Paul McKellips - Jericho 3

Miriam removed her winter parka and placed it on the back of her desk chair. She had modified her sweater vest earlier in the morning. She had configured a solitary green fabric strap that lifted up from the left side of her vest, wrapped around and behind her neck, then connected back down to the front right side of her sweater vest like a halter. The straps were sown into the vest where three empty water bottles sat snugly in three neatly sewn pockets.

Miriam reached over and pulled the vase on her desk closer and removed the artificial flowers. Camp looked over briefly and smiled as Miriam admired her flowers.

The lobby was overflowing with emergency orders and instructions yelled out in two different languages. No one heard Miriam pour the glass beads into the three empty water bottles — a bead that had been deposited into the vase each day for almost four years — and born from a single bead necklace worn one day and replenished the next.

Out of the top center drawer, Miriam removed two packages of cotton shoe laces she had purchased from one of the Haji stores in Terp Village. She had spent several long nights in her Terp Village hooch corning the black powder she had scoured for on Thunder. Using water as a binder, she had dried the black powder into cakes, crushed them again and again, and screened them into smaller sizes. The fine-grained, dried slurry of black powder covered the cotton shoelaces along with a light coating of glue from the hospital’s supply cabinet, and together created an archaic black match fuse with an ignition burn rate of nearly 20-feet per second.

The cotton shoelace had 10 inches of common single stem on top. Three extending stems were sewn together into the common stem, and all were covered and prepped with the dried slurry. Miriam staged each of the coupled stems down through the narrow slits she had cut into the blue plastic water bottle caps and then into the glass bead-filled water bottles already sitting in their customized pockets in her colorful wool vest.

She removed the iced tea bottle from her lower desk drawer, unscrewed the cap and emptied a new flask of oriental spice perfume into the bottle. She poured the mixture into the water bottles where it blended with the beads and the dried slurry laces. Miriam gently screwed the blue plastic caps back onto the water bottles.

She waited for several minutes until she saw him coming.

Dr. Mahmoud walked quietly down the long corridor and into the front lobby so he could inspect the triage drill. She bowed her head, said a quick prayer, then reached back to grab her parka. She put both arms in and zipped the parka up a few inches.

Camp looked over at Miriam and smiled again.

“What’s the Pashtu word for cold?” he shouted to Miriam over the mayhem and din in the lobby.

“Same as in English… brrrrr,” Miriam laughed without the slightest hint of betrayal in her voice.

Miriam got up and walked around the six-foot wall separating her cubicle from the front desk. She moved past triage cots where more than 40 Americans, Afghan soldiers and local Paktya role-players were conducting the emergency drill. She stepped to the center of the room.

She stopped.

Without speaking a word she reached into the pocket of her parka and pulled out a cigarette lighter she had found discarded on the picnic table between Terp Village and the checkpoint.

“What’s up with Miriam?” Camp whispered to Sylvia Dawkins who was sitting next to him as she snapped photos for her Armed Forces Network story.

Camp’s legs froze in situational awareness cement as Miriam lit the dried slurry cotton shoe lace that peeked out from the parka zipper. The flame raced up her coat and disappeared.

The initial “explosion” sounded more like a muffled backfire from an old pick-up truck.

The parka expanded with a violent heave of gas vapor then flames shot up through the collar, out the sleeves and through the zipper as Miriam screamed in pain.

Camp found his legs and after two steps was airborne through the front lobby until his body came crashing down on Miriam. The lobby erupted in panic as 40 people jumped for cover and 10 medics reached for M9s and M4s.

Sylvia Dawkins kept shooting photos.

Camp smothered Miriam with as much force as possible. In a split second, he wondered if he would actually hear the final detonation or feel his body disintegrating into a thousand tiny little pieces.

Flames poured through the open spaces between Camp’s arms and chest as an Army medic standing nearby grabbed a blanket and jumped onto the burning contortion of US Navy Captain “Camp” Campbell and Miriam the interpreter who was buried and hidden on the cement floor in a melting parka.

The flames were extinguished. The room was eerily silent. Everyone waited for the final blast that never came.

Camp rolled off of Miriam. His hands were burned and his uniform was smoldering and frayed.

Miriam moaned in pain. She was alive but semi-conscious.

The medics rushed over. Two medics tried to attend to Camp before he brushed them aside. Four others went to Miriam. They gently cut off the remains of her parka and rolled her over. The three water bottles had melted to her chest. The glass beads were still perfectly lodged against her chest as they carefully removed the improvised explosive device from around her neck.

“SECURE THIS BUILDING. No one leaves. No cell phones. No comms. No one moves,” Camp yelled as he got to his feet. “Everybody go to red.” The words echoed in the cinder-block hospital as medics took their weapons off of safety.

“She’s alive, Captain,” one of the medics yelled.

“Get her down to the ER,” Camp said as he ran next to the cot she was being carried on.

Miriam was delusional, moaning, and trying to speak. She was saying something in Pashtu.

“English, Miriam,” Camp prodded as they hurried down the single fluorescent lined corridor.

“My husband,” she uttered through her brown crusted face which had already started to swell.

“Your husband? Did he make you do this?” Camp yelled through her moans as she started to go into shock.

Inside the ER, Camp grabbed an intubation tube as Miriam was moved to a gurney. She writhed violently as Camp jammed the tube up her nose to make sure her airway stayed open before for massive swelling set in.

The medics moved in to cut away the clothing that hadn’t already melted to her skin.

Camp checked her vitals on both wrists and ankles.

“Check out her right arm, sergeant, she’s going to need an escharotomy, or we’ll lose that pulse,” Camp barked to the lead medic.

“I don’t think I can do that, captain.”

“Better learn quickly.”

Captain Henry ran in from the drill location in the operating room down the other corridor and just in time to see the carnage in the ER.

“Get me a scalpel and some large dressings, sergeant,” Henry barked. “Someone take a look at the captain’s hands.”

Camp was already on the cell phone he was issued at Bagram.

“Finn! Get over to the hospital now! We’ve had an attempted homicide bombing.”

“What the hell?” Finn said as he got up from his table in the DFAC and sprinted out the back door with his phone glued to his ear.

“Finn, find some C4 and bring it.”

“Where the hell am I supposed to - .”

Camp hung up as Finn changed directions and ran toward the EOD B-hut.

“Captain Dawkins!” he screamed down the corridor. Sylvia Dawkins came running carrying her Nikon with M9 pistol still in her thigh holster, while six other American medics stood guard in the lobby with weapons pointed at Afghan army soldiers, hospital workers and the local citizens who were participating in the drill.

“Yes, sir.”