Michael Vey 9, page 21
45 Sharing Bad News
“We’re at the hacienda,” I said. “Did you stop them?”
“We stopped them.”
I breathed out in relief. “That is good news.”
“Some of it.”
I sensed the gravity in his voice. “What is it?”
“The Chasqui knew of our plan and sent attack helicopters.” He hesitated. “Jax and Tessa were killed.”
My chest felt like a bag of concrete had fallen onto it. “It can’t be.”
“There’s more. Cassy was with them during the attack. She was hit too. We’re in the ICU at the Puerto hospital right now. She’s in critical condition. She’s lost a lot of blood.”
The news fell even heavier. “We’re on our way.”
“Michael, did you save the girls?”
“Yes. Jack too.”
“Jack came with you?”
“Jack was only trying to save Tara.”
“Is Jaime with you?”
“We have him, too.”
“Why didn’t he call us?”
“Jaime was captured by the Chasqui. He was beaten and tortured. That’s how they knew about our plans to stop their bats.”
“But Jaime didn’t know where we would be. We didn’t even know until the day before.”
“They just needed a general idea. The Elgen had el-readers. They’re machines that track us electrics. If the Chasqui still had them, the el-readers would have led them right to Cassy and Tessa.”
“What about Jacinta’s friend, Lars? Why didn’t he help?”
“He did help. He helped deliver Jaime to the Chasqui. He’s owned by them. He’s a traitor.”
“I’m going to kill that Swede with my own hands,” Johnson said.
“We already took care of that,” Michael said. “At least, the Amacarra did. Is Jacinta with you?”
“Yes. Just a moment.” I could hear him walking. “I stepped outside to be alone,” he said. “You’re not saying Jacinta was in on it.”
“No. She wasn’t. I’m sure she doesn’t know her friend is a traitor. You’ll have to tell her.”
“I’ll tell her,” he said. “What about the Chasqui? Are they hunting you?”
“We don’t think so. At least what’s left of them. After our last battle, most of the Chasqui are dead.”
“How did that happen?”
“It was mostly Tara. I’ll tell you about it when we get there. Just keep Cassy alive.”
“I wish it was up to me,” he said.
“I need to tell the others. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.”
“Bye.”
PART TWENTY-TWO
46 Jacinta Learns the Truth
Johnson hung up the phone and walked back into the room. Quentin and Jacinta were looking at him.
“Was that Michael?” Quentin asked.
Johnson nodded. “He’s safe. They’re all safe. They rescued Taylor, Tara, Jack, and Jaime.”
“Jaime?” Jacinta said. “The Chasqui captured him too?”
“It turns out that your friend Lars is a Chasqui sympathizer. He set us up. They tortured Jaime until he told them what we were up to. That’s how they found us.”
Jacinta gasped. Then her eyes welled up. “I had no idea.”
“I know. Michael assured me that you didn’t.”
Jacinta started crying. “It’s all my fault. Their deaths are my fault. Their deaths are on my hands.”
Johnson put his arms around her. “No. You couldn’t have known. Their blood is on the Chasqui’s hands.”
PART TWENTY-THREE
47 On the Razor’s Edge
From my side of the conversation, Taylor knew that something bad had happened. Something horrific.
“What is it?”
“We need to gather everyone. Now.”
“Can’t you tell me?”
I looked at her dolefully. “I’d rather only say it once.”
“I’ll gather everyone,” she said.
Taylor ran through the house calling everyone to the meeting. Within a few minutes, everyone had congregated in the dining area. The room was silent in anticipation of what I had to say. As hard as I tried to remain stoic, tears welled up in my eyes. I took a deep breath.
“This is really hard for me to say.” I wiped a tear off my cheek. “The Chasqui knew about our plans to attack their cargo of bats. Those helicopters we saw fly over us in the jungle weren’t looking for us; they were going to attack our friends. Alpha Team did their job and stopped the trucks. They saved many thousands of lives, but…” I stopped, then wiped my eyes. “Tessa and Jax were killed in the attack. Cassy was seriously injured. She might not make it. She’s in the ICU at the Puerto hospital.”
Everyone just stared, too much in shock to speak. McKenna was the first to break the silence. “Tessa is dead?”
“Tessa and Jax,” I said.
Tara glanced over at Zeus, who looked almost paralyzed with shock. He probably was. Zeus and Tessa had been in love once, a long time ago. Their relationship had ended shortly after Hatch moved Tessa to Peru (which was probably why he had moved her to Peru), but I suspected that a part of Zeus had never completely let go of his feelings for her. Zeus said nothing, but I saw him furtively wipe tears from his face.
“This is my fault,” Jaime wailed. “I killed them. I killed them all.” He buried his face in his hands. “Why didn’t they just kill me first?”
“You didn’t kill anyone,” I said. “The Chasqui did.”
“If only I had kept my mouth shut.”
“They tortured you,” Ian said. “Any of us would have talked.”
“It’s true,” Taylor said, putting her hand on his shoulder.
Everyone nodded their heads in sympathy. For the next minute the only sound in the room was sniffling and crying.
