On Fire Read online

  “Did she tell you what was wrong with her?”

  “Yes,” the woman cried, looking at her bloody hands, growing more frightened. Her eyes were wide with shock from being struck by the Taliban soldier as she tried to protect Khat from him. “S-she said it was here,” and she stood up on wobbly legs, pointing toward her abdomen. “I—I don’t know the word… I—I’m sorry…”

  Mike kept his voice soft and patience. “It’s okay, you did what you could. Are you Mohsin’s wife, Nasreen?”

  Her eyes widened enormously. “I am. Tell me! Is Mohsin alive?”

  Mike smiled to reassure her. “He’s fine. He’s at Bravo right now. We’ll let him come back here as soon as we can get the Taliban out of your front yard, okay?”

  Nasreen began to cry with relief, leaning against the wall, sinking to the floor, her face buried in her hands.

  Touching Khat’s pale cheek, Mike could feel the perspiration on his fingertips. He glanced up. Travis was watching the door intently. He keyed his mic. “Bailey? I need your medical help over here pronto.” Mike gave him directions to the house. He lifted Khat into his arms and placed her gently back on the cot that she’d been dragged off earlier.

  Nasreen crept forward, trying not to sob. “S-she said something a-a-apend?”

  Mike frowned. And then he blinked. “Appendicitis? Is that what she told you?”

  Her eyes widened. “Yes! Yes, that was it! That is the word she used!”

  Bailey exploded through the door, medic bag in hand.

  “Over here,” Mike said, gesturing sharply to him. “Take a look at her. Khat told this woman she had appendicitis before she lost consciousness.”

  Bailey, who was small and wiry, put his rifle aside and opened up his medical ruck. He quickly got her blood pressure and pulse. “Shit, man, her blood pressure’s over three hundred! And her pulse is through the roof. She’s critical.” He quickly pulled up her sleeve and put a line into her arm, getting an IV started. Mike came over to hold the IV bag above Khat’s head. He watched as Bailey tore off his gloves and then gently felt her abdominal area.

  “Man, she’s tympanic,” he groused, shaking his head.

  “Speak English, Bailey,” Mike growled.

  “Her abdomen is hard. Like a taut drum head.”

  Mike felt his fear amp up. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means her appendix has probably burst and her guts are completely covered with infectious material and swelling. She’s going to go septic. That’s past critical.” He gave Mike a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry, man.” He took another piece of equipment out of his ruck and gently placed it inside her ear.

  “Man, she’s getting no breaks here,” he muttered. “Her temperature is a hundred and five. Shit!”

  “Medevac in five minutes on south side of wall,” LT reported. “Get the package over here now. When you get the package on board, come see me, Tarik.”

  “Roger,” Mike said. He’d wanted to go with Khat, but it wasn’t going to be impossible. Bailey closed his ruck and threw it on his shoulders.

  “I’ll carry her,” he told the combat medic. “You hold up the IV?”

  The carnage from the fight between the SEAL team and the Taliban was evident on the chaotic streets of the village. Mike carried Khat in his arms, her head lolled against his shoulder, sweaty brow tipped against his jaw. His heart was tearing apart. Her clothes were wringing wet with sweat. Her skin was hot. Mike turned and shielded her with his body as the Black Hawk medevac landed. Eighty-mile-an-hour winds gusted and whipped around them, kicking up clouds of dust. He moved forward, head down. He reached the open door and transferred Khat to the nearest medic. Pulling out a piece of paper that listed important medical information, he thrust it into the hand of the other combat medic. Bailey transferred the IV bag to one of them. The noise was high. There was no use trying to talk. They turned, holding their hands against their faces to protect themselves from flying debris, crouching and hurrying away.

  Mike heard the medevac spooling up, its massive twin engines on the top of the bird roaring as it broke the grip of gravity. His chest was tight. Trying to swallow against a lump, he broke into a trot, avoiding the bodies, heading back toward the gate, Bailey on his heels. Tears streamed down his cheeks and he wiped them away. No one could see him crying. No one.

  *

  IT WAS BARELY dawn when Mike strode through the doors of the Bagram Hospital ER doors. He’d been released by his LT, and caught a flight out of Bravo to Bagram. Exhausted, scared, he was still in full battle dress, including his weapons as he walked into the busy ER. A nurse came up to him.

