Response Team

Chapter 19 Alternate.

David's cell rang at 2:10am on a Tuesday night, which meant it was from someone that was already programmed into his cell. The call came from Captain Johnson, our commander. David grabbed the cell off the night stand and put it in speaker mode and set it between us on the bed.

"Good morning Captain?" David mumbled while we both lay on our sides under the sheet looking at the phone on its back. Then the screen changed and it was the Captain standing in his kitchen, he looked to be wearing just his gym shorts, same as us. We all chuckled at our unplanned pillow talk meeting!

"Men, we got a call, but this one is optional, it's from the FBI. The short explanation is there's an Indian Health Service doctor with a history of inappropriate contact with young girls. He was accused of doing pelvic exams as part of routine visits, which is highly inappropriate."

"During the investigation he disappeared and hasn't been seen in ten days. They've had no hits on credit cards or his cell, but the FBI thinks he's at a motel in central Iowa. They're afraid to raid the motel fearing he might kill himself, they want him alive to stand trial. They're asking us to apprehend him, since you two don't look like FBI and could capture him in a grocery store or someplace where violence and gunshots could be avoided. Believe it or not, the FBI does not have spider technology, just guns, bombs and handcuffs."

I spoke first, "They're certain they located him in Iowa?"

"Yes, positive ID."

"What town is he in?"

"They found him in Marshalltown, Iowa which is a small town of about thirty thousand people about 60 miles northeast of Des Moines on Route-30. The town is known for meat packing and medium manufacturing."

"How did they find him?" David asked. In my head I thought they should have offered this one to our alternate team in Omaha, this would only be 150 miles away from them, and they could use the hours.

"The owner of the motel regularly checked the FBI wanteds and recognized him, but there's a catch. He appears to be travelling with a young girl, they're not totally sure who she is. They think she is a runaway fourteen year old girl from Dupree, South Dakota on the Sioux Indian Reservation. They don't want to risk any harm coming to her and are afraid if they raided the room he'd try to kill her. They've been at this old motel for three nights now and paid in cash."

"What's the connection between them?" David asked.

"They recently got a possible ID on her and think she might be a former patient of his, someone that got one of his full contact school athletics physical exams."

"What's the closest airport to Marshalltown" I asked.

"That would probably be Cedar Rapids, about 55 miles to the east, it's called The Eastern Iowa Airport and its large enough for our jets."

"You can get us there on the jet?" I asked.

"Yep, all it takes is one text message and it's on the way."

"Can I put you on hold?" David mumbled and pressed MUTE on his cell, then he looked me in the eyes. I picked up his cell to double check it was in mute mode.

We discussed the possibility the FBI interfering with our work. After some discussion we agreed to take the case, I activated the phone again and talked to the boss and told him we'd be at the airport in thirty minutes. The boss added that her tribe posted a small reward for her safe return.

We got out of bed and got ready to go to work. Next stop: Cedar Rapids, Iowa. On the way to the airport I called the Captain back and asked who called us and were told this case was being run by the FBI in DesMoines. I asked how we were going to get to Marshalltown and he said we needed to rent a car.

Anytime in the past when we got called by the FBI but they left us to fend for ourselves those cases usually turned into shit, because that was what they did the best. Even though they needed our help the FBI had a constant level of disdain for civilians that was evident every time we worked with them. Neither of us were fans of working with them but they paid well. The thought crossed my mind we were rushing to get things started but the car rental places there won't even be open when we climbed down the outside of the jet.

At our office the desk guy handed us papers faxed by the FBI about their suspects. She's Native American with a history of discipline problems at home and school, and possibly undiagnosed ADHD.

He was an MD-D.O. originally from California. He went to doctor school at UCLA and after losing several malpractice suits got a job with the Indian Health Service and had served in Montana and both Dakotas and had been run out of a few tribal communities after complaints of sexual misconduct with young girls.

The report said that for almost any female office visit he did a pelvic exam, that got him fired twice but the IHS was (always) so short on doctors so they ignored his history and one previous temporary license suspension. He was never charged criminally but probably should have.

Last year he saw this girl as a patient and she seemed to fall in love with him the moment they met, then they became secret friends. Her parents said she ran away from home and lived with him for months while more complaints came in about his practice so after tribal investigations the IHS suspended him and initiated state a licensure hearing. He also faced possible criminal charges, then the two simply vanished about a week ago. Three days ago the FBI got a tip that he was in Marshalltown.

We stayed in our street clothes but brought our batsuits. We stood outside our airport office in the night air talking for a while, but it still stunk like jet exhaust. After dark the number of flights at ELP went down so overnight the exhaust stench usually faded away, but not tonight.

