by Dale Brown
A pregnant woman.
“What the hell’s going on?” demanded Bison.
“Yo—Nurse, Powder. We got you covered!” shouted Hernandez. His voice was so loud Powder thought his eardrums would break.
“She’s pregnant, real pregnant,” said Liu. “Somebody get me a medical kit! Fast. Real, real fast.” Powder put his weapon on safety as he walked forward. A thin, worried-looking man stood to the side of Liu and the woman, gesticulating wildly. He held his hands out at Powder and started talking a mile a minute.
“Yeah, listen, I don’t speak what you speak, but I’m on the same wavelength,” Powder told him. “My man Liu’s gonna help. He’s the best.” He pushed his visor up. Even in the darkness the poor husband looked scared shitless.
“Hey, this is a natural thing, right?” he said to the man.
“Happens every day.”
The woman on the ground moaned loudly.
“Where the hell is that medical kit!” yelled Powder.
“Hernandez! Bison! Come on! Get on the ball here!” Hernandez came down the path in a dead run. “What’s the story?”
“Pregnant lady. See if Liu needs help while I check the road.”
“No way. You help Liu, I’ll check the road.” Bison raced down the hill before Powder could stop him.
“Wimp,” he said.
“Wimp yourself,” said Liu over the com set.
“How we doing, Nurse?” asked Powder, walking over to his partner.
The answer came from the woman on the ground, who screamed louder than an air raid siren. Liu reached down and cleared her feet apart, exposing everything to the air.
Nurse had his armored vest, helmet, and other gear off, his sleeves rolled. His hands moved gently across the woman’s stomach. As Nurse put his ear down toward her belly, the woman screamed again.
“Jesus,” said Powder. “Can we move her?” “Too late for that,” said Nurse. “Come here and hold her legs.”
“What?”
“Now!”
Powder took a tentative step forward, but as he started to crouch down, the woman screamed again—and this time even louder.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” yelled Powder, jumping back.
“Shut the hell up, Powder,” said Captain Freah, walking down the hill. “Nurse, you got a handle on this?”
“Baby’s turned around, Captain. This isn’t going to be easy.”
“What are you saying?”
“Breech birth. Kid’s backward. Supposed to come head first.”
“You sure?”
Nurse didn’t answer. “I need that medical kit, ASAP.
And towels.”
“Should we boil water or something?” asked Powder.
“You did take medical training, right?” asked Liu.
“You are a certified paramedic, right?”
“Man, I do not remember anything on birth. No birth.
Nope. Not once.”
“How close is she?” asked Captain Freah.
“If the kid wasn’t turned around, I’d say she’d be ready any second,” said Liu. “The contractions are two minutes apart. Here’s the thing—”
The woman screamed again. Her husband dug his nails into Powder’s arm. The sergeant tried to reassure him, though it was hard to tell if this had any effect.
“Go ahead,” Danny told Liu.
“Captain, this is what they invented C-sections for.”
“What do you mean? You have to cut her open?”
“No way, not here, not me. That’ll kill her for sure.”
“Call for evac?”
“No time. This kid is coming out now, butt first, or they’re both dying. It’s a squirmy little SOB; gotta be a boy. It’s tiny, so maybe he’ll slide out if she’s strong enough to push. I need to keep the kid warm, very warm, so it doesn’t breathe inside the mother until it’s out.
Shit—I’ve only heard about this, I’ve never seen it done.”
“If we don’t do anything, she’ll die anyway,” said Freah. His voice was calm, almost cold. He took off his vest and then pulled off his shirt and gave it to Liu. “Get some of the chemical hand warmers down here, blankets, everything we got to generate heat,” he said into his com set.
Within ten minutes the Whiplash team had a small tent erected around the woman. A portable kerosene heater had been hauled down from one of the tents above; sweat flowed freely. As the woman’s screams grew more desperate, Freah suggested they give the woman morphine, but Liu said that would affect the baby. Besides, he needed her conscious to help push.
All of a sudden, Powder realized the woman had stopped screaming. He looked down at her; she had closed her eyes.
