Читать книгу A Time to Die - BEVERLY BARTON, Beverly Barton - Страница 7

THIS ASSIGNMENT sucked big-time. Lexie would rather be just about anywhere than here in Gadi covering the presidential inauguration ceremonies. Newly elected President Tum was an evil, arrogant son of a bitch who had massacred a hundred thousand of his own citizens in an ethnic cleansing. And the world had turned a blind eye. Even UBC, United Broadcasting Center, for whom she worked as a TV journalist had thought this man’s official takeover of power was so insignificant that they had sent only her—a rookie reporter—and a lone cameraman to cover the event. Their escort/bodyguard, Mr. Kele, was here somewhere in the crowd, a moth-eaten-looking rogue who made Lexie’s skin crawl. But at least the guy carried a gun and spoke the language.

“There he is. President Tum. Get as many close-ups of the cocky little bastard as possible,” Lexie told Marty Bearn, her cameraman.

Marty and she had met for the first time on their recent plane ride from Atlanta, the home base for UBC. She had bellyached to him about this crap assignment until she’d vented as much frustration as she could, and he had shown her photos of his bride, a cute little brunette with big doe eyes. She had wondered what a cutie like his Sherry saw in a big, hefty oaf like Marty, with his shock of auburn red hair, hee-haw laugh and oversize teeth. But by the time they arrived on the Dark Continent, Lexie understood Marty’s appeal. He possessed a laid-back, easy-going nature, an appealing personality and a caring attitude. Not to mention that he was hog-wild, crazy in love with his wife. What woman could resist a man who loved her that much?

“Look at him strutting up to the podium like a little bantam rooster,” Marty said. “I bet he’s not more than five-six without those high-heel boots he’s wearing. He’s definitely got a Napoleon complex.”

“He’s a monster, if you ask me,” Lexie said off-camera. Then she returned to reporter mode, keeping her voice low as Marty began filming again.

Prior to Babu Tum’s arrival, she had commented on the outdoor event being held in an open courtyard half the size of a football field. As Marty had cinematically scanned the area and the large crowd of citizens who had been herded into place like mindless cattle, she had considered how she would present this news event to her audience. Later, once back at the studio in the U.S., she would create a voiceover to describe today’s farce. A fake election. A dictator president. A subjugated people. She supposed it was possible that UBC would use the entire piece Marty and she created, but she seriously doubted it. The “powers that be” would cut it down to a two-or three-minute segment and put their own spin on the soon-to-be forgotten event. One more African dictator assuming official power was hardly newsworthy, was he?

Unfortunately, Lexie was not proficient in the native language, so she managed to pick up only a word here and there, occasionally piecing words together to figure out a sentence. Where was their guide when she needed him? Lost in the crowd, not worth the two hundred dollars a day UBC was paying him.

Oh, well, it probably didn’t matter that she couldn’t understand every word of Tum’s speech. Overall, the man was simply blowing his own horn.

Less than five minutes into Tum’s speech, which had been interrupted half a dozen times by shouts Lexie did understand—Long live President Tum—a ripple of apprehension tapped up her spine just as droplets of perspiration trickled between her breasts. In one life-altering moment, she instinctively knew something horrible was about to happen.

A single rifle shot rang out—the long-range weapon hitting its mark. Babu Tum’s dark eyes widened in shock and realization as the bullet entered his forehead.

“My God!” Marty Bearn gasped. “Tum’s been assassinated.”

Tum’s guards, whose presence on the podium with him had apparently not deterred the assassin, aimed their weapons, searching the crowd for the killer. One by one, three of Tum’s six-man advisory council dropped as shot after shot rang out. While the other three men took cover, the crowd went wild, screaming and running, everyone hysterical with fear. Caught up in the frenzy, Tum’s guards began firing into the crowd, killing at random, taking down unarmed civilians.

“Let’s get out of here!” Marty called to Lexie.

“No way in hell!” she yelled back. “This is history in the making. Keep rolling. We don’t want to miss a thing.”

“Damn it, Lexie, we’ll get ourselves killed.”

“Keep rolling!” Being on the scene for this story could make her career as a journalist. Once she got this footage back to Atlanta, her face and name would become famous overnight.

As if from out of nowhere, a group of armed warriors surrounded the courtyard, returning fire in an attempt to protect the crowd by taking on Tum’s guards. While the gunfire continued, Lexie described what was happening and Marty filmed the scene as it continued to unfold. What appeared to be a four-man team, all wearing black, their faces masked by some sort of camouflage paint, each carrying a rifle, stormed forward, waging war on three times their number. One man in particular stood out, at least in Lexie’s mind. Towering a good six-four, his sheer size distinguished him from the others.

“They’re not Gadian,” she said into her microphone. “From what I can tell, these soldiers are all Caucasian, except one. Apparently they’re either mercenaries or special agents of some type who were sent to assassinate President Tum or—”

Marty Bearn grunted loudly, then clamped his left hand over his chest and went down on his knees, all the while clutching his camera in his right hand. Bright-red blood stained his shirt and seeped between the fingers of his left hand.

