The White Warrior

by Marilyn Donnellan

  Marco hardly took his eyes away from the changing scenery out his window the entire three hours. The take-off left him feeling exhilarated. What a thrill to be thrown back against his seat as the plane quickly moved to full speed. As the plane broke through the snow flurries into a clear blue sky, it was a breath-taking sight. He watched the sunset spread across the horizon as they traveled west while munching on a pretty good chicken salad, with lemon pie for dessert. He decided the plane ride was the most fantastic thing he ever experienced.

  The flight attendant told him a press conference was scheduled on the Ft. Sam Houston Air Force base tarmac once they arrived, but he was to stay in the background and not interfere. Marco didn’t say anything, preferring to allow the AR eye implant and vid-phone convey conversations to the prime minister. At one point during the trip, a printed message flashed across his vid-phone from the prime minister.

  “Position yourself where I can see Major Riley as he speaks at the press conference.”

  “Understood,” he wrote back. Ironic. The same prime minister trying to ban writing and reading was sending him a printed message.

  The landing, just before 8 pm San Antonio time, was smooth as silk. As the jet came in for landing, Marco saw a crowd of several hundred behind a line of heavily armed military personnel, spotlights from the airfield shining on the crowd. Another twenty to thirty people stood in front of a barrier; probably from various government-approved press outlets.

  Major Riley and the lieutenant disembarked first from the plane. Marco waited until everyone else was off before grabbing his backpack and ambling down the steps. As he glanced over at the crowd he thought for a moment he saw Brogan and Bryan. As he stepped off the plane and into the crowd he lost sight of them.

  He shrugged and moved into a position near the media, allowing his AR eye implant to show the prime minister everything going on. He made sure to turn on the prime minister’s vid-phone, too. As the press waited for Major Riley to speak, Marco turned to look at the crowd. It had to be Brogan and Bryan. He stopped himself before moving toward them, knowing not to take a chance on the prime minister seeing them. As he turned toward the podium where the major stood, he heard some people in the crowd start to chant BL slogans: “Save our books. Save our past. Save our future.”

  The major was introduced by the mayor of San Antonio. The major confidently strode up to the dais, but before he could speak, the sound of gunfire broke out and a crimson rose spread across his chest. As the crowd saw him collapse they began to panic, screaming and running every direction. Military personnel raised laser rifles and started firing indiscriminately into the crowd. A one-sided gun battle ensued, and the unarmed crowd paid the price.

  Later, a single gunman on top of the airport hangar behind the crowd was identified as the initial shooter. His shot killed the major. The toll initiated from that one shot included 50 unarmed civilians’ dead, and another 39 wounded, shot by the military. Besides Major Riley seven military personnel, including Benson, died. Ten reporters were seriously hurt. In the chaos, no one initially knew for sure who was responsible for anything.

  When the shooting started, Marco immediately hit the ground, hoping to stay out of the line of fire. It worked, but he was splattered with blood from those injured near him. The AR eye implant broke when he hits the ground. After what seemed an eternity, someone helped him up and urged him to run toward the hanger. He turned to see who it was and looked up into Bryan’s face.

  “Well, long time no see, bro!” And remembered nothing else as a blinding pain suddenly caused everything to go black. Bryan later told him while they ran away, a laser shot grazed his head.

  “You are lucky to be alive, Marco.” Allison told him as she bandaged his head at her apartment. Without a doubt, she was the most beautiful sight he had seen in a long time.

  For a minute, Marco could not remember where he was or why. As his memory returned, he panicked, thinking the vid-phone might have recorded everything while he was unconscious. He frantically fumbled through his pockets when he did not find the phone on his wrist.

  “Is this what you are looking for?” Bryan asked, holding up the vid-phone.

  Marco nodded, grabbed it and made sure it was turned off.

  “Don’t worry,” Bryan said with a grin, “I made sure it was turned off.”

  Marco laid his head back on the pillow. “Where am I and how did I get here?”

