GWOT 2 - A Day Off NI

GWOT 2 - A Day Off

It started with checking my morning E-mail.

I now get about a thousand messages a day. 80% of them or so are sent by automated systems. But I do need to actually read them all.

The ones from humans are prioritized by sender. Unknown senders hit the top. Then external stakeholders. Then internal stakeholders. Then everyone else.

Anything from homeland.gov of course hits the top. (No dhs.gov for these posers, not sexy enough to satisfy their fragile egos.)

For my many and grave sins, of omission and of commission, I am now the official Homeland liaison to the campus. The VP-HR declined the honor by having a nervous breakdown. Strictly unofficially, of course.

The current E-mail is their visitation schedule for the next month. I acknowledge it and plan accordingly. There is one demand - that I reduce the height of the signage over the South Gate to better accommodate their gun trucks.

I am tempted to take it literally -- and install blades while we're on the subject -- but don't want to get any of my people killed.

They meant to _raise_ the height of the signage, of course. I put in the work order at the second highest priority and assign two supervisors to keep track of it.

Then I went to breakfast.

Two measly green tinted scrambled eggs, some oatmeal and a half cup of what might be mistaken for reconstituted powdered milk in dim light.

No caffeine. Saving the coffee for the coders again.

Diet cola was a distant memory, and tea was unobtanium unless I cared to break into the stash in E18 Sundries. But the first rule every drug dealer learns is "Don't get high... off your own supply!"

I think I am careful not to snarl at the server or the cashier. But they look greener than the eggs, and Brooke discreetly elbows me in the ribs just where my armor doesn't quite overlap, so clearly I fucked that up too.

Over breakfast I heard complaints from half a dozen employees about various guards. These took the general form of creative imagination. "So and so looked at me funny..."

So and so, in this case Sharon, is far too busy wrestling with the demons in her head to give a rat's ass about you, you quasi artistic full blown compiler error strewn miscoded mistake of a pseudo simian...

I realize that I am talking out loud. I tone it down. After some harrumphing and a bit of groveling (mine), the employee departs to complain to HR about me.

Brooke dismisses the waiting line of employees and drags me outside with an off-hand gesture.

"What the fuck is up with you, Boss?" she hisses. "That breakfast was crap and I know how much you hate Homeland, but you are just being ... pissy ... this morning."

I take a deep breath.

Then another.

Then I see the glint on the skyline, 330 degrees, and unobtrusively turn side profile to disguise keying up my radio.

Brooke sees my change of manner, because she knows me well. Living at arm's length for months will do that.

"H5, report contacts, three three zero on the ridge," I murmur.

After a moment there is a reply.

"Alert two, hostile contacts, three three zero," H5 replies.

Under my eyebrows, without moving my head, I swiftly glance around. There are a number of Employees not-enjoying their breakfast.

Uptake is going to be really important about now.

I go to the nearest group. They stop talking.

"Make an excuse. Go inside. Right fucking now," I growl loudly without opening my mouth.

Without looking at each other, they hastily comply.

Brooke moves between me and the skyline.

It's inevitable, it's her job to take a bullet for me, and this is that type of situation.

But I am sick and tired of thinking about that lean body torn apart by bullets.

H5 says 'CRACK!' and Brooke and I start broken-field running for the next-nearest door, not the nearest one. She is still careful to stay between me and the skyline.

Bullets kick up dust behind us. That's OK, every bullet shot at us is one less bullet shot at an employee.

Two sides of a triangle. They can infiltrate and get a vantage into the courtyard. H5 can get a vantage to see them from the roof of the building.

I wish we had mortar shells and a touch of trigonometry. (We have the mortar, but no bombs for it.) Then these infiltrators would have a bad, bad day out.

Ordinary geometry will have to do. CRACK. CRACK.

I glance around the courtyard.

No more bodies to tell me I've failed again.

I listen to the radio as the site responds like the well drilled machine it is. Scouts out, then armored columns, then reaction teams.

The snipers broke contact.

