There was a long, long pause on the radio channels while Slocombe imagined messages running up and down the command chain. Eventually, the radio broke silence. “Oscar flight is to remain circling area. Ground forces closing in to assess situation. For your information, alert is being cancelled.”
Police Cruiser Adam One-Two, I-270, Bethesda.
One of the small advantages of gasoline rationing was that the roads were clear and people who wanted to drive at high speeds could do so. The previous night, Officer Peter Malloy had been in a high-speed pursuit of a Corvette whose owner had obviously decided to blow his month's fuel ration on a really fast run. The race had topped 170mph before the ‘Vette had gotten clean away. In the secrecy of his soul, Malloy was looking forward to a rematch. In the meantime, this race along I-270 would have to do. “What's going on?”
Beside him. Jim Reed was listening to the scanner. “Two angels down just ahead of us. They're not doing anything, just standing on the Interstate. Well, one of them is standing, the other is laying down. Army and Marine ground forces are moving in but we're way ahead of them. Nobody seems to realize we're here yet.”
“Good, let's keep it that way. If we can bring them in alive...” Malloy's eyes were sparkling with delight at the prospect.
“Or get killed in the attempt?” Of the two, Reed was the more realistic. Or pessimistic depending on how one looked at such things.
“So? We go to Hell. You think they don’t need cops in Hell?” Malloy hit the brakes on the Crown Vic cruiser. “OK, we're there. Get ready.”
He reached under his seat and pulled out one of his most loved possessions, a Pfeifer-Zeliska .600 Nitro Express Magnum revolver. Malloy was a cop partly because he liked it and partly because it had annoyed his parents who believed that their money should insulate their only child from such mundane lifestyles. When they had finally died in an auto wreck, he had become a very wealthy cop and had invested USD17,000 in an example of what was truly the most powerful handgun ever made. ‘Malloy's Cannon’ was a legend in his local police station and had caused him to be at the top of the “must call” list if there had been a Baldrick berserker raid. Sadly, in Malloy's eyes at least, the opportunity to fire the piece had never emerged.
“Do you want a hand carrying that thing?” Reed's question was a mixture of envy and genuine curiosity. A handgun that weighed just under 14 pounds was quite a load after all. And it made his .500 Smith and Wesson look positively feeble.
“Just watch those two.” Malloy walked up to where the two angels were stretched across one of the Interstate 270 carriageways. For a moment, he was stopped by the sheer beauty of the one who was standing. Then his training kicked back in “Freeze, you are under arrest.”
I-270/Old Georgetown Road interchange, Bethesda, Maryland
Lemuel-Lan looked at the two humans in blue walking towards him. They'd emerged from a car that had strange red-and-blue flashing lights on its roof, lights that reminded Lemuel of some of the shows in Michael's nightclub. That connection made him blink, the truth was that the rapid changes had left him bewildered. He remembered taking Maion through the portal to Earth that he and Michael-Lan had generated. They had emerged in mid-air and had fallen towards the ground below that seemed all too close and solid. He'd beaten his wings with all the strength he could muster and filled his flight sacs to bursting point in an effort to break the fall, yet Maion had still screamed with pain and passed out when they struck the road.
Now, these two humans were facing him. It occurred to him that their very presence meant that the aircraft overhead weren't going to rain destruction down upon them but they both had drawn guns and seemed very determined. And hostile, Lemuel reminded himself of that. These are not the meek and docile servants I knew in Heaven. These are the killers who destroyed The Eternal Enemy's Army with contemptuous ease, stormed his fortress, killed him and installed their own puppet in power. And now they will do the same thing to Heaven and that is the only way to save us from a madman.
Lemuel moved to place himself between the humans and Maion's gravely-injured body. “Don’t kill us I beg you. Maion is terribly injured, she needs your help.” As if in answer, there was a thunderous crash and a brilliant flash of lightning.
Police Cruiser Adam One-Two, I-270, Bethesda.
