Speed the Dawn

by Philip Donlay

  Donovan rushed to his side, set aside the flashlight, then knelt and wrapped William up in his arms. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

  “You’re here,” William uttered between ragged gasps of air as he blinked at the light. “Help me.”

  Donovan kept William from moving, his heart breaking at the terrible pain he was enduring. “Shannon, get the drugs, now.”

  Shannon sat the backpack down and unzipped the flap. Using the flashlight, she grabbed a handful of vials and several sterile packs of syringes and laid them on the floor.

  “What are they?” Donovan asked.

  “There’s several. Some are fentanyl, a few propofol, but mostly morphine,” Shannon answered. “The packages are the syringes and needles.”

  “I say we start with the morphine. I’m assuming one vial is one dose?”

  Shannon handed the light to Donovan and ripped apart a package. “A vial is ten milligrams.” She attached a needle to the barrel of the syringe, held the vial upside down, inserted the needle, and emptied the small container. Without hesitation, she stuck the needle in William’s thigh and pushed the plunger all the way down.

  Donovan could feel William’s muscles begin to relax. His eyes softened and far less agony marred his face.

  “Where are we?” William asked.

  “We’re in Pebble Beach,” Donovan said. “How much do you remember?”

  “I was on the golf course. Everyone ran.”

  Shannon grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator, twisted off the cap, and knelt next to Donovan to let William take a sip, then another, until he turned his head away.

  “I remember it getting dark, and all I could think about was the mistake I made. I’m so sorry,” William said as his eyes filled and tears trickled down his lined face. “I should never have allowed you to go through with what we did. I couldn’t bear how much pain you were in.”

  Donovan tilted his head in confusion. William’s drug-induced train of thought made no sense. “It’s okay, we’ve got you. You’re going to be fine. The drugs are going to take away your pain.”

  “You would have survived. Robert Huntington was strong, but I got in your way. I’m so sorry.” William’s words became slurred. “We didn’t need to kill you. We could have proven them all wrong. I failed you. Please forgive me.”

  Shannon’s eyes grew large, and Donovan felt his nerve endings begin to buzz, trapped between William and Shannon. All he could do was sit, helpless against the words spilling from William. Not only was he distressed at what Shannon was hearing, he was horrified that William had carried around his regret for decades.

  “We know you didn’t kill Meredith,” William said in a whisper. “I’m so sorry I robbed you of your life.”

  William was fading fast, his eyes blinking slowly as he tried to focus. Donovan was shocked by the words and couldn’t help but briefly wonder what his life would have been like in William’s version. There was no debate. Donovan was exactly where he wanted to be. William finally closed his eyes and was out, but the damage was done.

  Shannon went to the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of water, and drank most of it in one prolonged swallow. When she’d finished, she handed one to Donovan.

  “Let’s get William back up on the chaise. We need to change the dressing on his ankle.”

  “No wonder you know Pebble Beach so well,” Shannon said, her arms crossed across her chest.

  “Help me take care of William, and then we’ll talk.” Donovan needed time to gather his thoughts. He hadn’t had to face the reality of his secret becoming public for years. At this moment, he had to add one more to the very short list of people who knew he had once been Robert Huntington.

  Together they lifted William back onto the chaise lounge. Shannon used a towel to wipe up the blood on the floor. She pulled out the last two water bottles and set them down.

  Donovan unfolded and spread out a clean towel at the foot of the chaise lounge and dumped the medical supplies from the plastic bag they’d loaded at the hospital. He took a moment to turn every package right side up and sort them by category.

  “Are you thinking about trying to push the bone back into place?”

  “No, I’m afraid we’d make matters worse. For the moment, his toes are pink and warm, so the blood is flowing to his foot. I say we just rewrap the ankle and leave the rest for a doctor.” Donovan handed the penlight back to Shannon.

  “I found an ankle splint in the emergency room.” Shannon rifled through the pile of medical supplies. “Maybe we can use it to replace the truck’s mat.”