Brooke sags.

Oh hell no.

She looks at me inquisitively.

Her eyes roll up in her head and she falls down heavily on her side. I catch her as she falls.

I check angles. We are not in LOS.

I key up.

"Medical emergency, E2 Courtyard Exterior, stretcher bearer and medic Code 3."

I start searching for the wound.

An entry wound is like a little marker dot, reddish-black in color.

An exit wound can be the same, or a huge chunk of hamburger suitable for the grill blasted out of the body, or anything in between.

Head is good. Neck is good. I check. I don't bother with gloves but I keep looking at my hands for blood.

Hands up and down her chest. No modesty here. Then her sides, then her gut. Roll her on her side.

Airway - open. Breathing, clear regular and good volume and no unusual sounds. Pulse strong and steady.

Run my hands along her back, then LOOK. No blood, either on her uniform or on my palms or fingers.

Pelvis. Arms. Legs.

As the stretcher bearer team arrives, I am starting a slower, secondary survey. I can't figure out where she got hit.

And the consequences of not finding a wound are always 100% fatal.

"Did she hit her head when she fell?" the medic asks.

"Negative," I reply. "Primary survey complete, no findings."

Quite properly, the medic assumes I'm an idiot and does it all again.

I take vitals, first just pulse and respirations, then an actual blood pressure.

Pulse 90 and thready, respirations 24 slowing to 18, BP 160 over 90. I say this out loud.

Yeah, we were running a little bit ago, but Brooke is in good shape in her 20s. If it weren't for her sway back, she'd be dodging punji sticks in China.

Doesn't seem consistent with getting hit, though. I take the BP again, 140 over 80. Better but still high.

Brooke blinks and sits up.

"Hey, what happened?"

"You passed out," I say as the medic overrides me, saying loudly "Where does it hurt?!?"

Two minutes of intense conversation later, all three of us are in agreement.

She fainted. Sudden exertion, no breakfast, nothing to drink this morning.

We walk her over to the shade, dismiss the stretcher bearer team, someone brings over a pitcher of water and tumblers.

Brooke inhales half a pitcher, then slows down.

I drink some water too.

"Scared me," I say briefly after the medic goes on his way, with an admonition that she needs to report to Sick Call.

"I didn't have time to be scared. I do admit I wondered why you were feeling me up."

Of course, this comment is just in time to be overheard by Yet Another Employee Who Doesn't Like Security. And feels that we should be doing something instead of just sitting here.

The second time he repeats himself, I thank him for his observation. This continues in a mild tenor key until he wanders off.

At this rate I'm going to be sending more E-mail explanations than getting work done today.

Screw it.

"Echo 18 to Control."

"Go ahead."

"I'm Ten-Seven. Please advise Captain Arturo that he has the duty today."

I can sense the puzzlement although the frequency is empty.

Echo 18 is 10-7?

That's right up there with The Firecracker War Is Over.

"Copy," says the dispatcher.

Sick call is of course the usual room full of sniffles, follow up on existing injuries, awkward rashes and bruises and sprains.

But everyone is awfully quiet because I am there, sitting next to Brooke.

She is third to be called. After a moment, the attendant comes back out to get me.

The vet surgeon - who is almost as much a non-Echo 18 fan as the snipers earlier - patiently interviews me, then examines and interviews Brooke.

Then cocks her head, looks at me again.

"Sit up here on the table," she barks. To me.

She may have started her practice on animals, but the last seven months have been a crash course in humans. Hale and hearty, scared and weak, sickly and dying, broken and battered.

She listens to my chest, takes my pulse, takes a BP, checks my reflexes with that little hammer everyone hates.

"You are both suffering from the same condition. One of you is just more of an idiot. Exhaustion."

She digs our sleep schedules out of us with a wooden tongue depressor, waved in the air like a sword. Or scalpel.

"Both of you are on limited duty medical for three days. Go back to your quarters. Go to bed. That means sleep. That's a medical order. Don't bother notifying your respective bosses, I will do that for you."

