Shane motioned for her to get out and she scrambled out on her hands and knees, moving quickly to the side as he and Oakley lifted the driver out and carried him into the building. She followed and her eyes struggled to adjust to the dim interior of the clapboard building.
A short woman gesticulated and spoke loudly in Spanish while they lay the driver on a bare gurney.
“She says there’s no doctor here and we have to…go to Flores,” Kinley said. “I think. My Spanish isn’t very good.”
“He won’t make it back to Flores,” Shane said.
Ghost and Oakley rummaged through drawers and cabinets. “I’ve got saline and an IV. And a fourteen gauge,” Oakley said.
“Antiseptic,” Ghost said. “Nothing stronger than acetaminophen, though.”
“Let’s get a line started,” Oakley said.
“What can I do?” Kinley watched the men work, apparently knowing what to do without discussion, and felt useless. She didn’t want to get in the way, but if she could help at all, she wanted to do it.
“Keep pressure on the wound on his side while they work,” Shane said. “I need to make a call.”
* * *
Shane stepped outside the building, away from the woman still yelling at them in Spanish, and called the office.
“This is Graham.”
“It’s Shane.” He paced back and forth in front of the door, scanning from one end of the road to the other.
“What do you need?” he asked.
Graham was the reason he’d signed on with Leonidas in the first place and the reason he stayed, even though he was feeling restless.
“I need medevac in Carmelita, Guatemala. An air ambulance would be ideal.”
“For you or someone else?” Graham asked.
Shane could hear the keys of a keyboard clicking away while he gave Graham a quick rundown of the attack and driver’s injuries.
“Air ambulance is thirty minutes out. Can you stabilize the driver that long?”
Shane inhaled. “We’ll do our best.”
“Do you think it was random or were you targeted?” he asked.
“I don’t think this was about Leonidas.” Something was off about the attack, though. They’d focused on Kinley from the beginning. It had all gone to hell when one of the men had tried to grab her. Fear had gripped him as he watched that man chase after her into the jungle, not being able to help her in the moment, hoping she’d be safe until he could get to her. He’d been surprised, and strangely proud, when he learned she’d defended herself.
“All right. Stay alert and let me know if you need anything else.”
“Head on a swivel.” Shane ended the call and scanned the road again.
It was wide and ran from one end of the town to the other. It might actually be wide enough and long enough to use as a landing strip for small aircraft. Getting back in the van, Shane moved it to the side of the block of buildings. Graham hadn’t said whether the air ambulance was fixed-wing or rotary, but he hoped it would land as close to the clinic as possible.
Walking back in the clinic, he found Kinley sitting on a low stool, staring at her hands while Oakley and Ghost fiddled with the IV line.
“Evac is on the way. How is he?”
Kinley looked up. “They stuck a needle in his chest.”
Her skin was pale, making the circles under her eyes appear more bluish while her pupils were so wide he could barely see the green of her irises.
Squatting in front of her, he took her hands in his. She had washed them but still had blood around her nails. “It relieves the pressure in the chest cavity created by the bullet wound. You doing okay?”
