by James Hunt
Jim and Coyle ran along the dock. The screams and cries that were silenced by their distance from the blast grew louder the closer they moved to the giant crater. They ran past the main office, and Jim spotted Captain Streak talking to a group of soldiers while pointing in different directions. A portion of them broke off and sprinted towards the blast site. Jim waved his arms. “Terry!”
Terry whipped around. Dirt, blood, and ash soiled his white shirt. “Jim, you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
Two more soldiers rushed up to Terry. Their helmets were tilted forward more than usual, hiding their panicked eyes. “Captain, we’ve got twenty men trapped in the barracks that collapsed after the blast.”
“You boys get on the horn with CBMU 303 and tell them we need wreckage crews here ASAP.”
“Yessir!” they said synchronously.
Terry turned back to Jim and Coyle. “I need the two of you to report to the rear security office and wait there ‘till we sort this out. Angela!”
A young sailor with braided hair helped lift a gurney carrying a soldier with a missing leg into the back of an ambulance. She rushed over to Terry at the sound of her name. “Yessir?”
“I need you to escort these two back to the rear security office.”
Angela grabbed Jim’s arm, pulling him forward. “You gentlemen follow me.”
Jim called out to Terry, who was trotting off. “You need any help?”
Terry waved him off. “Just follow Angela and we’ll take care of it from here.”
Before Jim could object further, another earth-shattering blast rocked the base. Jim flew forward with Angela, whose head smacked against the concrete. Jim’s hands caught himself before his face hit the ground. Pain shot from his hands, wrists, and elbows up to his shoulders from the force of the blow.
A trickle of blood poured from Angela’s ear. Jim rushed over to her unconscious body. He checked her pulse. She was alive, and she was breathing. She moaned as her eyes fluttered open. Jim cradled her face gently in his hands. “Angela, can you hear me?”
Behind Jim, Coyle stumbled onto his hands and knees with an endless string of cursing. Jim glanced over to Terry, who was motionless on the ground. More sirens were blaring in the background, and an ambulance’s blue and red lights flashed in the distance. Jim threw his arms up into the air. “Hey, over here!” The ambulance made a sweeping turn over to them. Jim knelt down and cradled Angela’s head. “Angela, do you know what today is?”
“Tuesday,” she mumbled.
Jim picked up her security badge from the pavement beside her and examined it. “And can you tell me your last name?”
“Parker,” she whispered with her eyes half shut. She then turned her head sharply and threw up on the ground.
An EMS responder jumped out of the back of the ambulance. His gloved hands gripped the medical bag in his hand. Jim watched him shine a flashlight in her pupils and check her pulse. Jim patted him on the shoulder.
“I think she’s concussed. She knows her name and what today is, but the Captain over there has been motionless for the past two minutes.”
Jim watched the medic check Terry’s vitals. Then he heard the loud cracking of Terry’s ribs as the medic started CPR. He stumbled over to a building that Coyle was leaning against and examined Coyle for injuries, but couldn’t find any. Coyle’s eyes were closed and Jim slid his eyelids open. “Do you know your name?”
Coyle smacked Jim’s hand. “Shut up, Jim.”
“Doesn’t look like you have any brain trauma, except for what was already there,” Jim said with a half-smile.
Coyle forced a grin.
“You think you can stand?” Jim asked.
Coyle nodded as Jim helped steady him.
When Jim brought his attention to the rest of the surrounding area, he saw where the second blast had come from. A huge plume of smoke was rising out of the U.S.S. Midway. Tourists were running in all directions, trying to flee the blast site. There were only a handful of first responders on the scene and too many injured victims for them to help. Jim ran back over the ambulance and grabbed a first aid kit out of the back. Jim passed Coyle and shouted back at him. “Come on!”
The two of them ran along the dock next to the Midway when Jim saw a young man lying on the ground with his arm blown off. His horrific and painful screams filled the air as people around him ran for safety. Jim rushed towards the injured man, grabbing some gloves out of the bag. He tossed a pair to Coyle in mid-stride.
“What do you want me to do with these?” Coyle asked.
“Put ‘em on!”
Jim skidded to the ground next to the boy and started pulling out gauze and bandages from the first aid bag. Coyle fumbled with the gloves and knelt down beside Jim with a wince. The young man cried in agony as Jim tried to calm him. His shrieks grew louder after every glance he gave the bloody stump that used to be his left arm. Jim stuffed gauze into Coyle’s hands and shoved them onto the wound. “Keep steady, even, firm pressure. If the blood starts to seep through, just add more, but don’t remove the bandages you have. Let them pile up.”
Jim ran further up the dock a little ways to see if there was anyone else hurt. He scanned the dock, his eyes tearing from the smoke around him.
“Uh, Jim!” Coyle shouted.
Blood had soaked through the gauze. The white cotton turned crimson red when Jim rushed back over to Coyle and the now-unconscious man. Coyle’s fingers were now deep in puddles of blood.
“Jim, I’m out of gauze!”
