Apache Dawn: Book I of the Wildfire Saga

by Marcus Richardson

  Brenda thought for a moment. “How many did we have come in?”

  “Oh…let’s see,” he said as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Last count was twenty-two, I think.” He shrugged. “We’re going to see a significant rise in the ‘end of the world’ type injuries and behavior, I think. If people think this is The Great Pandemic all over again, a good number will try to get away with looting and whatnot, just like before. If that’s what we’re facing, we’re going to be in for a wild ride. L.A. got pretty nasty last go around.”

  “Wait,” Brenda said, hand to her throbbing head. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why not?” He pushed the glasses back into place on his nose. “It’s human nature to want to—”

  “No, not the reaction to H5N1—or whatever it is we’ve got here. I’m talking about the GSWs. I walked past three different gurneys as the EMTs ran them into the ERs. Each one had at least a double-tap. One had a triple-tap.”

  “Okay, you lost me,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “A what?”

  Brenda cocked her head, trying to work the cobwebs of sleep deprivation from her mind. Something wasn’t right and if her head didn’t feel so damn fuzzy, she might be able to puzzle it out. “Okay, a normal gunshot wound is one, maybe two bullets. Over in the Sandbox we’d occasionally get a stitcher. Where the victim is perforated by a trail of bullets up the leg or the side.”

  “Like in a drive-by,” agreed Dr. Fletcher. He took another sip of his coffee and nodded.

  “Right. But a double-tap, that takes skill. It’s where two bullets are placed on target real close together. The shooter aims and pulls the trigger twice in quick succession, with controlled movements to make sure that if the first bullet didn’t take down the target, the second does. Usually placed center mass to make sure the heart is stopped.”

  “Sounds like fancy shooting to me.”

  “It’s how the military trains its best shooters. I’m talking Special Forces, that kind of thing. A gang banger is lucky to hit his target, first off. To pull off a double-tap takes a LOT of training and skill.”

  “What if some Crip just got lucky?”

  “Three different vics, all with double-taps and a triple-tap on one?” She shook her head. “No way that’s luck. Maybe once. No, I’ve seen those wounds a lot in the Army. When we were attacked a few times at our bases, we had to go through the enemy dead and make sure…you know,” she said.

  “That they were enemies?” asked the surgeon, eyebrow raised.

  “That they were dead,” she replied coldly. “We weren’t there to make friends and win the hearts and minds of the locals. We were there to kill as many of them as possible to get Iran to surrender so America could focus on healing. But look,” she said, waving her hand. “The Iranians that I examined were nearly always taken down with double-taps. We had a lot of Rangers at our base. They’re pretty damn-good shots.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” Dr. Fletcher said around a mouthful of apple. “You think Army Rangers are out there in L.A. shooting people?” He grinned, white teeth flashing in the dimly lit room.

  “No,” she laughed. “I think something strange is going on…I’m just trying to work it out so I don’t go crazy thinking that we’re facing H5N1, round two.”

  “Fair enough,” he grinned.

  The door to the lounge burst open and a breathless nurse stuck her head in, followed by the noise of a hospital in chaos. “Dr. Fletcher! The Chief needs you, NOW. Oh, and you too, Dr. Alston. Come on, you’re not going to want to miss this!”

  The doctors grabbed their gear and raced to follow the nurse in her pale-green scrubs, already heading off down the crowded hallway. She pushed her way past a few police officers, one with a bandaged head.

  Brenda gasped as she stepped into the hallway behind Dr. Fletcher. “What the hell is going on?” she asked. There were people everywhere. Cops, paramedics, patients slumped against walls and sitting on the floor. More than one of the first responders was wounded, from the looks of all the bandages and torn clothing.

  “It’s getting real hairy out there,” the nurse called over her shoulder. “ILI cases are up to about 40 an hour,” she said, gently placing her hand on a cop to move him aside. “GSWs are still coming in. Almost all of them are DOA. Now the police are getting wounded.”