  “We were at the airport when you arrived,” Bryan said, “We started toward you just as the shooting started. Which we had nothing to do with, by the way. We saw you go down, afraid you’d been hit. It wasn’t until you collapsed the second time we realized you were grazed by a laser shot. So, we brought you here. We figured you would be safer here than trying to take you to a hospital. Besides, we knew you wouldn’t mind if Allison took care of you.”

  Marco didn’t mind at all, even as a flush crept up his neck when he looked over at Allison. Allison even smiled a little at the comment. Maybe there was hope for him yet. His heart leapt at the possibility she might care for him.

  “Okay, everybody out. Marco needs his rest,” Allison said authoritatively. “You can catch up later tonight.”

  “Don’t worry, you’re safe, Marco.” Brogan said as she walked into the bedroom where Marco lay, when suddenly she collapsed.

  Bryan caught her before she hit the floor. Allison directed him to move her upstairs to the bedroom they had been using, where she quickly examined her, assuring him she was fine.

  “She just fainted. Probably from all the excitement,” she told him. “Go on downstairs. She just needs to rest. Go!” She insisted as Bryan hesitated.

  Later, Marco was feeling well enough to come out to the living room area. It seemed, from all the conversation, a lot of planning of some kind was going on. Allison introduced him to her dog. When she told him the dog’s name, she blushed a little.

  “Marco Junior, huh? I wonder where you got that name,” he asked her with a grin. Allison ignored him. He decided to let it go for now.

  “Hey, is Brogan okay? And how is everybody else?”

  But before anyone replied, they heard a loud knock on the door. Papers quickly disappeared, and bottles of Mexican beer suddenly popped up on the table.

  Allison opened the door to two military personnel. “Yes, what can I do for you?”

  “We are looking for Prime Minister Altero’s aide, Marco Anton. His T-chip indicates he is here. We just want to make sure he is okay.”

  Marco stepped to the door. “Well, hello, boys!” He pointed to the big bandage on his head. “As you can see, I’m a bit damaged but fine. Thanks to the gentle care of Dr. Allison Simpson, a friend of mine from the university who came to the airport to meet me. And all these folks you see here, college buddies. Hey, why don’t you come in and join us for a beer?”

  “We’re on duty, sir,” one of the men responded, “but we needed to make sure you were okay. By the way, the prime minister wanted to know what happened to the AR eye implant and the vid-phone he gave you.”

  “Well, it’s like this,” Marco said, trying to look embarrassed. “The AR eye implant stopped working in the melee and I have been having such a good time reminiscing with my buddies, I forgot to call. I’ll call him right now, if you think I need to.”

  “No need, sir, we’ll let him know, but be sure to turn the vid-phone on and keep it turned on in case he needs to reach you.”

  With those parting instructions, the men left. Marco carried the phone outside and stuck it into a potted plant, ensuring the prime minister would be unable to hear the conversation inside.

  “Don’t let me forget to get that bloomin’ thing out of the pot before I leave,” he joked with his friends.

  Brogan brought him up to speed on everything since the raid by Major Riley’s men in Van Horn. “Now we can finalize plans for getting the Van Horn prisoners out tomorrow.” She told him what happened earlier that day when she, Allison and Bryan boldly went into the pr
ison.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Mother

  At 8 am, three BL Council members stood in line at the prison’s security gate, waiting to be admitted. Allison wore her dark blue medical scrubs jumpsuit. The jumpsuit scrubs Brogan and Bryan wore were a rather ugly pea green. The medical jumpsuits included many pockets with zippers used to hold various pieces of medical equipment.

  Bryan’s appeared to be a bit short in the legs and crotch, causing him to periodically tug on it.

  “Stop, it, Bryan,” Brogan whispered nervously, trying not to giggle. Because of the tight fit, the jumpsuit showed off his muscular body.

  “It’s not funny,” he scowled. “Besides, you don’t want this ugly thing damaging the family jewels, do you?”