“I said freeze sucker.” The standing angel had tried to step sideways and Malloy decided it was time to fire a warning shot. For the first time since he had bought the piece, he squeezed the trigger on the Pfeifer-Zeliska.
It took a second for Reed to clear the after-images from his eyes and shake the ringing noises out of his ears. When he had managed it, he looked around for his partner. Malloy was laying flat on his back on the ground, staring up at the F-22s circling overhead. Behind the two angels, little bits of concrete were still falling off the flyover where the .600 bullet had plowed into the cement. “Too much gun?” Reed asked sympathetically.
Malloy climbed to his feet, also trying to shake the ringing noises from his ears. His hat had gone somewhere backwards and there was a red gash in his forehead where the recoiling pistol had hit him. “Nahh, just right,” he mumbled. Then, in a stronger voice he addressed the lead angel. “When I say freeze you don’t move. Not a muscle, you understand? Now kneel down and put your hands behind your head. Jim, call dispatch, tell them we have two angels in custody. You, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in athe court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer and have him present with you while you are being questioned. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning if you wish one. Do you understand each of these rights I have explained to you?” Lemuel nodded. “What's your name?”
“I am Lemuel-Lan-Michael. This is my mate, Maion-Lan-Lemuel-Lan-Michael. Please, you must help her. Just look what Yahweh did to her. Michael says humans are her only hope.”
“You get those names Jim? What does dispatch say?”
“I think they're speechless. Oh, the Army is coming.”
“Please help her.” Lemuel was pleading, tears rolling from his eyes.
Malloy nodded and looked at the angel on the ground. She was indeed female and was as beautiful as Lemuel was handsome. In fact, she was just about the most beautiful thing Malloy had ever seen. Or would have been if she hadn't been beaten so badly. “You say Yahweh did this?” He couldn't believe it.
“It was done on his orders. Because a female he smiled on was jealous of her.”
“Damn. Jim, get back to dispatch. Tell them we'll need some sort of transporter and a medical team. We've got an emergency here.”
“That's all right Officer, we'll handle it from here.” An Army Colonel had appeared at the scene. “This is ours now.”
“Sucks to be you, Sir. We got here first, this is a Prince George County PD collar. And these are our prisoners.”
Colonel Paschal sighed. He was beginning to see why Prince George County PD had the reputation it did. “And you are, officer?”
“ Peter J. Malloy, Badge number 744, service number 10743.”
“Well, Peter J Mallow, badge number 744, this area is under Federal jurisdiction and these are foreign military personnel engaged in hostile activities against the United States and, by the way, the human race.”
“Hosile activities?” Malloy's voice was openly derisive. His family had been big on State's rights and the iniquities of the Federal Government. “Look at them. Lemuel there has been as good as gold. I've had more trouble busting little old ladies. And his mate is so badly smashed up, she needs emergency care right now. She's not hostiling anybody. We've got the EMS on their way, have you.”
“Hostiling isn't a word.” Paschal sighed again, then looked at the female angel. That was when he realized just how urgent getting her to a medical facility was. “And an EMS team won’t do much good. We need to get her to Bethesda at least. I can get a tank transporter here to move her.”
Malloy twisted his mouth in a semi-grin. He was having a lot of fun baiting this Army officer even though he knew it would probably bite him in the ass in the long run. “I'll do you a deal. You take Maion there to Bethesda right away, we'll take Lemuel to Central Booking and get him signed in. How's that?”
“Malloy, if you look behind me, you will note that I have half a dozen armored cars here. They're armed with 20mm cannon. Now, I have seen that pistol of yours and I note that the dirt on the back of your uniform suggests you fell flat on your ass when you fired it. So, let's just assume that the balance of firepower is in my favor. So, I'll suggest a deal. We get Lemuel and Maion, we'll record you as being first-on-scene and them as being your collar. Fair enough? Oh, and I'll make sure your watch commander knows that you had the situation well in hand when we got here.”
Molloy smiled at the Colonel. “That sounds right fair Colonel.”
“Good, now take a hike before we have a falling-out.”
