Joe Rush 02: Protocol Zero (30 page)

I told her, “I’m glad you’re all right.”

She said, “I’m not.”

I said, “Where are you going?”

She said, “Oh, I’m already there.”

“Karen. I love you.”

“Funny way to show it, Joe.” She skied away.

•   •   •

BACK IN WASHINGTON, BEFORE EDDIE AND I HAD FLOWN TO ALASKA THIS
summer, the admiral had insisted that we watch a warning film, an old black-and-white copy of an original made at a German World War Two prison camp, Treblinka. It was one of the films that Admiral Galli came up with from a seemingly inexhaustible supply of archived, classified files, which he regularly used to underline points. We’d pissed and moaned because it was a nice, warm spring day, and Eddie wanted to shop for souvenirs for his wife and daughters, and I wanted to sleep at the hotel.

Instead, we were ushered into the admiral’s screening room, space for six, where we slumped into cushioned chairs and, coffee before us, watched a grainy film. We sat up a little. Then we sat up a lot. Eddie grew so sick at what we were seeing that at one point he gagged.

Shot one: three smiling white-coated doctors standing by a bathtub filled with water. Shot two: the biggest, fattest, least-healthy looking doctor waves his hand, and two German soldiers dump lots of ice cubes into the tubs.

The three prisoners look like toothpicks when they lurch in, terrified, eyes swinging between the smiling doctors and the ice-filled tubs. And then, clearly forced, they remove their rags. The man folds his neatly. Maybe once he was a lawyer, or businessman, the kind of guy who draped his clothing neatly over the top of a chair each night, before climbing beneath laundered sheets with his perfumed wife. The woman refused at first to get into the tub. The soldiers pushed her in. The kid was screaming, but the film had no sound reel with it. We only heard the whirring projector and the muted hum of Washington on a warm spring day outside, where cherry blossoms bloomed.

“You two Marines
will not
let yourself get frostbite or hypothermia this summer,” Admiral Galli said. “I hate this film and the people who made it. But it’s the best graphic warning I know. Watch!”

Watch? Horrified, we couldn’t stop. The Nazi doctors slid big red thermometers in the water, and smaller ones in victims’ mouths. Someone, an Allied technician likely, had added numbers on the bottom of the screen. The thermometers in the film showed temperature in Centigrade. The added numbers were Fahrenheit, easier for us to understand.

“Body temp, ninety-eight point six,” whispered Eddie. The immersion had begun.

The victims began shivering.

The shivering grew worse.

The child shivered more than the adults.

“Keep watching,” Galli said.

He’d given us reading material, and I’d skimmed it, but now, facts slammed home. I knew for the Jews in the tubs, as their skin temperature dropped, the nerves on the surface pulled back, pushed blood farther into the body. It was natural triage, the body sacrificing its skin in exchange for keeping organs—heart, lungs, kidneys—warm.

The fingers in those tubs were probably numb by now.

At body temp 97F, the father seemed to pause, and I knew that inside, he’d gone into a pre-shiver, the body’s expectation of near convulsions to come.

Fat Nazi doctor said something to skinny one, pointing to his own ears, then Dad’s ears, keenly observing, fascinated, probably saying something like,
“Und now ze ears vill begin to hurt him!”

At 88F, the doctors were looking at blood in a test tube. “Thicker blood,” Fatso probably remarked. “At zis temperature, ze blood thickens into natural oil.”

By 87F, I knew from the reading, even oxygen was being sent from the outer surface of the bodies into the interior. The three victims were convulsing with shivers. Any air or warmth would be fleeing to the core.

The father clapped his hands over his ears. He was probably trying to block out his jackhammering heartbeat.

The woman moaning, pleading.
Let my son out, at least!

Tears streamed down the kid’s face, as he lifted both shaking arms to his parents. They could not help him. Fat, happy doctor took notes. Skinny doctor spoke to the boy, with a kind expression, as if reassuring him, as if any minute he’d give the kid a lollipop. Doctor with the limp just watched, left elbow cupped in right palm, right hand stroking chin. Hmm. Very interesting.

The soldiers remained expressionless, on the side.

At eighty-five degrees, freezing victims start to think they’re
hot,
not cold, as I now felt, lying in the snow. I had to get my parka off. I was burning up. But my fingers refused to grip the zipper head.

