Dangerous Waters

by Radclyffe

  “Until we hear otherwise, we’re going to emergency operations as of now.” Dara downed the last of her coffee. “Thanks, everyone. You know how to reach me.”

  She dropped the takeout container in the wastebasket next to the stairwell and took the stairs down to the ground floor where the ER and trauma bay occupied one full wing. She went straight to her office to clear her emails and start wrestling with the call schedule. A lot of people were going to lose their days off. Once done, she pulled up the latest purchase orders and reviewed the stock on hand. Sighing, she emailed the ER manager and asked him to prepare an urgent order to restock half their inventory. That was going to shoot her budget all to hell. By the time she looked up, it was nearly noon, and she was famished. Miraculously, no one had interrupted her. Penny must have had everything out on the floor under control. For the thousandth time, she gave thanks for her friend.

  Her cell rang, and Penny’s name popped up on the screen.

  Smiling, Dara answered. “Hey, I was just thinking about you. Lunch?”

  “I think you’re going to have to postpone that for a while.”

  Something about Penny’s tone had Dara’s skin prickling. “What’s wrong? I didn’t hear a trauma alert. Do we have a level one on the way?”

  “Not the kind you’re thinking of.” Oddly, Penny had lowered her voice. “I just escorted a soldier to the break room. I think you better get out here.”

  “A soldier? What do they want?”

  “She said she was here to organize the emergency response operation.”

  “Did she now.” A muscle in Dara’s jaw started twitching.

  It looked like the storm had just arrived.

  Chapter Six

  Landfall minus 6 days, 11:55 a.m.

  National Hurricane Center Atlantic Ops

  University of Florida Institute

  “Are you seeing this?” Bette said with a tinge of awe in her voice.

  Four multicolored screens, each ten feet wide, took up one wall of the control room, and each was filled with images of Leo. Where he’d moved, how fast he’d moved, and where—maybe—he was going later today, and the next day, and the next.

  Stan grinned wryly at the rhetorical question.

  He hadn’t been doing anything else for the last twelve hours, and wouldn’t be doing anything else for the next week or two. Until Leo made landfall—somewhere—and ran out of steam, he’d be in the weather room along with most of the other members of the watch team for the duration. Some people would take breaks—he’d make them, and the aerial reconnaissance squads were required to take downtime. But he’d be right here, catnapping at his desk, drinking bitter coffee, living on doughnuts and pizza. Watching his opponent’s every move. Because make no mistake—this was war, and despite all their sophisticated advances in predictions and forecasting, he and the other weather watch groups around the world were still running to catch up.

  For a weatherman, this was the storm of a lifetime. Every eye in the control room was fixed on those images. Data scrolled across the bottom of the screen—storm center size and location, maximum sustained wind speed, directional movement, track, and time. Data they all absorbed by second nature. What none of them could absorb yet, or even totally comprehend, was Leo’s enormous size.

  “We need a better yardstick,” Stan muttered. A contradictory mix of dread and excitement curled through his chest as he tracked the massive tropical cyclone moving inexorably closer to the vulnerable populations in its path.

  “What do you mean?” Bette asked.

  “Wind speed doesn’t begin to describe the power of this thing,” Stan said. “Just look at the diameter—hell, it’s as big as the state of Massachusetts. Even if the eye skirts land, the rainfall and storm surge will flood areas hundreds of miles away.”

  “Uh, boss,” Anjou said in a half-apologetic, half-enthusiastic voice, “we just got the latest numbers from aerial recon.”

  “Give ’em to us.”

  “They’re recording speeds upward of 140 in the eyewall,” Anjou said, his wiry frame coiled as if he were about to spring from his chair. He swiveled and stared at Stan. “Do you think he can hold those speeds?”