  “Nice,” Donovan said as she ripped open the plastic and held the adjustable splint above William’s ankle, eyeing the fit. “We might have to modify the straps, but this could work.”

  Shannon set the splint aside, grabbed a pair of surgical scissors, and ripped them free from the packaging. She handed them to Donovan, but didn’t make eye contact.

  Donovan understood she was trying to absorb a great deal of information. He took the scissors and began to cut away at the earlier bandage. He peeled off layer after layer, until he reached the final clump of dressings, which he gently removed and tossed aside. So far, William hadn’t so much as flinched. Blood oozed from the opening, and the skin at the edge of the wound looked as if it were starting to darken. He twisted the cap off one of the water bottles and poured most of it over the wound, saving the last for himself. The single swallow felt good on his dry throat. He repeated the process, and then used a clean towel to absorb the water on William’s foot and ankle.

  “Here’s the antibiotic ointment.” Shannon handed him a tube with the top already removed.

  Donovan squeezed out some of the contents and had an idea. “Unwrap some of the gauze pads, and hand them to me one at a time.”

  Shannon placed the penlight on William’s thigh with the light aimed at the supplies. “Do you want the biggest ones or the medium-sized ones?”

  “Medium,” Donovan said, and applied the antibiotic directly to the first gauze square, and then pressed it onto the wound, listening carefully for any response from William. There was none. Once Donovan had the wound covered, he asked for the large pads and covered the wound with another layer and then finished with several strips of white tape to hold everything in place. He leaned back, stretching his neck from side to side.

  “Much better. Now, what about this?” Shannon picked up the plastic splint and held it above William’s ankle.

  Donovan calculated the dimensions and selected a roll of elastic bandage. “I’m thinking we wrap the ankle to provide some padding, and then we position the splint, and use Velcro straps to hold it in place.”

  Working quickly, Donovan and Shannon fit the elastic bandage underneath William’s ankle, foot, and calf, until all the gauze was covered and secured. The entire time, William lay still with his eyes closed. The long shadows, cast by the penlight distorting his features, made him look older, almost otherworldly, like he’d already passed away.

  When she and Donovan finished, Shannon stood and went to the sink, and with the last of the water pressure, rinsed the blood from her hands. She turned until she made eye contact with Donovan. “It’s true. William wasn’t making anything up. You’re him.”

  Donovan heard the low rumble the same time Shannon did. She snapped off the penlight. Donovan rose to his feet and moved through the darkened hallway until he could see out the front window. The two motorcycles, headlights ablaze, cruised slowly down the street. He could see the riders, their heads turning, surveying each house as they rolled past. The bald man with the tattoos looked straight up the driveway, and for the briefest of moments, though Donovan knew he was impossible to spot, he felt like they were zeroed in on each other in the darkness, readying for a fight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  LAUREN DIALED ERNIE’S cell phone and waited for him to answer. She was back on the bridge, standing, leaning over to study the details of an aeronautical chart Montero had retrieved fr
om the helicopter. She ran her finger along the shoreline of Pebble Beach and then beyond, wondering where Donovan could have taken refuge.

  “Deputy Director Rincon.”

  “Ernie, it’s Lauren. We need to talk.”

  “You’re damn right we do. Where in the hell are you?”

  “I’m out on the Eco-Watch ship, the Buckley.” Lauren ignored Ernie’s understandable anger at her disappearance. The playing field was changing rapidly and the men in San Jose only had part of the picture. “Are you someplace you can talk?”

  “Hang on a second,” Ernie said. “Give me time to walk down the hall to the office you were using earlier.”

  Lauren heard a door shut and Ernie exhale. “Ernie, I’m sorry I bolted like that. The helicopter was called in for a rescue, and I needed to leave. To be honest, the chaos there with all of the politics and posturing was less than productive. Plus, I needed a place where I have unlimited use of the latest communications equipment. This ship provides me with all of that.”

