by Bill Clem
“Do you have any idea of the implications you’re raising?”
“That’s just it, Frank. I’m not raising them,” she said, “he is...”
She ripped back the tarp in a flourish and let it drop to the cave floor.
Pierce had to choke back his response. He felt himself flush and his mouth went dry instantly.
“My God, Samantha. What on earth have you found?”
“What on earth? I’m not sure that’s the right question, Frank.”
A half hour later as they exited the cave, Pierce’s mind pored over past research, keeping time with his thumping heart. He asked like what seemed a hundred questions. He barely gave Samantha enough time to answer before he fired another question at her.
“We found something else, too,” Samantha said. “Something that doesn’t exist here.”
“In Africa?”
Samantha paused. “No, on this planet.”
Before Pierce had time to contemplate it, a thundering of rotors exploded overhead as two U.S. Army Chinooks, hovered above and prepared to land.
When they touched down, Pierce realized it was no fellow scientists. Someone stepped off the chopper and gazed around. Whoever he was, he looked like a funeral director. Although Pierce knew the mortuary business was competitive, he doubted anyone was here to measure them for caskets.
The man approached Pierce, side stepping some video cable. He barely acknowledged them and went directly into the tent. Pierce stepped over to the tent, pulled the flap back, and watched the spectacle unfold.
“Kevin Howard,” the man said. “I have direct orders from President Ritter to take over this excavation site at once.”
“You have some identification.” Howard asked.
“My identification is not important, Mr. Howard.”
Howard glared at him “It is if you expect me to pick up and leave. I don’t know who you are, but I have a permit from the African government to be here.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“Then you understand I have an invest—”
The man’s eyes bore down on Howard. “Mr. Howard, you will gather up your equipment and assistants, and leave this site at once. Otherwise, those nice soldiers over there in those two birds will remove you by force.”
One of Howard’s assistants taking measurements trudged over and looked at him. “What’s going on?”
“Pack it up, we’re finished here.”
* * *
Samantha Coulter stood frozen in place as the funeral director exited the tent. He went to three soldiers poised with rifles and paused. Samantha craned her neck around the side of the tent and listened.
“What’s our orders, sir? One of the Marines’ asked.
The next words from his mouth made Samantha’s blood run cold.
“Kill them all.”
CHAPTER ONE
May 21st, 2007
Suburban Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland
Claire Walters gulped down her second espresso of the morning as she rushed down the first floor corridor and glanced at her watch. Damn. Late again.
Since starting her OB/GYN residency, she’d become the poster child for arriving late for rounds. Moreover, try as she did, it was in her nature to try to squeeze in every extra minute of sleep that she could. Thus, she was always fighting the clock, and this morning was no different. Except that the medical center was starting a new, experimental invitro fertilization program, and there was an important lecture, she was supposed to be at fifteen minutes ago.
Claire tried to be as quiet as she could as she entered the long conference room, but the heavy doors banged shut and every head turned to see her flushed face, which was almost as red as her hair.
She slid into a chair and sunk down, knowing the chief resident was one of those turned heads, and no more had the thought entered her mind than she saw him glaring at her across the room. Shit!
The Chief of Obstetrics was standing next to a large bulletin board going over some statistical analysis about failure rates in current invitro fertilization programs. Claire found it boring and had it not been for the caffeine surging through her veins, she could have fallen back to sleep.
An hour later, and with the lecture behind her, she was now facing a lecture of another type. The chief resident had asked her to stop by his office as he left the conference room. Claire was sure she was about to be chastised once again by someone whom she deemed to be inferior to her and every other resident she knew. How he’d come to be the Chief Resident was beyond her, although it was rumored his father had contributed millions to the medical center. This made Claire resent him even more.
She was a simple girl from a simple family. Like most work-ing–class Irish, she’d worked hard all her life and nothing had ever come easy to her. Her father’s credo, after a few beers, was “wake early, work hard, and always tell the truth, and you’ll get somewhere in life.” Well, she got the work hard and tells the truth part right, as for the wake early... that was another story.
The Chief resident had an office on the forth floor that overlooked an ally and a set of green dumpsters that belonged to a Chinese carryout behind the medical center. Claire found it amusing that it was the least desirable office in the whole place and she knew the current occupant found it offensive given his place on the social ladder, compliments of his rich daddy.
Harold Goldstein was tapping his pencil on a small, grey metal desk when Claire walked in. His thick glasses gave her the impression she was looking at a large bug.
“So, Hal, what’s up?’
“Cut the crap, Claire. You know why you’re here.”
“Come on, I was fifteen minutes late.”