  “Did anyone say how?” asked Dr. Fletcher as he looked at Brenda. “Is there rioting or something downtown?”

  “Nothing we can figure out, just shots coming from dark alleys or from behind. One cop who was over near the beach said someone dressed like a soldier pulled an assault rifle on him. He says his partner reported seeing boats by the coast, then this guy jumps up and yells something and starts shooting. Big damn gun.”

  Dr. Fletcher shook his head. “That makes no sense at all.”

  “Did we get anything else?”

  “No,” said the nurse as she pushed a supply cart aside and headed for the double doors that guarded the entrance to the critical care ward. There were two men in black suits standing to either side of the door. “He died. Blood loss. The guy had taken three shots to the chest. Punched right through his vest like it wasn’t even there.”

  “Armor piercing rounds,” Brenda murmured. Dr. Fletcher raised his eyebrows.

  Brenda was still processing the nurse’s last comment when the two men in suits moved in unison to block their way to the critical ward. The facts were adding up to something that was really off-the-wall. Boats off the coast, strange men sporting automatic rifles and armor-piercing rounds. Military precision gunshot wounds. Now these two guys who looked like FBI agents. She frowned, unable to put her finger on the root cause of it all.

  “It’s okay,” the nurse said, nervousness evident in her voice. “This is Dr. Fletcher, and this is Dr. Alston.”

  Without moving or acknowledging the nurse, the man on the right lifted his hand to his face and spoke quietly into his sleeve. Brenda looked at his clean, close cropped hair, and noticed the wary look in his eyes which never stopped searching his surroundings. She surmised immediately that the guy had military training at a pretty high level.

  She turned to the other guard, whose mannerisms were identical. He was watching everything without spending too much time on any one person in front of him. He was alert, awake and ready. He had the same, clean cut, crisp, cookie-cutter appearance as the man talking into his sleeve, except he was black.

  “Who are you guys?” asked Brenda.

  The man who spoke into his sleeve looked at her and his cold gray eyes sent a shiver down her spine. There was no emotion there at all. No stress. In the midst of all the chaos of the shootings and mysterious illness, these guards were acting as if there were nothing wrong in the world at all. And at 0430 in the morning, no less.

  4:30 am, she chided herself. It’s not oh-dark-thirty anymore—you’re a civilian, remember?

  The one who had spoken into his sleeve touched his ear and nodded. “Okay, you’re cleared to take them back.” They stepped back and Brenda and Dr. Fletcher followed the nurse through the thick double-doors.

  “That was odd,” said Brenda. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the hallway before them. This area of a hospital would normally contain a few crit-care nurses and surgeons carrying charts or equipment carts, maybe a few family members of patients milling around. Brenda was fairly certain that men dressed for combat should not be here. Tactical vests, M4 rifles, helmets, and a whole gaggle of guys in those black tactical suits. She leaned to look around Dr. Fletcher—was that a German shepherd down there?

  “Janice, stop. Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on in my hospital?” barked Dr. Fletcher.

  “Lewis,” called a familiar gruff voice. “Over here,” said the Chief, waving from just down the hall. He was talking to a man in full battle lead-out who nodded in agreement and marched off, his rifle hanging by a combat sling at his side.

  “George, seriously, what the hell?” asked Dr. Fletcher with a sweepin
g gesture of his right arm that encompassed the overcrowded hallway. “We going to war?”

  “Maybe.”

  “What?” said Brenda and Dr. Fletcher at the same time.

  “We have a VIP down there in Suite Six.”

  “Who?” asked Dr. Fletcher.

  “The President of the United States,” said the Chief, rubbing his eyes. “And I’m getting to old for this shit,” he muttered.

  “Okaaay,” said Brenda. “Why is he here? If this is another stunt to gain publicity for his re-election campaign…”

  “He’s presenting with what we think is our mystery ILI.”

  “How serious?” asked Dr. Fletcher.

  “Right now, he’s got a fever of 104.5, half-delirious, increased heart rate and some bleeding from the mouth and ears. I swear, this thing looks more like hemorrhagic fever than influenza, but the tests—”

  “How long?” asked Brenda.

