Chapter 2 - THE SHADOW IN THE TRAUMA BAY
The air in the rooftop elevator shaft smelled of turbine exhaust and burning jet fuel.
The heavy metal doors groaned open on the fourth-floor trauma corridor.
The noise that came out of the elevator did not sound human.
It was a guttural, rolling roar that shook the light fixtures hanging from the acoustic ceiling tiles.
Two flight paramedics came through the doors running backward, their faces pale beneath clear plastic visors.
Between them rolled the heavy hydraulic transport gurney.
On the mattress lay a massive man strapped down in shred-torn multicam trousers and a soaked green undershirt.
His face was coated in gray alkaline dust and dried blood.
His right combat boot was gone.
From mid-calf down, his right leg was wrapped in a massive, blood-blackened pressure bandage that was failing rapidly.
A mechanical tourniquet was twisted around his upper thigh, but the red line of arterial seep had already soaked the canvas strap.
Bright scarlet blood dripped continuously from the lower frame of the gurney.
It hit the floor with a steady, rhythmic rhythm that left a horrifying trail across the white tiles.
Straddling the wounded man’s torso was a massive, scarred German Shepherd.
The dog wore a battered Kevlar tracking harness with reinforced titanium haul loops.
His ears were flattened tight against his skull.
His dark muzzle was pulled back in a terrifying snarl that exposed two inches of glistening, predatory canines.
He was limping on his left hind leg, but his weight remained planted squarely over the soldier’s ribcage.
Every time a paramedic’s hand reached toward the patient's leg, the shepherd lunged forward with explosive violence.
“Clear the hall!” the lead paramedic screamed, his flight suit soaked in sweat.
“He nearly took my forearm off at four thousand feet!”
“He thinks we’re trying to finish Kesler off!”
Dr. Halverson stepped out into the center of the bay, holding a clipboard like a shield.
“What is the meaning of this circus?” Halverson shouted, his voice cracking slightly as the dog snapped toward him.
“Push the gurney into Bay 1 and lock the doors!”
“We can’t push him anywhere, Doctor!” the corpsman yelled back.
“Kesler’s systolic pressure is bottoming out at fifty-five.”
“If we don’t get a second tourniquet on that femoral stump in the next ninety seconds, he will arrest on this gurney!”
The shepherd let out a piercing bark that reverberated through the corridor.
The sheer sonic force of the bark made the young resident drop his trauma shears.
The dog’s ribs heaved.
White foam flecked the corners of his black gums.
Shrapnel had sliced a two-inch gouge along his left flank, but the animal showed no sign of pain.
His entire universe had narrowed to a single objective: keep every living creature away from Daniel Kesler.
Halverson backed away until his spine hit the nursing station desk.
His face was completely drained of color.
“Security!” Halverson shrieked, pointing a shaking finger toward the snarling dog.
“Get security up here right now!”
Two armed base police officers hurried through the stairwell doors, their hands resting on their holstered service weapons.
One of them unclipped a yellow plastic Taser from his tactical vest.
The other carried a heavy aluminum animal control pole with a looped wire cable.
“Do not fire a Taser in this bay!” Bethany Cole shouted from the doorway of Bay 1.
“The patient is soaked in oxygen and volatile cleaning agents!”
“Then use the wire loop!” Halverson ordered, his voice high and hysterical.
“Choke the beast and drag it down the stairs!”
“I have a dying Master Chief on my floor, and I will not let a mangy dog ruin my survival statistics!”
Jenna stood behind the medication preparation counter.
Her hands were perfectly still now.
The trembling that usually accompanied her timid nurse persona had vanished entirely.
Her eyes were locked on the dog’s head.
On the left ear.
There, along the cartilage edge, was a small, clean, V-shaped notch.
She had held the surgical clamp herself when that notch was made seven years ago at the training facility in Indiana.
His military microchip registration had been VK-09.
She had bottle-fed him when his mother rejected the litter after a mortar training drill.
She had taught him to track scent trails across broken slate and submerged swamps.
She had named him Koda.
Because in the Lakota language her grandmother spoke, Koda meant friend.
When Jenna was forced underground, Koda had been re-assigned to her husband’s reconnaissance team.
Daniel had refused to let anyone else take the leash.
Daniel had kept Koda as the last living connection to the woman he believed was buried under a granite headstone in Arlington.
Jenna looked down at Daniel’s gray, motionless face.
His breathing was shallow, ragged, and wet.
His lips had taken on that telltale bluish tinge that signaled irreversible hypovolemic shock.
The monitor strapped to the gurney began emitting a continuous, shrill alarm tone.
Heart rate was one hundred and seventy-two beats per minute and climbing.
The heart was beating frantically, trying to circulate dust because there was no volume left in the pipes.
“Officer, snare the neck!” Halverson screamed, hiding behind the broadest security guard.
“Do it now, or I’ll have you court-martialed for failing to assist medical staff!”
The guard with the wire pole stepped forward, his knuckles white around the metal pole.
He extended the noose toward Koda’s head.
Koda didn’t retreat.
The dog coiled his muscular hindquarters, preparing to launch his sixty-pound frame directly at the guard’s throat.
If the guard swung, Koda would bite.
If Koda bit, the second officer would draw his nine-millimeter service pistol and put three rounds through the dog’s skull.
And in the thirty seconds of muzzle-flashes and terror that followed, Daniel Kesler would bleed his final pint of blood onto the floor.
“Stop,” Jenna said.
The word was not loud, but it cut through the screaming alarms and the barking like a razor blade.
Halverson spun around, his face purple with outrage.
“Rock, shut your mouth and get out of the way!”
Jenna did not look at Halverson.
She did not look at the security guards.
She stepped out from behind the counter with an unhurried, balanced gait that was completely foreign to anyone who knew her.
Her shoulders were squared.
Her chin was level.
Her eyes were focused entirely on the wounded animal on the stretcher.
“If you touch that animal with that wire, he will sever your brachial artery before you can clear your holster,” Jenna said calmly.
“Nurse Rock, you are suspended!” Halverson yelled, spitting in his fury.
“Step back or I will have you removed in handcuffs!”
Jenna walked straight past Halverson’s outstretched arm.
She did not even acknowledge his presence.
She took three measured steps toward the gurney.
Koda’s head snapped in her direction.
The snarl grew deeper, rumbling in his deep chest cavity.
His teeth were inches from her face.
Jenna took a slow, deep breath, tasting the familiar iron tang of Daniel’s blood in the air.
She raised her right hand, curling her fingers into a specific three-finger claw shape used only by Tier One assault handlers.
May you like
She looked directly into Koda’s wild, panic-stricken brown eyes.
And she spoke the words that nobody in this hospital had ever heard.
