Zero to 165

by A. R. Moler

  Zero to 165

  by

  A.R. Moler

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2012, 2017 by AR Moler

  Cover illustration by P.E. Ash

  Chronology of stories in the Division P universe

  Braided Lives

  Hell Dogs Squadron

  Seeking The Balance

  Falling From a Height

  Zero to 165

  Don't Fret the Timing

  Braided Lives 2

  Begin and End With You

  The LD50 of Memories

  Fragmentation (Coming in 2017)

  When an F/A-18 is catapulted from the deck of an aircraft carrier, plane and pilot go from zero to 165 mph in two seconds.

  Chapter One

  When the land to air rocket (LAR) hit the jeep, it exploded in a ball of fire and shrapnel. Navy SEAL Captain Jonas Nightengale was running full tilt away from the vehicle as it happened. The force of the explosion picked him up and hurled him a dozen feet through the hot afternoon air of Caracas. He hit the ground with the shoulder of his jacket in flames. One of his teammates, Tim Parrish, scrambled from cover and grabbed Nightengale's limp body, rolling him over in the dirt and beating the flames out. Dodging spurts of gunfire, the second Navy SEAL pulled his injured comrade behind the relative shelter of the closest building and quickly checked to see if Jonas was still alive. Parrish found a pulse that was weak and fast and. Nightengale was breathing in shallow gasps. A palm sized slice of metal was embedded in the side of the injured man's thigh and he was also bleeding freely from an evil looking gash in his forehead above his left eye. Nightengale lay like a rag doll, half draped over Parrish's leg.

  "Nightengale's hit bad. What's the ETA on the chopper?" Parrish said, tapping his earpiece.

  "Extraction in five," was the reply.

  ***

  In the chopper, a corpsman named Dawson applied a pressure bandage to the deep gash in Nightengale's thigh and grabbed the gear to start an IV. Jonas was rousing somewhat and thrashing erratically .

  "Easy Captain! You're safe," said the corpsman. Jonas let out a roar of pain and struck out at the person nearest to him. His fist caught the corpsman in the side of the face and flung him back against the bulkhead of the chopper.

  "Grab him!" yelled Parrish. It took both him and another SEAL to restrain Nightengale enough to strap him down to the cot bolted to the side of the helicopter. The injured man continued to struggle.

  "Can you give him something to calm him down?" demanded Parrish.

  "I can't give him any of the usual stuff. Nightengale's allergic to most of it. It'd send him into anaphylactic shock. I am going to dose him up with some morphine though. I think between the head injury, the leg and the burn, he's in a hell of a lot of pain." Dawson finally managed to get a line in then pulled out a syringe and stabbed it into Nightengale's IV.

  The injured man's struggles slowed. Oxygen wasn't available, and neither were any other drugs that might have helped. Controlling the bleeding, delaying shock as best he could and giving some pain relief was about all Dawson could do for the next twenty minutes. He got Parrish to help him tuck a Mylar blanket around Nightengale and hoped for the best.

  ***

  Laptop balanced on his legs, Dr. Mason Flynn sat in the Norfolk airport, nervously awaiting take-off to fly to Pensacola. Peter Vithoulkas, Division P's senior healer, had "requested" that Mason go there to care for an injured Navy SEAL who was also a Division P operative. Although the man had not been injured on a Division P assignment, his condition had been declared critical. There had been a bigger and bigger push lately by the Division P staff to insure that their own people had psi specific medical care.

  Mason skimmed down through the somewhat cryptic and sketchy information that had been sent to him via email. The SEAL's name was Jonas Nightengale and he'd been on an anti-terrorist assignment in Caracas when he had apparently been caught far too close to an exploding vehicle. The field corpsman's original report listed a shrapnel injury to the left thigh and a burn to the back and left shoulder with an estimate of ten percent body surface for the burn. The left shoulder was dislocated, and there was a head injury that had left the soldier extremely disoriented and combative. Nothing further could be assessed about the head injury until the man reached a hospital on the mainland. Judging from a list of erratic vitals, things were further complicated by what Mason translated as psi shock.

