Hot Zone (Elite Force 2)

“There are already over a dozen makeshift hospital sites being set up in schools and churches.” The foreign soldier covered the mouthpiece on the walkie-talkie and tucked the clipboard under his arm. “It’s going to be a matter of which one can take them.”

“I know it’s chaotic right now, but if she’s not going to be flown out—”

“Do you know this woman?”

So easily he could end this now. He could do what he would—and should—in any rescue situation. Ensure the appropriate personnel made a record of the pertinent information, such as her connection to the child, then move on to the next case.

He could not be personally responsible for every individual he saved. It wasn’t practical, feasible, or mentally advisable, if he wanted to keep from falling the rest of the way off the deep end.

But then he’d stopped giving a shit about his sanity five years ago.

Hugh looked back at Amelia, under the sheet with only her face and one arm sticking out. “Yeah, her and the kid… They’re mine.”

Chapter 4

Dr. Aiden Bailey thrust his hands into the man’s chest cavity and squeezed life back into the dead heart.

Squeeze. Squeeze. Pray.

“Catch, damn it, catch,” the seasoned surgeon muttered with each massage of his fingers.

The canvas wall creating the makeshift operating room flapped from movement on the other side, another surgical team to tackle the insurmountable flood of injured. Aiden focused, worked, even though he’d been in the Bahamas to adopt a son, not ply his trade.

Squeeze. Squeeze. Pray.

He’d volunteered his services in the improvised hospital after the earthquake hit. His Hippocratic oath, his call to heal, wouldn’t let him turn away from the masses of injured.

Squeeze. Squeeze. Pr—

Through the thin membrane of latex gloves, he felt the warm blood, the fibrous muscle, the tips of his fingers tuned in for the tiniest hint of a… throb.

His imagination?

No.

The heart expanded against his palms. Again. And again, as life returned to the waxy, middle-aged man sprawled on a stretcher in the half-standing church that had been turned into a temporary hospital. Supplies and conditions were rustic, to say the least.

NGO workers and military medics on loan from other countries brought freshly wounded faster than he could treat them. Groans filled the air, mixed with the crackle of shortwave radios. A couple of people had been lucky enough to get a cell phone connection and a rare few had satellite phones, but none of that had helped him find out what he needed to know.

So he worked. And waited. His mind filled with the worst-case scenarios. Joshua. Amelia. Helpless in the face of more than just the destruction. Looters. Worse. He understood how far seemingly normal people would go better than most.

God, he had to keep busy or his mind would explode from worrying about his sister and Joshua.

Once he was certain the patient had stabilized—as much as anyone could be considered stable in these crappy conditions—Aiden extended his hand, ready to suture layer after layer to close the gaping chest cavity. He didn’t even need to look or ask. His nurse—his wife—had worked with him for five years on Doctors Without Borders missions before they’d recently swapped to Operation Smile to repair cleft palates in children. They’d known each other far longer, having met as undergrads at Auburn.

They didn’t require words anymore when operating.

The terror he saw in the eyes around here, though, would require more skills than he possessed. So he focused on what he could accomplish rather than dwelling on the grief gripping his chest as tightly as any fist wringing life back into a dead human hull.

His sister and his son were somewhere out in that post apocalyptic hell, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. His little sister was out there, the sister he’d taught to drive, helped proof her college papers, vowed to take care of since their father died. And his son… already he hadn’t been there when his child needed him.

If only he and Lisabeth hadn’t jumped in that cab to pick up lunch at her favorite place a few blocks away. Joshua had been napping, and they’d wanted to treat Amelia to a special meal in thanks for all she’d done for them with the adoption.

And yeah, he’d wanted some time to absorb becoming a father, something he’d never expected to happen. He’d thought he and Lisabeth had a life path in place, dedicated to helping other children. He’d needed to take in how that course had shifted.

Then the world had shifted in a different, all-too-real way.

He and Lisabeth had spent the first six hours after the quake hit searching for Amelia and Joshua. They’d tried to get back to the hotel, only to be blocked and sent to the site where survivors had been taken. Then they’d been told patients had been sent to multiple locations. Some names appeared on multiple lists, but no list carried the names he was looking for.