The Patient

by Michael Palmer

  “No!” Alex said. “I know you’re good, but I don’t want anything happening to that pilot. Let’s send them a message.”

  He could see both Grace and the pilot now, but none of those in the rear of the aircraft. She definitely was holding a gun.

  “Anytime, trooper,” Randall said.

  “How about now?”

  The submachine gun rattled off a five-second burst. Reflexively, the Ranger veered off to the left.

  “Put her down right now!” Randall demanded over the hailing frequency.

  Then he nudged the Aero next to the Ranger’s new position and repeated the order over a loudspeaker that had enough volume to awaken half the state. Barnes punctuated the order with another five-second barrage. Alex could see that there was discord in the Ranger’s cabin. The pilot was shaking his head. Grace was waving her gun at him.

  “We can’t keep doing this indefinitely,” Randall said. “I trust myself to be able to fly this close, but I don’t trust him. Can you put a few rounds through the windshield without doing any other damage?”

  “Probably not,” Barnes said. “But I can certainly plant a few around the door.”

  “Just stay away from the passenger and the pilot,” Alex insisted.

  Barnes was more than up to the task. The H & K rattled off another burst. Sparks flared from just above the door, and the Ranger lurched to the left. For the Saito Industries pilot, the shots were clearly the last straw. The Ranger slowed, then began to descend.

  “Way to go,” Alex said.

  “Get your weapon ready, friend,” Barnes said. “Rick, Giraffe, there’s an MP5 for each of you back here.”

  “Their leader just had a brain tumor removed,” Alex said. “I don’t think he’ll be in any condition to mix it up or run. Just the same, keep some distance away and let me and Barnes here jump out. Don’t follow us until you’re absolutely certain they’re not going to take off again.”

  The Ranger touched down in a hay field. Randall brought the Aero in about twenty yards away and kept the spotlight drilled on the corporate chopper’s side door. Alex and Barnes dove out, rolled, and came up low, sprinting across the grass. They split up as they reached the tail of the Ranger and flattened out on the ground on either side. The rotors slowed, then stopped. As soon as they had, Randall and Gareffa raced across and dove into place, one beside each of them.

  “Come out with your hands high!” Alex called out. “Quickly now.”

  His heart seemed close to pumping right through his chest. Five years and it was about to end—this time for real.

  “Get ready,” he said to Randall. “They may come out trying to use the neurosurgeon as a shield.”

  “What do you want to do then?”

  “Remember what I said about my being willing to die if necessary to get Malloche?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that goes double for saving the doctor. Hurry up!” he yelled at the helicopter. “One at a time.”

  The Ranger’s door opened. The pilot quickly jumped down, his hands in the air. Then Grace appeared and meekly tossed her gun out before stepping onto the grass.

  “Stay over there, Barnes,” Alex called out, rising to his feet.

  He readied the MP5 and approached the chopper. The Malloches and Jessie were still inside.

  If you hurt her, you bastards …

  Alex was several feet away when Carl Gilbride appeared at the doorway, looking dazed. He reached a hand out for help, but Alex motioned him down. Another shadow, another person silhouetted in the cabin doorway. Emily DelGreco.

  “Emily, where is she?” Alex asked. “Where’s Malloche?”

  “They’re not here,” she said grimly. “I’m afraid we’re it.”

  CHAPTER 43

  UNNOTICED IN THE PANIC AND PANDEMONIUM that had gripped the city, an ambulance pulled up to the deserted bay behind the closed emergency ward of the Eastern Mass Medical Center and waited. Minutes later, Armand, Jessie, and Arlette Malloche emerged, wheeling Claude on a stretcher. With the help of the driver, a muscular Arab who was clearly another member of Malloche’s gang, the stretcher was hoisted into the back of the ambulance and secured. Armand then climbed onto the passenger seat, and the large van eased away from the hospital.

  Jessie set her bag of instruments and pharmaceuticals aside and sank onto the padded bench next to the stretcher. The Malloches hadn’t said as much, but she could tell from snatches of conversation and the sounds of sirens audible even seven stories up, that they had ordered soman to be set off someplace in the city. And now, God only knew how many people were being sacrificed on the altar of their escape.

