hide?”

“No. Any storage sheds are too close to the clinic or the village, and you remember how long it took to drive to the school where I teach—” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. “Taught, my health class.”

Sounds of boots trampling underbrush and the thwack of machete blades indicated that the search parties were getting closer.

“We’ll skirt around this village,” Lachlan decided. “And aim for the next village.”

“Okay.”

“But first, I need to attach a tracking device to the rebel vehicle.” He glanced behind them. “You come with me and act as a guard.”

Heart in her throat, Helen followed Lachlan to the edge of the jungle. The rebels had left just one guard at the truck. Helen watched in mingled dismay and cool detachment as Lachlan crept up behind the man. He stabbed the man in the lower back while his hand covered the man’s nose and mouth. Once the rebel went limp, Lachlan slit the man’s throat.

After dragging the body into the jungle, Lachlan crawled underneath the vehicle. Helen remained hyper-alert, jumping at the slightest noise, gritting her teeth against the urge to call a warning every time the wind rustled the leaves. Just as she thought she was going to go out of her mind, Lachlan returned.

She was so glad to have him close that she stepped toward him and had her arms around his waist before she even thought about it.

“Success,” he breathed against her ear. “They won’t easily find the tracker.”

Nodding, she pushed away, embarrassed that she’d needed the physical reassurance. “All right. I’m ready to go.”

Lachlan brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. His eyes held pride. In her? Why? She’d nearly fallen apart.

“Which way?” she asked.

Lachlan studied her a moment more, then turned and slipped between the trees.

The next several hours turned into a stop-and-start, cat-and-mouse game that further eroded Helen’s nerves. She found it difficult to tell direction. Sometimes she heard the sounds of the rebels tramping through the jungle and thought they were close behind, only to turn around and see nothing. Other times she heard gunshots or screams that seemed to come from all directions at once. Twice rebel soldiers almost discovered them, but Lachlan, with his quick reflexes, had pulled Helen deeper into cover just in time. Still, she wasn’t certain her heart could take many more of these spikes in adrenaline without giving out. This morning she’d been annoyed by Lachlan, but right now his calm, capable presence was the only thing holding back the fear threatening to overtake her.

Not long after Lachlan had planted the tracker on the rebel truck, they’d circled near enough to the village closest to her clinic to see that it had been hit by a missile. David’s house and those surrounding it had been completely destroyed. Homes farther out had suffered less structural damage, but all the buildings still smoldered.

In comparison, the other two villages had only been torched.

What she and Lachlan didn’t find as they dodged rebel patrols was any sign that the villagers had escaped. But with fires still raging and the rebels close by, they didn’t dare enter the villages to check for survivors.

Unfortunately, as the day wore on, more rebels joined the search. In fact, the jungle became so dangerous, that in a lull between rebel patrols, Lachlan asked, “Do you know of any large trees that we could climb to get up and away from the rebels?”

She tried to figure out where they were, but the narrow trees and thick undergrowth all looked the same to her. “I’m sorry, I don’t. I never spent any time in the jungle. And honestly, even if I knew of such a tree I’d be no help. I haven’t got a clue where we are.”

The look he gave her was loaded with sympathy. “No worries.”

By the time the afternoon lengthened toward dusk, Helen was exhausted in both body and spirit. Rain had fallen on and off all day, quenching the fires at the villages and soaking her through to her skin. At least the rain and the air temperature were both warm. Leaning her back against a tree in the jungle outside of the farthest village, she took a grateful sip from Lachlan’s water bottle. They hadn’t seen any rebels for at least twenty minutes.

“This design is brilliant,” she commented as she handed back the self-filtering water bottle. Because of the effectiveness of the attached filter, they’d been able to take the bottle to the stream throughout the day to fill it without fear of parasites or waterborne diseases.

Lachlan opened his mouth to reply, then cocked his head to one side.

She strained to hear what had caught his attention. “More trucks?”

“Aye.” He motioned for her to follow as he walked closer to the road.

“They’re leaving,” Helen breathed when they reached a safe position overlooking the road. She watched in relief as the rebels piled into their trucks and drove toward the main road.

Lachlan insisted on waiting half an hour to make certain the rebels had truly gone. During that time, he called his boss to update him on the situation, and to request that he mobilize the helicopter.

Helen waited impatiently until Lachlan ended his call. At last, he said, “Okay. Now, it should be safe to break cover.”

“Finally.”

Lachlan stopped her at the edge of the village. “Are you quite certain you want to accompany me, doctor?” he asked again. “I’ll bring any survivors to you.”

She shook her head. “I need to see for myself what happened.”

“All right. Brace yourself. I expect this will be difficult to view.”

