A siren cut through the mumbled words of encouragement. One of the barbers repeated to everyone what Daniel had told him, that the lady was a military nurse from the base. As planned, Daniel quietly blended into the back of the crowd. Once he was certain Sam had her ride, he and O'Neill would return to the jumper and wait for her signal.
The ambulance was a heavy black vehicle that obviously did double-duty as a hearse. While practical, it couldn't have been too inspiring for accident victims. The young driver, whom Teal'c had identified as Glenn Dennis, hurried out with a First Aid kit in hand, but seeing Sam was already attending to the victim, he turned and opened the rear of the ambulance-come-hearse and pulled out a wood and canvas stretcher.
“I need to keep the pressure on this towel to stop the bleeding,” Sam announced when the driver laid out the stretcher beside them.
“I'm okay,” the rider objected, trying to sit.
“No, you're not,” Sam scolded, pushing him down. “If you try to get up, you could...cause a lot of damage to yourself.”
“Here.” The barber gestured for one of the other men to help. “We'll lift him on.”
“Careful,” Sam cautioned. “It's important to keep him as still as possible.”
The rider was still trying to object, but someone shushed him. “Do as the nurse says, kid.”
Sam frowned and shook her head when he was in the vehicle. “I'm really worried about his head wound.”
“Can you come to the base with him, ma'am?” Dennis asked, securing the stretcher. “I can give you a ride back into town, later, when he's been seen to.”
Stepping up into the cramped rear of the ambulance, Sam smiled gratefully. “That's okay. I'm due to report back there this evening, anyway.”
Dennis nodded gratefully, closed the door behind them, then retrieving his First Aid kit, climbed back into the driver's seat. “It was swell of you to stop and help, Miss. I can patch up a few cuts and splint a leg, but having a nurse right there, well, that sure was lucky.”
“Yeah.” Sam smiled at him in the rearview mirror. “Lucky.” She turned her smile to the rider and added truthfully, “You'll be fine. You've got a tough head.”
“Shoulda seen that truck, though,” he groaned. “Sun was in my eyes, I guess.”
The inside of the ambulance was redolent of embalming fluids, tobacco and engine oil. Dennis had the front windows open to offer a little ventilation, but Sam suspected that most of his patients probably passed out from heat exhaustion. She caught sight of Daniel nodding to her from the entrance of the alleyway, then turned her attention back to the soldier, who now seemed more concerned about the fate of his bike than his injuries.
The base was only a few minutes away. Alerted to the arriving ambulance, according to Teal'c, the barrier should have been raised and the ambulance waved through. However, that was not the case. Instead, both gates were closed and the MPs on duty held up their hands for Dennis to stop, blocking Sam's only chance of entering the base to locate An.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Heya, Johnny, What'll it be? Got some nice pecan pie,” Dorothy asked the new arrivals. She shot Jack a smile when he pulled out a crumpled ten-dollar bill to pay for their meals.
Jack eased himself onto one of the blue vinyl stools. “I'll try some of that pic. Another coffee, too.”
“Coffee and pie,” Brazel drawled.
McBoyle ordered the same, sat two stools away from Jack and turning to face Brazel, pulled out a spiral notepad and pencil. “Okay, Marc,” he said, licking the end of the pencil, “now take it from the top. Tell me a little about who you are and exactly what you saw, all right?”
The pie, complete with a massive artery-clogging dollop of yellow cream, appeared in front of Jack. He opened the newspaper and pretended to read an article about Stalin's denouncement of the Marshall Plan.
“I'm a foreman at Foster Ranch,” Brazel began. “Dee—that's my neighbor's boy—'n me were up at the Hines pasture and we saw all this real strange wreckage, like from a plane crash or somethin'. I've found stuff before, you know, those weather balloons the Army are always testing, but nothing like this. Hell, the sheep point blank refuse to cross the pasture to get to the watering station. Dunno what I'm gonna do about them. They're not gonna last in this heat without water. I'm just trying to do my civic duty and all I want is someone to get out there and clean it up.”
The arrival of the coffee gave McBoyle the opportunity to interrupt. “I got all that. What happened next?”
Brazel gulped down a few burning mouthfuls, then picked up his fork and stabbed the pecan pie with more force than it really deserved. “I dragged some of the bigger pieces into one of the sheds. Took Dee home and showed Floyd and Loretta some of the smaller stuff.”
“Floyd and Loretta Proctor? Dee's parents?”
“Yeah. They reckoned maybe I might get a reward for reporting it. Huh.” Brazel snorted and shoveled pie into his mouth. “Some reward. Next day I was out there and saw these buzzards circling around about two, maybe three miles east.”
“East of the crash site,” McBoyle confirmed, scribbling on his pad.
“Figured it was a couple of sheep.” He washed down the pie with the rest of the coffee, and held the cup out to Doris for a refill. “I saddled up and rode over to the bluff. Something dead all right, something that stunk real bad. I got off and climbed up to take a look. And that's when I saw 'em. These three little people, like. But they weren't human, no sir, they was nothing like a human.” Brazel shoved the now empty plate away. “Frank Joyce, he dunno nothing.”
