Edge of Tomorrow

by Wolf Wootan

  Hatch had already selected a second pair of missiles and they hit the building five seconds later. The building became a pile of bricks, mortar, twisted steel, and concrete. He flew Shadow-3 around to the opposite side of the rubble to see if anyone was escaping the attack. No one was in sight. Although sporadic fires were blazing, Hatch fired two missiles with incendiary warheads into the rubble, starting a massive fire.

  “How’s that look, people?” chortled Hatch.

  He took the chopper up to 1000 feet and surveyed the damage, satisfied that there would be very few survivors, if any.

  “Looks like enough. Take the bird, One, and head for home,” said Hatch.

  Brawley took over the controls and banked to the left, starting a climb. At that instant, the rubble exploded like a pile of fireworks: missiles were streaking, bricks were flying as if from a volcano eruption, ammunition was detonating.

  Three yelled, “Shit! That place must have been an ammo dump! Haul ass, One!”

  “What the fuck!” yelled Sara. “We have a skin puncture, port side! I’ll try to isolate it!”

  Syd was grasping the arms of her chair as she watched the rolling explosion below on her screen. It looked as if someone had dropped a match in a large bag of Fourth of July fireworks. When Sara yelled, Syd looked up at her back and was horrified at what she saw. There was a ragged hole about two inches in diameter in the chopper wall to Sara’s left, and blood was flowing out of Sara’s arm a few inches below her left shoulder.

  “Sara! I can see the hole! It’s to your left. And you’ve been hit!” yelled Syd.

  “Shit! You’re right! I can feel it burning now,” said Sara.

  “You’re losing a lot of blood! As soon as we level out, I’ll come help you!” said Syd excitedly.

  The chopper pulled out of its tight left turn and began to put distance between them and the exploding building. As it leveled off and increased speed, Syd unbuckled herself and moved to Sara’s chair and looked at her left arm. Her flight suit’s arm was red and the spot was growing.

  “Hatch, take over my system! I’m getting dizzy,” moaned Sara.

  Hatch quickly transferred control of the Defensive Weapon System to his console.

  “Got it, Sara! Syd, can you help her?”

  “I’m on it!” cried Syd. “Hang on, Sara!”

  Syd opened the cabinet door on the port side near her chair and surveyed the contents. She needed something to stop the bleeding. She grabbed a tourniquet and put it around Sara’s arm above the hole in her jumpsuit, tightened it, and secured it.

  “I need to cut the arm of your suit off to get at that wound, Sara,” said Syd.

  “Bad idea. This material doesn’t cut well. You’ll have to try to get it off me,” answered Sara, slurring her words.

  Syd decided she would have to get Sara down onto the floor next to Chair 6 if she were to be able to get at the wound. She grabbed a blanket from the cabinet and spread it on the floor. She went back to Sara and unstrapped her from her chair. She took off Sara’s headset and laid it on the desk.

  “Sara, can you get up and lie down on that blanket for me? I’ll help you,” Syd said.

  “Sure. I think. My fucking arm’s on fire!”

  Syd helped her to the blanket and laid her on her back. She unzipped her suit all the way down and helped her pull her right arm out of the sleeve. The left arm would be more difficult because of the tourniquet, and the pain. Syd was still listening to the sequencing voice channels.

  “This is Six. They just scrambled two fighters to search the area for insurgents,” Syd informed the crew.

  “Lot’s of radar sweeps,” added Hatch, “but the skin is working perfectly in spite of the hole. They haven’t spotted us yet.”

  Syd found a sealed syringe of morphine. She stripped off her flying gloves, which were now bloody, and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. She opened the sealed syringe.

  “Sara, I’m going to give you a shot of morphine before I try to work on your arm. We’ll never get this suit off if I don’t,” Syd told Sara.

  “No! Don’t shoot me up! I’ve got to get back to my station!” Sara objected, her voice weak.

  “No way, girl! You’re through for the day!” said Syd as she injected the morphine.

  “Need any help, Syd?” asked Hatch, looking over his shoulder.

  “No, I can handle this! You just protect our asses!” replied Syd, glad she had to focus on Sara to keep herself from panicking.

