Page 47 of Viral Justice

Chapter Eleven

Ali followed Max, Cornett, and the man whose son was sick out of the house and down a stone street strewn with rocky debris from explosions and gunfire.

Bull and Tom stayed behind. Tom was already starting IVs for the sick while Bull guarded their gear and watched Tom’s back.

She’d argued briefly with Max about the wisdom of making this house call. Briefly, but vehemently. His own mission parameters didn’t include caring for the sick. Not an hour had gone by in the village and he was violating his own orders.

It was also damned near impossible to guard a body in motion. They weren’t staying in the primary location—they were wandering through a village full of an unknown number of sick people, many of them armed with Russian-made rifles. Instead of the four of them together, they’d split up, making themselves far more vulnerable to attack.

Max had shut her down and told her the situation had changed. She disagreed. It hadn’t changed that much, but Max refused to listen to any other complaints.

Fine. She’d ream him out when the mission was over. One of the reasons why she was assigned to him was to give him sound advice regarding security.

Checking out a sick child was the humane thing to do, but it sure as hell wasn’t safe.

They entered another house, this one in poorer condition than the one they’d left. It had taken some hits from bullets and probably a grenade or two, leaving debris and rubble all around.

Two women backed themselves into a corner of what looked to be the kitchen while a parade of strange men went through their home. Well, mostly men. They probably thought she was a young man or teenage boy.

The rifle in her hands didn’t look at all out of place.

The men ahead of her entered a small, dark room. There wasn’t space for her, so she hovered in the doorway keeping an eye on them as well as the way out.

Max crouched next to the pallet on the floor with his stethoscope in his ears as he listened to a boy’s chest. The boy’s breathing was audible several feet away, sounding like popping bubbles as he struggled to take in air. His whole body looked involved in the effort, not just his diaphragm. She’d witnessed something like this during an advanced conditioning training event. One man had to drop out when he experienced one of the forms of altitude sickness where his lungs filled with fluid. Ali had ended her training to help get him down the mountain and she’d never forgotten the sound of his breathing—wet popping of air mixing with the fluid in his lungs.

This boy sounded just like him.

Max swabbed the boy’s nose and mouth, then pulled out a small handheld device, which he swiped across the kid’s forehead.

“How long has he been sick?” Max asked the boy’s father.

“Since yesterday. At first he had a fever, headache, and a cough. A few hours later, his cough turned red, and no matter how fast he breathed, he felt like he was drowning.”

“Your son has pneumonia and a high fever,” Max said. “He needs to be in a hospital.”

“We have no way to get to a hospital,” the man exclaimed, putting his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Please help my son.”

Max didn’t say anything right away. He stared at the young man dying on the floor, then motioned for his father to follow him. “I don’t have the medicine or equipment he needs,” Max whispered urgently. “If you don’t take him to a hospital, he will die here.”

“Can you do anything to help him?” the man asked.

“I can give him fluids and some pain medicine, but that’s all I have.” Max shook his head. “I should have brought a pharmacy.”

He knelt next to the boy, got an IV started and hung a bag of saline on a nail in the wall above the boy’s head.

“This will help a little, but probably not enough,” Max said to the father. “When the bag is empty, pull the needle out of his arm, understand?”

The man had lost all color in his face. He nodded after a moment, then Max strode out of the house like the damn thing was on fire.

She didn’t blame him.

He’d come to this village thinking all he’d have to do was test for the pathogen. He forgot the first law of war.

No plan of operation extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy.Helmuth von Moltke the Elder may have died in 1891, but his basic understanding of war was timeless.

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