  “He’s been complaining of aches and pains for about 18 hours now, but took a real turn for the worse two hours ago. His personal physician made the call to get him here so he could be stabilized. They found what they thought was AFib on top of the flu.”

  “Good Lord,” sighed Dr. Fletcher.

  “And who are all these guys?” asked Brenda. She eyed the soldiers in the hallway. She was starting to wish her older brother Derek was here. He was a Ranger. She suddenly wanted someone right next to her, armed to the teeth that she could trust.

  “Those guys,” said the Chief with a nod of his head, “Are Secret Service. Outside of the people on this floor, no one knows the President is here. I’m told to make sure you understand this is a matter of urgent national security, what with Atlanta and all. No communications with the outside world until they say so. I don’t want to think what they’ll do to you if you get caught. Not under these conditions. Got it?”

  Brenda shook her head in disbelief. She couldn’t even begin to try and process the fact that Atlanta had been wiped off the map the day before. There was nothing she could do about that and she had plenty of other things to worry about, right in front of her. “This is crazy.” She really wanted to talk with her brother, Derek.

  And a martini. Definitely a martini.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” muttered the Chief. “Look, I wanted my best people working on the President, Lewis, and you’re one of them. Dr. Alston, you’re the only one of us with experience in something…well, anything close to this.”

  “What?” she gasped in surprise. “I’ve never dealt with anything like this—”

  “Maybe not, but you’ve been in combat. Have you seen the GSWs coming in?”

  Brenda had to quickly get her mental train back on the track after the sudden topic switch. “Uh…Yes, they are pretty strange—”

  “Not according to the Secret Service. The motorcade was ambushed on the way here. As a result, they’re taking over the ward and turning it into an impromptu fortress until they can get the President out of here.”

  “Attacked? By who?” she asked.

  “They didn’t stop to ask. They just plowed through the hail of bullets and got here as fast as possible. You should see their vehicles out back! Shot all to hell. I’m told they left several of their wounded men back out there in the streets somewhere. That’s how seriously they’re taking this.” He frowned. “They’re having trouble contacting anyone outside the hospital, like their radios are being jammed or something. He thinks there is some sort of national, or at least regional attack underway.”

  “Who’s attacking us? Whoever nuked Atlanta?” asked Dr. Fletcher. “I can’t get my head around this…”

  The Chief shook his gray, balding head. “I don’t know, and they don’t either, if you ask me. Agent Sheffield,” he said, indicating a man in a tattered black suit talking with three others, “Said he saw fully automatic weapons fire hit one of the motorcade vehicles from two different directions. He’s talking machine guns—he’s talking military-grade stuff, very high powered. Either the gangs got a hold of some new toys or…”

  “Or what?” asked Brenda.

  “Well, it’s just speculation, but the rumor is there’s some kind of assassination squad in L.A. trying to take out the President. The Agents over there in the corner think it may be the North Koreans.”

  “Oh my God,” muttered Dr. Fletcher. “That would mean we’re at war?”

  “What about the civilians?” asked Brenda. “If the President is here and these guys think he’s not safe…that means whoever the hell is out there trying to kill him may know he’s here. Everyone in this hospital is at risk now.”

  The Chief nodded. “I thought that too,” he said with a sad smile. “There’s nothing we can do. We can’t evacuate the President, his vitals are too weak. We can’t empty the hospital, there’s just too many people. Besides, where would we send them? Every hospital in L.A. is bursting at the seams with ILI cases.” He shook his head. “From what we can gather, every major hospital along the West Coast is in the same boat.”

  “This place will be a circus when the media finds out…” said Dr. Fletcher.

  “That won’t happen,” said the Chief with a glance at the German shepherd, sniffing around doors and cabinets. “The media think the President is still at his hotel. Agent Sheffield figures we have a few hours before they start to sniff around. But, he said they have ways to keep the media thinking the President slipped away and moved up north. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he says that should keep whoever is trying to kill him off guard as well. They’re trying to get military reinforcements until they can get the President out of here. Whatever the hell is going on, it’s serious.”