  As Sara started to get even groggier, Syd took off the tourniquet, lifted her slightly with her right arm, and pulled the left sleeve off her arm. The blood was flowing again, so Syd reapplied the tourniquet. The left side of Sara’s bra, including most of the cup covering her left breast, was soaked in blood. Blood was running down her arm. Sara raised her head slightly and saw the bloody bra.

  “Shit! Syd! I didn’t get hit in my fucking tit did I?” moaned Sara as her head dropped back to the floor. Syd grabbed another blanket, rolled it up, and put it under Sara’s head to make her more comfortable.

  “No, Sara! You’re hit in the arm. Your pride and joy is still intact!” said Syd as she wiped the wound so she could check it out. Something was still in the wound. She would have to remove whatever it was before she could bandage it. She took a pair of tweezers from the First Aid cabinet. She looked at Sara, who appeared to be out now.

  “Those fighter pilots are jabbering again, Hatch. They’re climbing to 10,000 feet. Have you got them?” Syd said, relaying information she heard on the aircraft tactical channel.

  “Got ’em, Syd. Thanks!” Hatch announced.

  Syd was still trying to listen to Farsi from the sequencing channels, while listening to the calm chaos going on between her own crew members.

  She probed the wound with the tweezers. The wound was shallow, in the fleshy part of Sara’s arm. More blood than damage. She pulled out an object and dropped it in her gloved hand. It looked like a smashed .50 caliber lead slug. Fortunately, it had lost much of its energy coming through the skin of the chopper; otherwise, it would have done much more damage.

  Probably would have been in your glorious tit, Sara! You’re one lucky gal—if I can keep you from bleeding to death!

  She wiped blood again, sprayed the wound with a disinfectant, and applied two butterfly bandages.

  “There you go, Sara. Maybe this will hold until you can get it stitched. Now for a gauze bandage around your arm and see if the bleeding will stop,” Syd mumbled to herself, since Sara was out cold.

  She finished the bandaging, then retrieved another blanket and covered Sara, trying to ward off shock. Sara had lost quite a bit of blood.

  “Hatch, Sara’s going to need a doctor as soon as we land. She needs a transfusion and some stitches,” said Syd calmly into her boom mike.

  “I’ve already called Shirley. She’ll have the doctor we use there when we arrive. I’ll call her back and tell her about getting some blood. Sara’s blood type is on file,” he answered.

  Syd looked at her watch, noting that it was 5:45 P.M., or 1745 as the military preferred to call it. She was still on Istanbul time, so she did a quick calculation and determined that it was 7:15 local. At least 15 more minutes to get out of Iranian air space, then two and a half or more hours after that to Istanbul. She hoped Sara would be all right. She was sitting on the floor next to Sara with her hand on Sara’s clammy forehead. She checked the pulse in her neck, finding it weak.

  Then she heard over her headset, “Holy shit, Five! This is Three! We just lost the visible spectrum on the skin!”

  “I see the warning on my screen! Can you fix it?” yelled Hatch.

  “I’m running a diagnostic—trying to isolate it,” answered Three, the Engineer.

  Then Syd heard excited voices from the fighter aircraft.

  “Trouble, people! This is Six. The fighters think they spotted something moving below them! That could be us! They’re coming down to take a look!” she said.

  “OK,
Brawley! It’s still 15 minutes until the end of twilight, but it’s pretty dark down in the shadows! Pretend you are in ’Nam and don’t let those guys see us! The skin is still working in the radar band, so they can’t use their radar to find us. So, don’t let them see us! How’s that diagnostic, Three?” queried Hatch.

  Without warning, the chopper turned sharply to the left, and started down toward the ground. The maneuver threw Syd violently to her left, cracking her head against the chair of her station.

  “Thanks a whole friggin’ bunch for the heads up!” she groaned into her mike. Sara rolled into her, onto her bandaged arm. Stunned, Syd rolled Sara back on to her blanket and checked her bandage. Syd’s head was pounding; she felt the spot on her head, but could not detect any blood.

  “I’ve isolated the problem!” yelled Three. “I have to replace a circuit board. Hang on a minute!”

