She looked both ways along the outer loop, listening for the men, but hearing only the dull hum of the air recycling system.
Turning back to the left, she caught sight of one of the small orange boxes that were scattered throughout the base. It was mounted chest high on the wall, and inside was a button that would sound the general alarm. Pushing it would be the safe move, but at the moment, her only advantage over those she was following was that they had no idea she was trailing them. Setting off the alarm would definitely change that.
She needed to find them again first, and preferably subdue them without creating the base-wide panic the alarm would trigger. At the very least, she could learn as much as she could about them before she hit the button.
Right or left?
Eenie-meenie-miney-moe.
Left it was.
10
The bullet had passed straight through Sanjay, creating both entry and exit wounds a couple inches above his hip, forcing Kusum to use both hands to press the makeshift bandage against him. The material was already soaked with blood, but she didn’t want to let go for fear that letting up pressure would be worse.
“He needs a doctor,” she said.
Darshana slowed the car enough to take a turn, then increased the speed again. “I know, but where?” She paused before tentatively saying, “We could take him back to the base.”
Kusum knew the Project Eden base would have doctors. But she highly doubted they would treat Sanjay after what the three of them had done. Still, she could think of no other choice.
“No,” Sanjay grunted, looking up at her. “We cannot go…back.”
“But you will die,” she said. “You need medical attention.”
“Then you…and…Darshana will give it to me.”
She stared at him. “We are not doctors.”
“You will have…to be.”
His eyes closed.
“I will find a hospital,” Darshana said. “There should at least be supplies.”
As much as Kusum wanted to tell Darshana to turn around and head back to the base, doing so would erase the sacrifice Sanjay had made to capture Mahajan. But she wasn’t about to let her husband die, either.
“Do you have the satellite phone up there?” she asked.
Darshana looked at the seat next to her, then back at the road. “Yes. Do you want it?”
“I cannot let go of him,” Kusum said. “So you will have to make the call.”
“Rachel?” Crystal said.
Rachel looked over from her desk. “Yes?”
“I have Darshana, one of Sanjay’s people, on the line. She says they need help.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
As Rachel donned her headset, a box appeared on her computer screen, letting her know she had a transferred call waiting. She clicked CONNECT.
“Darshana?” she said. “What’s going—”
“Please, you must help us. Sanjay’s hurt and—”
“Hold on, hold on. Tell me exactly what’s going on.”
She could hear Darshana but her voice was muffled and not directed at Rachel. Another voice spoke up, followed moments later by a click. The sound coming over the line took on the familiar echo of a speakerphone.
“This is Kusum, Sanjay’s wife. Who am I speaking to?”
“Rachel Hamilton. Your friend said Sanjay’s hurt? How can I help you?”
“He has been shot and is losing a lot of blood.”
Before she could stop herself, Rachel said, “How did that happen?” Sanjay and his people were only supposed to observe the Project Eden base in Jaipur and try to confirm whether or not one of the Project’s directorate, a man named Mahajan, was there. “Never mind. That’s not important right now. Hold on.” She covered her mic and yelled, “Someone get Dr. Gardiner in here immediately!”
Crystal jumped up from her desk and raced from the room.
“We’re getting someone who will know what to do,” Rachel said to Kusum. “Just hang in there.”
“Thank you,” Kusum said, sounding relieved.
“However we can help, we will.”
“There is one more thing I need to ask.”
“Yes?”
“What do you want us to do with Director Mahajan?”
“Excuse me?”
“The director. What should we do with him?”
“You have Mahajan?”
“Yes, yes. He’s in our trunk.”
Darshana found a hospital toward the edge of the city.
The streets around it were stuffed with abandoned cars, so she had to stop about half a block away. While Kusum remained with Sanjay, Darshana searched the nearby cars until she found some cloth they could use as fresh bandages for Sanjay’s wounds. Once they were set, she and Kusum carried the unconscious Sanjay the rest of the way to the hospital.
The waiting area was littered with the rotted corpses of Sage Flu victims. Watching where they stepped, they carried Sanjay across the room and into a corridor. Against the wall was an old gurney, and on the floor beside it another body. Either the woman had rolled off before she died or someone had dumped her.
Darshana nodded at the bed. “We can use that.”
Grunting, they lifted Sanjay high enough so they could lay him on it.
“Stay here,” she told Kusum. “Let me see if I can find a room we can use.”
“Hurry,” Kusum told her.
The first several places Darshana found were stuffed with more victims, many wearing the uniforms of doctors and nurses. Thankfully, the smell of decay in the air wasn’t as overpowering as it probably had been a week earlier. Or perhaps she was just used to it now.
She found one room that stored linen and another jammed full of wheelchairs, but it wasn’t until she moved deeper into the hospital that she finally found something useful — a room full of medical supplies: plastic trays, syringes, bandages, wraps, slings, and more.
She left the door open so that she’d remember which one it was, then continued the search for someplace where they could work on Sanjay.
She threw open doors and peeked inside just long enough to know if the spaces beyond would work or not. She found one room that was empty but cramped. In a pinch, it would do, but she hoped for better.
Then she saw a sign on the wall saying SURGICAL PROCEDURES with an arrow pointing farther down the hall. Following it, she found three operating rooms, all unoccupied. Even better, just outside the rooms was a generator, with power cables running from it into three sets of lights in the center room.
She checked the petrol level and saw the tank was half full. It took four yanks of the cord but when the generator turned over, the lights in the operating room glowed to life.
Darshana raced back to Kusum and Sanjay.
“This way,” she said as she released the lock holding the gurney’s wheels in place.
They rolled him down the halls and into the center operating room. Then Darshana returned to the medical supply room, filled up a cart, and ran to the linen closet and grabbed several towels before hustling back to her friends.
“Here,” she said, holding a couple towels out to Kusum.
While Kusum replaced the now soaked cloth with the towels, Darshana pulled the sat phone out of her bag and called the Americans.
“Kusum?” the woman named Crystal said through the speaker.
“Yes, I am here,” Kusum replied.
“Hold on.”
A second passed, then, “Kusum, it’s Dr. Gardiner. Are you somewhere you can work now?”
“Yes. Darshana found a hospital.”