  “We’re going to have to prepare as if he could and hope that he can’t. Update the advisory to Cat 4.” He strode to his desk to run new simulations of potential storm tracks, pulling data from their logs and feeds from the European and World Weather Watch systems. He sat back after mapping, adjusting, and adding a little bit of intuition, and studied the most likely storm path over the next five days. The surrounding cone of uncertainty covered damn near the whole southern US. Then he picked up the phone to call the governor’s office.

  Landfall minus 6 days, 12:04 p.m.

  Miami Memorial Hospital

  Dara stopped in the entrance to the break room to assess what she was walking into. For some reason, she’d expected more than one soldier, a show of force, but only one person waited. Maybe she’d been hasty in suspecting a hostile takeover, and she cautiously relaxed. The rangy soldier leaning against the counter contemplating a Styrofoam cup glanced up, her swift, intense return appraisal belying her relaxed pose.

  “Unless you’re desperate, I wouldn’t recommend it,” Dara said.

  “Six hours old?” the soldier asked in a husky alto.

  “Try ten.”

  A quick grimace, a flick of the wrist, and the sludge masquerading as coffee hit the sink.

  Dark eyes, more black than brown from this distance, settled on Dara’s. “Thanks for the warning.”

  At first glance, the woman was pretty much what Dara expected—soldier always conjured up the impression of short-haired, suntanned, stone-faced men and fit, capable women who’d obviously worked hard to carve out a space in the very system that often rejected them—she’d experienced similar skepticism and casual dismissal of her career by friends and family as well as thinly veiled suspicion and barely concealed ostracism from colleagues. Her mother’s voice echoed unbidden. Really, darling, why do you need to work at all? I’m sure your father would be happy to have you in the business, in some suitable area. And if you must have a job, why on earth choose something so plebian? Medicine, after all, is not exactly a prestigious profession these days. And then there were the so-called colleagues, who still congregated in the men’s locker rooms and country clubs and gentlemen’s bars to make referrals and deals and alliances. The military had to be several magnitudes worse—after all, the very fabric of the organizations was built on power and prowess.

  Dara had learned very quickly, personally and professionally, not to rely on first glances. She’d been wrong enough times to learn. Friends turned out to be opportunists, lovers had agendas, and parents abandoned their offspring without a backward glance.

  Though she didn’t even need a second look to know this woman had nothing to prove. The soldier looked completely comfortable in her tan camo BDUs and sand-colored leather boots laced above the ankle. Dara couldn’t decipher the significance of the patches sewn on both sleeves, but the name and rank stenciled in block letters above her left breast were clear enough. Her jet-black hair was longer than Dara expected, curling ever so little on her collar. Her face bore the requisite tan, with fine squint lines around her inquisitive eyes and faint creases resembling parentheses bracketing her full mouth. This was no desk jockey. She spent a lot of time in the sun. Her skin, though, was unblemished and smooth. Probably good genes. The rest of her body certainly suggested that. Muscled broad shoulders, trim waist, long legs.

  The soldier tossed the cup in the trash. “What do you recommend for a refill?”

  “There’s a good kiosk half a block down from the ER entrance.” Dara held out her hand. “I’m Dara Sims, the ER chief.”

  “Colonel Sawyer Kincaid.”

  Firm, warm grip to go along with the confident demeanor, just as Dara expected. Dara had had her measure taken enough times to recognize Colonel Kincaid was assessing her in the same way she’d just do
ne. Her gaze was unapologetically appraising, direct and intense enough to be palpable. Neither confrontational or congenial. Under other circumstances she might be intrigued or interested by the attention. Kincaid was good-looking, actually very good-looking, and her confident easy charm was just as attractive. But this wasn’t a casual encounter, more like two competitors each sizing up the other before the big game. Dara held Kincaid’s gaze and let her look. She knew what she’d see. A woman in navy-blue scrubs and a white lab coat, average height, average build, shoulder-length wavy blond hair, blue eyes, a body that said she worked at staying fit, and an attitude that announced she was in charge because she’d earned it.

  Once Dara had decided Colonel Kincaid had discovered all she was likely to discover from her scrutiny, she said, “What can I do for you, Colonel?”

