Ascent

by Thorby Rudbek

  Richard sat down abruptly at the end of Karen’s bed. If you knew what was in store for us at Redcliff, you’d be more than nervous. The grey box was still in his hands, and he held it gingerly, like a newborn kitten. He put it on his lap, reached out and touched one of Karen’s feet where it stuck out slightly from the blanket, but there was no sensation of power being drained from him. After a minute or so of physical contact – he found it still gave him some comfort, even though she was still unconscious – he pulled the blanket down a little to cover her foot and keep her warm.

  Tracy, meanwhile, had ignored her own advice and was doing her own pacing about the room. Finally she walked over to the blinds and pulled one away from the window slightly, so she could see out.

  “Look, if you’re going to keep doing that, why don’t you turn off the lights?” Richard complained. He got up and joined her at the window. Outside, the streets were deserted; the street lights still on, although dawn was not far off.

  “If I don’t have the lights on, Brad will probably start wondering if I’m in some sort of trouble.”

  He’d be right. And I’m eternally grateful to you for all you’ve done. He turned away from the window when she did.

  “I’m sorry,” Richard said quietly. “I guess this waiting is really getting to me.”

  “He’ll be here soon,” she assured him, resting her hand on his arm. “It’s just that on weekends he usually sleeps in.”

  “So do I!” Richard managed a sheepish grin. He recalled the previous Sunday, before he had met Karen, which was the last time he had ‘slept in’, and marvelled once more at what had transpired in one week. Shaking his head slightly, he walked back to the bed and sat down at the foot once more. He watched as Doctor Wilde checked Karen’s pulse again, and the drip that was still attached to her arm.

  Time seemed to drag. The streetlights went out, and the day began in earnest. Still, sleepy little Westwood was reluctant to stir.

  Incredibly, Richard found himself dozing. Something brought him back, and he looked over at his new doctor-friend with interest, as she too suddenly seemed more alert. A moment later and they both turned towards the window, at the sound of a car pulling up outside.

  Tracy held up her hand for silence, she listened intently. The engine sounded a little rough to Richard.

  “It’s Brad,” she announced with certitude as she walked out of the room and stood by the front door. Richard followed her and they both waited, he glancing back into the waiting room every few seconds. There was the sound of a door slamming, followed by the crunch of footsteps on the gravel at the kerb.

  Tracy opened the door, and in stepped a wiry-looking older man of medium height, dressed in a brown outfit with gold striping along the outer seams.

  “Hi.” He looked from Tracy to Richard questioningly.

  “Brad, this is Richard Fletcher. He needs your help,” Tracy began, a little uncertainly.

  Richard stared at the moustachioed man, surprised at what to him looked like the kind of age difference that there would be between a father and daughter, rather than the relationship he had anticipated. Brad scrutinized Richard in return.

  “He looks fine to me.” He noticed the young man was holding a dark blocky object with one hand against his hip. It was about the size of a child’s shoebox, and seemed to be quite featureless.

  “It’s not really me that needs your help, it’s…” Richard stopped in mid-sentence and walked back into the waiting room, expecting that the pilot would follow. Brad looked at Tracy, and she smiled and kissed him quickly on the cheek, told him his uniform looked great, then took him by the hand and led him into the room. Once inside, he saw Karen laid out, pale and still on the stretcher, a blanket covering her legs and a hospital gown draped loosely over her upper body, but pulled down slightly where the gauze rested against the wound.

  He walked over to her and studied the dressing on her chest, gradually soaking up blood, then the plasma drip, and finally her face.

  “She’s not doing too well,” he said, stating the obvious. “She should be in a hospital, not here.” He looked at Richard, realizing there was more to this than met the eye.

  “Tracy said you watched the news with her last night,” Richard began, cradling the box in his arms. “The bit about Redcliff.” He watched for a reaction.

  “Redcliff!” Brad’s eyes widened in surprise and recognition. “I thought you two looked familiar. What did you do to Tracy? You better not have–” He tensed as if he might spring at Richard.

