Close Pursuit

In the flashes of artillery explosions, the girl looked to be in her late teens. And pretty. Really pretty. Her eyes were big and dark and doe-shaped, her black hair lush around a heart-shaped face that high-fashion models would envy. It seemed strange, though, that a girl this young would have made her way to Alex by herself.

“Does anyone know you’re here?” Katie whispered to the girl.

Fear made the girl’s eyes even bigger as she shook her head vigorously. “My family does not know I am pregnant.”

Katie stared. “How is that possible?”

“I am not married. I wear big clothes. I pretend to eat a lot and tell them I am gaining weight. But I really don’t eat much and try to stay thin.”

In this culture, of all cultures, Katie supposed it might be possible to hide a pregnancy if a woman was really careful. Then the rest of this girl’s dilemma hit her. An unmarried girl, pregnant. In a society where sex outside marriage was punishable by death. No wonder the girl had hidden the pregnancy.

“What will you do with your baby when it comes?”

Anger flared in the girl’s eyes. “Kill it.”

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT? KATIE’S JAW dropped at the hatred in the girl’s voice. What the hell? She opened her mouth to ask what in the world was going on when a dark figure materialized in the doorway. She reached hastily for the pistol before she recognized Alex’s familiar silhouette.

“We’ve got a problem,” he murmured.

“No kidding,” Katie replied, jerking her head toward the cot. “She wants to kill her baby.”

Alex went still for a moment. Then he asked quietly, “Was she raped?”

Of course. Young. Beautiful. Unmarried. “I hadn’t thought of that,” Katie confessed. She turned to the girl and murmured a quick question.

The girl shook her head in the negative. Hmmm.

“Regardless,” Alex interjected, “we may have to get out of here sooner rather than later. A line of rebel troops is advancing up the valley. If Karshan’s local militia doesn’t hold the road until daylight, we’ll be overrun.”

Katie frowned. “If the fight’s on the road, how are we going to drive out of here?”

“As always, you grasp the crux of the situation unerringly,” he muttered.

We’re trapped? “Where will we go?”

He shrugged. “Up.”

“Up the mountain?” she demanded in disbelief. “With her?” She jerked her head toward the laboring girl again.

“I scouted around a bit. Karshani tribesmen are entrenched in the village up the valley. Rebels have the road and the lower pass covered. Over the mountain will be the only safe retreat for us.”

“But the girl—”

“She’ll have to make do. I can’t stop the war for her to have a baby. I’ll do what I can for her.” He moved toward the rear of the tent and his patient. “Keep an eye outside. Watch the road down where the river bends. If you see any movement, tell me immediately.”

Katie nodded her understanding. The scene outside was surreal. Tracers streaked across the black sky like comets. Explosions peppered the hillsides, lighting up gun emplacements and clusters of shooters behind rocks and outcroppings.

The girl’s bouts of heavy panting inside the tent came closer together and longer in duration. Katie heard Alex demonstrating breathing techniques, exhaling in short hard bursts. The girl mimicked him obediently. It wouldn’t be long before the girl delivered. Thank God her labor was progressing quickly.

But not quickly enough. Headlights came into sight at the bend in the dirt road beside the river. “Vehicle’s coming up the road,” Katie announced.

“What kind?”

“Can’t see yet. It’s loud. Probably not civilian.”

Alex swore quietly, and the girl let out a groan from behind the towel she was biting into.

The vehicle came into sight. Crap. “Armored personnel carrier,” Katie reported urgently over her shoulder. It stopped halfway in view, and the front hatch opened.

“You’re kidding,” Alex muttered.

“I wouldn’t joke about something like that. And I know my military vehicles. It’s an APC. Late-model version with the wedge-shaped, anti-IED bottom.”

Alex swore quietly again.

“Special Forces troops exiting it now,” she mumbled. God knew, she recognized the gear and way of moving. Half her brothers were men just like that. She couldn’t count how many times she’d stood by her father during training exercises watching soldiers egress APCs into simulated combat.

“Special Forces?” Alex echoed in dismay from the back of the tent.

“Yes,” she answered with conviction. “They may be wearing civilian clothing and rebel colors, but no way are those regular soldiers.”

