Chapter 10

Before Kurt left the house to go to the recruiting center, Sam gave him a list of the guys he wanted to contact. Kurt promised he would keep it to himself but see what he could do about locating them. When he came home, he returned the list with information penciled in on most of them.

"Here you go, Sam. I was able to find out about most of these guys by looking them up in personnel records. I have access to the Pentagon mainframe," he said with a smile.

"You didn't tell me that," Sam said with an even bigger smile. "Think you could get into the CIA stuff yourself?"

"No. I try that, they'll flag me. Only certain people with the right clearance can get in."

Sam used to have the right clearance, many years ago. He knew what Kurt was talking about. "Thanks anyway, man. This'll help a lot." He folded the paper and stuffed it into his wallet. "Well, I guess I better get out of here."

"You're not gonna track them down tonight, are you?" Kurt looked at him with surprise.

"Tomorrow. Right now, I've gotta find myself a place to stay."

Kurt looked even more confused. "I thought you were staying here for the time being."

Sam glanced at Amanda before answering him. She kept herself busy chopping up some vegetables but didn't meet his eyes. "I thought the deal was that you put me up last night, and I was on my own after that. It's better this way. Then you don't get mixed up in the middle of my problems."

"Sam." Amanda looked up from her work and met his eyes. "You don't have any friends, at least no friends but us that you're in contact with here. With things being the way they are, you need us."

"Yeah, you protected me. Now it's our turn to help you," Terri said from where she stood near the stove helping Amanda cook dinner.

Sam stood in thought. He really didn't want to put them in danger, but would spending one more night bring them any harm? He let out a breath and nodded slowly. "Okay, I'll stay tonight, but that's it." He couldn't escape noticing the grin on Terri's face. When she smiled like that, the crinkles around her eyes became noticeable and told the world that she wasn't as young as she appeared to be, despite the youthful hair style and tight clothes. The bruise on her cheek was fading fast, but the scars would never heal. He hoped that she could eventually be free of Warren and find a new life, whether it was in LA or somewhere else. He knew from experience that there was a big country out there that was open to exploring. She just had to find the resources to do it.

That night he slept a lot better on the cot. He kept his handgun under his pillow, but this time it was for an entirely different reason. He was worried that somehow the CIA would find him and raid Kurt and Amanda's home. On his advice, Kurt parked the truck in the garage and closed the door. Only then did he feel sort of at ease. Sam was tired, and he slept well, but a part of him always remained on alert. Although he wasn't alert enough to hear the sound of a vehicle stopping and car doors slamming, when a barrage of bullets hit the house, he awoke abruptly, rolled off the cot, and flattened himself on the floor. Screams came from Terri's room.

"Get down, Terri!" Not sure she heard him, Sam crawled the short distance from the cot to her bedroom. The closed door looked like a slice of Swiss cheese, yet the assault didn't stop. He pushed the door open. Terri lay on the floor, no longer screaming, and not moving. He crept over to her and felt for a pulse. "Thank God," he muttered, feeling it. Her right side was slick with blood. "Come on, Terri, stay with us!"

The shooting stopped as quickly as it began. A loud boom came from the living room, followed by footsteps. Taking a chance that no one would fire on the house again, Sam got up and stepped to the side, using the door as a shield. In the spill of light coming from a street light, he saw Warren walk into the room and aim his automatic at Terri on the floor. Sam popped out from behind the door and his fist connected with Warren's chin, sending him flying backward against the door jamb. The force knocked the gun out of his hands and stunned him. Sam picked up the gun as he stuffed his own weapon into his waist band, and aimed the automatic as another one of Warren's gang stepped into the hall. He got off a couple shots but they missed Sam. Sam wasn't so careless. The guy went down.

Warren lunged at him, but Sam used the butt of the gun to slam into the side of his head and stomach before his attacker could even throw a fist. The man doubled over, and Sam brought the butt down solidly on the back of his head. He fell to the floor unconscious.

A shot rang out and grazed Sam's upper arm. He swung the gun around and fired, taking another man down. More shots came from the hall aimed toward the living room, someone cried out, and a body fell with a solid thud onto the floor.

"Sam, you okay?" Kurt poked his head around the door frame.

He was breathing heavily, but Sam replied, "Yeah, just a nick. Call 911, if somebody hasn't already. Terri's been hit." Kurt turned to get the phone. "Hey, wait! You got anything to tie up this guy? I think he's still breathing."

"I've got just the thing," Kurt said and disappeared for a few seconds. He came back with a pair of handcuffs.