“Marty!” Lexie screamed.

She dropped down beside him as he crumpled into a heap at her feet. Oh, God. Oh, God! “How bad is it?” she asked as she tried to pull his hand away from the wound.

He tried to speak, but couldn’t. A gurgle of bloody saliva erupted from his mouth.

“Marty! Don’t you dare die. Do you hear me?”

His hand clutching his chest went limp. Lexie’s heartbeat drummed inside her head. Please, God, help him. Don’t let him die. She lifted his hand from the wound, then gasped when she saw the damage a single shot had done, the entry wound almost directly over his heart. Then she looked into Marty’s face. She knew he was dead.

Just to make sure, she felt for a pulse.

Nothing.

This was all her fault. He had wanted them to run, to get away, but she’d insisted they stay and keep filming. I’m sorry, Marty. I’m so sorry.

She loosened the camera from his hand and rose to her feet. She had to find a way out of this nightmare. There was nothing she could do for Marty. Not now. It was too late for anything except remorse.

Doing her best to avoid getting caught in the crossfire, Lexie tried to make her way out of the courtyard, but too many dead bodies blocked her path, men and women cut down by Tum’s retaliating guardsmen. Keeping low, pressing the camera to her breasts, she visually scanned in a circular motion, seeking an escape route. She spied an open gateway directly to the left of the podium, where several guards remained. In her survey, she had noted that only a handful of Tum’s soldiers were still standing. Whoever the hell this elite squad of assassins were, they were good. Very good. Good enough to eliminate seventy-five percent of their foes in record time.

The gunfire overrode the screams, which seemed like a rumble beneath the roar. The scent of sweat mixed with the metallic odor of blood as the sweltering African sun blasted down on the dead and wounded.

The taste of fear coated Lexie’s dry mouth.

What should she do? Stay here and risk being killed? Or run for her life? Neither option appealed to her, but what other choice did she have?

Going strictly on gut instinct, she made a mad dash for the one escape hatch open to her. She crawled halfway there, then stood and ran as if the devil were chasing her.

Almost there. Almost there. Just a few more feet.

Wham! The bullet hit her in the back with thundering force, knocking her flat as pain shot through her like a wildfire raging along every muscle and nerve.

She had come so close, had almost escaped.

Her body floated downward, as if in slow motion. She tried to make sense of what had happened and why. She lifted her gaze as she fell and saw three of Tum’s guards go down in rapid succession, blood spurting from their splintered heads. When she hit the stone floor of the courtyard, her tight grip on the camera holding the footage of the day’s events loosened. Try as she might, she could not stop the camera from skidding out of her reach. She had risked her life and Marty’s for nothing. He was dead, and she was probably dying.

Slipping in and out of consciousness, Lexie had no idea how long she lay on the hot, bloody stone floor. Five minutes? Fifty minutes? Five hours?

“You can’t take her with us,” a man’s voice said, his accent decidedly British.

“If I don’t, she’ll die,” a deeper, harsher voice replied. American, Lexie thought somewhere in the deepest recesses of her addled brain.

Seconds later, she felt a pair of large, strong arms lift her as if she weighed no more than a child. He crushed her wounded, agonized body against his hard chest. She managed to focus on his face for half a second, not long enough to really see him, catching only a glimpse of smoky-gray eyes before passing out.

GEOFF MONDAY, the SAS officer who had been second in command on their secret assignment, which had sent a select group of American and British soldiers into Gadi, came up to Deke. He nodded toward the closed door across the hall from where Deke was waiting to speak to Lexie Murrough’s doctor.

“Any change in her condition?” Monday asked.

Deke shook his head.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know,” Monday told him. “She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Yeah, I know.” It wasn’t as if this UBC reporter had been the first innocent civilian he’d wounded or killed, but she was the only American. Civilians died in wars every day, casualties of hatred, revenge or sheer madness. So why was Lexie Murrough any different? Because she was a woman? Because she was a fellow American?

“You risked your career, not to mention your neck and mine, to save her,” Monday told him. “She’s going to live, thanks to you.”

“She’s paralyzed because of me, because my bullet hit her spine.”

The closed door opened, and two military doctors emerged. One walked away down the hall, while the other approached Deke.

“Captain Bronson?”

Deke nodded.

“Ms. Murrough is awake and asking questions,” the doctor said. “She wants to know the name of the soldier who rescued her.”

Every nerve in Deke’s body tensed.

“You can go in to see her, if you’d like.”

Deke shook his head. “Tell her you don’t know who the soldier was.”

The doctor gave Deke a quizzical look, then said, “If that’s what you want, but I’m sure she’d like to thank you.”

“I don’t want her thanks.” Deke turned and walked away. How could he face the woman—a girl really, only twenty-four—and accept her thanks, when he knew it had been his bullet that hit her and probably paralyzed her for the rest of her life?