A barrage of machine-gun fire exploded from over her right shoulder, and she jumped violently. Where had that come from? She craned her head to the right and spotted the muzzle flash up the valley a little ways. A very little ways. The weapon rat-a-tatted loudly, and the soldiers at the river hit the deck, diving for cover.

This was nuts. She was standing in the freaking middle of a no-kidding combat zone. The unreality of it struck her forcefully. She might have wanted adventure, but she didn’t do combat. This was a bad dream. She was going to wake up any minute and it was all going to go away.

Alex joined her in the doorway, and she pointed out the action quickly. “Locals have the soldiers pinned down for the moment, but those troops will send out a patrol to flank the gunners and take out the position. The patrol will have to pass right by here to get to the gun,” she whispered frantically.

He nodded in quick agreement with her assessment and breathed, “Time to go.” He picked up a rucksack from the floor just inside the door and shouldered it. “Get the girl and follow me. I’ll find us a route up the mountain.”

Katie whirled and ran to the laboring girl. “We have to leave.”

The girl stared up at her in disbelief.

“I know. But we’re about to get overrun by soldiers who will shoot first and ask questions later. I’ll help you.”

Awkwardly, the patient sat up. Katie wedged a shoulder under her armpit and levered the unwieldy girl to her feet. A moan escaped her. Alex slipped outside and turned to the left, toward the advancing soldiers. Better them than the local gunners, Katie supposed, given that they had a laboring girl in tow. Although the soldiers would probably be inclined to shoot her and Alex for rendering medical aid to the locals anyway. Because it was such a huge crime to help innocent girls give birth to tiny, future terrorists, she thought bitterly.

Alex jumped up on the boulder beside their tent. The laboring girl reached up, and, with Katie hoisting from below and him pulling from above, they got her up onto the outcropping. What scrub there was up here was sparse and mostly dead. They had to rely on rocks and terrain for what little cover they could find.

Seeking cover and ways up the nearly impassable terrain, Alex doubled back to them often when one route dead-ended out and he had to find another. Katie put an arm around the girl’s shoulders to steady her as they moved a few dozen yards up the steep slope. Without warning, the girl bent over, breath hissing between her teeth as she grasped her swollen belly. She devolved into a fit of coughing interspersed with low moans of pain.

Alex looked over his shoulder impatiently as Katie and the girl fell behind. He slid back down the gravel-strewn slope to them, pistol in hand, to wait out the contraction. Finally, the girl exhaled and nodded. They resumed picking their way up the hill.

During the girl’s next contraction, Katie looked over her shoulder down the valley. She couldn’t see the unidentified, definitely military, patrol headed their way, but she could feel it as surely as she felt the girl’s fingers digging painfully into her forearm. A few more coughing breaths and the girl nodded once more.

They were able to go maybe thirty feet up the mountain between each contraction. It was agonizingly slow, particularly when the gun emplacement lit up once more. Sure enough, soldiers down the hill fired back. At least a half-dozen weapons returned fire in a wide arc that would roll right over their tent any second.

They were maybe a hundred yards from their shelter when another contraction gripped the girl. This one drove her to her knees, and she doubled over, grasping her belly. “I have to push,” the girl grunted.

“Not yet,” Alex snapped under his breath when Katie translated the girl’s words.

Katie relayed his order, but the girl shook her head. “You’ll die if we have to leave you out here,” Katie whispered frantically. “A few more minutes. We’ll find a place to hide and then you can push.”

“I can’t go any farther,” the girl moaned.

“Keep her quiet, or we’ll all die,” Alex bit out.

“I’m trying,” Katie retorted, panic climbing into her throat.

The girl’s contraction passed, and Katie heaved her to her feet. They made it only a dozen yards before the girl collapsed again, groaning into her hand pressed over her mouth.

Shouting erupted below them. Katie looked down as a burst of flame lit the night. The soldiers had just torched their tent. Cold terror washed over her. What if they hadn’t left when they did? They’d be dead right now. The rebels probably had mistaken it for a local headquarters of some kind. The more immediate problem, though, was the wash of firelight illuminating the entire hillside.

“Get down,” Alex ordered, yanking Katie and the girl down behind a waist-high boulder. A barrage of machine-gun fire raked the mountainside close enough to make Katie flatten herself to the ground.

