The Army Comes Calling (25 page)

     “Ouch! What did I do?”

     Sarah winked at the girls and said to Bryan, “You told me you’d only wear that pink teddy in the privacy of our own home.”

     “Oh, yeah.”

     Hannah turned to Sami and said, “I think we’d probably better get back to our apartments and change, or we’re gonna be the butt of a lot of jokes this morning.”

Chapter 43

     Right on schedule, the
chop chop chop
of the Huey’s main prop could be heard in the distance. It was coming in at treetop level, as was the colonel’s preference.

     “Any other way to fly is for sissies,” he’d told Frank and Karen on the first tour.

     It was a perfect morning to fly. The sun was shining, making the early morning dew dance on the flowers and leaves below. The birds were singing, and the woods around the compound were alive with a symphony of chirps and whistles and creaking noises.

     The breeze was slight and out of the northwest. Hannah thought she could smell the faint scent of the lake water as she and John stood on what they’d come to call the “helicopter pad.”

     Suddenly, quite literally out of the clear blue sky, the helicopter came into view. They could see Colonel Montgomery smile broadly when he saw them waiting.

     Montgomery was an old school military officer. He liked it when people waited on him. He despised the times when he had to wait for others. It was a double standard practiced by high ranking military officers as long as the military has existed.

     The pilot touched the bird down a safe distance from their waiting passengers, and the colonel hopped off to greet them. He raised his voice to be heard over the noisy aircraft, shouting, “Good morning!” as he shook John’s and Hannah’s hands.

     The two were seated in the cabin, Hannah facing forward and John facing her, looking aft. No machine gun was brought on this day, and the crewman who normally would be the gunner assisted the pair in getting strapped in. He fitted them with helmets, made sure they were secure, and told them to give him a thumbs up when they were comfortable.

     Both of them did so. He asked over the radio if they could hear him. Both nodded their heads.

     “You’re on Tac 2,” the crewman said. You can use it to converse between yourselves and the colonel. If you’d like to monitor the operational channel and listen to the pilot and Air Traffic Control, you may switch to Tac 1. But don’t say anything on Tac 1.”

     Both John and Hannah nodded, indicating they understood.

     The crewman sat down and started strapping himself back in. Colonel Montgomery looked at his guests and said, “You guys ready to go?”

     Hannah smiled and said, “Yes, sir!”

     Colonel Montgomery switched channels briefly and said, “Let’s show our guests what this baby can do.”

     From the rooftop, Mark and little Markie watched as the bird broke free from the earth and lifted up over the trees.

     Markie said, “Wow! Cool!”

     Sami, standing behind them, was more subdued. She managed a smile as she reached out and tusseled Markie’s hair. But she still couldn’t get over her sense of dread.

Chapter 44

     By mid afternoon things had gotten back to normal in the compound. Hannah and John were finishing up their tour in San Antonio and would be heading back soon.

     Helen and Karen and a couple of other volunteers were in the kitchen, baking pies and planning the evening meal.

     Joe, the only true musician in the group, was setting up the microphones in the dining room for a concert he was planning to give during dinner. As a surprise to everyone other than him and Rachel, she would accompany him on one of his songs.

     They’d been sneaking off to the barn lately for private lessons on the acoustical guitar. Others had seen them come and go, and had assumed they were witnessing a budding romance in the works.

     And there was a little bit of that too. But mostly it was Joe getting Rachel ready for her big musical debut.

     All seemed right with the world, until Bryan broke in over the radio.

     “Sarah, come in Sarah.”

     There was no response.

     “Sarah, this is Bryan. Come in, baby.”

     Still no answer.

     Frank, on duty at the security control center, tried to help.

     “If anyone is with Sarah or knows where she is, please have her turn her radio on and answer.”

     No response from anyone.

     Bryan started to panic. Sarah never turned her radio off. This wasn’t like her at all.

     All conversations in the compound immediately ceased as all ears were glued to the radio.

     “Okay,” Frank said. “Nobody panic. Has anyone seen Sarah since lunchtime?”

     There were no responses.

     Frank continued.

     “Bryan, you didn’t have lunch with her?”

     “No, Frank. I was on guard duty on top of the building. I haven’t seen her since this morning.”

     Frank went on.

     “Okay. Did
anyone
have lunch with Sarah?”

     Silence.

     “Has anyone seen her since breakfast?”

     At last, an answer.

     Debbie said, “I saw he just after breakfast, Frank. She said she was going outside the compound to pick some wildflowers.”

     “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Mark, you were on the security desk this morning. Did anyone let Sarah out the gate?”

     Bryan interjected.

     “Frank, Sarah never goes in and out of the gate when she picks flowers. She always goes through the evacuation tunnel that comes out under the old cabin floor.”

     Frank released the microphone key and cursed. Then he keyed the mike again and asked one last question:

     “Bryan, are you sure she’s not in your apartment taking a nap?”

