Defending Zara (Mountain Mercenaries #6)(2)

Zara nodded and turned toward the contraption they called an ambulance. It was actually a rickety old bicycle that had been hooked up to an equally old-looking box on wheels. It had a hinged lid with strategically placed items on top. Cans, pieces of wood and scrap metal, trash . . . anything that would make someone who glanced at it not look twice. But under that hinged lid was an empty box, large enough to carry a human being through the back streets and barrios of Lima.

It wouldn’t pass a thorough inspection by the police or military, but at a glance, it looked like a giant pile of garbage. Zara made sure the rubbish on the lid was secure, and she tested the connection from the box to the bike. The last thing she wanted was for the thing to come unattached while she was on her way to the doctor.

Zara had met Daniela Alvan through Mags. She was in her mid-thirties and the closest thing the barrio had to a doctor. She’d helped more women than Zara could count, and her specialty was midwifery, but she regularly stitched up the wounded, treating knife and gunshot wounds. Daniela was discreet, and she lived in a small house near the barrio Zara had made her home. It had actual brick walls and running water, both of which were luxuries most in the area didn’t have.

Daniela had often allowed “Zed” to help her, running errands and allowing her to watch and assist as she treated patients. As a result, Mags now considered Zed their little group’s personal doctor.

But they both knew the men who’d been beaten would need more assistance than Zara could give them. So she would take them to Daniela, who would make sure they weren’t bleeding internally, and then they’d return them to their American friends so they could get the proper medical treatment they most likely needed.

But the first aim was to get them away from the area. Away from the gang that hated any and all outsiders and would come back to make sure they were dead—once the danger from whatever had spooked them had passed. They’d search every hovel until they found them, which was why Zara was making sure their “ambulance” was ready to go.

Within seconds of checking the wheels on the decrepit bike and trailer, Zara startled when the women burst back through the door. They were dragging a man who looked like he was dead already. His head lolled backward and his eyes were shut.

“Drag him to the trailer,” Mags ordered.

It took four of them to move him, and Zara had no idea how in the world she and Daniela were going to be able to get him out of the trailer by themselves, but she couldn’t worry about that right now. She and Mags held the trailer steady while the others struggled to get the man’s unconscious body up and over the lip of the wooden box. He was tall and muscular, which made their job all the harder.

When he was finally inside, Zara looked down at him in consternation. They’d been able to carry two people in the trailer in the past, but the American was huge. Zara estimated that, when standing, he’d tower over her by at least a foot. Even after they’d arranged him on his side in a fetal position, it was obvious his companion wasn’t going to fit in the small space that was left.

“Ruben and Marcus are coming back this way!” Bonita hissed. She was peering between the wooden slats through a gap that served as a crude kind of door.

“Which means Eberto, Alfonso, and the rest of the gang will be back before too long,” Gabriella said, something they all knew.

“Shit,” Mags muttered under her breath. “There’s no time. We can’t go out and get the other American. Zed, you ready?”

Zara nodded. She took one last look at the injured man at the bottom of the trailer. He had brown hair and day-old scruff and had been stripped of his shirt, pants, and shoes by the men who’d beaten him. He was wearing a bloody and torn undershirt and a pair of boxer shorts.

Something about seeing the man in his underwear made her feel sorry for him, which was an unusual feeling for Zara. She did her best to stay as far away from men as possible. She’d learned a long time ago that they were nothing but trouble.

But seeing this American so badly hurt, knowing it was up to her to get him help, made her anxious. She could take him straight to his American friends, but she suspected the two corrupt soldiers would promptly blame her for his condition and arrest her. And who knew if they’d actually help him?

No, her best bet was to get him to Daniela. She could make sure he wasn’t going to die, then they’d figure out what to do with him after that. Maybe she’d warn him about the kind of men his team was working with. Everyone in the barrios knew many of the bastards who worked in the First Special Forces Brigade in the Peruvian military were corrupt, working in cahoots with del Rio and anyone else rich enough to pay them to look the other way when something illegal was going on. How they regularly ran sweeps of the barrios and beat anyone who dared speak back to them or look at them sideways.

The lid was lowered and the women fussed over the items camouflaging the box. When they were satisfied that it looked like nothing more than a heaping pile of trash, they stepped back.

Mags approached Zara as she climbed onto the bike. She reached out a hand and squeezed Zara’s shoulder. “Be careful,” Mags said in English.

When Mags had found “Zed” five years ago and discovered that, once upon a time, English had been her primary language, she’d made it her mission to help Zara practice it every day. She’d taken Zara under her wing and given her the first sense of family and safety she’d had in a decade. There wasn’t anything Zara wouldn’t do for Mags, and if she wanted her to relearn English, that was what she’d do.