Fear like she’d never known before roared through her. They were going to die. The three of them were not soldiers. They were barely armed, they had no gear and their only escape was up a forbidding mountain that only a seasoned climber—or a mountain goat—would attempt to scale.

Another drone flew past, barely higher than eye level, raking the ground with gunfire from a pair of machine guns mounted on its belly.

The girl’s hands clamped around Katie’s elbow just then and squeezed so tight the circulation in her hand felt entirely cut off. “Uh, Alex,” she whispered. “This girl’s going to deliver pretty soon.”

Alex had picked up a few phrases in the local dialect, and he used one now, biting it out succinctly. “Don’t push.”

“Can’t...stop...” the girl ground out from behind clenched teeth.

Katie translated grimly.

“We have to keep moving,” Alex whispered in English. “We’re not out of the line of fire, and the patrol will sweep the area looking for whoever was in that tent.”

They would never outrun highly mobile soldiers. Katie shook her head in disbelief and denial, but it made no difference. He was right. She told the panting girl, “Crawl if you have to, but keep moving. Do you understand me?”

“I can’t,” the girl wailed under her breath.

It was becoming a familiar refrain, but Katie replied fiercely, “Find a way. I’ll drag you if I have to.”

Katie had to give the girl credit. She pushed up to her knees, moved her burka aside and staggered up the hill after Alex, using her hands for support on the steep hillside before her. She fell twice, and each time Katie bodily lifted the girl back to her feet. The next time they dived for cover, though, the girl’s breathing changed. An element of really sharp pain entered her gasping breaths.

“She really can’t go on,” Katie told Alex. In a flash of mortar fire, Katie saw the frustration and futility that passed across his face. He nodded, though, and angled off to the right.

It was only a half-dozen yards to where he stopped and waved for them to join him, but Katie didn’t think she and the girl were ever going to make it to his side. Each step was a herculean effort for the girl, who was in so much pain she could not stand unaided. Only Katie’s arm around her kept her upright. Thankfully, Alex rejoined them and lifted the girl in his arms. He moved quickly into the shadows.

Katie made the mistake of glancing down and saw that they stood at the top of a nearly vertical cliff face. Only the narrowest of ledges kept her from plunging hundreds of feet to the valley floor below. Sick to her stomach with terror and vertigo, she plastered herself to the rock wall at her back and edged forward. Alex ducked into a low opening, and she fell to her knees beside him in relief.

The three of them were crouched in a tiny crevasse that didn’t rise to the exalted status of a cave. It was maybe eight feet deep at best and no more than three feet tall at the opening, narrowing to a few inches tall in the back. But it afforded them a little cover from the battle raging outside and a moment to catch their breaths.

The girl started swearing under her breath so colorfully that Katie felt an incongruous urge to laugh. Or maybe that was just hysteria threatening. Either way, the girl’s voice broke on what would have been a scream had she not jammed her burka in her mouth and bitten down for all she was worth.

It was Alex’s turn to swear. He unceremoniously shoved the girl onto her back to examine her. “Baby’s trying to crown,” he muttered. “Tell her to push with the next contraction.”

Katie was so relieved she could cry as she relayed the instruction to the girl. The contraction came, and the girl strained, bearing down in the age-old way as Katie supported her shoulders from behind.

“Again,” Alex ordered.

“Again.”

After several more contractions, Alex fumbled in the rucksack and pulled out a flashlight. Covering himself with the girl’s burka, he took a quick look at affairs. When he emerged, he spoke so calmly in English, Katie’s blood ran cold before she even comprehended his words.

“Tell her to rest for a while and just try to breathe through the contractions.”

He’d never told a woman to take a break in the middle of a delivery before. Just the opposite in fact. He always had her give the women pep talks and tell them at all costs to keep pushing until it was over.

She relayed the instruction and then murmured, “What’s up?”

“This kid’s head is too big to pass through the pelvic opening. The baby can’t be born.”

“What do we do now?” she asked as calmly as her exploding alarm would let her.

“Two choices. Leave the girl and her baby here to die. Or do a C-section and save the kid.”

“And the mother?”