     Bryan sounded irritated. Or maybe it was worry.

     “No, Frank. I’ve searched every inch of the compound. She’s not here.”

     “Okay. Sami, I need for you to come and relieve me at the desk. I need for all available men to meet me at the gate in ten minutes. Replace the batteries on your radios. You shooters draw a weapon from the gun case. As of now we’ll consider her missing and presumed lost in the woods. We’ve only got a few hours before nightfall, so we’ll have to move quickly.”

     Karen asked, “Is there a way to get ahold of Hannah and John? Maybe one of them knows where she is.”

     Mark answered, “Hannah definitely doesn’t know. She made a comment just before they walked out to meet the helicopter that it was sad her best friend didn’t bother to come and wish her bon voyage.”

     Three hours later, as pairs of searchers scoured the woods outside the compound, a tiny robin landed in the middle of a clearing half a mile away.

     The robin was building a nest for her brood, and poked through several wildflowers lying in a loose bouquet in the short grass. She walked through a puddle of red sticky blood, but didn’t know and didn’t care what it was. She selected a wild bluebonnet from the bouquet, decided it would make a perfect addition to her nest, and carried it away into the darkening sky.

     Thank you for reading T
he Army Comes Calling
. I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. Please enjoy the following preview of the next installment of the
Final Dawn
series.

Final Dawn Part 6:

MISSING

     Hannah awoke for the second time, still in a daze and still in a world of pain. She still couldn’t move the lower part of her body. Couldn’t even feel it, as a matter of fact. The huge piece of wreckage that covered her hips and legs kept her from even seeing whether her lower body was still intact. The tingling she felt occasionally came in waves, first barely perceptible and then very intense.

     Had her lower body been severed in the crash? Was that why she couldn’t feel her legs and feet? Was the tingling merely her body’s way of trying to convince her she was still whole? Or was her hip bone as far as her body extended now? Was the weight of the huge chunk of metal which covered her from her pubic bone to her ankles the only thing keeping her from bleeding to death from legs that were no longer there?

     She’d had little formal training in medicine while in college. She’d always been amazed when she told people she was an astrophysicist how many thought that had something to do with medicine. Many of her friends had asked her casual questions about their ailments, as though she were formally trained in the medical field.

     The truth was, the few medical courses she took in college were merely block fillers: elective courses she took simply because they interested her and she needed the credits. She took two semesters of basic medical principles and first aid techniques. Another on emergency medicine.

     She tried her best to remember. Her abdomen was sensitive to the touch, and was warm and hard. That meant internal bleeding, she was almost positive. And that wasn’t good.

     She tried again to cry out. But her lungs just wouldn’t inflate to allow her to do it. Even now, three hours after the crash, she was still breathing in very short, very labored breaths. Whenever she tried to inhale deeply, the stabbing pain from her fractured ribs made her feel like passing out.

     She looked once again at the arm.

     Oh, she tried not to. The pain it caused her was even worse than the pain in her abdomen or the pain in her lungs.

     This pain was in her heart.

     But the arm kept drawing her back. It wouldn’t let her
not
look.

     It was as though the limb, peeking out from underneath a chunk of Army green fuselage that had to weigh a ton or better, kept calling her name.

     Hannah studied the arm again, desperate to know. She’d known John for years now… considered him one of her best friends. And she knew he had tattoos. She remembered seeing the words “Semper Fi” tattooed on his shoulder once when she was giving him a haircut.

     But even as well as she knew him, she couldn’t say for sure if he had the letters “USMC” tattooed on the inside of his right forearm.

     Like the arm that peeked out from the piece of fuselage.

     She hadn’t seen John since the crash. Hadn’t seen anyone, in fact. As far as she knew she was the only survivor.

     And she knew in her heart she wouldn’t survive long without help.

     Suddenly, there was a sound. Of what? It was a scratching noise, barely perceptible.

     No. It was a dragging sound. Coming from the area past the arm.

     Hannah strained to see who or what was making the sound, but the sun was setting and the area around the crash site was getting dim.

     Finally, around the side of what was left of the propeller assembly, a weak and damaged figure emerged.

     It was the crewman who’d strapped them into their seats for their return flight just before they left Kelly Air Force Base. The one who told her it was bad luck not to smile for the man who buckled her in. The man who told her she was beautiful and who pointed out that he was single and looking for a mate.

     She’d been told that by many men over the years, of course. But she was still flattered, and gently told the man she was happily married and had a child.

     She’d laughed when the man said, “Dang it!” as though he was genuinely heartbroken.

     She wondered if he’d be the last man to ever tell her she was beautiful.

     He dragged two legs behind him as he clawed his way across the ground. One was tied off with a tourniquet just above the knee. The leg below that was gone. The other leg was intact, but was crushed almost beyond recognition. She saw a piece of femur protruding through the flight suit on his upper right leg, and found herself trying to remember how to treat an open fracture.