Page 40 of Hot Intent

“I need you to bury the evidence. All of it. Do you have any idea the international crisis that would ensue if word of what was there got out?”

“Is more of it still in the area?” Alex demanded.

“I don’t know. If you could find out and let me know, I’d be eternally grateful. Anything you find must be destroyed along with the bodies. You’re a doctor, my son. Think about the lives you will save if you do this.”

“And if I fail?” he asked carefully.

“You must not fail. The collateral damage in your life would be…unthinkable.” His father added soberly, “I am sorry, but I do not have the power to stop what would happen. It’s above my head.”

Shock reverberated through Alex’s entire being. His father’s bosses would kill Katie and Dawn. If he didn’t betray the United States and commit treason by burying evidence of chemical weapons in Cuba, the only people in the world he loved would die.

7

Katie was perplexed when Alex abruptly broke off their investigation of the Zacara factory to take Oscar to Baracoa. She didn’t for a minute think he’d agreed to the trip for altruistic reasons. He’d gotten a stubborn look on his face when she first promised the boy they would take him to his grandmother. Then, that call had come in, and Alex had abruptly changed his tune.

The shed had yielded a waterlogged mo-ped, but Alex and the boy worked on it for a half-hour and got it running again. Alex rigged a makeshift hitch to a four-wheeled utility wagon also in the shed and turned it into a tow-able conveyance for the boy.

She and Alex rode the mo-ped while Oscar sat in the wagon behind them. The trip south to Baracoa was slow going. They were only about twenty miles from the city, but it took them most of the afternoon to get there.

Baracoa had fared slightly better than the villages had. It had a number of sturdy buildings that had withstood the battering of Giselle. And, it had public services like police, a fire department, and a hospital. It appeared that much of the populace had beenrecruited to clear debris and shovel mud. The city was mostly dug out from the storm and passable.

A soldier with an AK-47 slung across his back waved them to a halt as they reached the edge of Baracoa. Alex explained that they were bringing the boy to his grandmother. On cue, Oscar burst into tears and told the soldier a fractured account of his home being washed away and his family lost.

Once Alex assured the soldier that he and Katie would be leaving Baracoa as soon as they found the boy’s grandmother, the soldier let them pass.

The irony was not lost on her that Alex was doing to Oscar exactly what his father had done to him—using a child as a cover for espionage. For surely, this trip to Baracoa was about their mission in some way.

A frisson of ethical misgiving tickled her spine. She ought to object to using Oscar like this. Except the boy really did need to get to his family and really was too young to get there by himself. And it wasn’t like they were endangering the child.

The boy tearfully directed them to a modest cottage. Its windows were still boarded up, but the front door was open and there were signs of life.

Oscar leaped out of the wagon and ran for the front door, shouting. A middle-aged woman came out and scooped the boy into her arms tightly. As the boy sobbed, the woman’s face crumpled and the pair shared their grief. It was hard to look at, and Katie turned into Alex’s shoulder for comfort.

His body was rigid, his face set in stone. She didn’t care how tough he tried to be. He was affected. He was just conditioned to close off his feelings. His arm came up around her shoulders for a brief squeeze.

He said quietly, “Time for us to be on our way.”

Oscar’s grandmother barely got a chance to thank them before Alex untied the wagon and climbed on the mo-ped. Shethrew her leg over the back of the bike, and they pulled away from the house. How many more personal tragedies just like that were playing out all around them? The scale of this storm’s damage was hard to wrap her mind around.

Alex pointed the mo-ped toward the middle of town with purpose, as if he had a destination in mind. She leaned forward to ask over the noise of the motor, “Where are we going?”

“The hospital.”

She frowned. What did he want with a hospital? They couldn’t just stroll in and announce their presence to the authorities. But apparently, that was exactly what he had in mind. They parked in front of a decent-sized structure that appeared to have weathered Giselle reasonably well, and Katie followed him hesitantly as he marched into the emergency room.

“Let me do the talking,” he muttered low.

Ya think?She made a face at his back as he headed for a man in a white lab coat with a stethoscope around his neck. The Cuban doctor got a surprised look on his face, but in a few seconds, nodded in agreement with whatever Alex was murmuring to him.

Alex returned to her side, shedding the backpack of their emergency gear as he came. “Take this and find a spot out of the way to get comfortable. This will take a while.”

“Whatwill take a while?”

“I’m trading my surgical skills for the supplies we need.”

Her eyebrows lifted in surprise. “We need supplies?”

“We need sterile test tubes to get clean samples,” Alex bit out. And then he was gone, disappearing behind a pair of swinging doors with the Cuban doctor.

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