Seconds slipped away. He had no idea how much time had passed. But he was acutely aware of how little air he had. Already he could feel the difference, hot and suffocating like being under a damp wool blanket. And because there was no place for his exhalations to escape, he knew he was contaminating what air was left, saturating it with carbon dioxide. The mixture would eventually start to impair his mental capacity.
Just the thought sent his fingers digging, clawing, searching for an air pocket. Surely there must be more air trapped between the pieces of debris, caught somewhere in the folds. He tried twisting his body again. Bucked against the backpack. Smashed his helmet from side to side.
Suddenly he stopped.
There was crunching above him. And panting. He could hear a dog panting.
Bolo! Had he gotten away in time?
Creed strained to listen. He cocked his head, and that’s when he felt the drips on his hand. The panting wasn’t a dog’s. The panting was his own.
Drips of saliva from his mouth.
How could that be when his throat felt raw and cotton-dry? Swallowing was an effort. He was breathing hard now, sucking in air, and still he was breathless. He tried to calm the panting. He was breathing too fast, too deep. He’d use up his meager supply in no time.
He felt the surge of panic. He had stomped it down several times. Soon it would be something he could not control.
Creed lay flat, palms against the dirt ledge he had created beneath himself. Then he pushed until his wrists and elbows screamed for him to stop. He pushed until his back ached, until the muscles in his neck felt like they would explode, until the pain in his chest sliced too deep. He fought to breathe, clawing away swatches of debris, only to hear and see the space refill. All thought and reason had given in to basic instinct.
When he finally stopped it wasn’t because his muscles failed him. It was the hum that started to fill his ears, relentless but almost soothing like a lullaby.
He felt light-headed, and suddenly exhaustion dissolved into an unusual calm. He felt himself slipping into water, letting go of his body. Giving in and allowing the water to carry him.
He closed his eyes, and soon he was floating.
13.
Washington, D.C.
Ellie sat quietly at the corner of the long conference table. She had listened to Senator John Quincy’s long explanation about the documents provided by the DoD. All the momentum she had gathered during her brisk walk down the halls to come to this meeting had evaporated as soon as she came in the door. Senator Quincy derailed her quite easily by inviting her, in front of the rest of the committee, to come sit at the corner of his end of the table. It so disarmed her that she had barely heard him say how “pretty” she looked today.
This congressional hearing was not the first one on this particular subject. Senator Quincy reminded them of that. Congress had taken a look at these two classified government projects from the 1960s and 1970s. Project 112 and Project SHAD were a series of tests conducted by the Department of Defense. The purpose, which Senator Quincy read from a document, “was to identify U.S. warships’ and U.S. troops’ vulnerabilities to attacks with chemical or biological warfare agents and to develop procedures to respond to such attacks while maintaining a war-fighting capability.”
“Basically,” Quincy continued, “the DoD claimed they were trying to find out how chemical and biological agents behaved in different environments. How they affected our military personnel and how long it would take to respond effectively. They sprayed ships and dispersed aerosols in controlled areas that were supposed to simulate enemy attacks. Not until 2002 did the DoD admit that actual biological and chemical agents were used in these simulated attacks. Nasty stuff like VX nerve gas, Sarin nerve gas, and E. coli were used on our soldiers and sailors without their knowledge or their consent.”
Yes, Ellie thought, it sounded like a travesty, but she was raised in a colonel’s household and constantly heard her father talk about the sacrifices of the few to protect the greater good of a whole society. Military personnel didn’t necessarily sign up to be exposed to IEDs or machete-rampaging Taliban, but it happened as part of war. These soldiers and sailors were part of a project to protect the free world against an enemy who would use such weapons.