by Bob Blanton
Nurse Catara walked down the hall to the medication closet and collected the two syringe cartridges that were just coming out of the machine there. She grabbed an IV bag and a PVC before heading back to the exam room.
Nurse Catara knocked before entering the room. “That was fast,” Dra. Martog said.
“We don’t have very many patients,” Nurse Catara said, giving Victor a glare.
“Enrique, we need to put this PVC in, I’m sure you’ve had one before,” Dra. Martog said.
“Yes, a peripheral venous catheter,” Enrique said. “This is my best vein.” Enrique pointed to his left arm just above the elbow.
“Okay, we’ll use that one then. You’re going to have to sit here for about two hours, so do you need to use the facilities first?”
“No, I went before we got here,” Enrique said.
Nurse Catara inserted the PVC, hung the IV bag, and connected the drip. Once that was done, Dra. Martog took one of the syringes and injected using the catheter. “This will take care of your pain and prepare you for the treatment,” she said.
Then the doctor injected the second syringe into the IV bag. “This second shot will start fixing those fractures you have,” she said.
“Do you want something to read?” Nurse Catara asked. “Or we can bring a small pad in so you can watch a video if you want.”
“I have my iPad with me,” Enrique said. Victor immediately went to the door, opened it and summoned Gordo. Gordo immediately produced an iPad from inside a bag he was carrying and presented it to Victor, who, in turn, handed it to Enrique.
“We’ll be back to check on you after a while,” Dra. Martog said.
“If you need anything, just press this,” Nurse Catara said as she handed Enrique a wired push-button switch.
Dra. Martog nodded to Victor as she left the room, indicating that he should follow. Surprisingly he did. He followed her down the hall to her office with Gordo on their heels.
Once they were both in her office and the door closed, the doctor turned on Victor. “You do know that we would have treated your son without all of these theatrics!”
“I’m sure you would have,” Victor said. “But I also have another agenda.”
“What?!”
“Later, now tell me about my son,” Victor demanded.
“You are correct, he has Osteogenesis Imperfecta,” Dra. Martog said. “I’ve cured the disease, and I am treating the fractures that he has. I’ll give him a third shot before you leave that will help to strengthen his bones until his body can do that itself.”
“Can’t you do more?”
“We can, but in order to fully treat him, we would need to send him up to Delphi Station. He would need to stay there for six weeks to complete the treatment.”
“I’m not giving you people my son!”
“Nobody would use a child as leverage in whatever agenda you have planned,” Dra. Martog said. “But unless he goes to Delphi Station, all we can do is make him less susceptible to breaks during the year it will take his body to strengthen his bones by itself. But he’ll still have the deformities from the past breaks that haven’t set correctly.”
“And if he goes to Delphi Station?”
“On the station, they would be able to rebuild all his bones back to what they would originally be at this point in his life; it would be as if he never had the disease.”
“And what would this cost?” Victor asked.
“I don’t know, you obviously have money, so we wouldn’t do it for free,” Dra. Martog said. “And I suspect you wouldn’t have any good records of your income for us to determine the correct fee.”
“Why do you need to know my income?”
“We charge based on the patient’s ability to pay. Here most of our patients are treated for free, but of course, the upper-class clients pay a fee. This treatment could cost as much as one hundred thousand U.S. dollars.”
“I will think about sending my son to the station. But for now, you are to only treat patients that I approve,” Victor said.
“No!”
“What do you mean, no?”
“Just that, we will treat the patients that need to be treated,” Dra. Martog said.
“It’s simple then, only patients that I want to be treated will be allowed into the hospital.”
“Then we won’t treat them,” Dra. Martog said.
“Why not?!”
“Because we are here to treat the people that need treatment. Mostly children, like your son. We’re not here to follow your orders or to treat your friends for whatever problems they’ve acquired.”
“That’s what I want you to do,” Victor said. “It is just that I will be setting the fee for the treatment.”
“So, you’ll leave the poor to suffer!”
“No, we’ll have a sliding scale just as you do,” Victor said. “I will need you to expand your facilities so that you can treat more patients. I’ll bring them to you.”
“You do realize that we cannot continue our work here without the consent of MacKenzie Discoveries in Delphi City,” Dra. Martog said.
“I’m sure that they can be made to understand reason.”
“I don’t think they’ll allow you to blackmail them,” Dra. Martog said.
“If they don’t agree, we will start killing people,” Victor said.
“Wouldn’t that be counterproductive? Eventually, you will run out of doctors and nurses to treat your special patients.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t kill you or your Paraxean colleagues,” Victor said. “But that receptionist; I think you would be just as effective with a new receptionist. And I see you have several local nurses helping out. They can be easily replaced.”
“You’re a brutal animal!” Dra. Martog snapped.
“I like to think of myself as extremely persuasive,” Victor replied.
Wed Nov 11th – 1300 CST
“Kal, are you ready to give an update?” Marc asked as they gathered again to review the Guatemalan situation.
“Ready,” Kal said. He took a sip of water, took a deep breath then plunged ahead.