  There was a different sort of information contained in the next section of the email. Jonas' specialty for Division P was psychometry, the ability to gain information from touching an object. He also had some lesser empathic/telepathic Talents, and he was listed as un-partnered. This tidbit made Mason pause. Did that mean somewhere in his own file, Mason was listed as partnered? And did it designate Cameron Bradshaw as that partner? Mason smiled a little at the thought. Division P was one of the few places where he and Cam could be open about their relationship.

  "They're starting to do board," said Danny Valentine. He was traveling with Mason for a mixture of security and support reasons. The six foot four blond man was Division P's east coast chief of operations. He wore a dark suit, a bland gray tie and a white shirt. Aviator style mirrored sunglasses were pushed up on his head. Mason thought Danny looked very "MIB." Although Mason was intimately familiar with the standard procedures of a hospital, part of Danny's role this time was to make Mason's access to the patient as smooth and rapid as possible in the military setting.

  Back in the summer, a Division P agent had died despite belated heroic efforts by Peter Vithoulkas. Part of the fiasco was attributed to delayed access to care by a psychic healer or anyone who knew the peculiar dangers psi talents were prone to. The entire goal of this trip was to prevent another such death.

  Mason powered down his laptop and tucked it into its case. "How long is this flight supposed to take?" he asked Valentine.

  "About two hours I think. Cam suggested I should get you drunk before take off," Valentine teased.

  Mason gritted his teeth and made a face at Valentine. He'd spent more time flying in the last six months than in the last six years, and he loathed every fucking minute of it. Yeah, white knuckled flyer just about described him to a tee.

  "Are you going to be okay? Or do I need to hold your hand?" Valentine asked.

  Mason knew that Danny was involved with both Peter Vithoulkas and some woman who Mason had never met. He also knew Danny would actually hold his hand if he freaked out that badly, but Mason swore to himself that he could cope. He would much rather have been traveling with Cam. His lover, the adrenaline junkie F/A-18 pilot, would have happily held his hand, kissed him or done whatever he could to distract Mason.

  "I'm fine," Mason said tersely.

  Trudging down the hallway to the plane entrance, Mason ducked through the doorway; being tall occasionally had some real disadvantages .

  ***

  It took a recitation of the alphabet, naming bones in the body, and about eight other self control techniques to get Mason through the take off. He spent the flight reading CVs and cover letters for orthopedic surgeons. With all the responsibilities Mason had shouldered in joining Division P, the orthopedic practice he was part of was getting the short end of the stick some weeks. After much discussion with the other two partners in the practice, the decision had been made to start hunting for a fourth doctor. Spreading out the patient load would help everybody. Finding the right person to mix with three hard headed doctors who already knew each other well enough to tolerate each other's personality quirks was going to be
tough.

  After reading through all the information supplied by the applicants for the orthopedic position, Mason's thoughts turned back to the "partner" entry in Jonas' file. Jonas Nightengale, the patient, was Navy just like Cam. What would happen if Cam got injured during something he was doing for the Navy? Mason certainly wasn't listed as next-of-kin on any military record. Would Division P step in and get hold of him? Obviously Division P had been notified in some way in Jonas' case. The idea of Cam lying in some military hospital, critically wounded, and dealing with the very real potential of psi shock was a sobering thought.

  Mason breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the plane touched down. Neither he nor Danny had more than carry-on luggage and if they were lucky the SEAL would be stable enough for transport in the next twenty-four hours.

  Walking through the airport, Mason called Cam. "Hey, I'm on the ground again."

  "Are you doing okay?" Cam sounded slightly concerned.

  "I'm fine. Danny even volunteered to hold my hand if I had a panic attack."

  That brought a chuckle from Cam. "I'm gonna swipe your car tonight and bring a couple of boxes of stuff over."