  For an hour, Jessie had watched Armand, Grace, and Arlette gathering their weapons and packing their things. She knew they would be going momentarily, and she knew they would be taking her with them. Armand left the floor briefly and returned with the sort of stretcher used by ambulances and life-flight helicopters. Jessie made a final check of the supplies she had gathered and stopped to say good-bye to Sara and Tamika. Then, to her surprise and bewilderment, Carl and Emily were led off before she was, directed by Grace at gunpoint into the elevator.

  “Where are they being taken?” Jessie had asked.

  “Away,” was Arlette’s annoyed reply. “Now, let’s get Claude onto this stretcher. We have to get going.”

  Cardboard had been taped over the windows in the back of the ambulance, but Jessie could still monitor their progress through the windshield. As they were pulling away from the hospital, she heard the distinctive thrum of a helicopter, lifting off from directly overhead.

  “Very clever,” she said sardonically.

  “Actually, it is,” Arlette said. “Don’t you think so, dear?”

  Claude, still somewhat groggy from what remained of the sedatives Jessie had been giving him, nodded and smiled.

  “I do, my love,” he replied. “I do, indeed.”

  “The day we decided on your hospital,” Arlette boasted, “we borrowed this ambulance and arranged for that helicopter and pilot up there, without even knowing we were going to have to use them. Now, I wouldn’t just call that clever. I’d call it brilliant.”

  “Brilliant,” Malloche echoed.

  Arlette seemed displeased that Jessie hadn’t commented on their genius.

  “Maybe you should be doing something besides scowling, Doctor,” she said. “Check my husband’s blood pressure.”

  “Whatever,” Jessie replied, rummaging through the nylon gym bag for her stethoscope and BP cuff.

  “You’d best continue to do your job enthusiastically and well,” Arlette said. “Your nurse friend is being brought along to ensure your cooperation. And Dr. Gilbride’s presence up above us should assure you that once we all meet up again, you are no longer indispensable.”

  “In that case, why don’t you just let me out right here. I’ll call a cab.”

  Jessie peered ahead through the windshield. Half an hour ago, they had crossed the Tobin Bridge, cruising north. In another fifteen or twenty minutes they would be entering New Hampshire. Then what? Maine? Maybe even Canada. Arlette was right. Their preparations for the contingencies surrounding her husband’s surgery had been brilliant. And now, it actually seemed they were going to make it.

  Aside from Arlette’s steely anger at the betrayal in the OR, there had been few threats directed toward Jessie. Still, she sensed that no matter how good a job she had done and would do in treating Claude Malloche, there was a very good chance that neither she nor her two colleagues in the helicopter would be allowed to remain alive. They were the only ones who would know where the killers had gone after leaving Boston.

  Jessie was fearful for the others on Surgical Seven who knew what Malloche and his wife looked like, particularly Michelle Booker and the team from the OR. From the moment Arlette ordered her away to the ambulance, she had been terrified that they would set the timers on the explosives and kill everyone remaining on the floor. Now, she asked once more if that had bee
n their plan, and once more Arlette gave her reassurance that the telephones had all been removed, the elevator disabled, and the doors rigged to detonate if they were opened, but that no timers had been set to destroy the neurosurgical floor and its patients.

  “You had better be telling me the truth,” Jessie said.

  Arlette looked at her dispassionately.

  “I will say this one more time. You are no longer indispensable to us. I would suggest you take care how you speak to me.”

  The smugness in the woman’s expression and words, the unbridled arrogance, had Jessie on the brink of lunging at her to gouge away her eyes. If Armand turned and shot her to death, so what? She was as good as dead anyway. At least by maiming Arlette, she would be hurting both of the Malloches before she died.

  Hurting both of the Malloches …

  The words resonated in Jessie’s head.