“The invasion force is the Sorcaño organization, which is headed by Victor Sorcaño. He mainly traffics in cocaine but has recently branched out to growing opium and making heroin for export to the U.S. Guatemala City is about fifty kilometers north of his usual territory. He has made it clear that he is expanding. He informed our managing director of the clinic, Dra. Martog, that she was to only handle patients that he approves.”
“Yes, she sent me a message to that effect. I watched the video of her with Señor Sorcaño. I told her to just follow his directions and that we would resolve the situation as soon as possible,” Marc said.
“What are you going to do about his son?” Samantha asked.
“If he allows it, we’ll send him to Delphi Station to be treated,” Marc said.
“And after the treatment?”
“We’ll return him to his family.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it remains to be seen whether Victor Sorcaño will be available after the treatment to act as Enrique’s father, but he does have a mother,” Marc said. “Kal, please continue.”
“They have approximately two hundred armed personnel in the area of the hospital. Based on data from the local authorities, Victor Sorcaño commands over five hundred soldiers.
“We have the layout of their force placement and are continuing to monitor their routines and habits. We need to wait for this situation with his son to play out. I would prefer he was either on Delphi Station or back home before we move. It would be nice if Victor were to return home before then, too. The soldiers are being much more vigilant while he’s around. But we only have one day’s data on that,” Kal said.
“Okay. Ideally, when would you like to make your move?” Marc asked.
“Monday or Tuesday,” Kal answered. “They should be nice and bored by then. And given their history, overconfident. Those are also the days when w
e have an early moonset, so we’ll have a nice dark night.”
“Why do you say, overconfident?” Blake asked.
“They’ve never come up against professionals,” Kal said. “They’re used to fighting off a few federales or local cops. Occasionally there’s a gun battle between them and one of the neighboring organizations, but none of those people are trained like ours are.”
“What kind of casualties do you expect?” Blake asked.
“On their side, I would expect fifty to eighty percent,” Kal said. “Our side, ten percent.”
“How many fatalities?” Samantha asked.
“I assume you’re worried about our people,” Kal said. “I would like to say zero, but we’re likely to lose two or three people. You just can’t plan for every possibility.”
“Those are pretty confident numbers,” Blake said.
“Well, our armor has built-in nanite injectors, we all carry med patches in our kits, and the armor will stop an AK-47 round. So, we’re as fortified as one can get.”
“How will you deal with the guards in the hospital?” Marc asked.
“We plan to kill them all,” Kal said.
Samantha sucked in her breath. “All of them?”
“We won’t have time to try and disable them. We need to put them out of action as fast as possible to avoid them raising the alarm. Dead is the easiest way to assure that.”
“Okay, then start working your people up for the mission,” Marc said.
“Already doing it,” Kal replied.
“Sam, we need to make the appropriate noise to the Guatemalans about the situation,” Marc said. “We don’t want them to know we’re coming.”
“Except for the president, I’ve been screaming at every official I know. My Spanish cursing is getting much better,” Samantha said. “We’ve already informed the president that we plan to handle it ourselves, and he’s agreed to look the other way. Although he has said that you need to expect a lot of complaints and accusations afterward.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” Marc said. “People, let’s get to it.”
Fri Nov 13th – 0400 CST
Catie and crew arrived home from their mission to deploy the Asteroid Explorer probes on Friday at eight o’clock in the morning. After dropping the twins off at Dr. Sharmila’s, everyone headed to their condos for a long soak in a tub. Catie messaged Kal that she would be available to introduce his team to the Hover Oryx at 1100 hours. Marc allowed her to sneak into her condo without telling him, although ADI had apprised him of her landing time.
Chapter 21
The Kealoha Solution
Fri Nov 13th – 1100 CST
“How do you like the Pong Surveillance probes?” Catie asked as she met Kal and eight members of his team by the Oryx. She’d landed it on the city runway since it could do a VTO, and it was now sitting in the hangar by the runway.
“I like them,” Kal said. “I think they’re going to be useful during our mission. Being able to just throw them close to where you want them to be, and then fly them around the corner or whatnot, is pretty sweet.”
“Glad you like them,” Catie said, feeling proud of herself. She’d designed them for paintball, but paintball was what they did to train for serious missions, so it made sense that they would be useful.
“These are my best snipers,” Kal said, pointing to five of the eight people with him. “And these three crazies want to see how well they can rappel down from this baby when it’s hovering.”
“Do you want to go up now?”
“You bet,” Kal said. “We’ve got targets set up over on warehouse number six on the airport. That’s also where these guys will rappel down.”
Catie used her Comm to drop the cargo door for the Oryx, “Load up! And we’ll be off.”
The three rappelers gathered up several huge coils of rope and headed into the back of the Oryx while the five snipers just carried their packs and strode right in and sat down, totally relaxed.
It only took five minutes to taxi out of the hangar and do a VTO with the Oryx; Catie kept the jet engines off. The gravity drives were just powerful enough to lift the Oryx against gravity, but couldn’t give it much acceleration while inside the Earth’s gravity well; no matter, they were only going one kilometer away.
