The Savage Horde

Chapter 11

A long mid-line incision was made in order to expose the internal organs. Rourke began exploring the stomach.

Dr. Milton's voice sounded nearly as labored as the respirator. "Why are you going through the gastrocolic omentum, Doctor Rourke?"

Mechanically, his mind on his hands and not his words, Rourke answered. "To open the lesser sac of the stomach." The membrane was a loose fold. "Suction" he called, Milton himself assisting. The greater omentum covered the anterior stomach surface and intestines like a drape, Rourke stopping, noting a hematoma at the mesenteric attachment. "We have to evacuate this hematoma." Evacuating, Rourke inspected the stomach wall between the leaves of the greater and lesser omentum. There was damage, a whole bullet, not a fragment, partially severing the connection to the rear wall of the abdomen. "Gotta get that sucker out,"

Rourke remarked, exhaling hard, feeling ready to collapse. As each bullet or fragment was removed, Rourke carefully repaired the organ damage with continuous locking chromic sutures.

According to the clock on the surgery wall—he supposed bulkhead would be more appropriate since they were on a naval vessel and—likely—already underway, he had spent more than an hour and a half sorting through the mess that was Natalia's stomach, finding bullet fragments and piecing them meticulously together—if he left even the smallest fragment, the complications could be legion—could be mortal.

"Do you have your closing sutures available?"

"You're ready to close her?" Dr. Milton asked.

"No—just thinking ahead—you have what I need?"

"Yes."

"Fine."

"Are you sure there were seven bullets?"

"Yes," Rourke nodded. "Somebody gimme a wipe, huh?"

A hand reached out—he didn't see who it belonged to, his eyes bothering him with the light as well, the glare—he needed a smoke, needed sleep—but Natalia needed life. "Damnit—" Rourke almost spat the word. In the fat of the greater omentum he found what he had not wanted to find. The sixth bullet had been intact—he had hoped that the seventh would be.

It was not.

He had the jacket, the gilding metal—but the core of the bullet—the core had separated and was still somewhere inside her.

As Rourke held it up, trying to determine if anything other than the core itself were missing, Milton asked, "Is that it?"

"Unless a bullet is made of lead alone, it usually has a whole or partial jacket surrounding it. These should be full metal jacketed if they were standard G.I.

Ball—and all the others have been. Somehow the jacket peeled away from the lead core and the lead core is missing in there still—and you can see the way the jacket peeled back that it was ripped—a lot of force bearing on it. Looks like there are pinhead-sized fragments of the jacket missing as well. Pll need someone standing by with a microscope so we can piece this thing back together as we go—can't afford to leave any pieces behind."

"I'll get someone on that," Milton murmured.

Rourke closed his eyes for an instant—he thought of the eyes beneath the closed lids beyond the surgical tent. "Natalia," he whispered.