From the windows the passengers saw the ocean move closer and closer into view. From below their feet, they felt the vibrations as the landing gear was deployed and locked into place. The green of the island replaced the blue of the water. The gray of the tarmac was right below them, and then, with the softest of bumps, the tires touched the runway. The flaps were pulled up to slow the plane and just like that, they were taxing casually to the terminal.
It all felt so surreal.
“That was it? Have we landed, or am I dead?” Creed asked to the stunned cabin.
Before anyone could answer, Captain Jacobi came over the speaker laughing, “Did you feel that? Guys, that was probably the smoothest landing I’ve ever made at this airport. Somehow, a tailwind carried us right to the tarmac and set us gently on the ground. That was the damn-dest thing I’ve ever seen! Trainer? Have you ever heard of something like this? Me either! I’ll be talking about this flight for the next fifty years! That was awesome! Hang on, the tower’s calling me…” and the ecstatic voice of the pilot clicked off.
“Thank you, God!” Alik said aloud.
“Amen, brother! Mom’s going to love this story!” Evan grinned widely.
“You kidding? Who wouldn’t?” Creed said relieved.
“Williams.” Alik smiled.
“Except him.” Creed was unfastening his seatbelt.
“Farrow,” Evan added jumping up from his seat and looked at the ambulance waiting for them at the gate.
“…and her.” Creed walked over to Meg and gently touched her forehead with his hands.
Leaning down he whispered, “Hi, beautiful! We’re back on land and taking you home. I can’t wait to see you smile.” Without thinking, he brushed his lips softly against her pale cheek.
“Hey, now—enough with the mushy stuff. We’ve got to get her unloaded and on that bus down there.” Alik was so thrilled to be so close to safety, he felt like running the whole way home.
The ground crew was opening the special ambulatory hatch that acted as a ramp for Meg’s gurney when the two captains came back to help.
“The tower’s givin’ me a hard time about them having to pull out all their emergency vehicles and personnel for nothing! Ha! They don’t believe me that we have zero fuel left on this bird!”
“It really was the most remarkable landing I’ve ever been a part of,” Mr. Trainer was saying.
The two men were smiling and smacking each other on the back like a couple of football players who just threw, caught and scored the winning touchdown.
They could afford to relax and celebrate now. They weren’t on their way to face a furious female meta named Farrow who had personalized bullets waiting for them.
53 Orographic Effects
“How did you talk the driver out of giving you the keys to this ambulance?” Evan asked Creed as they were cruising down the road with Meg, her gurney and all her medical equipment.
Creed smiled. “I gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
“You don’t mean…” Alik started, frowning.
“I asked him how much money he made in a year working as a paramedic and gave him double that in cash.” Creed glanced over at Alik and Evan, taking his eyes off the road only for a second.
“Working for Williams, I had access to as much money as I needed to accomplish my objectives. All that’s about to be cut off, so I thought I’d go out with a bang. I also gave the pilots and Missy double their yearly salaries each. They certainly earned it!”
“Nice, Creed! So, how does it feel to be a good guy?” Alik teased.
“I’ll feel better once we get Meg healthy,” he said changing the tone of the conversation.
“We all will.”
“What is our ETA?”
“GPS says eight minutes.”
“It’s time to text Mom.”
“Is it just me or does it seem to be getting darker?” Creed said.
“Oh, no. Do you see that?” Evan pointed upward as they rounded a ridge.
“Damn it. This isn’t good,” Alik moaned.
“Is that a huge rain cloud up there?” Creed said amazed at how quickly the weather changed from the crisp blue skies of the airport.
“Yes. The greatest influencing factor in Hawaiian weather is orographic, and here on the Big Island, Paulie’s house is on the west coast—great for surfing, but also great for rain bursts.” Evan was craning his head out of the window to look upcountry.
“What is he talking about?” Creed asked Alik.
“Elevation. The higher up on a mountain, the more dramatic the weather. West side of the island is wetter than east side,” Alik explained.
“Those dense, black clouds are already starting to release,…”
Splat!
“…rain.” Evan finished and pulled his head back into the ambulance. He wiped the big, sloppy, raindrop from his forehead with his T-shirt.
“This is going to pose a serious problem. Smoke bombs don’t work in the rain,” Alik had to raise his voice to be heard over the hugely thick droplets that had begun to splat flat onto the windshield of the ambulance.
“Maybe Farrow will be caught off guard by the rain, too,” Evan said hopefully.
The other two boys looked back at him with raised eyebrows.
“Well, one can hope, can’t one?”
Ignoring Evan and his goofy optimism Alik said, “We can’t call mom now. We have to maintain silence since Farrow is probably listening in on a scanner,” Alik said.
“Do you want me to pull over and wait it out?” Creed asked.
“It’s too late. Mom’s expecting us now and will have already lit the bombs—or tried to. We’re going to have to just do this, guys,” Alik said ominously.
They looked at one another and nodded in agreement.
“Let me cover Meg,” Creed said seriously.
“We’re all going to cover her as we push her gurney and run like heck. Leave all the medical equipment on the bus. Just worry about…” Alik was talking a mile a minute.
