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46
Maxie was numb with exhaustion. The smell of drifting gouts of gunsmoke mingled with a still-subtle, but growing, stench of decay from bodies and body parts outside the perimeter of trashed vehicles at her medical station. The orderlies carried bodies to a spot in back, among some rocks. They’d long since run out of body bags and were simply stacking the bodies in a cleft among boulders piled up during recent construction. They first stripped uniforms from the dead to make bandages.
A constant stream of walk-in casualties flowed in. There appeared to be many sniper-trained commandos; several of Maxie’s patients with minor injuries hid between the vehicles and scanned the horizon, ready with rifles to shoot back if they saw any more snipers. Explosions pounded steadily as tank and artillery fire rocked the city. Maxie was busy and tired, and by now ignored the constant rattle of machinegun fire, along with the popcorn-popping of small arms. Occasionally a rocket or a large shell pursued a slowly shuddering, maniacally whistling path to its target. Sometimes the impacts were far away, slamming air and ground alike. Sometimes the impacts were closer, deafeningly so, and sometimes tiny gravel fragments landed on the buses nearby and peppered Maxie’s skin.
Numbly, Maxie kept on with the work. She was now the only nurse left. The woman doctor had disappeared; probably run blindly into the hazy light, staggering among rocks until someone picked her off. Maxie directed triage while her corpsmen stabilized whom they could. The corpsmen directed a small volunteer crew of brave souls to carry away those who were beyond help.
Suddenly, the rattle of gunfire grew close and intense. Men in the compound shouted and ducked for cover. Bullets whined past overhead, some slicing through the thin skin of the buses. Other bullets shattered the safety glass and sprayed the compound with stinging but harmless fragments. “Keep your eyes covered!” Maxie yelled as she ran to look. She threaded her way among men and women most of whom were on their knees and elbows, with their arms wrapped over their heads and their foreheads to the ground. “Stay down!” Maxie yelled as she stepped forward and into the crack between two buses that lay overturned, back end to back end. Glass fragments exploded around her, and she shielded her face. Her hands were bloody, but she ignored them. If the final attack was on, how could she evacuate her station now? Whom to take, whom to leave? She decided that she couldn’t leave anyone behind, so they would all stay, she with them.
Hands reached out to help her, to pull her into the safety between the buses. A dead man lay sprawled in the center; there was no time to move him, so he lay on his back, legs spread, one hand on his blood-soaked fatigue uniform chest, the other stretched high over his shoulder as if he were doing the backstroke. The two remaining men wore flak jackets and helmets. They had several small ammo boxes and some loose ammo in a pile. She picked up the dead man’s M20B2 field rifle, smelling the oil and burnt powder in it, and crawled forward with the two soldiers flanking her. Might as well die fighting, she thought. “What are they doing?” she asked.
“Ma’am, they’re not shooting at us. Frank here caught a stray round. They’re shooting over our heads.”
Maxie peered out and glimpsed a startling sight. The low horizon, seen from her position, swarmed with men in blue-and yellow camo. Some wore helmets; others caps; and some showed their shaven heads. They popped up and down, firing their rifles. Out of sight, they appeared to have some field artillery, for she could see the gouts of smoke and hear the explosions as the shells streaked into the sky.
She pulled back in. “I have decided we are not going to evacuate.”
One of the men was an older NCO. “I would suggest we stay put, Ma’am. We’ve got too many wounded. We’d be walking into the line of fire.”
The other, a younger NCO, agreed. “They’re not worried about us, or we’d be goners already. Please, let’s stay put.”
Maxie closed her eyes and sighed with relief that they agreed, though she couldn’t admit that to them. Her relief was short-term, however, for in another second an explosion rocked the ground and showered dirt and glass on them. Maxie and her companions ducked down so hard she tasted brownish-red soil in her mouth. It caked her lips. She grimaced. Explosion after explosion rocked the ground. She held her rifle tightly.
“Let’s pull back!” the NCO said as the wrecked buses around them began to bounce on the rolling earth, threatening to roll over and crush them. Maxie and the two men scrambled to get clear. She stumbled repeatedly as the ground bucked under her.
“Look!” someone cried. “Jets!”
Maxie looked up and saw the distant flashes of silver as five Air Force jets peeled away. The last two of their rockets were still flying, directly toward Maxie it seemed, and she was too fatigued to react. Instead, the rockets streaked overhead and exploded in the front lines of the mutineers.
“That’s our side!” someone shouted, and everyone cheered. Sporadic fire still came from the mutineers’ line, but the milling bodies were gone. Maxie scanned their position but could not see a single man moving. The air above their position was filled with one huge thunderhead cloud of gray smoke.
“Look over there!”
Maxie and everyone around her turned to see several tanks roll up the road toward the field station, coming from the direction in which the Japanese tourists had been killed.
“I hope they’re ours,” someone said.
“I have a feeling they are,” said the tall black man who’d nearly been killed the night before. He grinned from ear to ear, despite the pain of his wounds. “But them ain’t all tanks!”
“Earthmovers,” Maxie heard someone exclaim. For every tank there were three huge yellow bulldozers, each the size of a small house. Must be ten of them, Maxie thought. Just three tanks? Another man said: “They’re civilian, like you see at the city landfill. What the—?”
The main battle tanks moved past Maxie’s position, blazing with machine guns and rockets as they rolled. Every ten seconds, each tank would buck as an artillery round left its muzzle with a groaning noise and a puff of smoke. The tanks were aiming at objectives over the horizon.