“He’s losing too much blood. We need to pinch off the brachial artery to stop the flow.”
Jim removed the gauze and jammed his fingers into the stump to locate the artery. “I got it. Grab the IV tubing out of the bag and we’ll make a tourniquet to stop the rest.”
Coyle searched the bag for the tubing and flung it at Jim.
“Coyle, I’ll need your hands for this.” He instructed Coyle to wrap the tubing around the end of the stump. “Get as close to the edge as you can.”
While Coyle finished tying off the impromptu tourniquet, Jim dropped his ear down to the man’s face. “He’s not breathing. Check for a CPR mask in the bag.”
“A what?” Coyle asked.
“It looks like a water jug with a mouth piece on it,” Jim yelled back.
Coyle pulled the mask out and slid it over the man’s face. Jim stopped him. “No, you’ll need to open his airway up first. Tilt his head back with the palm of your hand, then place the mask over his mouth and give him two full squeezes of air… Good, now put the palm of your right hand right in the center of his chest, and then place your other palm directly over that. Perfect. Keep your arms rigid and bring your body weight over his body and press down hard. Do those thirty times followed by two more breaths with the mask and repeat.”
Coyle’s body shook with every compression. Sweat dripped off of his forehead. The blood on his hands dried and cracked in the sun. Jim kept coaxing him on.
“You’re doing great, Coyle. Keep it up.”
Jim looked around to see more ambulances arriving on the base. Another young man who was coughing terribly ran by them. “Hey! Go and grab those ambulances and tell them you have a priority over here. Tell them we have a patient with a severed limb who’s unconscious with severe blood loss.” The man hesitated as he saw the huge pool of blood Jim was kneeling in. “Go!” Jim shouted.
The man snapped back to reality and took off at a stumbled sprint. Jim knelt down and checked the man’s pulse. He couldn’t feel anything.
Two EMS responders with a stretcher came rushing up. The first one took over for Coyle, who had fallen back on the concrete, exhausted. The second knelt down by Jim.
“I’ve got the brachial artery pinched off, but he’s lost a lot of blood,” Jim told the responders.
Jim and the EMS responders lifted the man onto the stretcher while Coyle looked on in shock at what he’d just done. Jim followed them all the way back to the ambulance wi
th his fingers jammed inside the man’s stump. One of the EMS workers and Jim traded places when they got to the ambulance doors. The two EMS responders jumped in the back and the ambulance took off.
Jim walked back over to Coyle and surveyed the dozens of ambulances and fire trucks now on scene assisting the wounded. When he finally reached Coyle, he was sitting still, staring at the pool of blood the young man left behind. Jim put his hand on Coyle’s shoulder as he knelt down to him. “You did great.”
Coyle glanced back up at him with watery eyes and nodded his head. Jim stood back up and extended his hand to help him off the ground.
Firefighters were extinguishing the flames in the surrounding buildings. Debris lay strewn along all areas of the base. Jim couldn’t believe it. There was no way this was the same naval base he had entered this morning, but it was.
Jim saw Angela propped up on a stretcher as they were walking back and trotted over to see her. She was conscious with an IV running into her and a bandage wrapped around her head.
“Where’s Terry?” Jim asked.
“They took him up to the Naval Medical Center. He wasn’t breathing when they left.”
“Who’s second in command?”
“Captain Forth.”
“Where is he?”
Angela pointed behind Jim to the smoldering U.S.S. Midway as tears welled up in her eyes. Jim looked back at the fiery blast as the EMS responders loaded Angela into the back of the ambulance. They slammed the doors shut, startling Jim, and before he could say a word, the ambulance was off.
Jim rushed back over to Coyle, who was trying to hold himself up. Jim started to cough as the smoke in the air thickened. He grabbed Coyle’s arm and pulled him along back to their vehicles. He hoped beyond anything that they were still intact.
“Jim, what are you thinking? What’s going on? What are we gonna do?” Coyle asked between exhausted breaths.
Jim didn’t immediately answer, leaving Coyle to wonder if Jim had heard him. As the two of them headed off away from the chaos, Jim said aloud the one thing he was thinking. “Get the hell out of San Diego.”
Chapter 2 – Panic
Jim and Coyle found their cars intact where they’d left them. Jim threw his and Coyle’s bags in the back of his truck as Coyle tossed him the keys. He unlocked the back van doors and took a scan of its contents. He grabbed some of the multi-use tools that Coyle had, along with a tackle box, and combined them with the rest of the items in his truck. He locked the van and tucked the keys into his pocket.
Coyle looked at him suspiciously. “What are you doing?”
Jim hung on the driver side door. “It’ll be better if we take one car. My truck is a 4x4.” Jim got in and started the engine while Coyle mulled over the fact that he was leaving his van and tools in the middle of all the madness. Jim rolled down the window and shouted, “Hey, the longer we wait, the worse it’s going to get!”
Coyle lingered next to his van.
“Coyle, if I’m wrong, I’ll buy you a new van,” Jim said.