  Brogan laughed out loud, breaking the tension. Allison had UT badges for them, uploaded to their forged T-chips. She had some T-chips made for them by an underground forger, since they flushed theirs down the toilet before they escaped from Austin. She leaned over and whispered to them.

  “Remember, your names: George and Nancy Johannsen.”

  Their turn to go through security. Allison confidently swiped her badge and Brogan and Bryan followed in her footsteps. As they went through a security body scanner, the guard at the other end, greeted Allison.

  “Good morning, Doc. We weren’t expecting you today.”

  “I wasn’t expecting to be here, Jim,” she said with a smile. “But I received a call saying a large group of prisoners had been brought in from the solar farms. I wanted to get to them right away for some tests. I also heard some of them are already sick. Do you know anything about that?”

  “All I know is about 50 of them were put in two holding cells on the main floor. A couple of them were badly beat up. One of them, an older woman, is apparently unconscious but the prison doctor doesn’t seem to know what’s wrong with her.

  “Do you need my help with directions to the prison intake center?”

  “No, we’ll be fine, Jim. I’ve been there before, but thanks for the offer. Come along, George and Nancy. Apparently, we have our work cut out for us.”

  At the final security check point, their medical bags were scanned before they were free to walk into the administrative area. Allison walked toward two holding cells, confident it was where the Van Horn prisoners were held. At the first cell, she asked the solitary guard to open the door.

  “Gee, Doc, I don’t think I can do that. The warden has instructions from Major Riley’s team no one is supposed to see or talk to the prisoners but the major.”

  “Sam, did you forget I saved your life when you had appendicitis? Now, open the door and let me in. I don’t think you want me to talk to the warden, do you? My instructions are specific from the university and approved by the warden for research on solar sickness among energy grunt prisoners.”

  Allison stood her ground, looking sternly at the guard. The guard swallowed hard, nodded, and opened the door, locking it behind them. The stench as the door opened was almost unbearable from no toilet facilities and prisoners so tightly packed in the room. They scarcely had room to walk. Brogan and Bryan began to move among prisoners, peering at faces, covering their noses with handkerchiefs. Allison went back to the holding cell door and banged on it.

  “Sam! I need some light and some buckets of clean water. Now! How in heaven’s name do you expect us to work in such filth?” She made sure the guard was gone before she turned to the prisoners. “Is there anyone here by the name of Finlay?”

  A large, tall, stooped figure stood up at the back of the dark room. “I’m Finlay. What can I do for you?”

  “Daddy!” Brogan cried, and rushed to his side, Bryan right behind her, catching Frank as he started to fall. “Oh, Daddy. What have they done to you? And where is mother?”

  “It’s okay, honey. I’m just a bit sore and weak. But I haven’t seen your mother since we got here. I’m sure she is in the cell next door. But what are you doing here? It’s not safe for you. Go see about her first.” Frank spoke with obvious effort, one hand clasped to his side. Allison came over and gently touched his ribs.

  “I’m a doctor and a friend of your daughter. I think you may have some broken ribs, sir. You need to sit back down before you puncture a lung. I’m going to tape them up for you.”

  While they talked and Allison examined Frank, the other prisoners silently gathered around, their faces gaunt and haggard from the rough treatment by their captors. While Allison pulled some medical tape out of her bag and worked on Frank, Bryan quietly started talking to the prisoners, telling them they were going to help them escape the next day.

  “You need to be ready to move before 10 am. There will be a parade in front of the prison to distract guards. So, when you hear the parade, that’s a signal we will be coming for you, if not before, so be prepared.”

  Murmurs of excitement fell silent at the sound of the guard unlocking the cell door.

  “Doc, I have the stuff you requested,” he hollered as he opened the door.

  “Thanks, Sam. My assistants will take it.”

  For the next hour, the three helped to bandage minor wounds of the prisoners and give them fresh water to drink. The fresh water helped a lot. Once all prisoners had been treated and Brogan said a reluctant goodbye to her father, the trio knocked on the cell door and asked to be escorted to the other holding cell. The other prisoners’ situation was much the same, except a couple of prisoners were unconscious and feverish. Brogan’s mother also lay unconscious in a corner, her head cushioned on one of the other female prisoner’s laps.

