Red Awakening (Red Zone 2)

Beneath her fingertips, she could feel Mace slipping away from her, his breathing becoming shallower by the second. She couldn’t lose him. Not after everything they’d been through. Not now.

Ignacio reached for Mace, feeling for a pulse. “Too fast. He’s struggling to breathe.” He lifted the shirt. There was a massive black bruise on his side. He felt his way along it. “Broken ribs.” He kept his hands flat on Mace’s chest for a minute. “Uneven breathing. Punctured lung. Probably internal bleeding.” He seemed to be listing what he found purely for his own benefit. He ran his fingers down Mace’s throat. “Trachea is shifting to the right. We need to relieve the pressure on his lung.”

“What does that mean?” she said.

He smiled at her and touched his ear, obviously activating a comm link. “Doc? I got a situation here. Looks like a tension pneumothorax, possibly a hemothorax. I don’t have any medical supplies, and our boy’s heart rate is right up, breathing’s labored, and his trachea has started moving right.”

Keiko reached for Mace’s hand and held it tight, her eyes on Ignacio, wishing she could hear both sides of the conversation.

“No can do,” he said. “We’re in engine failure. Sandi is trying to glide as far as she can, but we’ll have to bail. Right now, state he’s in, he won’t survive a jump.” He listened, his jaw tightening, and then his head hung forward. “Damn. Okay. Yeah, I’ll see what I can find. Stay on the line.”

“What is it?” she demanded.

Ignacio’s head came up, and his dark eyes hit hers. “We need to get the air out of his chest cavity. It’s compressing his lungs and heart, and it’s killing him. There’s blood in there, too, but only surgery will fix that. Right now, the priority is getting the air out.”

“How?” She looked at Mace. His face was pale, his lips turning blue. They were running out of time.

“Normally, I’d shove a fourteen-gauge needle in his chest, but we don’t have one. If I cut into him with my knife, the hole will just seal when I take it out, keeping the air inside. We need something tube-like that can keep the hole open and let the air out.”

She looked around, frantically searching for something, anything, that would fit his description. Ignacio started opening and shutting the various cubbies.

“I can’t see anything.” Panic made her voice thin.

“Me neither. Sandi,” he called, “we need something tube-like.”

“There’s nothing up here. Don’t even see a med kit.”

“How long have we got until we need to bail?”

He meant jump from the shuttle. Keiko’s stomach spasmed at the thought. But she’d already leaped from a building, right? She could do this. Only, the building hadn’t been moving at the time. Don’t think about that. Think about helping Mace.

“Five minutes, max. Probably less. We got some air currents that are helping keep us up here. But we aren’t going to get much more time than that.”

Keiko looked out the window at the downtown skyline. They weren’t far from the park, but she wasn’t sure how much control the pilot had over a shuttle without an engine. They could only coast for so long. The chances of them crashing into one of the buildings seemed awfully high to her. And even if they made it to the park, what then? How would Mace survive the jump? How would any of them?

She turned her attention back to Mace. But as she did, her eyes caught something outside the shuttle.

“There.” She pointed. “The telescoping antenna. It’s a hollow tube, right?”

Ignacio’s head snapped around. “Genius. Hold on while I open the door and get it. Sandi, I’m going outside. Keep it steady.”

“I’ll do what I can,” she called back.

He slid the door open, held on tight to its edge, leaned over the back of the shuttle, and snapped off the antenna. A blast hit the side of the shuttle. They hurtled sideways. Ignacio slipped. Keiko threw herself at him. He grabbed her hand, and she tugged. The shuttle evened out, and Ignacio crashed back inside.

“Thanks,” he said as he knelt beside Mace.

Rapid gunfire sounded off their left side, and Keiko glanced away from Mace long enough to see that there was an Enforcement armored drone chasing them, a black helicopter close behind.

“Striker,” Ignacio snapped into his communication device, “keep them off us. I’m about to cut into Mace.”

The chopper opened fire on Enforcement, forcing the drone to engage them and abandon the shuttle.

“Help me.” Ignacio had a knife out, the blade cutting through Mace’s shirt on the right side of his chest.

Keiko knelt beside him. “What do you want me to do?”