Chapter 46
I felt odd. Rocking and warm yet my legs were stretched uncomfortably. I groaned and looked up on a strange world, we were inside a black tunnel only dimly lit by bobbing lights and sparkling flares. My hands were gripped in a soft silky mane and I was on a horse. Or so I thought until I saw the glowing two foot spiral ivory and gold horn glowing like a torch.
“Mum,” I managed and my voice scared me. It sounded like the worst asthmatic, liquidy and full of rales. I wanted to cough, I needed to cough and I knew if I did, my lungs would collapse as blood spewed forth.
She moved so smoothly that not one footfall jarred me. Walking beside me holding up bags of blood, fluid and 02 were Martinez and another man whose breast patch said P. Storrer. He was tall, blonde and gave me a grin when he saw my eyes were open.
“Hey. Welcome back, Draco,” he said, his hand warm on my knees. Someone had bandaged them, the scrapes no longer hurt. “What’s it like being that Dragon?”
“Awesome,” I grinned in a ghastly parody of a smile. I hugged my legs together and shivered. I felt very odd, cold yet so hot that sweat poured off me. Lucid yet I felt as if I wasn’t quite awake, my ears made everything thrum yet every sound was crystal clear. I could hear their foot beats, her cloven hooves scraping, even the ticking of their watches and the dust settling yet my heartbeats were so loud it drowned out his words.
“Hey. I can see light up ahead!” Suarez’s voice broke my concentration and as the glow at the end of the darkness became an irregular circle, I could see it, too. The Unicorn stopped and I could hear her thoughts in my head as clearly as if she spoke them.
We have traveled the origins of the Power that made all before the Pattern, before Chaos and before even I existed. I can go no further. I love you, Son of my Desire. From here these mortal men hold your life in their hands but they have been worthy of touching me. They will defend and support you. Go and I will see you again in Amber.
She dropped to her knees and I slid carefully off, held by both SF men. She lightly touched each man in the unit with her horn and turned, leaped and was gone in a flash of light.
It was only about twenty feet that we had to walk but it took us nearly 10 minutes and they finally carried me. We stepped out into the bright sunlight on a desert scene of bare sandstone, dry grass and sere landscape. Hills bare of anything but goat tracks, ravines and higher mountains. Martinez set me down against his pack and pulled out his radio.
“Sarge?” Storrer asked holding me with his knees. “This looks like –.”
“I know. Just exactly where we followed the LT into this crazy shit.” He pushed the button on his radio and spoke softly as he sent Suarez and Jackson out to scout. “Peppermint Patty, this is Retriever 9, do you copy?” He clicked off and waited. Repeated his call sign again. “Retriever 9 calling for pickup, come in.”
We heard the static and crackle of an American voice. “Who is this? Where did you get a US radio? Identify yourself,” the words were sharp and angry.
“This is Retriever 9, I repeat, Retriever 9 with his puppies, some eleven in all. LT is dead. We request extraction from Little Bunny ASAP. We have critically wounded.”
“What’s your DOB, Retriever 9? You and your puppies have been reported KIA six months ago.”
“Holy shit. We’ve been gone longer than that,” one of the other grunts said.
“Time runs differently in the Shadows,” I whispered. Storrer held a canteen to my mouth and I took a few sips. Listened blearily to Martinez reciting his DOB, SS number and other data. He kept his signals short until finally he burst out, “Riley, you asshole! Come get us before the ghoulies triangulate our position! Out.”
The two running perimeter came back stealthily and held up their hands, two fingers each and pointed downhill. Quietly, they reported that four boys were pushing a herd of goats straight towards us and the tunnel yet when we turned to look, the tunnel was merely an old narrow cave entrance.
“Can you move, Raven?” Martinez asked and I nodded. Storrer helped me up and we shuffled up over the narrow ridge just before we heard the bleating of goats and a few sheep. Luckily, the boys were far enough behind the herd that they didn’t notice the animals staring at us and their sharp hooves destroyed what little sign we left behind.