  “I get it,” Ernie said with a sigh. “If I could get out in the field, I would. We keep getting bits and pieces of what’s happening in Monterey, and none of it is good. Several volunteer crews, including some K-9 units, have gone into the city trying to locate survivors and establish usable routes that EMS crews can utilize at first light. We haven’t found much, mostly victims who for whatever reasons didn’t evacuate. Besides fire and carbon monoxide, the bigger problem with urban fires is the high levels of poisonous gases that some materials give off as they burn. Hydrogen cyanide, sulphur dioxide as well as phosgene are formed when certain household products, such as plastics, PVC pipe, and vinyl are burned. These gases don’t dissipate outward like gases from forest fires—they can linger and build up in structures, form deadly pockets where you don’t expect them. We had to pull all the units out—it’s just too dangerous right now.”

  “I think you need to start pulling everyone back,” Lauren said. She’d been around Ernie long enough to know that his firefighter mentality pushed him to get in there and fight the fire and save the people. It was a mind-set that existed in everyone who fought fires, a necessity that allowed a unique group of people to run toward the fire instead of away. “I’m waiting for data to confirm my theory, but I think we’re only hours away from a significant change in the meteorological conditions.”

  “What kind of a change?”

  “High winds out of the southwest.”

  “No way. We just looked at the forecast while we planned our air and ground attacks for first thing in the morning.”

  “Check the time and date of those forecasts. There haven’t been any updates because two of the GOES satellites are down. We’re trying to pull in observations from other agencies, foreign governments, any hard data we can get our hands on. Right now, the downside is it’s the middle of the night, on a weekend, and while we don’t have visual confirmation yet, there are signs that the remnants of a tropical storm have veered north, and the low-pressure area is going to impact our area.”

  “Evangeline?” Ernie said, as what Lauren was telling him clicked.

  “Yes, though I’m surprised you know what I’m talking about. People in California rarely pay any attention to the tropical storms that sweep across Mexico.”

  “I have some good friends who are seasoned boaters. They were planning a fishing trip down south and they invited me, but said they were waiting and watching the tropical storm before they made any final decisions.”

  “Ernie, based on rough calculations at my end, we could see winds start to pick up in less than two hours, and they’ll continue to build over the next twelve hours.”

  “What kind of velocities are we talking about?”

  “Too soon to tell.” Lauren glanced down at the legal pad where she’d made her early calculations. The two numbers she’d circled were easy to spot. “I predict the winds will reach forty miles an hour, with gusts possibly as high as sixty miles per hour.”

  “That’s it, then,” Ernie said as if the air had been forced from his lungs. “If we have as much as twenty-mile-per-hour winds fanning these flames, we’re going to lose the entire peninsula.”

  “What if we get the winds I’m talking about?” Lauren asked, wanting to hear the answer directly from Ernie.

  “There are so many variables. Offhand, I say we lose Salinas, and if we don’t hold it there . . .” Ernie paused as he fully imagined the enormity of the situation. “It could burn all the way to San Jose. Maybe consume the entire Bay Area.”

  “We agree, then,” Lauren said. “The Pentagon is already aware of what is happening. People are starting to work on this, but you and I are at ground zero, and they’ll be coming to us for answers. I’ll do what I can to provide the meteorological data. You figure out how to fight this fire.”

  “We’re going to need some expert input on fire behavior,” Ernie said. “I need to call a colleague in Montana. He works at the Forest Service Fire laboratory. I’ll call you back when I have him on the line. Give me ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be here,” Lauren said. She disconnected the call and dug into her phone to see if the latest images from Calvin had arrived. She searched for what she was looking for, opened the file, and began to scroll through the various pictures of Monterey, using her fingers to enlarge the area. The images were still too small for her to make any determinations. She sat down at the console and brought up Calvin’s e-mail on the large high-definition screen. As the image filled the screen, Lauren minimized it, clicked through her inbox, and saw the earlier images Calvin had sent hours ago, just after the initial meteor event. She felt Ryan slide from his captain’s chair and move in next to her as she brought up both images and arranged them side by side. She looked up at him. “I know they’re different formats, but they’re both taken of the same Monterey fires. Tell me what you see.”

