Under Vanishing Skies (22 page)

His brow furrowed. “Is that why you and dad had to build all the stuff for the IICN from all that spare junk?”

I smiled. “Exactly. Some bits and pieces of equipment didn’t get fried, but that was just luck. EMPH equipment wouldn’t have been damaged at all.”

“
So some of this stuff,” he said, pointing to the map, “might still work?”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “It’s possible. But the only way to know for sure would be to go there and check it out or—”

William stared at me for a half second before saying, “Or what?”

“
William, I need you to go through that list again.”

“
Again?” he whined.

“
Yup. All of it. For every piece of equipment that has a one in the EMPH column, I want you to color the equipment icon blue. Got it? How long do you think that will take?”

“
About thirty seconds,” he said, smiling. “I linked each icon to the spreadsheet, so all I have to do is write a script to change the color based on the value in the column.  Come on...I did harder stuff when I was five.”

I ruffled his hair. He ducked out of my reach and flashed me an annoyed look. It was the kind of look my girls had given Kelly when she would dress them up in the same outfits.

It actually took him closer to three minutes to finish the script, but I wasn't complaining.  All real coders underestimated schedules. He handed me the data mat and I overlaid the position of the Indian reconnaissance satellite on it.

“
There,” I said, pointing at an icon located in the southwestern part of China. “See that?”

He nodded.

“
If that laser uplink station is still operational, we might be able to communicate with it through the Indian satellite that Jin hacked.”

“
I don’t get it. How is that uplink station going to decrypt the messages?”

I folded my arms across my chest, leaned back, and smiled. “Jin really was a genius.”

William shook my shoulders and said, “How is that going to help?”

I looked at him and smiled. “Do you know how those laser uplink systems work?”

He shook his head.

“
They shoot a laser through a liquid lens that automatically morphs itself to adjust for the scintillation of the upper atmosphere.” I could tell from the puzzled expression on his face that I had lost him. “You know how on a really hot, sunny day when you look out over the dock and everything looks all wavy?”

He nodded.

“
That’s scintillation. Same thing happens in the upper atmosphere. If you shoot a laser through the distortion without adjusting for the scintillation then the information the laser sends gets all messed up.”

Looking even more puzzled, he asked, “But how does the uplink know what the scin-till-ation will be like up in the sky?”

“
It uses a quantum computer to figure that out.”

He still didn’t get it, but I did. I finally understood Jin’s plan. He planned to use the quantum computer at the laser uplink station to decrypt the messages. All we had to do now was—

The door flew open and Mohamed charged into the room. He was out of breath. “Aron, you must come quickly.”

I stood up. “Take it easy. What’s going on?” I knew from the sound of his voice and the fear in his eyes that it wasn’t good.

“
The pirates just attacked the Tari island chain.”

That was only three islands to the south of us.

“
Is it still under attack?” I asked.

Mohamed shook his head and tried to catch his breath. “No, but we just got a call for assistance. They have several hundred wounded and a few—” He paused and looked at William as if deciding whether he wanted to finish the sentence. “And there are some dead too.”

“
Well come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I snatched my backpack from the floor and hurried past him, but he grabbed my arm and stopped me.

“
There’s more.”

“
Well...what is it?”

Mohamed didn’t speak.

“
Come on...if there are people hurt, we’ve got to move.”

“
The pirates attacked three boats near the island, and there are reports that they killed the men on board and kidnapped the women.” His gaze fell to the floor before he said, “Your friend Shannon was on one of those boats.”

Chapter 14

Our boat approached Tari from the east and I looked out at the plumes of black smoke rising into the early evening sky. Swarming around the smoldering island, a ragtag armada from nearby islands rushed in to help. I grabbed the binoculars from Mohamed and scanned the boats. There wasn’t a single MDF patrol boat in the mix. I searched the sky and didn’t see any helojumpers either. It didn’t really surprise me, but it pissed me off.

The main pier was overflowing with boats, so Kamish pulled around to the south side of the island. He docked next to a hut that sat on stilts over the shallow water. I didn’t wait for Kamish to tie the boat to the moorings. Grabbing my bag from the deck, I slung it over my shoulder and sprinted down the narrow boardwalk and out on to the beach.

I had only made it twenty feet before I came across a young girl lying face up in a grotesque heap over a small boulder. Her eyes were open, but they already clouding over. I knew from her blood-stained, naked legs how she met her fate, but I pushed the thought away. Seared on her forehead was the seal of Jamal. I didn’t bother to stop. There wasn’t any point. Her throat was cut so deep that I could make out the ridges of her trachea.

 
I passed a dozen more victims. My hatred for Jamal and his pirates grew with each crescent moon and star that I saw branded on their bodies.

I could make out the roofline of the community center up ahead. I stopped and took a few deep breaths before going on. I decided that throwing up in front of the wounded wouldn’t instill a sense of confidence. Best to let my stomach do what it wanted out here.

When my stomach was empty, I straightened up and headed for the community center. As I approached the building, I tried to make sense of what was going on outside. The scene that unfolded was pure chaos.

Laid alongside the open-air hut  were rows of bodies covered in blood-soaked sheets. A boy, maybe four, sat next to one of the corpses. He wailed as he shook an uncovered foot. A two-man  team carrying a body almost tripped on the boy. They dumped their load a few feet from the kid and hurried off. I stood there and watched as body after body was brought in and dropped to the ground, I had to get out of here, so I walked inside the community center.  What I found in there was worse.