“That’s not what I mean. I’m saying, I’ll be her shield. I’ll cover her with my body so any bullets will hit me and not her.” Creed’s eyes didn’t leave the road as he struggled to see through the flapping windshield wipers.
“Are you serious?” Alik asked.
“Absolutely.”
“You’ll have to be careful not to crush her with your weight, and the gurney’s going to be really heavy with you on it, too.”
“You’d do that for her?” Alik asked, ignoring his brother’s logistics.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? I am completely healthy. I put her in this position to begin with. I can turn off pain, so you guys don’t have to worry about me whining like a baby if I’m hit…and besides, I don’t want anything else to hurt her. Ever.”
“I think it’s a good idea. Evan, what do you think?” Alik asked his brother while staring at Creed’s profile.
“He’s going to have to help us unload her first. I don’t think the gurney could sustain his weight and release its legs and wheels correctly. We don’t want to end up on the ground out there.”
“Okay, so as soon as we get the gurney on the ground, release the legs, I climb on, crouch on top of her and cover her as much as possible without hurting her. You guys both run along the safer side of the gurney—the side that is furthest away from the hills and greenery where Farrow will be hiding—and roll us all into the house. Sound like a plan?”
“Sounds like one hell of a plan,” Alik nodded.
“I’m going to start getting Meg ready to unload. Try to park as close to the house as possible,” Evan said as he crawled toward the back of the bus.
“Heck, if I could, I’d drive us right to the front door,” Creed said.
“Too bad there are all those giant palm trees in the way.” Alik was already unfastening his seatbelt and climbing to the back to help Evan.
“Well, maybe they’ll help supply some cover,” Evan said hopefully.
<
br /> “You guys ready? We’re home.”
54 Welcome Home
Of all the times for it to rain! And not just a regular rain shower, oh, no! That would be too simple! Margo peered anxiously through the closed window blinds, talking to herself. It had to be a torrential downpour that exploded right above their heads with no warning!
Sure enough, the smoke bombs were useless in the downpour. They wouldn’t even stay lit, so Margo gave up after throwing five and watching each of them fizzle pathetically.
She had been praying the boys had come up with another plan, because if Farrow were standing nearby with her handguns loaded, as Margo suspected she was, she could do some serious damage despite the rain and darkened skies.
Margo was so mad at the whole situation she had half a mind to gear up and go after her own assassin, but there was no time. Right now, she had to be focused on helping her children safely in the house. After that, she wasn’t making any promises that she wouldn’t go take care of the wretched female meta herself!
“Okay, Margo. It’s going to be okay. The boys are incredibly resourceful. They’ll figure something out.” Theo was standing beside her trying to calm her down.
Just then, as if on cue, the ambulance rounded the bend and came to a skidding stop at the end of the front walkway. Margo watched in amazement as the back doors to the bus flew open and out jumped Alik. He yanked the gurney out of the vehicle and anticipated Evan to catch the other side smoothly. For half a second, the boys were holding their sister stretcher-style before the legs popped down and locked into place. Then, amazingly, Creed jumped carefully on top of Meg and laid his body down on her.
“Oh my, God!” Theo was yelling as he watched amazed at what he was seeing.
And then came the loud bangs of shots being fired.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Handgun shots, Margo thought to herself, just as I suspected. She ran to the other side of the room and yanked the window open just enough. From the back of her waist band she pulled out her own gun. She aimed into the dense thickage, right where she would be hiding if she were Farrow, and pulled her trigger smoothly again and again.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
She was shooting in the dark, literally, but she knew the gunfire would force the shooter into a defensive position, ducking, cowering and hiding between shots.
Theo stood with his hands covering his ears watching the whole scene take place as though it were an old black-and-white western.
Showers of bullets spun through the wet air.
Theo flung the door open just as the boys reached it and slammed it shut right behind them.
Margo continued to fire into the night for a few extra moments before she turned and looked at her children.
There stood Alik and Evan, dripping wet with their T-shirts stuck to their strong torsos, smiling from ear to ear as they helped Creed off the gurney.
“Now that was one heck of a plan! Thanks for the cover fire, mom! You’re awesome!” Alik said sweeping his mother up into his arms even as she held the still smoking handgun.
“My boys!” she yelled and hugged them to her, ignoring how wet they were. “Is everyone okay? Anyone hit?”
“I’m good,” Alik said patting himself all over making sure adrenaline hadn’t disguised the pain of a bullet wound.
“Me, too,” Evan said inspecting his clothing for blood.
“Creed?” Theo asked.
“Well, I took at least one, but I shut off the pain, so I don’t know if there’s more,” he said nonchalantly. “Don’t worry about me; make sure Meg’s okay first.”
“What? Never mind, explain it to me later. Now, let’s get you and Meg to the lab.” Margo took on her motherly tone and everyone hurried across the house to the lab.
Outside, lying in the mud, Farrow cursed furiously as she struggled to locate her satellite phone in one of her many pockets. She had to tell Williams what just happened. She had to tell him that the whole plan—the metas on a plane headed to Germany with the serum to trade for the female’s life—was dead.