  “He didn’t do anything to me, Brad,” Tracy interrupted him, grabbing onto his arm for fear he would do something precipitous. “Except turn up, she unconscious, he half-dead from exhaustion, and looking anything but dangerous. You didn’t believe the story the reporter told on TV last night, and I don’t believe that crazy story they told on the radio today, either.” She gestured to Richard again. “Tell him what you told me.”

  So Richard told Brad Hawk about meeting Karen, talking with Karen, and helping Karen. He told him a little about Citadel, and the people who had tried to trap them when they had wanted to leave it. Richard told him about the barricade and the police, and how Karen had been shot. (The tears flowed freely at this point, and he had to struggle to maintain a degree of control over his voice, so that he could be understood). Finally, he told Brad how Doctor Tracy Wilde had helped him.

  “And that brings us to the reason why I got Tracy to ask you to come.” Richard cleared his throat nervously, somehow sure that Brad would refuse to help him. And for good reason, too. “I hadn’t told Tracy this yet, but I’ve got some kind of radio link with Tutor back at Citadel, and so I know that the army is waiting for us there, with the biggest collection of tanks and missiles since I don’t know when. I imagine the Air Force is standing by, too, and probably the Navy. The only thing we have going for us is the laser that Tutor can fire from this box.” Richard indicated the grey object that he was carrying.

  Brad looked at it with interest for a few seconds. It seemed quite innocuous to him. He pulled out a handful of change and dumped it in a neat stack in a metal bowl on the small table by the door.

  “You’ll excuse me if I seem a little dubious, but do you think you could demonstrate the laser? Something that U.S. technology clearly couldn’t do. I might find this story easier to believe then.”

  Richard pulled the tiny earpiece out and showed it to Brad and Tracy. They looked at the shiny metal with interest.

  “This is the audio link with Tutor.” He put it back in his ear. “Tutor, could you do something impressive with these coins to show Brad I’m not a subversive enemy agent?”

  Tutor confirmed that it could be done, and told Richard to hold the box up above the dish. A moment later the bright beam burst forth and seemed to dance across the interior of the bowl and the coins within it, as it had when Tutor had created the convincing logo for the cream-coloured truck. Richard stepped back as soon as the beam stopped, to allow Brad easy access to the bowl.

  “Admirable,” Brad breathed as he and then Tracy stared long and hard at the coins. Tutor had drilled a hole through the centre of the stack, stopping at the surface of the bowl. The remainder of the interior was covered with some kind of diagram. Brad picked it up and tipped the coins onto the table, as that part of the room was poorly illuminated. He tilted the bowl so the light reflected off the stainless steel. Inscribed on its concave surface was a picture of a helicopter in flight with a line extending from beneath it, striking a missile in mid-air. Pieces were flying in all directions from the shattered projectile. The spot that had been under the stack of coins looked exactly as it always had – there was no sign of the laser having impacted on the stainless steel, after the precision penetration of the nine coins. “Never seen the like…” Hawk whispered almost reverently.

  Richard watched him intently, awaiting some more definitive response with a rising fear that it would be the logical one, and his only hope would be dashed.

&nbs
p; “How long will this thing work?” Brad asked quietly, after a protracted period of profound pondering.

  “Tutor says if we run a cable from the electrics of your helicopter close to this box, he can maintain it indefinitely.”

  “Close, not into?”

  “Some kind of inductive feed, I think…” Richard speculated.

  “There’ll be a whole lot of missiles, not to mention anti-aircraft guns and cannon fire from ‘planes; can this box handle all of it?”

  Richard looked away uneasily as the coldly factual response came back from Tutor.

  “Well?”

  “Tutor says such an approach would succeed about seven times in every twenty attempts.”

  “Not very good odds,” Brad seemed to be disappointed. Sounds like half my missions in ’Nam! “But I guess the chances of success would be higher if we could get close before they started their all-out attack.”

  Richard got confirmation from Karen’s mentor that it would be so. He looked at Brad anxiously, the tension building like a huge wall leaning over him, a huge wall which he knew was about to fall.

