Sullivan stomped the accelerator and tore off in the direction of the helicopter. “Don’t miss, Shannon, or we’re fucking dead!” he shouted.
They had removed the hard top, and Emory was standing in the backseat braced against the roll bar. She opened fire on the door gunner even as machine-gun bullets were hitting the fender of the Jeep. The gunner fell back into the aircraft, and the helicopter swung around to face them directly. Sullivan swerved right against the direction of its turn, hoping to throw off the pilot’s aim. The first rocket struck the ground to their left and just behind them, leaving their fate in Emory’s hands.
Sullivan straightened the Jeep and she fired the M-203.
Even as the projectile was arcing toward the windscreen of the aircraft, Sullivan was swerving hard to port. The pilot overcorrected and the second rocket struck the ground to their right. A fragment hit Emory in the hip and she fell down in the back of the Jeep as her 40mm grenade detonated against the windscreen of the Blackhawk, killing both pilots.
The aircraft went into a violent spin, whirling around four times before smashing into the desert floor, breaking apart on impact and bursting into flames. Sullivan raced back toward the bridge where Marty stood waiting and locked up the brakes. The three of them raced to reattach the hardtop and quickly tied down the supplies, only to find the front left tire had gone flat. They changed it as quickly as they could, then Sullivan drove back up the embankment onto the highway.
Marty noticed Emory’s leg for the first time. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s shrapnel. Come back here and help me.”
He climbed into the back with her and she gave him the curved hemostat she had taken from the medical bag, which was basically a pair of locking forceps normally used for clamping off a bleeding artery or vein.
“Use that to pull the shrapnel out,” she said, shrugging her trousers down over her rump to expose her bleeding right hip.
He took hold of the jagged piece of metal and tugged at it, causing Emory to wince. “It’s in there pretty tight,” he said.
“Don’t play with it, Marty. Pull it out!”
He clamped the hemostat onto the metal and gave it a jerk, but it held fast and Emory grabbed the roll bar, shouting in pain. “Fuck!”
“I’m sorry. It’s really in there, Shannon.”
“Need some help?” Sullivan asked.
“You just wanna play with my butt… keep driving.”
It was getting too dark to see inside the Jeep, so Marty took the red filter from his light and held it in his teeth while he examined the wound.
“You’re going to have to do a cut-down,” Emory said, digging in the bag for a scalpel.
“A what?”
“You’re gonna cut it out.”
“Oh, jeez!” He gripped the light in his teeth and pressed against the wound with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, holding the skin taut as he drew the razor-sharp blade along the ridge, drawing blood and exposing the blackish metal.
“Okay, good job, hon. Now pull that fucker outta me.”
Marty took hold of the metal with the hemostat and had it out with one tug. The piece of shrapnel was half the size of a trading card, cut corner to corner, slightly bent. He tossed it on the floor and Emory poured peroxide over the open wound. Then she took a packet of sutures from the bag and clamped the curved needle between a smaller pair of hemostats. “Sew me up.”
He sat looking at her.
“It doesn’t have to be pretty. Just keep it as straight as you can.”
Marty was sweating. “Can you turn the heat off, Sullivan?”
“It’s not on.”
“Come on,” Emory said. “It’s not that tough.”
It took him nearly twenty minutes, but Marty got the wound sewn closed and then Emory dressed it and pulled her trousers back up. By then it was total darkness once again, and Sullivan was driving with his night vision.
“Is there enough ambient light for those things to work out here?” Marty asked as he climbed into the passenger seat.
“Not real well,” Sullivan said. “I’ve switched to infrared.”
It was a bizarre feeling racing into total blackness, and Marty found it difficult to look out the windshield without feeling terrified they were going to hit something. “You’re sure you can see?”
“I can see.”
He plugged one of the other NVDs into the charger then closed his eyes and leaned his head back. A second later Emory was tugging at his arm.
“Come back here,” she said.
“Something wrong?” he asked, moving into the back again.
She lay over on the seat and put her head into his lap, taking his hand and setting it on her head. “Pet me. I don’t feel good.”
Marty began to run his fingertips through her hair.
“Somebody talk to me back there,” Sullivan said. “Keep me awake.”
Marty lifted his head again and drew a deeply disappointed breath, smiling blandly in the dark. He really needed to sleep, but he was apparently in too great a demand.
Thirty-Five
“Rats?” Ester said in disbelief. “I ask your engineers for new technological ideas and they come up with rats? Good lord!”
“It’s only a stop-gap, Madam President,” Admiral Longbottom tried to assure her. “And the little bastards will eat damn near anything, so breeding them won’t be difficult.”
“I can’t take rat meat to the people,” Ester said. “My God, Barry, tell the man!”
“Well, I think it may well be a matter of presentation,” replied Vice President Hadrian with the same calm demeanor that had served him so well as President. “If you present them today with some wounded black wharf rat as the answer to our future, they’ll throw bricks at you, and understandably so. But if you wait until the food has begun to run low and everyone is afraid… and then present them with an entire cash-crop of clean, white lab rats with pink eyes… you’re a hero.”
“Exactly right,” said Longbottom, grateful for Hadrian’s presence in the Islands.
“Nothing says we have to take the project public. But we are talking about avoiding starvation. And if we start a breeding program now with the lab rats we still have here on the island, we can have a good head start by the time the fish supply begins to run out.”
“Okay,” Ester said. “So where do you propose we raise these things?”
“Well, we can raise them on the hangar decks of our carriers,” Longbottom said, abhorring the idea but feeling the need to offer the concession. “That will keep the population off the island and out of sight. And there are ways the meat could be processed so that eating it won’t be such a distasteful idea.”
“It’s as bad an idea as Soylent Green,” Ester muttered. “Anyway, I don’t like the idea of using your ships. I’m sure another place can be found, one of the other islands may be perfect. What else do you have for us?”
“I saved the best news for last,” Longbottom said with a smile.
“Thank God,” Ester said.
“First, my engineers are confident that we can use the reactors aboard our nuclear vessels to supply electrical power to most of Honolulu for twelve hours a day,” the admiral began. “On a revolving schedule. It will take time to construct a new power grid but this is a work-ready project. And we won’t have to worry about replacing the atomic fuel for a couple years. And by then we should be running largely on tidal power.”