“Okay, there’s your warehouse,” Catie said. “What do you want me to do?”
“Move half a kilometer off to the north, set up a rock-solid hover at two thousand meters, and then open the cargo doors,” Kal said. “We’ll know in a few minutes if this has a chance to work.”
“Cargo doors opening,” Catie announced after she had moved the Oryx and set up the hover. She had it dialed in to maintain its position within one cm. Ridiculously tight parameters, but unless there was a big wind gust, the gravity drives should have enough power to handle it.
“Boring!” Catie heard over the shared Comm channel.
“What?” Catie asked.
“Ramsey is just commenting on how steady your hover is,” Kal said. “Go ahead and move over the warehouse. Hover at four hundred meters.”
“Four hundred meters! Those guys really are crazy.”
“Hey, they’ve done El Capitan, that’s over eight hundred meters,” Kal replied.
“Like I said, crazy. . . . Okay, we’re set,” Catie announced.
Two minutes later, Kal said, “Take us home.”
“That was fast,” Catie said.
“We’re on the clock,” Kal replied.
Catie landed the Oryx at the main airport and taxied into a hangar. “What now?”
“I’ll see you at the meeting,” Kal said as he and the five snipers headed off.
Fri Nov 13th – 17:00 CST
“Kal, do you have a plan?” Marc asked as he opened the meeting. It was Friday, three days after the clinic had been taken over.
“We do, the team is rehearsing as we speak,” Kal said.
“Please share,” Blake said.
“As you know, everything is subject to change as we learn more about the enemy,” Kal said. “But based on what we now know, here’s our plan.”
Kal brought up a map of the area around the hospital on the display.
“The enemy force was still controlling access to the neighborhood. They have checkpoints here, here, here, and here.” Red dots appeared on the display marking the checkpoints. “People pass freely through the checkpoint after a cursory search. The Paraxeans are escorted to and from their apartments; they’re not allowed to go anywhere else; they either eat at the hospital or have food brought in. There are guards on the roof of the apartments and at both entrances to the building. The building is inside the zone they control. They’ve also co-opted all the other apartments in the complex for their people. At the hospital, they have guards on the roof, on the floor where the clinic is located, and in the lobby and emergency room on the ground floor. They have guards posted at each of the other entrances to the hospital. They also maintain a contingent of ten guards in the immediate area of the hospital.
“They maintain roving patrols on the streets in the neighborhood and two patrols along the border with the jungle. Victor and his son are still staying close by. They’ve taken over a nice house in the area,” Kal explained.
“Our plan is to take over the hospital first, followed shortly by the apartment building. We’re going to use Catie’s Oryx to take out the guards on the roof using our snipers; then the team will rappel down to the roof and take over the building.”
“How are you going to avoid somebody seeing that big airplane?” Blake asked.
“We’re going to have it hover at four hundred fifty meters; there won’t be a moon, and at that height and with its light-absorbing properties, it should be virtually invisible.”
“Isn’t it going to be a problem rappelling that distance?”
“No, we have a special harness with a controlled brake,” Kal said. “Each team member will free fall down the line for 6.5 seconds, falling two hu
ndred meters. The brake will then engage and decelerate them at 1.5G of deceleration for four seconds. It will then disengage and allow them to complete the descent under their own control. We’ll drop four lines and send six Marines down each line.”
“I sure hope that brake doesn’t fail,” Blake said.
“So do we all,” Kal replied. “Once on the roof, the team will travel down the stairwell to the clinic where they will take out the guards there. Barry, the NCOIC, will head to the roof for a smoke break; he’s been doing this every evening. He’s shifted his schedule, so it overlaps our targeted infiltration time. He’ll trigger the start of the operation with a code word; he’ll take care of the guard next to him since we cannot get a line of sight on all four guards. Snipers will take out the other three. Once the team is down, the snipers will take up position on the roof, and the Oryx will move to the next target.
“Barry will lead the team back down the stairwell to the clinic. They will be expecting him to return, so that will provide cover. He and the team will take out the four guards in the clinic; at night, they’re usually watching TV together or playing cards. The team will then go to the bottom floor and take out the guards there.
“At the same time, Barry’s team on the ground will move to take control of any outside guards or will mark them for the snipers. We will follow essentially the same pattern at the apartment building. We will get the Paraxeans out of the apartments; exfiltrating them via the roof to the Oryx. Once the Paraxeans are safe, the team will move to take out any enemy combatants located in the other apartments. When both hospital and the apartment building are secure, the Oryx will move to a position to allow the snipers still on board to start taking out the enemy checkpoints. Barry’s team will mark them for the snipers. Then we will begin mop-up operations, taking out the roving patrols and any other enemy combatants in the area.”
“What do you need?” Marc asked.
“We have it,” Kal said. “We’ve set up mockups of the hospital floors and the apartment layout in a warehouse on the airport. We’ll be practicing the maneuver six times a day until we deploy. As I’ve said, anything you can do to get Victor out of the area would be appreciated. He’s brought in thirty extra men with him; we hope they go with him when he leaves.”