“Liu! Did she die?”
“Transition,” said Liu, who was stripped to the waist.
He had his hands over a soft shirt and blanket between the woman’s legs. “Her body’s taking a rest before the real work. What I’m thinking is, when she’s ready to push, we stand her up.”
“Stand her up?” asked Freah.
“Yeah. Gravity’ll help.”
The woman moaned.
“Already?” Liu said, looking at her. He doubted if she understood a word of English, but she nodded anyway.
“Okay. Powder, Captain, an arm apiece. Hernandez, you hold her behind.”
“God,” said Freah.
“We got to try,” said Liu. “I know it’s a long shot.”
“Screw that horseshit,” said Powder, hoisting the poor woman up over his shoulder. “We are going to do this! Yo, husband, you get back here with Hernandez. Let’s do it.”
“You heard him,” said Danny.
“Push!” yelled Liu.
The woman groaned.
“Push!” yelled Liu again, moving his hands below her waist, trying to coax the baby’s rear end through the tiny birth hole.
“Argh!” said the woman, leaning forward and down so hard she nearly toppled Powder and Danny.
“Push!” yelled Powder and Danny and Liu.
“Push!” yelled the entire Whiplash team, even General Elliott.
“Argggh!” screamed the woman, falling back.
“Oh, God,” said Powder.
“Next one, everybody,” said Liu.
The woman bolted upright and screamed again.
“Push!”
“Argh!”
“Push!”
“Wahhhhhh!” cried a new voice, never before heard in the world.
“Kick ass!” shouted Danny.
“About fuckin’ time,” said Powder, who made sure no one was looking as he wiped the tear from his cheek.
AS WORD SPREAD ABOUT WHAT WAS HAPPENING ON THE slope, most of the others went down to try and help out.
Zen and one of the CCTs ended up manning the surveillance post. Zen sat in his chair, bundled against the cold in a blanket as well as a parka. Cold and fatigue curled around his head, stinging his eyes, twisting the noises of the night. His mind felt as if it had found steps inside his skull and climbed to the top of a rickety stairway, wedging itself into an attic cubbyhole and peering down a long hallway at his eyes. At times he felt the hollowness he associated with leaving Theta during the ANTARES mind experiments; he wanted to avoid that sensation, that memory, at all costs, and when he felt it slipping over him, he grabbed the wheels of his chair, welcoming the shock of cold on his bare fingers.
ANTARES had teased him with the idea that he might walk again, that he might become “normal” once more. It was a false hope, a lie induced by the drugs that made ANTARES work. But it was impossible to completely banish the hope.
The figures on the screen began to jump up and down and cheer—obviously the baby had been born. The CCT turned from the screens and gave Zen a thumbs up. Zen nodded back, trying to smile as well, but he could tell from the airman’s reaction that he hadn’t quite pulled it off.
“A boy!” said Jennifer Gleason when she returned from the slope a few minutes later. She was the vanguard of the slow-moving
caravan bringing mother and child to a heated tent where they would be sheltered for what remained of the night. “A boy!”
Zen tried to sound enthusiastic. “It looked wild.”
“It was. She just pushed him right out. Peshew.” The scientist made a sound something like a hockey puck whipping into a net.
“Pretty cool,” said Zen.
He wheeled himself around to the cement area to watch the group surrounding the mother’s stretcher. Breanna, flanked by Danny Freah and one of the Whiplash soldiers, carried the baby. She smiled at Zen as she passed but kept walking, part of an unstoppable flow.
“Quite a show, Jeff, quite a show,” said Brad Elliott, stopping. The general looked about as proud as a grand-father. “A hell of a thing—this is why we’re here, you know. To save lives,” added the general. “This is it—this is what I wish we could communicate to people. This is what it’s all about. People don’t understand. You know, American SF forces stopped a massacre of Kurds in northern Iraq after the Gulf War, not far from here.” At Dreamland, Brad Elliott had given several pep talks on some of the projects they were working on; never had Zen seen him quite so enthusiastic.