----<>

"How do we grab him, spiders in the HVAC system?" I asked.

"Motels don't use central air, each room would be self-contained. We'd have to use sewer vents and toilets. Gassing a fourteen year old is iffy, there's no record of injuries but doing that bothers me. Did it say on those papers how much she weighed?" David asked.

"What if they only left the room every couple days, I don't want us watching a motel room door for 2-3 days straight" I looked at the papers again then told David it said she was five foot five inches tall and 95 pounds, tan skin, black eyes and hair. After some time with no conversation David asked, "Why would they be hiding out in an old motel, what are they waiting for?"

I immediately replied, "Waiting for the heat to die down." Then something else crossed my mind, "What if she's running the show? What if running away was her idea? Maybe she has connections in Iowa? What if he's the victim and not her? Was she arrested for anything as a juvenile?" I pondered out loud.

"There's not much about her on the FBI sheet, just enough to make him look guilty." David said commenting on obvious unprofessional bias in the FBI summary.

We walked around on the tarmac but since we couldn't see the jet approach from the northeast we just kept walking and listening for the sound of the only fighter jet to land at ELP. Our cases were outside and ready to load into the jet.<>

We talked about them being armed, I said a rural doctor was less likely but you never knew for sure, that's why we wore expensive bulletproof suits. After our long conversation I was starting to get the entire case mapped out in my head: spiders and gas would be likely in this case if we took them in the motel room. Maybe we'd get lucky and a pizza delivery guy would drive up and we could finish the delivery and take them into custody without firing a shot.

Fifty minutes later the jet was fueled and ready to go, we had our gear stowed and were fastening our harness belts. The tug was already pushing us back. I guessed that flight would be similar to our trip to Alton but this one was hours before sunrise.

Like previous flights he lifted off the runway heading towards downtown into the southwest wind. We banked hard over northeast El Paso as slowly as an F-35 could fly. When we got back over Fort Bliss he increased the throttle and pulled back on the stick and we flew vertical, then he applied more thrust so the sonic boom would happen over the desert.

When we reached 38,000 feet he started to stick forward to steer us towards central Iowa, his dispatcher already called their airport for fuel service, then he'd fly back to Kansas City while we rented a car.

It was somewhat weird but I fully understood the rationale, the F-35 pilots that hauled us around the USA were not allowed to socialize with us or any of their passengers since they were often on confidential missions. That and the primary lifesaving mechanisms were removed from the jet to accommodate a third seat. It felt weird not even saying thank you to them knowing they suffered worse in front than we did in back.

They transported high ranking officials, even the President a few times a year. That little jet flew up to three or four times faster than any passenger jet. Even though the engines were not military it was risky flying in that jet.

Forty minutes later we were circling the airport, the sun wasn't up and the tower was closed but the runway lights were on. He called three times on Unicom and announced our approach and landing. As we circled lower and lower we could see some airport services were open but not the tower or the passenger terminal.

We got our bags and climbed down the outside of the jet and walked around the terminal and called for a taxi to the nearest car rental place, we got there 70 minutes before they opened. So we sat outside on a bench and talked.

Before we left Avis I clipped the thing on the rental car license plate. The clip was similar to a tie clip and put an emblem on the front side of the plate, we were required by DOD rules to display the emblem. They say 79% of US police and fire were trained to recognize it as equivalent to a diplomat plate: do not arrest, detain, or question.

Two hours later we were halfway to Marshalltown on US-30 going 80mph. We could have gone faster but Iowa was infested with white tail deer and Canadian Geese, it was dangerous to hit one at any speed. Lincolnway (US-30) was mostly two lanes across flat farmland. We got there at 9:10am and reported to the police station downtown. They never asked to see our ID cards, in a large city that was normal.

We gathered in a conference room with city cops and the FBI, I think we drove past the target motel on US-30 on our way into town. It was an old Lincolnway landmark hotel that was built in the late 1920s. I suggested we stay there tonight, but David gave me the death stare when I said that in front of all those cops.

We told them our plan and listened for half an hour while they told us stuff we already knew about the doctor. I asked if he had any weapons registered and they said no. I noticed it appeared like it was a simple case, what you see is what you get: kidnapped kid, hiding out in Iowa, two on the run trying not to be seen. One thing was weird though, why where they just sitting there, what were they waiting for? What were they doing in that tiny motel room day after day? When we asked that one of the cops said, "If you gotta ask..."

They showed us large photos of the motel from the street and the back side too. The room had one small bathroom window but it was too small for most people to climb through. The motel was one story wood structure on a slab. Each room had a large AC unit in the front wall under the window. Each room had two queen size beds, a closet, shower, toilet, refrigerator, and microwave oven. It cost $39 a night.