  Hurting both of the Malloches …

  For a time, the notion swirled about without focus. But there was something there … something. Suddenly, Jessie knew. There was a chance, the smallest chance, for her to take control—to put her captors to the ultimate test. The plan was shaky, but it was still a plan. It required careful movement on her part, plus an unerring insight into Claude and Arlette. Which of them was the crueler? Which the more devoted to the other? Which the less likely to sit by and watch the other die? And to succeed, the plan required two other elements as well—the absolute devotion to the Malloches of both Armand and the driver, and an inordinate amount of luck.

  They had just passed the sign welcoming them to New Hampshire when Jessie put her plan in motion. She knelt beside the stretcher and, under Arlette’s watchful eye, examined Claude carefully. Then she went back and reexamined his eyes with her ophthalmoscope.

  “Any headache at all?” she asked.

  “Not really,” he replied. “Why?”

  “Squeeze my hand, please.… Now with your other hand. Spread your fingers and don’t let me push them together. Harder. Is that the hardest you can push against me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is something wrong?” Arlette asked.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t know.”

  “What are you talking about? He seems fine to me.”

  “Mr. Malloche, repeat this phrase after me: Methodist Episcopal.”

  “Methodist Episcopal,” Claude said, with the tiniest hitch.

  Jessie shook her head just enough for the gesture to be noticed. Saying the two words, used by many physicians as part of their neurologic exam, was awkward enough to have tested even Demosthenes.

  “There are some neurologic signs that haven’t been present before,” she said. “Very soft signs—a slight thickness in his speech as you just heard, a slight weakness in his right hand—but I think both signs are real.”

  “What does that mean?” Arlette asked.

  “Maybe the early signs of a buildup in intracranial pressure.”

  “Like the Devereau woman?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  “I’m going to increase the steroids he’s been getting, and add another medicine to reduce swelling.”

  “Do whatever you have to.”

  Jessie drew up some steroid and injected it into Claude’s IV line. Then she drew up a second medicine and left the syringe just on the surface of her supplies, close at hand.

  Claude or Arlette?

  Another twenty minutes passed. They had traversed the narrow southeast corner of New Hampshire, entered Maine, and then left the highway. Nightfall was complete now. They were rolling along darkened country roads and through small villages. Jessie sensed the driver had taken the route before—probably on a practice run. As best as she could figure, they were still headed north, maybe northwest. Claude had drifted off to sleep. Arlette seemed heavy-lidded, but she remained vigilant, her stubby machine gun in her lap, her finger on the trigger.

  “Where are we headed?” Jessie asked, loudly enough to wake Claude up.

  “To a quiet place where my husband can finish his recovery. I don’t believe we’ll be on the road too much longer.”

  Jessie knew she had to act soon. Once Carl, Emily, and the others met up with them, the chance would be gone. She was willing to risk her own life, but there was no way she could stand firm while someone threatened to kill her closest friend. And under pressure, there was every reason to believe Carl would crack. It had to be now. First, though, she had a decision to make.

  Claude or Arlette?

  She examined Claude once more and asked him all the same questions as before, ensuring that he was awake and alert. Then she motioned Arlette over. The decision had been made. She was the indispensable one. She was the one to fear.

  “I think the swelling may still be increasing,” Jessie lied. “Look. Look at what happens to the corner of his mouth when he shows his teeth.”

  As Arlette moved forward, Jessie leaned back and slipped her fingers around the loaded syringe. She had chosen an exposed spot just at the base of the woman’s neck.

  “I don’t see—”

  Arlette Malloche never finished her sentence. In one motion, Jessie straightened up, drove the needle to the hilt into the trapezius muscle, and depressed the plunger. Arlette cried out and whirled, her gun leveled at Jessie’s face.

  “Kill me and you’re dead,” Jessie said quickly. “Claude, I’ve just injected your wife with a lethal dose of a medicine called Anectine. It’s just like curare. In a minute or so, every muscle in her body will be paralyzed. She will be unable to breathe. But until the very moment she asphyxiates to death, she will be wide awake and aware of everything. Tell them to stop the ambulance. I can save her, but I won’t unless you do as I say.”

  “Don’t believe her!” Arlette cried.

  But her gun hand had already begun to shake. Claude forced himself up onto one elbow.