The other side of the ridge revealed a small valley with a glimmer of green in the bottoms. Silently, we made our way down and halfway there, all of them were sweating in the dry heat. Except for me. It was so dry that it hurt to breathe and the dust from our passage lingered in the still air. There wasn’t a breath of a breeze and sound carried yet I was the only one who moved stones or made noises. They moved as quietly as specters and they eventually put me in a chair hold to hurry our progress along. I knew they wanted to get as far away from these Afghanis as they could.
His radio crackled just as we entered a dense thicket at the bottom of the ravine, filled with cedar trees and stuff that looked like gorse. It made great cover especially when they pulled out their ghillie suits. You could walk right past them and not see them. I was fascinated as Storrer explained it to me and I pointed to the wood elves standing near us wearing their own such apparel. He stared at me, with his brow furrowed and when I looked again, nothing was there. He placed his huge palm on my forehead and I recalled that it grew larger and larger until it filled my whole world. After that, I remembered vague images of being carried to a small hilltop where the wind swirled and hummed like a giant bee. Someone rolled me and cut my clothes off, pinched my arms and stuck cool plastic over my face. I felt my stomach drop, bodies leaned into me and I thought I was flying but my wings didn’t want to open. Martinez leaned in my face and his dark eyes smiled at me. “Time to sleep, macho hombre. Grande Negro Draconis. You’re almost home.” His voice faded but the pounding beat of a giant heart remained in the background.
*****
The Chinook set down at the base in Kandahar and was met by MPs and medics who whisked the weary team into custody and took the other unknown soldier into the hospital. Martinez shouted his STATS as he was led away, breaking free once to grab the nearest doc. Rapidly, he said, “broken ribs, punctured lung, knife wounds in the abdomen; possible entry into bowels and pneumonia. I gave him 10 mL of morphine two hours ago,” he shouted as he was dragged off.
In minutes, the boy was x-rayed, hooked up to fluids, on a respirator and readied for surgery. The nurse, a twenty-year veteran from Florida looked for his dog tags and found the leather thong around his neck but all that was on it was a thin gold wedding band. One of the other medics lifted his eyelid and stared.
“Hey. Look at this.” He held the boy’s eye open and all of them stared at the strange blue gemstone embedded where an eyeball should be. He tried to remove it and it wouldn’t come loose. The other eye was a strange yellow – like a predatory cat yet reacted to his penlight within an acceptable time.
“He can’t be more than seventeen or eighteen,” he said, his mouth agape under the mask.
“Whatever. Let’s cut him open and see why his BP is still falling,” the Major said and the boy was scrubbed from his chest to his groin. Hours later, he stitched and stapled the boy back together after finding the nicked vein in his liver and repairing the punctured lung and torn bowel. On massive doses of antibiotics, anti-inflammatory for the 104º fever, bowel infection and pneumonia, with over half his blood volume replaced and a machine breathing for him, Major Garret sighed and cautiously pronounced him critical but stable. Two hours later, he was on a C-147 hospital plane enroute to Ramstein AFB in Germany.
Transferred to the state of the art hospital under armed guard, he was placed in a bed in the security wing with curious medical and military personnel waiting for him to awaken.
The entire Retriever 9 team were vetted by a doctor, debriefed and sent on to Ramstein as well, where they spent the same uncomfortable night in the locked wing of the Hospital under guard where they were told they would be interrogated by both the NCIS and
CIA.
“Any idea who this kid is?” the surgeon in charge of the boy questioned. His name was George Armstrong Favre and he was AF, a tall, bald man with hardly any wrinkles and crisp hazel eyes. He was a whiz with battlefield wounds saving life and limb where others were too quick to amputate. He asked the question of the LT in charge of the investigation into Retriever 9’s case. That officer was dark and sleek like a seal, not quite white nor African American in color but could even blend in with Asians. His name was Paul Ferrete, called Ferret by his men because he had the same qualities as the weasel family.
“His fingerprints aren’t in AFIS or the Military data base and his DNA is…weird,” Ferrete said. “How old do you think he is? Do you think he’s a native or American gone native? We even checked his teeth–he has no fillings of any kind, no metal implants and other than the eyeball, looks like a US teenager.”