I-270/Old Georgetown Road interchange, Bethesda, Maryland
The number of humans surrounding Lemuel was growing faster than he could count. All that mattered to him was that some of them had made a straight line for Maion and started to deal with her more obvious injuries. Lemuel knelt quietly on the blacktop, listening to what they said. He understood very little of what they were saying but he did comprehend the tones they were using to say it and that frightened him. Those tones were getting steadily more urgent and the actions of the people treating Maion were becoming more and more frantic.
“What is happening?” The words burst out from him.
The one Lemuel had heard called Colonel Paschal turned around. “She is your mate?”
“She is... Colonel.”
“That makes you next of kin I guess. The doctors here are deeply concerned. They'll tell you all about it in due course but the short version is that your mate has numerous badly broken bones, severe internal injuries and a lot of superficial ones. We've got a vehicle coming, it'll be here in a few minutes and that will take her to the best local hospital we can find. That's a place called Bethesda up the road. At the moment, they are trying to stabilize her so she can be moved. They're not certain they can do that.”
“What will happen if they can't... stabilize... her?” Lemuel saw the sympathetic look on Paschal's face and knew the answer without being told.
“Lemuel, I'm not a doctor, so I can't give you a detailed picture. What I can do is this. We'll do everything in our power to cure her. More than that, I can't say.”
Chapter Sixty Two
I-270/Old Georgetown Road interchange, Bethesda, Maryland
“Get out of the fucking way Sir.” The nurse pushed past Colonel Paschal and joined the scrum of medical personnel working on Maion. She was carrying large transparent packages that had just arrived on the HH-60M Medevac helicopter that was now sitting on the road a few dozen yards back. Volume expanders he guessed to himself, possibly the new oxygen transport therapeutics. I-270 hadn't seen this level of medical activity since a Greyhound bus had rolled over before the war.
“You'll have to forgive Grace Sir. She tends to get very focussed.” The man standing beside Paschal was the copilot of the Medevac chopper.
“It's OK, she said ‘Sir’. That makes all the difference Lieutenant... Rawlings. What's going on? That was volume expander wasn't it?”
“Sort of. It's one we developed for use on daemons. Lot of them were really badly chewed up in Iraq and it turned out we knew nothing much about their blood chemistry. So we use that stuff, it works regardless of blood groups. Johns Hopkins did a quick test on some angelic blood and it seems to be OK for them too, so Mac and I got orders to fly a few gallons of the stuff down.”
“A quick test. Is that all?”
“All we had time for Sir, word is, if we didn’t get that stuff down here fast, she isn’t going to make it.” Paschal made ‘shusshing’ motions with his hand and pointed at Lemuel. “Sorry, Sir, didn’t realize.”
Paschal looked at Lemuel-Lan who was staring at the scene around Maion with stunned incredulity. There were at least a dozen doctors around her now with as many nurses helping out, the whole scene illuminated by the blue, red and white lights on the emergency vehicles. To Paschal's eyes, helping out was a misnomer since the nurses seemed to be doing most of the heavy work. One of the doctors detached from the group and ran over to Lemuel.
“You, angel, what's your blood group?” Lemuel started and looked down at the figure addressing him. “Hurry up, we've got an emergency here.”
“What's a blood group?” Leemuel was bewildered.
The doctor twisted his lips. “What color is your blood?”
“Silver.”
“Hers is white. We can't take the chance.” The doctor turned to the team around Maion and made a ‘negate that’ gesture. One of the other doctors acknowledged and another bag of volume expander was opened. The doctor was about to go back when he saw Paschal looking at him.
“The wild primary colors in daemon blood? They're daemon equivalent of blood groups. We can transfuse green to green or yellow to yellow but not green to yellow. I was hoping Lofty here would be white blood but he isn’t. Tough on his girl that.”
“Is she going to make it?” Paschal said the words softly but he saw Lemuel start and cautiously look around.
The doctor pushed his lower lip out. “She's got a better chance that she had a few minutes ago. Now we've got the volume expander into her, her heart's got something to pump around. Odds still aren't good but we've pulled people back from worse. I hear Yahweh had this done to her?”
