Patients panicked. Those who could move jumped from their beds, some of them barefoot in hospital scrubs, and rushed toward the exit, their eyes wide with dread. Several women grabbed children and, despite Amina’s and the medical personnel’s pleading, fled into the night. A pair of elderly patients, too ill or unaware to flee, remained along with a pair of toddlers who cried and cowered in their crib.

Amina spun around, her eyes stark. “They say it’s the rebels. They say we’ll all be killed.”

Rachel took a deep breath, Amina’s fear blunting her own. “We’re noncombatants. We’re no threat to them. If they come through here, they’ll be looking for drugs or supplies or weapons. They can take what they want.”

“Yes,” Amina said, her voice shaking. “I do not think we want to be here when they arrive, but”—she looked at the frail old man with the infected leg and the blind woman with pneumonia and the children with raging fevers from measles—“we have no choice.”

Rachel held her wrist close to one of the flickering lights. Almost five a.m. She thought of her father’s instructions for her to be ready to leave. Did her father know this was coming? How could he have kept her in the dark and allowed everyone here to be endangered? She couldn’t believe that of him. He was rigid and authoritarian, but he was not so ruthless as to ignore the safety of international aid workers and helpless civilians. Right now, she didn’t care what he knew or what he expected her to do—she wasn’t leaving without her friends and coworkers, and she wasn’t abandoning those who depended on her.

“I’m going to headquarters. If Dacar isn’t there, I’ll try to radio the center in Mogadishu myself. Will you be all right here?”

“Yes,” Amina said. “But hurry.”

“Tell the medical staff to prepare the patients to be transported. You should grab anything you need too. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Rachel hurried toward the exit, paused, and turned back. Amina was staring after her, looking small and vulnerable in khaki pants and a loose white T-shirt. “In case I’m…delayed, there’s a helicopter coming. Get the patients on there and everyone else you can find.”

“But what about you?”

“I’ll catch up.” Rachel smiled. “I promise. Just take care of things here.”

She slipped through the tent flap and quickly took cover in the shadows beyond the glow of the light filtering through the canvas. Keeping close to the edge of the clearing with the jungle at her back, she worked her way around behind the sleeping tents toward headquarters. The gunfire had stopped, and she didn’t know whether to be happy about that or not.

Ten yards in front of her, three men burst out of the jungle. Rachel froze, the sound of her pulse pounding in her ears so loud she couldn’t believe they didn’t hear it. Each wore a scarf around his neck, a tunic-like shirt that came to the tops of his thighs, long loose pants, and boots. Two carried rifles. The third had some kind of tubular weapon about four feet in length balanced on his shoulder and a heavy rucksack strapped to his back. They were laughing. They didn’t look her way.

Rachel didn’t breathe for so long her vision dimmed and her head spun. When no one else came and the sounds of the men’s voices disappeared, she crept forward again. Where had they gone? Most of the supplies were kept on a wooden platform under a tarp next to headquarters. If they were there, she wouldn’t be able to reach the radio.

The wind picked up and she took advantage of the rustling to move a little faster. A streak of lightning shot across the clearing. Rachel stumbled and looked up.

Not lightning. Searchlights. Not wind—rotor wash. A helicopter slid into view like a huge black bird of prey. Rachel’s heart lurched, and relief, so intense she almost cried out, surged through her.

Gunfire erupted from all around the camp, the sharp cracks making her jump and her legs tremble. Caught halfway between the hospital and headquarters, she had nowhere safe to run. She did the only thing she could. She sprinted into the jungle to hide.

Chapter Five

The sky lit up with tracer trails. The rattle of automatic weapons fire penetrated Max’s protective ear coverings, concussive pops beating against her eardrums. Fox’s voice, tight but controlled, announced, “We’re taking fire. Hold on.”

Max gripped the edge of the open portal. The bird pitched and rolled, an intentional maneuver to give those on the ground an even more difficult moving target. Below her, the jungle vegetation morphed from black into spurts of vibrant green relief as the light from muzzle flashes and rocket flares illuminated their surroundings for brief seconds. The fractured kaleidoscopic images of the trees and earth jumped and flickered as the helicopters descended with their noses and rockets pointed down.

Dawn was on the horizon. She wouldn’t need the night-vision goggles any longer and was about to toss them aside when an uneasy sixth sense warned her not to count on anything, or to count anything out. She pushed them up, secured them to her helmet, and squinted down at the landing zone. The only place to land appeared to be right in the middle of the encampment—and right in the center of the firefight. A ring of small square tan tents came into view, bordering a clearing about half the size of a football field. Dense jungle vegetation crowded in around the perimeter, providing excellent cover from which to attack. Two larger tents sat at either end of the clearing like chaperones at homecoming, policing the exits. The place looked eerily deserted. Where was everyone? And who the hell was shooting at them?

In another second, the bird settled lower over the LZ and she had her answer. Three men carrying assault rifles and a grenade launcher knelt and started firing up at them. The pings of bullets ricocheting off the Black Hawk were followed by another round of communication from both birds.

Verify your targets. We’ve got friendlies down there.

Those aren’t friendlies lobbing RPGs at us.

I hear you. Visually verify—rules of engagement.

They weren’t to fire unless fired upon, but that seemed to be a foregone conclusion now. Beside her, Ollie fired out the side window and rounds kicked up dirt like deadly raindrops racing across the sand.

Ollie, Burns, stand by on the ropes, Fox said. We’re going in hot.

Roger, Ollie said and Burns echoed him.

