Joint Task Force #2: America (25 page)

Josiah reached down, keeping his gun pulled back slightly in the event the man was faking and tried to grab it. He tugged the man onto his back. He didn’t want any more to die before higher authorities got here. Already, he was going to be spending the rest of the night doing paperwork on this. The more dead bodies, the more paperwork.

He pulled the second man over, glanced at the wounded one in the middle of the beach. The man had somehow turned onto his side. At least that one wasn’t going to suffocate, though he was going to have a lot of sand in his mouth.

He looked down at the two men breathing heavily at his feet.

“Here,” Harry said, handing him a flashlight. “I brought both of ours. Figured we might need them.”

Josiah turned the flashlight on and shined it on the two men at their feet. Their faces were covered in small blisters. The second one looked worse than the first, with blisters so large Josiah was sure the man couldn’t open his eyes. If these men were sea sick, that wasn’t the only thing bothering them. He walked over to the wounded man and shined the flashlight on the man’s face. This one was also covered in blisters.

Whatever was wrong with these men, Josiah just hoped it didn’t mean more work. Bad enough he was going to have to call Harriet and tell her he’d be late. Bad enough he was going to have to listen to her twenty questions and convince her that he had little choice. Bad enough he was going to have to listen to CIS question everything he told them. He stuck his shoe under the body of the dead man and pushed it over.

He shined his flashlight on the dead man’s face and wondered what had happened to cause the sea of blisters that covered the faces of these four men. They were like bumps, and for a fleeting moment, they made him think of acne gone so bad it was forcing the man’s eyes shut. He flicked off the flashlight. Josiah hoped whatever these men brought ashore with them wasn’t contagious. If it was contagious and he brought it home, he’d really catch hell from Harriet.

CHAPTER 10

LIEUTENANT EARLY LIFTED HER HEAD, SHIFTING HER JAW
back and forth. Her vision had returned, though her left eye remained swollen. She twisted her head back and forth, trying to ease the muscle tightness of her neck. Early pulled herself to a sitting position from behind Senior Chief Leary. Senior Chief Leary leaned back against the bulkhead.

“Senior Chief, it’s not working.”

“We’ve only been at it a few minutes, ma’am. Besides, it’s all we got.”

“I’d say more like a couple of hours.”

“Let me see,” Lieutenant Scott Kelly said. He knee-walked across the small space between them, deliberately fell across the Senior Chief’s legs, and pulled himself around so he was between them.

“Gotta-Be, you can’t see shit. Your eyes are too swollen. You can’t see and the Senior Chief doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head.”

“I’ve heard that punch line, Scott,” she replied, her voice slightly slurred. She tightened and released several times the muscles in her jaw, then moved the jaw back
and forth a few times. “I tried to get a grip with my teeth on the plastic strip, but the thing is so tight on your wrists, Senior Chief. Then, when I do manage to get a bite on it, it slips out as soon as I bite down hard or attempt to saw through it with my teeth. I just can’t get a good grip.”

“Lean up, Senior Chief,” Kelly said, nudging Leary’s hard shoulder with his head.

Leary leaned forward so the copilot could look. “Yeap, you’re right, Gotta-Be,” he said. “Your teeth have nipped the Senior Chief’s wrist, but the plastic is still intact.”

“Lieutenant,” Senior Chief Leary said, turning his head so he could look at Kelly. “How about yours? Are they as tight as mine?”

Kelly sat back up, tried to smile, and quickly stopped. “Ouch,” he said. “That hurt. Senior Chief, I can’t tell you if mine are looser or tighter. I lost feeling in my hands days ago, but if we stay here another couple of days, I’ll be free because my hands will fall off; so either way, I won’t be much use.”

“Come here, Scott, and let me look,” Early said.

The young Lieutenant leaned forward.

“Turn around.”

Kelly pulled himself onto his knees and shifted his body so his back was to Early. “What do you see?”

“Wait a minute. I haven’t even gotten myself where I can see. Turn a little bit to the left, so the light from the porthole falls across your hands.”

A moment later, he felt a tug on his restraints. “What are you doing?” he asked, looking over his shoulder and trying to see what she was doing.

Early leaned back. “You got a small link that’s kinked in the plastic. I think I can get a better bite on yours than I did on the Senior Chief’s.”

“We should have checked before we started on me,” Senior Chief Leary said.

“Yeah, but we’re tired.”

“That may be, ma’am, but we can’t afford to let that cloud—”

She interrupted. “When they pulled the tongue through
the lock, they didn’t pull the plastic handcuffs as tight as they could.”