There was a paved parking lot in front, the hotel had no other services, no pool, no room service, no bar, no massage or concierge. It was just a basic 1930s motel, except they used door card-keys and not actual keys.

They showed us still photos of him and her taken on the motel office security camera and they nearly matched the ones from the FBI, so we were convinced they were the droids everyone was looking for.

We drove there alone and got a room two doors from theirs. David talked to the owner about the plumbing and he said as far as he knew they were in the room right now. He gave us a card that would open our room and another card for their room. While we were talking two plain clothes FBI agents arrived as back-up but they stayed in the laundry room.

We went to our room and got into our suits and loaded up a spider with two gas pellets and opened the bathroom window and set it on the window ledge, it took off running up the red brick wall of the hotel. Our case comms were on and we had our glasses on too.

We could see the approximate locations of each room based on the sewer line vent pipes sticking up through the roof. It ran across the shingles to the 2nd pipe and climbed down the inside and after some moving around we saw light again as it emerged in the toilet bowl and saw no movement so it cleared the toilet and hid under the sink to dry off. Sometimes spiders went to the toilet paper roll to clean their optics after climbing through water.

The next step was to crawl along the base of the bathroom wall, under the closed door and out into the motel room. It went to the headboard wall and climbed up a wall-mounted headboard and perched on top and sent us hi-res still photos then switched to IR video. Total body count: two people on two beds, they were not together. She looked small stretched out on the bed closest to the bathroom, he was on the other. It looked like two people lying on the beds watching TV on the other side of the room.

David said, "We could do this right now."

"Don't you want to gather some intel first, look for weapons and see if the FBI already bugged the room?"

"What about this, we use one spider, on his bed near his pillow. We set it for a short burn, it might not even get her at all. They're in the perfect position for it."

I got up from the chair and started to undress to get into my suit, then he did the same.

"You don't want to watch them for a while first?"

"But they're in the perfect position for a short gas load right now." David said but he never suggested we jump right in like this before, I thought it would work but it was risky.

"Well that's not normally how we do it but this is your mission, go ahead and gas him." I offered reluctantly.

It took about five more minutes to get into our suits while we watched them in bed watching TV. After he was dressed David sat and drive the spider around a little and silently moved it along the top of the headboard down the wall and up the other headboard, the bed furthest from the bathroom. He turned the spider's cam side to side, up and down but we saw no weapons. Both of them were in beds alone, not talking, the only sound in the room was the TV playing some movie. They were laid out partially under bed spreads but we could clearly see the top of her head and his, we could see them breathing, and we could see the curtains by the wall AC unit blowing around like the AC was on low.

David moved the spider down the headboard onto the mattress within inches of his head and told the spider to do a short burn, which would release only a quarter of the normal amount of gas. I expected she might get knocked out too, but it was unlikely at that distance.

We left the room and walked outside past our truck, down two doors with our machine guns clearly visible. David had their room card in his left hand, we both watched the gas appear around his hair but he never moved, it looked like maybe he was asleep, well now he's going to be deeply asleep. We watched as we stood against the brick wall of the motel building just feet from their door while we watched the spider's IR video. It showed the gas generating was finished and there was still no movement in the room. We pulled out our air filters and put them in our mouths and noses. I started the timer on my arm display terminal.

He held up the key card and slowly inched closer to the door, we paused when we saw her sit up on the bed and put her feet on the carpet and her hand over her nose. David slid the card into the lock, it beeped and turned green and he lowered the handle and opened the door inward. We burst in with hands on our machine guns on our front sides.

I immediately tasted the gas in my mouth. The guy on the bed never moved but a few seconds after we entered the room there was a flash from the far bed and a loud bang and David collapsed to the floor, I dove over him and raced between the beds then leapt onto the farthest bed and wrestled with the little girl, she had a pistol in her hand. I knocked it out of her hands then punched her in the face a few times, like I went crazy with rage.

I think I punched her three times right in the nose and mouth, then I grabbed the pistol off the floor and dropped the magazine and ejected the only bullet in the chamber. Then I went to my husband, he was on the floor just inside the door groaning and ignoring me. I used the panic button on my wrist unit and pressed the one on his wrist too, within 60 seconds we'd have police and fire dispatched to our locations. I kept glancing at both beds for any signs of movement, but all I saw was her squirming in pain and holding her face.

I unzipped his suit and saw he got shot in the upper left stomach, he had a huge red area but no blood. The suits we wore stopped bullets but you still got punched super hard. It looked like he got hit right over the spleen.