We slink out.

Sharon and Shreve - not exactly a pair that work well together - escort us back to the A1 barracks area, and to our shared room.

Shreve, to my horror, is now carrying an automatic shotgun on a quick-reaction sling.

Not a semi-automatic shotgun. That would be bad enough.

But some well meaning idiot has given him an AA-12 Atchisson assault shotgun, presumably from some out of state law enforcement armory.

He takes up his guard post in the A1 entry lounge.

Sharon, in her most aggressive Mom voice, tells me that if her audit of network activity catches my computer doing anything other than passive camera monitoring, that she'll turn it off with a chainsaw. Then she forwards my desk phone back to Security Control and tells me that if I take a nap, I can have milk and cookies later.

I am too tired to give her the drubbing down she deserves. At least that's what I tell myself.

I half-undress and slump against the wall on one corner of the bed. Brooke takes up the other corner.

We drink our water.

I say nothing. She says nothing.

The handful of off duty night folks are asleep. But we have the door propped open anyway.

Being roommates is controversial enough. No, not controversial, a gross violation of what few rules we have left. But this is not the day to change rooms.

We both drift in and out of sleep.

Suddenly the sun tells me by the shadows in the hallway that it is late afternoon.

Where did the day go?

Mo sticks his head in. He is in full bomb tech gear minus helmet and armor. He says he doesn't plan on an open casket funeral, so he won't wear armor inside the wire any time he doesn't have to.

He hands in a basket of sandwiches. A little woven basket. Peanut butter and a hint of jelly, on hearty slices from the small arsenal of cafeteria bread makers.

And, true to Sharon's word, milk and one cookie each.

After some monosyllabary - "Yes. No. Fine." - he leaves.

Brooke and I eat. I lazily page through all four hundred cameras. Nothing doing.

Then we are awake and bored.

We talk for half an hour before night shift wakes up and starts gearing up. Five PM already?

The barracks is talking and joking, but subdued. Staying quiet so we'll rest. Night shift is at posts, day shift starts trooping in. Some have dinner at the cafeteria, some eat in barracks.

The sun goes down and we see the reflection off of B building as it does.

We fall asleep again.

Brooke wakes up screaming.

"No, no, no!"

I hold her shoulders and she clings to me, then wakes up and withdraws.

It has happened far too often for either of us to be embarrassed or offended. And no guarantee that she's the one screaming either.

The little idiot clock on the side of the computer tells me it's 9 PM.

Good for it.

I start getting dressed to gear up.

Brooke growls at me.

I take the uniform shirt back off.

She goes out to use the facilities and I drift off.

###

The barracks are empty.

The site is empty.

I find clothes, I start searching. It is the middle of the day, a clear sky, everything is bright.

My radiation dosimeter badge is missing.

So I go to the radiation survey locker, using my keys to get past the locks, my code to disarm the alarm, and a thin metal plate to disarm the antipersonnel charge.

It's fully stocked.

I get out the dosimeter and the Geiger counter.

I see a dead bird. I wait five minutes.

I check the settings.

Five minutes, differential, compared to the rate.

I am taking 8 sieverts per hour.

Oh shit.

I run inside to the basement, to our most isolated room.

It has been stocked as a fallout shelter.

I immediately decontaminate, in quick practiced motions. Discard my clothing. Push away the contaminated monitoring equipment with a stick.

Get out fresh equipment.

Fourteen sieverts per hour. And it has been at least ten minutes.

I am in a land where Death itself is dead.

I start vomiting, quick red and black, flooding myself.

Flooding the room.

Drowning in my own...

###

It is Brooke's turn to hold me as I cough and clear my airway of saliva.

That was a bad one.

We talk and drift through the night. Her nightmares, my nightmares.

Finally comes a time when she is sleeping peacefully, good REM cycle sleep, and I am staring at the wall wondering just what all is going wrong without me to keep an eye on it.

When you get the chance to rest, you rest.

Even when resting is itself a Hell.