The English-speaking man shrugged. “They should not be in our country. So, we are moving to take it back. All across the country right now, other attacks are taking place. We will get rid of you American infestation, one way or another.”
They had staged this and been building to it. That was why the attacks had been getting more severe. More wounded Marines, more deaths. It had all been their plan.
Rex looked around. It appeared they were keeping the medical personnel alive for now. Rune was here, and Santana. Silvia and another nurse he didn’t know well. Maybe if they hung on long enough, they would get reinforcements. He knew Colonel Trent had radioed for support. They were so far out, though…
In his mind, Rex prepared for his own death.
The Taliban moved into an adjoining tent, leaving two guards to watch over them. Almost immediately, Rex heard men being beaten. And laughter. And gunshots.
Twice they brought in Marines to be patched up and cleaned up before they were taken back out. Rex wasn’t even sure why they were bothering because, as soon as they left the room, he could hear them being beaten again. Eventually, they would hear a gunshot, and the Marine would not come back.
Rex wasn’t sure what they were trying to figure out — numbers on base or their orders — but the Taliban never seemed satisfied. They kept terrorizing people, then shooting them.
One of the Taliban grabbed Silvia Chen by the hair, jerking her to her feet. Rex tensed, wondering if it would make any difference if he tried to intervene. He and Silvia had had friendly relations over the past few weeks, and he genuinely liked her work ethic. She was a strong nurse, and she had a great sense of humor. The woman was tiny, though, and he’d seen the men making motions to her. When the leader of the group went into the other tent, two of the guards jerked Silvia to her feet. The man holding her leaned in to whisper something in her ear, and Silvia paled. Rex glanced around. This might be the only chance they had to fight back in any way. There were the three guards total, and eight prisoners, none of which had any kind of weapon. The Marines were all outside or all dead.
The man punched Silvia suddenly, and Rex lunged to his feet. Immediately, the guy that had popped him in the jaw swung his rifle around. He muttered a few words about this one being trouble, and the gun went off. Rex hissed as a bullet struck him through the shoulder.
“You son of a goat fucker,” he yelled, lunging toward the man. Another shot rang out, and he went down hard, pain screaming through his left thigh. It felt like he’d been hit by a Mack truck. Hands were on him within seconds, trying to staunch the blood as well as hold him down.
“He needs medical care,” one young orderly in a t-shirt and shorts said, standing up to the guards.
A bullet took the young soldier through the heart.
If Rex could have been more shocked, he didn’t know how. One second, the Marine was leaning over him. The next, he was on the floor five feet away, gasping his last breath.
Blinking, he tried to make sense of how everything had gone wrong so quickly. Pressing his hand to his thigh, he tried to stop the leak, but it was an impressive hole, if he did say so himself. His energy began to flag.
The same Taliban that had shot him reached out and gripped his arm, pulling him to his feet. Pain roared through him, and it was all he could do to stay conscious. Jerking and shoving, the guy took him to an adjoining tent. Rex thought he was about to die, and he struggled.
The man muttered something and shoved him into the room. Rex landed on the bloody floor and yelled out in pain. Then Olivia and Baylee were there. They took him from the man and guided him to the gurney.
“I’m glad to see you alive, Rex. What’s going on?” Olivia whispered.
Rex wanted to sag with relief against them, but he didn’t dare. His emotions were chaotic enough. He drew in a deep breath and tried to control the pain.
He told them what he’d gathered about the attack, even as they injected him with antibiotics and patched him up. There was no pain medication, which he sorely needed, but Olivia did the best she could as she extracted the bullet from his leg with a set of forceps. Then they sutured everything together. Rex blacked out from the pain at one point, then roused when they were bandaging him. The girls did everything they could for him. As soon as he sat up, the waiting guards took him back to the tent he’d been in with the other prisoners and dropped him against a wall.
They started torturing Colonel Trent next, and it was bad. The man was a hardass, but they very methodically broke him. Then they shot him. Two of the men hauled him next door to Baylee and Olivia to get fixed, but Rex could tell when they dragged him back through that Trent was not much longer for this world.
Rex lost consciousness at one point, and he knew that they weren’t going to make it out alive. Silvia couldn’t handle the stress and lost it, screaming and crying, scratching her own skin. They put a bullet through her head. Rex was numb to what they were doing. The Taliban would shoot prisoners and one of the medical personnel would patch them up to be interrogated more. It was a demoralizing process. People were dying faster than they could patch them up.
Rex didn’t know what to do. They were outmanned and outgunned. And he was injured badly enough that he doubted he could do much anyway.
Two of the guards kept looking at him and motioning to him. One was the asshole who had shot him. The English-speaking rebel in charge was in another room, and Rex could hear the muffled sounds of fists thumping into flesh. They were beating a man for no reason.
Then, into the silence, he heard Baylee yell out. She sounded pissed, which he’d never heard before. Then her voice changed, fear creeping in. She screamed ‘no’, and he had a feeling he knew what was happening. Then he heard Olivia scream out in a way he’d never heard before, and he had to move. He pushed up from the floor and hobbled toward the room where his team was, ignoring the guards on him. If they killed him trying to save his friends, he would be okay with that.
They let him get to the doorway and see Baylee being attacked, her pants ripped down her legs, before they hit him in the kidney with the rifle butt. As he dropped to the floor, he saw Olivia unconscious on the floor, her leg bent at an unnatural angle and her head bleeding. She had tried to stop them. His eyes went to Baylee. She was fighting like a hellcat, but two men were holding her face down on a gurney. A third was behind her, unfastening his pants, and he knew what was about to happen. Rex tried to push up from the floor, but something struck his head, and the world swam.
When he roused, his upper body was strapped face down to a bloody gurney. His shoulder screamed with pain, and he felt fresh blood drip down his arm. The stitches had been ripped out. He blinked blood from his eyes. They’d used the straps of the gurney to tie him to it, his arms stretched the length of the gurney. His legs hung heavy, and he used his good one to try to stand. That was when he realized his feet were tangled. And had he been cut on his hips? There was blazing pain, there.
He felt the brush of something sharp against his bare ass, and icy fear rolled down his spine.
He blinked to clear his vision, and he could see he was in one of the surgeries. He couldn’t see anyone else, and he glanced around, trying to see who was touching him. It was the Taliban soldier that had been watching him. Apparently, he’d moved him when he was unconscious.
Another man entered the room, grinning a gap-toothed smile, and Rex flexed, gritting his teeth.