“It’s a major surgery. If blood loss doesn’t get her, shock and hypothermia may. And then there’s the problem of noise. If I cut her open without anesthesia, she’s likely to scream her head off and get us all killed.”

Katie stared at the shadows wreathing his face. How in the hell were they supposed to choose between those options?

He stared back. At length, he muttered, “Welcome to playing God.”

A barrage of gunfire below them made her jump. For a minute there she’d forgotten about the war raging outside. The girl lying on the ground beside her panted fast and hard as another contraction gripped her.

“What would you do?” Alex asked quietly.

Katie shook her head, horrified to the core of her being. “Ask the mother. It’s her baby. Her life.”

“How very pro-choice of you,” Alex replied wryly. Then he said more sharply, “So do it. Ask her.”

Katie was shocked that he had declined to make a unilateral decision. It was so very...human...of him. She turned to the mother and waited out the end of the contraction.

Holding the girl’s hand, she said quietly, “Your baby is too big to be born this way. Doctor Alex can cut the baby from your belly, but he has no medicine for the pain. If you make any noise, we will all die.” She took a deep breath and added reluctantly, “You may die from the surgery.”

“If I have no surgery?” the girl asked.

Katie relayed the question, and Alex outlined the answer sentence by sentence as she translated.

“You will become exhausted eventually. The placenta will separate from your uterus. Your baby will suffocate and die, and you will begin to hemorrhage. That means you will bleed inside your body. You will die from blood loss.”

The girl was silent, considering her options. “I hate this baby. I do not care if it lives. But I want to live.”

Alex nodded briskly. “Then the baby must come out of you.”

Katie watched as he pulled out a scalpel, clamps and what she recognized as suture materials. He spread a towel on the ground under the girl and another beside himself.

“How are we going to keep her quiet?” she asked.

“If we’re lucky, she’ll pass out fast.”

“That’s not encouraging.”

“Since we’re being so democratic about this, ask her,” he suggested. “I’ll try to time the incision for during an artillery barrage. She’ll have to do the rest.”

Katie spoke briefly to the girl. Determination entered the girl’s eyes, and Katie thought that she was more scared than the girl at this point. The girl twisted a length of her burka and told Katie to hold it in her mouth for her when the time came.

“Ready?” Alex murmured from his crouched position between the girl’s legs. The girl’s grotesquely distended belly, now bared to the cold air, was pale in the darkness. How on earth was Alex going to do a C-section in these conditions?

The girl put the gag in her mouth, and Katie grasped the ends of it, her entire body shaking with terror. The girl wasn’t shaking much less.

“Next explosion,” Alex murmured, scalpel poised.

Kaboom!

Alex slashed. The girl screamed. The night lit up and blood spouted black and wet from the girl’s belly. A second slash, and the girl thrashed wildly.

“Hold her down,” Alex ground out. “Placenta’s separating. She’s hemorrhaging.”

Katie leaned on the cloth gag, pinning the girl’s head to the ground. A knee across the girl’s shoulders helped hold her in place, while Alex knelt on the girl’s thighs. He worked fast, and Katie did her level best not to look at the gore unfolding.

Instead, she stared into the girl’s panicked, animalistic eyes. All humanity drained out of the girl as she screamed against the gag again and again. And then, just like that, the girl went limp. Her eyes glazed over.

Is she dead? Katie fumbled under the girl’s jaw for a pulse.

“Thank God,” Alex breathed. He worked even faster, hacking the baby free of its mother’s body.

Katie was shocked at how fast Alex had the baby out. Thirty seconds, maybe, all told. A lifetime for that poor girl, though.

“I can’t find a pulse,” she told him frantically.

“First things first,” he snapped. “Gotta get the kid breathing.”

The baby let out a wail that he quickly muffled with a hand over its mouth. Alex shoved the baby at her fast. “Keep it quiet.”

Like she had the first idea how to silence a newborn infant? The baby was slippery with blood and white, greasy gook. Quickly, she wrapped the child in the spare towel Alex had laid out and slipped the child down inside her coat for warmth, which was a trick while keeping a hand over the crying child’s mouth. She hoped she wasn’t suffocating the poor thing. What a hell of a way to be born.

