by Ethan Cross
Joey had hacked the hospital’s computer network and found Corrigan’s exact location along with the codes to the facility’s security office. They passed through the lobby and followed Joey’s directions down the maze of hospital corridors. Calming pastels and soothing off-whites covered the walls, the colors at odds with the antiseptic smell. Katherine repeated the instructions in her head. Elevator 4 to the lower level. Right out of the elevator. Take a left at Records and Billing. Security Office on the right.
Joey’s directions were spot on. A heavy dark-gray door marked Security sat in the spot he had said with a keypad on the wall beside it. Annabelle punched in the code, and the door opened with a buzz. Katherine had been with NCIS for seven years, and she had never shot anyone, although rigorous training had made her a proficient marksman. She told herself that she wasn’t actually going to shoot these men. The guards would just be tranquilized. They would wake up in a couple hours with a slight headache and a vague idea of what happened, other than that they would be no worse for wear. Somehow it still felt like the most criminal and underhanded part of Munroe’s plan.
The door opened into a hallway with a bank of lockers straight ahead, the control room on the left, and a small break room equipped with a fridge, microwave, and two round laminate tables. The place smelled of sweat and burnt coffee. Katherine sat the aluminum case near the door and pulled the tranq gun from her jacket.
Having practiced the movements thoroughly in their heads, Katherine and Annabelle immediately swung to the left into the control room. Two men stared at a bank of monochrome monitors showing the various corridors of the hospital. One of the men turned and reached for a button on his panel, but the women dropped both of the guards with a shot to the side of the neck.
That wasn’t so bad, Katherine thought.
Then she heard Annabelle say, “Wait!” before screaming in pain. She turned to see the barbs of a Taser embedded in Annabelle’s chest. The dark-skinned woman shook as electrical current pulsed through her body.
Katherine wheeled around as the guard that had attacked Annabelle dropped his X26C Taser to the floor and tackled her. The man must have been concealed from view down the hall by the lockers.
Momentum carried Katherine forward into the sleeping guard’s chair. Strong arms wrapped around her thin frame, pinning her arms to her sides. Lifting her completely off the floor, the guard spun her around and slammed her into the block wall, driving the air from her lungs. The tranq gun fell from her grasp.
But she wasn’t about to let some rent-a-cop get the best of her.
She slammed her heel down on the inside of the man’s right knee. He buckled to that side but kept hold with his arms. With her feet back on the floor, she dropped down, slipped from between his arms, and whirled around in a crouch.
Her palm thrusted out and into the man’s groin. The hard blow bent him forward, and she followed it with a chop to the side of his neck.
The man stumbled backward, dazed and hunched forward. Wasting no time, she retrieved the tranq gun and fired a dart into the chest of the overzealous security officer.
She then moved to Annabelle’s side, pulled the barbs from her chest, and helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?” Katherine said.
“Not really,” Annabelle whispered.
“Don’t worry. Nothing ever goes as planned, and so I actually feel better that we had this happen. Maybe it means that everything will go smooth from here on out.”
Annabelle gave her a doubtful look but didn’t comment. She just leaned against the wall, straightened her wig, and tried to compose herself. Katherine retrieved the aluminum case and removed the small circular device from its padded foam enclosure. The black machine had a diameter of nearly two feet and looked like a game piece from a giant checker board. Following the procedure that Joey had outlined, she hooked the device into the hospital’s intercom system and configured the proper output options.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
After changing into a pair of nurse’s scrubs, Katherine commandeered a gurney and followed the corridors leading to John Corrigan’s room. When she saw the designation for the proper wing, she inserted the specially designed earplugs that Munroe had received with the circular device. She then pulled out her phone and pressed the button to send the text message that she had already typed out: At the nest. Munroe had suggested that all their communications remain innocuous in case of later inquiry. They had purchased burner phones for the same reason.
He had also given them a brief description of what the black disk, which was now hooked into the hospital intercom system, would accomplish. The device was a sonic weapon using a principal similar to the Long Range Acoustic Device used by the US military. LRAD systems had countered pirate attacks, controlled riots, and acted as communication devices, but they could also weigh over three hundred pounds. This device was tiny in comparison but still harnessed infrasonic sound waves, those below the frequencies audible to human beings, in order to destabilize the inner ear of anyone in range. The debilitating sound waves would cause those affected to lose focus and balance.
The hospital’s secure corridor that held prisoners in need of surgery rested just ahead, and Katherine had yet to notice a change in the behavior of the people around her. But then, as if struck down all at once by an act of God, everyone in the corridor, except for her, dropped to their knees with their hands over their ears.
She rushed forward and typed in the code Joey had supplied. The automatic double doors swung open, and she pushed her way past the writhing guards and hospital personnel. She followed the corridor to John Corrigan’s room and found the former soldier hooked to all manner of machinery. Munroe had called in earlier to get an update on Corrigan’s condition. He’d learned that the doctors had woken the prisoner with no complications, and Corrigan was nearly ready to be moved back to the USDB. Corrigan twisted against his restraints and rocked back and forth, unable to bring his hands up to block his ears.
