enjoying some time off to cool down at our base camp.
“Man, when they said ‘remote,’ I figured we’d be several hundred clicks from the border but they weren’t kidding,” Bear said, eyes still closed. “We are in bumfuck nowhere. It’s amazing these folks even made it out here.”
“It goes to show you how bad it must’ve been where they came from,” I said.
Bear was about to reply when Dozer appeared. “Hawk,” he said, “Commander Wolffe is on the sat phone for you.”
I immediately got up and headed towards the main tent we used for briefings.
I found the satellite phone waiting for me on the meeting table.
“Commander?”
“Captain, there’s a new mission for you,” Commander Wolffe said, immediately getting down to business. “We’ve been contacted by a non-profit that needs protection and guiding while they provide medical services to the refugees.”
My brow furrowed. “Does that mean we move Easy Team to another camp?”
“No, they’re coming to your camp,” Commander Wolffe replied.
“Here?” I asked in surprise. This was such a remote camp. There were other refugee camps that were literally ten times our size. Why would some charity medical team come here instead?
“Apparently this is a small medical aid team not associated with the UN. They felt they would be better applied in smaller camps that were further away from all the help the UN and Red Cross were providing.”
That made sense. Only the bigger camps were getting the majority of the aid. The three people that had been cut by the shiv a few days back had been tended to and bandaged by members of Easy Team since we had no medic present.
A medical team here would be a big help to the refugees and to us since we wouldn’t have to be stretched so thin providing guard duty and medical duty at the same time.
“When do they arrive?” I asked.
“They’ll be arriving at a temporary military Air Force base north of you in three days. Their Qunar liaison will pick them up and drive them and their supplies the rest of the way to camp. Because they are a volunteer mission team, they will need any protection and guidance you can give them. For some of them, I hear, it’ll be their first crisis mission.”
Oh great, a bunch of cherries coming to camp.
“Understood, sir. We’ll make sure to take good care of them,” I said.
“I’m counting on it,” Commander Wolffe said before hanging up.
I sighed as I lowered the sat phone. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate or admire the countless doctors that were risking their lives to come to Qunar to help those who were so very much in need.
But usually, first time crisis mission doctors were easily squeamish. They had a hard time adjusting to the fact that they weren’t at their home hospital anymore. Here, electricity was spotty, running water sometimes impossible, and danger always present.
I imagined a bunch of Ivy League graduate doctors coming in with pink hands and green ears. I could hear my men groaning at the thought of having to babysit a bunch of cushy doctors while also patrolling the camp.
Oh well. As long as these medics followed our orders and helped where they could, I was pretty sure I could get them back home in one piece.
So much for that vacation.
Chapter Five
Emilia
“Oh my god, this is like stepping into