Razor's Edge d-3

by Dale Brown

“Oh, I remember you quite well,” said Elliott. “You spent twenty minutes in my office one afternoon explaining why Blood on the Tracks is mankind’s greatest artistic achievement.”

  “It is, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  The others cracked up. Mack wondered how they could all be so damn cheerful. Even with the heaters going full blast, it had to be under thirty degrees in there.

  “That Bronco out there is in great shape,” said Garcia.

  “Pretty plane. I cut my teeth on those suckers.”

  “What do you know about the launch sensor in Quicksilver?” Alou asked.

  Garcia shrugged. “Spanish leather. Why? Need to be calibrated?”

  “You think you could alter it to pick up a laser flash?”

  “Light’s a flashin’?” The techie turned back toward Elliott. “That’s actually the Who, sir. It just came to me.”

  “I thought so. What about the sensor?”

  “Have to study it a bit. You know, I can get at least twenty percent more power out of those Garret engines on the Broncos. See, they put better—”

  “Let’s concentrate on the launch sensor for now,” said Alou. “Dr. Gleason will help you. Everybody else, try and get some sleep. We’re supposed to be off the pavement at 0530, and word is the Whiplash boys brought a very limited supply of coffee.”

  Chapter 40

  High Top

  2350

  Powder took another sip of water and rubbed his eyes. Five small television screens were arrayed in front of him, showing the infrared scans from the devices Whiplash had arrayed on the slopes. The Dreamland-designed units could pick up a dead mouse at three-quarters of a mile; Powder suspected that with a little tweaking they could see mosquitoes. By contrast, a “stock” AN/PAS-7 thermal viewer would have trouble seeing a cold Jeep at that distance. A small computer the size of a briefcase monitored the images for any sudden change, a kind of computerized watchdog.

  The gear made it too easy, Powder thought. He stared at it and stared at it, and he felt himself nodding off.

  “Hey,” said Liu, sneaking up behind him.

  “My M-4’s loaded, Nurse,” he growled.

  “Falling asleep, huh?”

  “I hate guard duty.”

  “Yeah.”

  “General Elliott just landed with Major Smith.”

  “No shit. The old dog himself?”

  “Yup.”

  “We oughta go say hello. Think he’ll remember us?”

  “Might be better he didn’t,” suggested Liu.

  “Nah. I wasn’t driving that truck.”

  “You were in the truck.”

  “True.” Powder paused to reflect. “Wasn’t that much damage to his car.”

  “Insurance companies declare year-old cars total losses all the time,” said Nurse. “Even if they’ve just been scratched.”

  “It’s a tax thing,” said Powder.

  A low beep sounded from the audio alert. The two men turned to the IR screens. A shadow had stumbled into the far corner of the second screen, near the far bend on the dirt trail southwest of base.

  “Uh-oh.” Powder picked up his M-4/W, a short-barreled version of Colt’s M-16 with a 204 grenade launcher and a special laser sight that could transmit target data directly to his smart helmet, displaying it on the visor. “Get the guys.”

  While Liu trotted over to alert the others, Powder watched the figures scoping the hill. There were two native types, bundled in bulky clothes that concealed their weapons.

  “Scouts,” Powder told Liu when he returned out of breath. He’d put on his smart helmet and Velcroed his bulletproof vest. “Probably saw the lights and came to check it out. Nobody on the screens and the radar’s clear.”

  “Okay.” Liu pointed to one of the ground-radar screens, which covered part but not all of the western approach. “Send somebody to cover me,” he said, starting down the slope.

  Powder slipped on his combat helmet and adjusted his throat mike, listening to Liu’s deep breaths while staring at the IR screen.

  “What’s up?” asked Bison, coming on a dead run.

  “Sshhh!” Powder motioned him to the gear. “Number two. Cover us.”

  “Powder! Yo—”

  Bison obviously didn’t want to be left out of the party, but that was tough nuggies as far as Powder was concerned. He trotted to the north side of the hill, opposite from the angle Liu was taking. He had a little trouble with the rocks, climbing across a sheer cliff for about fifteen feet and losing his sense of direction momentarily. But the starlight mode of the smart helmet projected a compass heading at the bottom right-hand corner, along with GPS readings; he got himself straightened out and then began picking his way down toward the trail. He had the path in sight and his M-4 ready when Liu hissed that their subjects had stopped.

