Her Tempting Protector: Navy SEAL Team (Night Storm Book 2) Page 15

  “There is no way in hell you could ever let me down, Carys.” Cullen’s thumb brushed the top of her spine. When a tendril of hair worked its way loose from her braid, his fingers were immediately there to tuck it back into her hair’s twist. Adam began to get fussy.

  “I need to burp him.”

  “We’re circling back to this when we have time,” Cullen warned. “I don’t want you hurting.”

  She put the baby on her shoulder and gently patted his back. She took a look over at Cullen, his attention was on the road. She looked up and saw another group of people pulled over, soldiers standing over them with guns.

  Would it never end?

  The soldiers used oil drums in order to split the highway as they got nearer to the city. It got to the point that the long line of cars trying to get out of Khartoum were being stopped, searched and many times having their belongings confiscated. The poor bastards who were dumb enough to want into Khartoum were only being searched for cameras. The RSF didn’t want journalists inside the city reporting on their atrocities. They weren’t on the lookout for international soldiers; the RSF assumed they were all coming in on the military air transports from the various carriers in the Red Sea.

  Unfortunately, the angry older man who was checking their car, did have some extra questions for Cullen and Carys, especially when Carys could not produce identification. Ever since Cullen found out about Carys being on a watch list, he’d had her I.D. taped to the bottom of one of the crates supporting Shada’s mattress.

  “Who is this woman and baby to you? Why are the two of you taking her to the hospital? Why not a Sudanese driver and nurse from Wad Madani?”

  Carys jumped in before Cullen even had a chance to spin his normal bullshit.

  “This young woman’s father used to work at the American Embassy. He left his job six months ago, but when he heard that my husband and I were travelling from Wad Madani to Khartoum he insisted that we bring her. He knew that I was a nurse and my husband would be a good escort because he once was a law enforcement officer in America.”

  His head swiveled to look at Cullen. “She is your wife?”

  “Yes,” Cullen affirmed.

  “Let me talk to my supervisor.”

  As soon as he walked away, Cullen called Kane. He wished he had his normal mic and receiver system, but they weren’t on a normal mission, so there had been no point. He kept his phone out of sight on his lap.

  “Kane, we’ve got a problem, he’s going to talk to his supervisor, I need a diversion.”

  “You got it,” Kane said.

  Even though Kane had already been waved through, he had only gone a hundred meters beyond the checkpoint. Cullen grinned as he saw him turn the Thing around and then do a three-hundred and sixty degree turn into on-coming traffic. He pulled his gun out and shot into the air.

  “Well, that’s sure a diversion,” Carys deadpanned.

  They watched as four of the current men manning their checkpoints jumped into Jeeps to follow Kane. Cullen knew that those men would be toast.

  The man who had been questioning them came back and threw Cullen’s fake I.D. back through the window. “Just go,” he said in disgust. When it took Cullen a moment to start the vehicle, he hit the roof of the truck angrily. “I said go!”

  Adam started to cry and Cullen put the truck in gear and sighed with relief as he made it onto the main street of Khartoum.

  “Raiden said to take her to the same hospital where you were before. Some of our guys have it secured. I’m going to call ahead.”

  “Have them put one of my people on the line, I’ll tell them what I need.”

  Cullen’s gut clenched. He was pretty sure that there was bad news, really bad news regarding her team, but now wasn’t the time to tell her. He placed a call to his lieutenant, Max Hogan, who didn’t pick up. He went down the line until he got ahold of Nick Hale, the junior member of their team.

  “Where are you, Nick?”

  “I’m leaving the airport now. The lieutenant said I needed to get my ass to the Khartoum General Hospital and meet up with all y’all.”

  “Is it up and running?”

  “It’s one of the few. The Marines, and a couple of SEALs from the Midnight Delta team, have it covered. Nobody is messing with it.”

  Cullen looked over at Carys who was nodding that she was hearing everything. “I’m going to put Dr. Adams on the line. She’s going to tell you what she needs when she arrives. Everything needs to move slick as snot when we get there. You got that?”