“I still have no feeling in my hand.”

“Wiggle your fingers.”

Early and the Senior Chief watched as Kelly’s fingers wiggled. “Well, they still work, and the Senior Chief’s didn’t. At least you’ll still have your sex life if we get these cuffs off.”

“I don’t want to be a killjoy or anything, but even if we free one set of hands, how am I going to free you two? It isn’t as if hands are going to be better than teeth on these things.”

“That’s easy, Lieutenant,” Senior Chief Leary said. “What do we got laced to our boots?”

The three looked at their flight boots. Each had a metal dog tag with their name, service number, blood type, and religion embossed on it. The shoelace ran through a hole in the end of it.

“They aren’t the sharpest thing around.”

“They’re better than nothing, and if you get free then you can use the edge around the hole on it to cut through these things.”

“Ouch! What are you doing?”

“She’s working on your plastic, sir. Just sit there and let our Commander do her thing. You’ll have a great story to tell when we get back to the squadron.”

For the next few hours, Early nibbled on the plastic between mouthfuls of water. They stopped for a couple of hours when their captors arrived with the evening meal. It was hard to tell what time it was. Their watches had been taken the day they had been captured, and the meals the silent captors provided were always the same light soup with bread thrown on the deck.

Early was about to quit. Her jaws and neck hurt. Her teeth hurt, too, and the warm iron-like taste of blood told her she had ripped her gums doing this. She was tired. Two more tries and then she was going to hang it up for the night and get some sleep. Maybe tomorrow she would be more successful.

Early leaned forward and bit into the plastic. Getting a grip on it between her front teeth, she shook her head back and forth, hoping the movement simulated a sawing motion. Suddenly, part of the plastic gave way, a strip of it ripping her lip as it sprung apart. The pain brought tears to her eyes.

“I felt that,” Kelly said. “I felt something give.”

Early leaned back, breathing heavy and trying to stop the bleeding with her tongue. the Senior Chief Leary wiggled forward on his hips and leaned toward Kelly’s hands for a better look.

“Shit, man. There’s only a thin strip of plastic holding those things together. Try to pull them apart.”

“I don’t know—”

“Lieutenant, try to pull them apart,” the older man said, a slight trace of urgency in his voice.

Kelly pulled.

“Come on, Lieutenant! You gotta put some strength about it. If you ain’t gonna try, then it ain’t gonna break.”

Early leaned against the bulkhead. Her strength was gone. She had spent hours with the Senior Chief and at least the same amount of time with Kelly. This had better work. Scott had his head down, and she could see from the movement of his shoulders that he was trying to break free. She also saw when he stopped.

“It’s not working,” he said.

“Here,” Senior Chief said, sliding forward. “Push your hands out behind you as far as you can. I’m going to slide forward and put my feet between your arms. Then, you’re gonna pull while I push your arms apart with my legs.”

Kelly raised his arms as high as he could.

“Lean forward, Lieutenant. That’ll take those arms a little higher.”

He did as the Senior Chief ordered.

“Now straighten up, Lieutenant.”

Kelly raised himself. The space between his arms slid over the Senior Chief’s boots with his tied hands stopping near the top of Leary’s ankles.

“This is gonna hurt, Lieutenant, because I’m gonna use
my legs to push your hands apart. At the same time, you’ve gotta pull your hands apart. Together we might be able to break the plastic.”

Early opened her mouth to say something about the possibility of this effort dislocating Kelly’s shoulders, but realized they had no choice.

“It can’t hurt any worse than it already does, Senior Chief.”

“Think of it as visit to the dentist, Scott,” Early offered through deep breaths. “Pain for a few seconds and then it’s over.”

“A few seconds! What dentist you been going to?”

“On the count of three, we push and pull,” Leary said. “One, two, three . . .”

Grunts from both men filled the compartment, over-riding the low monotonous vibration of the ship’s engine. Early held her breath and mentally crossed her fingers. This had to work. This was their only chance. She glanced at the small window in the hatch. If someone happened along now, there was no way the two men could separate, and this single opportunity to escape would be gone. They knew their captors would kill them rather than be bothered with them trying to escape.

A sharp twang caused Early to jump. Kelly was falling forward. Both hands of the copilot came around to break his fall, but they didn’t make it past his shoulders. They flapped uselessly by his side. Kelly continued forward, his cheek bouncing once off the metal deck. He was free. She glanced toward the small porthole, expecting to see a face. But no one was there. The faint light continued to shine into the compartment. Kelly pulled himself up with his legs and stomach muscles. The copilot used his shoulders to flop his arms, one at a time, into his lap. He moaned, “Christ! This hurts.”

