Page 72 of Duty Preserved

He stopped. His eyes went to the plane where the AMREF crew was loading Alyson.

“We thought he was out cold.” His voice dropped. “He wasn’t. She touched him, started working, and he just⁠—”

He couldn’t finish it. His hand came off the doorframe and pressed against his face, and for a second, I thought he was going to lose it. He didn’t. He collected himself and looked at me.

“How bad is she?”

He asked that before anything about his own leg. Before the break, before whatever was going to happen to him next. He wanted to know about Alyson.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “The AMREF crew is working on her.”

Andrew appeared at my shoulder. He’d done what he could on the logistics side, and he wasn’t about to stand across an airstrip while one of his people was in a vehicle with a broken leg. He looked at Cole, then at me, and didn’t ask what had happened because he’d already heard enough on the radio.

“Your leg,” Andrew said, crouching beside the running board. “I suspect you tried sticking it up that lion’s ass and breaking it off there?”

I could tell he was trying to make light of it all.

Cole closed his eyes for a second. “I was running to get to her. I was so fixated on getting to her that I wasn’t looking where my fucking feet were going. I just went. My leg sank into a deep fucking burrow, and my ass kept wanting to move forward. Here we are.” He gestured at the apparent gnarly break in his leg.

Andrew looked at me. I looked at Andrew.

“My notes are going to say: Broke leg attempting to bare-knuckle box a Nemean lion. Classic Hercules archetype,” Andrew said.

“No.” Cole shook his head. “I stepped in a goddamn hole.”

“Not how I’m going to remember it. C’mon, Hercules,” Andrew said. “Let’s get you to this plane so they can get both of you out of here.”

Cole didn’t laugh. I wouldn’t have either. But his jaw unclenched by a fraction, the tension giving way because Andrew had given it permission to.

I looked at the leg. Briefly. Below the knee, it looked like a fourth grader had tried to draw a cursive stick figure. The pant leg stretched tight over swelling that had already started. Cole held perfectly still because any movement sent pain through him.

“I’m done,” Cole stated. He said it to both of us, plain as day. “I’m not walking on this. I’m not coming back for a while.”

Neither of us argued. There was nothing to argue with.

Andrew and I got him out of the truck. It was ugly but the best we could manage. Cole kept his jaw locked and didn’t make a sound, but I felt the effort that took in the way his fingers dug into my shoulder.

We carried him between us across the strip toward the plane. Sarah was there already, standing near the cargo door. She looked at Cole being carried and her mouth pressed into a hard line, but she didn’t speak.

We got him up and into the cabin and settled him across from Alyson’s stretcher. The crew secured him. Andrew checked the straps once more because he couldn’t stop doing the job, and then we backed out.

The second truck pulled up to the edge of the strip as we were reversing. Daniel got out with a bag over his shoulder. He didn’t come to help. He walked straight to the cargo door, his chin set, and didn’t look at any of us.

“I’m going too.” He said it flatly. “I’m not coming back. I’m done with this place.”

Nobody answered. The engines were running, and the crew was signaling for us to clear the door. Daniel climbed in without waiting for a response. He didn’t say anything about Alyson. Whether he was going because of her or in spite of her, I couldn’t tell.

The cargo door swung shut.

Andrew and I backed away from the prop wash and stood beside Sarah at the edge of the runway. Three of us and a handful of rangers watching the plane taxi to the end of the strip, turn into what wind there was, and accelerate.

The wheels left the ground. The plane climbed and banked south toward Nairobi, getting smaller against the sky until it was little more than a faint white dot.

Andrew put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll go collect the rangers. Get them debriefed.” He didn’t say the rest of it, but I heard it anyway. Go take care of her.

I turned to Sarah.

She was standing motionless in the same place, arms at her sides, looking at the sky where the plane had been. She wasn’t crying. She was shut down. The autopilot that had held her together had finished its job and had no more route to follow.