  "When I get back, we have to decide if we're trying to merge furniture or storing some of it," replied Mason. Only in the past few days had Cam agreed to move in with Mason, and Mason was blissfully pleased with the idea.

  "I don't have a whole lot, you know, and most of it's cheap crap. Anyway, we'll sort it out."

  "Yeah, eventually."

  "Call me tonight sometime. Let me know how it's going. Oh and remember to eat something," Cam admonished.

  "I will," promised Mason.

  ***

  Danny had arranged for a car to take them directly to the NAMI hospital from the airport. They had been told Jonas Nightengale was being flown in from the other direction, back to the U.S. in a cargo plane. Once that plane landed, Nightengale would be transferred to a helicopter that would bring him directly to the hospital. Hopefully, this would get the injured man to Mason in the minimum amount of time.

  Things never went according to plan.

  By the time Danny and Mason reached the hospital, Jonas had already been there for half an hour and was in the middle of having a CT scan done to assess his head injury. The military doctors refused patient access to both Danny and Mason. Valentine was pissed, and judging from the look on Mason's face, the doctor was worried.

  It took three phone calls and an additional half hour to begin to clear the problem. The staff neurologist condescended enough to allow Mason to view the CT scan results while the powers that be negotiated.

  ***

  Mason skimmed down through the CAT scan results on Nightengale. There was evidence of a tiny amount of bleeding in the brain. Mason's neurology knowledge was limited, but it didn't seem sufficient to account for Jonas' continued unconscious state. The initial exam records from the hospital indicated he was currently scoring about a six on the coma scale. Jonas would occasionally open his eyes in response to pain and periodically make sounds indicating discomfort. He would flex or withdraw from pain when his injuries were being examined and bandaged, but there had been no coherent communication.

  Mason suspected psi shock was a key player in Jonas' status in combination with all the injuries. Damn, he needed to get access to Jonas. There were potentially things that he could do for Jonas that conventional medicine wasn't capable of.

  He saw Danny striding back down the hallway toward him.

  "Any joy?" Mason asked.

  "Yes, finally. Let's head for ICU, I managed to get Director Bottman to yank the appropriate strings."

  ***

  Jonas Nightengale was propped up on his side to eliminate pressure on his badly burned shoulder. Approaching the bed, Mason immediately curled a couple of fingers around Jonas's wrist. It was a useless gesture from the traditional medicine point of view; the EKG display was less than three feet away. For a healer, though, the touch provided a wealth of information. God…Jonas was a serious mess, Mason instantly decided. Behind Mason, Danny pulled the curtain shut.

  "Do whatever you need to. I'm here to run interference," said Danny.

  Mason nodded and grabbed a stool that was pushed against the wall. He sat beside his patient and let the assessing part of his Talent scan Jonas in greater detail. Everything he was noting reinforced his idea that a profound case of psi shock was complicating all the physical injuries. The patient records indicated that Jonas had stopped breathing three separate times, gone into V-tach once and his blood pressure had been all over the place. Mason focused on settling Jonas's nervous system as a first task.

  Every unguarded touch must have been pure pain for the injured man. Mason gently touched the steri-strips holding the gash above Jonas' eyebrow shut, letting warm energy soothe raw hypersensitive nerves. He continued down the length of Jonas' face and on to his throat, damping pain as he went.

  ***

  Every psi did their own thing a little differently. Danny watched Mason working his magic on Jonas. The dark haired healer sat close to Jonas, both hands on his patient. Danny noted that Mason's eyes were open, even if they appeared to be focused on some spot of imaginary importance on the bed sheet. Danny compared that to his lover Peter, Division P's wunderkind healer. Peter had a tendency to close his eyes and just let his fingers do the walking when he was healing somebody.