“Things like this happened all the time,” continued the general. “Our planes dropped tons of food, our medics saved hundred of lives a week. We saved people from Saddam—why doesn’t the media report that? We should have had a film crew here. This is the sort of story people should see.”
“I agree,” said Zen, not sure what else to say.
Elliott put his hands on his hips. “We’ll get a helicopter in here in the morning, help this kid. Maybe we can get him a college fund going. Sergeant Habib says these people are Turkish Kurds. Hard life. This is what we’re about. We have to get the story out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Make the place safe for that kid. That’s what we have to do.”
Zen watched Elliott practically bound away.
“A boy!” said Breanna, slipping her arms around him from behind. She snuggled next to his neck and kissed him. “God, you’re cold,” she said.
“Hey,” he said.
They kissed again.
“You should have seen it, Jeff. Sergeant Liu—God, he is awesome.”
“I couldn’t get down.”
She described the birth, the woman pushing, everyone shouting, the tip of the baby’s behind appearing, once, twice, and then a rush of baby and fluid.
“You ought to sleep,” said Zen when she finally finished.
“I’ll sleep,” she said.
“You haven’t, and you have a mission in just a few hours now.”
“I slept on the way over,” she told him. “Chris and I traded off. Don’t worry about me, Jeff.” She bent down and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then started back toward the tent where they had installed mother and child. “Warm up the bed. I’ll be along.”
“Yeah,” was all he could think to say.
Dreamland
1700
“LET ME JUST BLUE-SKY THIS FOR A MOMENT, BECAUSE THE implications truly are outrageous.” Dog watched as Jack Firenzi danced at the front of the small conference room off the hall from Dreamland Propulsion Research Suite B, one of the subbasement research facilities in what was informally called the Red Building. The frenetic scientist had come to Dreamland as an expert on propulsion but now headed research into the hydrogen-activated wing platform, or “Hydro” as he referred to it. His audience consisted of two NASA officials, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and an undersecretary of Defense, all of whom had started out somewhat bewildered by the sartorially challenged scientist, yet now were focusing not on his Yankee hat, sneakers, or three-piece suit, but his rapid-fire praise of inflatable wings.
“Imagine an aircraft that can travel at Mach 6, yet with the turning radius of an F/A-18,” continued Firenzi. Dog had heard the presentation before, so he knew that Firenzi would now talk about the XB-5 Unmanned Bomber Project, where the Hydro technology could increase the aerodynamics of the large airframe. Today the scientist’s optimism knew no bounds—he took off his hat and began using it to describe additional applications, including microsensor craft scheduled to begin testing in the next phase of the project and an improved U/MF on the drawing board. Under other circumstances, Dog might have watched the VIPs to make sure their reactions remained bemused awe at the eccentric scientist who backed up his enthusiasm with a blackboard’s worth of equations. But Dog was preoccupied with the Whiplash mission. The news from Iraq was relatively good—twelve hours of air strike sorties that hit about eighty-five percent of their targets, with no new American losses.
Brad Elliott’s Razor theory seemed to be gaining adherents—and yet, the very fact that no planes had been shot down in the past few hours weighed against it. The Iraqis were clearly using new tactics, and also seemed to have many more missiles, or at least launchers, than anyone thought. One of the F-15s had been photographed by a U-2, and the damage appeared consistent with missile fire. But that didn’t rule out a laser acting on the others.
Everyone was scrambling for intelligence.
“You had mentioned commercial applications?” asked one of the congressmen, Garrett Tyler.
“Oh, yes,” said Firenzi. “One possibility is to replace or augment variable geometry. The trapezoid wings used on the Dreamland MC-17 demonstrator—see, that’s actually a perfect example of the benefits here. Because (a), that technology—basically a folding slat, let’s face it—is very expensive and prone to wear and tear, and (b), it’s always there, on the wing, in some manner, and while they’ve done a lot with the airfoil to reduce drag, it does add to drag. The C-17 is always a C-17. It’s never going to break the sound barrier. But imagine a cargo aircraft with a wingspan the size of an F-104—you remember those, the Starfighter? Tiny wings. Fast as hell. So imagine a plane with a fuselage the size of a 767 but wings like that. Takes off—all right, we’re still coming up with an acceptable propulsion system, but that can be solved, believe me; that’s my area of expertise. You have these narrow, small wings and can go incredibly fast, then, when you want to land, you slow down, pop!” Firenzi yelled and threw his arms out at his sides. All of his audience, even Dog, jumped up in their seats as the scientist mimicked a plane coming in for a landing.
