Please. I’ll give you anything, just please let him be alive. Let me be in time.
“We ask especially for your blessing upon Sophie, our courageous leader in this mission. Give her strength as she leads us in saving your people in Orlisia. Keep her and everyone else in the coalition safe as we carry out your work. Amen.” There was a murmured response from the group, then silence.
“Everyone at the designated meeting area at JFK by 2 p.m. tomorrow. Flight leaves at 7 p.m. Sleep well, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”
Chapter 4
January 25, 2014
Will watched Anjali ease herself out from under Sophie’s sleeping body and walk down the aisle to him. Sophie had curled up against his wife as soon as the plane had taken off, and Anjali held her until her friend had fallen fully asleep. One of the big airlines had donated a flight to the coalition, so the strike team had the plane to themselves. Most were taking advantage of the extra space by stretching out to sleep.
“Asleep.” Anjali sat down in Will’s lap and put her arms around his waist. She pulled his shirt out of his pants and slid her hand up his back. He moved his face to kiss her. Anjali always got this way when they went on a mission together. Will had never imagined that marrying a field doctor would lead to so much amazing sex on airplanes.
Anjali Shah had entered his life just after Sophie had moved to New York to join him in starting Refugee Crisis International. Their first task had been to recruit an executive team, including a medical director.
Anjali had come from Médecins Sans Frontières with a remarkable amount of experience in the field for someone in her thirties. The little Indian doctor was five feet and two inches of pure hellfire, working under horrific conditions without complaint. Will had once seen her help dig a burial trench by hand in 115 degree heat during a cholera epidemic. Men twice her height and three times her weight did her bidding without question.
Of course, he’d fallen in love with her. In addition to being an excellent field doctor, Anjali was beautiful with her long black hair, brown skin, and slender figure. To this day, he lost his mind every time she fluttered her wide brown eyes at him. They’d married two years after their first trip to the field together, a violent and dramatic mission to India that had nearly cost them both their lives.
He rubbed Anjali’s back tenderly. He couldn’t imagine a day on this earth without her. He hated flying into a warzone with her, hated having her in harm’s way. When Will tried to imagine how Sophie felt – knowing the man she loved was missing and quite possibly dead – his brain went on overload. He couldn’t wrap his head around it.
Sophie’s sanity might not survive if Michael didn’t make it home.
“I’ve still never met him,” Will said quietly. “After all these years. I feel like I know so much about him, but our paths have never crossed.”
“The universe conspires to keep you two apart, I’m convinced,” said Anjali. That Michael and Will had never met was a running joke, although Will was pretty sure Sophie had engineered a few of their near misses over the years. To introduce Michael to Will represented a level of commitment that she hadn’t seemed comfortable with. “Even I’ve met him.”
Her husband pulled back in surprise. “You have? When? Where?”
“Haven’t I ever told you?” Anjali’s brow puckered in thought. “In 2006, I think. I was representing Médecins Sans Frontières at a career fair at Harvard between field assignments. He came by my booth and introduced himself, said he was interested in doing some development work after he got his MD and before he started practicing. We talked for a while. Very intense, very idealistic.”
“I can’t believe you remember him.”
“You don’t forget a guy like Vanguard.” She traced circles on Will’s inner arm. “He’s compelling. Just as intense as Sophie – and you know how intense she is. Plus he’s smoking hot.” He could feel her grinning against his neck, and knew she was trying to get a rise out of him. They sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes.
“Will,” Anjali whispered, “do you think he’s alive?”
He let out a long sigh against her neck. He told Sophie on a daily basis that he thought Michael was alive. Here with Anjali, he could qualify his optimism.
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “If it were anyone else, I’d say it’s a million-to-one shot that we find him alive. But Vanguard went through the same program that Sophie did.”
Anjali looked at him curiously. “GYL? You think that will make the difference?”
“If I hadn’t met Sophie near the beginning of her GYL year and seen the impact it had on her afterward, I never would have believed it myself. Look at everything she’s accomplished in her short career. She’s carried that experience with her every step of the way.” He looked over at his protégé’s sleeping form a few rows up. “Vanguard is GYL too. He’s got that same experience. Maybe it’ll give him the edge to survive.
“God help her if it doesn’t.”