It was because of the rain that she had no warning. It had washed away the smoke and the stink of wet ashes and death, so it wasn’t until they came out of the trees that lined the road leading through the village that she realized al-Rami’s forces had been there before them.

The chaos was appalling. At least half the houses in the village had been damaged or destroyed and the muddy lanes between them were littered with debris and the carcasses of animals. A few people moved slowly through the wreckage, too dazed and numb to pay much attention either to the rain or the five new refugees among them.

Except for a softly uttered profanity from Tony, no one spoke as they made their way through the ruined village. Sam tried to close her mind to the devastation and concentrate only on the task at hand, but it was impossible; she’d never experienced the waste of war firsthand before. She was badly shaken, though she didn’t want to be, and already dreading what they would find at the hospital.

“I guess you’ve seen all this before,” she said in a low voice, directing the comment to Tony past Cory’s rain-slicked chest but tilting her head to include both men in the pronoun.

“Yeah, we have.” Tony didn’t look at her as he replied; he was bearing most of Cory’s weight now, and his face was set in a bulldog grimace of effort. “Never get used to it, though.”

“Nobody should,” Cory muttered. “Get used to it…” His voice trailed weakly off.

Sam and Tony exchanged a brief look. Please, God, Sam prayed, let the hospital still be standing.

But her prayer wasn’t to be answered, not that one, anyway. Where the hospital, the village’s pride and joy, had stood, there was only a burned-out ruin, a charred skeleton reeking of soggy ashes.

She’d been looking ahead, her attention riveted on the devastation, her gaze sliding past Hal Lundquist, who was trudging doggedly on some distance ahead of them. But she saw him halt in his tracks, then sink slowly to his knees in the muddy road. His shoulders hunched and his head bowed; he seemed to curl himself over the woman he held close in his arms, and it appeared poignantly as if he was shielding her from the rain. As Sam came nearer she could see his shoulders shaking.

“Can you manage?” she said in an undertone to Tony, and when he nodded, though every nerve in her body screamed in protest at the separation, she peeled her arm from around Cory’s waist and eased her shoulders out from under his weight. And as she moved away from him, her side and shoulders where his warmth had been felt chilled and raw, as if her skin had been stripped away.

She bent over Hal and laid her hand awkwardly on his shoulder. “Come on, Hal, don’t give up on her now.” She’d meant to say it gently, but it came out gruff instead, and she thought, Damn you, Pearse-you’d have been so much better at this than I am! Because suddenly, irrationally, she was more than a little angry at him for getting himself shot and letting her down like this.

“It’ll be all right,” she said to Hal, awkwardly patting his shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay.” And she wondered who she was trying to convince-him or herself?

Miraculously, though, the lanai adjoining the hospital had survived almost untouched. While Sam supported most of Esther’s weight, Hal managed to stagger to his feet, and together they stumbled the last few remaining yards to shelter. They found Cory and Tony there already, Cory stretched out on one of the market tables and Tony standing beside him with his hands braced on the edge, hunched over and breathing hard.

“How’s he doing?” Sam asked Tony in a low voice as she helped Hal lay Esther down on another table nearby.

“He’s doing just fine-awake and lucid and capable of answering for himself,” Cory muttered irritably, sounding almost normal, although he slurred his words a little. “Wish you guys’d quit talking over me. How’s Esther?”

“Hangin’ in there. And don’t you dare get testy with me, Pearse.” Sam’s voice was clipped and breathless. God, it was hard to see him lying there like that…pale and thin, bearded and muddy…shivering like a castaway or the survivor of some wilderness ordeal. Fear blew its icy breath into her lungs and she gasped, momentarily paralyzed by it.

Tony lifted his head, still winded and breathing hard through his nose, and saw Sam’s eyes lose their fire and her face go bleak. She’s losing it, he thought. Hang in there, Captain. “Okay, boys and girls,” he said briskly, “if you’re all done bickering, what’s our next move?”

To his relief, Sam gave herself a little shake and took a breath, and he saw her eyes focus once more. “Okay,” she said, “We’ve got two choices. One, we can wait for the rain to stop and see if I can call in a chopper. Don’t ask.” She glared at him, holding up a hand to shut him up before he could ask her how she planned on doing that. “Trust me, okay?”