  “Is he responding to treatment, then?” asked Brenda. She wondered if Derek was getting a call at this moment to mobilize and head into war. Would she be able to talk to her brother again? Would she ever see him again? She tried to fight the tears starting to form in her eyes. It was still her first day of work, technically.

  “Not very well, but yes. He’s stabilized, which is more than can be said for most people in this hospital right now. Agent Sheffield says they had plans to get some of The Pandemic vaccine to the President before the trip but he refused on the advice of his political advisers. They said it would look cowardly and the media would eviscerate him for trying to act heroic and help the sick when there was no chance he could get sick. This close to the election, he listened to them.”

  “Politics!” hissed Dr. Fletcher.

  Brenda sniffed to get her emotions in check. You are back in the Army, girl, she told herself. Act like it! “So they can just get him the vaccine now! We know it’s effective after exposure, it just takes longer. Right?” asked Brenda.

  “Right. But they no longer have any.”

  “Any? Why?” she asked, confused.

  “There was an order from on high to consolidate the remaining vaccine supply at the CDC’s strategic vault last week. No one thought anything of it,” said the Chief.

  “Strategic vault…” said Brenda, looking back at Dr. Fletcher. “That’s Atlanta.”

  “Was,” said the Chief sadly. “I had a lot of friends down there…”

  “But wait, I thought the CDC had all the really important stuff buried deep underground in vaults…weren’t they designed to survive an attack by the Russians during the Cold War or something?” said Dr. Fletcher.

  “They were,” said the Chief, looking at his own hands.

  “Oh my God, that’s why Atlanta was nuked. Even if the vaults survived, the whole city would be so hot that no one would be able to get in to bring any surviving vaccines out,” Brenda said and slumped against the wall in exhaustion. “Why is this happening?” She slid to the floor, hands on her face. Exhaustion was knocking on her door again with the reminder that people could not function on two hours of sleep in forty-eight.

  “Without the vaccine, what hope is there for the President, or any of these people?” asked Dr. Fletcher. “Or us, for that matte
r? What if we catch it?”

  “I don’t know,” muttered the Chief sadly. “I just don’t know. I have to believe that those who have been previously exposed to H5N1—and survived—have a better than even chance of fighting this off.”

  “That’s something, I guess. But…?” asked Dr. Fletcher.

  “But…” said the Chief. “We sent off samples of the first cases Thursday. It’ll take a few days to be processed. We just don’t know,” he said, holding up his hands in a helpless gesture.

  Just then, a nurse behind her circular desk at the end the “T” intersection of hallways, sneezed violently. The entire ward went deathly silent as all heads turned to look at the poor woman. She went pale—a trembling hand still over her mouth and looked around with wide eyes at all the staring faces.

  “God help us all,” said the Chief.

  CHAPTER 8

  Glacier National Park, Montana.

  CHAD HUNTLEY LAY ON his side in the snow and tried to slow his breathing. He was a little surprised by the amount of snow this early in the season, but he figured he was high enough up in the Rockies that it was bound to snow sooner or later. He dusted the cold white powder from his weeks-old beard with the exposed fingers of his trigger hand.

  He was so close. He wanted badly to take a peek over the boulder that he was hiding behind but was afraid the movement would blow his cover. Instead he glanced down at the crude heartbeat monitor attached to his belt. The glowing point of light flickered but remained in the same spot on the monitor. The female cougar that had been tagged last year was acting erratically. He had been tracking her for a few increasingly cold days now and his suspicions grew the longer she sat still.

  He adjusted the grip on his rifle. The well-traveled Henry lever action was chambered in .45-70 and Chad loved it. It wasn’t as cool looking, he supposed, as the standard issue AR-15 his boss had issued him, but it had a soul. There was something that made him smile about the smooth polished walnut stock and heavy, solid barrel of the trusty Henry in his hands. It just felt…natural.