"Kurt, you're a recruiter. Do I even wanna know why you have these?" Sam looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Don't ask." Kurt answered with a guilty expression and headed for the living room to check on the one he shot.

Sam turned and cuffed Warren, and Amanda slipped into the room, turned on a lamp beside the bed, and gasped at the sight of her sister. She dropped towels and other supplies on the floor. "Sam, look at her!"

"Manda, turn off that lamp! If there are any more out there, they'll home in on that light and start shooting again!" He was across the room in two strides and turned off the lamp. Thankfully, no other shots came from outside.

"Sam, I can't see."

"Just use your sense of touch, cover her up with towels, and that's about all you can do until help arrives." He heard sirens screaming toward them. "Hear that? Help is on the way!" He dropped the automatic on the floor, pulled his gun out and slipped his hand under the bed, and stuck it inside the box spring mattress. When the cops came, it wouldn't do for him to have possession of a firearm with no permit. Then he knelt beside Amanda and assisted her with Terri.

Police stormed the house and shouted at Kurt to drop his weapon. Two more barged into the bedroom.

"Hands up! Let's see those hands!"

"We're trying to help her!" Amanda screamed at them.

Sam ordered her. "Manda, just do it! It's okay, help is here!"

"Get up off the floor. Now!"

"Okay, we're moving." To Amanda, he spoke calmly. "Manda, just put your hands behind your head and get up slowly. It'll be alright."

She nodded, her hair falling into her face, obscuring her vision. She pulled it away, glanced at him, and followed his instructions. The cops grabbed their wrists and pulled them out of the room, forced them to step over the two bodies in the hall, and marched them out to the front lawn. Kurt already stood there with his hands clasped on the back of his head as he talked to the commander in charge.

"This is my house! That's my wife Amanda, and my friend... Jake." He almost slipped. "Manda, how's Terri?"

Her attention was taken by a paramedic team rushing into the house. "I don't know. She was bleeding so bad." Tears rolled down her cheeks, the red and blue flashers painting them with garish color.

Sam felt someone's hand reach into his back pocket for his wallet. "What's your name, Sir?"

"Jake Baldwin," he replied confidently. "I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio. I was born June 22, 1958." The cops looked at him suspiciously. "Look, I was in the military, I know how this works." That seemed to appease his inquisitors.

"Okay, you can put your arms down. Sorry, Sir."

"Not a problem." He took his wallet and put it back into his pocket.

"Can you tell me why you were here?"

"I'm just crashing at my friends' place for a couple nights, that's all."

"Do you know who these men were?"

Kurt answered them. "One of them, the guy Jake cuffed, is Warren Sillman. He's married to my sister-in-law, Terri. They shot her. They just pulled up and hammered the house."

Sam felt a sudden surge of guilt. "Jeez, Kurt, they must have followed us here. How else would they have known where she was?" He'd been so careful about tails, and surely he would have seen that blue Nova. It stuck out like a sore thumb.

"No, they didn't follow you," Amanda said. "Warren knew where we lived. You were here a good day before they showed up. Don't blame yourself." She turned at a sound and saw the paramedics dashing out of the house with Terri on a gurney. Blood seeped through the sheet, and in the emergency vehicles lights, she looked like she was dead. Amanda ran alongside them. "Can I go with her?"

"Sorry, ma'am. She's in very serious condition."

Amanda covered her mouth with her hand that still bore her sister's blood. "Oh no, please! Please let me go!"

"Ma'am, we'll take you to the hospital." An officer touched her arm and turned her toward a waiting car.

"I'm going with her," Kurt said. "Unless you officers still need anything from me."

"No, we're good. We'll have a detective talk to you at the hospital."

"Thanks." Kurt took a few strides toward the squad car, then turned. "Jake... I'll see you later. Don't go anywhere, okay?"

"Yeah, I'll be here, Kurt. Don't worry!" He smiled at his friend and watched him rush to the car, get in the back with Amanda, and the car sped away.

"Looks like you'll be making a trip to the hospital yourself."

"Huh? Why?" The officer pointed to his arm. Blood ran down from his bicep to his hand and dripped on the grass. "Oh, that! Wow, I kind of forgot about it in all this chaos."

Another paramedic team came out of the house, and the officer waved them over. "These people will take good care of you, Mr. Baldwin. You'll be just fine."

"I told Kurt I'd stay here. All you've gotta do is slap a bandage on it and I'll be fine. It was just a nick! I've had worse."

He protested all the way to the ambulance and the two pushed him inside.

"Please sit on this bench, Sir, and I'll take a look at this."