  “You’re about fifty yards above them,” said Bison, watching from the sentry post. “It’s just two. They may be setting up weapons.”

  “If it’s a fucking mortar, we better hit ’em quick,” said Powder. He loaded a grenade into his launcher but moved his finger back to the rifle trigger. “Go for it, Nurse!” He jumped forward, balancing himself with his gun and yelling a war hoop. He nearly tripped as his feet hit the rutted but clear path. Liu shouted something and Powder saw a blur of images in his visor screen, everything blurring. He pointed the nose of his gun upward, crosshairs bouncing as he ran.

  He saw three figures, Liu to the right — marked by a fluorescent “good guy” triangle transmitted by the smart helmet — and two to the left, one lurching toward him.

  “Get down! Get down!” yelled Powder, sliding to his knee to steady his aim, cursing himself that he’d left his buddy vulnerable, cursing himself for getting Nurse killed.

  “Wait! Wait!” yelled Liu. “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”

  The figure closest to Liu slid backward then collapsed to the ground. Liu dropped down beside him.

  Her. It was a woman.

  A pregnant woman.

  “What the hell’s going on?” demanded Bison.

  “Yo — Nurse, Powder. We got you covered!” shouted Hernandez. His voice was so loud Powder thought his eardrums would break.

  “She’s pregnant, real pregnant,” said Liu. “Somebody get me a medical kit! Fast. Real, real fast.”

  Powder put his weapon on safety as he walked forward. A thin, worried-looking man stood to the side of Liu and the woman, gesticulating wildly. He held his hands out at Powder and started talking a mile a minute.

  “Yeah, listen, I don’t speak what you speak, but I’m on the same wavelength,” Powder told him. “My man Liu’s gonna help. He’s the best.” He pushed his visor up. Even in the darkness the poor husband looked scared shitless.

  “Hey, this is a natural thing, right?” he said to the man.

  “Happens every day.”

  The woman on the ground moaned loudly.

  “Where the hell is that medical kit!” yelled Powder.

  “Hernandez! Bison! Come on! Get on the ball here!”

  Hernandez came down the path in a dead run. “What’s the story?”

  “Pregnant lady. See if Liu needs help while I check the road.”

  “No way. You help Liu, I’ll check the road.” Bison raced down the hill before Powder could stop him.

  “Wimp,” he said.

  “Wimp yourself,” said Liu over the com set.

  “How we doing, Nurse?” asked Powder, walking over to his partner.

  The answer came from the woman on the ground, who screamed louder than an air raid siren. Liu reached down and cleared her feet apart, exposing everything to the air.

  Nurse had his armored vest, helmet, and other gear off, his sleeves rolled. His hands moved gently across the woman’s stomach. As Nurse put his ear down toward her belly, the woman screamed again.

  “Jesus,” said Powder. “Can we move her?”

  “Too late for that,” said Nurse. “Come here and hold her legs.”

 
; “What?”

  “Now!”

  Powder took a tentative step forward, but as he started to crouch down, the woman screamed again — and this time even louder.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” yelled Powder, jumping back.

  “Shut the hell up, Powder,” said Captain Freah, walking down the hill. “Nurse, you got a handle on this?”

  “Baby’s turned around, Captain. This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Breech birth. Kid’s backward. Supposed to come head first.”

  “You sure?”

  Nurse didn’t answer. “I need that medical kit, ASAP. And towels.”

  “Should we boil water or something?” asked Powder.

  “You did take medical training, right?” asked Liu.

  “You are a certified paramedic, right?”

  “Man, I do not remember anything on birth. No birth. Nope. Not once.”

  “How close is she?” asked Captain Freah.

  “If the kid wasn’t turned around, I’d say she’d be ready any second,” said Liu. “The contractions are two minutes apart. Here’s the thing—”

  The woman screamed again. Her husband dug his nails into Powder’s arm. The sergeant tried to reassure him, though it was hard to tell if this had any effect.

  “Go ahead,” Danny told Liu.