  “One oiled pig coming up.”

  Cullen slowed the truck down as he rolled down the window. He motioned for Raiden to come up beside him. When he could see his friend, he yelled over to him. “Get us past all of this mess to Khartoum General.” He motioned his hand toward the mob in the street in front of him.

  Raiden nodded, and pulled out in front of him. He took an immediate left down a side street. Cullen followed. Before they got to another huge cluster of protesters with signs and banners, Raiden took a right going down a one-way street the wrong way, but it worked.

  Cullen continued to blindly follow his teammate.

  Right.

  Left.

  Left.

  Right.

  Finally, he did a fast turn into a parking lot that Cullen didn’t recognize, but he continued on, four-wheeling over the double curb that took them to the back entrance of the hospital.

  Nick and two orderlies appeared like fucking magic rolling a gurney down the back ramp. Nick had a huge grin on his face like he’d just solved world hunger. “Somebody need a ride?” he called out above the screeching of the Unimog’s tires. As soon as Cullen stopped the truck and put it in park, Carys handed Cullen the baby. She was out the door and shouting orders as she opened the back passenger door.

  The orderlies gently lifted the entire mattress with Shada on it, onto the gurney. Carys held the bag of saline high above her head.

  “Nick! Come here.” Cullen shouted. Before Nick could get to his door, Raiden was there, opening the door and taking Adam into his arms.

  “Your doctor has it under control, but I know I’d want to be there, so go,” Raiden nodded toward the doors that had just closed.

  Cullen ran up the rampway.

  16

  “Sir, you can’t go in there,” the thin nurse said emphatically in Arabic.

  “Yes, I can,” Cullen growled. He was not going to be stopped at this point. Carys and Shada were behind those doors. He needed to make sure they were all right. That was his job, they were his mission.

  A security guard and an orderly appeared behind the thin nurse. Cullen’s expression turned feral. Like they were going to stop him.

  “Lyons, stand down.” Raiden called out in English. He heard Adam crying behind him.

  He turned. There was Raiden. He was unruffled despite holding a baby who was trying to blow down the walls of the hospital with his screams.

  “Dr. Adams is going to take good care of her patient,” the nurse assured Cullen. Her voice was just loud enough to be heard above Adam’s cries.

  Cullen went over to Raiden, “Give Bubba to me.”

  He turned back to the nurse. “He needs formula, a bath, and a clean diaper. Where can I take of him?”

  “I’ll take care of him,” she said as she held out her arms.

  “That’s not what I asked,” Cullen said. He just barely kept his voice civil. He was tired, really hungry and worried as hell. Not just for Shada, but for Carys, she was going to be devastated if Shada didn’t come out of this alive.

  “Ma’am, this little boy is very important to me, we’ve been through a lot. I would like to take care of him myself. Is there a place where I can get him cleaned up and fed?”

  She frowned. “You need to be clean before you are allowed into our nursery.”

  “He could go into the doctor’s locker room,” the orderly suggested. “They have a shower. I could find him some scrubs.”

  �
�Will you allow me to bathe him while you shower, sir? Then you can feed him?” the nurse asked.

  It was the right thing to do, so Cullen nodded.

  That was why Kane McNamara and two of his friends from Midnight Delta found him in the waiting room, freshly showered in white scrubs, feeding a baby.

  Kane dumped a bag on the chair beside him. The smell was heavenly. Cullen grunted with laughter when he saw what it said, Chicking Fried Chicken.

  “It was that or hospital food.”

  “Adam gets fed first,” Cullen said. “Then me.”

  “I’ll burp him,” a big blond man with a Texas accent said as he walked into the waiting room.

  Cullen grinned. “What do you know about burping babies, Jack?” he asked the big SEAL who was on the Midnight Delta team.

  “I’m getting into practice for our daughter. She’s due in two months. Beth will be impressed that I got in some practice while I was over here.”

  “You really have time to be burping babies?” Kane asked Jack Preston. “I knew you guys from California didn’t work.” Cullen handed Adam over to Jack who handled him pretty good. Not perfect, but pretty good.

