Hostage Zero

Jonathan felt tension draining from his shoulders. Jammin’ Josie was exactly right. During the shoot-’em-up drug war, there had been a time when the only safe people were the ones on the wrong side of the law. A man like Josie could have retired on the reward for betraying the good guys.

“You’ve always been a good friend to me,” Jonathan said. “But it’s been a long time, and things are different now. Josie, right now is your one and only opportunity to tell me if your loyalty has been compromised. Tell me the details of what you’ve told others, and I promise that I’ll let you all walk away. I won’t come looking for you.”

Something changed in Josie’s eyes. A brief flash of panic, maybe. Boxers saw it, too, and he shifted his grip on his rifle, allowing his gloved finger to slip into the trigger guard of his M4.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

Harvey sensed the tension between Jonathan and his old friend, but there was nothing about their interaction that seemed critical. The order to arm himself surprised him, but even then he didn’t sense urgency. As ordered, he’d lifted out his MP5 machine gun, but he thought it was more a symbolic gesture than preparation for combat, so he didn’t even bother to extend the telescoping stock. He stood, watching and doing his best to listen, with the weapon dangling from his hand like an overgrown pistol.

Such was his posture when one of the mercenaries on his left shouldered his M16 and brought it to bear.

Boxers said, “Oh, shit,” and then the jungle exploded in automatic weapons fire.

Harvey dropped to the ground for cover, but by the time he rolled to a prone shooting position and brought his weapon up, it was over. None of the mercenaries remained standing. Most appeared to be dead, but the one closest to him writhed from his wounds, one of which pumped blood at a fatal rate.

Harvey whipped his head toward the spot where he’d last seen Jonathan and Boxers, and both of them had dropped to a knee. Barrels smoking, their weapons remained locked in on their targets. In less than five seconds, they’d cut down seven men. Harvey had never seen anything like it.

“Mr. Smith, are you all right?”

Harvey gaped. His ears felt like they’d been stuffed with cotton. “Yeah,” he said. “Holy shit.”

While Jonathan held his aim, Boxers rose to his feet, and with his weapon always at the ready, approached the bodies. “If you’ve got nothing better to do, how about giving me a hand?” the Big Guy said.

“M-me?” Harvey stammered.

“Y-yeah, y-you,” Boxers mocked. “Disarm these men.”

Harvey rose to his feet. “But they’re dead. Jesus.” Once he stood, he could see just how dead they were-every one a head shot.

“Disarmed and dead is better than just plain dead.”

“No, Big Guy, I need him here with me,” Jonathan said. He was kneeling over Jammin’ Josie, his bloody hands pressed against the other man’s belly. “Find the aid kit and bring it here.”

The trauma bag lay on the top of the equipment piled next to one of Josie’s Blazers.

Harvey knew it was bad the instant he saw pallor in Josie’s face. The location of the bullet wound in the upper left quadrant of the abdomen, combined with the flow of blood, said that his spleen had been hit.

“He needs a surgeon,” Harvey said.

Jonathan gave him a knowing look. Josie was not long for this world. “Do what you can.”

A new kind of fear gripped Harvey’s insides. He hadn’t seen a bullet wound in years; and the last time he did, a medevac chopper was always a radio call away. He had no magical powers. This man was going to die, and Harvey was going to have to tend him while it happened.

“What’s this all about?” Harvey asked. “What just happened?”

“You tend to the wounds, Doc,” Jonathan said. “And we’ll find out the rest together.”

Jonathan helped Harvey strip Josie of his shirt, exposing the wound that had been inflicted by one of Josie’s own-by accident, Jonathan assumed, but with mercenaries, you could never be sure. This man who’d betrayed him had a chest and belly much like Jonathan’s own-less developed, perhaps, but equally disfigured by scars from previous wounds. This new one was a perfectly round hole in the front, about the diameter of a number-two pencil, while the exit wound in his back was a ragged avulsion three times the size of the entry hole.

While Harvey pulled HemCon packets out of his med kit and ripped them open, Jonathan said, “Tell me what you did, Josie.”

“Am I shot bad?”

“Yes,” he said. “You’re shot bad.” No matter what, Jonathan owed him the truth.

“Fatal?”

“Probably.”

“Jesus,” Harvey snapped. “Where did you learn bedside manner?”

Jonathan ignored him. “I need to know the details, Josie. You don’t want to die with betrayal on your soul.”

Harvey said, “This is going to hurt.” He’d donned a pair of latex gloves and prepared to insert the HemCon pads into the wounds. Similar in appearance to standard gauze dressings, HemCon pads were soaked in a coagulating agent that was damned effective at stanching the flow of blood from traumatic injuries long enough to get the patient to a hospital.