Cover fire, Romeo Two Four, Fox requested of the second Black Hawk that hovered above them.

Roger, Swampfox One.

Both crew chiefs fired the machine guns nonstop, round after round strafing the border between jungle and the clearing to force the insurgents back into the jungle and away from the LZ. Oil-scented steam rose from their weapons. Coils of three-inch-thick nylon ropes lay by their feet ready to be tossed out for a rapid descent. They would drop down and clear the immediate area so Max and Grif could deploy and find Rachel Winslow.

Max pushed the image of Winslow from her mind and sighted her weapon on the figures milling about on the ground. She had no idea who they were, and if they weren’t firing directly at the birds, she wasn’t about to fire on them. Some of them could be the Red Cross people they’d come here to protect. Clouds of sand whipped up by the rotors caked her nose and mouth. She tried not to breathe too deeply.

When they were fifty feet above the ground, a man and a woman carrying a litter made of two poles with sagging canvas strung between them erupted out of one of the large tents and ran awkwardly across the open ground toward them. She keyed her mic. “We’ve got wounded approaching. Get us down.”

Roger that, Fox grunted. Ollie, Burns. Go! Go!

The crew chiefs tossed the ropes, pulled off their headphones, and jumped. Max fired toward the jungle, trying to keep her rounds above head height to deter anyone from shooting back, and hoping not to hit a friendly. Ollie and Burns slid down to the ground and crouched in the swirling red-brown dirt, firing at rebels who appeared and disappeared like wisps of smoke.

Grif crouched beside Max in the portal, waiting for the skids to touch ground. He squeezed her shoulder.

“Keep your head down, Deuce.”

“Planning on it,” Max yelled. She had jumped out of birds into hot zones plenty of times before, and she didn’t worry about what might happen. She couldn’t stop a bullet if it had her name on it. “You get those medics with the litter on board. That must be the hospital tent up ahead. I’ll check it.”

“Roger, Deuce.”

Closer now, Max could make out the features of the woman at the front end of the litter. She wore plain tan hospital scrubs and field boots. Her thick blond hair escaped from a twist at her nape and thick curls flew about her face in the wind. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open, and she appeared to be panting in panic or exertion. Not Rachel Winslow.

Max brushed aside an unexpected twinge of disappointment and jumped the last five feet, landing next to Ollie. Automatic weapons chattered all around her. Another man and woman broke from the jungle twenty yards away and ran toward her, shouting, “We’re Red Cross. Help us!”

“Get into the helicopter,” Max shouted, waving them toward Ollie and Burns, and raced toward the people carrying the litter. A wizened old man, or possibly a very malnourished young one, lay on the litter, his eyes glazed. “Are you the doctor? How many more patients are back there?”

“Yes, I am Maribel Fleur,” the woman said with a hint of a French accent. She gulped for breath. “We have another non-ambulatory and two children.”

“We’ll get them. You two get on board,” Max said.

“You will need help. I will go back—”

“No! I’m a doctor. I’ll handle it.” Max waved for Grif to grab the litter, signaling him to get both the old man and the two French medics into the bird. “They’ll need you to look after them inside. Go. Go.”

She didn’t wait to see that the woman followed her instructions. Grif would take over. She held her rifle close to her chest and sprinted for the hospital tent. Just as she reached it, another woman and man pushed through the opening bearing a second litter with a thin, white-haired woman on it. The woman carrying the litter was young and dark-haired with a smooth caramel complexion. The man with her was white, in his mid-forties with a day’s worth of reddish beard and terror in his eyes.

“The children,” the young woman gasped. “Two of them inside.”

“I’ll get them,” Max said. “Where is Rachel Winslow?”

The woman shook her head. “I don’t know. She went to the headquarters tent.”

“Headquarters. Which one is that? The other big one?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“When?”

“Ten minutes ago? Then there was shouting and more shooting. I was afraid to go after her.” The woman’s face contorted with fear and guilt. “I shouldn’t have let her go alone.”

Max pointed to the Black Hawk. “It’s all right. I’ll find her. Go to the helicopter. Hurry.”

The man shouted something in French that was lost in the wind, and the two of them rushed toward the Black Hawk with the litter bobbing precariously with every step. Max shoved inside the tent, swept the room quickly with her weapon ready, and spied the two toddlers, a boy and a girl of about three, standing in a common crib. Their faces were smeared with tears and splotched with blisters, and both were wailing.

“All right you two, you’re all right.” Max slung her rifle onto her back and scooped up one under each arm. They grabbed onto her with surprising strength, their legs settling on either side of her hips. “We’re gonna run for it. You’ll be fine.”

A boom sounded from somewhere close by. Big caliber rocket or shoulder-launched mortar shells. If one of those took out vital parts of the Black Hawks, none of them would be getting into the air again. They didn’t have much time. Maybe none at all.

“Hold on! We’ll be okay!” The kids wouldn’t be able to understand her, but they’d know she wasn’t afraid. She only hoped Ollie, Burns, and the gunners on the second Black Hawk had cleared the LZ because she couldn’t fire her weapon and carry the kids too. Looking neither right nor left, she fixed on the belly of the bird and raced across the open ground, the air thick with dust and smelling of hot metal and death. The kids clung to her like limpets. Neither of them cried. The French doctor, hair flying and face set, jumped from the bird and rushed to meet them. She held out her arms. “Give them to me.”

Max handed over the children. “Stay in the helicopter this time!”

The blonde pointed in the direction of headquarters where two bodies lay in front of the tent. “What about them? There are injured—the rest of our team is out there somewhere!”