I was afraid for internal bleeding but looked closely at his wound and checked over and over but there was no penetration. Soon the motel was full of sirens. David was awake but moaning and no longer talking.

I grabbed handcuffs off his suit and cuffed both of them, but she was still on the far bed screaming in pain with both hands over her bloody face. I'm sure I busted her nose, but that bitch shot my husband, she's lucky I didn't snap her neck instead!

Within five minutes they grabbed David and loaded him into an ambulance and blasted off for the ER in downtown Marshalltown. I handed scene custody over to the cops after I told when what happened. Then I got into our rental car and raced to Unity Point Hospital. Both of our cases were in the rental car trunk.

I roared into the downtown hospital parking lot and ran into the ER lobby in my shiny black metallic mesh suit and was shouting that they brought my husband in by ambulance. A couple minutes later I was escorted into their trauma room.

David was in a gown, his suit (and machine gun were removed and sitting in a heap on the counter by the sink. They had two IVs in him and he'd already been to CT and was now getting labs drawn and an ultrasound of his spleen.

The PA walked in the room and asked what he got hit with?

"Not sure, maybe a 40 caliber hand gun round, our suits are bullet proof." I said pointing at the heap of shiny black cloth on the counter.

"His CT showed bleeding and inflammation, he's already lost blood internally, as soon as we see the ultrasound we will decide if he needs surgery."

"What do his labs show?" I asked.

She said, "This is too early for it to show up in his hemoglobin but he looks hypovolemic, he's really thirsty which is a symptom. When was his last meal?"

"Last food was about 6am today."

She glanced at the clock and said that was five hours ago, so he should be good. She said she was going to talk to the doc and the surgeon but the next thing was for her to see the ultrasound images then she'd be back. On her way out the door she told the nurse David was `strict NPO,' but I had no idea what that meant.

I was alone in the room briefly with David, he looked pale and in a lot of pain. I held his hand and leaned over and kissed his forehead and told him I loved him. Moments later the ultrasound tech finished and wirelessly uploaded the images for the radiologist and the ER doc to look at.

"What about our peeps?" David whispered.

"Both of them went to the local slammer." I whispered into his ear.

"Holy crap I never saw that coming, never thought a tiny little Indian girl would shoot me. Maybe she really was the kidnapper." He said with grimaces of pain.

"Shhhhh, honey, try to relax. The PA said when they see the images they'll know if you need surgery."

"Oh fuck it hurts Ryan. I don't want to die in Iowa. Don't let me die here Ry." He said gripping my hand a little harder.

"You're gonna go home, I can feel it." I told him but I was truly scared. I knew sometimes his Indian DNA kicked-in and he sensed things, he may have seen his own death already.

We were talking for a few minutes about happy stuff when the PA walked back in with someone taking else notes of what was said.

She asked about us and I told her we worked for the DOD and we were married nine years ago. She told us that he had bleeding from his spleen and needed immediate surgery, they've already called in the surgery team. I mumbled `shit!' and held his hand tighter while she went on about time being critical right now. I lowered my forehead to his shoulder and listened with my eyes closed, the news was bad and I felt a wave of anxiety sweep across my body, I nearly cried.

While she was talking two people from the surgery prep area arrived in the room to move him to their department. I grabbed his gear and followed them across the ER, down a hallway, up the elevator to the pre-op area. He was connected to cardiac monitors and they hung two bags of saline and drew more blood to get him ready for transfusion.

"No, he's never had blood before and we're both B negative with no diseases." I told the blood bank lady who got him banded and ready to receive emergency uncrossed blood. David's blood pressure was dropping, the display said his heart rate was 99 and his BP was 91/49. They set it to run every five minutes, all David would do now was moan and hold his belly, he'd stopped talking again.

A few minutes later the anesthesiologist arrived and asked about his medical history: none, healthy, no diseases or history of surgery. He said it would start off as a robotic procedure in OR8, they were getting ready right now and the surgeon just arrived and was setting up the robot.

About ten minutes later they came and got David and took him to surgery, they had me go to a waiting area where I sat alone in a room with a TV and all our stuff in a large clear plastic bag. I think they started surgery around 12:35pm.

Two long hours went by. I had a hard time not crying. But after half an hour I walked over to the TV and turned it off because I couldn't stand hearing it any more.

By 4pm he was awake and in recovery. He'd received two units of blood and had his spleen removed but tolerated it well, they said he'd have three small scars but otherwise he should fully recover.

