Mid Ocean

by T Rafael Cimino

  In the driving rain, the two managed to get back on their feet and started to run from the building toward some shipping containers that were fifty yards away. Owen’s adrenaline level had masked the pain he was feeling as the two hobbled away as fast as they could.

  Joel looked back at the building as the entire bay door became mobile, being torn from its mammoth frame structure as the speeding truck pushed it. As it proceeded forward, beams and panels of corrugated steel fell by the side exposing the demon-like machine. Blinded by the obstacles, Del ran the truck right into the rear of a shipping container, ripping a seventy-gallon fuel tank in half, spewing its contents of diesel fuel that immediately ignited.

  •

  “What the fuck was that?” Pat Stephens yelled over the helicopter’s intercom system.

  “91 Lima Fox, Ocala Tower, we have an explosion and are responding to vector 090,” Chester Marks said into his mic.

  The black and gold Bell Huey banked to the east after the long flight from Miami while Pat peered through his binoculars.

  * * * * *

  Code

  The two IFC firemen, Ron Jeffries and his partner, Hal Keller, arrived after a call had been made to their station reporting an explosion. As they rounded the curve and entered the parking lot of the abandoned plant, both looked on in disbelief. The area that had been an abandoned eyesore for all these years was now transformed into a war zone. To the right was the burning Peterbilt truck. The building had a twenty-foot square hole in the side of it. Oh my god, what is going on? Keller thought to himself.

  “Rescue One to base. We need the sheriff out here at once!” Jeffries yelled into the truck’s microphone.

  “What’s going on out there?” replied the farm’s dispatcher.

  “I don’t know, but it seems like some kids have taken vandalism to the next level. This may be gang related.”

  “10-4 Rescue One,” she responded.

  “Look, over there!” Keller yelled, pointing to Joel who was tending to Owen lying on the ground, bleeding from his throat and head.

  They weren’t prepared for this. Still, the need to tend to a patient overrode their need to stay in a safe environment. Keller was the first out of the truck. Jeffries went to the rear and grabbed some equipment, taking an EKG monitor, trauma bag, a spine-board and a blanket. Keller reached Owen first.

  “Who are you and what the hell is going on!?” Keller yelled.

  “Special Agent Joel Kenyon, U. S. Customs. I need to use your radio!” he demanded.

  “We’ve already got the sheriff’s department on the way,” Jeffries replied.

  “Hey, speaking of radios, let’s get a Shandscare MedEvac en route,” Keller said.

  “Rescue One to base.”

  “Go ahead Rescue One.”

  “Call Shands Hospital and get a chopper here to the old porcelain plant ASAP. And, we need some backup from EMS – we’re about to work a code here…and where are those damn sheriffs?” Jeffries yelled into his portable radio.

  “Shands is on the phone, Rescue One. They advise that air rescue is tied up on a traffic accident over on the interstate. Our main office is requesting that all IFC security forces guard the front gate. My hands are tied up here Ron.”

  “Base, we have a critically injured federal agent here. Get us a Marion County ambulance ASAP!”

  His training taught him to check for life threatening problems first. Owen’s airway was open but he was breathing at eight times per minute with gurgling blood being exhaled with each breath. His carotid pulse was one hundred and forty, very weak, and completely undetectable in the radial arteries in his wrists. His skin was cool to the touch and his face looked like a starched bed sheet. His pupils were dilated and he was totally unresponsive. There was a lot of blood. After removing Owen’s Kevlar vest, Keller took out his trauma scissors and cut a nice straight slit in his shirt exposing his chest. A large caliber entry wound had lacerated the front of his throat, nicking his right carotid artery before entering the bottom of his jaw. From there, the bullet cut into his temporal artery before blowing half of his right ear off the side of his head. If he makes it, he is going to take a whole lot of plastic surgery to fix, Jeffries thought to himself.

  Jeffries cracked open the drug box, a converted fishing tackle box filled to the top with lifesaving medications and IV fluids.

  “His breathing is at eight, get ready to incubate as soon as he hits six!” Keller said grabbing the emergency airway kit.

  “Where are the cops man!?” Jeffries yelled, looking back at the burning truck.

  “Hold this,” Keller instructed Joel, placing a six-inch square gauze pad on Sands’s bleeding wound.

  Immediately, the white pad turned crimson red absorbing the blood that oozed through Joel’s fingers. Keller then grabbed two-liter bags of lactated ringers from the drug box while Jeffries took a fourteen-gauge needle and immediately found a vein in the left arm.

  “I’m getting a central line. At his age, we don’t have much time before this turns cardiac,” Keller said, grabbing a twelve-gauge needle connected to a syringe. Then he slid the stainless steel barb into the left side of Owen’s neck, penetrating his external jugular vein, attaching the plastic portion of the catheter to the second bag of IV lactated ringers.

  •

  “I’ve got an LZ over there, upwind from the burning truck,” pilot Chester Marks said over his intercom microphone.