  He swiveled his chair to the right and opened a door to expose rows of circuit boards and other electronic gear. He looked for a few seconds, then pulled one out of the rack. He opened another, smaller cabinet above the other one and selected the board he wanted. He put that in the slot that he had just emptied, then closed the two cabinets.

  “I have to run a check on the board,” he said. “Give me 60 more seconds.”

  Syd relayed what she was hearing: “Those fighters have lost us momentarily. They’re turning east at 5000 feet.”

  “I see them on radar,” said Hatch. “How’re we doing, One?”

  The pilot answered, “We’re in a depression now, in the shadows; but this valley runs out in a few more seconds. How’s that board, Three?”

  “Looking good! Thirty more seconds!”

  “One of the fighter jocks thinks he sees us,” advised Syd.

  “Yeah, he’s turning in our direction, closing with an overtake of 150 knots. He must be cranking! He’ll have to use his guns visually—there’s no way he can get a lock,” said Hatch. “I’m locked on to him, two missiles armed. I have to shoot in 15 seconds, Three, or we’re in deep shit!”

  “Ten more seconds, nine, eight …” said Three.

  Syd discovered that she was holding her breath. She wanted to get back to her chair and strap herself in, but she couldn’t leave Sara to roll around in case of another sharp turn.

  “Thar she blows!” said Three. “Skin’s in the green!”

  “Confirmed!” said Syd. “They’re cursing because they lost us! They say we disappeared around a rise!”

  “OK, One. Climb out of here, and take us home!” exclaimed Hatch.

  “Roger, Five. Heading for home!” the pilot responded. “Estimated time, 2 hours 35 minutes.

  Syd prayed that Sara would last that long.

  Chapter 19

  Triple Eye Office, Istanbul

  Saturday, August 4, 2001

  10:15 P.M.

  Shadow-3 landed, without any more incidents, on the asphalt in front of the hangar at Triple Eye’s Istanbul estate. The medic, Shirley, was waiting with a gurney near the hangar door. With her were several of the ground crew and Marli.

  As the rotor slowed to a stop, Hatch unbuckled and opened the chopper’s door and folded it down into steps. The door was next to where Sara was lying. Syd still sat on the floor next to her. Hatch descended the steps and talked to Shirley while two hefty ground crewmen entered the chopper and gently carried Sara out of the aircraft and placed her on the gurney. Shirley and Marli pushed the gurney toward the large house.

  The Chief Engineer helped Syd to her feet and they exited, followed by the two pilots.

  Hatch came over to Syd and asked, “You OK, Syd?”

  “I think so. I should find some ice for this bump on my head. It’s really swollen,” she answered.

  “What happened?” he asked with concern.

  “I was kneeling next to Sara when Brawley went into ’Nam mode. I cracked my head on my seat.”

  “Christ! I’m sorry, Syd! It was dicey there for a while. You should let the doctor look at that.”

  “I thought this mission was supposed to be a slam dunk,” she said as they walked toward the house.

  “My fault entirely! I should have guessed that place was a munitions dump and stayed further away. It would be a miracle if any of those bastards got out of that place. I apologize to you for moving in so close, but I wanted to make it look like a ground attack out of that copse of trees. I’ll apologize to the crew, too,” he said. “I should kiss your boo-boo and make it better.”

  Syd made sure they were the only ones still outside the house, then said, “I think I bit my lip, too. Do you think you could make that better? But be gentle. I’m not kidding.”

  He took her in his arms and kissed her moist lips very gently.

  “I feel better already. Now, I want to check on Sara.”

  They entered the house, and Hatch led her down a hall to a room which was configured as a hospital room. There were four hospital beds and an operating table. Sara was on the table and the Turkish doctor was working on her arm, stitching the wound. Sara was awake, though still groggy. An IV was hanging on a hook on a stand, the tubing going to a needle in Sara’s right arm just below the elbow. Syd approached the table and looked at Sara, who was very pale. Shirley was at the head of the table monitoring the machines that were displaying Sara’s vitals.

  “Yo, Dr. Z.!” Sara mumbled with a weak smile. “The doc says you did good. Saved my fucking life!”

  The doctor looked up at Syd and said with an accent, “So you are the one who worked on her? The work you did not only kept her from bleeding to death, I don’t think she will have much of a scar. I should have guessed you were a doctor.”