“It’s the blood returning, Lieutenant. Give it a few minutes and keep trying to move those fingers. It’ll hasten the—”

“My left hand,” Kelly muttered, staring down at his twitching hands.

The man’s right hand was free of the plastic handcuff. The remnants of that half hung from the remaining portion still pulled tightly around the man’s left wrist.

“You’re free.”

Kelly looked down at his left wrist. “I think we pulled it tighter when we broke it.”

“No time for that, Lieutenant,” the Senior Chief said. “Untie my flight boot and take my dog tag off the shoe lace.”

Kelly moved forward. “Damn,” he said softly, scrunching his eyes shut. “Damn! That hurts!” He waved his right hand back and forth, forcing his hand into a loose fist. He reached over and squeezed his left hand a couple of times, then looked up at Early and the Senior Chief. “They’re not working,” he said in a high voice.

“Keep squeezing your hands, Scott. They’ve been tied up for a few days. Give the blood a chance to circulate and you’ll be okay in a few minutes.”

“Meanwhile, Lieutenant,” the Senior Chief said. “Start getting that dog tag off my flight boot before someone comes along.”

Kelly shook his head. “With what, Senior Chief? These fingers? I can only wiggle them.”

Early leaned over, grabbed the end of a shoelace with her teeth and pulled it. The knot came loose easily.

“Thanks, boss, but I was thinking of Lieutenant Kelly untying it.”

Kelly reached over and, with fingers returning to life, pulled the laces through the holes until the dog tag fell away, the sound of metal hitting metal as it bounced off the compartment deck. “I didn’t even feel that.”

“I’ve been meaning for about a month to take a file and shave off the sharp edges from where maintenance had bored that hole for me. Just never got around to it, and it seemed the only time I remembered to do it was when tying my boots and the damn thing would prick me.”

Kelly squeezed his hand together in a tight fist. “I think I’ve got some feeling.”

They looked at the copilot’s right hand. Even in the
low light, the hand had a pinkish color to it. The left hand had turned blue. Freeing Kelly had pulled the cuff on the left hand too tight, cutting off circulation completely. Early knew they had to free that hand quickly before the lack of blood permanently damaged it, if it wasn’t already permanently damaged after four days of these damn things.

It took two tries before Kelly was able to pick up the dog tag. He ran his fingers over the hole where the shoelace had been threaded. “Yeah, it’s sharp,” he said, holding the dog tag between his finger and thumb while he briefly sucked the cut on the knuckle of the finger.

“Lieutenant, you gotta get that other half off your left wrist ASAP!” the Senior Chief said urgently, keeping his voice low. “If you don’t, you ain’t gonna have a left hand.”

“And if I don’t free you, my left hand will be the least of our worries.”

“Scott, take a moment and cut your left hand free. You’ll work better with two hands.”

He opened his mouth as if to protest and then shut it as if he knew he would lose an argument with Early. A minute later, the sharp edges on the dog tag cut through the remaining cuff, freeing the left hand.

“Get the Senior Chief next, Scott.”

Kelly crawled forward on his knees, dragging his still-useless left hand, but already Early could see the blue being replaced by a pink tint as blood flowed back into the limb. The Senior Chief turned so his hands faced the copilot. Several minutes later Leary was free, rubbing his wrists as Kelly worked on Early. She watched as Leary rubbed his hands together, muttering to himself as he worked to get the blood flowing freely through them.

“Ouch,” she said when the sharp edge of the dog tag nicked her wrist.

“Sorry.”

“They’re coming back,” Leary said, holding up his hands and making loose fists with them. “Yeah, they’re
coming back.” He looked at the hatch. “Now, assholes, let’s see how you like these hands untied.”

Early’s hands fell apart at the same moment a face in the porthole obscured the light from the compartment. The three captives stopped what they were doing, staring at the face as its eyes squinted. Then the face disappeared.

“He may be opening the door,” Early suggested.

“No, ma’am. I don’t think they can see in here when they look. Ain’t enough light. I think they just look because someone told them to. They’re so dumb that they don’t know what they’re supposed to be looking for.” Senior Chief Leary leaned back against the bulkhead and, using his feet, forced himself upright.

Early watched as the senior chief’s hands fought to close into a fist. The pain must have been excruciating, for his wrists had been tied a lot tighter than hers. The tingling of blood rushing through her hands tickled at first and then as feeling returned it brought with it pain across her shoulders, down her arms, and in her hands. She blinked away the tears from the pain. “Damn,” she said in a low voice.