  “The element of surprise is what we need,” Brad said finally. “A registered emergency transfer helicopter on call has air-corridor priority. It may hold them off for a while. It could raise the odds and tip the balance in our favour.” He stepped over to Richard and offered his hand.

  “You’re going to help?” Richard shook it, smiling with relief. He’s with us!

  “It sounds crazy enough to be true. And I don’t like seeing pretty girls with gunshot wounds.” Brad turned to Tracy and hugged her. “Kind of like a wounded rabbit, huh?”

  “That’s why I wanted to be a doctor.” She looked up into his eyes - hers became moist as she saw his concern.

  “That’s what I thought. Now, it will take me a few minutes to register the flight with air traffic control. I’ll book us as going to Augusta in Maine; that will get us quite close to Redcliff, hopefully without catching their attention.” Brad was all business, now he had committed himself. “Then we’ll swing starboard when we reach the closest point on our flight path and head straight on to Redcliff without landing at Augusta, and I’ll give them some good stories on the radio if they start getting concerned about us.”

  “How will we get Karen to the airport here, and past security?” Richard asked.

  “Security? Ha!” Hawk guffawed. “Airport! Westwood doesn’t rate an airport. It’s just an airfield, and fortunately for you, our mutual friend here, Doctor Tracy Wilde,” Brad put his arm around her at this point. “Parked her car on the highway right in front of mine a few weeks ago, totalling my previous ancient ground transport–”

  “Hey! Don’t forget about the animal!” Tracy protested with mock indignation.

  “Totalling it,” Brad repeated with a smile. “So as to save the life of some wild but unrecognizable animal, previously presumed to be a quill-less, mutant, non-porcupine, but now speculated to perhaps even be an alien,” here he winked at Tracy. “Who I’m sure is eternally grateful for her lightning reactions. So I now have an old, old Buick (on her personal recommendation) which happens to be the world’s largest and most smooth-running station wagon. It’s clean, it’s quiet, and it’s perfect for transporting stretcher-cases. So we’re all set!” Brad turned away, picked up the phone and started making arrangements. In a surprisingly short space of time he had created a credible flight plan and logged it with air traffic control, checked on refuelling points and obtained information on the weather along their intended route to Augusta.

  Still, it was over an hour later when Brad hung up the phone for the last time. At last Tracy draped another thin, hospital-style blanket over Karen and moved the bed towards the door.

  “Richard,” Dr. Wilde began as the exhausted young man got up and walked alongside. “I’d like you to sit in the back next to Karen and hold the plasma bottle up. Brad’s not kidding when he says the ride is good in his wagon, she’ll be fine.”

  He nodded his understanding. It’s the flight I’m worried about, especially the end of it. Richard followed, and helped to keep the bed rolling in the right direction.

  “Take the other end of the stretcher,” Brad directed from his position by the front door as he picked up the forward end and collapsed the extendible rolling framework with practised ease. “Tracy can carry the plasma for now.”

  Richard picked up the end by Karen’s feet, figured out how to retract the extended framework after a moment’s delay, and together they walked out of the clinic onto the street. Tracy opened the huge tailgate of the station wagon and watched while Brad slid his end in. Richard took the plasma and climbed in next to Karen.

  “Just a minute,” Tracy muttered and dashed across the sidewalk back into her office. She came out a moment later, after turning off all the lights behind her, and jumped in beside Brad. “I left a note to my receptionist to ask the other doctors at the practice to cover for me if I’m not in on Monday. I figured they’ll’ve heard by then if I won’t be back on Tuesday.”

  Brad nodded soberly, then started the engine. And she never does anything dangerous... He smiled quietly in amazement.

  Richard leaned against the side of the cargo area to brace himself. True to the pilot’s word, the vehicle glided smoothly away from the kerb.

  “It isn’t very far to the airfield,” he assured Richard as they drove off into the pre-dawn gloom.

