WAR: Intrusion (27 page)

Not professionals, then. Good. Lachlan made certain that they both spotted him before he ducked into the library on the opposite side and down the hall from the office where the women were hiding. This way he wouldn’t risk a stray bullet going through the walls into their safe haven.

He found suitable cover under the farthest computer desk, which was set perpendicular to the right wall. Then he quickly pulled out his sat phone and sent a text to Dev with the alert for teammate under fire. Dev would notify the rest of the team. When Lachlan saw the confirmation that the text had been delivered, he tucked the phone away and waited for the attackers to find him.

The attackers might be overly aggressive and poorly trained, but they weren’t completely stupid. They fired through the door he’d closed behind him. Then the lead man shoved open the splintered remains of the door and fired his weapon in an arc in front of him. But the idiot only fired at waist level and never dropped his eyes below man height.

When Lachlan didn’t drop dead in front of him, the attacker stepped farther inside. Only now did he search the floor, but he still didn’t look far enough into the room to spot Lachlan’s hiding place.

The man in the hallway called out a question. His partner snapped out an unhappy answer as he slowly moved deeper into the library, holding up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun shining through the windows across the room.

Good. The light would compromise the man’s vision and throw Lachlan’s section of the room into shadow.

The man from the hallway strode inside. He fired two bursts from his weapon, one to either side of his partner. His partner turned to chew him out.

Lachlan rolled into firing position.

Lachlan’s first shots killed the man facing him. Before the second man could turn around, Lachlan shot him, but he didn’t aim to kill. He needed the man alive for questioning, because he had no doubt this attack was planned by Natchaba.

The man screamed, dropped his weapon, and fell to the ground, writhing and clutching his leg, which was the easiest of the three wounds for him to reach. Lachlan crawled out from his hiding place and stood up. Feeling a sting on his upper left arm, he glanced down. A ricocheting bullet had torn a shallow line across his skin. It wasn’t life-threatening or painful enough to slow him down, so he ignored it. The attacker paid no attention as Lachlan reached down and picked up his rifle. This close, Lachlan saw that the wounded man was actually a lad of no more than nineteen.

The boy was so busy howling in pain that he never saw the blow that knocked him out.

Lachlan trussed the unconscious lad with flexicuffs, then used the boy’s bandana to gag him. Stepping over the dead body of the other man, who looked to be a few years older, Lachlan moved cautiously into the hallway. A quick look through the broken door into the receptionist’s area showed the receptionist sprawled behind her desk. Bullets had perforated the front of her. Pushing aside the anger over her senseless death—she’d been a bright, cheerful woman who’d flirted playfully with him—he scanned for danger. But the front door was closed and he found no others, dead or alive, in the rooms off the hallway to his left.

Returning to the main hallway, Lachlan cleared the room across from the library, then entered the conference room. He coughed as he entered and waved smoke away. He’d been right to insist that the women hold their meeting in Gloria’s office instead of in here. Someone had shot out the window and thrown a Molotov cocktail inside. Without much to fuel it, the fire had nearly burned itself out. Lachlan stamped out the remaining flames.

Helen and the other women would be okay in their hideout for a bit more, so Lachlan returned to the library. The injured attacker was just regaining consciousness. Lachlan knelt beside him.

“Help me,” the boy wailed in English as soon as Lachlan removed his gag. “I need a doctor.”

“Why should I help you?” Lachlan demanded. “You have just killed an innocent woman and attempted to kill me. You’re a rebel sympathizer.”

The boy nodded. “But—”

“According to your leaders, I’m a foreign devil with no mercy. Tell me why I shouldn’t let you die.”

The lad stared at him. The muscles in his throat worked but no sound came out.

Lachlan sighed. He’d hoped the boy would figure it out on his own. “Perhaps if you tell me the names of those who gave you today’s orders and where to find them, I might consider letting a doctor tend you.”

“No. I can’t.” He shook his head.

Lachlan pressed the butt of his gun to the closest of the boy’s wounds. He screamed.

“Stop. Please, stop,” the lad sobbed, tears running down his face. “I don’t know anything. Robert, he was the one who talked to the man. I just followed.” The boy continued to blubber, devolving into a local dialect that Lachlan didn’t understand.

