He grinned. "Yeah, it does, don't it?"

She slugged him in the shoulder and turned to walk away. "I said almost, jerk-off," she told him in her usual taunting voice.

Coop followed her into the office where Hammer lay, snoring softly with a sheen of sweat on his pale face.

Harley looked up from the chair next to the couch. He hadn't left Hammer's side since the affair with the airplanes was over.

"I don't much like the way he looks," he said, a worried look on his face.

230.

"Corrie was just on the cell phones to base," Jersey said. "She said Ben was sending the Osprey back for us, and Dr. Buck would be on board to start any treatment Hammer might need until the plane could get him back to Indianapolis and the base hospital there."

Harley nodded, somewhat relieved.

"Until then, what do you want us to do with our captives?" Coop asked.

"You want to start questioning them or wait for the big boys back at base?"

Harley's face grew grim. "I don't believe I'd better have any contact with the men . . . I'm afraid they wouldn't survive it, and I know Ben will want to question them himself."

Jersey shook her head. "I don't think the Arab gentleman is going to be very cooperative," she said.

Harley grinned, but there was no mirth in it. In fact, it made the hair on the back of Jersey's neck stir. She'd never seen such an evil face on her friend.

"Oh, he'll talk. It's amazing what Intel can do with the chemicals they have available to them nowadays," Harley growled in his deep voice.

"Better living through chemistry is what I always say," Coop added irreverently.

"Meanwhile, you'd better keep a close eye on him until we get him safely back to base," Harley said. "These rag-heads think if they martyr themselves it a.s.sures them a place in heaven, or wherever the h.e.l.l they go when they die."

"He's tied up tighter'n a hog on slaughterin' day," Coop said. "I saw to that myself. He's even got a gag in his mouth so he can't swallow bis tongue or something."

Jersey laughed derisively. "That's an old wives' tale, Coop. People can't really swallow their tongues.""Bulls.h.i.t!" he said, following her as she walked out of the office and down the corridor. "I once had an Uncle Festus who swallowed his tongue."

"Oh?" Jersey asked, her eyebrows raised.

"Yeah. It was on his wedding night. When his bride took 231.

off her nightie, he noticed she had a ... er ... she was equipped like a man."

"What?" Jersey said.

Coop nodded. "Yeah, poor ol' Festus. He always thought it was funny her having a mustache an' all, but he put it down to a lack of female hormones."

Coop hesitated, then laughed. "Guess it was after all."

"You lying sack of. . ." Jersey began.

Coop held up his right hand. "Truth, I swear."

When they got to the room holding the prisoners, the FFA man, Jim Short, and the Arab, Achmed Sharif, Jersey walked over to Anna, who was standing there with her Uzi aimed at their midsections.

She leaned over and whispered in Anna's ear. "Harley says to watch the Arab real close. He figures he might try to off himself to keep from talking."

Anna snarled back, "If he does, I'll just start shooting off various parts of his anatomy until he gives it up as a bad idea or I run out of parts."

Jersey laughed and glanced at Sharif, who was straining to hear what they were saying. He tried to say something, but the gag made his words unintelligible.

Coop leaned over him. "Huh? What did you say? You've got a gag in your mouth and I can't understand a word."

This infuriated the Arab and he rocked back and forth, struggling against the duct tape Coop had wound around and around his body.

Coop soon tired of tormenting his captive and went to sit next to Jim Short, the FFA man they'd captured in the tower. The other FFA men who'd been guarding the road were similarly tied up out in the main terminal waiting room.

Coop stared at the man and said, "You look like you could use a cigarette. You smoke?"

"When I can get them," Short answered morosely. "Usu- 232.

ally, they haven't been available in the U.S. since the last war." He grimaced. "In fact, most things that make life worth living aren't available either."Coop fished in his pocket and brought out a pack of smokes. He put one in his mouth and lit it, then pa.s.sed it over to Short, who took a deep inhale and let the smoke trickle out of his nostrils with a look close to ecstasy on his face.

"I've been wondering, Short," Coop said. "Why did you and the other guys throw in with these rag-heads anyway?"

Short cut his eyes up at Coop. "You wouldn't understand," he said.

"Try me."

Short shook his head. "No, you live in a place where you have some say in your government and your life. It's different here in the U.S."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. We're told when to work, what to do, what to eat, how to dress .

. . that is, when food and clothes are even available, which is not too often."

Coop shrugged. "Last I heard, the U.S. is still a democracy. If the people are so unhappy with Osterman as president, why don't they just vote her out of office?"

Short gave a quick laugh. "Yeah, it's a democracy all right. Trouble is, the ruling cla.s.s, the government, is in charge of counting the votes."

He leaned his head back and sighed. "After the last election, I asked around. I couldn't find one person who said they'd voted for Osterman and her Socialist/Democratic Party. Not one, mind you, and yet the official line was she won the election by seventy-five percent of the vote."

"I'm surprised more of the citizens didn't rise up and revolt like you did then," Coop said.

Short snorted. "Hah. Most of the people here are so demoralized by the way the government treats them, they're 233.

233.

like little children. They are afraid to speak out against Os-terman for fear of losing what few privileges we still have."

"Did you try protesting the results of the election to the United Nations?" Coop asked.

"Sure," Short said. "The leader of the FFA set up a meeting with representatives of the U.N. to discuss the voting irregularities, but for some unknown reason, he disappeared the night before the meeting."