“He’s definitely not Arabic, he’s circumcised. Not Afghani, Iranian or Iraqi. If anything, northern European or American. He’s 6’1/2, should weigh 180-190 but has clearly been severely malnourished for a year or more. The sutures in his skull aren’t closed yet nor are his spinal processes showing signs of arthritis so he’s no more than 21 although I believe it’s closer to 17. He’s had his left tibia and femur broken twice, all of his ribs, the xyloid process, and a major concussion. He has extensive scarring on his back and buttocks, a healing shoulder fracture and right arm. Pneumonia, knife wounds, abdominal punctures and penetrating stab wounds, peritonitis. In short, this child has been tortured to the point of death and nearly died on my table.”
“Huh.”
They stared at the pale, composed face lying on the air mattress covered with blankets and his hands lying at his side. He had short hair of blue black, the nurses had shaved it to stubble to remove the dirt, crusted blood and lice that infested it. Bathed, in a clean gown, he looked and smelled clean.
Favre picked up his hand and read the vitals. His heartbeat was fast and thready, the respirator breathed an even 16 inhalations per minute and his BP hovered at 90/60 while his heart was in the 100’s. His temperature stubbornly refused to drop below 102.9º even on the massive doses of alfa calforan and other high risk antibiotics. He had so many tubes and lines coming from him that the nurses had to work around his bedside in shifts.
Favre lifted the boy’s eyelids and touched the stone, gasped when the gem reacted with the star shaped slit widening much like a human iris. He checked the normal eye and saw the same reaction. “Holy Christ!” he breathed. “You think he sees out of it? What the hell kind of technology could produce this?”
“How much longer before he comes up out of the anesthesia?” Ferrete questioned. “You know, he’s a really good-looking kid. Who’d do that to him? And what was he doing over in Afghanistan?”
“Didn’t you asked the team that brought him out?”
“Yeah but they said some weird shit before they clammed up. They said they’d talk to us after they talked to him. Called him the Black Dragon in Spanish and said they owed their lives to him. Seems to me it was the other way around. They brought him out.”
“We’ll find out when and if he wakes up,” the doctor said.
“What’d you mean? I thought he was on the mend?”
“He has peritonitis. Which is 95% fatal when treated this late. And a walloping case of pneumonia. Don’t hold your breath.” Both of them stared at ‘John Doe’ before returning to their other tasks leaving J. Doe to the nurses and armed guards.
Chapter 47
I wasn’t sure if I was alive or dead. I was drifting–nothing seemed to hurt but everything was numb. I had a strange constriction down my throat that suddenly made me gag and that I fought. I heard a woman make a startled exclamation and she popped a penlight in both eyes. “Well, hello my beauty,” she grinned. “Cough and I’ll take the breathing tube out.
I coughed and it was as if my lungs were made of glass. I managed a feeble huff and out came the long trach tube I’d had before. Before I could even lick my dry lips, she was putting those rubber prongs to my nose and watching the pulse OX meter.
“Good, your levels are staying at 95%, that’s great compared to your O2 levels yesterday. There are a great many people waiting to see you.” She pushed the call button but the nurses’ station already knew I was awake from my elevated STATS.
“Dad? Grandpop?” I whispered. “Water, please?” I begged and she held the cup with ice and a straw to my lips. I took two sips and started hacking. Tiny electric sparks danced before my vision and when I could see again, the room had two doctors, two officers in uniform, a man in a three-piece suit and a woman that looked like a Federal Agent in a dark skirt and jacket. She was a blonde like Dayle Hinman.
“Hello, son. I’m Major Favre, I did your surgery. How are you feeling?”
“Like hammered dog shit,” I said succinctly.
“What’s your name?”
“Raven Corey.” I was exhausted and started to drift back to sleep. He touched my hand and I jerked awake. It was cold and I didn’t know him. I didn’t like strangers to touch me.
“Where are you from, Raven?”
“California.”
“Your dad? Who’s your father, and grandfather?”
“Merle Corey. Carl Corey. San Francisco.” It was too much for me, I sank back into sleep.