The woman was cute. She kind of reminded him of one of his buddies back in Miami who helped him and his friends when they needed an ambulance to stage a heart attack emergency to prevent a client from being murdered. The woman held onto his arm and cleaned it with an alcohol infused cloth. It stung, but he forced himself not to move.

The wound still bled, so she pressed a thick pad in place. "Can you do me a favor and hold that for a few seconds?"

"Sure."

She pulled up his t-shirt to his shoulder so she had better access. She quickly packed another pad over the wound before wrapping it with a thick gauze bandage. Jake winced when she got it a little too tight.

"Sorry." She loosened it a little, but it was still snug enough to maintain pressure. He'd been wounded like this in battle before, and what she did was standard procedure. He'd handled other soldiers' gunshots in the same manner. "Okay, that should do it until you get to the hospital. Do you want us to take you, Sir?"

"No, it's okay. I can drive. I just have to get my truck out of the garage."

She glanced out the back and peered at the driveway. "With the number of cars and people around, I don't think your truck's going anywhere tonight. An officer can take you if you don't want us to."

"That'll be fine. It's not that big of a deal. I could just put some betadine on this, take some Tylenols and be okay."

She gave him a look. Obviously, she'd seen people like this before who thought they knew everything about wound care. "Let me guess, you're an expert in field medicine, right?"

Jake grinned. "Bingo! In a battle, we'd barely bat an eyelash at something like this."

She shook her head. "I hate dealing with ex-military guys," she muttered and escorted him out of the ambulance. "Good luck, but if I were you, I'd get that checked out anyway."

In the end, Jake took the paramedic's advice. The cops allowed him to go into the house and find Kurt's keys so Jake could take his car, and then they would all have a way to get home later. He drove himself to the emergency room and walked into the waiting area. Kurt and Amanda sat in a couple of chairs. Amanda's robe was covered in blood. Kurt's pajama bottoms and t-shirt were relatively unscathed. They looked up at Jake, and Amanda met him as he approached.

Jake stopped in front of them and asked, "How is she?"

"We don't know," Amanda replied with tears starting anew. "They rushed her in there, and they were doing CPR on her, but nobody's come out to tell us anything."

She threw her arms around his waist, and he put his arms around her and rubbed her back, ignoring the pain in his arm. The top of her head fit just beneath his chin. He'd forgotten how short she was.

"How are you doing," Kurt asked as he jutted his chin toward Jake's arm where the stained gauze covered nearly his entire upper arm.

"It's nothing. I'll have them look at it, but there's nothing they can do that I couldn't have done myself with the right supplies."

"Well, you better have them look at it. It's still bleeding."

"Yeah." Jake slowly pried himself away from Amanda, and she took refuge in Kurt's arms. He turned toward the reception desk, gave the nurse a smile, and said, "The paramedics sent me here to have somebody look at this. I was shot at, just grazed me. It's really no big deal, but..."

"Sir, you're bleeding on my desk. Come with me."

"Making such a big deal out of this," he muttered, but he followed her through the doors.

An orderly appeared within seconds and disinfected the place where a few drops of Jake's blood landed on the desk and floor.

The nurse forced Jake to get up on an exam table, set the head at a forty-five degree angle, and she moved his arm so that it rested over his head and lay on a pad that soaked up the excess blood. Another nurse came by and took his vitals, then hurried away to another bed. Jake glanced at his arm and he was surprised to see that it really was something to get a little excited about.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Zachariah," an olive skinned man said as he entered the cubicle. Jake noticed the foreign accent as he asked, "What is your name, Sir?"

"Jake. Jake Baldwin."

"Alright, Jake. I'm going to take a look at this wound. How did this happen?"

"I was grazed by a bullet from a Mac10."

The doctor's eyebrows rose and he nodded. Apparently he wasn't used to his patients knowing what kind of gun shot them. "I see." He donned gloves while a nurse cut off the bindings. Then he probed it and wiped away some of the blood. "It's a bit deeper than just a 'graze' as you say. It appears that the bullet nicked a major blood vessel. Not an artery, but a vessel large enough to cause some concern."

"There's no serious muscle damage though, is there, Doc?"

"I don't think so. I might have to do a little stitching if the vessel is damaged severely, but otherwise this will heal up just fine on its own." He patted Jake's tricep and wrote something on a tablet. "A little higher and more on the outside, and you would have lost part of your tattoo." He smiled. "I know how some people can get upset about that sort of thing. Yours, I'm happy to say, is safe."

Jake closed his eyes and put his head back. That damn tattoo again. He was getting really tired of people taking notice of it.

