“Roger, wilco, Cap,” Swanson said with a nod.

“Any questions or suggestions?” Rick searched his men’s faces in the ensuing silence. “Right. Let us know if your little arms get tired, ladies. Let’s roll.”

Doctor Cynthia Myers had made her way to a remote village in Katangela to run an OB clinic and was the only doctor within several kilometers. Women came from villages all around for care. In the five months she’d been here, Cynthia had witnessed people dying of everything from infection to sickness to mortal wounds sustained in a hippopotamus attack.

As she stood in the dirt courtyard in front of the clinic, she watched a chicken with a fat grub clutched in its beak strut from the edge of the jungle. “You’re going to get in trouble, Amelia,” she said. The hen had become known as Amelia Egghart because she tended to explore the outside world as often as possible. “Tadeas doesn’t like it when you escape from the coop.”

Suddenly, ominous sounds interrupted her. From somewhere in the distance came the faint but unmistakable sound of automatic gunfire. Despite the isolation of the remote village in the wild of the African jungle, she had heard that sound all too often since her arrival.

The sounds escalated, a set of low, thunderous cracks alternating with short but sharp high-pitched bursts, like a distant percussion section warming up for a marching band concert at halftime. Something about these cracking reports sounded very different and threatening.

Her nurse, Tadeas, came out of the hospital building. “Apparently, there are more than just Kalashnikovs in the jungle today,” he said.

“Pistols?” Cynthia asked.

He shook his head. “ARs. American rifles. Western mercenaries love expensive black rifles. The locals favor AKs. Those are cheap, and so are the bullets.”

She felt her eyebrows knitting together as she listened to the now-sporadic gunfire. “That sounds close.”

Tadeas turned his eyes toward the tree line. “Actually, that sounds very close.”

Though they were nearly always fatal, the American-made 5.56 caliber rounds—much like the Kalashnikov 7.62 caliber rounds—created overwhelming trauma whenever patients survived the gunshots.

Meeting Tadeas’s eyes, Cynthia saw her own worry reflected. “I’m going to go find something to eat,” she said. “See if you can relieve Ayo. She may not want to leave Gamila yet, but she needs to eat something.”

Gamila had gone into labor at four that morning. For six hours, Cynthia and Ayo, her midwife-in-training, had ministered to the teenager as she progressed through the labor. Having witnessed the growing infatuation blossoming between Tadeas and Ayo, Cynthia had no doubt that he would see to her trainee’s needs now.

“One of the villagers brought your dinner, Doctor. I covered it and put it in your pantry,” Tadeas replied.