Selene nodded. “I’ll keep an eye out for picture albums.”
“Please do,” he said softly, stroking his long white beard, then adding, “I miss her so much, more now than ever, but I’m thankful she’s not here to see the state of the world. It would’ve been really hard on her.”
Selene didn’t know how to respond to this, so she tried to give him a sympathetic look before backing out of the kitchen and heading down the hall to the lobby, where Chloe and Daniel were playing fetch with Sniffy. The little Bichon Frise had made a new friend. It was a good thing. Selene knew it was best for the dog, and for the kids, but somehow it made her sad. Sniffy didn’t even run to her when she entered the room.
Keep your mind on what matters most, she reminded herself. Let Sniffy be happy. He’s been through enough.
14
“Jackpot,” Malin said, his heart pounding. The near brush with Rod Smith still had him freaked out, but now the anxiety was mingled with excitement. It was like stumbling upon a pirate’s treasure, but instead of piles of gold and jewels, he was looking at shelves of plastic and cardboard tubs containing medical supplies.
He was on the ground, pressed flat against the dirt, with his face poking through the bottom of the heavy canvas that made the walls of the medical tent. Spence had slid a couple of barrels to one side of him to block him from the nearest intersection, and Archer was squatting on the other side, pretending to work on an old rusty piece of junk they’d picked up along the way, as Spence guarded them with the AK-47.
The medical tent hadn’t been hard to spot once they’d gotten close. It had a prominent red cross painted on each side. But as he lay there with his head under the canvas, Malin could hear the camp waking up around them. Their risk of being recognized was increasing exponentially with every passing minute.
Fortunately, the medical tent was empty. A row of cots occupied the middle of the tent, with shelves against the outer walls. Though there were no patients on the cots at the moment, Malin saw what appeared to be drying blood splashed all over the side of the end cot, speckling the rug floor. Someone had died in here recently, from the look of it.
“Both of you, get in there and get it done,” Spence said, speaking softly. Their immediate vicinity was surrounded mostly by the backs of tents, so there was no traffic. However, people were moving nearby. “Load up and get out. You have seconds. Seconds. Go.”
Malin pulled himself into the tent, yanked the backpack off his shoulders, and rose. As he rushed toward the nearest shelf, he heard Archer working her way under the tent behind him. If someone had died recently, it meant someone had been in the tent recently. Maybe the absence of medical personnel was related to the death of the patient. If that was the case, then they could return at any moment.
Malin moved to the nearest shelf and began picking through the items, taking a few from each category and placing them in his pack: bandages, gauze, medical tape, cotton balls, surgical implements of various kinds, medical gloves, pill bottles, and so on. As he did that, he heard a much more chaotic sound behind him.
He glanced back and saw Archer clearing the shelf with a sweep of her arm, dragging the entire row into the pack. She was done within three seconds, just barely able to zip the pack shut, as Malin went back to work, picking his way along.
“We’re not picking over produce at the grocery store,” she said. “Just swipe it all into the pack and let’s go.”
“I don’t want to leave the camp with nothing,” he said. “There are civilians here.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Archer said. “You’re going to get us killed trying to be altruistic. It’s us or them, stupid. Get it done.”
“Everyone in the camp is not the enemy,” he replied. It wasn’t as if he were wasting an inordinate amount of time. It might have taken him ten extra seconds to be a little more selective. The islanders and Marines didn’t need to take absolutely everything. It was unnecessarily cruel, especially with so many civilians forced to live and work in the camp.
Giving him a withering look of disgust, Archer moved up beside him and began picking up whole cases of supplies, jamming them into his pack. He briefly considered resisting her, but the deed was done before he could do anything about it. Archer had managed to clear one entire shelf, jamming everything into his pack.
“Now, zip it up, and let’s get out of here,” she said. “We’re trying to leave this camp alive, remember?”
“Yes, got it,” he replied. He could have zipped up the pack as it was, but out of sheer orneriness, he pretended like it was overfull, removed one box of bandages, and set them back on the shelf. Archer didn’t seem to notice or care.
“See how easy that was?” Archer said, slinging the pack over her shoulders. “Let’s go.”
Malin put the pack over his shoulder and started toward the back of the tent. It was a single, short gasp that drew him up short. Spinning around, he saw a man standing in the open tent flap. He was short and soft, a pudgy gentleman with his black hair carefully parted and combed to one side. He wore a long-sleeved dress shirt, filthy with dust, that had a small red cross created in electrical tape over the breast pocket. In his right hand, he was holding a clipboard, and it looked like he had frozen in the middle of writing something with a stub of a