I had my own reasons for grief. Tessa had a way of climbing into your heart, and Torstyn and Zeus weren’t the only ones who had felt something for her. I met Tessa when I was captured by the Amacarra. The tribe had called her “Hung fa” because of her red hair, something they saw as mystical and an omen of good luck. The first time they saw her in the jungle, they thought she was a goddess. I just thought she was pretty.
That was a terrifying time for me. I had just barely escaped the Starxource plant and the Elgen guard, only to be captured by these jungle warriors in red-and-black war paint. I was pretty sure they were cannibals and were planning to eat me. Instead, they brought me to their village and Tessa. Seeing another electric, one as brave as Tessa, who spoke English and was also fleeing the Elgen, had been a huge relief. I hadn’t realized at the time that she had probably saved my life. Had the Amacarra not already befriended an electric, they likely would have assumed I was just another “white devil” and shot me with their poisonous blow darts.
Tessa and I had spent days together in the jungle, and we got close during that time. After we were back with the others, she confided that she had feelings for me, which I probably would have been receptive to had I not already been with Taylor.
After that, things changed between us. We were still friends, but for the last several years we hadn’t talked much. I felt bad about that, and I was looking forward to seeing her at the reunion in Boise. She always had a place in my heart.
I clearly remembered the last thing she said to me just before we left on this mission. She had come out to say goodbye, and she seemed especially anxious. She had put her arms around me, then said, “I just had this feeling.” When I asked her what she was feeling, she smiled sadly, then said, “I’ll tell you when we’re all back.” I wondered if she had a premonition that we wouldn’t see each other again.
Remembering her last words broke my heart. Be safe, Michael. I don’t want a world without you in it. Now I would have to live in a world without her in it. I couldn’t believe she was gone.
It wasn’t lost on me that Cassy had said something similar before we left, just after she kissed me. If something happens to one of us… Something had.
I just wanted to go to sleep and somehow wake up with a new reality. I had had enough nightmares lately. Why couldn’t this be another one?
I took another deep breath, then said, “I’m going to the hospital to be with Cassy and the others. If anyone wants to come with me, I’m leaving now.”
Everyone stood except for Nichelle.
“I’ll pull up the van,” Jaime said.
As everyone walked out to the front drive, I looked over at Nichelle, who was sitting in the corner, crying. I walked over and crouched down next to her. “Nichelle.”
She looked at me with swollen eyes. “Why did it have to be her, Michael? Why her? Why not me? Why not someone who doesn’t matter?”
“Don’t say that.”
“Everyone loved her.”
I sat down next to her. “They did. Just like everyone loves you.” I held her as she shook.
When she could speak, she said, “Why did they have to die? It hurts so much.”
“I don’t know. My mother once told me, the only way to take pain out of death is to take love out of life. We hurt because we love.” I lifted her chin. “You love her. Just like we all love her. And you. We’re family.”
She looked at me gratefully.
“Now let’s go. Cassy and the others need us.”
“Thank you.”
I kissed her cheek. “You’re welcome.”
I stood, then took her hand and helped her up. We walked together out to the van. Jaime had pulled the van up to the front door of the hacienda. Taylor was sitting in the front passenger seat. Jaime got out when he saw me and got in the back so I could drive.
The best word to describe the ride into Puerto Maldonado was “solemn”—each of us dealing with the loss in our own way and praying that we wouldn’t lose Cassy too. Several times Taylor took my hand to comfort me, then released it almost as if she’d touched a hot stove. I suppose the pain and intensity of my thoughts were too painful for her.
I parked the van near the hospital’s emergency entrance, and we all went inside. Johnson, Quentin, Cibor, and Jacinta were sitting on vinyl couches inside the entrance. They all looked physically and emotionally drained. They stood as we entered.
I can’t describe the feelings we had, such a bizarre mix of emotions—the joy of seeing each other alive, the anguish of loss, and the foreboding that we still might lose another one of us.
“It’s good to see you all,” Johnson said. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen.
“How’s Cassy?” Taylor asked.
“She is not doing well,” Jacinta said. “The doctor was just here. She has internal bleeding, but they are having trouble finding where she is bleeding.”
“Have they scanned her?” Ostin asked. “Do they have a CAT scan?”
“They have a CAT scan, but it is not working. They only have one. This is a small hospital.”
“Why can’t they just bring one in from somewhere else?” McKenna asked.
“It is not that simple,” Jacinta said.
“We don’t need one,” Ostin said. “We have Ian. Where’s Cassy?”
Jacinta pointed. “The ICU is through those doors. But they won’t let you just go back there.”
“I got it,” Ostin said. “Come on, Ian. Let’s do this.”
The two of them walked through the doors.
“You’d better go with them,” Johnson said to Jacinta.
“To translate?” she asked.
“No. To buffer.”
“I’ll go too,” I said. I walked through the emergency room doors with her.
Halfway down the corridor a nurse stepped in front of Ostin. “You cannot be back here,” she said in accented English.
“This is an emergency,” Ostin said. “I am Dr. Ostin Liss of Caltech. This is Dr. Ian Fleming. He is a trauma specialist from the Mayo Clinic. We are here on official hospital business for the American patient Cassandra.”