Katherine wheeled the gurney into the room, moved to his bedside, and inserted a pair of the earplugs that canceled the sonic weapon’s effects. Then she pulled a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and held it up for him to see. It stated that she was there to get him out. He nodded, the surprise evident on his face.
After undoing his restraints, she helped him onto the gurney and quickly pushed it into the hall, clumsily banging the sides of the doorway as she went. With great effort, she forced herself to calm down. Everything was going according to plan. The guards were disabled, and they were almost in the clear.
She pushed the button to open the automatic doors and continued down the hall. She had just started repeating Joey’s directions for her escape in her head when the people in the corridor seemed to relax and many stood back up, shaking their heads and looking around at each other in shock and fear.
The sound of running feet echoed from down the hall, and she turned around to see the guards from the secure wing taking up pursuit.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Katherine shoved the gurney forward as fast as she could, her legs pumping hard to gain momentum. People dove out of the way of the escaping pair and hugged the walls as they sped by. Eventually, they hit the proper elevator and waited as it slowly rose to meet them. She pulled the tranq gun from her coat and aimed it back in the direction of the running guards. She sighted in and squeezed the trigger when the first man was in range. A high-velocity dart blasted from the gun’s barrel and struck the guard square in the chest. He dropped to the polished white floor. As Katherine fired again, his partner dove into one of the doorways to avoid a similar fate.
The elevator doors slid open with a ding, and she swung the gurney from the hallway into the elevator. A moment later, she ran down the ground floor corridor toward the lobby. She could see the sliding front doors of the medical center, but a pair of guards stood in her path within the lobby. They had their Tasers dra
wn and aimed at her.
The tranq gun held a five round magazine of darts, and she had already used four. Only enough left for one guard, but perhaps the second man would flee if she disabled his partner.
She jerked back on the gurney, but her feet slid on the laminate floor, and she nearly lost control. The guards raised the Tasers and screamed, “Stop or we’ll shoot!”
Raising her weapon and using the gurney as cover, she fired at one of the guards, a big man with a beard, the one she judged to be the tougher of the two. The dart burst from the end of the gun, spiraled through the air, and missed the guard completely, sailing just over his shoulder and embedding in the drywall behind him.
For a second, she couldn’t believe it. How could she have missed? A dart gun likely wasn’t the most accurate of weapons, but at this range…
The elevator dinged down the hall behind her, and more guards rushed into the hall.
The two guards from the lobby must have guessed that she had spent her last round and cautiously moved forward.
The officers had her boxed in with no way to escape and no way to defend herself. It was over. Not just the escape, but life as she knew it.
Then the guards in the lobby fell to the floor, and Annabelle said, “Come on!”
Katherine wasted no time in following. They burst out of the hospital’s front doors and helped Corrigan into the awaiting Yukon that Annabelle had positioned in the loading area. Annabelle hopped behind the wheel, and Katherine jumped up into the passenger seat. She saw the guards rushing out of the front doors in the rearview as they sped away.
“What happened back there?” Katherine said. “You weren’t supposed to turn off the sonic weapon until we were clear.”
“It made a sizzling sound and then quit working. I think it’s fried.”
Katherine heard the sirens approaching close behind them. Too close, coming too fast. “I hope the next part of Munroe’s plan goes smoother than this.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Munroe knew that the moment a report broadcasted across the airwaves that a death row murderer had escaped, every cop within fifty miles would converge on Leavenworth—setting roadblocks, dispatching choppers, checking all methods of transportation: airports, bus stations, train depots, car rental offices. The police would keep searching around the clock until they had run them to ground or were certain that their quarry had escaped the net. They could try to hide out somewhere until the police presence died down, but they didn’t have time for that. Instead, Deacon’s plan involved slipping out right beneath the noses of their pursuers.
The twenty-six-foot U-Haul truck that they had rented under a false identity allowed for that to happen. A roll-up door covered the truck’s backend. Pull-out ramps allowed the Yukon to drive right into the back. It would be a tight fit, but they had about a foot to spare on each side. Once the Yukon and its passengers had been safely loaded inside, Black would drive them out right through the roadblocks and past the police.
Munroe waited in the rear cargo area as Black bumped over the country roads to the chosen rendezvous point. Munroe’s disposable phone vibrated against his leg, and the truck’s progress halted. It was the signal that they had arrived. Late the previous afternoon, Black scouted for rendezvous locations and chose a spot where they could discretely load the SUV without any witnesses. And, if someone did see them, they would be long gone before that person realized the significance of what they had observed.
