Secret Agent Sam

“Okay,” she said briskly when she was finished, “that’s the best we can do for now. Tony, you want to load up? The quicker we get going, the faster we’ll be able to get help. I’m thinking maybe that clinic’ll have some supplies we can use to get them both stabilized.” She raised her voice and called to Hal, “How far did you say it is to the village? A couple of miles?”

“More like three or four,” came the doleful reply.

“Esther said he’s a pessimist,” Sam muttered under her breath. “Let’s hope she’s right.”

Tony was a short distance away, rearranging his burden of camera and equipment bags, now short two neck straps. Sam was about to stand up, too, ready to help Cory to his feet, when he touched her arm, then beckoned her closer.

“Sam…I want you to know something…in case I don’t…” The weakness in his voice terrified her.

“Don’t you even think about it,” she snapped back at him, shaking with fear and impotent fury. “Don’t you dare. Just…don’t you dare.” She shoved herself to her feet, her vision blurred and shimmering, chest heaving. “Trust me-you’re gonna have a whole lot of time to say whatever it is you have to say to me. Now-if you’re quite finished feeling sorry for yourself, do you think you can get your butt up offa there, so we can get going?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cory muttered contritely. But he was quivering inside with a crazy mixture of amusement and admiration, weakness and fear. He knew he was in a bad way, not just because of the way he felt, which was as lousy as he could ever remember feeling, but because Sam was in a temper. And if Sam was in a temper, it meant she was either upset or scared-in this case, he figured probably both. Scared for him, he thought. And for Esther. Scared she wasn’t going to be able to get them help in time. It was a sobering thought.

But at the same time, as he watched her take charge, shoulder the weight-literally-of the sick and injured, get everyone moving again, he felt a tremendous surge of admiration. And pride. And humility. And in a way, shame. He’d always admired her, of course, both as a woman and as a person, and been proud of her, too. But he wondered now if there’d been something patronizing in his enjoyment of her, as if he’d been somehow responsible for her, or as if she were an extension of himself. God help him, was he only now seeing her as the incredible and amazing person she was, separate and apart from him? It was a horrifying, humiliating thought.

And with it came another: She loves me.

He felt dazed as her shoulders came under his arm and lifted, and her strong bones and supple muscles grew taut in support of his weight…as he felt the heat and energy radiating from her body, smelled the sweat of exertion and fear, heard the fierce, determined sound of her breathing. My God, he thought, she does. And he realized he hadn’t really believed it before, or understood how much. He wondered if he’d ever heard her say it. Wondered if that was why he’d felt abandoned when she’d gone off to pursue her career, and why he’d put her to such a terrible test, forcing her to choose. An impossible choice, he understood now. What he’d asked her to give up had been nothing less than what made her who she was. And so much about her he loved.

The thought made him sick and weak with shame. I don’t deserve her, he thought. She was right to turn me down. And if I do make it through this, and she decides to give me another chance, I’d damn well better figure out a way to make it right.

If we get through this…

“Sam,” he murmured, turning his face toward her and away from Tony, who was holding him up from the other side. He could feel the wet ends of her hair, like kitten kisses on his face. “That thing behind your ear…”

Her arm tightened around his waist. “Yeah, what about it?”

“Can you use it to call for help? Like…is there a code for Mayday?”

He heard the hiss of a breath and saw her eye crinkle and her cheek change shape with her smile. “An extraction? Yeah, and I mean to do that…just as soon as we get to a clearing big enough for a chopper to set down.”

Well, he should have known she’d have thought of it already. That she’d have it covered. Should have known he could leave it to her. This business of trusting her with his life…it seemed it was going to take some getting used to.

He let go, then, let himself slide into a twilight of pain and struggle and jungle growth and dampness that seemed to go on and on…endlessly.

Though he knew when it began to rain again. They didn’t stop to look for shelter, but just kept going, following Hal, whose gaunt, heroic figure seemed like a ghostly outrider in that curtain of rain, plodding tirelessly ahead, carrying his wife in his arms and leading the way.

And he knew when at last they left the jungle for the cultivated fields on the outskirts of the village, but he felt no sense of triumph or relief when he was lowered onto the muddy bank of a rice paddy…only terrible cold and weakness, and an exhaustion that seemed unconquerable even by his most powerful effort of will. But, he remembered, they were in the open, now. Sam would call for extraction, using that sci-fi chip in her scalp. He didn’t have to get up, didn’t have to move again. He could wait right here for the chopper to come and pick him up…

Except, the next thing he knew Sam and Tony were there again, pulling at him, making him get up, forcing him to walk, making him move on.

“It’s the rain,” Sam yelled above the roar of the deluge as they struggled on. “I can’t get a signal through. Right now, I’m hoping we can at least get some first-aid supplies at that little hospital…clinic, or whatever. We’ll ride this out…try for a chopper later. If all else fails, we’ll just have to fly out.”

Fly out, Sam thought. Yeah, that’s if the plane’s still intact. And if the landing strip isn’t knee-deep in mud. If we make it that far…

But she didn’t want to think that far ahead-couldn’t let herself. One step at a time. First, make it to the hospital in the village. There’d be medical supplies there, and food and water and shelter…maybe even dry clothes, if the bags they’d had to leave behind were still there. Imagining what it would feel like to be dry again nearly made her weep, and her stomach growled at the thought of those nonperishable field rations in her backpack.

It was because of the rain that she had no warning. It had washed away the smoke and the stink of wet ashes and death, so it wasn’t until they came out of the trees that lined the road leading through the village that she realized al-Rami’s forces had been there before them.

The chaos was appalling. At least half the houses in the village had been damaged or destroyed and the muddy lanes between them were littered with debris and the carcasses of animals. A few people moved slowly through the wreckage, too dazed and numb to pay much attention either to the rain or the five new refugees among them.

Except for a softly uttered profanity from Tony, no one spoke as they made their way through the ruined village. Sam tried to close her mind to the devastation and concentrate only on the task at hand, but it was impossible; she’d never experienced the waste of war firsthand before. She was badly shaken, though she didn’t want to be, and already dreading what they would find at the hospital.

“I guess you’ve seen all this before,” she said in a low voice, directing the comment to Tony past Cory’s rain- slicked chest but tilting her head to include both men in the pronoun.

“Yeah, we have.” Tony didn’t look at her as he replied; he was bearing most of Cory’s weight now, and his face was set in a bulldog grimace of effort. “Never get used to it, though.”

“Nobody should,” Cory muttered. “Get used to it…” His voice trailed weakly off.

Sam and Tony exchanged a brief look. Please, God, Sam prayed, let the hospital still be standing.

But her prayer wasn’t to be answered, not that one, anyway. Where the hospital, the village’s pride and joy, had stood, there was only a burned-out ruin, a charred skeleton reeking of soggy ashes.

She’d been looking ahead, her attention riveted on the devastation, her gaze sliding past Hal Lundquist, who was trudging doggedly on some distance ahead of them. But she saw him halt in his tracks, then sink slowly to his knees in the muddy road. His shoulders hunched and his head bowed; he seemed to curl himself over the woman he held close in his arms, and it appeared poignantly as if he was shielding her from the rain. As Sam came nearer she could see his shoulders shaking.

“Can you manage?” she said in an undertone to Tony, and when he nodded, though every nerve in her body screamed in protest at the separation, she peeled her arm from around Cory’s waist and eased her shoulders out from under his weight. And as she moved away from him, her side and shoulders where his warmth had been felt chilled and raw, as if her skin had been stripped away.