“That's right. Or so we've been told. We haven't had a chance to do an interrogation yet.”
“Damn. She's a mess. We've given her morphine to kill the pain but it isn't working very well. Either angels have a major resistance to opiates or... ” the doctors voice wandered off for a second and his eyes suddenly got suspicious. “As soon as she's got enough of her own blood to live on, we'll run a full panel on her.”
“Look between her toes Doc.” Malloy's voice cut across the conversation. “That's where women tend to shoot up.”
“Our local cop with the howitzer. Malloy, what are you still doing here?”
“Orders from dispatch. Stay here and assist as needed. Reed's over there stuffing trash into bags.” Paschal turned back to the doctor but he had already gone, heading back to the team effort.
“Colonel Paschal Sir. Message from Bethesda. They're setting up an emergency ward on the grounds. A big tent, the patient's too large to get through the doors. Bethesda say it'll be as well-equipped as any intensive care unit as long as it doesn’t rain. They've got jury-rigged power lines all over the grass.”
Paschal nodded. Over by Maion, the medical team suddenly gave a loud cheer and the work pace slackened. Lemuel saw the reaction and looked over at Paschal, unable to ask the question he wanted to. “Don’t worry Lemuel, that's good news. At a guess, I'd say they've stabilized her for movement. The Doctor will tell you more.”
It was the same doctor who had come across earlier. This time he was considerably more relaxed. “Colonel, I'm Doctor Zinder, Dan Zinder. Sorry I was abrupt earlier , but things were pretty close for a while there.”
“No problem. This is Lemuel-Lan, your patient's mate.”
“Lemuel-Lan. OK, situation. Your mate has lost a lot of blood and has severe internal injuries. We've stopped the internal bleeding for a while at any rate and we've bulked out her blood supply. That's a holding action, we're not quite sure what to do next about her blood loss. Normally we'd give her a blood transfusion but we don’t have any stocks of angelic blood. Johns Hopkins is looking at using daemonic blood and we're checking to see if any colors are compatible with white. Now, her wings. Each wing has been broken in five places, twice on the inner bone, twice on the outer, one on the joint between the two. We've splinted the straightforward breaks but the joints are a very complex injury, one we have no experience with. Our big worry
in the short term is marrow getting loose from those broken bones and entering her bloodstream. If that happens and it forms a clot, its all over. Longer term, it looks to me as if the breaks were intended to permanently cripple her ability to fly. I've got a call in to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, they've got more experience in ruined joints there than anybody. If anybody can fix her, they can.”
Doctor Zinder stopped as the HH-60 spooled up its engines and started to take off. Over by Maion, the staff surrounding her were bracing themselves. “One, two lift” and they transferred Maion on to a load pallet. The HH60 moved overhead, cables hanging from its slung-load hook. They were fastened to the corners of the pallet and the HH-60 started to lift to take the strain. Three nurses jumped onto the pallet as well, Paschal recognized one of them as ‘Grace’.
“Doctor, riding the pallet like that is... “
“Against regulations and they aren’t wearing safety harnesses either. But we absolutely need them on there to make sure nothing goes horribly wrong in mid-transit. Anyway, ever tried stopping a Navy nurse from looking after a patient?”
The HH-60 climbed away and turned south-east for the Bethesda hospital, Lemuel's eyes following the helicopter as it set off. Paschal thought for a second and then made his decision. “Lemuel, we have to drive around by road, It'll take us ten or twenty minutes. You can fly there much faster, just follow the helicopter. Try not to break anything when you land.”
Lemuel's expression was disbelieving. “You will trust me?”
“Of course we trust you. You've got your mate to worry about, that'll come first for you. Now move.” Paschal watched Lemuel take off. I wish I could do that. he thought, then he got on the link to the F-22s still circling overhead. Trust, but verify.
Angelic Treatment Ward, Bethesda Naval Hospital, Bethesda, MD
The Salvation War 2: Pantheocide Page 59