  “You’re aware of the situation with Leo?”

  “I am. We were alerted last night. I wasn’t told to expect the Army.”

  “National Guard.” Sawyer heard the annoyance in the ER chief’s voice and registered the undercurrent of irritation that went along with the wary posture. This woman did not like being taken off guard and was used to being in charge. Not that much of a surprise, considering her position. Might be a problem if—more likely when—the situation went critical, but as long as Dr. Sims’s resistance was matched by her competence, Sawyer could handle it.

  Dara shrugged. “My apologies. Military, I should say.”

  “I’m probably ahead of the memo,” Sawyer said, “but we’re going to need to get coordinated ASAP, which is why I decided to come down personally.”

  “Memos aside,” Dara said dryly, “I think you’d better fill me in on where you fit in all of this and what I can help you with.”

  “I’m in charge of the Guard’s disaster preparedness planning. I don’t know how much you know about how these things work—”

  “It’s not my first hurricane,” Dara said evenly, while reminding herself Kincaid’s authoritative—actually, commanding—tone was just habitual. Probably everyone in the military talked that way, as if they alone understood the intricacies of the situation, especially to those they outranked. Well, she wasn’t one of the soldiers in Kincaid’s command, and she sure as hell wasn’t outranked. “I grew up down here. I know what we’re facing.”

  “I’m not sure you do—not from a relief and recovery standpoint.” Something hot and wild flickered through Kincaid’s eyes for an instant and then disappeared. “How many times have you run search and rescue and emergency medical evac for a major disaster with mass casualties?”

  Her voice was just as cool and even as it had been before, that brief spark of fire extinguished as if it had never existed. But Dara had seen the flame, and the rage that fueled it. Interesting. The colonel wasn’t granite after all, more like molten lava simmering beneath the surface. “I’ve got close to ten years’ emergency medicine experience, Colonel. There isn’t much I haven’t seen.”

  “I don’t doubt your medical ability, Dr. Sims, but we’re talking mass casualties—the possibility of dozens, even hundreds of displaced people, many of them injured, ending up right here or in whatever aid facilities we can establish before things go south.”

  “Colonel,” Dara said, gathering all the restraint she could muster on a bad day rapidly getting worse, “I suggest you—”

  Dara’s cell phone emitted a long, loud, harsh sound that echoed instantly from somewhere on Kincaid’s person. She pulled her phone from her lab coat pocket. “Sorry.”

  Sawyer yanked her phone out of her uniform pocket. “Excuse me.”

  NOAA Alert

  Hurricane Leo has been upgraded to a Category 4 hurricane. Predictions indicate a northwesterly track toward Barbuda, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and south Florida. Florida Governor Phillip Valez has mobilized 6000 National Guard troops and issued a state of emergency, including mandatory evacuation of the Florida Keys.

  Dara looked up. “You’re reading what I’m reading?”

  “Yes.” Sawyer’s jaw set. “There are three hospitals in the Keys. If they evacuate, can you handle their patients here?”

  “They’re all smaller regional places. It depends on the numbers and how many will need ICU beds,” Dara said. “We’ll need to coordinate with them if they decide to evacuate. We also need to reserve beds for later emergency admissions here as well.”

  “Let’s get whoever’s in charge down there.”

  “I’ll call them.” Dara pictured the chain of islands with the string of bridges and causeways connecting them. “How will you transport? There’s only one highway in and out of the Keys.”

  “C-130 transport planes can handle the critical patients. Ground vehicles for the others.”

  “We could be talking about dozens of patients.”

  “And we’re going to have to gear up the op now.” Sawyer hadn’t expected the first test of the situation to escalate so quickly, but that was the way of war. Endless waiting exploding into the chaos of flame and fire in an instant, demanding every sense, every instinct, every skill be at peak efficiency before the mind even registered the assault. React or die. But she was a soldier, and Dara and most of the others dealing with the crisis were civilians. For now, at least, she could wait and watch and hope they were prepared. “I can make the calls to those hospitals if you need to organize your people here.”

