Page 18 of Close Pursuit

“Keep her dressed,” Alex ordered when Katie reached for the hem of the girl’s burka.

“Why?”

“We may need to move her.” He sat down at the foot of the cot to examine the patient, shielding a flashlight with his hand.

“But she’s having a baby,” Katie replied blankly.

“Haven’t you ever watched Gone With the Wind?” he retorted under his breath. “Babies don’t care if a city’s burning down around mom. They come when they come.”

“This isn’t Atlanta, nor is it the nineteenth century,” Katie whispered back. She’d watched enough women push with all their might to deliver babies to know that during childbirth was no time to move a patient.

“Tell that to the soldiers out there,” Alex retorted from between the girl’s knees. “She’s dilated eight centimeters. Time her contractions for me.”

Ten centimeters was the magic number when Alex allowed women to start pushing. Some women went from eight to ten in a half-hour. Some took hours to get there. Katie waited in tense silence for the girl’s next contraction to start and end.

“Three minutes apart, one minute in duration,” she reported in the rumbling aftermath of some sort of shell exploding.

“We’ve probably got a little time, then,” Alex remarked. “Stay with her. I’ll be back.”

Shocked, Katie watched him glide outside of the tent and disappear into the night.

“Where—“ the girl blurted in alarm.

Katie shushed her hastily. “He’ll be back. He’s just checking the battle. Stay as quiet as you can.”

“Cursed, greedy Tatars,” the girl muttered. “They think to destroy us. They are demons who take our land. Steal the food from our mouths. Poison the wells, salt the fields. I curse them unto the end of time--” She devolved into a low moan as a contraction hit.

Katie frowned, not understanding the Tatar reference. Weren’t they nomadic raiders from southern Russia from the time of, oh, Genghis Khan? The girl’s language sounded old. Religious in nature. But clan rivalries and tribal feuding had been going on out here as long as humans had lived in these barren mountains. It was a revealing glimpse into mankind’s violent and harsh past. Frankly, she found it miraculous that humans had survived their own homicidal tendencies to populate the planet.

In the flashes of artillery explosions, the girl looked to be in her late teens. And pretty. Really pretty. Her eyes were big and dark and doe-shaped, her black hair lush around a heart-shaped face high-fashion models would envy. It seemed strange, though, that a girl this young would have made her way to their tent by herself.

“Does anyone know you’re here?” Katie whispered to the girl.

Fear made the girl’s eyes even bigger as she shook her head vigorously. “My family does not know I am pregnant.”

Katie stared. “How is that possible?”

“I am not married. I wear loose robes. I pretend to eat a lot and tell them I am gaining weight. But I really don’t eat much and try to stay thin.”

In this culture, of all cultures, Katie supposed it might be possible to hide a pregnancy if a woman was really careful. Then the rest of this girl’s dilemma hit her. An unmarried girl, pregnant. In a society where sex outside of marriage was punishable by death. No wonder she’d hidden the pregnancy.

“What will you do with your baby when it comes?”

Anger flared in the girl’s eyes. “Kill it.”

3

What?Katie’s jaw dropped at the hatred in the girl’s voice. She started to ask why in the world she would say something like that when a dark figure materialized in the doorway. She reached hastily for the pistol before she recognized Alex’s familiar silhouette.

“We’ve got a problem,” he murmured.

“No kidding,” Katie replied, jerking her head toward the cot. “She wants to kill her baby.”

Alex went still for a moment. Then he asked quietly, “Was she raped?”

Of course. Young. Beautiful. Unmarried. “I hadn’t thought of that and didn’t ask,” Katie confessed.

“Regardless, we may have to get out of here sooner rather than later. A line of rebel troops is advancing up the valley. If Karshan’s local militia doesn’t hold the road until daylight, we’ll be overrun.”

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