"Disappeared?"

"Yeah, as in taken away by Ostefman's Black Shirts to some dungeon never to be seen again ... or worse."

"So, the UN. did nothing?"Short shrugged. "What could they do? After our leader was made to disappear, n.o.body else had the b.a.l.l.s to make a formal complaint, and the whole matter just sort of died from lack of interest."

"So, how did you guys come to be working with these Arab terrorists?"

Coop asked.

"Evidently, their leader, El Farrar, has some contacts in the U.N.

Enough so he could find out the name of our organization and a few names of members. He sent some men over here last year to feel us out on the idea of working with him to get Osterman ousted from office."

"Didn't you realize that was just exchanging one despot for another?"

Coop asked, amazed at the naivete of the man and his organization.

"Of course, we knew that was a risk. But we figured in the confusion of the takeover, we might be able to get the upper hand." He shrugged. "At least it was worth a try. And if we didn't succeed, we figured having Arabs as our leaders would make it easier to recruit people to join us in opposition and eventually we'd be able to take our country back."

Coop shook his head. "Well, partner, I'm afraid you backed the wrong horse in this race. There's no way these a.s.sholes are gonna take over the U.S., not with Ben Raines joining in on the side of the present government."

234.

Short stared at Coop. "Speaking of that, just why did Raines agree to help Osterman? We never for a minute figured on that happening."

Coop shrugged. "You got me, pal. That's way over my head. I'm just a grunt in this man's Army, and I goes where I'm told and I shoots who I'm told. That's the way the Army has always been and that's the way it'll always be."

Coop stopped as the sound of an airplane could be heard through the shattered windows of the terminal.

He stood up and motioned to Jersey. "Let the troops know, the train home has arrived."

Jersey got up out of her seat and went to tell Harley to wake Hammer up.

His ride had arrived.

235.

When the Osprey landed at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Hammer was taken off first. Dr. Larry Buck had an IV going, and quickly started intravenous antibiotics and painkillers.

Ben, who was standing on the landing field, asked Dr. Buck how he was doing.

"Okay, I think," Buck said. "The bullet pa.s.sed through his deltoid muscle without hitting the bone, so it should heal all right. But I want to get him to surgery right away and clean away some of the damaged muscle to prevent any infection from setting in."

He hesitated as corpsmen working under him hustled the stretchercontaining Hammer toward the base hospital. "The bullet left a pretty big hole in the muscle, so I might have to do a plastic repair and take some muscle from his gluteus maximus to fill in the defect."

"Gluteus maximus?" Ben asked.

"His b.u.t.t, Ben, his b.u.t.t," Buck said with a grin.

"Ouch!" Ben said, sympathizing with the pain Hammer was going to be feeling for some time.

Buck shrugged. "Other than not being able to sit down comfortably for a while, it shouldn't give him too much trouble if all goes as expected."

"Go on and get to work, Doc," Ben said. "When you're 236.

done with Hammer, we'll discuss a chemical interrogation of our prisoners."

Buck gave him a thumbs-up and trotted after the stretcher as the other members of the team exited the plane.

Once Hammer was under anesthesia and his wound area and the possible donor site on his left b.u.t.tock had been prepped, Dr. Buck stepped to the table and prepared to operate.

The wound on his left shoulder was a small entrance hole in the anterior portion of his left deltoid muscle, with a larger, more gaping hole where the bullet had exited on the back side of the muscle.

First Buck used a plastic brush to thoroughly scrub both areas, making sure to get out all pieces of cloth from Hammer's shirt that had been carried into the wound.

After that was accomplished, he used a pair of Metzen-baum scissors and some tissue forceps to grasp all of the grayish-appearing dead muscle and cut it away until there was a bed of fresh uninjured muscle slowly oozing blood across the entire diameter of the wound.

Using his fingers, Buck pulled the edges of the wound together to see if it could be repaired without having to take a chunk of donor muscle from the hip area.

He was pleased with what he saw. The damaged muscle had swollen to the point where he thought he might be able to bring the edges together by undermining the skin and subcutaneous tissue enough to free up the edges and make them more mobile.

He slipped the points of the Metzenbaum scissors under the skin, and using both blunt and sharp dissection, cut the skin away from its underlying soft tissue attachments. This loosened it enough that when he pulled the edges together, there was no tension on them, a necessary process for the wound to heal properly.

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237.

"Give me some three-0 chromic suture on a large needle," Buck said tothe scrub tech standing next to him.

The tech placed the needle with the attached suture on a needle-driver and slapped it into Buck's hand.

Using a deep vertical mattress-type technique, Buck made a deep pa.s.s through both sides of the muscle and gently pulled them together with several sutures.

Once this was done, he leaned over and had a nurse wipe the sweat from his brow. The teirjperature under the big operating lights over the table was twenty degrees warmer than the rest of the operating room, and the thick gown Buck was wearing made it even hotter.

Finally ready for the last part of the procedure, he stepped back up to the table.

"Four-O nylon on a cutting needle," he said.

The tech obliged, again slapping the needle driver into his palm with a smack.

Buck glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes. "Gently, son, gently," he said. "Put it in my hand and give a little push. You don't need to slap it like you see on television and in movies."

"Yes, sir," the embarra.s.sed tech replied.