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I look through the windshield. The road ahead is empty. “There’s no accident here.”

“The call is west of us,” Dima says, checking the navigation screen. “They’re using the bridge to reach it.”

The approaching ambulance slows near the narrow center of the bridge.

Dmitri flashes the headlights twice, pulls as far to the right as he can, and waves the driver through.

The other ambulance draws level with us but doesn’t continue past.

Something about the driver bothers me. He isn’t looking through the bridge or toward the road beyond us. He’s watching our ambulance.

“Dmitri,” I say, pushing myself upright. “Don’t pass them.”

The other ambulance swerves across the center line, and its front corner slams into our rear side.

The impact throws me across the bench. Alexei catches my shoulders before my head strikes the wall, then the ambulance turns hard and tips onto two wheels. Glass breaks above us. The stretcher tears free from one floor bracket and crashes across his legs. The child seat fixed to its rail strikes the wall, and my medical bag slides beneath the bent frame. Alexei’s breath leaves in a rough sound.

Dmitri brings the ambulance down on all four wheels, but the damaged side door folds inward. A metal canister bounces through the broken window and rolls beneath the bench. Smoke pours from it before I can reach it.

A second canister strikes the floor and bursts in a white flash inside the rear compartment. My vision goes white. Alexei covers my head with his body as the sound drives through my ears. His arm tightens around me, then slips. Blood runs through his shirt and onto my hand.

The damaged side door is pulled open.

Three men in medical uniforms stand outside. One holds a short rifle. Another wears my hospital’s emergency badge.

The men in the cars behind us were only there to keep Ilya and Roman busy. The cars were bait. They never wanted Misha.

This ambulance was the real attack, and its crew came for me.

The first attacker reaches through the smoke. Alexei fires from beneath the fallen stretcher, and the man drops against the open door.

The second grabs my coat.

I twist free, drop to my knees, and reach beneath the stretcher for my medical bag. My fingers close around the pediatric kit. I tear it open, rip the cap from a wrapped syringe, and drive the needle deep into his inner thigh. He shouts and strikes my shoulder as I wrench it sideways before he knocks it from my hand.

Dima kicks at the jammed partition from the front. “Vera!”

He presses his radio. “Roman, the second ambulance is hostile. Get through those cars. Ilya, close the eastern end of the bridge.”

Gunfire answers from outside the driver’s door.

“The SUV has the road blocked,” Roman says through the radio. “We’re pushing through.”

“I’m moving in from the junction,” Ilya replies.

Dmitri kicks open the driver’s door, fires twice, then ducks behind the engine block.

The attacker I stabbed tries to follow, but his injured leg gives beneath him. The third man catches me from behind. I drive my elbow into his face and feel cartilage give beneath it.

Alexei shoves at the stretcher across his legs. “Let her go.”

He raises his pistol.

The man behind me pulls my body against his chest and presses a gun beneath my jaw.

Alexei’s finger stops on the trigger.

“Vera, stay still,” he says, blood covering one side of his shirt.