I got to see him about half an hour later, he was groggy and barely able to stay awake, he sounded drunk and looked like crap. I stayed beside him in recovery, then at 6pm he was moved to a regular room on the telemetry floor. I had to hold a plastic bottle between his legs so he could pee. That night I drove to the motel and slept there. I cried that night (with my face pressed into the pillow I imagined his soft stomach) like a kid but it felt good. I thought about calling David's mom but decided not to. I doubt I could have added anything positive by talking to her.

The next morning when I got to the hospital at 10am (with all our stuff) there were two cops (detectives) in his room, they said the girl was charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, shooting a federal officer, and the doctor was charged with kidnapping, rape, and some other stuff. They were in police custody in Marshalltown and being moved to a federal facility in Des Moines soon for arraignment on federal charges.

The detective held up a small plastic bag with the spider inside and asked if that was ours and I said yes, it was DOD property and secret military technology. While he was holding it I told him I needed it back and he said, no `it was evidence.' So I reached into the plastic bag for David's Batsuit panel and told the spider to self-destruct immediately. Moments later the bag filled with smoke and a hole melted and the crumbs of the spider's body fell out while the cop was stunned that it suddenly burst into smoke.

They asked me about what happened when we broke in the room, I said we stepped in the door and saw them on separate beds watching TV. Suddenly there was a flash and a bang and David dropped, I stepped around him and ran to her. She was holding the pistol aimed at me, I knocked it out of her hands and punched her to immobilize her. I unloaded the pistol and tended to my partner and summoned help. He stayed unconscious on the bed while she screamed in pain.

The cop said there was no record of a 911 call from the motel and I told them I used military technology, the call would have come from Texas or Washington DC. But that explanation didn't satisfy him at all and he wanted me to go with him for questioning and I told him no, I was staying with my partner. He said he could detain me and hold me for questioning. I told him if he did that he'd be dead before the weekend, which really made him angry. I told him to go call his boss on the phone and discuss it before he did anything he couldn't take back.

"Either you come with us and make a written statement at the police station or we'll have to arrest you for interfering with a police investigation."

"Let me warn both of you, I'm a federal agent on a secret operation if you detain me within 48 hours from right now both of you and any other officers involved will be killed."

"Killed, by whom?" He asked with a smile on his face?

"You won't see it coming, but I promise you, the best thing you can do right now is call your boss, then take me into custody now that you've been legally warned. I'm not going anywhere, I'll be right here by my husband."

He told the other officer to cuff me and put me in their car, I was nearly in tears but David was too groggy to participate so they took the Hello Kitty backpack but left the Batsuit case with David (machine guns hidden inside) and escorted me out in handcuffs. I was placed in their car and taken to their office. Before we left the room I had them get the glasses out of the plastic bag so I could wear David's glasses so my office could see and hear what was going on. Luckily the comms were still active. But my batsuit was in the case with David's. So I only had use of the comms built into the glasses frame.

At the Marshalltown Police building downtown I was put in an interrogation room in handcuffs and sat there alone for a while, the backpack was gone but not too far since I was still connected. While I was alone I advised my boss in El Paso of what happened and he said they were working on it but so far our case was unopened, only the officers that detained me were in violation of federal military law. Then a moment later he said the case was opened but he couldn't tell if any of the weapons inside were touched, but none of them were activated.

He said a team was now on the way by helicopter from Offutt Air Force Base. Ninety minutes became two hours and the detective that cuffed me and put me in his car came back in the room and sat on the other side of the table and asked if I was ready to write my statement or did I want to be arrested and charged. We talked for a few minutes, he was focused on my statement and I had this sinking feeling that he was spending the final hours of his life as if what I warned would never happen. Then I heard the unmistakable sound of large helicopters outside.

I looked at him and said, "Too late now. I warned you. If you were smart you'd grab your cell and call your family and tell them you love them." But he just laughed and looked around the room as the entire building seemed to vibrate as they landed. The police department was completely unprepared for being invaded by heavily armed soldiers in full combat police gear, I almost wished I could have seen it.

With a smile and a wink he asked me if that was my friends coming to kill him, I told him to call his wife and say good bye, he only had a few minutes left. But he chuckled and left the room, and locked the door.

A few minutes later I heard yelling and people running up and down hallways, then the fire alarm sounded and in the hallway I heard someone yell, "He's in here!" The sound of a pry bar on the door made it creak then it popped open but I was still handcuffed to a heavy steel table. Then I heard short bursts of gun fire and more frantic yelling-pleading-crying and then screams. A guy in a helmeted riot uniform walked in and removed my cuffs. He pointed down the hallway and told me to get in the helicopter and stay there.