“I’ll be fine. I’m used to locking away my empathy while I evaluate and treat critically injured patients.”

The rain had reduced the temperature of the village, but the smoky ruins still exuded enough heat to make Helen uncomfortable. Keeping her emotions under tight rein, She picked her way across charred debris, recognizing the pedal of a child’s tricycle here, a cooking pot there. The first dead body they found was of a chicken with blackened feathers. More animal carcasses followed, mostly chickens, goats, and dogs. But there were no human bodies.

“Maybe everyone made it safely away,” Helen murmured.

Ahead of her, Lachlan halted abruptly in his tracks. Then he spun around. “Doctor, go back to the jungle. Now.”

Over his shoulder, she caught a glimpse of a blackened, smoking pile that reached nearly to the height of a low roof. “What’s—” She spotted a human femur sticking out from the bottom of the pile. “No!” She rushed past Lachlan.

“Bugger it all. Helen, come back.”

Helen pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. The rebels had created a pile of human bodies in the center of the village. Those on the outside of the pile were little more than burnt skin and brittle bones. She tried to pull one of the bodies away, but the heat and the stench drove her back. So she glanced frantically around for something she could use to dig into the pile.

“Helen! What are you doing?”

“Trying to see inside the pile. What if someone is still alive? I have to know.”

Lachlan cursed and snatched her back. “The chances of someone surviving this long, given the heat of the fire, are nil.”

She wrenched out of his grasp and started tugging on the unburned end of a wooden pole that had probably held up the roof to a small shed. Oh, God. How horrible would it be to be suffocating under all of those bodies? She had to know. Had to find out if there were any survivors.

The pole finally broke free and the momentum from her tug sent her reeling back until she nearly knocked into Lachlan.

“Helen, stop.” He reached for her again.

“Don’t touch me!” She scrambled out of his reach, then used the burnt end of the pole to pull away the exterior bodies from the pile.

“Come on, doctor. Be reasonable. You need to think of your own safety.”

“You might not care if anyone is alive, but I do,” she snarled. “I couldn’t live with myself if I left someone to die at the bottom of this pile.” She glared at him. “Could you?”

“No,” he admitted. “Here, let me take over.” He nudged her out of the way.

Helen held her breath as he uncovered burnt body after burnt body. “What—?” She shook her head. “I thought the interior bodies wouldn’t have burned as much.”

“I think the rebels piled bodies here that had been burnt in the building fires, then added fresh bodies to the top before setting them on fire,” Lachlan answered.

Despite his initial reluctance, he continued digging until he reached the earth beneath the pile. “No survivors. I’m sorry, doctor.”

Helen’s stomach churned with despair and anger and it took all of her self control not to vomit. “I… Can we check the rest of the village, just in case someone managed to hide?”

“All right.”

But all they found in the rest of the village were more dead bodies. Helen recited the local prayers for the dead over the pile of corpses, then she insisted on covering the bodies with scraps of blankets and tarps before she and Lachlan moved on to the next village. There they found the exact same situation.

Finally, they reached the village closest to Helen’s clinic.

The destruction was different here, due to the missile strike. Instead of a pile of bodies in the center of the village, there was a small crater. The dead were scattered around the remains of the buildings. Some bodies had bullet holes, others had machete cuts. All had been burned by the fire that consumed the entire village. David’s severed head had been jammed onto the hood ornament of his burned-out Mercedes sedan. The head of the potential bomber sat on the ground in front of the car. Their burned corpses lay several feet away. Many other bodies showed evidence of having been hacked at with machetes.

“Why did the rebels act so viciously against this village as compared to the others?” Helen asked, barely able to force the words out through the anger and sorrow constricting her throat. Yet she couldn’t allow herself to cry. Not yet. She wasn’t certain she’d be able to function at all once she let her pain out.

Lachlan’s gloved hands pulled the burnt corpse of a woman off a charred front yard, revealing a scrap of bright green fabric. Helen stepped closer and saw the partially burnt body of a little girl. Oh, God. The girl’s mother must have thrown herself over her child in a desperate attempt to shield the girl. Helen bent down to pick the body up, then dropped to her knees.

“Sisi!” Helen gathered the child’s body against her. Sobs broke out of her as the dam holding back her grief exploded. “No. No.” She rocked back and forth. It wasn’t fair. How could anyone do this to a child? How could anyone justify killing such a sweet, sunny girl as Sisi?

“Ah, lass. I’m terribly sorry.”

Helen didn’t know how it happened, but somehow she ended up on her feet with her face pressed against Lachlan’s chest and his arms encasing her in a protective circle of strength while she cried and screamed and beat her fists against him.

It took a long time, but eventually her tears dried up. Exhausted by her outburst, she rested against Lachlan for a bit.