Screams filled the air. Those unlucky enough to have survived the attack were sprawled out on every inch of open ground. I passed by a woman in her thirties. She sat cross-legged on a thatched mat holding a makeshift tourniquet on the stump of her right arm. I tried not to make eye contact. I failed. Her eyes locked on to mine. I saw her mouth open and close as if she was trying to speak, but nothing came out. I closed my eyes to break her hold on me and kept going.

As I moved through the hut, I scanned the faces looking for Shannon. But all I saw were the faces of people on the verge of death. A woman carrying towels rushed past me. There were others like her, people moving from patient to patient trying to prevent the inevitable. Their clothes were covered in as much blood as their patients.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jumped and turned to find Mohamed standing behind me. His warm smile and laughing eyes were replaced by a somber, resolute expression. He had seen this before, the insanity and horror of an emergency medical ward. But I hadn’t. After other raids, I had helped carry the bodies to the makeshift morgues. Dealing with the dead was far easier than dealing with the dying.

“
Follow me, Aron. I need your help.”

“
Me? I can’t help here. I’ll go out there and see if they need help bringing people in.”

“
These people need us. Just do what I say and stay calm.”

I nodded, but I had lost my calm back on the beach next to that girl on the boulder.

I followed him through the ward. We stopped next to a large group of tables that were pushed together. Linens, buckets of water, and bottles of various medicines were spread out across the table. Next to the tables I watched as an elderly woman sang gospel songs, cried, and washed bloody utensils. 

A tall, skinny man with a large crooked nose and a shaved head came up to Mohamed and said, “Thank God you’re here, old friend.”

Mohamed reached out and clasped the man’s bloodstained hand. “Hans. Who else is here? Victoria, Raj?”

Hans shook his head. “You and I are the only doctors here so far. Perhaps others will come.” The look on his face told me that he didn’t hold out much hope of that.

“
So this is it?” Mohamed motioned towards the tables. “Is this all we have to work with?”

“
I’m afraid so. I’ve instructed everyone to send the uninjured straight down to the main pier. Everyone else is out there, trying to stabilize the patients.” He pointed toward the paved pavilion behind the hut. “What I really need is someone to triage the wounded, so I can focus on helping the most seriously injured.”

Mohamed nodded.

“
Place a mark on their foreheads...you know the drill. Just like we did with the refugees.”

Mohamed nodded again and grabbed me by the arm. He led me out onto the pavilion. There, sprawled across the ground, were men, women and children. They rolled around on the ground and rocked back and forth. They shrieked, mumbled, and cried. There had to be at least a hundred. I looked out towards the jungle and saw more being carried in or staggering in on their own.

Reaching into his shirt pocket, Mohamed pulled out a pencil made out of tree resin. He handed it to me and said, “I’ll tell you what to write. Try to write it clearly on their foreheads. Do you understand?”

I nodded and followed him. He examined each person and then yelled out a letter. I wrote the letter on their foreheads. It took several minutes before I finally had the courage to ask, what the letters stood for.

Mohamed examined a deep laceration on the shoulder of an old man and said, “Mark this one with a D.” He stood up and walked toward the next patient, but paused to say, “The letter D stands for delay. That means the patient can wait. The letter I stands for Immediate. Those patients need to be seen at once. And M stands for Minor. Those people can be taken straight to the pier for transport off the island.”

He bent over the next patient, an unconscious woman in her late twenties. He lifted her eyelid and placed two fingers on her neck to check her pulse. “Mark her with an X.” He got up and walked over to a small girl who was missing a leg. She looked like Taylor, my youngest daughter. I marked her forehead an X and quickly looked away.

“
What does the X mean?” I asked.

He looked up at me and I saw the answer in his eyes.

*** 

It was dark before the stream of casualties had finally slowed down. I had no idea what time it was, but it was late…probably early morning.

After the last patient had been stabilized, I walked outside and slumped to the ground against the building. Pulling my knees up to my chest, I encircled them with my arms, closed my eyes, and rested my head on my knees. The smell of death hung in the air.

All night long I looked for Shannon, but she had never come through the triage area. Before I came out here, I had walked through the morgue. I lifted the sheet off of each body and looked at each face. With every sheet I lifted, I prayed that it wouldn’t be her. I guess my prayers were answered, but it didn’t make me feel any better. I was so numb and so tired that I couldn’t feel anything.

“
You did well today, my friend,” Mohamed said.

I heard him plop to the ground next to me. I leaned my head back against the wall and looked at him through one opened eye. “It didn’t make much of a difference. I stopped counting the Xs when I reached sixty.”

He patted my arm and said, “It is not about the ones we couldn’t save. It is about the ones we did save. Here...this will help.”

He dangled a small flask in front of my face. “No thanks. Not tonight. That shit gives me bad dreams.”

He opened the flask and took a swig before saying, “I understand. I felt the same way after that first wave of refugees arrived on the islands. Do you remember? I spent weeks on Male helping to treat them. They were all so sick from radiation. I felt helpless because all I could do was make them comfortable before they died. A terrible thing, radiation poisoning.”