As I stepped into the hallway I saw two cops on the floor in puddles of blood, I couldn't see faces but the clothes looked familiar. One of the soldiers pointed down the hallway towards the exit, so I walked out. A few minutes later one of those guys brought out with my backpack case but the Hello Kitty emblem was gone. Outside in the parking lot sat two large Huey helicopters. Slowly, the place was surrounded by more and more cop cars, but the guys from the copters stopped them from going inside. Two fire trucks arrived and ambulances too.

I got into the Huey and belted myself in and watched smoke pour out two doors of the police station. There were a dozen cars in the street outside and it looked like a war zone. Some of the local cops were by their cars with pistols drawn aimed at the building. The scene reminded me of the office building shootout in Terminator-2.

The soldiers with weapons in hand left the building but none of the cops in the street fired at them, then I saw flames coming from the roof of the building.

Both helicopters started engines at the same time, their long blades slowly began to turn as their turbo engines gained speed. Both lifted off but flew in different directions. I wanted to ask the soldiers seated near me who they were but I saw their uniforms said US Air Force.

We flew straight to the hospital and landed on their ER helipad. Before I was inside they started to leave. I heard the unmistakable sound of a large military helicopter take off outside. I went directly to David's room.

That day they did more ultrasound exams and said they saw no more bleeding, his labs were better and he was improving. As far as they were concerned he could leave tomorrow afternoon. I spent the rest of the day and all night beside David. I sat on the recliner beside the bed and held his hand. He was naked under his gown so that evening I fingered his tit under the blanket and late that night I kissed his palm several times. He smiled but was very non-talkative. I think he was deep in thought over what went wrong, how he almost got dead. I was expecting more visits from city police or state police but nobody came back.

That night in the room I heard people talk about the dead cops in town and it looked like they got invaded by Russia. The police department looked like the movie Red Dawn happened for real.

The next day, using our medical benefits I arranged to have him med-evacuated to El Paso and his care transferred to William Beaumont Medical Center on Fort Bliss. That afternoon he left by ambulance to DesMoines then flown to El Paso on a private medical jet. I drove the rental car back to the motel, got all our stuff, and drove back to Cedar Rapids and flew to Dallas, then back home to El Paso after nine hours of airport/airplane bullshit at three airports.

I got home in his truck at 10:15pm and was stinky and angry, so I took a shower, called our office for updates, and then drove to the hospital.

David was still being watched but they said he might be discharged tomorrow, his labs were improving and they gave him another unit of whole blood because his hemoglobin was still low after surgery. David seemed quiet and distant but the obvious effects of the anesthesia drugs seemed to be gone, but I wasn't sure based on how he acted. The army surgeon said it looked like the people in Marshalltown fixed him well but should have transfused him again.

That night at 2:30am when the ultrasound tech came back I looked at his belly and saw how jaundice he looked and the area around his spleen was a huge bruise, deep purple with yellow borders now. He said it was very tender and even hurt to breathe. I asked if he wanted pain meds and he said yes, so I asked at the nurse's station, and she got him 10mg of morphine and put it in his IV. David was asleep in minutes, which made me happy. I sat beside the bed and watched him sleep for a couple hours.

The next day around 11am the trauma surgeon came in and lectured both of us. He said we must take this injury and surgery seriously. He said people die suddenly after surgery like this, we must follow his orders.

1. Strict bed rest for five days, only up to the bathroom then right back to bed. No straining or lifting or twisting movements. No falling or bending over. Absolutely no lifting. No sex. No NSAID pain meds.

2. For one month after surgery: No work! No lifting! No running or brisk walking. No sudden movements or bending over. He can sit, lie, or recline but no vigorous movements. No walking more than across the room, no walking around the block. Bed rest or sitting for four weeks. Sex only while lying motionless on his back only. Nobody can press on his abdomen. No NSAID pain meds.

3. During month #2 after surgery: No lifting, running, or strenuous activity. Only seated clerical work but most importantly: No lifting! Regular diet, but no NSAID pain meds.

4. During month #3: He may start a slow return to normal activities but if he feels any signs of internal bleeding you should immediately call 911 -- don't hesitate because seconds may count.

Again, the doctor stood beside the bed and told us to be silent for a moment and listen carefully: People die after this surgery because they ripped internal wounds open doing stupid stuff like carrying out a bag of trash to the can, chasing the dog across the yard. You must stay down for the next two months or you could rapidly bleed to death internally. Then he handed us a paper with the timeline for his recovery and restrictions printed in plain language.

At 7pm we were discharged home. They helped him get into the truck and I drove us home. At home I went to the neighbor's house and borrowed their 17 year old son and with his arms over our shoulders we slowly moved David inside to our bed and got him tucked in safely.

Then I wrote an email to our boss to advise our team status, offline for 57 days, activate the Omaha crew.