Someone was looking down at me. I gazed up. At an eighty-five degree body temperature, I knew, people dying of cold actively hallucinate.

The stranger said, in Jens’s voice, “I found your snowmobile, Joe. I gassed it up. Thanks for the loan.”

He added, “Feeling chilly, guy? Wish me luck. Off to Canada!”

The stranger—or hallucination, more likely—was gone.

Major Edward Nakamura, USMC, sat on the right-hand front seat of a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter as it raced south by southwest out of Barrow. It flew low. The aurora borealis had ended and a thick cloud cover had returned. The lights of the copter shone in an arc below, sweeping across a white blanket of unrolling, undulating tundra. Major Nakamura tried to batten down the rage and fear and consider what he needed to do.

I hope that Joe is at that cabin.

But the whole attempt to get there had the heavy feeling of too late. Five heavily armed Rangers rode behind. Add Nakamura, that made six. He settled back and felt the fury as a knotting in his neck and jaw, and a line of tension that made his back into a steel rod. His teeth hurt. His eyes throbbed. He could not stop flashing back to the way that General Homza’s adjutant, Major Garreau, had refused to listen when Eddie had burst into headquarters, trying to reach the general.

“Your friend just attacked two Rangers,” Garreau had said.

“Just let me talk to General Homza for a minute! He’ll explain! We made a deal!”

“The general is busy. If you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a mass escape underway.”

Homza was out on the ice, Garreau said. Homza was personally watching the last few yards of open space closed up out there. Homza was directing his field commanders. And after that he was talking to Washington, discussing the situation with the secretary of defense himself.

“You’ll see him when he’s free,” Garreau said.

And then, when Homza had finally walked in, exhausted, and spotted Nakamura in the glass room, he’d raised his eyes inquiringly at the adjutant, cocked his head to listen to Eddie’s tale
,
and as it came out Homza had slumped and looked blank for some moments, turned to the adjutant and said, simply, “Give him what he needs.”

Eddie thinking,
I need to take back the last hour that you just wasted. That’s what I need.

Why had Homza kept the arrangement with Joe and Eddie secret? Maybe he wanted credit. Maybe he was playing it safe.

Ten miles to go,
Eddie Nakamura thought, eyeing the odometer, calculating distance backward since they’d lifted off from Barrow Airport, less than a half hour ago.

If Joe isn’t there, if I figured this wrong, if I misread what he was telling me, I have no idea where he is.

The pilot said, pointing, “Should be ahead!”

There would be no lights to announce the place. They flew by instrument. The spotlights swept over snow and for a moment some animal was there, scurrying away, wolverine, looked like, nature’s mass of warm-blooded fury, a fierce creature but one that knew when to run, not fight, knew when to play it smart against bad odds.

Eddie flashed to Homza’s face again, a quick flick to that countenance which, up until Eddie told the story, passed along Joe’s claims, had always seemed so sure. Eddie had seen the animation go out of it as the weight of realization hit. Homza probably knowing that he’d blown it. Knowing, if Joe was right, if Jens Erik was who they wanted, that many of the general’s steps until now had been blunders; the arrest of Valley Girl, the marginalization of Joe, the failure to realize a basic fact of the Arctic, that ice freezes, and then to not have enough troops to handle things when it did . . .

Game over, General, for you.

The pilot said, “That cabin has to be here. Where is it? We’re here, but everything looks like everything else. Wait! There.” He pointed.

And there it was, in the floodlights, a burned-out wreck of what had been some dilapidated shack. A wooden hut. An escape for researchers. Lake number nine’s shelter, now a smashed-up mass of barely smoking charcoal, hissing as the last embers were smothered up by blowing snow.

“I don’t see anyone,” the voice in Eddie’s earphone said.

“Circle.”

“I don’t see tracks.”

“You wouldn’t, in this wind. Circle, I said.”

The copter tilted and veered and they began a search pattern. Eddie’s heart beat loud and hard in his throat. Eddie heard the chatter of talk between the pilot and Barrow, and more talk coming in from Rangers out at sea, on ice, manning the new oceanside barrier. No one else could escape from Barrow anymore.

Big deal. At least eighty people did.

Now he was startled to spot the wreckage of a small plane, also burned, by the lakeside. He frowned, considered ordering the chopper to touch down, so they could continue looking for Joe on foot. If a plane was here, this was definitely where Joe had been heading.

The pilot said, “I don’t think anyone’s here.”

