It was all-encompassing, consuming. It started like an atom bomb in his gut and worked its way both up and down simultaneously. He doubled over, moaning as a wave of cramps convulsed through his gut, the pain intensifying each moment. It seemed as if somebody had skewered his intestines and was slowly extracting them through his navel. The mess hall around him was tilting, whirling about him, his entire world suddenly unsteady. He got a glimpse of Gonzo’s face looming over him before the pain forced his eyes shut. He heard someone moaning, crying and praying, and vaguely realized it was his own voice. Around him, the Marines backed away in horror.
Hospital Corpsman Second Class David Evans shoved his way through the crowd to Griffin’s side. The Navy corpsman was their medic and an integral part of the squad. Evans ran his hands over Griffin, checking to make sure he was breathing and his heart was still beating. “Get Medical down here,” he snapped, turning to Gonzo. He kept his fingertips on Griffin’s neck, feeling the thready pulse under his fingers. “No, not you — you,” he said, motioning with his chin to a Marine farther back in the crowd that had gathered. “Get to the phone, tell Medical to get down here — full decontamination gear.”
“Oh, shit,” one Marine muttered. “Don’t tell me—”
“The rest of you,” the corpsman continued, pointing at Gonzo, “get over against a wall, anyone who was within five — no, ten feet of him. Anybody else, move to the other side of the compartment. Now move.” The corpsman was only a petty officer second class, but the note of command in his voice kicked in the reflexes of every Marine and sailor present. They did as they were directed, the senior man in each group taking charge of his cadre, holding them in position as the corpsman tended to Griffin. A few moments later, the order blared over the loudspeaker. “Medical to forward crew’s galley. Man down. Contamination gear required. Now set MOPP Level Three throughout the ship.” The few Marines who had not figured out what the corpsman was doing now tumbled to the danger. There were more protests, but the larger group at the back of the compartment moved as far away as possible from the group that had been near Griffin. Forty seconds later, the first ship’s corpsman arrived, hastily donning a gauze mask and rubber gloves. He stopped ten feet away from Griffin.
“What happened?” he asked.
“He went down — cramps, nausea — oh, shit,” Evans said as Griffin’s body started to buck under his hands. He moved to Griffin’s head and placed a hand on either side of his face, trying to prevent the Marine from slamming his head against the deck. “Convulsions! Hold on, buddy, hold on.”
“Why the contam gear?”
“They were on a mission to the beach today, to the interior. They saw something that look like it could be biochem warheads. Those guys were around him,” he said, nodding toward the group that had been nearest to Griffin. “The others, ten feet away. The cooks, I haven’t done anything about them.”
More medical people were arriving on the scene, including a young doctor who darted forward. The first-class corpsman clamped his hand on his upper arm and jerked him back. “Hey! Let me go!” The doctor struggled and tried to pull away. “There’s a man down!”
“You don’t have your gear on,” the senior corpsman said, not relaxing his grip. Briefly, he sketched in the details. While the doctor stood stock still in stunned silence, the corpsman took charge.
“Full contamination gear,” he said to a second group of men and women arriving. “Get a stretcher. Call Medical, tell them to set up an isolation chamber. Until we know what’s going on with him, we’re not going to take any chances.” He glanced over at the doctor, who had regained control of himself and was nodding agreement. Then he looked at the corpsman by Griffin’s side. “Plus an isolation ward,” he said. “One room and one ward. You want to hold these guys — how long ago was he in country?”
“About six hours ago.”
“Right.” The senior corpsman turned back to the doctor. “You want to hold them for at least seventy-two hours in isolation. Right, sir?”
“Right,” the doctor said, staring unbelievably at Griffin and Evans.
Things moved with surprising efficiency after that. The medical teams had practiced exactly this scenario time and time again, but never, ever, had any of them thought they’d really have to do it for real.
Finally, after Griffin was loaded onto an isolation stretcher and prepared for transport, and the passageways and ladders between the galley and Medical were cleared of all personnel, the senior corpsman turned to Evans. “Full decontamination procedures for you. We’ve got Griffin from here — follow along, and I want you in the decontam shower the second we get there. Got it?”
The strain were starting to show in Evans’s face. “Got it,” he said, pleased that his voice was steady. As he started to head off, following Griffin, the senior corpsman, now completely gowned and gloved, stopped him. “Good going.”
Evans shook his head. “Maybe.”
“No maybe about it. Now go get showered,” the senior corpsman said, his voice unexpectedly gentle. “We got it in time — you’ll be okay.”
“Yeah. I’ll be okay.” But as Evans watched another convulsion wrack Griffin’s body, as he saw them insert an IV needle in his arm, he wasn’t so sure.
Coyote took a deep breath before he picked up the handset to call Admiral Jette. He could not let his personal feelings get in the way of duty. Like it or not, they were going to be working together, and that meant they needed to coordinate their resources and plans. Gone with the days of autonomous operations. There were too few people and too little equipment.
“Your people got the plans we sent over, I take it?” Coyote said after a few preliminary remarks. “Any feedback?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact. My people are wondering why there aren’t more specifics. Seems like a lot of TBAs,” Jette answered.
There it was again, that faintly supercilious, superior tone of voice that had been driving Coyote crazy for the last few months. How could a man rise to one-star rank and still have no clue as to how things were actually done in a combat flight schedule?
“To Be Arranged gives us more flexibility. My experience has been,” Coyote began carefully, striving for self-control and patience, “that a target list changes radically from day to day. The shelf life of intelligence is pretty short, often measured in hours rather than days. If I start assigning flights to specific targets now, people start planning around those. Then, when we have to make changes, they’re caught short. That’s why I leave a lot of the details TBA so people will continue to think outside the box.”
“But we know where their bases and major facilities are. So what if you have to fine-tune a few details?”
“The devil is in the details,” Coyote answered, aware that his voice was getting sharper. “It’s a specific Silkworm site that will kill you, not the general knowledge that there’s a missile somewhere within a five-mile area. Unless,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to control his temper, “you really want to send a Tomcat driver out with orders just to find something that looks dangerous and kill it?”
“I put a lot of faith in the guy in the cockpit.”
“Like I don’t? Listen, buddy, I’ve been there, been back, and got the Air Medal. And I’m telling you, this has nothing to do with dissing the judgment of an individual pilot. It has to do with how old your intelligence is, how good it is, and what the hell is going on in the rest of the world. Not whether your flight schedule has all the blanks filled in days or weeks before the actual event.”