Page 50 of The Hero
“Go back to Bob and stay put. They’ll find you. I’ll make sure a doctor is with the extraction team, and Bob’ll get the help he needs on the way to Maine.”
“Maine?” Marlowe asked in surprise. She figured they’d go to Cal’s home country.
“Yeah. I’m guessing the favors I’m calling in will be enough to get you out of Cambodia, but they aren’t going to want to harbor a fugitive in their country ... political shite, you understand.”
Marlowe wasn’t sure she did, but she mumbled her agreement anyway.
“We’ll fly you both into Bangor and get Bob to a hospital right away,” Cal told her. “Your job is to keep him alive until my countrymen and women can get there. Got it?”
“Yes.” Her response was firmer now. She was so relieved, she could cry. But she held back the tears. She couldn’t fall apart now. She had to get back to Kendric.
“You did good, Marlowe,” JJ said quietly. “Thank you for calling.”
“Thankyou,” she said with a small shake of her head. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I can’t wait to meet—”
The line abruptly went silent as April was speaking, and Marlowe looked over to see the shopkeeper had cut the connection.
He said something in rapid-fire Khmer, the official language of Cambodia, obviously letting her know her time was up. Marlowe handed the receiver back to him and thanked him in English, then quickly turned and headed out of the shop. She needed to get back to Kendric. Now that she knew help was coming, she felt cautiously optimistic.
That feeling lasted until she entered the room where Kendric was still lying on the floor. He hadn’t awakened while she’d been gone. If anything, he seemed worse. His breathing was shallower, and when she lifted the sheet she’d placed over him, the wounds on his back looked even angrier than before.
“You have to hang on, Kendric,” she whispered as she walked over to the last bottle of water he’d procured for them before he’d been too weak to do anything else. She poured some of the precious water onto a clean corner of the sheet and did her best to wipe away the green pus from his wounds. They needed stitching, and she’d kill for someantibiotic cream, but all she could do was try to clean out the wounds and wipe away the nasty infectious pus.
“Your friends are coming,” she told him, ignoring the tears that dripped from her cheeks. “Please hang on. They’re on their way. And we get to fly on a royal plane. Isn’t that cool?”
She tried to get him to drink some of the water, holding his head up to make it easier, but she wasn’t sure she was successful.
She kept talking to him. For hours she rambled, speaking until her voice was hoarse. She needed him to know that he wasn’t alone, hopefully make him keep fighting the infection raging throughout his body.
Marlowe wasn’t sure when to expect their rescuers. She didn’t even know how they’d find them, but Cal seemed to think they wouldn’t have any trouble locating them using the info she’d provided. She trusted Kendric’s friends. She knew they’d help him.
She hoped Kendric wouldn’t be too upset with her for telling them his secret about what he’d been doing behind their backs. But ultimately it didn’t matter if he was mad. If he decided he never wanted to see her again. As long as he was alive and healthy, she’d deal with the consequences of her actions.
She’d done everything she could. Now all she could do was wait ... and pray.
Chapter Ten
The extraction from Cambodia went surprisingly smoothly.
Four men and a woman showed up at the door of Marlowe and Kendric’s room a very stressful sixteen hours later, and immediately got to work moving Kendric from the floor to a stretcher. The woman barked out orders in what sounded like German as she got an IV line started in Kendric’s arm. She paused to lift the sheet and look at his back, made a concerned sound in her throat, then covered him up and gave more orders to the men.
Marlowe found herself following along behind their rescuers as they loaded Kendric into a van. They shuttled her inside, then raced off toward the airport.
The driver bypassed the main terminal and instead went to a smaller building. He flashed his identification at the man stationed at a security hut, and it seemed to Marlowe that they barely even slowed down. They drove straight to an airplane with the Liechtenstein flag painted on the side, and everyone jumped out of the van and began to assist with the stretcher.
The next thing Marlowe knew, she was walking up the stairs and into the luxurious plane.
The doctor was hovering over Kendric toward the back, while two of the men locked the stretcher into place to make sure it didn’t move around when they took off.
“Please, have a seat,” a woman said from next to her in accented English, making Marlowe jump. She hadn’t even seen her approach.
“We’ll be taking off as soon as the doctor gives the word,” she went on. “Would you like something to eat? Or drink?”
Marlowe was extremely thirsty, but the thought of putting anything in her stomach right now made her nauseous. “No, thank you. I’m fine. When ... how ... don’t we have to go through customs or something?”
The woman smiled. “It’s been taken care of. I met with the authorities and showed them your passports.”