“Then who burned this place?”

“I don’t know. Whoever did it is gone.”

“Keep circling,” Eddie ordered. “I see smoke down there. This is fresh. Shut up and look for my friend.”

•   •   •

THEY SAW THE BODY TWO MINUTES LATER. IT WAS A MOUND HALF BURIED
in blowing snow, an hourglass-shaped lump of white that ended in something dark, like fabric, the half-removed snowsuit. Eddie was the first one out of the chopper. He kept his sidearm out. He knelt by Joe’s side.

“Uno?”

No movement. No breathing. No rise and fall of chest. No warmth.

“Oh, man. Uno!”

Eddie thumped on the chest to get the heart moving. He thumped hard. He couldn’t figure out why the thermal suit was unzipped. And the hands. No gloves.
Hypothermia victims get confused and take off their clothes.
Eddie unzipped the jumpsuit further, tore off his balaclava, lowered his ear to the bone-white chest, above Joe’s heart. Eddie listening. Eddie sitting up and spitting out an order that the Rangers stop making noise, crunching around in the snow.

He’s dead.

No, wait.

Do I hear something? Or do I just want to hear it?

Faintly, faintly, he heard it.

“Get him back! Get him in the chopper! Now, now now!!!”

•   •   •

THE HALF-HOUR TRIP SEEMED LIKE IT TOOK A MONTH. RANJAY WAS WAITING
at the hospital, where they landed. Ranjay telling Eddie to stand back, let him get close. Ranjay saying, as they wheeled Joe in, that friends do not operate on friends. That friends make mistakes when they do. That doctors should never work on good friends.

“
You’re
a friend. I’m going in, too,” Eddie said.

“You’re not working on him.”

Eddie bulled up to the little Indian. Eddie’s face in Ranjay’s. Eddie wanting to punch the guy, except he saw, in those brown eyes, strength and determination. Eddie slumping. Eddie unable to speak. Ranjay turning and, with the emergency staff, rushing Joe into the operating room.

Ranjay calling back to Eddie, “Come! Major! Come in and see!” Then, as if addressing a child, “But don’t touch.”

•   •   •

THEY INSERTED A LONG CATHETER INTO JOE’S ABDOMINAL CAVITY. THEY
wheeled in saline solution, just salt water, but warm, and began the flush. It was like flushing a car radiator. The warm solution was supposed to raise his body temp, but not too fast.

Eddie remembered a story. It was that a capsized boatload of Italian seamen had been rescued from the Atlantic, not from the ocean like the frigid one here, not iced over, but from waters that were only fifty degrees.

The rescuers had carefully warmed the seventeen grateful victims in blankets and poured them coffee. The Italians had recovered nicely, quickly, in no way in as bad a shape as Joe. They stood up, unaided. They walked together to the ship’s mess. They were smiling and chatting. Within minutes, out of the blue, all seventeen collapsed and died. Heart attacks.

Can’t warm up too fast
.

My best friend, Eddie thought, going back in memory. Uno and Eddie at college, in Massachusetts, in ROTC. Roommates. Eddie and Joe at Parris Island, competing to see who was the better Marine. Eddie winning the push-up competition, Uno winning on the obstacle course. Eddie in hand-to-hand combat. Uno, earning his monicker,
Number One,
during war games in the hills, capturing the general of the “Blue” team.

You were always better at strategy than me, Joe.

Eddie watched the monitors. They held steady. Joe’s limbs looked less waxy. The pulse rose a tiny bit, and so did Eddie’s hope. Ranjay ordered more saline solution brought in. Joe’s blood pressure was almost nonexistent. Eddie remembered all the piss-drenched clothes they’d cut away, all the sweat, bodily fluids lost in his body’s attempt to warm itself. Eddie saw cold blisters on Joe’s limp hands.

Ranjay to Eddie, as they finished. “Now we wait, Major. He was badly injured even before the exposure. He needs a CAT scan. He’s got back injury. He’s got bumps on the front and back of his head. Major, even if he survives, we may need to do amputations.”

“I understand, Ranjay. Christ.”

“Let’s get some coffee.”

“Ranjay, you’re a good guy. You’re an honorary Marine.”

The little man beamed. But then he looked sad. His head wove side to side in the Indian mannerism.
We must wait and see and hope for fate to be kind.

“Tea for me, please,” Ranjay told the cafeteria girl.