I spent the next five days closely managing his bodily functions, even wiping his butt. David seemed depressed and abnormally quiet, he wouldn't admit to being in pain but I'm sure he was. It was like taking care of a 150lb infant, I even got him a package of adult diapers.

Seven days after surgery he looked better and was talking more. He used a walker to go to the bathroom but I was still wiping his ass and helping him get to his feet. On our 14th day after surgery we went back to the army hospital for our first follow-up. They did lab work and ultrasound imaging around the surgery. Everything looked okay.

We finally got David to discuss pain and we got a prescription for Percocet pills. His abdomen had a horrible looking bruise but the color was slowly fading. And his tenderness was slowly going away. David said his skin was super sensitive, even the slightest touch hurt badly.

That first month he lived on the living room sofa during the day. I ran the household, he mostly read, napped, or watched movies all day. We got visitors from work, even the Captain came by to visit. Several large floral decorations were delivered, one had new toothbrushes. And two guys from the FBI came by to discuss the Marshalltown affair.

An Air Force Rapid Response Team stormed the police department like the beaches at Normandy and secured our case, then they identified and located the officers involved and questioned them. The sudden appearance of two helicopters and fourteen heavily armed soldiers in their police department lead to lots of commotion and yelling. Soon after their arrival it was clear, they admitted being repeatedly and clearly warned but confiscated the case anyway. They soldiers used the dispatcher to advise all officers on patrol to stay away from the downtown facility but they poured in, and from all the surrounding towns too.

The AF team put the two officers in a janitor closet and executed both of them, the bloody scene spread out into the hallway. David knew nothing about what happened since he was in surgery at the time.

The local police chief was forced to watch while the airmen executed both detectives. They shot one in the chest because he didn't have a vest on but the 2nd cop, the sergeant refused to remove his vest (he was the guy that handcuffed me despite being warned repeatedly) so the airmen slit his throat and watched him bleed out on the floor beside his partner, while their boss was forced to watch.

They said the three of them showed no remorse and said they were amused by my warnings. The AF team asked them if they thought I was kidding when I warned them they would be dead within 48 hours if they proceeded and both of them said it sounded like bullshit to them. One of the AF officers asked their chief if these men had ever received the mandatory training about top secret military hardware carried by civilians and the chief said he had no memory of anything like that (that was a lie because they found the memo in his email and printed out and sitting in a stack on his desk). He signed and returned the form that the training was done.

Basically it was a lousy day and lots of blood was spilled. The good news was the kidnapping was over and the good guys won. The bad news was we'd never collect a reward for recovering the girl. It appeared the single biggest bad actor in the entire police part was their chief. They told us he was likely to be fired and face multiple lawsuits from families of the dead police officers. If he was fired then the city would not pay for his legal defense. The local police made no formal public statements about two dead officers and only held private burial ceremonies at the cemetery. Nine days after the executions the chief of police in Marshalltown resigned. He drove home and shot himself in his back yard.

Forty five days after surgery David had his final re-eval with the Army surgeon and was recovering very well. David was still very tender and felt weak and often queasy like he might puke but slowly improving. At home he started wiping himself but it hurt badly to twist his body. If he was in bed and needed to pee I held the urinal and aimed for him. He still hadn't got hard since surgery and wondered when that would return. Luckily the injury was nowhere near his boy parts. The doc said that was not uncommon with people after anesthesia drugs and surgery.

Eight weeks after surgery David was allowed to return to work in a clerical role. During his clerical time David spent a week at WSMR writing user manuals for everything inside the case, he said he spent an entire day online talking to a designer in Washington about adding a cellular sniffer to every equipment backpack. It would hear every cell in that area and log its data (number, direction, speed, and location). New technology made it easy to sniff those signals and record all the data, there was no transmitter involved since the cell phones had to transmit that same information to the local tower regardless.

I got called on one large job last week by myself that was in Los Angeles, it was a well planned bank heist that timed their robbery to coincide with a scheduled cash payout for the Western States Lottery the morning when an afternoon media event was planned, for the first of monthly ten million dollar payouts. Ten mil in cash was at the bank, at a branch suitable for a media event with a large parking lot and good security.

Three men arrived two hours earlier with automatic rifles and body armor along with a very well planned escape using switched vehicles. They would drive under overpasses then swap vehicles or drive into parking garages and swap cars. One stop would have them drive into a parking garage and escape on foot into another parking garage and drive away in an ambulance.

At first there was a shootout with police outside the bank. Since I was at the airport they shoved me into an airplane that was leaving for LAX right then, I boarded in street clothes with both bags, I got into my suit in the airplane bathroom and had one of the attendants help me get zipped. Eighty minutes later we touched down in Los Angeles. The bank heist was at a standstill with two dead cops and three wounded civilians.