  “Watch your tongue—you idiots from D.C. are the ones who can never get anything done,” Drake Avery said. He was the second-in-command of the Midnight Delta team.

  God, that man could start a fight in a meditation studio.

  “We’re not from D.C., you over-sized Tennessee asshole,” Kane thundered. “We’re from Virginia. If I didn’t like your wife so much, I’d wipe up the floor with you, right here and right now.”

  “Great, Drake, once again you have endeared us to another SEAL team. Burp Adam and shut up.” Jack handed over Adam to the largest man in the room. “When you see him with a baby, he becomes a palatable human being.”

  If Cullen hadn’t been so hungry, and he didn’t know Drake, there was no way he would have allowed Adam to be handed over to the senseless SEAL.

  “So why are you two here?” Cullen asked.

  “We’re here to update you guys on a couple of things.”

  Cullen handed over a burp towel to Drake, then ripped open the fast food bag.

  “What info do you have?” Raiden asked.

  “All Embassy personnel have finally made it out of the country on this last flight to Egypt. The airport is now tighter than a tick. We’re cleared for incoming flights and outgoing flights, our problem is just getting people into the airport.”

  Cullen approved of the way that Drake swayed back and forth with Adam and lightly rubbed his back.

  “How many people still need to be evac’d?” Raiden asked.

  “We’re down to approximately two-hundred fifty Americans. About a quarter of them we’re having to go door-to-door to get.”

  “Is anybody else helping, or does it all come down to us?” Kane asked as he handed a chicken sandwich to Raiden and offered one up to Drake who shook his head.

  “Now that all the spec ops from the other countries are here, they helped to secure the airport, so some of the Marines that came from the USS Autry when the Ospreys landed are helping us. All-in-all, we have twenty-three of us on this project. Captain Hale is holed up with our two lieutenants—he wants every American out of Sudan by EOD tomorrow.”

  The bite he had just taken turned to dust in Cullen’s mouth. Until they figured out how to ensure Shada and her children were safe, he didn’t think there was a chance in hell that Carys was going to leave.

  Cullen woke up disoriented. Raiden crouched over him.

  “Man, I’ve never seen you sleep so deep.”

  “Is Carys out of surgery?”

  “A nurse came out. She said things are wrapping up. Carys should be out soon.”

  Cullen looked around and remembered that someone had pointed him to the relative quiet of the couch in the doctor’s lounge. God, he’d needed the sleep. For that matter, so did Carys. She had to be dead on her feet.

  He followed his friend out to the waiting room. Kane, Jack and Drake were gone. “Where is everybody? Where’s Adam?”

  “Drake went down to coordinate with the Marines. Jack and Kane are doing house-to-house sweeps for civilians to evacuate. As for Adam, you don’t have to worry about him, he’s asleep in the nursery with the other babies,” Raiden assured him. “I put an extra security guard on the floor and one right outside the nursery while I checked in with the lieutenant.”

  He looked at Raiden for three extra heartbeats, trying to comprehend what his friend just told him. “Why the extra security?”

  “Leila told the guy who tried to snatch her that her mom gave birth to a son. On the outside chance that her bastard of a father might want to get his hands on him, I didn’t want to take any risks.”

  “Makes sense,” Cullen nodded. He still wasn’t firing on all cylinders as he looked around the ugly beige room where they forced family to wait for news about their loved ones. He longed for some coffee, but something else occurred to him. “Where are Leila and Aamira? Jesus, what about Farida, please tell me she’s all right. She is, isn’t she?”

  “Whoa there,” Raiden said as Cullen grabbed his shoulders. “I’m not keeping them from you. The two oldest girls are at a hotel with Faizah, and Farida is actually here. They ended up having to remove her spleen.”

  Cullen knew that wasn’t too bad, he’d had friends who did just fine without a spleen. But he could tell by Raiden’s expression there was more. “Out with it,” he demanded.

  “They found an old fracture on one of her ribs. That bastard had had his hands on her before this.”