“Hold the flashlight,” Alex ordered.

She didn’t have three hands, for crying out loud. But he was probably doing the work of three surgeons right now, so she didn’t complain. Kneeling awkwardly, she kept the baby’s mouth covered as it slid farther down in her coat and held the flashlight in her free hand where Alex pointed it.

He worked frantically on the mother, his hands flying.

“How’s she doing?”

“Bleeding all over the place. I’m losing her,” he gritted out.

Another round of gunfire from nearby made Katie jump and the baby cry even louder. She made hushing noises into her coat even though she doubted they would have any effect on the squalling infant.

Alex started to swear in a steady stream under his breath, and in the light of the next mortar, his face looked gray. She risked a glance down. There was blood everywhere. A huge pool of it lay under the girl. The formerly white towel was now black with it. And where Alex’s hands worked inside the girl, his fingers disappeared in a flowing puddle of it. Streams of blood trickled down the girl’s belly unchecked. Katie had never seen so much blood in all her life.

“Listen for a heartbeat,” he ordered.

She laid her head on the girl’s chest. The rib cage did not rise, and she heard only the swish of her own blood in her ear. God, she hated silence. But then a barrage of gunfire made it too loud for her to hear a thing, and that was worse. She hunted again, frantically, for a pulse under the girl’s jaw. Nothing.

Tears welling in her eyes, she shook her head at Alex.

He continued to work in grim silence for several more minutes. But finally he went still. He stared down at the girl’s body bleakly. And then all he said in a terrible, agonized whisper was, “Turn off the flashlight.”

Her second hand freed, she turned to the business of quieting the crying infant. She maneuvered the hot little bundle inside her coat until it lay across her, the baby’s head on her left breast. She remembered hearing somewhere that the sound of heartbeats calmed babies. It took a few moments, but it worked.

Alex shook himself out of wherever he’d gone mentally and crawled to the edge of the crevasse. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“What about her?” Katie glanced down at the corpse of the girl who’d been so brave and angry and determined to live.

“We have to leave her.”

Every cell in Katie’s being protested the notion of just abandoning the girl here like a discarded hunk of meat. Thankfully, Alex crawled back to the girl’s side. Gently, he closed her eyelids before pulling the end of her burka across her face. He covered the bloody mess that had been the girl’s belly with a towel and arranged the girl’s robes over it all.

He placed his hand over the girl’s heart and murmured barely loud enough for Katie to hear, “Rest in peace, and be with whatever God you worshipped in life.”

The tears overflowed from Katie’s eyes then, and she sucked back a sob. She was shocked when strong arms wrapped around her, dragging her up against a hard body. Between them was the hot bump of an infant torn from its mother’s dying body. Katie didn’t even know what sex it was. A hand pushed her face down onto his shoulder; his own face was buried in her hair. He shuddered against her while she cried into his neck.

But as the ominous thwocking of a helicopter became audible in the distance, he stilled and muttered into her hair, “If you want that baby to live, grieve later. Follow me now. Fast and silent.”

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEXT HOUR was a nightmare. The mountain was no less steep at the top than at the bottom, and the baby fussed occasionally, sending her into a cold panic as she tried frantically to shush the newborn. It didn’t help matters that the battle raging below grew more intense as the night wore on. And who knew what lay over the mountain peak?

Alex was grim and silent, focused intently on finding a route up the mountain. He was quick to lend her a helping hand, though, or to haul her up over a particularly rough patch. As she’d correctly guessed, he was deceptively strong. And when her strength lagged and her will to go on faltered, he was indomitable.

And there was always that intense hug to think about. It had been more than simple comfort. He had let her inside his guard for just a minute. Made a human connection with her. Maybe even needed her for a second there.

Alex murmured from ahead, “Stay low. We’re cresting the mountain. We don’t want our silhouettes visible below.”

She crawled across the open peak and huddled in the lee of a boulder just over the crest beside Alex.

“How’s the baby?” he asked.

“Alive. It moves around now and then.”

“Let me see it,” Alex muttered.

She unzipped her coat and lifted the infant out. In a flash of mortar fire, she saw it was a baby girl. Said baby girl took immediate and loud umbrage at being exposed to the sharp chill, however, and started to squall.