  “Captain, this is what they invented C-sections for.”

  “What do you mean? You have to cut her open?”

  “No way, not here, not me. That’ll kill her for sure.”

  “Call for evac?”

  “No time. This kid is coming out now, butt first, or they’re both dying. It’s a squirmy little SOB; gotta be a boy. It’s tiny, so maybe he’ll slide out if she’s strong enough to push. I need to keep the kid warm, very warm, so it doesn’t breathe inside the mother until it’s out.

  Shit — I’ve only heard about this, I’ve never seen it done.”

  “If we don’t do anything, she’ll die anyway,” said Freah. His voice was calm, almost cold. He took off his vest and then pulled off his shirt and gave it to Liu. “Get some of the chemical hand warmers down here, blankets, everything we got to generate heat,” he said into his com set.

  Within ten minutes the Whiplash team had a small tent erected around the woman. A portable kerosene heater had been hauled down from one of the tents above; sweat flowed freely. As the woman’s screams grew more desperate, Freah suggested they give the woman morphine, but Liu said that would affect the baby. Besides, he needed her conscious to help push.

  All of a sudden, Powder realized the woman had stopped screaming. He looked down at her; she had closed her eyes.

  “Liu! Did she die?”

  “Transition,” said Liu, who was stripped to the waist.

  He had his hands over a soft shirt and blanket between the woman’s legs. “Her body’s taking a rest before the real work. What I’m thinking is, when she’s ready to push, we stand her up.”

  “Stand her up?” asked Freah.

  “Yeah. Gravity’ll help.”

  The woman moaned.

  “Already?” Liu said, looking at her. He doubted if she understood a word of English, but she nodded anyway.

  “Okay. Powder, Captain, an arm apiece. Hernandez, you hold her behind.”

  “God,” said Freah.

  “We got to try,” said Liu. “I know it’s a long shot.”

  “Screw that horseshit,” said Powder, hoisting the poor woman up over his shoulder. “We are going to do this! Yo, husband, you get back here with Hernandez. Let’s do it.”

  “You heard him,” said Danny.

  “Push!” yelled Liu.

  The woman groaned.

  “Push!” yelled Liu again, moving his hands below her waist, trying to coax the baby’s rear end through the tiny birth hole.

  “Argh!” said the woman, leaning forward and down so hard she nearly toppled Powder and Danny.

  “Push!” yelled Powder and Danny and Liu.

  “Push!” yelled the entire Whiplash team, even General Elliott.

  “Argggh!” screamed the woman, falling back.

  “Oh, God,” said Powder.

  “Next one, everybody,” said Liu.

  The woman bolted upright and screamed again.

  “Push!”

  “Argh!”

  “Push!”

  “Wahhhhhh!” cried a new voice, never before heard in the world.

  “Kick ass!” shouted Danny.

  “About fuckin’ time,” said Powder, who made sure no one was looking as he wiped the tear from his cheek.

  AS WORD SPREAD ABOUT WHAT WAS HAPPENING ON THE

  slope, most of the others went down to try and help out.

  Zen and one of the CCTs ended up manning the surveillance post. Zen sat in his chair, bundled against the cold in a blanket as well as a parka. Cold and fatigue curled around his head, stinging his eyes, twisting the noises of the night. His mind felt as if it had found steps inside his skull and climbed to the top of a rickety stairway, wedging itself into an attic cubbyhole and peering down a long hallway at his eyes. At times he felt the hollowness he associated with leaving Theta during the ANTARES mind experiments; he wanted to avoid that sensation, that memory, at all costs, and when he felt it slipping over him, he grabbed the wheels of his chair, welcoming the shock of cold on his bare fingers.

  ANTARES had teased him with the idea that he might walk again, that he might become “normal” once more. It was a false hope, a lie induced by the drugs that made ANTARES work. But it was impossible to completely banish the hope.

  The figures on the screen began to jump up and down and cheer — obviously the baby had been born. The CCT turned from the screens and gave Zen a thumbs up. Zen nodded back, trying to smile as well, but he could tell from the airman’s reaction that he hadn’t quite pulled it off.