The metas were back home on the island and Creed obviously chose his allegiance to them over Williams. As she listened to the ringing, she decided to just leave out the part about the coyote finding the dart. He didn’t need to know that. He did need to send reinforcements though, considering she had just been shot in the stomach by one of Dr. Winter’s random bullets. Farrow tried to ignore the metallic, coppery taste of blood from her mouth, but couldn’t. She spat angrily and heard the doctor’s voice mail pick up.
Of all the times not to answer his phone, Farrow thought miserably.
55 The Plasmodium Parasite
“We need a current blood sample,” Paulie was saying as they were finishing settling Meg back into the lab.
“Right, I’ll collect that myself,” Margo said. Her hands worked as efficiently as possible gathering the supplies she needed.
“We’ll need to make another thin blood smear so we can estimate the parasite density and hopefully determine what species it is so we can treat her,” Paulie was saying much of this so everyone in the room was included in the process whether they had a medical background or not.
“There are treatments for malaria already, aren’t there?” Creed asked the room.
“Yes, for the four to seven known species of Plasmodium that have been successfully treated but the trick is to know which species infected the patient. With Meg, things get even more complicated because we believe she was infected by a laboratory-grown super-parasite—compliments of Williams. It has behaved differently from anything I can find in documented medical cases, so we’re trying to determine the appropriate antimalarial treatment—the sooner, the better,” Paulie explained patiently.
“With her clinical status, clearly we’re working with a severe manifestation of the disease. Impaired consciousness, anemia, jaundice, seizure…these are all clear indicators of the severity of the disease,” Evan concluded.
“What are you thinking, Evan?” Theo asked anxiously without looking up. His hands were busy working on removing a second bullet from Creed—this one located in his side. The first struck his shoulder and was trickier to remove, clean and stitch up than this one.
“I’m thinking we start her on a drug combination that is recommended for treatment of severe malaria and see if that can’t knock this out of her system. We’ll keep taking samples of her blood, and watch for confirmation of parasitologic response to the cocktail treatment. It may not kill off the parasite completely, but nothing about what I see in this smear contraindicates that course of treatment, either.” Evan’s voice was steady and calm. He had his face pressed into the viewer of the high-powered microscope where he was studying his sister’s blood.
“Paulie and I were thinking the same thing, but we wanted to wait to double-check a fresh smear and discuss it with you to see if you agreed,” Margo said with obvious respect for her son’s medical opinion.
“Take a look,” Evan motioned to his mother as he stepped away from the microscope.
“Even at first glance, I can tell the density of the parasite has definitely increased from the sample we were looking at before. She’s getting worse.” Margo nodded to Paulie to come look for himself.
“Evan’s right, though we haven’t definitively determined the species; this is beyond doubt a kind of malaria. Her fragile condition demands a presumptive treatment.” Paulie nodded to the other doctors in the room.
“Okay, now to create the cocktail,” Evan said. He accessed a member’s only medical research site and began peeling through the cyber pages for what he was looking for.
“Both this site and the Center for Disease Control recommend either the combination atovaquone-proguanil or artemether-lumefantrine. They are both considered very effective in treating P. falciparum or Species Not Identified.” Evan jotted down those names and their common brand names as well on a piece of paper and looked up at his mother.
“Great, so let’s ge
t the stuff and get it started,” Cole mumbled from the corner of the lab. They turned and looked in surprise at the patient everyone thought was sound asleep.
Theo hurried to his son, smiling widely. “You’re awake! Wow, Cole, you sure gave us a scare!” His father held his right hand and squeezed gently.
“Sorry ‘bout that dad. I’ll try to never get shot again,” he grinned weakly up at his father. Redirecting the conversation he called across the room to Evan, “Is that medicine hard to get?”
“Well, it certainly isn’t over the counter.” Evan looked over at Paulie. “Any ideas how we can get this stuff immediately?”
“I’m sure I can make a phone call, but the problem isn’t going to be finding the medicine. It’s going to be getting it here, safely.”
“I’ll go get it,” Creed said casually, as though he just offered to go pick up a pizza.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Creed Young. You’ve been shot twice and are sedated!” Margo shooed her hand at him dismissively.
“No sedative necessary,” Creed said and sat up effortlessly.
“I really don’t recommend you do anything active for at least five days, Creed. I know you’re a meta and heal faster than humans, but you still have to give your body time to recover.” Theo had just finished stitching the last hole and was trying to put a sterile dressing on the site, but his patient kept moving. Creed was already reaching for his T-shirt.
“We don’t have time to argue about this mom,” Alik was saying. “Paulie, can you get on the phone to a pharmacy and have that medicine put together for us?”
Paulie nodded and grabbed the phone from his pocket. Moments later, he was talking smoothly into the receiver sounding very convincing and matter-of-fact about needing to place an order for these medicines. He added some other meds and supplies to the list. He charged the order to the credit card they had on file and sweetly negotiated an earlier pickup time than the standard one hour.
He hung up the phone with a grin and said, “Okay, the meds will be waiting for pickup at the hospital’s pharmacy. They’ll be expecting my ‘courier’ to come by in half an hour.”
Winter's Storm: Retribution (Winter's Saga #2) Page 21