  “Not an M.D., Doctor. Ph.D.,” Syd laughed.

  “Well, you did great work. She needs two units of blood and she will be as good as new,” said the doctor.

  Syd reached into the breast pocket of her jumpsuit and took out the lump of lead she had taken out of Sara’s arm.

  “Here’s a souvenir for you, Sara,” she said, holding it up between her thumb and index finger so Sara could see it. “You can wear it on a chain as a good luck charm.”

  “I guess it could have been worse,” moaned Sara. “It could have been a fucking 20 millimeter!”

  She tried a weak smile.

  Hatch moved up next to Syd and said, “Hang in there, Sara. Now you’ll have to take some time off without arguing with me.”

  “Just a scratch,” she said, her voice weakening. “I’ll be up and at ’em in a day or two. But I need two favors.”

  “Name them. Anything for you, Sara,” he said.

  “One, get me home tomorrow. I’m already tired of Turkey.”

  “Done! We’ll go back to Florida tomorrow. We’re through here. What’s the other one?”

  “Two, take Dr. Z. to dinner and buy her drink for me.”

  “That’s an easy one,” he smiled, “though it is late. What do you think, Syd?”

  Syd was definitely not in the mood to go out to a restaurant at this time of night. To please Sara, she figured she should agree, and then talk to Hatch outside the room.

  “Fine. I’ll make it an expensive one, Sara. I’ll hit him in the pocketbook,” said Syd. “Now, you get some rest.”

  As Syd and Hatch left the room, Shirley asked Sara, “What’s with the ‘Dr. Z.’ thing, Sara?”

  “Oh. Dr. Zorrina. It’s a long story. I’ll tell it to you sometime when I’m not so sleepy,” Sara answered as she dozed off.

  • • •

  Back in the War Room, Syd said, “I just said I’d go to dinner tonight to please Sara, Hatch. It’s really too late, and my head is pounding. I just want to get out of this bloody jumpsuit and take a long, hot shower. I do need a drink, though. Badly. And some ice for this head.”

  “I’ll take care of that. What do you want? Wine? Hard stuff?”

  “You choose, I don’t care.”

  Hatch picked up the telephone and gave orders to someone.

  “We’ll h
ave something in a minute. While we’re waiting, I wonder if you are up to listening to some recordings of the voice channels as we were leaving the target area. It’s SOP to program one of our comm satellites to record all voice channels during a mission. I would like to hear what those fighter pilots and their radar station controllers were saying.”

  “OK. Start it right after we lost the skin, if you can,” said Syd.

  Hatch sat at the console next to her and typed commands into the computer. Then, voices came over the loudspeakers. Syd listened for a moment, making notes on a pad of paper on the desk of her console.

  “Skip ahead to where we went invisible again,” she asked.

  She listened for a few more minutes.

  “OK, that’s enough. We’re in luck. Here’s the overview: the lead pilot said he saw something, his wingman said he did not; lead asks ground radar for help, they say there’s nothing on their radar except the fighters; lead says he can’t see anything on his radar either, but he definitely sees something, and he’s going down for a closer look; he gets to 500 feet and the object he’s after disappears; ground radar says he’s crazy, so does his wingman. It looks like we pulled it off without being officially seen. They all say the pilot who saw us saw shadows, or something. That’s a laugh!”

  “That’s good! We’ll monitor the news tomorrow and see who gets blamed. There will be a lot of finger pointing,” said Hatch. “We still may have some damage control to do.”

  A Turkish waiter arrived with a tray loaded with an ice pack, a bucket of ice, two glasses, and a bottle of cold Stoli vodka. A second waiter followed with a tray containing a hibachi. The top of the hibachi was covered with skewers of meat marinated in a spicy sauce. There was also a basket of assorted breads and a bowl of dipping sauce. The waiters put everything on the conference table and left.

  “I got us a snack, too. You need something to eat,” said Hatch.

  Syd picked up the ice bag and put it to her head while Hatch fixed two strong drinks on the rocks. He handed one to Syd.

  “This one is from Sara,” said Hatch, raising his glass. Syd took hers and touched it to his.