“Zip,” said Firenzi triumphantly. “Enough wing surface inside twenty-five seconds to land on a road. A road!
Really. It’s the future. Imagine the civilian commercial applications—airports could handle two, three times the traffic. We’d reconfigure runways, change approaches—there would be parking and no traffic jams!”
“You know, I think we’re probably all in the mood for dinner about now,” said Dog, sensing that any further performance from Firenzi would convince the congressman he was crazy. “Unless there are other questions.” There were a few, but Firenzi handled them as they walked to the elevators. There wasn’t enough room for the entire party to fit comfortably; Dog stayed behind with Knapp to wait for the second gondola.
“Anything new from Iraq?” Knapp asked as they waited.
“No details of the raids,” Dog told him. He couldn’t assume that Knapp’s clearance entitled him to know that Dreamland had sent the Whiplash team and two Megafortresses to Turkey.
“Should’ve dealt with the SOB when we had the chance,” said Knapp.
“Can’t argue with you, sir,” said Dog.
“Like to get a look at what’s shooting down our planes.”
“So would I.” Dog folded his arms.
“The President’s counting on you,” said Knapp.
“We do our best.”
“Joint Chiefs wanted to put you under CentCom for this, but he wouldn’t let them.”
Dog, unsure exactly how to respond, simply shrugged.
The elevator arrived. Knapp grabbed his arm as the door opened.
“Colonel, you understand of course that that was said in confidence.”
Dog smiled. “Absolutely.�
��
“I happen to agree that Dreamland and Whiplash should be independent. But best be careful. Dreamland’s future may well ride on your standing with the Secretary as well as the President.”
“I don’t get involved with politics if I can help it. Not my job.”
“Maybe you should help it,” said Knapp.
Dog had to put his hand out to stop the door from closing, since they hadn’t entered the car yet.
“General Magnus may not be your boss forever,” added Knapp as they stepped inside.
Dog could only shrug again as the elevator started upward.
Aboard Quicksilver,
on High Top runway
29 May 1997 0650
“POWER TO TEN PERCENT. ENGINE ONE, TEMP, PRESSURES green. Two, green. Three, green. Four, green. Recheck brakes. Holding. I’d recommend new drums at twenty thousand miles,” quipped Chris Ferris, deviating from the checklist. “You might get by with turning them down, but then you risk shimmy stopping at highway speeds.”
“Thank you, Mr. Midas,” answered Bree.
“We’re your under-car-care specialists,” said the copilot without losing a beat. “Power to fifty. System checks.
We’re in the green. Augmented list for assisted takeoff.
Green, green, green. My, we are good. Flighthawks are plugged in and ready to cook.”
“Jeff, how we looking down there?”
“Flighthawks are yours,” replied Zen.
“You sound a little tired this morning, Flighthawk leader.”
“Not at all, Quicksilver. I got two hours of sleep.” Breanna knew Zen was in a bad mood and wouldn’t be kidded out of it. He’d told Fentress he wasn’t needed today, which had obviously disappointed the apprentice pilot. Fentress looked like he wanted to say something, but Zen had simply rolled himself away.
Not that Fentress shouldn’t have spoken up. He needed a little more of Mack Smith in him—not too much. Still, Mack had spent the morning pestering everyone with possible missions he could undertake, and while he was more than a bit of a pain, you had to admire his gung-ho attitude.
From afar.
“Takeoff assist module on line,” said Chris. “On your verbal command.”
“Computer, takeoff assist countdown,” said Bree.
The slightly mechanical feminine voice of the computer began talking. “Takeoff in five, four …”