  “Four minutes,” Jessie said. “If I don’t get a breathing tube in her within four minutes, her brain will be irreparably damaged. After that, you would not want her to be saved.”

  Jessie made a theatrical point of looking at her watch. Claude Malloche’s eyes met his wife’s, and in that moment, Jessie knew she had chosen her victim well. Whether or not Arlette would have reacted as her husband was about to, she would never know. But Jessie had her doubts. Arlette, stunned and undergoing massive chemical change in her muscles, could no longer hold the gun up at all, and in fact, was having difficulty holding herself up as well. Still, she would not ask for help.

  “Stop the ambulance immediately, Faoud!” Claude barked.

  Without a word, the driver pulled over. Jessie took two rolls of adhesive tape from her bag and had Claude order the two men out of the cab and onto their faces on the ground. Faoud quickly did as he was ordered. Armand hesitated.

  “A minute’s gone,” Jessie said.

  She gestured at Arlette, who was bracing herself on the seat but was no longer capable of speaking.

  “You’ll regret this,” the Mist growled. “Armand, just do as she says or Arlette will die. We will get our chance. I promise you that.”

  Slowly, shielded from Armand’s line of sight by Malloche’s stretcher, Jessie slid her hand over and wrapped it around Arlette’s gun, adjusting her finger onto the trigger.

  “Armand!” Malloche snapped. “Quickly! Do as she says.”

  Twisted around in his seat, the thin, ferret-eyed man looked at Jessie with hatred. But he didn’t move.

  “Armand!” Malloche barked again.

  Jessie could see the indecision on the young killer’s face. The muscles by his jaws twitched. His lips tightened. Prison! Jessie could almost hear the thought in his mind. She tightened her grip on the gun.

  Suddenly Armand’s pistol was up and firing. Jessie dove to the floor, knocking Arlette over as two shots ricocheted off the rear door. Then she shot back, a prolonged burst of machine-gun fire up under the stretcher into the back of Armand’s seat. T
he killer screamed once as he was slammed backward into the dashboard. Behind Jessie, the rear doors were thrown open. But before Faoud could even get a shot off, Jessie ripped him across the chest with another volley. Blood erupted from half a dozen wounds. The heavyset man spun around nearly full circle, and dropped to the ground.

  Jessie, who had never handled anything more lethal than an air rifle, was astonished at how easy it had been to kill with a weapon built for that purpose. Her heart was pounding, but she was surprised at how little shock or remorse she was feeling. She took some time to catch her breath, and assured herself that both of the killers were dead. Then she set the machine gun aside and quickly taped Malloche’s wrists and ankles to the stretcher.

  “Help her,” Malloche said hoarsely, gesturing to his wife, who was now on her back on the ambulance floor, totally awake, but unable to breathe, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, her paralyzed limbs in an odd, awkward position.

  No tube! Jessie’s mind screamed. Just lie there! For Lisa and Scolari, and those people in the lab, and all the others you have killed, just lie there and die!

  “I wish I could do what I want to, Arlette,” she said as she taped the woman’s ankles together, then her wrists. “I really do.”

  She retrieved the laryngoscope, endotracheal tube, and Ambu breathing bag from her kit. Then she pulled Arlette until her head hung backward out the rear door of the ambulance—a position that straightened her trachea. Finally, she hunched down beside where Faoud lay to get a good view along the lighted arm of the laryngoscope into Arlette’s throat. The breathing tube slipped easily between the woman’s vocal cords. Jessie inflated the balloon around it to seal it in place.

  Finally, she dragged Arlette back into the van next to her husband and began ventilating her with the black latex bag. In just a few minutes, she would be breathing on her own. Even then, Jessie had no intention of removing the thick tube. It would be a perverse pleasure leaving it in Arlette’s throat, but a pleasure nonetheless.

  As expected, in five minutes or so, Arlette Malloche was breathing on her own, shaking her head against the profound discomfort of the tube, and piercing Jessie with a look so intense that it was unsettling even though the woman’s wrists and ankles were tightly bound. Jessie responded with a bland grin and a thumbs-up sign.