  The Bell Huey circled, churning some of the black smoke from the burning truck into a small cyclone as it landed. Pat was the first one out of the sliding side door, jumping to his feet and running toward Joel.

  “Are you okay?” Pat yelled over the spinning chopper’s turbine.

  “He’s been hit!” Joel answered with a trembling voice.

  “Is this Owen Sands?” Pat asked.

  “What’s the holdup with the ambulance?” Joel asked.

  “I don’t know. What about your chopper?” Keller asked, pointing to the Huey as the last of the FBI tactical team was exiting.

  “Let’s do it!” Pat yelled.

  “Here, hold onto this bag,” Keller instructed, handing the plastic bag of fluid to Pat as he finished taping down the IV catheter into the side of Owen’s neck, opening the ball valve in the IV line and letting the lifesaving fluid run into his veins.

  “You, grab that oxygen bottle,” Keller said, “I’m going to incubate him in the chopper. His breathing has slowed to six.”

  “What’s that mean?” Joel asked.

  “It’s either a late stage of shock or the bullet hit a lung,” Keller replied.

  “On my three,” Keller ordered as the four men each took one of Owen’s extremities, picking him up and moving him over to the plywood spine-board. Then, they made a duck walk for the chopper.

  “What are we doing?” Marks asked, looking back from his pilot’s seat.

  “We are going to fly directly to the trauma pad at Shands in Gainesville. Do you have a chart for that?” Keller asked.

  “Not in front of me, but I will in a second,” Marks answered. “Pat, who is this? We can’t transport the public.”

  “He’s one of us. Just get us there and quick,” Pat ordered as he slid the large door shut.

  FLASH

  Despite the chaos around him, everything was calm inside Owen Sands’s head. He dreamt soft, peaceful scenes of his life, in better times and in black and white.

  FLASH

  The day he met Leslie, he was so nervous and she was so confident. All he could say was his name.

  “Owen. My name, I mean, is Owen,” he told her as she blushed, feeling complimented by his effort.

  FLASH

  The day they got married, standing barefoot in the pure, white sand of the beach in Destin.

  “I promise to do all the things that I can’t even dream I would be able to do - the things that will be inspired by my love for you,” he said, reciting his final vow of the ceremony.

  FLASH

 
; The day Tessa was born in the delivery room of Miami’s Baptist Hospital.

  “Push Leslie,” the nurse instructed.

  “Push honey!” Owen repeated.

  “I got it the first time honey!” Leslie said.

  FLASH

  The day Leslie told him she was pregnant with their second baby. “Owen, remember how great it was when Tessa was born? Well my love, we’re going to do it again!”

  •

  Jeffries handed his partner a stainless steel blade with an attached light and a small plastic tube. Keller then propped Owen’s head back and inserted the tube into his bloodstained mouth, down his throat and into his windpipe, making a direct source for oxygen rich air to get into his lungs. He then took his stethoscope and listened attentively to both sides of his patient’s lungs. “The tube is placed but the sounds are diminished on the left. I don’t think it’s in too far. I think his lung is collapsing, or it could just be filling with blood,” Keller said.

  “Jesus!” Joel yelled out of frustration. “What can I do?”

  “See that clear plastic bag over there…the one that looks like a football?” Jeffries said.

  “Yeah, this one?” Kenyon asked, grabbing the long, tubular breathing assist device.

  “That’s it. Hook some of the clear tubing to the end of that bag, and then hook it up to the oxygen cylinder and turn it on…as high as it will go,” Jeffries ordered.

  As Joel complied, Keller grabbed the bag and started to assist Sands’s breathing by squeezing air into his lungs.

  “Here, take this,” Keller asked his partner. “I’m going to decompress this left lung.”

  Taking another twelve-gauge needle and syringe, Keller found a spot in between Sands’s ribs below his armpit and inserted the needle. As soon as he advanced the needle halfway, a surge of air came followed by a stream of blood.

  “It’s a hemo! He’s bleeding inside next to his lung!”

  “What’s that mean?” Joel asked frantically.

  “He needs surgery…and fast,” Jeffries said.

  “Ron, get him on a monitor and take a BP real quick,” Keller asked as Jeffries hooked up three wires that were connected to three matching adhesive electrodes. They were placed on Owen’s chest as the machine was turned on. The green screen displayed a constant wave that corresponded with a beep for each time his burdened heart cycled a beat.

  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

  FLASH

  The black and white scenes continued. The beeping, to Owen, sounded more like the day his doorbell rang and Tessa had come home, standing on the front porch, holding her daughter.

  “Daddy…”

  FLASH

  The day he sat in his daughter’s room with the lights off, playing with his granddaughter Monica by candlelight. This scene was different than the rest though. Everything was black and white, except for her socks, her brightly colored pink socks.

  “Grandpa…?”

  “Yes baby.”

  “Are you going to go help the babies one day?”

  “Someday honey.”

  “Not too soon because I need help with these babies,” Monica said, pointing to the dolls under the shawl.

  “That’s a deal,” he promised, holding her tight.

  “Grandpa…?”