“Frank, from radio station KGFL?”
“He told me he didn't buy it, and that the bodies are probably monkeys or chimps from some Air Force experimental rocket or something. I told him and I'm telling you. They're not monkeys, God dammit. They're not human!”
“Okay, Marc, calm down. I believe you, all right?”
Somewhat mollified, Brazel hunkered over his coffee. “Anyways, I filled a couple of cardboard boxes with parts from their spaceship, I reckon, and brought it in to show Sheriff Wilcox. Major Marcel and Captain Cavitt and me drove back out there night before last. We ate cold beans and spent the night in a bunkhouse 'bout three miles from Hines pasture, where the wreckage is. Next morning, Cavitt and me rode up there while Marcel drove in his Carryall. He said it himself; the stuff was “not from this earth.” You ask him; that's his exact words. They was loading up the Carryall when Walt and Judd turn up.”
“Walt Whitmore, owner of radio station KGFL?”
Marcel downed the coffee in one go and then wiped his face on the back of a grubby sleeve. “Yeah. He's got more sense than Frank. Walt drove me back to town and I spent last night in his house. Now the Sheriff's telling me I gotta shut up and say nothing to nobody 'coz the FBI don't like it. I can't even get back to the ranch 'coz the military are telling me the place is off limits! My own goddamned place!”
Eyes squinting against the low sun, he glanced outside and swore. “What in hell is it now?”
Jack glanced at the clock and then turned in his seat. Teal'c's intel was, once again, right on the money.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Holding the sodden towel firmly in place against her patient's head, hoping to hide the fact that his injury was minor, Sam frowned at the approaching MPs. She allowed her dog tags to hang down the front of her blouse. With their rubber silencers removed, they should look enough like their 1947 counterparts for her to get away with the subterfuge if nobody looked too closely.
“Gotta start teaching your boys to look where they're going,” Dennis said to the first MP.
A grizzle-faced sergeant came around to the side of the ambulance and barked at the motorcyclist, “Parker! What the hell did I tell you about keeping your eyes open, boy?” Shaking his head, his eyes dropped to Sam's dog tags. “Got yourself a pretty nurse, though. Guess you ain't so dumb after all.” Turning to the guard box, he yelled, “Open up.”
While Sam was rel
ieved the ruse had worked, given the level of secrecy that had surrounded the Manhattan Project, and the fact that Roswell currently housed the only atom bombs in the world, the lapse in security was alarming. Perhaps 1947 really was, as some historians opined, a brief halcyon moment between WWII and the fledgling Communist paranoia.
Dennis backed the ambulance up to the emergency entrance of the hospital. Parked beside them were three of the window-less boxy military ambulances that had formed part of the convoy that had just passed through town. If Teal'c was right, and so far he had been, then one of these ambulances had carried the surviving Asgard from the primary crash site at the foot of the Capitan Mountains. The others had brought in the remains of the clones from the Corona site.
Two MPs were standing at the back of one ambulance, looking pale and scared and apparently uncaring that a civilian ambulance had just pulled up beside them.
Dennis didn't seem to notice as he came around and opened the rear door. The front gate must have notified someone that they were coming, as two orderlies were waiting to unload the injured motorcyclist.
“Hey, Glenn,” one of them said, offering Sam an appraising look as he climbed into the ambulance. “Gotcha self a new assistant?”
“I'm Lieutenant Carter,” Sam replied stepping outside into the cooler air. “I've just transferred in from Los Alamos.” She glanced across at one of the military ambulances and saw that the doors were open.
The guard snapped to attention. “Yes, ma'am.”
The orderlies lifted out the stretcher carrying the injured Parker, careful not to dislodge the bloodied towel Sam had wadded under this head. She was about to suggest an MRI, remembered that they wouldn't exist for another quarter of a century, and instead said, “He may have a fractured skull and broken nose.” She tried to angle herself so that she could see past the nervous MPs.
Unfortunately, Dennis also was curious. His attempts to peer inside the military ambulance obscured Sam's line of sight and drew unwanted attention from the guards, who eyed Dennis suspiciously. Still, she caught a glimpse of wreckage that was definitely Asgard in origin, and the whiff of something foul, worse even than the odorous mud of Bayou.
Why had Asgard escape pod parts been loaded into an ambulance? Maybe this aspect of the Roswell story was wrong. Maybe these vehicles had all come from the second Corona site where only the deceased Asgard had been found. The smell certainly suggested as much.
The doors were pushed open to an air-conditioned emergency reception room. Sam focused on the bike rider, Parker. Engaging him in conversation was the best way to maintain the illusion she belonged there, and knew exactly where she was going. “How do you feel?”
“I'm okay, ma'am. 'Cept something smells real bad. Is that a sign of concussion?”
The orderlies took him into a larger wardroom, bustling with urgency, while Dennis stopped at the nurse's station to check them in, after which he said something about grabbing himself a Coke from the staff lounge.