Lachlan yanked the lad’s gag into place, then walked away.

When he reached the room where the women were hiding, he gave a “Shave and a Haircut” knock on the door. Before he opened it, he called out, thickening his brogue so no one would think he was a pretender, “It’s Lachlan, Dr. Kirk. Is everyone all right?”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

THE
SILENCE THAT followed the bursts of gunfire was worse than the noise of the shooting. Helen met Mrs. N’Dorah’s eyes and tried not to let her fear for Lachlan show. She didn’t know a whole lot about guns, but over the past few days she’d learned the difference between a pistol shot and an assault rifle. None of what she’d heard had sounded like it came from Lachlan’s pistol.

She held her breath when the creak of the old wood of the floor indicated that someone was moving about in the corridor. The person opened the door of the office next to them, then moved on to the conference room.

When the knock sounded on their door, Helen barely stifled a frightened gasp.

Gloria panicked and almost broke free of the strong hold Helen and Mrs. N’Dorah had on her arms. They’d gagged Gloria with Helen’s bandana because in her initial hysteria she’d nearly screamed, which would have been a disaster for them all.

With all of Helen’s focus on restraining Gloria, it took her a moment to recognize the pattern of the knock. Then Lachlan’s familiar voice called “It’s Lachlan, Dr. Kirk. Is everyone all right?”

Joy and relief surged into her. Blinking back tears, Helen crawled out from behind the desk. “Yes,” she replied. She unlocked the door and drank in the sight of him, admitting that the thought of him being killed had scared her as much as the possibility that the attackers might find her and the others.

She gasped. Blood soaked the shirt on his upper left arm. “You’ve been shot!” Her heart took a thoroughly unprofessional nosedive. But when she pulled him close and examined his arm, she gave a shaky laugh. “Oh. It’s nothing major. It’s just—”

“A flesh wound, aye.” The humor in his voice had her glancing up. “I’ve always wanted to use that line on a lass. Just my luck that instead of becoming the object of female adoration due to my stoic manliness, you’re full aware of just how insignificant a wound it really is.” He gave her a mock pout.

Thrown off balance by his ability to joke around so soon after the attack, she could only stare stupidly at him as she fought the urge to kiss him. Instead, she patted his cheek. “There, now, I won’t tell Gloria and Mrs. N’Dorah that it’s a bearable pain. You can ham it up with them if you’d like.”

He glanced behind her and frowned.

Helen turned. Mrs. N’Dorah had helped Gloria out of their hiding spot and was in the process of removing her gag. “Ah…about the gag,” Helen murmured to Lachlan. “We had to stop Gloria from screaming.”

He just nodded. “Otherwise you’re all okay?”

“Yes. What happened? Is the receptionist okay.”

“No. I’m sorry. She was killed in the initial attack. There—”

Footsteps pounded down the hallway. A man shouted frantically in the local language. Lachlan shoved Helen behind him and brought his pistol up. Before he could fire, Gloria rammed into him. “That’s my son!” she shouted as they fell into the hall.

Helen stepped into the doorway. A thin young man, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old, with skin a few shades darker than Gloria’s light caramel color raced toward them. “Mother!”

Gloria swept him into a fierce hug.

Lachlan was on his feet, watching the reunion warily, weapon by his side.

As Gloria and her son turned to go into her office, the boy caught Helen’s eye. He stared at her with such hatred, Helen gasped and took a step back.

Smirking, the boy pulled something out of his pocket and tossed it toward Helen. Then he grabbed Gloria and ran back down the hall.

Lachlan fired at the boy, hitting him in the back. Then he shoved Helen into the office and slammed the door shut behind him. “Under the desk,” he ordered, pulling Helen sideways from the door. She’d only taken a few steps when there was an explosion in the hall. The door to the office blew open as Helen dove behind the desk.

Mrs. N’Dorah had already crawled into the desk’s bay and Helen scooted inside with her. When Helen’s ears had cleared, she called, “Lachlan?”

“Here, lass. Stay put while I check to make certain there are no other attackers.”

“Okay.” A moment later she heard his feet crunch over debris. When his voice barked “Where the fuck are the police?” she realized that he must be on his sat phone.