  Ryan used the tip of his pen as a pointer. “These individual fires have obviously joined together, small clusters have become larger clusters, and each actively burning sector seems to be growing larger, though the fires aren’t moving in the same direction.”

  “Exactly—the winds are light and variable,” Lauren said as she enlarged both images. “But there’s something else.”

  Ryan leaned in and studied the screen.

  “The smoke,” Lauren said. “When the fires began, the smoke was being pushed by a slight breeze from the west, less than five knots. Now look—the wind at the outer edges of the field of view shows the clouds shifting from a southerly wind. See this—the sharp gradient in the cloud direction. It’s evidence of a strong midlevel shear. Evangeline is coming, and she’s bringing her winds.”

  “What can the Buckley do?” Ryan asked.

  Lauren pondered the question before she answered. “Is there an update on the helicopter?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ryan said as he stepped away and began speaking into a handheld radio.

  Lauren’s phone lit up indicating a call, but she didn’t recognize the number. “Dr. McKenna.”

  “Lauren, it’s Ernie. I have Dr. Adam Harrison, with the Forest Service Fire Lab, on the phone. Dr. Harrison, meet Dr. Lauren McKenna with the Defense Intelligence Agency.”

  “Dr. McKenna, nice to meet you,” Dr. Harrison said. “I’m just now processing the data Ernie sent me. Can you tell me more about this wind event you’re expecting?”

  “First of all, to simplify this, call me Lauren. Adam, there is an earlier infrared image I gave to Ernie, taken not long after the initial event. Do you have that in front of you?”

  “Let me pull it up,” Adam said. “Ah yes, there it is.”

  As Lauren waited for Adam to examine both images, she tested the cup of coffee she’d poured earlier. It was lukewarm and she set it aside. Moments later, a crewman set a fresh cup down and stepped away.

  “Okay, the first feature of note is the fact that the vectors are not the same,” Adam said. “Not all of the burning clusters are moving in the sam
e direction.”

  “I saw that as well,” Lauren said as her eyes were pulled to the aeronautical map from the helicopter. She’d spotted a detail that instantly nibbled at her subconscious. She pulled the chart closer, put her finger on Monterey, and oriented it to match the perspective of the two images on the screen. The contour lines and elevation changes were what had registered. All of the computer images were flat, one dimensional, but the people who flew were always interested in the terrain.

  “In a low-wind situation like we have now,” Adam replied, “the local geography, available fuel, and even the rising energy from the fires themselves are the driving factors in the direction of the burns. What we have now are localized updrafts. The intense fire is drawing in air at ground level, much like a chimney. The ambient air temperatures, plus the contours of the surrounding terrain, are dictating the direction the fires move. All of this changes if there is even a slight shift in the direction and velocity of the surface winds. What changes do you think we can expect?”

  “Within two hours, I predict winds from the southwest at twenty knots, intensifying to winds steady at thirty knots, with higher gusts. I expect these conditions to continue for twelve hours before beginning to subside.”

  “It won’t matter if it’s twenty or fifty knots,” Adam said. “If you’re right, these fires are going to explode out of control and race northward. The mountains in Big Sur will act like a funnel, and as the wind pushes through the valleys, the air will accelerate. The total effect is that I’d expect to see surface winds downrange of the mountains reach sixty to seventy knots. We can’t fight that; no one can.”

  “Gentlemen,” Lauren said. “Is there anything we can do to stop, or even slow down, this fire?”

  “We should start setting backfires,” Ernie said. “If we can burn enough of the available fuel ahead of the fire, it might serve to slow it down when the winds start to pick up.”

  “I would start there,” Adam said. “Let me get to the lab and see what type of models the program generates. Ernie, it might make sense to fall back and think about setting a second barrier of backburns. I’d also start evacuations downwind, the sooner the better. Lauren, the more weather updates we have, the more accurate the simulations.”