"Are you feeling nauseous, Sir," the nurse asked.

"No, I'm fine. Just tired."

"Okay, you just relax. It'll take awhile for this to get stable so we can determine what we need to do. I'm going to put an IV in just in case."

"I don't need that."

"Yes, you do. You've lost maybe a half a pint of blood. That doesn't sound like much, but any more than that and you'll be sticking around for a transfusion."

Jake grumbled to himself, but he assented to the treatment. He'd tolerate it, but if they wanted to admit him, they'd meet a whole lot of resistance on his part. He scrunched his eyes closed when the needle went in, but after the IV was in place, they left him alone for quite awhile. Despite all the noise around him, Jake was able to doze.

"Good news, Mr. Baldwin."

He opened his eyes a couple of hours later to find the doctor standing before him. "Yeah?"

"We don't need to do anything other than clean the wound, bandage it up, and send you home."

He snorted. "I coulda told you that!"

"We prefer to be cautious. Nicole will take care of bandaging you up and removing the IV, and then you're free to go."

"Thanks, Doc. Sorry I'm not the best patient."

He smiled. "People who have some medical background generally aren't. Take care, Mr. Baldwin." He handed him a piece of paper. "This is a prescription for an antibiotic and a pain medication if you need it. I'd recommend at least getting the antibiotic."

"Thanks." Jake took the prescriptions and waited patiently for the young nurse to clean up his arm and re-bandage it. She was inexperienced, and it showed in the excess care she took. When she removed the IV, it was more unpleasant than it should have been. He looked down at the spot where she taped a cotton ball over the needle mark. No doubt he'd have a bruise there the next day.

When he exited the emergency room he found Amanda and Kurt still waiting. He glanced at his watch. Streaks of blood partially obscured the face. He scratched them away and saw that it was 0340. It was a long night.

"Any news on Terri?"

"She's in surgery. They don't know if she's going to make it," Amanda's voice was so soft and riddled with sorrow, he almost couldn't hear her.

"I'm sorry, Manda."

"It's not your fault. It's that creep Warren. He did this, he and his friends."

Kurt put an arm around her and said, "It's out of our hands. The only thing we can do is pray." He sniffled. "Let's go to the chapel."

The three of them walked to the chapel that wasn't very far away. It was empty. Kurt led them to the front, and he and Amanda got on their knees on a couple of padded kneelers. There was room for Jake too. He stood behind them for a moment, not sure he was worthy to even be there, much less kneeling at the altar. Amanda reached out for his hand and pulled at him. He had no choice but to get on his knees and join them.

A lot of things had changed in the thirty plus years since he left Amanda. As he knelt beside her, he listened to her soft prayer, his heart agreeing with her words. It was a beautiful and eloquent prayer, but it was the faith behind it that really threw him for a loop. When the two met, he and Amanda were young, in their early 20s, still kids, but were instantly attracted to each other. Before his two week leave was over he was a married man and not sure what that all entailed. He knew she came from a "good" home, that she went to church and stuff, but the way she let loose with him, as one who wasn't sure about God and religion, he was confused about whether she truly believed.

Time changed her, and he saw now that Amanda had a deep and abiding faith. She asked for healing for her sister, a reprieve on her life, but ultimately left it up to God's will. He'd never been that confident to entrust his life into a faceless being's care. Yet that didn't stop Sam from talking to God now and then. He just couldn't make that kind of commitment. He sighed softly. Apparently, that was the story of his life. The only thing he'd ever given his heart and soul to was the Navy, and when they rejected him, it took a long time to give his soul away to anyone or anything. He gave himself completely to Elsa, but there again, he ran. It was for different reasons, but he ran nonetheless.

Amanda and Kurt got up and stepped back to sit on a pew together. Sam stayed where he was, uncurled his hands from the elbow rest, and folded his hands. He continued silently, because he didn't have the kind of words Amanda did, and he wondered if what he did say was good enough. God, Amanda pretty much said it all for Terri. She loves her so much, and I'm begging you not to take her away from Manda. Bring her back to health and make sure that the people who did this pay with their freedom, if not their lives.

His mind wandered to his own situation, and he continued. Thanks for the assistance to bring me this far in my flight. Help me find the means to clear up the misinformation that put me and my friends on this journey, and keep Elsa, Michael, Fiona, Jesse, and Maddie safe. Let us all be reunited soon. I know it's a lot to ask, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibilities for you to handle.

It really kills me to say this, but your will be done.

Giving up control was not one of Sam's strengths. But sometimes, there's no other option left besides giving up and dying.