Page 142 of Viral Justice

Duty and desire warred within him so hard his fingertips tingled with the need to do something,anything. “Thank you, Grace.”

“Whatever you need, Max.”

Max followed the transport team carrying Ali’s gurney down one of the narrow roads leading from the center of the village toward the valley. Once past the last houses, he could see a waiting medevac helicopter poised to take off, its rotors creating enough wind to make the inside of his biohazard suit sound like he was taking off in a balloon.

He waited while the team strapped Ali’s gurney securely onto the bulkhead, then stepped forward. One of the combat medics grabbed him by the arm and helped him into the bird.

It took more muscle power than it should have. Then again, he was sleep deprived, hadn’t eaten enough food to feed a mouse, and had taken a beating. The fact was, he should’ve been on a gurney of his own.

He hadn’t even reported his own injuries yet. Oh, the head wound had gotten looked at, cleaned, and rebandaged, but the bullet wound in his side hadn’t. He was going to hear about that one from someone.

Max sat at Ali’s feet with a clear view of her heart and ventilator monitors. She was stable for now, and her oxygen saturation was up to eighty-eight.

He’d take any good sign there was.

He put his head back, intending to rest for just a few minutes, but when he opened his eyes, they were coming in for a landing at the base in Bahrain.

He glanced at Ali’s monitors, but nothing had changed.

He got out first, then waited to one side while the team off-loaded Ali and ran her into the base. They didn’t go very far. She was taken into one tent, while he was guided into another next to it.

Three people in biohazard suits were waiting for him, as was a portable decontamination shower. They literally hosed him, his biohazard suit, and clothing down as he removed it. After he got his pants off, he had to peel the dirty scarf away from his side carefully to avoid causing unnecessary bleeding. One of the decontamination team looked at the wound, then made a radio call.

By the time he was declared clean there were a couple of nurses waiting to take a look.

“How old is this?” one of them asked.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe seven hours.”

The nurses took him by the arms and led him toward a wheelchair.

“What is Sergeant Stone’s current condition?” he asked.

“We’re still evaluating her, but she’s stable.”

He looked at the tent she’d gone into and balked at sitting in the chair. He wanted to stay with her. “Have you moved her to the hospital already?”

“Yes, sir. The on-duty physicians want to consult as soon as you’re ready.”

“They’ll consult now. My being ready has no bearing on Stone’s treatment.” He gave the two nurses his best hard-line look.

“Yes, sir.”

He began giving the nurse a history of Ali’s injuries and how the anthrax was introduced into her system.

They entered the hospital a minute later and Max insisted on seeing Ali before he allowed the medical staff to put him in a treatment room so his wound could be cleaned and sewn up. They also insisted on antibiotics, which he agreed to, and at least eight hours of rest, which he completely ignored.

His head wound was actually worse than he’d thought. The bullet that grazed him hadn’t just cut a furrow through his skin, but scraped off a layer of bone as well. They did an X-ray and decided there wasn’t much more they could do about it than bandage it up.

They’d given Ali an MRI and thankfully she’d sustained no internal bleeding. It did reveal two broken ribs, and the extent of the damage to her lungs.

Whatever Akbar had put in the powder she breathed in caused a great deal of irritation and swelling, which meant less oxygen was reaching her bloodstream.

Max explained it to General Stone. “It’s out of our hands now and in hers. If she can survive long enough for the antibiotics to kill off the anthrax, she’s got a good chance. But her lungs aren’t in good shape. The spores she inhaled along with the other ingredients of Akbar’s poison have irritated the tissue enough to cause significant swelling. Fluid in the lungs. We have to give the lungs time to recover and allow the swelling to go down.”

“But if her lungs are full of fluid, is she drowning?”

“As long as some oxygen is making it into her bloodstream, she’ll survive. We can do some things to help. Put her on one hundred percent oxygen, medically paralyze her so her muscles don’t use up any oxygen, and even give her a unit or two of packed cells to increase the number of red blood cells available—”

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