  “May I help you?”

  “Yes. A few hours ago my fiancée, Sergeant Khatereh Shinwari, was brought here. She had appendicitis. I need to know how she is and where she is. I want to see her.” Mike drilled the young nurse with a hard look. “Right now.”

  The nurse gulped. “This way…” she said and hurried toward the nurse’s station opposite the gallery of curtained cubicles. She explained to the supervisor who had gray hair and blue eyes what Mike wanted. The older nurse took one look at him and went to the computer terminal.

  “Your name is?” she asked him.

  Mike gave his name, barely hanging on to his patience. He tried taking some deep breaths, his anguish eating him alive. Was Khat alive? Dead? God, don’t let her be dead. That’s all he’d prayed for all the way in on the Chinook to Bagram.

  “Petty Officer Tarik,” she said briskly, “she’s just come out of surgery and is in ICU.” The nurse’s voice dropped. “Since you’re family, you can go up to that floor. I’ll ring ahead and tell the nurse’s station to expect you. Her surgeon is Dr. Bradley Mason.”

  “Thank you,” Mike said, turning on his heel. He knew where ICU was. He’d flown in with one of his team two years ago, shot up and not expected to live. He’d remained with Farley throughout the ten hours of surgery and then in ICU, staying with him while he fought to live. And he had. Pushing through the doors into the passageway, Mike headed for the bank of elevators. He got some surprised looks from people as he strode past them. Yes, he was dirty, he stunk, eyes red-rimmed and jaw tight. With his black beard and long, black hair around his shoulders, they knew he was black ops. They stepped aside to allow him to pass them in the hall.

  The elevator wouldn’t hurry fast enough. Mike took off his black baseball cap, tiredly rubbing his brow. The heel of his hand came back dirty. Nostrils flaring, the elevator halted and he threw his cap on and quickly exited, heading for the nurse’s station at the end of the hall. Before he ever got there, he saw a tall man about his height in a white lab coat, a green scrub cap on and green trousers.

  “Petty Officer Tarik?” he called.

  Mike nodded and halted. “Yes, sir. Dr. Mason?” The man was in his midforties, with blond hair and hazel eyes.

  “Yes. Can you step into the lounge with me for a minute?”

  “No,” he growled. “You can talk to me on the way to Khat’s ICU unit. Which one is she in?”

  Mason’s brows rose, but he nodded. “She’s in ICU 3. Come this way.” He gestured to another area beyond the nurse’s station. “Sergeant Shinwari just came out of surgery. Her appendix burst and we’ve removed it and flushed her entire abdominal cavity, trying to get every bit of bacteria out of there. She’s critical, and I frankly don’t know if she’s going to make it or not.” He gave Mike a look of sympathy. “What she has going for her is that she’s young and strong.”

  “My combat medic said something about her going septic,” Mike said, barely holding on to his emotions.

  “Yes. We’ve got her on maximum antibiotics. She was very dehydrated when she arrived. We’ve got her electrolytes stable now, but our main concern is her heart. With that much infection moving through her body for probably two or three days, it’s very hard on her heart. Plus, she’s got to beat that infection.” Mason halted at the plastic and glass enclosure. “You need to remember, even though she’s
unconscious, she can hear you. So, be there for her? Inspire her? Nothing negative. Don’t tell her she could die.”

  “I got it, doctor.” Mike grimly pushed through the door.

  Mason stood there for a moment, as if maybe he wanted to say something about how dirty Mike was, and then turned around and left.

  Mike put his safed M-4 in the corner. He took off his cap, sitting at the end of Khat’s bed. Everything in there was white. The monitors were beeping. He looked at them. He knew how to read them. Her blood pressure was two hundred now, her pulse one-hundred and fifty. Watching the cardiac monitor, her heart rhythm was solid and steady. She had a chance to survive this. Khat looked hauntingly fragile, her skin so pale that he could literally see the small, fine veins beneath her eyes and across her closed eyelids. He touched her hand. Her flesh felt so hot. He noticed her neck was packed in something. Touching it, he realized it was dry ice. Yeah, to cool the blood flowing into and out of her head to save her brain from getting fried and destroyed by too high a fever.

