Page 96 of Viral Justice

“I’m concerned that you’ve been seen a lot in the village. People might have a pretty good idea of who you are and who you’re with.”

“Who I am?” He didn’t want to assign her this task because she was a certain general’s daughter?

“An American soldier.”

Okay, that distinction was one she could accept, but he was forgetting other things. “You need the medics to help you with the people who are already here and any wounded who may arrive. I’m the one soldier you’ve got who can leave without leaving you shorthanded.”

He glanced at her, his face grim. “You’ve convinced me, Sergeant Stone. Use extreme caution while searching. Do not risk yourself any more than you have to.”

Ooh, he sounded pissed. “Yes, sir.”

Ali slipped out the doorway and was across the empty space between the front façade of the building and the nearest house in the time it took to breathe twice.

She needed to see what was going on before running headlong into a firefight that might not have anything to do with Nolan’s absence. She chose to go up the hill, looking for a spot that would give her a view of the valley.

She climbed the hill the way Berez had shown her and found a good spot within a couple of minutes.

She crouched behind a tree and used her scope to find the source of all the fighting.

There were a couple of craters in the ground in the tented area, smoke from several fires that were blazing without hindrance among the tents. A number of men with small arms shooting at each other, engaging in small skirmishes and running for cover.

Nolan and his men were conspicuously absent.

One of the groups of men fighting rolled something ungainly across the uneven ground, then they hauled ass away from it.

Holy fuck, itwasa Howitzer. Where the hell had they gotten that?

Only two men stayed with the piece of artillery. She watched them fire it a fraction of a second before the shells hit and the sound of it rattled the teeth in her head.

She watched them load fresh ammunition and prepare to fire it again.

She braced herself for it, but this time, the Howitzer disintegrated with an explosion that screamed of torn metal and old age.

The men who’d delivered the destroyed artillery gun looked at the crater where the piece of hardware, and its operators, had been with a deep shock she could see through her scope. They staggered like drunkards or extras from a cheap zombie movie.

Was this good news or bad news?

She had no idea if either of the two groups shooting at each other was sympathetic to the civilians that lived here or the Americans in their midst.

There was still no sign of Nolan or his team.

Where the fuck had they gone? Or were they all dead already?

The group that had been under attack by the Howitzer charged toward their enemy with a roar she could hear. The other side broke and ran. Those who could run anyway. The rest were overtaken, beaten, and shot. It didn’t look like the attackers had any interest in leaving anyone alive.

That was not good.

Even worse, she didn’t know who any of these people were. They could be offshoots from militant groups from anywhere, or they could be family members of the people who lived here.

Not that there were many of them left. The flu had killed a third of the people in the village and the tents. This fighting was only going to result in more deaths.

By the time they were done, this place was going to be populated by ghosts and those it would have been kinder to kill outright.

She shook herself. Defeatist, that’s what that was and she didn’t have time for it. She had some soldiers to find.

Okay, if I were Nolan, where would I go to ground?

The tent-town was three-quarters destroyed, either from artillery blasts, fire or people tearing it down. Not a good hiding place.

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