  “Sam!” Allison called as she pounded on the cell door. “I need three gurneys. Three prisoners need to go to infirmary, now!”

  “Ah, come on, Doc, you’re goin’ a git me in trouble if I do.”

  “I’m going to get you in trouble if you don’t. Now move it!”

  Brogan and Bryan went with the prison guard to find the gurneys, surreptitiously looking around for the location of the kitchen as they went. It was exactly where the BL member said it would be, almost directly across from the holding cells. They just had to figure out how to move prisoners tomorrow from the holding cell to the kitchen and into the refrigerated storage area, right under the noses of security guards in towers above them.

  Prisoners who didn’t need to go to the infirmary were treated and given fresh water. As she did with prisoners in the first holding cell, Allison verbalized notes into her research charts on her vid-phone to satisfy research requirements. The three of them escorted the sick prisoners to the infirmary.

  Brogan tried hard not to show medical staff in the infirmary she had any special concern for the unconscious gaunt woman with the black eye and broken nose, but it was probably the most difficult thing she ever did. Her mother appeared to be dying, her breathing labored and she was terribly thin.

  Allison talked to the doctor on call, a Dr. Rues Madaha, reminding him she was a specialist in hematology and why she came to the prison. “If you recall, the main reason I’m here is to study the effects of solar energy on the blood of these energy grunts. And, with fifty of them here as a captive audience it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.”

  Dr. Madaha laughed with her about the irony of her “captive” patients.

  “What I’d like to do, with your permission of course, is blood work on these prisoners, starting with these three, to see if there is any correlation between their symptoms and other energy grunts with blood diseases like lymphoma or leukemia. The incidence of such diseases along the energy corridor is excessively high. Our research is trying to figure out why.”

  “Interesting,” Dr. Madaha said eagerly. “I welcome the opportunity to collaborate with you. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”

  “First, I’m sure it is obvious the older female prisoner is in the worst shape. Let’s take a blood sample. I want to pump her full of blood to see if we can get her white cell count back up. My diagnoses, initially, is leukopenia.
Even without a blood test, I can tell by looking at her the white blood cell count must be extremely low right now. Let’s start an IV saline solution to build up her strength before we start doing further testing. In the meantime, I’ll order a whole battery of other blood tests. I can transport the vials with me to our research lab to speed things up, if that’s okay with you?”

  “Certainly, Dr. Simpson. What can I do to help?”

  “Hydrate the other prisoners and do the same blood draws. In the meantime, I’m going to ask my research assistants to go to the kitchen to see if they can round up some food for the prisoners in the holding cells. We need them at least strong enough to handle the tests. It is simply barbaric the way they are treated, don’t you agree?”

  Dr. Madaha appeared to be in his 70s, was short, fat and balding, and undoubtedly been given the prison physician’s job, either because he couldn’t make it as a physician in the real world with patients, or because he was lazy; the latter being Allison’s best guess. She figured a little flattery might help to get what she needed, and it seemed to be working.

  The prison doctor bobbed his head vigorously and busily started giving orders to two orderlies helping him in the small infirmary. Meanwhile, Brogan and Bryan headed toward the kitchen. Allison gave them a list on her vid-phone of foods to send to prisoners. She stayed to oversee the care of Emily.

  The cook, Alejandro, had just finished his shift so was eager to help them. Being between meals, only a few other staff remained in the kitchen. He showed them the walk-in refrigerator and, with some surreptitious taping on the floor, he and Bryan located the sewer entrance under and inside the refrigerator. It was located about three feet south of the load bearing wall. He also showed them where the kitchen connected to the cafeteria next door.

  “If we can move the prisoners into the cafeteria, we will take them into the walk-in refrigerator without guards getting suspicious, since it is not within view of any guards,” Alejandro said. After sending water to the holding cells, they headed back to the infirmary.