  Leaning over, he caressed Khat’s parted lips. They felt coolish beneath his mouth. A sob wanted to wrench out of his chest, but as he lifted away, watching her face, he savagely stuffed his reaction down deep. “Khat, it’s Mike. I’m here, angel, and you’re going to be all right.” He picked up her hand, holding is gently. “You’re a fighter, and you’ve won at everything life has ever thrown at you. Now, just this one last time, Khat, throw your heart into this fight, beat this infection. Do it for me. Do it for us.” His eyes burned with tears. He blinked them back, hearing his voice tremble with barely controlled emotions. Mike wanted to touch her, but he was filthy. He needed to shower and get a change of clean clothes. He didn’t want to add contamination to what she was already fighting.

  “I’m going to get a shower, Khat. And clean clothes. Then, I’m coming back here. I’m going to sit this out with you. I love you…”

  The nurses at the station watched him warily as he strode toward the elevators. Mike knew where the men’s locker room was down in the basement of the facility. He’d packed a small duffle with a clean uniform, toiletry items, towel, soap and wash cloth. It was all that he’d need. His stomach growled as he entered the elevator. On the way back, he’d stop at the cafeteria, buy something quick he could eat on the way up to ICU to be with Khat.

  *

  WHEN MIKE ARRIVED back at ICU forty minutes later, he found a chair sitting beside Khat’s bed. It hadn’t been there before. He’d left all his weapons in a nearby armory locker, not wanting to scare the hell out of the medical staff. This time, he had on clean cammies and his baseball cap, and was wearing a sidearm only, plus his KA-BAR knife in a sheath on his lower left leg.

  When he entered, he moved to Khat’s bedside and picked up her hand. Because he was clean, he could trail his fingers across the high slope of her cheek, feel the velvet of her flesh beneath his pads. Her hair had been washed and someone had tried to comb it into order. He leaned over, kissing her brow. “I love you, Khat. I can tell you right now the food at the cafeteria is about on par with those MREs we were eating.”

  He heard the monitor’s beeping change. Looking up, he saw her blood pressure drop below two-hundred. Her pulse rate was going down, too. Now, he wondered if talking with her, holding her hand, threading his fingers through her hair, all helped in some small way.

  The door opened.

  Mike turned. A small nurse with dark brown eyes and black hair smiled hesitantly. “Petty Officer Tarik?”

  “Yes?”

  “Um, we just wanted you to know that when you were in here before, and you touched your fiancée’s hand and kissed her…”

  Mike gave her a hard look, expecting to be told it was against some asinine reg that he couldn’t kiss her. “What?” he snapped.

  The nurse jerked, her eyes rounding. “I…uh…well we noticed her vitals going down.” She quickly pointed to the monitors. “We thought it was a good sign and we brought in the chair, hoping you’d stay a while with her?”

  Mike relaxed and erased the scowl on his face. He knew he could look like one mean sonofabitch if he chose to put on his game face. “I’m a permanent fixture here until she gets better,” he growled. “I was noticing that, too.”

  “Yes, it’s a hopeful sign.” Nervously, she opened her hands. “Can we get you anything? Coffee? Water? And oh—do you know there’s a room for visiting family if you’d like to catch some sleep?”

  “I’ll sleep in here. And yeah, I can use some bottles of water if you got some handy.” He noticed the name on the nurse’s lapel was Gardner, E.

  “Great! I’ll be right back. If you need anything, just press this buzzer right here?” She walked over and showed it to him, the device clipped on the edge of Khat’s pillow.

  “Water will do,” he said stiffly. All he wanted was to be left alone with Khat. He was sure even in an unconscious state, she hated the sounds of all the beeps of the monitors in the room. He watched Gardner’s look of relief he wasn’t going to rip her head off. SEALs had a very dark name in the world. You simply didn’t mess with them, their team or their loved ones. Nurse Gardner had reason to be jumpy around him.

  He lowered the railing on the bed and sat close, encasing Khat’s hand in his.

  Gardner came back, giving him a warm smile. She set the bottle of water on the tray table.

  “Is this dry ice they’re packing her with?” he asked, pointing to Khat’s neck.

