“Don’t go there,” Clark said, his voice a little sterner than he planned. “Let me see what I can get out of Perez. Help Shaw sweep the area, I’ll let you know.”
Dukes nodded, and exited the SUV.
“All right Airman Perez, it’s time to do your stuff again,” Clark punched in the Pentagon phone number for active field operations. It was a number that he had memorized while on duty in Afghanistan as a backup line of communications in case the radios went down.
Clark got the active switchboard, where he was asked his identification number, a clearance code, why he was calling and under whose orders was he operating. The lower ranking seaman on the other end of the phone sounded frazzled, but listened to Clark’s answers.
“It says here,” the Seaman said aloud, as he read his screen. “It says that you’re a Specialist, not Lieutenant. Is that correct? Sir,” he asked, tossing the ‘sir’ incase his data was incorrect.
“I received a field promotion from Colonel Horn, commander of the Georgia Guard,” Clark spoke, unsure how much credit he was about to get from the young sounding enlisted man.
“Okay, Sir, I have noted it in your record. You would be surprised how often that has happened in the last few days,” the Seaman let on.
“I can imagine.”
“Everything is clear on my end, Sir, but it will be up to Colonel Horn to make the final adjustment in your file.”
“Understood.”
“I’ve also located Senior Airman Perez in the JCS, and will connect you. If you’ll just hold a second, Sir.”
Clark smiled to himself, the civility and professionalism of the US military was second to none, and for that one second, he appreciated the fact. “Thank you, Seaman.”
“Yes, Sir.”
Clark watched through the windshield as the men swept the grounds. They were rounding the building, with each about twenty yards apart from the other. The helicopter that Tasha had reported earlier was no longer audible. That fact was one worth celebrating alone.
As Clark waited for the connection, a time that grew into minutes, he noted that in the frantic first few minutes of emerging on site, Emma had not reemerged from the church, and that gave him a little concern. He got out of the SUV, holding the sat phone to his ear and walked over to Shaw.
“There’s one dead guy in the back. He has a sheet over him. From the marks in the ground, and the way the back of the church is shot to shit, I’d say that’s the guy nicked by the helicopters. Her story checks out, so far.”
Clark nodded at the intel, and put a hand over the telephone’s microphone so he could speak. “Good to know. Did you get a look inside?”
“Just as I passed the window, Sir. It looks like the girl, Emma and the trooper they’re working on are the only ones inside; at least from what I can see. Did you get us a dust-off inbound for the injured guy?”
“I wish,” Clark said, raising his eyebrows at the thought that he could somehow command the Pentagon to send them a medical evacuation helicopter. “Take a pass inside; see what Emma’s status is. I’ll be in A-SAP.”
Shaw nodded his understanding of the order and then made eye contact with Dukes, who was rounding the building. He made a motion for Dukes to circle back around to the back, and that he would enter the building from the front.
Clark didn’t like just standing around and holding the phone to his ear, but he held on for the hope that if he could engage Perez, it might make his life much easier. He heard the line click, and then ring to an extension.
“I told you not to call here again,” Perez growled into the phone after she picked up the receiver.
“Perez? Perez, this is Clark.”
“Clark? What are you…”
“Listen, the Chinese have stolen the Presidential Humvee, and they have the children onboard. We’ve been tracking them for hours, but, I need your help!”
CHAPTER 29
Emma could smell the wounded man before she entered the room; large amounts of blood have a particular odor. She looked at the floor, and could see that there was a trail of blood on the floor. A quick glance down the hall showed the trail lead from outside what was left of the portion of the church. She also caught a glimpse of Dukes and Shaw as they walked around back, rifles at the ready.
“He’s in here. The boys got him to the couch.”
Emma let the girl lead her into the priest’s office. In a split second, she assessed everything as quickly as she could, deciding to take over the situation.
“Did you administer the IV?” She touched the bag; feeling for how much fluid was left; not much.
“Yes, yes, ma’am. That’s the second bag. We don’t have anymore.”
Emma noted that the girl, with no medical training had done a remarkable job, considering the situation. She smiled a small smile at the girl before lifting the sheet away from David’s body.
“Did you pack it with anything before wrapping it?” She asked, gently peeling back some of the wrapping, in order to get a better look.
“Yes, ma’am.” Tasha paused. “Pads.”
“Pads?”
“Yes, ma’am, pads, sanitary pads from the woman’s bathroom in the church.”
Emma looked at the girl; she didn’t think she was more than fifteen. “You did a really great job. Using those for this was brilliant. In fact, you probably saved his life.”
Tasha’s lips curled a little, but she wasn't ready to smile.
“But,” Emma continued, flipping her medical kit open. “Let’s see if we can help a little more. Okay?”
“Yes, ma’am, please do.”
“How’s it going in here?” Dukes asked from the doorway.
“He’s in pretty bad shape, but Tasha did a great job,” she replied, knowing that the girl had been shaken to her core, and needed all the extra encouragement she could get.