  “No. I’ll do it.” Dara let out a breath. The evacuation changed everything in the blink of an eye, but that was no different than a dozen situations she faced every day in the ER. She was conditioned to go from readiness into action in a heartbeat. She’d just have to see that everyone else at the hospital was too. “I’ll be better able to judge how many will need in-hospital transfers.”

  “All right. Is there somewhere you can set up a command post here?”

  “We can use our conference room. I’ll give you a quick tour of our unit before you leave.” Dara grimaced. “You should be able to find me there for the foreseeable future.”

  “Good. For now, I’ll be staying. I need to meet with your emergency response team.”

  Dara’s spine stiffened. No wonder Kincaid had shown up unescorted—she was a whole force unto herself. “Maybe we should be clear about the chain of command first, Colonel.”

  Kincaid’s dark eyebrows arched, and for an instant, Dara would’ve sworn she saw a smile. Then it was gone and the square, strong jaw tightened again.

  “I wasn’t aware there was anything to clarify, Doctor,” Sawyer said.

  “This is my emergency room, and unless I’m mistaken, I’m also the emergency medicine doctor here.”

  “I am a certified paramedic. Most search and rescue personnel are,” Sawyer said easily. The temperature in the room had just dropped thirty degrees. If Dara Sims had fur, it would be standing up on the back of her neck. So, the doctor was territorial, it seemed. Not a bad thing, if she matched her possessiveness with the skill to go with it. Sawyer didn’t have a problem backing down when a fight would solve nothing. As long as Sims didn’t let her pride get in the way during a crisis, there’d be no contest. “I’ve seen more battlefield injuries than you have, unless there’s something in your bio I’m unaware of, but I’m not questioning this is your ER.”

  “What bio?”

  Sawyer shrugged. “All personnel involved in disaster management at the state and local level are profiled in the protocols. Since you’re in charge at one of the largest level one trauma centers, you made the list. I’m probably in there too.”

  “So you checked up on me.” Dara’s temper frayed. What the hell was in the bio—and why didn’t she even know about it? She’d spent her entire life fighting for independence, working to shed the reputation that followed her name and the assumptions that went along with it. The idea that Sawyer had formed perceptions of her based on those kinds of expectations bothered her more than it should have, considering she didn’t care a fig what the overbearing and borderline-obnoxious soldier thought of he
r. But just on principle, to be measured by anything other than her actions and her accomplishments was insulting.

  “When I’m going into the field, Dr. Sims, I want to know who’s on my team, and who I can count on. You were one of the first people I looked at.”

  “Well, I certainly hope I met your approval,” Dara said, not caring that her tone was laced with sarcasm.

  “Why does it bother you?”

  “I’m not bothered,” Dara said, despite being irrationally annoyed. By now she’d gotten over being sensitive to the opinions of people who didn’t know her. Hadn’t she? “I’ve got more important things to think about.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Sawyer sounded as if she didn’t actually believe her, which just added to Dara’s annoyance. She mustered her most reasonable tone, the one she used with overbearing colleagues and VIP patients who attempted to direct their own care. “Since we’re going to have to work together, we should just agree right now to let each other do the jobs we’re trained for.”

  “Six thousand National Guard troops are on their way to Orlando,” Sawyer said evenly. “I’m responsible for all of them, and possibly thousands of civilians who may be in danger soon. In the heat of battle, Dr. Sims, there can be only one leader. In this case, it’s going to have to be me.”

  “I won’t argue that, Colonel,” Dara said. “But inside these walls, and any other place I am called to care for patients, I am in charge.”

  Sawyer didn’t like it, but she also respected rank, and Dara had a point. “We’ll be staging relief and recovery from a local command post, but this hospital and your ER are our field hospital. We may have to share command.”

  Dara laughed and shook her head. “You are as likely to do that as I am.”