“Dear God, Lonnie, what happened?” Marcus asked as he crossed the room. He stood in front of her and gently examined the wounds. “Who did this to you?”
“I met an old friend,” Lonnie replied through puffy lips.
“I’ll kill the bastard.”
“Too late.”
He put his arm around her, resting his hand on her shoulder. She winced at the pressure of his touch and he pulled away.
“The baby?”
“Baby is okay. The doctor is coming in with an ultrasound to verify, but the way it’s kicking, I am pretty sure the baby is fine. Tough kid.”
“Like Mom.”
“Marcus, Kharzai was there.”
“Kharzai did this?”
“No, he saved me.”
Hilde stepped forward. “He wasn’t there when I came to find you.”
“He crashed into the van. He’s the one who killed the driver.”
“You saw him?” Mike asked.
“No. Just a flash as the taxi backed into the van. It was so sudden. But I am certain it was him.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“No, and the crazy thing is with all of that violence, there were no other witnesses.”
“No one?” Marcus asked.
“The street was totally empty,” Hilde replied.
“Maybe we can get something on the surveillance cameras.”
Hilde shook her head. “I checked into that. The hotel only has one camera in that back alley. A raven was sitting on it the whole time. There was only a tiny window of view beneath the bird’s tail feathers, and there was nothing but pavement in that area.”
Marcus let out a humorless grunt.
“What?” Hilde asked.
“Remember I told you that native mythology says that ravens are spirits that love to play pranks on mortals. I guess there’s something to it.”
Mike let out a breath. “And we know whose side they’re on, too.”
A crash at the door drew their attention. An overweight nurse stood in the doorway, her scrubs stretched tight at the belly, butt, and thighs. She was in her early thirties, rebellious brown hair in a barely controlled ponytail pulled back from a fleshy face which was plastered with too much makeup and too blue a shade of eye shadow. She wheeled in a portable ultrasound machine. The nurse paused as she looked at the four people in the room, too many for the tiny space if they expected her to be in there too. Mike and Hilde moved back against the wall to let the nurse pull the machine past them, then they headed toward the door.
“We’ll go back to the hotel,” Mike said, “and get hold of Tonia and Warner to let them know what’s going on. See you back there.”
Marcus nodded, and they walked out of the room. The nurse drew near to Lonnie with the machine and began to uncoil the ultrasound wand. A name tag hung awkwardly from her left breast. It dangled when she moved, as if it were not correctly attached to her shirt. The name “Nellie” stood out in bold black letters on the white plastic tag. Beneath the name was her title, “Nurse: OB/GYN, Prenatal, Delivery”.
“Are you the father?” She looked up at Marcus and smiled flirtatiously at him. He was taken aback and flustered by her brazen look.
“Yes, I am,” he said. “She’s my wife.”
“Hmmm…you got a good one there, Mrs. Johnson. He’s a hottie.”
“Yeah, he's been getting that reaction from a lot of women lately.”
“Well, it looks like he got that reaction from you too.” She winked and flashed a smile toward Marcus, her chubby cheeks balled up on the sides of her face making her look like a Cabbage Patch Doll with clown makeup.
Marcus was uncomfortable near her. He moved to the other side of the bed, putting Lonnie between him and the rotund nurse. Lonnie lay back, barely stifling a burst of laughter. The nurse reminded her of the secretary on The Drew Carey Show from the nineties. Marcus’s reaction to her was almost as funny as the woman herself.
“Okay, let’s get started here.” Nellie grabbed a tube of lubricant from the shelf under the machine and squirted some into her rubber-gloved hand.
“If you could pull your shirt up, honey, just over your belly. Don’t need Mr. Stud there to get too much of an eyeful.”
She slid her hand onto Lonnie’s belly. The baby jumped at the contact.
“Oh, boy — the baby’s certainly alive, ain’t it? The lotion is going to be a little cold, honey, but it makes the wand work a whole lot better.”
Nellie rubbed the lotion over Lonnie’s belly until it was evenly spread, then switched on the wand and put its tip against the lower part of her distended belly. The screen on the ultrasound machine immediately lit up. Marcus looked at the image, a smile stretching across his face. A clear picture of the baby’s face came into view. The baby stretched as if craning its neck to get a better view through the window of the machine. It was sucking its thumb, the other arm wrapped around its middle.
“Wow,” Marcus said, a look of wonderment on his face, “it looks like it is alive already, like I can just hold it.”
“Well, that’s because it is alive, silly man,” Nellie replied. “That right there is a totally viable, totally alive, ready-to-conquer-the-world baby. You want to know the sex?”
Marcus looked at Lonnie, and she looked back at him. They paused for a moment, then Lonnie turned back to Nellie.
“Yes. We do.”
“All righty, then.”
Nellie slid the ultrasound wand to the middle of Lonnie’s belly. All they could see was the baby’s hip. The baby had turned as if suddenly being modest.
“Okay, baby, now just roll over a little bit,” Nellie said. “We ain’t gonna hurt you. Just a little peeky-weeky.”
The baby rolled over at Nellie’s urging.
“Well now, there we go.” She smiled up at Lonnie, then turned to Marcus. “Now you know what color to paint the baby’s room, eh?”
Chapter 22
“Thank you all for attending.” Kharzai slid his eyes over the group of four tattooed men in the garage, noting that none of them, other than Blue, had been at the rail yard debacle. His lips stretched in a serpentine grin that would have made a mongoose bristle. He crossed the cement floor to a metal tube leaning at a steep angle propped up on a bipod.
“This is the tool with which you will each earn your money.” He stopped by the mortar tube and scanned across them. “I don’t suppose any of you happened to have served in the military and know how to use one of these.”
“M-224, 60mm Lightweight Mortar,” a voice said, then continued. “Infantry portable smooth bore, muzzle-loading, high-angle-of-fire weapon. It can be fired from a bipod, or handheld position in close-in support of ground troops.”
The voice was that of a young man in his mid-twenties whom the others called Bones. Tattoos swirled in Celtic patterns across his face and down his neck and arms, accentuated with three-dimensional demon faces and a few swastikas. On his right wrist was a detailed ink of the Marine Corps Eagle Globe and Anchor emblem. A red slash, drawn like a gaping wound, marred the symbol. An angry fist jutted its middle finger into the wound. Around his neck hung a string of knuckle bones. Among the mix of adult-sized bones were interspersed some that had come from very small fingers.
Kharzai looked coldly at the man, his eyes barely containing hatred that boiled. In all his years of killing people, he'd made it a rule that no children, even if they actively fought for the other side, would be intentionally hurt. This bastard obviously did not follow that credo.
“Very knowledgeable answer,” he said, burying his emotions. He motioned toward the tattoo. “You were in the Marines, huh?