Apache Dawn, - [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗
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“What?” she gasped in surprise. “I’ve never dealt with anything like this—”
“Maybe not, but you’ve been in combat. Have you seen the GSWs coming in?”
Brenda had to quickly get her mental train back on the track after the sudden topic switch. “Uh…yes, they're pretty strange—”
“Not according to the Secret Service. The motorcade was ambushed on the way here. As a result, they’re taking over the ward and turning it into an impromptu fortress until they can get the President out of here.”
“Attacked? By who?” she asked.
“They didn’t stop to ask. They just plowed through the hail of bullets and got here as fast as possible. You should see their vehicles out back! Shot all to hell. I’m told they left several of their wounded men back out there in the streets somewhere. That’s how seriously they’re taking this.” He frowned. “They’re having trouble contacting anyone outside the hospital, like their radios are being jammed or something. They think there’s some sort of national, or at least regional, attack underway.”
“Who’s attacking us? Whoever nuked Atlanta?” asked Dr. Fletcher. “I can’t get my head around this…”
The chief shook his gray, balding head. “I don’t know, and they don’t either, if you ask me. Agent Sheffield,” he said, indicating a man in a tattered black suit talking with three others, “said he saw fully automatic weapons fire hit one of the motorcade vehicles from two different directions. Military-grade stuff, very high powered. Either the gangs got a hold of some new toys or…”
“Or what?” asked Brenda.
“Well, it’s just speculation, but the rumor is there’s some kind of assassination squad in L.A. trying to take out the President. The agents over there in the corner think it may be the North Koreans.”
“Oh my God,” muttered Dr. Fletcher. “We’re at war?”
“What about the civilians?” asked Brenda. “If the President is here and these guys think he’s not safe…that means whoever the hell is out there trying to kill him may know he’s here. Everyone in this hospital is at risk now.”
The chief nodded. “I thought that, too,” he said with a sad smile. “There’s nothing we can do. We can’t evacuate the President; his vitals are too weak. We can’t empty the hospital; there’s just too many people. Besides, where would we send them? Every hospital in L.A. is bursting at the seams with ILI cases.” He shook his head. “From what we can gather, every major hospital along the West Coast is in the same boat.”
“This place will be a circus when the media finds out…” said Dr. Fletcher.
“That won’t happen,” said the chief with a glance at the German shepherd, sniffing around doors and cabinets. “The media thinks the President is still at his hotel. Agent Sheffield figures we have a few hours before they start getting suspicious. But, he said they have ways to keep the media thinking the President has slipped away and moved up north. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but he says that should keep whoever is trying to kill him off guard as well. They’re trying to get military reinforcements until they can get the President out of here. Whatever the hell is going on, it’s serious.”
“Is he responding to treatment, then?” asked Brenda. She wondered if Derek was getting a call at this moment to mobilize and head into war. Would she be able to talk to her brother again? Would she ever see him again? She tried to fight the tears starting to form in her eyes. It was still her first day of work, technically.
“Not very well, but yes. He’s stabilized, which is more than can be said for most people in this hospital right now. Agent Sheffield says they had plans to get some of The Pandemic vaccine to the President before the trip but he refused on the advice of his political advisers. They said it would look cowardly and the media would eviscerate him for trying to act heroic and help the sick when there was no chance he could get sick. This close to the election, he listened to them.”
“Politics!” hissed Dr. Fletcher.
Brenda sniffed to get her emotions in check. You are back in the Army, girl. Act like it! “So they can just get him the vaccine now! We know it’s effective after exposure, it just takes longer. Right?”
“Right. But they no longer have any.”
“Any? Why?” she asked, confused.
“There was an order from on high to consolidate the remaining vaccine supply at the CDC’s strategic vault last week. No one thought anything of it,” said the chief.
“Strategic vault…” said Brenda, looking back at Dr. Fletcher. “That’s Atlanta.”
“Was,” said the chief sadly. “I had a lot of friends down there…”
“But wait, I thought the CDC had all of the really important stuff buried deep underground in vaults…weren’t they designed to survive an attack by the Russians during the Cold War or something?” said Dr. Fletcher.
“They were,” said the chief, looking at his own hands.
“Oh my God, that’s why Atlanta was nuked. Even if the vaults survived, the whole city would be so hot, no one would be able to get in to bring any surviving vaccines out,” Brenda said, and slumped against the wall in exhaustion. “Why is this happening?” She slid to the floor, hands on her face. Exhaustion was knocking on her door again with the reminder that people could not function on two hours of sleep in 48-hour timespan.
“Without the vaccine, what hope is there for the President, or any of these people?” asked Dr. Fletcher. “Or us, for that matter? What if we catch it?”
“I don’t know,” muttered the chief sadly. “I just don’t know. I have to believe that those who have been previously exposed to H5N1—and survived—have a better-than-even chance of fighting this off.”
“That’s something, I guess. But…?” asked Dr. Fletcher.
“But…” said the chief, “we sent off samples of the first cases on Thursday. It’ll take a few days to be processed. We just don’t know,” he said, holding up his hands in a helpless gesture.
Just then, a nurse behind her circular desk at the end of the T-intersection of hallways, sneezed violently. The entire ward went deathly silent as all heads turned to look at the poor woman. She went pale—a trembling hand still over her mouth and looked around with wide eyes at all of the staring faces.
“God help us all,” said the chief.
Glacier National Park, Montana
Chad Huntley lay on his side in the snow and tried to slow his breathing. He was a little surprised by the amount of snow this early in the season, but he figured he was high enough up in the Rockies that it was bound to snow sooner or later. He dusted the cold white powder from his weeks-old beard with the exposed fingers of his trigger hand.
He was so close. He wanted badly to take a peek over the boulder that he was hiding behind but was afraid the movement would blow his cover. Instead, he glanced down at the crude heartbeat monitor attached to his belt. The glowing point of light flickered but remained in the same spot on the monitor. The female cougar that had been tagged last year was acting erratically. He had been tracking her for a few increasingly cold days now and his suspicions grew the longer she sat still.
He adjusted the grip on his rifle. The well-traveled Henry lever action was chambered in .45-70 and Chad loved it. It wasn’t as cool looking, he supposed, as the standard issue AR-15 his boss had issued him, but it had a soul. There was something that made him smile about the smooth polished walnut stock and heavy, solid barrel of the trusty Henry in his hands. It just felt…natural.
As a gust of wind cascaded cold air over the boulder and onto his face, he thought he heard a low yowl come from the direction of his prey. The cougar sounded sick, sure enough. The heartbeat monitor showed the big cat was circling. Then it paused.
Time to move.
Chad slowly removed his father’s old Stetson and set it gently in the snow next to him, letting the wind blow stray locks of his thick brown hair across his face. The cold air hit the dampness of his scalp and sent a shock through his body that was not completely unpleasant.
Slow as he could, Chad unstrapped the pack from his back and crawled his way up the side of the boulder. He was dressed in his custom winter ghillie suit made of white, gray, and brown scraps of painted burlap and twigs. He carefully pulled the hood up over
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