  Danny also noticed the dampness of sweat beginning to stain Mason's blue dress shirt, a sign of the energy Mason was expending. He'd have to keep a close watch on that. He was aware that Peter believed Mason had some control issues, but Danny wasn't sure just how much of that was overprotective paranoia and how much was real. Danny had been away on business during the summer when Peter had damn near killed himself trying to save the life of another Division P agent.

  "Mason?" Danny said softly. There was no response and Danny wasn't certain if that was due to sheer concentration or something more dangerous. "Mason, should I go get you some food? Or a soda?" asked Danny, laying a careful hand on Mason's shoulder.

  Mason finally looked up. "Um, a soda would be good. Coke if they've got it."

  "I'll be back in a few minutes."

  ***

  Now that Jonas' nervous system was settling into a calmer state, Mason paid more attention to Jonas' mental presence and not just the crucial things like heart rate and blood pressure.

  Mason kept seeing the same little flutter of images. They certainly weren't his; they had to be Jonas's. A hand holding a deformed bullet on a chain and a woman's face being touched by a male hand. Mason held the injured SEAL's hand in his own and looked at the shape of the fingers. The hand in both images was Jonas's. What did the bullet mean? Mason had the impression it was something Jonas kept with him, something intensely personal and somehow connected to the woman. Maybe when Danny got back, Mason could ask him if Jonas had had any personal effects with him when he arrived at the hospital. In theory, barring clothing which usually got cut off, anything else would go into an envelope to be returned to the patient later; or the family if necessary.

  And who was the woman? Mason pondered. There were hints of strong emotional attachment to the woman but nothing hinted at a name or a location. Sister? Girlfriend? Wife was not a possibility; otherwise she would have been listed on Jonas' files with Division P. Anyone who cared deeply for Jonas could potentially help draw him back to consciousness. Mason wished he knew who the woman was.

  Mason pushed all those thoughts to the side for the moment, and began to focus what needed healing first. The burn in combination with the dislocation had done some serious damage to Jonas' shoulder. The ligaments were torn enough that surgery was going to be necessary to return the shoulder to even close to normal functionality. The deep gash in Jonas' leg had been stitched and was the least of the injuries. Mason focused on the burn. Surgical repair on the shoulder would have to wait until they got back to the Division P complex.

  ***

  Mason was still sitting bes
ide his patient when Danny returned. Danny stood watching for a moment. The heart monitor was now a nice steady even beep, hopefully evidence that Mason's healing skills were improving the whole situation.

  "Here's your Coke," Danny said, offering it to Mason.

  "Can I get you to open it for me? I don't want to take both hands off him at the moment."

  "Sure." Danny popped the top on the can, and handed it to Mason. "How's he doing?"

  "Better. There's shouldn't be any more apneic episodes or V-tachs, but he's still in pretty bad shape. Psychically and mentally, he's almost catatonic. I know it was probably a defense mechanism brought on by the injuries and the morphine and way, way too many people touching him. I'm not as good on the telepathic end as Peter, but I keep getting these little snips of memory." Mason went on to explain about the bullet and the woman.

  "You think the bullet thing is something he may have had on him out on the field?" Danny asked.

  Mason gulped some of the soda. "I think it's likely, kind of like a good luck charm."

  "I'll ask the nurses where his personal effects are."

  It took Danny about ten minutes to find the correct person to ask. The personal items had been stored differently than usual because among them was a K-Bar knife, a Leatherman and 9mm. In among the rest of it was a spent slug wrapped in a tight coil of wire and suspended from an inexpensive chain. Danny took it back to show Mason.

  "I think we need some very specific help with this, namely your partner Cam," said Danny.

  Mason's mouth quirked into a slight smile, "That is his thing, but he's going to need to touch it to have any hope of finding the woman."

  "I know, so step one's going to be getting him down here to put hands on this little thing, since I can't exactly just fax it to him."

  "Do you think the woman's in California? That's where Jonas is stationed," Mason replied.

  "I don't know. Jonas travels a lot, between SEAL team assignments and the stuff he does for us, she could be almost anywhere."