The getaway car was sitting outside the front doors with the motor running but the perps couldn't get to it and the driver was already shot dead, seated behind the wheel.

At LAX I was rushed off the plane directly to a waiting helicopter and flown to a rooftop helipad one block from the shootout then ran with the cases to the bank. By then there were only two perps left, and the driver was dead in the driver's seat.

Two others with the big weapons were outshooting police and seemed unstoppable, they even used clear plastic bullet shields. When I got to the scene they were trying to grab a hostage and get inside their vehicle but there was no obvious way for them to leave, some of the cops told me they would take a hostage from inside the bank and they guessed they'd mounted armor plates inside the car. It appeared they still had the cash and a lot of ammunition.

When I got there they were 30 feet from their car, I low crawled on the hot pavement until I was beside their escape car. The cops saw me and thought I was nuts, but once I got in position I activated two spiders and sent them to the two shooters. With all their vests and webbing the spiders could easily attach to their backs. Each one had a sleep pellet on board. I activated a third spider to kill their vehicle just in case. I was laid out flat on the hot pavement partially under the shadow of the front bumper of their getaway car. The heat that blew down on me was intense but I knew the car would soon be shut down. The third spider went under the car and had it disabled within seconds, it simply cut the cable from the distributor and the engine instantly died.

The other spiders approached them from behind and climbed up their body armor. My cases sat on the roof of an LA Police car about 50 feet behind me so I had good comms and could see what was going on from their location near the front door of the bank on the sidewalk between two large signs that shielded them.

The flag on the pole in front of the bank hung down against the pole so I fired both gas pellets and within fourteen seconds both of them dropped everything and fell over. I signaled all three to return to me (they could easily do that even if I was on the run) I jumped up and ran with police yelling at me to stop!

Within seconds both perps were in plastic handcuffs and their weapons tossed into the bushes outside the bank. Both perps got a nice little nap on the grass outside the bank. Nobody there knew who I was, but I flashed my little DOD ID card and explained I was summoned by their governor and was in the right time and place to get there quickly.

Two cops had been shot and one bystander in the bank was dead but the incident was over and the money recovered and I was the mystery hero of the day. At home David said he watched it live on cable-TV, since KTLA was on cable in El Paso!

Ever since we started this job we always kept a tiny-stretchy light weight balaclava (in the Kitty case) for situations like this. I slipped it over my head and put the IR glasses back on so not only could the TV news people not see my face but they couldn't even tell what color my skin was!

Unlike Dallas PD this group was very appreciative but teased me about risking my life for bags of cash. I asked one of them to drive me back to the airport. LA-PD escorted me across LAX, bypassing every line and checkpoint as if they were escorting the governor. We even had to run to the gate to board the plane after last call for boarding. I think the police called the airport to hold the flight for a federal agent that had an automatic weapon to surrender to the pilot.

At home David was thrilled but also somewhat upset for taking risks like I did but he greeted me with a very long and passionate kiss. After I got the stuff back in the Tac Room and plugged-in we showered together then went to bed. He asked me if I got us hot dogs from Pink's in Los Angeles but I honestly never had time, I actually had no idea where the bank heist was. They had me on the way back to the airport before they woke up the perps and put them inside a squad car.

That night on the TV we saw a repeat of the report from earlier that said the heist was on Wilshire Boulevard at the intersection with Westwood Boulevard, near the UCLA Campus. We both wondered how McKenzie was doing in law school.

David said the old `2001 Space Odyssey' movie was on TCM so I turned it on the TV and watched it with his boner in my mouth till the end of the movie. After the movie I played one of our favorite come shot compilation videos and jerked him into my mouth, his first orgasm in a month. It tasted a little bit stale so I spit it out.

David showed me a letter he got from the South Dakota tribal government that said they would not pay the reward for the safe return of their fourteen year old girl since she was now in prison awaiting trial for attempted murder. We both chuckled after reading it. David said he'd like to know where they mailed that letter. I told him I bet they mailed it to the FBI field office in Des Moines.

Another letter he read me came from a prosecutor's office in Des Moines that advised us the girl changed her plea to guilty on all counts in exchange for lighter sentencing. It said she wouldn't be eligible for parole until near her 40th birthday. The doctor was still awaiting trial and his medical license had been permanently suspended.

That night while I fell asleep with his flavor in my mouth I wondered how that bank heist would have been handled if David had been there too.

Contact the author: borischenaz gmail

Just a reminder, you are reading a rough draft version of the story.