Page 58 of Deadly Strain

A burst of angry, distraught shouting sliced across her nerve endings. Something was wrong. Sharp closed his arms around her tighter for a moment, then he surged to his feet.. He grabbed her under the arms and hoisted her up, almost throwing her toward someone slumped in his jump-seat.

Cutter. His head bobbed and weaved with the vibration of the copter in a way that made a painful shiver run up her spine. Blood dripped off his head, and the left side of his chest and shoulder were bloody.

Cutter had been shot.

“Doc!” Next to Cutter, Hernandez twisted in his jump seat and put pressure on his commander’s chest. He turned and yelled at her again. “Doc!”

She tried to step closer, but the aircraft jerked and swayed under her feet, pitching forward onto her hands and knees.

There was a lot of blood soaking the front of his uniform and body armor. Too much blood, and he appeared completely unresponsive.

She put a hand on Cutter’s neck but could find no pulse.Fuck.

“I’ll get the first-aid kit,” Sharp yelled.

“Is there just one wound?” she asked Hernandez, who was still putting pressure on Cutter’s chest wound.

His head jerked up at her question. “I don’t know.”

Where had the blood on Cutter’s head come from? She did a quick visual inspection and found a bullet burn on the left side of his skull. Enough to ring his bell but not kill him.

“Let me see his back,” she said to Hernandez.

He allowed her to put her hands on Cutter’s shoulder and bring his body forward enough to see behind him. There was a hole in the right side of his back, larger than a golf ball. And blood. So much blood.

Sharp appeared at her shoulder with the first-aid kit. She gave him a tight-lipped glance, then she looked at Hernandez and shook her head.

He shouted something, but she shook her head harder. “He’s gone! I’m sorry—but he’s gone.”

Hernandez stared at her like she’d shot him herself. He jerked his hand away with enough violence to make her rear back. He collapsed onto himself, bowed his head and fisted his bloody hands tight on his thighs.

She glanced at Sharp. He gave her a rigid nod. The other team members were either hiding their faces so they could grieve or staring at her like they couldn’t believe it.

Couldn’t believe their commander had been killed by their own men.

Grace swallowed the vomit that had risen in her throat and went to her seat. Marshall had a lot to answer for, and she wasn’t going to let him bulldoze his way out of any of it. She put her harness on, then stared at her bloody hands. Cutter’s body was still sitting across from her as if he were asleep. What would his men do with his body? With Marshall no doubt telling everyone they were the worst sort of criminals, they’d have to keep it with them. As if they didn’t have enough problems.

They hit some turbulence and the whole aircraft shook like an earthquake registering nine on the Richter scale. It was the last straw for Grace’s stomach.

She vomited, managing to miss everything but the floor of the helicopter. Yay her.

A bag was thrust in front of her face and she took it automatically, continuing to fill it with what was left in her stomach. Eventually, her guts stopped clenching and she was able to hand the bag off to Sharp, who threw it out the open door.

She should be outraged. She should be formulating a plan to bring Cutter’s killer, Marshall, to justice. All she felt was tired. So many people had died, so many more were at risk, and now her friend and a man who was the glue to this team was dead.

How on earth were they going to succeed?

How were they going to stay out of jail long enough to prove they weren’t the crazy ones?

Marshall had lost his mind. Ordering his men to fire on them—how was murder an acceptable response to soldiers following orders, even if they were someone else’s?

Were the men on the ground at the village going to fire on them, too?

What about the insurgents who were supposedly firing on the village? Would they even be able to land?

She didn’t have her bio-suit. None of them did. How was she going to take samples? The original patrol had contracted the illness, proving to her it had to be airborne.

She glanced up to ask Cutter her questions, to brainstorm a plan...but Cutter was dead.

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