“Yea, fifteen, today, twenty yesterday, a half an hour on Monday. When does it stop? I’m tired of you disrupting everyone with your tardiness.”
“And.”
“And... if it happens one more time, I’m going to the administrator and have your residency suspended.”
Claire could feel her blood pressure approaching the danger level. She wanted to reach across the desk and rip his glasses off, then gouge out his eyes. Damn he was a pompous ass. Instead of blinding him, Claire reigned in her Irish temper and relaxed.
“Okay, Hal, I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot on my plate lately.”
“Look, Claire, I’m really sorry about your father, but they’ve put me in charge here, and I need to work within certain parameters. Otherwise, they’ll have my ass in a sling. You understand, don’t you?”
For a moment, he seemed almost human to Claire. Then she remembered, this was the same guy who just a minute earlier threatened to have her suspended.
“I’ll be sure and be on time from now on.”
“That would be great.”
Claire got up and left without saying anything else. Fuck him, she thought.
As Claire left the office, she noticed a young woman on a gurney she thought she recognized. It was her colleague’s patient from yesterday. If her memory served her, Claire recalled the woman had come in for an emergency C-section. Judging by the size of her abdomen under the sheet, they must have postponed it. And what was she doing on the fourth floor? There were no obstetric suites up here. Claire watched them push the patient to a set of double doors marked:
AUTHORIZED PERSONELL ONLY
Claire flattened herself against the adjoining wall and stood transfixed as the two men stopped and one wrangled a set of keys from his pocket. He opened the doors and they pushed the gurney through, and then disappeared from site. Claire felt her body flush.
Something just didn’t fit.
A minute later, Goldstein came around the corner.
“You still here, Walters?” You better hurry. We have afternoon rounds in ten minutes.”
Claire was about to ask Goldstein if he knew anything about OB patients on the forth floor, but then decided against it.
No, this was something she wanted to check out. She would definitely come back after rou
nds and find out for herself where her patient went.
CHAPTER TWO
Linda Freedman awakened in the middle of the night, dry-mouthed, with a sudden pain in her abdomen. She had been nauseated before she went to bed, thinking it was from the enormous dinner she and her boyfriend had eaten. Was it the lasagna or the chocolate tort? She went to bed expecting to wake up just fine.
Now as she lay on the exam table awaiting the doctor, she felt worse than ever. She was horribly weak and dizzy. And she was having cramps.
Bad cramps!
The doctor entered the room and smiled as Linda adjusted herself on the exam table. Her feet were up in the stirrups of the specially designed table and she wore only a paper gown allowing the doctor easy access to her vaginal area. An assistant, Freedman recognized as Gloria, came in and gently rubbed her arm.
“How are you, Ms. Freedman? Having some cramps?”
Freedman nodded. She was the first volunteer for the new invitro-surrogate program at Suburban Medical Center. The first four months had been great without a hitch, and Linda and her surrogate family were looking forward to the new baby arriving near Christmas. Now, though, Linda felt that hope was dashed. She was also scared to death. If she didn’t carry this baby to term, the contract would be void, which meant Linda would be broke again. She didn’t want to go back to the homeless shelter. It had been a nightmare, until she was approached by the liaison from Suburban. They gave her enough money to support herself and set her up in a nice apartment. And once the baby was born, she was guaranteed another twenty thousand dollars.
Gloria pulled a sonagram machine close to the table, then squirted some clear gel on Freedman’s belly. She slid the arm of the sonogram over the belly until she stopped at a point just below the navel. Freedman could hear the steady whoosh, whoosh of the baby’s heart. Freedman glanced over and looked at the screen. She always liked to watch when they did the sonogram. Even though the baby technically didn’t belong to her, she felt a sense of attachment that all mothers feel. She was used to seeing the small fetus with its arms and legs curled up to its torso. This time, however, it looked different. The body seemed much longer and the head looked as if it had doubled in size from the last visit just one month earlier.
“It’s getting big,” Freedman said to Gloria.
Gloria smiled without comment and marked various landmarks on the computer screen with the light stick. Then she stepped over to the doctor.
Freedman listened carefully to the conversation.
“I think it’s time, doctor.”
“Okay, let’s prep her.”
“Is everything all right?” asked Freedman.
“Everything is fine, were just gonna run some tests. We need you to be asleep during them. I’m just gonna put some medicine in your IV. When you wake up, we’ll be all finished.”
Freedman watched as Gloria inserted the needle into the rubber port on her IV line. Then everything went foggy as she heard Gloria’s last words to her.
“Don’t worry, it will be all over before you know it.”