“Okay,” he said when he saw Cory nodding his head underneath the arm he’d thrown across his eyes. Tony nodded toward the table where Hal Lundquist sat beside his wife’s still form, hunched over, eyes closed, hands clasped…lips moving. Praying, he thought, and from long ago and half-forgotten memory, he felt a sudden impulse to cross himself. Lowering his voice, he said, “I don’t know if we’ve got time to wait.”

He saw Sam’s eyes drop for an instant to Cory, and the pinched look of fear come back into her eyes-just for a moment, though, like a bird’s shadow crossing the sun. “Yeah, I know. The other option is to get to the plane and fly it out-” her eyes flicked to the destruction around her and her face went bleak “-assuming the plane’s there and in any shape to fly.”

“Right,” said Tony on an exhalation. “Maybe one of us should go check it out first. I can-”

“You wouldn’t know what to check for. I’ll go,” Sam said in a hard, no-arguments voice, and he could tell from the way her eyes clung to Cory that she’d about rather chop off her arm than leave him. “You stay here and look after the others. I’ll be-”

They both froze as something rustled in the foliage behind the lanai. Both Tony and Sam moved instinctively, almost as one, to shield Cory’s body with theirs, and even as he did that Tony was thinking, Damn, she must love him. I believe she’d die for him in a heartbeat. He knew without a doubt the reverse was true as well, and he had time for a flash of something that was maybe half envy, half exasperation with the two of them for being so damn stupid, for not knowing what a precious thing it was they had going for them.

While his eyes were darting around the lanai looking for something he might be able to turn into a weapon, a man stepped out of the curtain of rain and under the relative shelter of the thatched roof. Tony relaxed and let out a relieved breath when he recognized the slight and humble figure as the hospital’s caretaker, the man who’d met them on their arrival.

Sam went eagerly to greet him, speaking to him in the language they’d used before-Tagalog, if he had to guess. The man rotated his upper body as he replied, and shifted something from his shoulder onto a nearby table.

Damned if it wasn’t Cory’s laptop.

The man spoke with Sam for several minutes more, gesturing descriptively and pointing, looking excited one minute, weighed down with grief the next. Finally, after a sad little bow to Sam, he nodded toward Tony and the others and slipped back into the rain.

“Hey, Pearse, I brought you a present,” Sam said as she rejoined them, taking the laptop from her shoulder and placing it gently on Cory’s chest.

He managed a thin and groggy-sounding, “Hey, that’s great…” as he clutched it with both hands and struggled to sit up. “Where did you…”

“He said it was the only thing he was able to save when they evacuated the hospital. Personally,” she added with a flash of wry grin, “I wish he’d left the laptop and saved the food and clothing. Right now I’d kill for a candy bar and a dry shirt.”

“Anyway,” she went on, her face grave again, “Tomas said the attack came this morning, just before dawn. Government forces-”

“Government forces did this?”

“They were after Fahad al-Rami. Guess they didn’t care who they got in the process,” she said dryly. “What do you guys call it-collateral damage? Anyway, al-Rami and his bunch arrived last evening and took over the hospital-made everyone else leave. They figured government forces wouldn’t attack a hospital. Turns out they were wrong.”

“Did they get him?” Cory croaked. “Al-Rami? Is he dead?”

“Tomas doesn’t know. He says they all fled when the shelling started, and took their dead and wounded with them. The good news is-” she took a breath, and this time her smile blossomed unrestrained “-he says he thinks the plane’s okay. He says al-Rami’s forces came in from the other direction and went out the same way, so they didn’t get as far as the landing strip. And he hasn’t heard any shelling from over that way, either. So-what about it, guys?” The smile wavered. “You up for one more run?”

“I’m ready,” Tony said, and nudged Cory. “How ’bout you, buddy? Think you can hobble that far?”

“Let’s get the hell outa Dodge,” Cory muttered, straightening up and sliding off the table. He would have kept going right on down to the ground if Tony hadn’t caught him.

Like a daddy picking up his child, Sam thought as she rescued the laptop and slung it over her shoulder. She got her arm around Cory’s waist to help Tony hold him upright, and her heart lumbered back to its customary location in her chest after another brief sojourn in her throat. And once again it flashed through her mind that Tony Whitehall was really a very sweet and gentle man, and not at all the tough guy he looked like.

She turned to Hal, who was still sitting slumped on the edge of the table, gazing at his wife. She touched him lightly on the shoulder. “Hal? Do you need help? Would you like Tony to carry her now?”