Coyle let out an exasperated breath and jumped in the truck. “That one has sentimental value.”
Jim pulled out of the space, dodging the emergency and military vehicles scattered around the base. The crowds from the U.S.S. Midway Museum were half-awestruck and half-panicked. The majority of the people had been evacuated from the immediate area, and all of them seemed to spill into the road, clogging up traffic.
Police arrived in droves and started herding the tourists away from the harbor and roping off sections of the base. Jim wanted to get out before they were stuck there for questioning.
Drivers became restless as the crowds thickened and patience dwindled. Horns and shouts from all over could be heard for miles. The EMS vehicles flipped on their sirens as cars tried to make room for them to pass.
A military officer walked to one of the upset drivers and tapped his AR-15 on the glass of his driver side window. “Honking won’t make it go any faster, pal.” The driver sank back into his seat and took his hand off the horn.
Jim was right on the curb in between the intersection and the highway. “If we can make it up to the street, I can jump the median and get on the interstate back to my place.” Jim drummed his fingers on the steering wheel then opened up his glove box for a pen and paper. He shoved the pen and paper into Coyle’s hands. “Make an inventory of everything in the truck. Tools, maps, food, everything.”
Coyle rummaged through the glove box, checked behind the seats, and got out into the bed of the truck and wrote down everything that he could find. He climbed back into the truck after the survey. During that time they had moved about a foot. He handed the list to Jim, who looked it over. “Not bad. We could be in a worse situation.”
Coyle surveyed the massive, un-orderly exit of families on vacation and turned to look at Jim, who was still studying the paper in his hands. “Jim, what the hell happened back there? What kind of a blast does that to a military naval ship?”
“It was probably a dirty bomb. Terrorists will take a dynamite base explosive with a radioactive component to enhance the blast radius and sheer power.”
All of the frustration, fear, and anger that Coyle had been feeling came pouring out. He punched the front dashboard repeatedly. “Goddamnit! How could have this happened? We’re on a military base!” He paused for a second. “In San Diego!”
“Knock it off! You’re going to bring attention to us, which I would like avoid,” Jim said.
Coyle slammed his head back into the headrest. Jim put his hand on his shoulder as he spoke. “The San Diego Naval Base is the central logistical hub for the entire southwest region of the United States. It’s homeport for the Pacific fleet and is also one of the Navy’s formal training grounds. It’s a perfect target for somebody wanting to hurt the United States.”
A horn honked behind them, and Jim noticed that traffic had picked up a bit and he lurched forward. He was able to pass the intersection and jump onto the highway, where he went twenty over the speed limit.
The truck pulled into Jim’s driveway and he jumped out. Coyle followed suit and started to reach in the back to grab their gear. Jim stopped him. “Leave it. We won’t be long.”
“We’re not staying here?”
“No, we have to get out of the city.”
Jim swung the front door open and ran to the small closet in the hallway. He pulled the backpack out and placed it in the hallway, then took out his keys and put the smallest in the lock of the black safe that lined the inside of the closet. He opened it to reveal a shotgun with a tactical grip, an AR-15 with a scope, two 9mm pistols, and stacks of ammo for each. The assault rifle would be good for any combat situations, and he had a variety of shells for the 12-gauge for hunting ranging from the big buckshot shells to the “number four” shells for duck hunting. Jim grabbed a large duffel bag from the top and started emptying the safe.
Jim pulled a holster out and strapped it to his belt. He liked to keep his pistol at his hip for easy access, and the Ruger LC9 was small enough to be hidden under a jacket without looking too bulky. He stuffed one of the pistols in his bag and kept the other one out, loading a magazine in it. He shoved it in the holster, covering it up with his shirt, along with two spare magazines. He walked back down into his room and grabbed a jacket out of the closet.
Jim placed the duffel bag of guns and ammo behind the seat of his truck along with the backpack. When he came back inside, he saw Coyle sitting on the couch with Tigs in his lap purring loudly. Jim walked to the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of pills from the cabinet and headed over to Coyle. He tossed the pills into his hand and Coyle examined the bottle.
“What’s this?” Coyle asked.
“Potassium-iodide. It’ll help fight off any radiation poisoning we may get. Take one.”
Jim returned with a bottle of water and handed it to Coyle to help swallow the pill, then he went to grab his cat’s cage and a small pre-prepared bag of cat food.
“So w
here are we headed to once we get out of San Diego?” Coyle asked from the living room.
Jim stacked the food in his pack and walked back down the hallway. “Phoenix. My sister and niece live there. We can stay with them for a while.”
“You sure it’s cool if I come with?”
“It’ll be fine.” Jim picked up Tigs and put her in the cage.
Jim gave a last glance around his home and took it in. A few pictures of him and his Navy buddies lined the walls. His sister’s family portrait with his niece and brother-in-law sat atop the entertainment center. He might never sleep under this roof again.
“Coyle, we need to get going. The roads will be packed soon if they’re not already, and we still need to grab supplies for you.”