  “A boy!” said Jennifer Gleason when she returned from the slope a few minutes later. She was the vanguard of the slow-moving caravan bringing mother and child to a heated tent where they would be sheltered for what remained of the night. “A boy!”

  Zen tried to sound enthusiastic. “It looked wild.”

  “It was. She just pushed him right out. Peshew.”

  The scientist made a sound something like a hockey puck whipping into a net.

  “Pretty cool,” said Zen.

  He wheeled himself around to the cement area to watch the group surrounding the mother’s stretcher. Breanna, flanked by Danny Freah and one of the Whiplash soldiers, carried the baby. She smiled at Zen as she passed but kept walking, part of an unstoppable flow.

  “Quite a show, Jeff, quite a show,” said Brad Elliott, stopping. The general looked about as proud as a grand-father. “A hell of a thing — this is why we’re here, you know. To save lives,” added the general. “This is it — this is what I wish we could communicate to people. This is what it’s all about. People don’t understand. You know, American SF forces stopped a massacre of Kurds in northern Iraq after the Gulf War, not far from here.”

  At Dreamland, Brad Elliott had given several pep talks on some of the projects they were working on; never had Zen seen him quite so enthusiastic.

  “Things like this happened all the time,” continued the general. “Our planes dropped tons of food, our medics saved hundred of lives a week. We saved people from Saddam — why doesn’t the media report that? We should have had a film crew here. This is the sort of story people should see.”

  “I agree,” said Zen, not sure what else to say.

  Elliott put his hands on his hips. “We’ll get a helicopter in here in the morning, help this kid. Maybe we can get him a college fund going. Sergeant Habib says these people are Turkish Kurds. Hard life. This is what we’re about. We have to get the story out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make the place safe for that kid. That’s what we have to do.”

  Zen watched Elliott practically bound away.

  “A b
oy!” said Breanna, slipping her arms around him from behind. She snuggled next to his neck and kissed him. “God, you’re cold,” she said.

  “Hey,” he said.

  They kissed again.

  “You should have seen it, Jeff. Sergeant Liu — God, he is awesome.”

  “I couldn’t get down.”

  She described the birth, the woman pushing, everyone shouting, the tip of the baby’s behind appearing, once, twice, and then a rush of baby and fluid.

  “You ought to sleep,” said Zen when she finally finished.

  “I’ll sleep,” she said.

  “You haven’t, and you have a mission in just a few hours now.”

  “I slept on the way over,” she told him. “Chris and I traded off. Don’t worry about me, Jeff.” She bent down and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then started back toward the tent where they had installed mother and child. “Warm up the bed. I’ll be along.”

  “Yeah,” was all he could think to say.

  Chapter 41

  Dreamland

  1700

  “Let me just blue-sky this for a moment, because the implications truly are outrageous.”

  Dog watched as Jack Firenzi danced at the front of the small conference room off the hall from Dreamland Propulsion Research Suite B, one of the subbasement research facilities in what was informally called the Red Building. The frenetic scientist had come to Dreamland as an expert on propulsion but now headed research into the hydrogen-activated wing platform, or “Hydro” as he referred to it. His audience consisted of two NASA officials, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and an undersec-retary of Defense, all of whom had started out somewhat bewildered by the sartorially challenged scientist, yet now were focusing not on his Yankee hat, sneakers, or three-piece suit, but his rapid-fire praise of inflatable wings.

  “Imagine an aircraft that can travel at Mach 6, yet with the turning radius of an F/A-18,” continued Firenzi. Dog had heard the presentation before, so he knew that Firenzi would now talk about the XB-5 Unmanned Bomber Project, where the Hydro technology could increase the aerodynamics of the large airframe. Today the scientist’s optimism knew no bounds — he took off his hat and began using it to describe additional applications, including microsensor craft scheduled to begin testing in the next phase of the project and an improved U/MF on the drawing board. Under other circumstances, Dog might have watched the VIPs to make sure their reactions remained bemused awe at the eccentric scientist who backed up his enthusiasm with a blackboard’s worth of equations. But Dog was preoccupied with the Whiplash mission. The news from Iraq was relatively good — twelve hours of air strike sorties that hit about eighty-five percent of their targets, with no new American losses.