Steve, I thought, I'm so sorry, so terribly sorry I dragged you into this.
"Can I please lie down?" His timorous voice startled me, but it gave me a burst of hope. Come on.
"Baby, just walk a little more. Try to get the blood flowing and flush the damned chemicals out of your brain."
"Morgy, are you okay?" His eyes had finally started to focus. And the first thing he asked about was me. I impulsively hugged him.
"I'm going to be." I pulled back and examined him. "You know where you are?"
He grinned with only half his face, and I could tell even that hurt. Then he stared around the room.
"Tell you one thing," he said, "this ain't Kansas anymore. Last thing I remember is, Alan and I were setting down. Then out of nowhere, your Colonel Ramos and about twenty kid soldiers with AK-47's were all over us." He groaned. "They took me and then he told Dupre to get back in the chopper and disappear. I think that son of a bitch tipped Ramos off we were coming. Then Ramos worked me over and gave me an injection. About five minutes later I passed out. It's the last thing I remember."
Ramos. Was he going to kill us both, now that Alex Goddard had gotten everything he wanted? I thought about it and decided this was not the moment to share that possibility with Steve. Instead I turned him around and lifted up his head.
"Are you really awake?" I loved this poor, beat-up man. More than anything, I just wanted to hold him.
"I'm not . . . but I'd damned well better be." He tried unsteadily, to straighten up. "Morgy, before he put me away, that Ramos bastard was talking about me, and you, in the past tense. Like we'd already been 'disappeared.' He didn't know I speak Spanish. What the hell's going on?"