Jet

She didn’t know how much time had elapsed when the doctor entered and approached the bed.

She looked up at him, her eyes struggling to stay focused. His face was impassive.

“I want to see my daughter, Doctor.”

“I can appreciate how you would.” He hesitated. “Look, there’s no easy way to say this…”

“What? What isn’t easy to say?” Her eyes got larger, and her vital signs spiked, her pulse and blood pressure increasing by twenty percent in seconds. She fought against the fog, forcing herself to clarity.

“You need to calm down. This isn’t good.” He picked up the phone on the side table and dialed an extension. “Nurse? I’m in room eleven. This is Doctor Barsal. Can you come here, please?”

Ten seconds later, a nurse stuck her head in.

The doctor moved to the door, and they had a hasty discussion before she left the room.

“What’s happened, Doctor?” Maya blinked, straining to shed the drug haze.

“I have bad news, I’m afraid,” he began. Her vitals continued to climb. He stopped talking as he watched the monitor.

“Bad news? What kind of bad news?”

He wouldn’t look at her.

The drugs made it so hard to concentrate. The doctor wasn’t making any sense. He had bad news. What bad news? Was her baby sick? Had she been injured during the procedure?

The nurse returned and quietly slipped the doctor a syringe. He moved to the IV and closed off the drip, then injected the contents into her line.

“This is just a sedative. It will help you relax. It’s for your own good.”

She felt instantly dreamier. Maybe he was right. It was good to relax. And he was helping her to do so…

Her vital signs normalized almost immediately as her heart and breathing slowed.

“That’s better. Now, as I was saying. I have some bad news. Your baby…there was a complication caused by the umbilical cord wrapping around her neck. I’m afraid we didn’t get to her in time. She…didn’t make it. We did everything we could, but it was too late. I’m so sorry…”

The walls seemed to close in as she listened to the impossible words. Her baby didn’t make it? That was crazy talk. What did that even mean, didn’t make it? Of course the baby made it. She didn’t understand.

Maya shook her head. “No. I don’t understand.”

The doctor frowned and took her limp hand in a caring gesture.

“I know it’s a shock. I’m so sorry. But your baby was pronounced dead half an hour after the attempted delivery. I signed the death certificate myself. We did everything possible, but sometimes…” He shrugged and frowned again. “Sometimes nature beats us no matter how hard we try. It’s one of the great frustrations of medicine. We can only do so much, and then it’s out of our hands.”

The words struck her like hammer blows, each one causing more damage than the last.

Her baby was dead.

Her daughter, Hannah, dead.

Maya’s tortured scream was audible all the way to the elevators at the end of the wing.

~ ~ ~

Maya stood by the side of the small plot as the tiny casket sank into the ground, the wind blowing huffs of salt air from the sea, carrying with it the smell of life. She hadn’t wanted anyone around — just her and her baby, her Hannah, gone forever before getting a chance to live.

Tears rolled down her face, shoulders shaking as she sobbed her grief into the blue absolute of the heavens, repeating the same unanswered question over and over again. Why? Why Hannah? What kind of God would do this?

The casket came to rest, and the two men who had lowered it into the grave removed the straps, pulling them free before the taller one looked at her.

“I’m sorry for your loss. Would you like to put in the first soil?”

Maya moved woodenly to the banked-up pile and grasped a fistful of moist loam, vision blurred, her breath rasping in harsh bursts as she struggled to retain her composure. She stood above her hopes and dreams, now dead as her soul, and paused to offer a blessing before relaxing her fingers and letting the cool earth fall from her hand.

She stood at the edge of the gravesite, crying, alone, as grieving mothers had cried at their children’s graves since time immemorial, her pain so visceral and intense she wanted to join her daughter in death’s indifferent embrace. But that wasn’t to be. The unlucky suffered on in a hell of their own devising while innocents paid the ultimate price in homage to a frivolous universe.

Maya knelt at the small headstone, as she had every week for the last two years.

“Sweetheart, there isn’t a minute that goes by that I don’t think about you. I wanted you so much…”

Her voice cracked. She couldn’t go on. She fell forward and sobbed quietly, supporting herself with one hand clutching the grass that had grown on the small mound that was the barrow of her treasure.

Maya stayed in place, head bowed, her anguish a raw nerve, the most devastating blow of her existence nestled a few feet beneath her. For the umpteenth time, she railed at an uncaring deity for taking her baby instead of her. The rage came, as always, like a black tsunami; it was all she could do to fight it back and find the will to go on another day.

Eventually, she stood, streaks of sorrow traced upon her face.

“I’ll be back again next week, Hannah. I love you. Mommy loves you. Always.”

Chapter 10

Present Day, Moscow, Russia

“Is this some kind of joke? Are you testing my patience?”

Grigenko’s voice boomed off the walls of his penthouse office, the lights of Moscow spread out below him. He was screaming into the phone, incredulous.

“No, sir. I’m afraid it isn’t a joke. We lost everyone except for three men.” The voice on the phone was deadly earnest. Yuri Kevlev was a seasoned professional who had been operating a private army for years. He was without question the best.

Grigenko paced to the window, stupefied.

“One…girl…did this?” Grigenko pronounced the word like an expletive.

“She may have had help. We don’t know for sure. But yes, barring assistance we’re unaware of, she killed most of the group.”

“This is not the result I pay you for.”

“No, sir, I agree it isn’t.” There wasn’t much to disagree with.

“Did you send untrained men? Green personnel? How do you explain this?” Grigenko demanded.

“No, we didn’t, sir. These were experienced veterans. All ex-Spetsnaz, as always. No corners were cut. I, frankly, am at a loss…I’ve never seen anything like it.”

This was a disaster. Grigenko sat back down in his executive chair and slammed his fist on the table in frustration.

“I have,” he seethed. The silence on the line was deafening. “Are we in any way exposed?”

“Of course not…I mean, no, sir. We have taken all the usual precautions. Nobody had any ID. There are no criminal files available on any of them through Interpol. Their identities will remain a mystery. Nothing leads back to any of us,” Yuri assured.

“And what are you doing to re-acquire the girl?” Grigenko asked, through clenched teeth.

“Everything possible. But as you know, once a target is alerted, it can become extremely difficult. Especially if they have decent knowledge of tradecraft, which I think it’s obvious this woman does.”

“I want no expense spared. None. I don’t care what it costs or how many men it takes. I want her head brought to me so I can piss on it. Do I make myself clear?”

“Abundantly, sir.”