The Tin Man by Dale Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

twinge in her voice. If his wife ever used foul language, he decided, the likelier answer would have been, “Fucking-A, Sherlock, I’m having contractions!”
    “How long?”
    “A couple of hours. But no real pattern. Very irregular. It’s probably Braxton-Hicks again.”
    “Oh. Okay.” It was a lame response, but what else do you say? “Gee, dear, you’re in pain, and I’m really concerned, but it’s not
that
pain, the
official
pain, so I’ll go back to sleep now”? Braxton-Hicks contractions, sometimes mistaken for real labor pains, had been a regular occurrence for Wendy all during her pregnancy. So things were stirring, but the action probably wouldn’t start for several days. Right? Wendy wasn’t due for another three weeks. And first babies were more often late than early—right?
    They had left the party downtown right after midnight. They were staying in a suite at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Sacramento, not far from the tavern. During the ride back to the hotel, he sensed that Wendy seemed a bit more uncomfortable than usual, but that was probably due to fatigue—her normal bedtime was closer; to nine P.M.
    They probably never should have come to Sacramento at this stage—hers was the definition of a high-risk pregnancy. Wendy Tork McLanahan, an electronics and aeronautical engineer first on contract to the U.S. Air Force and now an executive and chief designer for a small Arkansas-based high-tech aerospace firm, had spent most of the past two years in and out of hospitals after twice ejecting out of experimental military bombers, the latest just last June over the People’s Republic of China, alongwith Patrick and the crew’s copilot, Nancy Cheshire. Wendy had just recovered from her injuries from the
first
ejection when she was forced to eject from the second plane.
    Thankfully,-she did not lose the fetus. After a brief hospital stay and a few weeks to recuperate—and be debriefed by what seemed like every agency in the U.S. government except the Department of Agriculture—Wendy returned to work and kept on with her duties as vice president in charge of advanced avionics design at Sky Masters, Inc. until her maternity leave began two weeks ago.
    She was in great shape, the baby was fine, and she had insisted they could not miss Paul’s celebration. And after all that had happened over the past two years, Patrick wanted a family life, a
normal
life, more than anything else in the world. He hadn’t done much of the family thing for most of the last ten years, and he was anxious to get reacquainted with everyone.
    But here they were, four hundred miles away from home, and the baby was obviously headed down the chute very soon. Decisions. Good, bad, who the hell knew? Stop waffling and deal with it
now
, Patrick told himself.
    “I’m going to call Dr. Linus in San Diego, just in case, get someone standing by,” he told Wendy. Her nod and her touch told Patrick she really didn’t think it was false labor this time, so he picked up the telephone. Time to get moving. “Jon’s got the company jet at Mather demoing that electro-reactive cargo liner technology,” Patrick reminded her. “I think we should try to make it back to San Diego.” Dr. Jon Masters, their boss and president of Sky Masters, Inc., was at the Aerojet-General rocket plant east of Sacramento, to demonstrate a new lightweight technology he developed for protectingan airliner’s cargo compartment from a bomb blast. “The jet can be fueled up and ready to go in less than two hours, and we can be at Mather in thirty minutes and at the hospital in Coronado in four hours.”
    “All right,” Wendy responded. “I’ll get dressed.” She swung her legs out of bed and headed for the bathroom, then stopped halfway. “Dear?”
    “What, sweetheart?” Patrick replied. He turned, Wendy was reaching for a towel—and then he saw the growing bloody puddle on the white tile floor, and leaped out of bed with a speed and agility