Free Task Force Desperate by Peter Nealen Page A

didn’t look up from the woman he was examining. She was bleeding from a wound on her head. There was quite a bit of blood, but head injuries are like that. I didn’t see any flowing, just a slow ooze. “There was a riot in the southern slums a couple hours ago,” Billy said. “Nobody seems to know what started it, but it turned into Afar versus Issa really quick. Sounds like a few people died, and we’ve gotten a few dozen wounded and injured here. Dave and Colton are inside, treating the worst of them.” He pointed one gloved hand toward the side of the building that Dave had turned into an aid station. “You want to help me triage?”
    “Let me make sure tonight’s trip is put to bed; then I’ll be back out,” I said. I pushed past the line of wounded Djiboutians, and into the main building. The line continued in the hall, leading to the southeast wing of the building, while the door to the northwest wing, our team room, was tightly shut, with a sheet tacked over it. I slipped under the sheet and opened the door.
    Alek, Jim, and Larry were coming in from the other side, with Imad. Imad had my rifle in his hand and held it up for me before putting it on my rack. I nodded my thanks, and waited at the map table as the others secured their gear.
    “I told Billy I’d go out and help him triage the local wounded after this,” I announced, as the night’s team gathered at the map table. Alek nodded his acknowledgement.
    “So,” he began, “How does this affect our situation?”
    “We can’t know entirely,” Jim said matter-of-factly. “It’s going to depend on how many people knew about what was going down tonight, and how closely they connected Imad with us here. Worst-case, the bad guys know there are some heavy hitters in town, know it’s us, and act on it.” He rubbed his jaw. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but it sure as hell didn’t help us, any way you look at it.”
    There was a moment’s pause, as we all thought over the implications. Then I had an idea. “Wait, we know that Khasam and Farah are in town. We don’t know what Al Masri looks like, but we’ve got photos of those two. Anybody want to bet they’re taking a big part in the demonstrations that keep turning into riots around here?” That got everybody’s attention. “Maybe, if we start watching the demonstrations, we can get eyes on one of these fuckers and tail them. They might lead us to the hostages, or at least to somebody else who can.”
    Everybody mulled it over for a moment. “We’d still need to be able to trail him inconspicuously,” Alek pointed out. “As we’ve discovered before, that can be difficult here.”
    “Overwatch team,” Imad put in. “I’d be on the ground. Two teams in vehicles on the outskirts, positioned to move in and take up the trail when he leaves the crowd.”
    “It could work,” Jim said.
    “All right,” Alek said. “We’ve got some planning to do. But first, for the sake of OPSEC, let’s go help get these locals treated, and out of here.”
    Leaving our weapons with Rodrigo in the team room, we crossed over to the aid station to lend a hand. There were probably upward of twenty people in the room, men, women, and children. Most of the injuries were blunt trauma, from beatings or thrown rocks, but some sported lacerations, likely from knives or tapangas. Colton was stitching a young woman’s arm, where half her bicep had been cut off, and had been dangling down to her forearm. The kid next to her looked to have been hit with a rock; he was bleeding from a nasty abrasion on his shoulder. I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and squatted down in front of him, to start to clean the wound.
    “Fuckin’ nuts, man,” Colton declared as he tied off another suture. “Nobody can tell me why it started. None of these people ever did anything to anybody, and it’s not like it’s their fault their president’s a fucking klepto.”
    The dirt and grit out of the gouge in the kid’s