  Brad glanced in his rearview mirror as he drove, observing Richard’s constant vigilance – a continual stare at the pale, still face of Karen. He felt Tracy’s regard, and turned, recognising the elfish grin she gave him as similar to the first one he had been gifted with, just after the accident that had quite literally ‘brought them together”. He reached over and took her left hand in his.

  “Maybe I should be wondering if you have a death wish?” He murmured, assured that the young lad would not overhear.

  Dr. Wilde turned and looked at the two in the back of the station wagon, checking with Richard that Karen was not bleeding any heavier since they moved her into the vehicle. Still kids, really…

  “No, no,” she rejected this rather whimsical conjecture as she turned back to Brad, whispering as she leaned close to his right ear. “I wish for life, for both of us – together…” She felt the increased pressure as his hand responded to this revelation. “But most especially for the young ones.” And then she rested her head on his shoulder, as they continued moving serenely through the empty streets.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Special charter flights invariably come with a high cost – Anon.

  The flight towards Augusta in Brad Hawk’s old Bell 206B proceeded, with a couple of short stops to refuel. Everything was routine, and Richard watched with increasing optimism from his seat next to the veteran pilot as the miles dropped away rapidly behind them. Dr. Wilde kept checking the wound, and, as it oozed blood ever slower, replaced the gauze at longer and longer intervals. As they neared Augusta, the bright, sunny skies were replaced with patchy clouds, some of which were quite dark and full with the promise of rain. Brad glanced around quickly, taking in the still form of Karen and the obviously nervous face of his doctor-girlfriend, and announced he was about to break away from their registered flight-path.

  “It might get interesting soon. The good news is that there is low cloud along the coast; with any luck we’ll be able to use it to hide from their initial visual reconnaissance. I’m just going to take her down to see where the ceiling is.” He neglected to add that the clouds might make his favoured option of a low-level, ‘below the radar’ approach impossible.

  Richard nodded, too tense to talk.

  Outside, the layer of fluffy white stuff below them was already thicker, with only the occasional break through which the damp fields and the farm buildings could be seen. The three hundred seventy-five horse-power Allison gas turbine continued its almost deafening roar as the helicopter dropped into one of the breaks in the overcast – a nar
row, gorge-like opening – and sank quickly towards the ground.

  Brad levelled off about fifty feet above the treetops and looked around for overhead power cables before proceeding on his original heading. He felt like he was far away, reliving the past, as his technique was just as it would have been, forty years earlier, in Viet Nam. The clouds rushed by overhead, with the occasional lower portion momentarily enveloping their craft.

  Richard looked ahead and saw that the clouds hung lower, their darkened undersides already disgorging huge quantities of water. Brad took them rapidly back up and resumed his original altitude of five thousand feet. “I think we’ll go with plan ‘B’,” was all he said, as they returned to skimming the tops of the clouds.

  Richard glanced back at Tracy, to find her scribbling some medical terms on a scrap of paper.

  “Here,” she began as she passed them forward for Richard to give to Brad. “This should make them think twice about stopping us.”

  Brad read the words through and clipped the paper to his visor. The monotonous, incredibly loud sound of the Allison 250-C20 filled everyone’s ears, despite the headphones, discouraging idle chatter.

  “This is Redcliff Biological Hazard Control calling Delta Bravo Echo.”

  Richard jumped slightly, then groaned as he realized that this transmission indicated that their immunity had not lasted long.

  “You appear to have veered off your logged course for Augusta and are approaching the Bio-Hazard Control area. Do you copy?”

  “Delta Bravo Echo to Redcliff Control,” Brad responded in his most unconcerned manner, “I read you. We filed and obtained clearance for this route change a short while ago. Perhaps you have not received notification yet.”

  “Delta Bravo Echo, this is Redcliff BHC, resume your original flight path to Augusta while we check this out, please.”

  “This is a medical emergency, Redcliff.” Brad spoke very clearly, confidently and slowly. “It is imperative that we continue without delay. Delta Bravo Echo has priority as an Emergency Medical Transport.”