Page 98 of Deadly Strain

Sharp jerked his stunned brain back to earth, gave his pack one last look, decided it was full, and closed it up. “Yeah.”

He found Grace outside the plastic wall, talking to Max. He wanted to kiss her, hold her, and order her to stay here in the relative safety of this disguised garbage dump. He could do none of those things.

“Are you sure there isn’t anything else I can do?” she asked her commanding officer.

Max shook his head.

“Grace,” Sharp said. “Can I have a word?”

“Of course.” She followed him a short distance way. “What is it?”

“We’re missing some vital intel.” He hoped what he was about to ask her wouldn’t blow up in his face. “What happened two years ago to make Marshall think you’re responsible for the death of his son? Which brings up my next question. He had a son?”

Grace stared at him for a moment, the color draining from her face.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but it’s impacting everything we’re trying to do.” He glanced around at the men in the cave. “We’re all soldiers here and you won a Star for what you did then. Whatever it is that’s tearing you up inside, weunderstand.”

She glanced around the room and received nods from every man there.

“Yeah.” She nodded and seemed to deflate, her shoulders hunching. “I’m sorry. I should have told you a long time ago, right after the night he confronted me. I don’t like thinking about it, let alone talking about it.” She shook her head. “I’ve tried to forget that day, but it’s a part of me now.” She glanced around, blew out a breath and said, “I need a place where I can sit down.”

Smoke gestured at the rock he’d been sitting on earlier and she sat. “Okay.” She took a couple of moments to get settled. “The convoy had a dozen trucks in it. We were moving our combat support hospital to one of the forward bases seeing a lot of injuries. We were supported by armored vehicles with mounted guns. You know, the big ones.” She’d spoken to Sharp, but all around him, he could see heads nodding.

“I don’t remember how long we’d been driving when the IED went off. Maybe two or three hours? The explosion took out the first vehicle entirely. No one survived. The second truck was badly damaged, and the third was disabled by enough shrapnel from the blast to make it mechanically unsound.

“There had been six people in the second truck. Two died right away, the other four sustained injuries. Only two people in the third truck were injured. The other four escaped immediate injury.”

“My surgical team was split up between three trucks in the middle of the convoy. We grabbed first-aid kits, jumped out, and ran toward the blast zone. That’s when we started taking fire. I don’t know how many people were shooting at us, but it seemed like the bullets were coming from everywhere.” She stopped to catch her breath, but she couldn’t seem to slow her breathing down.

Sharp crouched next to her rock and put a hand on her shoulder. She relaxed a little. This was going to be bad. Really bad.

“I don’t remember how I ended up there, but the next thing I knew, I was behind the door of another armored truck, a Marine crowding me into the corner as he fired again and again at whoever was firing on us. A bullet took him in the neck. I tried to stop the bleeding, but it ripped his carotid artery apart and there was nothing I could do.” She sort of smiled, but not really. It was the kind of thing a person did when they felt they’d done a particularly stupid thing.

“It made me angry, so I grabbed my weapon and began firing myself. I shot at every target I could see until I ran out of ammunition. For a second or two I thought the weapon had jammed, then I realized I was out of bullets. But it seemed to work. The incoming fire had stopped.

Shouting for help from farther forward in the convoy got me moving again.” She twisted her fingers together, pulling at them as if there was something wrong with them.

“When I got to the third truck, I was waved forward by the lead surgeon. He couldn’t go as he had his hand inside a man’s chest, probably trying to control a bleeder. I rushed up to the second vehicle and found two of our trauma nurses dead. Shot in the back of their heads while trying to triage the dead and wounded inside, I think. At first I thought everyone was dead, then I heard moans and knew someone was alive inside.”

She swallowed hard and continued. “I pulled the bodies of the nurses aside and discovered two men alive. One was even conscious. I began triaging them, but someone started shooting at us again. One of the wounded’s sidearm was only inches from my hand. I grabbed it, turned and aimed over the edge of the door. The shooter was only about twenty feet from me and couldn’t have been older than nine or ten years.” The last word came out in a squeak, as if her lungs had run out of air.

“He looked terrified and was shouting at me in Arabic or Dari, but I don’t speak either one, so I didn’t know what he was saying.”

She glanced at Sharp. “How could I kill a child?” She looked away before he could answer and continued. “I hesitated, certain that if I just stayed still and let the boy calm down, he wouldn’t shoot.”

Tears dripped down her cheeks, but she didn’t seem to notice. “There was a shout from down the convoy and a Marine ran toward me, firing at the boy. He missed. The boy didn’t. It was a head shot and the Marine went down fast. So fast. The boy turned his weapon on me, but I shot him first. Twice in the chest. More extremists came toward the convoy and I kept shooting.”

“Marshall’s son was the Marine who tried to help you? The one the kid shot?” Sharp asked.

“Yes. I hesitated to kill that boy, and Marshall’s son paid the price for my mistake.”

“They don’t share a name.”

“No. Marshall told me he’d only become aware of his son’s existence when he tracked his father down after his mother died. He found his birth certificate with her papers with Marshall’s name on it. Marshall told me, he’d never been prouder of anything or anyone than he was of his son. He’d only known him a year.”

“Grief is one thing,” Sharp said slowly. “But blaming you for the death of a soldier—”

“They gave me a medal,” she interrupted. “If he had been your son, how would you have felt?”

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