“I thought they had a guard on this building,” Lachlan continued. “We just suffered two attacks.” His voice faded down the hall.

Helen fought back panic over his absence, afraid there’d be another explosion and this time Lachlan would die. But he wasn’t gone long. When he returned, he was still on the phone. He motioned for them to follow him.

Helen crawled out from under the desk and helped Mrs. N’Dorah to her feet then they picked their way through the burning debris that lay scattered across the carpet. Out in the hall, Helen saw that the explosion had set fire to the wood floor and blown out part of the conference room’s wall. Smoke filled the corridor.

A few feet to Helen’s left, Gloria lay facedown next to her son. A great deal of her clothing had been burned away. Helen dashed over to her.

“She has a faint pulse.” Helen glanced toward Lachlan. “Where can we move her to?”

Lachlan poked his head inside Gloria’s office and jerked his chin toward the interior. Mrs. N’Dorah helped Helen move Gloria, while Lachlan took up guard position at the end of the hall. Then Helen walked back down the hall to check on Gloria’s son. But Lachlan’s shots really had killed him.

Helen briefly closed her eyes. Everything had happened so fast, but surely there’d been some way for Lachlan to stop the boy without killing him? He’d been running away, after all. Couldn’t Lachlan have shot him somewhere less lethal?

Pain filled her chest. She didn’t know how her heart had room for all of this sorrow. Gloria had moved here from El Salvador after she’d married a West African man she’d met while he’d been on a business trip. He’d died of heart failure not long after she got pregnant and she’d raised her son alone. This was the first time Helen had seen the boy. She wondered what had happened to make him glare at her the way he had. Had Gloria known he’d joined the rebels?

She glanced toward the office where they’d moved Gloria. Had this attack been planned using information her son had gained after visiting Gloria at work?

Knowing that she’d probably never learn the answer to that question, Helen turned and went back into the office. As she reached the door, she heard Lachlan say to the person on the other end of the phone “We need the exterior secured so the ambulance can drive up without fear of being shot at.”

Shot at? Was there another attacker outside? Helen glanced at Lachlan, but he was too intent on his conversation to notice.

Confident that he’d make certain she and the others could leave safely when the time came, Helen stepped into the office. Kneeling down, she checked Gloria over. About sixty percent of her body was covered with severe burns. A few pieces of hot metal from the device had embedded themselves in her. “We need to cool her burns,” Helen said to Mrs. N’Dorah. She cursed herself for not bringing her medical kit. But then, even though Lachlan had explained that the Foundation might be a target, she hadn’t expected to need it. She’d never imagined that there would really be another attack this soon after the others.

While Mrs. N’Dorah stayed with Gloria, Helen headed for the kitchen to fetch the Foundation’s first aid kit, cool water, and towels, but she came to a halt at the door to the receptionist’s area. Bile rose in her throat at the sight of Ekuwa sprawled dead behind her desk.

Realizing that the scene needed to be processed by the authorities didn’t make it any easier to walk past the body without closing the woman’s eyes or without rearranging her limbs into a more dignified position.

My duty is to the living.

Right.

It took only a few minutes to soak the towels, grab the first aid kit, and return to the office. Once she’d cleaned and bandaged the worst of Gloria’s wounds, she placed the cool, wet towels over the burns. “That’s all I can do for now,” she said. “The team at the hospital will need to remove the shards in her back.”

“She’ll not be going to hospital,” Lachlan said from the doorway, pocketing his phone. “At least not the one we visited this afternoon. They’ve also been attacked.”

The room spun. Helen lost track of time for a moment. When she regained her senses, she found herself being supported by Mrs. N’Dorah. Lachlan knelt in front of her, a worried frown on his face. She wanted to reach out and touch his face to reassure him that she was fine, but she didn’t have the strength and the room was still shimmying. “The villagers?” she croaked.

“Fine. After our warning about the nurse, they were moved to a different floor. Their previous ward bore the brunt of the attack. But the hospital has been evacuated and all patients are being sent to other facilities while the bomb squad checks for other explosives.” He nodded toward Gloria. “The authorities are attempting to secure the exterior of our building. Once it’s safe to leave, the other hospital is a half-hour drive. Will she last that long?”