  “Yes baby.”

  “Not too soon…” she said, as her eyes closed shut.

  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP the monitor chimed with a constant tone.

  “He’s in a systole!” Jeffries yelled as Keller started to pound on Owen’s chest.

  Owen continued to ascend through the clouds as the chopper and his lifeless body leveled off, taking a course toward the trauma center. The horrid, shrieking tone of the cardiac monitor that was indicating a flat line continued to fill the chopper’s cockpit. Keller looked down at the spent man, torn and tattered. He was covered in blood. As he lay motionless on his back, Owen’s muscles relaxed for the last time letting his arm fall to the side. As the medic reached for his patient’s arm, a peculiar sight caught his attention. Falling from his left hand was a small child’s pink sock.

  * * * * *

  Advance

  Intense heat boiled up from runway Four-Left at Florida’s Homestead Air Force Base as two F-16 fighters idled at the end of the five thousand foot strip.

  “Tango six Ringleader, tango four Circus Act.”

  “Circus Act, systems check complete.”

  “Ringleader is go-no-go, initiate mission.”

  “Circus Act is go-no-go.”

  With simultaneous bursts of power, the two jets screamed down the runway until rotating, pointing their noses skyward and in an instant they were gone, surfing in the clouds above.

  After assuming a heading of two hundred and thirty degrees, the jets leveled off at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet and continued southwest. Seven minutes into the flight, they found it. The aerostat balloon Fat Albert floated at an altitude of 14,740 feet, with Jim Plimpton’s 18-foot backcountry boat Redfisher hanging from a towline with its bow pointed towards the earth below.

  “Circus Act to Ringleader, target identified at two hundred sixty-five degrees, going to missile lock.”

  “Ringleader to Circus Act, watch your lookdown screen for marine traffic.”

  “Circus Act has a clear LZ.”

  “Ringleader to Circus Act, fire at will.”

  One of the jets banked to the left, breaking its tight formation with the other and took a direct course aiming straight for the balloon. As his wings leveled horizontally, the green heads-up display showed a set of computer generated cross hairs that lit red with an accompanying audible alarm as the missile guidance system locked on the target.

  “Circus Act, missile away.”

  An orange burst of fire and smoke exploded around the deploying jet’s right wing as an Exercet missile assumed independent flight. Three seconds later it collided with the solid aluminum turnbuckle mounted on the nose of the target. The missile exploded on impact, engulfing the white balloon in a ball of fire and smoke. The boat almost seemed to stand still for a second before starting its plummet to the water below, gaining speed with every hundred feet of free fall. The Redfisher, having not been designed for air travel, flopped about in the accelerating wind like a leaf falling from a tree for the first time. As the descent increased, the boat started to spin at a fast rate, ejecting equipment in all directions until the spinning mass struck the water, which at the boat’s speed, acted more like concrete, breaking it into multiple pieces.

  “Circus Act to Ringleader, missile strike, high order detonation, target destroyed. Returning to base.”

  * * * * *

  Composure

  A soft snow fell over Arlington National Cemetery as a small group of family gathered to say one final goodbye to their father, grandfather, friend and partner. The memory of Owen Sands was treated to a full dress ceremony the day before and now it was time for everyone to return home. It had taken some political manipulating to get the facility to accept him into the ranks of military heroes and the political hierarchy but in the end, Pat Stephens drew on some favors that were owed to him and a spot that had been reserved decades before for John Kenyon’s spouse, a person who never materialized, was made available.

  Joel and Jhenna Kenyon remembered the day they stood at the same set of plots eight years before to bury their father; now they were there again with a lot less fanfare. The two men would share the same piece of land and honor, having served their country to the end and with sacrifice. Next to Joel’s side were Tessa, tiny Monica, Jade Sands, and Jhenna Kenyon-Stephens, all holding hands and looking at the patch of snow where Owen was laid to rest.

  Before Pat Stephens’s sweep was over, Joel Kenyon was a key agent in the indictment of thirty-one defendants, seven of whom were agents in the Tavernier office. Joel stayed on with the restructured Tavernier office that was later moved south to Plantation Key, across the basin from the local Coast Guard station, making his tempor
ary position a permanent one. He and Tessa moved in together, taking over the Sands home next to Coral Shores High School where they stayed busy raising Monica and Tessa’s sister Jade, who turned out to be a big help around the house, always volunteering for laundry duty. A bond developed between Tessa and Joel’s sister Jhenna. Both women, it turned out, were with child, almost simultaneously, and a strong friendship was born. The following year, Pat Stephens was nominated and confirmed as the youngest United States Attorney in American history.

  * * * * *

  Epilogue

  The Remote Viewer program was originally developed by the U. S. Army but after numerous successes, it was handed over to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Despite a large amount of skepticism, Congress continued to fund the unit that basically contracted services to over a hundred self-proclaimed psychics. Loose information was fed to the group and the results were vetted for relevant matches. The members who consistently supplied what was termed wild card data were eliminated and replaced with new candidates who would apply their craft to new scenarios.