Meanwhile, the 50-ton earth movers swung into action, pushing boulders and the debris of shattered buildings out of the way. “I know that song,” someone said. “They are clearing a landing strip. Jesus, look, five minutes and they’ve cleared a football field.”
One minute Maxie just heard the clattering of tanks and earthmovers.
The next minute she heard the thunder of rotors and the sky suddenly filled with black shark shapes. No, olive-drab attack helicopters. The sky was black with them, flying in a wide sweep formation ten across, several deep, stacked in layers so they could fire simultaneously. But they weren’t firing anymore. The horizon just beyond the station was taken; they’d hold their fire for the next objective. Most of them flew on, but several circled for a landing on the newly cleared ground.
A cheer suddenly rose. Men and women raised their arms, waving. For in the sky, headed directly their way, was a long line of smaller choppers, and Maxie recognized their shapes and their sounds. They were MAES units, probably two or three dozen flights, like a hundred insects growing larger every second. Maxie swayed on rubbery legs and felt ready to just sit down and roll over and go to sleep. She still carried the rifle slung over one shoulder. Her job was done. Soon, she would have a double martini and go to sleep.
One by one, the medevac helicopters set down on the clearing just created by the earthmovers, which were moving back toward the safety of the city. Each MAES flight kicked up a cloud of dust as it set down. The nearest one was close enough that the wind of its rotors sent up a cloud of grit that stung Maxie’s face and burned one eye.
A man jumped out. The pilot. He ran like a maniac, throwing his headgear aside as he ran toward Maxie. He grinned widely as he ran to her.
Tom Dash.
She let him take her in his arms. She wrapped her arms around his sinewy ribcage. She felt like going to sleep with her head pressed safely against his chest. He held her close so she smelled the aviation oil and the cleaning fluids in his flight suit. And his spicy aftershave.
Maxie wanted to talk, but she couldn’t. She looked up at her tall aviator in disbelief. Wave upon wave of relief pounded over her like an ocean. He looked so crisp and healthy and handsome! His teeth shone like ivory, and his eyes looked wildly humorous and happy. A flood of sound from all those high-powered engines threatened to overwhelm her.
Somehow, Tom stepped aside and she faced a group of stern old men in heavy combat gear, who for a moment all looked like her father. She thought they were going to yell at her and ask why she had not used her gold credit card. What made it worse was that they all had lots of stars on their helmets, or colonels’ eagles at least. A four-star general, saluted her. “Ma’am, I’m looking for a Captain Bodley.”
She nodded, licked her lips. Swallowed hard. She wanted to start crying, and some of her facial muscles were trying to start that, but couldn’t. She remembered she’d saved all her crying for the death of Tom Dash, but here he was alive, and now she could—when it was convenient and not terribly inappropriate—weep for all the dead and wounded here. At the same time she felt she should smile brightly, perhaps serve a cookie or some tea. So nothing came out. She felt Tom’s arm over her shoulders, pulling her close. He rocked her gently against his side.
A three-star general said: “We’re looking for some Army nurses, Ma’am.”
The four-star general prodded gently. “I’m General MacIntosh, Ma’am.” He looked around and his face seemed to become a dark shade of gray. “My God, what a place of hell this is.”
“The stink,” one of the generals said, looking ready to gag.
“We have a lot of dead people here,” Maxie said. “We also have a lot of wounded who need urgent help.” She pushed Tom gently away. She needed room to breathe. To think. “I’m,” she started. Then she pushed the rest of the words out: “the only nurse left. I’m Maxine Lee Bodley.” He looked stunned, so she added: “Sir.” And she added: “I’m turning it over to you right now.” She added a salute.
MacIntosh saluted again. “Thank you. Well done. Where are the rest of the nurses? The doctors?”
“They’re all dead, Sir.”
General MacIntosh turned a deeper shade of concrete, almost olive green. It took him some seconds before he could speak, and then, as dozens of men and women carrying stretchers and rescue cases jumped down out of the MAES choppers and came running full tilt, he could only say: “Oh God, I am so sorry.”
ALLISON: We have just learned that the former Second Lady, Meredith Cardoza, has issued a statement. She is currently at a U.S. Naval facility in Newport News, Virginia, where she was flown from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Jimmy Carter.
Mrs. Cardoza says that, in the hours following her husband’s murder, her life and the lives of her children were threatened if she spoke out about what she knew—what her husband had told her—about the conspiracy hatched by billionaire MCP founder Robert Lee Hamilton. We have some details now.
Mrs. Cardoza says she eluded Hamilton’s security teams and flew to Rome, where she sought asylum at the Holy See. Vatican and Italian authorities worked frantically to secure the family while avoiding terrorist incidents caused by the U.S. insurrectionists. Under Papal diplomatic portfolio, and accompanied by heavily armed Italian Carabinieri in armored cars, the family were taken to Rome’s Fiumincino International Airport under cover of night. While an Italian Air Force troop plane flew toward Spain on a decoy mission, the family and their guards were smuggled out of Italy on an Israeli El Al Airbus 9900 and flown to the Ivory Coast Republic in Africa, where Mrs. Cardoza and her children received asylum on property owned by the Archdiocese of Djibouti. For the past nine months they lived here in secret, guarded by Ivory Coast special forces.
Mrs. Cardoza alleges several recent plots to kill her, all of which failed. Her children are safe at an undisclosed location in France. She says it was her duty to return to the United States and help bring the renegade generals to justice.
President Bradley has issued a statement welcoming Mrs. Cardoza’s support, and has asked all American citizens to work toward seeking a peaceful resolution to this second U.S. civil war.
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