Ana

CH 39

It had been a busy night and now Paul thought he could see signs of the coming dawn on the horizon as he fidgeted in the back seat of the Humvee along with members of the Army Rangers Special Forces Unit, Bravo. Their column consisted of two Stryker armored fighting vehicles, two Humvees, and a transport truck containing the healing bed along with everything else that had been in room 325. They were forming up in preparation for transporting the alien bed to a nearby military instillation. What was to happen after that, they wouldn't tell him. He had never been this frustrated in his entire career with the CIA. How dare they keep him in the dark? Ears would bleed from the yelling he was going to do once he found out who was pulling the strings on this operation. He rubbed his tired eyes. The long night was starting to take its toll on him in a way that more coffee couldn't fix. He needed sleep but didn't expect to get any until this bed was delivered and he was debriefed.

Sergeant Prescott climbed into the seat next to him and addressed the young Lieutenant sitting in the front seat. "We are ready to roll Sir."

The Lieutenant looked up from the documents he was reading. "Ok, give the order to move out."

Prescott lifted his radio and barked out the necessary orders, and shortly, the column began moving. He gave Paul a side glance. "God Damn bed... they sent us to pick up a God Damn bed in the middle of the night. Don't that beat all Lieutenant?"

The Lieutenant turned to him. "You should be glad we got it easy this time."

The Sergeant continued to grumble. "Easy? Sure, we got it easy if you don't mind being a delivery boy when we should be sleeping. What the hell does the brass want with a hospital bed anyway?" Prescott hooked a thumb at Paul. "I'm sure the Doc here knows. Ain't that right Doc?"

Paul shrugged. "I'm afraid that none of this is to be discussed." Before the Sergeant could complain more, they were interrupted by the roar of low flying helicopters.

The Sergeant pointed up. "Our air cover is here. That must be one important bed you got there."

The column moved quickly down the empty road while the solders made small talk about their girlfriends and sports, as solders do. Paul chose to remain quiet, refusing to answer the occasional question from the others. He wasn't happy with how this was being handled at all. Headquarters shouldn't have let the military take the lead in alien affairs. It made him wonder if the hit on Washington disorganized the upper command more than he had been lead to believe.

An hour later they were well out of the city when they came to a stop.

"Why are we stopping?" Paul asked the Sergeant who was talking on his radio.

"Looks like a wreck on the road. They're going to-"

He was cut off by a loud explosion nearby, the force of which rocked the Humvee hard. Paul looked around frantically but couldn't see what was happening. Both the Sergeant and Lieutenant began yelling orders as gun shots rang out all around them.

The fiery trails of rockets coming from the woods next to them screamed into the air followed by more explosions overhead. For a terrifying moment, he watched as one of the helicopters escorting them burst into flames and crashed into the road ahead of them. Then he dove onto the floor of the Humvee for cover only seconds before bullets began ripping into the passenger compartment. He couldn't see much from his position on the floor but felt a hard bump as if the Humvee had run off the road and soon after, there was a flash of bright light and a crushing jolt that knocked his head against something hard rendering him unconscious.

Paul slowly came out of the blackness. His ears were ringing loudly and his eyes burned. Than a sharp, unbearable pain shot through his broken body and he realized someone was kicking him. He rubbed the grit from his eyes to look up, straight into the smoking barrel of a gun. The last thing he heard was the sound of the rifle ending his life.