The nurse suddenly looked confused. “Excuse me, doctors. I was not told you were coming. Let me get you some masks.”
“Thank you,” Ostin said.
She handed us all surgical masks. We put them on and washed our hands. Then she led us back to the OR. Cassy was lying on the table, as motionless as if she were dead.
“Doctor, the specialists from America are here,” the nurse announced.
He turned toward us. “I do not know of any specialists.”
“Her parents are very wealthy,” Ostin said. “They sent the best from the States.” He walked closer to the table. “I understand that our patient is bleeding internally, but you’re having trouble finding where she’s bleeding.”
“Our imaging equipment is not functioning right now. Our EKG equipment isn’t working either. I’ve never seen such an irregular reading before.”
This was common with all of us electrics. There was no way to practically explain it to him, so Ostin just ignored the electrocardiogram problem.
“Dr. Fleming can find where she’s bleeding,” Ostin said. “Please give us some room.”
The doctor seemed a little apprehensive, but he still stepped back, along with his two nurses and a medical technician.
“How much blood have you gone through?” Ostin asked.
“We have transfused six units of blood,” the doctor said. “Her hemoglobin has dropped to six.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Ian said, having no idea what the actual number should be. He stepped up to the table and looked over Cassy’s body. Then he pointed to a place just below her rib cage. “The bleeding is right there, but in her back. You’ll need to roll her over to see it.”
The nurses looked over at the doctor.
“You heard him,” he said. “Roll her over.”
The nurses and technician rolled Cassy over onto her stomach. In her back was a small puncture wound.
“That’s it right there,” Ian said. “That’s where the shrapnel entered.”
The nurse anesthetist administered a local anesthetic, and the doctor cut into Cassy’s skin about two inches above her hip.
“Retractors,” the doctor said.
A nurse handed him the retractor, and he opened the incision. A small but steady stream of blood squirted upward onto his face and mask.
“There is a perforation on the transverse colon,” the doctor said. “Nurse, clamp.” He applied the clamp, and the spurting stopped.
Ian kept looking through Cassy’s body. “It’s the only internal wound,” he said.
The doctor worked quickly to close the wound. As he worked, he asked, “How did you know she was bleeding here?”
“Dr. Fleming is the author of a scientific breakthrough in diagnostic technique and imaging,” Ostin said. “Have you heard of the MEI machine?”
“No.”
“It’s where his expertise came from. You will read his paper very soon.”
The doctor finished suturing the colon, then closed his incision.
Cassy’s blood pressure almost immediately started to climb on the digital monitor next to her. One of the nurses put a disinfectant and gauze over the wound.
“Dr. Fleming,” the doctor said, “you just saved this young woman’s life. It was an honor to work with you.”
“Thank you,” Ian replied. “It was my honor to work with you.”
“How long until she wakes up?” I asked.
The doctor looked over at me for the first time. “I have her sedated on fifty milligrams of propofol, with a fifteen-milligram maintenance. But now we can begin emergence. She should be responsive in less than an hour.”
“Our work is done here,” Ostin said. “Please let us know when she’s gained consciousness.”
“We will let you know.”
The four of us walked back out to the waiting room.
48 Planning the Future
“How is she?” Johnson asked as we emerged into the waiting room.
“Ian found the problem,” Ostin said. “They’ve stopped the bleeding. Her blood pressure is rising.”
“She’s going to be okay?” McKenna asked.
“We think so,” I said.
“Thank God something finally went right,” Nichelle said.
Tara walked over and put her arm around her. “Nichelle, when I was in the cave, I had never felt such pain in all my life. I was sure I was going to die. I almost did. But you freed me. And you freed Taylor and Jack and Jaime. And we saved tens of thousands of lives by taking out those trucks.
“My heart is beyond broken for Tessa and Jax and Bentrude and the others. But it’s also filled with gratitude. As much as we are hurting, I don’t think we should forget how much has gone right. And how many lives have been saved.”
“Tara’s right,” Jack said. “You saved me from the firing squad.”
“Tara is right,” Johnson said.
I looked over at him. I was glad to hear him say this. He’d been mourning the loss of three of his men even before this latest loss. I had hoped he wouldn’t blame himself or forget the good that had happened.
“We accomplished our mission. That’s what matters.”
I had a lot of questions about what he and the others had been through, but there would be time for that later. For now we had to deal with the moment. And the moment was Cassy.
“What do we do now?” Nichelle asked.
“We should get out of this place,” Johnson said. “As soon as Cassy is ready to leave, we go.”
“Johnson is right,” I said. “I’ll call for the plane now.”
I walked out to the van for the satellite phone. I sat inside and called my parents. This time my father answered.
“Michael, are you okay?”
“I’m alive. Most of us are alive.”
“How is Cassy?”
“They’ve stopped the bleeding. She should be fine.”
He exhaled in relief. “Thank goodness.”
“We’re ready to come home. All of us. Including Cristiano and Jacinta, if they’ll come.”
“Who are they?”
“They are friends who have been fighting with us. It’s not safe for them here anymore.”