The next time I woke, it was because someone’s hand gently rubbed on my chest bone, annoying and it hurt. I tried to swat at it but my hands were tied to flat boards and IVs. “Raven, wake up. Can you hear me? Hi, Raven. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
I grumbled. Everything started to hurt but especially my chest. I tried to feel for it but my hands were tied to those boards. I felt an uncomfortable fullness in my bladder. “Need to pee.”
“Go ahead, you’re wearing a catheter. That’s good, it’s a sign your kidneys are working. What’s your dad’s address, Raven? We couldn’t find one that was newer than ten years old… when he was in college. And your grandfather’s out of the country and no one seems to know where he is.”
George was no longer alive and he’d used to care for Grandpop’s San Francisco mansion. I didn’t know who the factum was now. Remembered Bill. Bill Taylor, Grandpop’s friend for over thirty years. Still, I wasn’t sure if he was in Amber or on this Shadow. Again, I remembered that Murphy was dead and started sobbing.
“Hey, kid. It’s okay. What’s wrong?” He seemed really concerned. “Are you in pain? AFC Brewster, get me 2 cc of Roxynol.”
“Yes sir,” the nurse scurried out and I choked out a reply between gasps. She was back in seconds and he injected it into my port. Immediately, I was floating and his fingers were on my pulse.
“That’s better,” he said. “Raven, who can we call for you?”
“Taylor,” I mumbled. “Bill Taylor. Lawyer. Grandpop’s lawyer.” I faded into oblivion with a sigh of relief.
*****
“I think his eyes are fluttering.”
“He’s coming up, his pulse is increasing and his BP, respirations. Temp is down to 101° this morning and his urine output has climbed to 400 mls. The drainage looks clearer, too.”
“Has he mentioned anything?”
“About what? Family? Afghanistan, who did this to him?”
“Where’s he comes from? That eyeball is so far above our technology – unless it’s from China or Japan.”
“He’s awake. Hi, Raven. How are you feeling?” I looked at the doctor, a major with a white lab coat over his uniform. He had hairy knuckles and surprisingly slender fingers. The other man looked like a Fed. I swallowed and lubricated my dry mouth.
“Water, please.” The Major let me drink my fill and asked if I wanted to sit up. I nodded and he slowly raised my shoulders so I could see the room. Private but there were barred windows and locked doors, three walls of windows waist-high. I could see the nursing station and out their windows to an airfield. “Ramstein?” He nodded.
“Have you been here befor
e?”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Lieutenant Ferrete. NCIS. We have a few questions for you.”
“About Martinez and the SF team?” At his nod, I continued. “I’d be dead without them.”
“He said they’d be dead without you. What happened to you? How did you get into Afghanistan? And just what the hell are you?”
“A US citizen,” I spat back. “Call Bill Taylor of San Francisco, lawyer.” I refused to say anything else until he was called. I wondered what had prompted their hard-ass attitude towards me. I was obviously not a jihadist or terrorist and certainly no threat or danger to either the US military or myself.
The rest of the day I spent sleeping, complaining, drinking and trying to eat but my appetite was gone. I drifted in and out; they asked me lots of questions but I was so doped up most of the time my answers were unintelligible. Days passed, each one leaving me a little clearer and more coherent, awake longer periods of the day and unfortunately, into the night. I heard the powerful noise of jets taking off and landing, the thumping beat of helicopters many times during the day. Was visited every day by different people but Dr. Favre kept the visits to fifteen minutes or under because of my condition.
So when the door opened, I didn’t even bother to look until I heard a voice exclaim, “Holy beards of Dworkin!” I bolted upright in bed and nearly passed out as everything screamed with pain.
“Bill!” He rushed over to me and squeezed me so hard I thought I would pass out. I found myself crying into his shoulder but managed not to sob out my story. “What are you doing here?” I asked when I could finally get the words out. He squeezed my shoulder in warning.
“Your grandfather sent me from Europe. He’s in a delicate situation and couldn’t leave.”
“How did you know to come here?” I stressed the word meaning Earth Shadow. “How did you even know to look here?”
“You mean Ramstein?” He asked letting me go. “They left a message at my office and my secretary forwarded it to me. What’s going on, who did this, where have you been?” I heard his unspoken words. Be careful what you say, they’re listening.