Hot Zone (Elite Force #2)(10)
Author: Catherine Mann

“Right.” Cuervo secured the kid against his chest. “Will follow through. You should go back to the hooch, clean up, and sleep. You look like hell, by the way.”

“Thanks. I’m outta here.” He pivoted on his heel. Away from the woman.

Away from the kid smiling at him with six tiny teeth.

His throat closed up.

Major McCabe clapped him on the back. “You had us worried there for a while.”

“When have I ever not come out okay?” He scanned the ruins for someplace to help, another mission to take on, the crazier the better, because sleep suddenly didn’t sound like a good idea, with nightmares sure to haunt him. Better to work himself unconscious instead. A good plan. It had carried him through the past five years just fine.

“Hey.” McCabe snapped his fingers in front of Hugh’s face, drawing his attention back. “You can’t count on that kind of logic to carry you through forever. I should have your ass for not coming out after you stabilized your patient.”

“Staying kept her stable.” He frowned, his jaw jutting. “Write me up if you need to, but I wouldn’t change a thing.”

McCabe sighed like a weary parent. “Let Rocha check you over. Now. We need to make sure you’re not hiding any injuries.”

He grinned, forcing a smile through caked-on grime so the major wouldn’t realize how blown to shit his insides were. He refused to be benched. “Would I do that?”

“Yes you would. Go. It’s an order.”

“Yes, sir.”

A light breeze parted the stifling air, welcomed for the cooling. Dreaded as it stirred the flies and the stench. Snakes and rats already scavenged through the debris. The fetid wind rolled across the uneven landscape, gathered grit and stray papers before lifting the door flap of the nearest medical tent…

His boots picked up speed toward the field hospital they’d put together shortly after landing. Triage was in place for major injuries to the left, minor to the right. Lines of wounded streamed out of both. His teammate Wade Rocha was already waiting, just as the major had insisted.

Still, Hugh checked one last time… just as Amelia’s stretcher reached the tent flap. He could swear she stared back at him, held him with those intensely blue eyes. Eyes that reached down deep in his gut and twisted.

He’d only felt this connection once before in his life. The day he’d looked at Marissa’s tear-filled eyes as she’d begged him to get her Siamese out of the tree. Next thing he’d known, he was hauling his ass up a twenty-foot oak.

He didn’t want this.

The past few hours had proven beyond a doubt that Amelia Bailey was dangerous as hell to his peace of mind. More than ever he couldn’t afford this during a mission that already put him raw and on edge.

And still… He bolted across the jutting mass of broken concrete. His eyes locked on the stretcher being carried to a drab green tent, the canvas flapping in the muggy air, stirring fat flies around.

He grabbed the arm of a foreign medic, a wiry guy with a top-of-the-line Motorola two-way radio and a clipboard. “Where will she go after you finish here?”

“There are already over a dozen makeshift hospital sites being set up in schools and churches.” The foreign soldier covered the mouthpiece on the walkie-talkie and tucked the clipboard under his arm. “It’s going to be a matter of which one can take them.”

“I know it’s chaotic right now, but if she’s not going to be flown out—”

“Do you know this woman?”

So easily he could end this now. He could do what he would—and should—in any rescue situation. Ensure the appropriate personnel made a record of the pertinent information, such as her connection to the child, then move on to the next case.

He could not be personally responsible for every individual he saved. It wasn’t practical, feasible, or mentally advisable, if he wanted to keep from falling the rest of the way off the deep end.

But then he’d stopped giving a shit about his sanity five years ago.

Hugh looked back at Amelia, under the sheet with only her face and one arm sticking out. “Yeah, her and the kid… They’re mine.”

Chapter 4

Dr. Aiden Bailey thrust his hands into the man’s chest cavity and squeezed life back into the dead heart.

Squeeze. Squeeze. Pray.

“Catch, damn it, catch,” the seasoned surgeon muttered with each massage of his fingers.

The canvas wall creating the makeshift operating room flapped from movement on the other side, another surgical team to tackle the insurmountable flood of injured. Aiden focused, worked, even though he’d been in the Bahamas to adopt a son, not ply his trade.

Squeeze. Squeeze. Pray.

He’d volunteered his services in the improvised hospital after the earthquake hit. His Hippocratic oath, his call to heal, wouldn’t let him turn away from the masses of injured.

Squeeze. Squeeze. Pr—

Through the thin membrane of latex gloves, he felt the warm blood, the fibrous muscle, the tips of his fingers tuned in for the tiniest hint of a… throb.

His imagination?

No.

The heart expanded against his palms. Again. And again, as life returned to the waxy, middle-aged man sprawled on a stretcher in the half-standing church that had been turned into a temporary hospital. Supplies and conditions were rustic, to say the least.

NGO workers and military medics on loan from other countries brought freshly wounded faster than he could treat them. Groans filled the air, mixed with the crackle of shortwave radios. A couple of people had been lucky enough to get a cell phone connection and a rare few had satellite phones, but none of that had helped him find out what he needed to know.

So he worked. And waited. His mind filled with the worst-case scenarios. Joshua. Amelia. Helpless in the face of more than just the destruction. Looters. Worse. He understood how far seemingly normal people would go better than most.

God, he had to keep busy or his mind would explode from worrying about his sister and Joshua.

Once he was certain the patient had stabilized—as much as anyone could be considered stable in these crappy conditions—Aiden extended his hand, ready to suture layer after layer to close the gaping chest cavity. He didn’t even need to look or ask. His nurse—his wife—had worked with him for five years on Doctors Without Borders missions before they’d recently swapped to Operation Smile to repair cleft palates in children. They’d known each other far longer, having met as undergrads at Auburn.