Jumping to his feet, Munroe rushed to the end of the truck and threw up the rear door. Then he knelt down, felt his way to a crouch, and hopped to the ground. They needed to pull out the vehicle ramps, and Black couldn’t do it alone. He heard Black’s footsteps come around the side of the truck, and with a few words and a bit of guidance, the duo slid both ramps out of their holding brackets in the truck’s bumper and dropped their front ends to the gravel and dirt of the rural roadway.
With the ramps in place, they were ready to receive cargo. Now all they had to do was wait for the women to arrive with the package.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
When Munroe had calmly described his plan, Katherine felt that he had considered most of the variables and that things would likely go off without a hitch. Of course, she also knew that in reality things never went as planned, and so she had anticipated a few hiccups. But nothing like this.
First, the device quit working. Then, a cop car had apparently been on patrol within a few blocks of the hospital and had immediately taken up pursuit of the escaping SUV.
Annabelle had practiced driving a specific route from the hospital to the rendezvous point. Now that was shot to hell. They had veered off on so many side streets into residential areas and whipped around so many turns in attempts to lose their pursuer that Katherine had no idea where they were, and she doubted that Annabelle had any better sense of their actual location. If they didn’t lose the cop soon, backup would arrive, and they would have no chance of escape.
They needed to lose the tail, but the driver of the blue and white patrol car was well-trained. For every turn or corner that Annabelle slid around, the patrol car matched the maneuver perfectly.
“Does this thing have an automatic open button for the back hatch?” Katherine asked.
“I think so.”
“Get ready to push it.”
Katherine vaulted over the seat, knocking Corrigan out of the way, and then repeated the move into the Yukon’s third row. She reached over the seat, pulled up on a lever, and pushed one half of the third row flat. Pulling a latch and lifting up, she unclamped the removable seat from its brace. It now sat unsecured on top of the rear floor.
She looked out the back window at the cop car riding their bumper. Its siren wailed, and the blue and red flashers pulsed wildly inside its light bar. “Keep going straight and open the lift-gate for the back hatch,” she yelled to the front of the vehicle.
The rear hatch slowly raised up. She didn’t even wait for it to open completely. Placing her heels on the seats of the second row and pushing with all her strength, Katherine shoved the unclamped third row seat out of the back of the Yukon.
It landed on the hood of the patrol car, crumpling the metal, and then the car’s momentum pulled the seat up the hood and through the windshield. The car swerved back and forth across the blacktop roadway. The cop fought to maintain control but ultimately lost the battle and smashed into a Toyota Tundra parked alongside the road.
Katherine felt a momentary rush of victory and wanted to pump her fist in the air and scream, but then the reality of what she had just done set in. She had ran a fellow law enforcement officer off the road. The car’s driver could have been injured or worse. Her joy instantly turned to guilt and sadness.
“Close it down,” she said to Annabelle and then climbed back to the front seat.
It took a few moments and a few wrong turns to find the right path, but Annabelle must have possessed an impeccable sense of direction because she managed to guide them back on track and find the rendezvous point. The open rear end of the U-Haul truck beckoned them in, and they easily crawled up the ramp and into the cargo area.
The side doors had little clearance but opened just enough for Katherine to squeeze her small frame through the gap. She hopped out of the truck and helped Black slide the ramps back into the holders. While she did that, Annabelle exited the vehicle and started preparing the row of cardboard boxes that would hide the Yukon from any eager young officer who decided to check the cargo hold for himself.
Once the ramps were secured, Black said, “What took you so long?”
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Antonio de Almeida sat next to his mother’s bedside and read to her from the works of Gabriel García Márquez. His recitation halted abruptly as an insistent knock on her door demanded attention. He stood and opened the door to reveal the pale form of Oliver Pike. “I told you to wait in the
car,” he said. “I don’t understand why such simple instructions confound you.”
He still seethed with anger at Pike over the mess the American had caused at Munroe’s hospital, a spectacle which could have been forgiven if the mission had been accomplished.
“You weren’t answering your phone.”
“I turned it off. I told you that I wanted to spend time with my mother undisturbed.”
“Trust me. You’ll want to hear this.”
“What’s happened?”
“It’s Corrigan,” Pike said. “He just escaped, and he had help. It has to be Munroe and his team. Who else would want to keep Corrigan alive?”
Almeida inhaled a deep calming breath. He beat down his anger, trying to keep it contained beneath the surface, but his emotions teetered on the verge of boiling over and exploding. He walked back to his mother’s side and stroked her hair. In a whisper, he said, “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We never should have been forced to hurt anyone. Let alone innocent people.”
Pike scoffed derisively. “It happens. Man up and grow a pair of balls.”
Almeida’s rage exploded. It took on shape and form and could no longer be contained or held in check. He sprang toward his companion, and before Pike could even register the attack, Almeida had a knife to the American’s throat and the man’s back slammed against the wall. He pressed the edge of the blade into the soft meat of the white man’s neck and wanted to slice open the veins and let the blood flow.