  “And the other girls? They were looked over too, right?”

  “Yes,” Raiden assured him. “They’re fine now, but x-rays showed that they had old injuries. Besides Aamira’s arm not being set properly, they found a hairline fracture on Leila’s skull. These girls have been used as punching bags. Thank God we got Leila away from her father’s lackey before she could be taken back to that bastard.”

  “As long as the girls are safe now, and Farida is on the mend, that’s what matters.” Cullen felt some of the weight he’d been carrying lift. But he knew there was a lot more that Raiden had to tell him.

  “Tell me about Carys’ team and do it quick. I want to be the one who breaks the news to her.”

  “I told you about the list that the RSF had with Carys’ name on it, right?”

  Cullen nodded.

  “Well every single one of Carys’ particular team were on it. Not all the DWB group that came in from the states, just the nine who were assembled by Carys.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Cullen protested. He dropped down into one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs. “Explain it to me.”

  “It turns out that a doctor by the name of Joyce Dandekar was instrumental in getting Carys’ team invited over here. Joyce and Carys studied together in the States. She was the fiancée of one of the generals in the Transitional Military Council.”

  “Was? You’re not going to tell me they had a bad break-up, are you?”

  Raiden sat down across from him.

  “No, I’m not. When that general was overthrown during one of the many coups, she was declared an enemy of the state, as was Carys’ team. Joyce has been captured and killed. The only ones left alive on Carys’ team are a Nurse Harris and a Dr. Phong. They’ve both been evacuated.”

  “What about the two that were missing? Any hope for them?”

  “No, their bodies were found with Doctor Dandekar’s.”

  This was going to kill Carys when she found out.

  “How long did the nurse say until the surgery wraps up?” Cullen asked.

  “Twenty to thirty minutes,” Raiden answered.

  Cullen really looked at his friend, and saw he was showing signs of wear and tear too. “Let’s go grab a cup of coffee, and you can fill me in on some good news. There is good news, right?”

  “I do have a couple of pieces of good news,” Raiden agreed. They both pushed
up from their seats at the same time. Raiden looked down at his watch, “We maybe have ten minutes. Leila gave me a piece of paper with that mythical uncle in Egypt that Shada had told us about, and I gave it to Kane. Turns out he’s real.”

  “No way,” Cullen was stunned. That kind of shit never happened. “Did Kane contact him, is he willing to help?”

  “He is. He doesn’t have much, but he has a shop, and Shada and her little family could live in the apartment above the store. He wants to come and meet them after things settle down.”

  Cullen thought his heart might beat out of his chest. Now that’s the way a book should end, with a happily ever after. They never did, but that’s the way they should.

  When they got to the front of the line, the clerk asked them if they would like their coffee in to-go cups or mugs. They chose cups and headed back upstairs. Raiden looked at his watch. “So, you’re sure Leila doesn’t have any lasting effects from the almost-kidnapping?” Cullen asked.

  “Yeah, sure, like I’ve had time to check on that.” It was one of the few times Raiden Sato sounded sarcastic and Cullen laughed.

  “I guess I’ve gotten into babysitting mode, instead of SEAL mode. I’ll talk to Faizah. Raiden, this has been a weird mission. I’m now into Daddy-duty.”

  “I don’t know, Lyons, I think it did more than that. I saw how you were looking at the good doctor. You’re reminding me of Kane with A.J. when we had the mission in Oman.”

  “Ah, he didn’t know he was in it for the long haul right from the get-go, the dumb son-of-a-bitch. It was funnier than hell to see the writing on the wall and have him so oblivious,” Cullen said over his shoulder as he looked toward the door leading to the operating rooms.

  “What do you mean?” Raiden asked. “He knew he wanted A.J. from day one.”

  “Yeah, but he didn’t realize that she was the one for him. The one he was going to make a life with.”

  Cullen tossed his empty cup in the trash and crossed his arms, willing the door to open.

  Raiden grasped his shoulder to turn him around. “Are you telling me that you’re in love with Carys?”