Sam was about to follow, hoping the lounge would lead her to the nurses' locker room, when a redheaded captain arrived, surgical mask hanging around his neck, his eyes watering. He barked at the orderlies, “I thought I told you to put him in the next room!” His expression turned even more surly when he noticed Sam. “And what are you doing out of uniform, nurse?”
“Sorry sir,” Sam replied, snapping to attention. “Lieutenant Carter, sir. I was off duty...saw the accident.”
“Well, all right then.” Giving her an appraising look, he added, “That's what we need around here, initiative.”
“Sir?”
“Think you can take notes without puking all over the place, Lieutenant?”
Teal'c had said the autopsy had been abandoned due to the smell. “Yes, sir. Of course.”
“Then get changed and report to Theatre Two. Tell the MPs Captain Haynes told you to let you go on through.”
Bingo. “Yes, sir.”
Sam pushed opened the entryway door and turned left, hoping like hell she was headed in the right direction when she almost bumped into another nurse, a young second lieutenant holding a cloth over her mouth, rushing out of an adjoining examination room. Offering Sam a muted apology, the lieutenant's watering eyes turned wide when she caught sight of Dennis loitering around the emergency entrance, peering through the dingy windows, trying to get a better look inside the military ambulances. “My gosh, Glenn!” Hurrying over to him, she took him by the arm, and urged him away from the glass. “Get out of here or you're going to be in a lot of trouble.”
“What?” His eyes lit in recognition. “Hey Naomi, how's it going. I just stopped for a Coke.”
Shaking her head, the nurse released her grip on Dennis and then hurried down the hall in the opposite direction. Sam followed, hoping they were headed for the same place. The nurse's pace picked up when Haynes stepped out behind them, and bellowed at Dennis, “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?”
“It looks like you've got a crash.” Dennis sounded startled by the officer's tone.
Sam missed the rest of his reply because she followed the nurse into what thankfully turned out to be the women's locker room. The dark haired lieutenant quickened her pace, and retching, ran into a toilet cubicle.
Using the distraction, Sam quickly opened several wooden lockers before she found one whose contents included a surgical nurses' scrubs. She could hear raised voices outside before Dennis's voice cut through. “Hey, look mister. I'm a civilian and you can't do a damned thing to me.”
“You watch your mouth, boy,” Haynes barked, “or somebody will be picking your bones out of the sand.”
The nurse threw up again. Sam pulled on the smock, making certain she still had ready access to her radio. Someone else from outside the room, someone with a deep-throated Southern twang, had joined the conversation. “Maybe we got some real good dog food here, Captain.”
“Get the son-of-a-bitch outta here.”
The young nurse had stopped heaving. Sam wanted to ask if she was okay, but the captain sounded in no mood for delays. More importantly, Sam might be able to follow him to Theatre Two without having to go searching. She opened the door just in time to see two MPs more or less frog-march Dennis through the doors outside.
The captain, sweat beading his forehead, even in the air conditioning, turned his temper on Sam. “C'mon, hurry up.”
His foul mood, Sam realized, was driven by fear. Fifty feet, two doors and a platoon of armed MPs later they reached an anteroom servicing three operating theatres and a recovery room. The atmosphere was thick with cigarette smoke and barely controlled panic. Something way outside their frame of reference was happening to these men. Hardened by the nightmare of the recent war, they were still struggling to come to grips with a new and shocking reality: extraterrestrials were no longer confined to the realm of pulp science fiction.
Snatches of desperate conversation between officers, doctors, civilians in dark suits and two frantic looking nurses reached her. “...not going to survive for very much longer unless we have some idea...”
“...something toxic in their blood...”
“...threat to the United States...”
“...President Truman flying in tomorrow to brief Senator | Chavez...”
The captain turned nervous eyes to hers. “Where were you previously stationed, Lieutenant?”
Someone was arguing with a photographer who was point blank refusing to return to the operating theatre, while a harangued looking female lieutenant dressed in a senior nurses' uniform was holding a white-knuckled hand to a black telephone receiver, ordering additional gas masks.
In an attempt to convey a credible mix of professionalism and grave concern, Sam squared her shoulders lifted her chin and replied, “Los Alamos, sir.”
A black-suited man with Brylcreemed hair and acne ravaged cheeks, pushed past the others until he was standing before her. “For how long?” he demanded.
What he was really asking, Sam kne
w, was, had she been stationed at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project? If so, it would imply she'd seen the nuclear accidents that had occurred during the development of Fat Man and Little Boy. And just as importantly, that she knew how to keep her mouth shut. “Almost four years, sir.”
A second, black suited man fixed his gaze on her, speaking around a lighted cigarette dangling from his mouth. “You ever tell anyone what you see inside here, you won't like what happens.” A blue-tined haze of tobacco smoke and fedora perched low over his brow combined to obscure his face, but something about him pricked Sam's nerves. “That's a direct order from President Truman.”
Nodding, she said a silent prayer of thanks that O'Neill wasn't here; otherwise he'd have these two guys pegged as Agent J and Agent K. “I understand, sir.”
“Take a deep breath, now,” Haynes warned her in a slightly more sympathetic tone. “What you're gonna see, well, it's not of this Earth.”
Stargate SG1 - Roswell Page 18