“Hey,” Clark said coming in behind Dukes; he still had the phone to his ear. “I’ve got Perez on the horn, and she has a bead on the hummer.” He was about to ask if the wounded man could travel, but it only took a second to realize that that was not going to happen. “We need to go, and…”
“Leave me here,” Emma insisted, cutting him off.
“But…”
“Look, I know I have a deep sense of responsibility for the kids, but…” she looked down at her patient and knew that he might die without her help. “Leave me a gun and a radio.”
“Please don’t go, I have guns and a radio,” Tasha pleaded to Emma.
“I’m not going to leave you.” She reached out and took the girl’s hand, pulling her close.
Clark looked at Emma; he could see the conflict in her eyes. “You need to keep yourself safe; they could be anywhere.”
She shrugged and half laughed; her stomach felt as though she had swallowed a ball of burlap twine.
“Emma, I’ll get them back,” he offered, his eyes as fixed onto hers as he could muster.
She nodded, not letting the tear form at the rim of her eye, like she felt like doing.
With that, Dukes and Clark ran out of the room, collecting Shaw on the way out of the church. A few seconds later, she heard the SUV spinning gravel in the parking lot as the three men went after the children.
“Why don’t you get your radio, and the gun you were talking about, and bring them in here. We’re also going to need a few more towels, some water for us to drink, a straw, and if you can find anything like Gatorade, bring that too.” Emma suggested, setting the girl on a task so that she could do a more thorough evaluation.
Emma watched Tasha leave, and then she removed the last layer of bandages, exposing the open wound. Thankfully, his bleeding was under some sort of control. Judging from the amount of blood that she walked by to get to the office, she was sure that the bullet had ruptured an artery. It was by the grace of God, and Tasha’s quick thinking, that she had managed to seal it off.
Emma removed her gloves from the emergency kit, donned them, and then set out to break open t
he sterile suture kit. She had assisted in sewing up hundreds of people, but, except for nursing school and throwing a stitch into her own self, she had never attempted something as grand as she was about to do.
“You look like you don't know where to start,” Tasha observed, reentering the room with the portable radio, water, two rifles and a few protein bars.
“Yeah, well, I’m a nurse, not a surgeon. At a hospital, an injury like this would have skilled hands piecing it back together, not those of a nurse.”
“But, you’ve seen something like this done before. Right?”
“Unfortunately, yes, many times. I did my primary internship at Grady Hospital in downtown Atlanta. Well, it used to be in downtown Atlanta, you know, before.”
“Yeah.”
“So, at Grady, you get all of the tough stuff like shooting, stabbings, really bad car accidents. Well, anyway, all the bright young doctors want to do their residency there. All because so much bad stuff happens to people, and that is the place where they are taken. It truly is a remarkable learning environment.”
“So, does that mean that you can do it? You can sew him back up?”
She looked up at Tasha. “I’m going to have to; and, I’m going to need your help. Okay?”
Tasha nodded, and Emma squirted her hands with antibacterial cleanser.
“Here, put these on once your hands dry,” she said, handing Tasha a second pair of gloves.
“Okay, so, what do you plan on doing?”
Emma breathed in and out deeply before speaking. “I’m going to do my best to close both sides of this wound. If I see any bleeders in there, I will do my best to close those, too.”
“Ah, can you use something like heat or something to stop the areas that are bleeding?”
Emma raised her eyebrow at the question. “Actually, yes, we could. You’re talking about cauterization of a wound. I would only do that in an area that didn’t have enough area left to sew back together. The good thing is that our friend Dukes is like a super prepper, and he went really overboard with this trauma kit. I actually have a battery powered cauterizer gun. So, if it comes to that, we’re prepared.”
“Well, I can almost bet that Jack and Lucy are thankful that you’re the one here to help their father. That’s for sure.”
The statement of thanks was simple, and almost slipped past the focused ER nurse, turned airline gate agent.
Emma stopped threading the suture needle and turned her head to look at the girl. “What did you say?” It came out more of a whispered question. A wave of goose bumps swarmed over her skin in anticipation of the answer.
“Jack and Lucy, his children. He doesn’t know that they’re alive.”
Emma’s mouth was hanging open, and she seemed to be searching for words.
“Miss Emma, are you okay? Is it something I said?”
Emma shook her head as a smile spread across her face. “What are the odds? I mean, in a world like it is now?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Tasha, I have been trying to get two teens, named Jack and Lucy, back to their father here in Alabama, for almost two weeks. Are you saying that the same Jack and Lucy that are with Penny right now, are his children?”
Tasha looked from Emma to David’s near lifeless body on the couch. “Yes.”
CHAPTER 30
Joseph had been driving for the better part of an hour. He felt confident with a half tank of fuel and a hostage secured in the back seat. Thankfully, the girl had remained quiet for most of the hour. He liked it that way; the Penny girl from earlier had driven him crazy with her pointless questions. He looked back at the new girl, again. He didn’t care about what happened to her; she was just a means to help him survive. The girl was balled up, trying to melt herself into the corner. He smiled.