  “Yes, dry ice. It’s wrapped so that it won’t freeze her skin,” Gardner said. “It’s to cool the blood going to and from her brain. When we first brought her in, her temp was 105 degrees fahrenheit. Now—” she pointed to the monitor “—it’s 104, so that’s hopeful.”

  Mike wiped his eyes. “When will her fever break?”

  Gardner said, “No one know for sure, Petty Officer.”

  “She’s sweating heavily,” Mike noted.

  “That’s the fever,” the nurse explained gently. She went over and checked the two IVs, one in each of Khat’s arms. “She was really lucky to get Dr. Mason. He’s one of our best surgeons.”

  Nodding, Mike said, “Any chance of dimming the lights in here? They’re damn bright.”

  “Of course.” She showed him where the dimmer switch was located.

  “Thanks,” he said gruffly, dismissing her. Gardner smiled nervously and quickly left.

  Mike looked at Khat’s relaxed face, her lips slightly parted. Her red hair was in tangles. He found himself threading his fingers through that clean mass, taming it slowly into place around her face and shoulders. Exhaustion weighed down on him. He hadn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours. Pulling the chair up next to the bed, he laid his head on his arms, his one hand holding Khat’s limp, sweaty fingers. Like all SEALs, he’d learned a long time ago to drop off to sleep in a split second.

  *

  NURSE EILEEN GARDNER watched the SEAL go to sleep. Her supervisor, nurse Celeste Rogers, stopped and looked at the computer that showed Khat’s bodily function recordings. “She’s improving a little.”

  Eileen sighed. “You can see why. That SEAL is a total piece of eye candy, with or without a beard and that long hair of his.”

  Celeste laughed softly. “Careful, Gardner. He seems nice because you’re giving him what he needs for his lady. The moment something goes wrong, he’ll be climbing our asses so fast it will take your breath away.”

  Looking up, Eileen said, “No way.”

  “Way.” Celeste was forty-five years old, an Army major, and she’d worked with all the black ops groups. “You can’t tame a tiger, or in this case, since we’re here in Afghanistan, a snow leopard.” Her mouth curved ruefully. “I was married to a SEAL once.”

  “Really?”

  “Not for long,” Celeste drawled, sitting on the counter, pushing her dark brown hair back behind her shoulders with her fingers. “Those guys are big-time protectors of the ones they love.” She shrugged. “I found it suffocating. He was ready to defend m
e at every turn, and I really didn’t want my husband fighting my battles. I can fight my own.”

  “He’s sure all of that,” Eileen agreed, resting her chin in her palm, curiously watching the SEAL.

  “He’s a first class petty officer,” Celeste warned, her voice going deeper. “That means Tarik’s been around the block more than a few times. So, don’t back up on him. This guy knows how to pull rate, rank and anything else if he needs too in order to manipulate the medical and military system to get what he wants for his woman.”

  “But, he’s enlisted!” Eileen protested. “We’re officers.”

  “Yeah,” Celeste said, grinning, “SEALs don’t much notice the difference between officers and enlisted personnel. He won’t follow your orders, so don’t expect it. The best way to work with this guy is to explain what you’re doing and why. It will go a long way toward neutrality between him, his woman and us, okay?”

  Raising her brows, Eileen murmured, “Okay.” She watched Celeste walk away to check the other ICU unit computers on the patients they watched over. Sighing, she wished she’d meet a guy like Tarik. The man was absolutely devoted to the red-haired woman—who Eileen didn’t think would make it. All the nurses, with the exception of Celeste, had quietly bet that Khatereh Shinwari would be dead inside twenty-four hours after the operation. Finding that sad, Eileen felt sorry for the SEAL who obviously loved that woman with a fierceness she’d never seen between any man and woman in her life. It was so tragic…

  Chapter Two

  WHEN MIKE WOKE UP, his spine was stiff from laying his head on the side of the bed all night. Lifting his head, he saw Khat was still unconscious. He looked across the bed at the monitors and saw her fever remained at 104. She was still fighting infection. He opened his hand where he’d held her hand all night. Throwing off the deep drowsiness, he glanced at his watch. It was 0800.

  The door opened and closed.

  “How are you feeling this morning, Petty Officer Tarik?” the nurse asked, going to change out the IV bags on the other side of the bed for Khat.