Assured that his hostage was not a distraction, Joseph looked through the front windshield, up at the sun. He was trying to get his bearings by using the sun as a guide. Navigation by the sun was nothing new, the practice had been around for tens of thousands of years, but he was out of practice, and the winding roads and strange landscape didn’t allow him to maintain a consistent heading. The gauges on the vehicle were faulty, and he didn't trust them. Besides the fuel gauge, the only other component that seemed to operate was the radio; but even that he treated as if faulty. He had been very careful when using the radio, so as not to give away his position. His attempts at contacting his command had been fruitless.
As each mile passed, frustration seemed to take over Joseph’s persona. Battle fatigue, stress of being on the run, hunger, sleeplessness, witnessing the murder of his friends, and being cut off from his comrades were all etching away at his mind and beginning to get the better of him. It was at that moment, when he felt that he had exhausted every angle of his rescue, that he remembered something critical, and he slammed on the brakes.
Deb had been given the impression that she had retreated into herself. But, in fact, she was memorizing every sign, every mile marker, and every road that they crossed. She was determined that she would escape the madman that held her and would find her way back to her home. What she didn’t expect was the erratic way her captor drove; always changing directions and constantly second guessing his actions. But, with that said, this was the first time that he had slammed on breaks; the action tossing her from her plush seat and onto the floorboard of the back seat.
“Ouch! What?” Deb said, an unintentional reaction. Her voice flowed over the speaker system of the vehicle.
Joseph took no notice of her reaction. Instead, he engaged the parking brake, took the rifle off the passenger seat, and got out of the truck. They were stopped on a two-lane road, next to a green mileage sign that read, “Oxford 18, Anniston 22”. There were a few abandoned cars about a hundred kilometers ahead of them, but there was no activity around them, and the rest of the road appeared empty.
The coming of a war has made the rabbits run and hide, he thought to himself before turning his gaze to the sky.
Deb watched him look around, his eyes following the sky, and then the curve of the mountains in the distance. He appeared to be looking for something, an airplane or helicopter, perhaps. She looked where he was looking and didn’t detect any movement against the backdrop of green hills and brown fields. But, by his reaction, he saw or knew something that she didn’t see or know.
With a new sense of purpose, Joseph flung the back door open, causing her to jump and retreat as far away from him as possible. She pulled herself small and leaned against the opposite door. And that is when she felt it pushing into her back, the door handle. Before he said anything to her, she put her hand on the handle and gently tested it, but she was met with stiffness, and an unwillingness to move; it was still locked from the inside.
“Get out!” Joseph ordered.
She didn’t move.
He swung the rifle up, pointing it at her. “Don’t make me ask again. Get out of the vehicle!”
Deb thought about resisting again, but then a calmer sense of purpose prevailed, and she started moving according to his command. The open door represented freedom from the machine, but she would still have to escape the man. All in due time, Deb, she said to herself. It was a phrase that her father always used with her; and something that she didn’t truly understand until now.
Deb put her feet on solid dirt and breathed in the hot summer Alabama air; freedom was measured in small doses. Humidity never felt as good as it did in that instant. But, small victories are short lived. Joseph put a hand on her shoulder and shoved her harshly to the ground. She had no time to react, and barely enough instinct to get her hands out in front of her before hitting the ground. She rolled with skill of playing endless hours of touch football with her family and college star brother.
With the girl out of the way, Joseph lunged into the backseat, obviously looking for something. A few seconds later, he emerged with the top shirt uniform of his former comrade; a man that was still lying dead on her family
farm as far as she knew.
She caught her breath as Joseph drew a knife, but she wasn’t his target. Instead, he slashed and cut at the mesh fabric of the shirt; trying to get to something sewn into the upper portion of the sleeve.
Joseph scolded his mental capabilities; he knew all along that there was a battlefield communications device hidden in the fabric of the dead man’s shirt. Why he hadn’t thought of using the device earlier was a puzzle. His personal battlefield communications device had been destroyed during the initial firefight days earlier, and it just never dawned on him that he had another way to communicate with his chain of command.
Deb pulled herself up from the ground just at Joseph freed the green metallic device from the dead man’s shirt. She found herself fighting the urge to ask, ‘what is it?’
The device was about the size of a matchbox, painted olive green, and powered by a small internal battery. This was the Chinese version of the United States’ Battlefield Combat Identification System, or BCIS. The BCIS system is powerful in that it can give real time telemetry to leaders that need to direct the movement of troops. But, for the system to work, it had to be within 25,000 meters, or roughly 15 miles of a relay terminal. It also had to be working, two facts that Joseph did not know.
Joseph turned the device over and over in his hand, as if trying to see into the fiber enforced plastic. With no external LED or noise, he had no way of knowing if the device was working, let alone connected to a network. The only way to know if the transponder was operational for sure was for him to crack it open.
“Stay there,” Joseph issued his warning.
Deb nodded, pulling herself up to the balls of her feet; putting herself into a position to move quickly. But, with a quick survey of the surroundings, she came to the same conclusion that Joseph had earlier; there was no place to run. On either side of them was open pastures, fence lines and oblivious cows chewing away at grass. She would need cover to run to, something like a house, or a creek bed. So, instead of running, she watched and waited for her opportunity. All in due time, Deb, her father’s voice pierced her thoughts for a second time.
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