“Good. Now rip out the radio and place your cell phones on the ground.”
The female paramedic did as she was told. The medical technician scrambled awkwardly in his pants pocket with his good arm. Kristian left his hands dangling.
“You’re not exempt, sonny boy. Throw your phone down!” the woman addressed Kristian.
Grinding his teeth with frustration, Kristian did as she said, watching as she scooped them into a backpack she wore. Her gun hand waved the female technician forward.
“Get in the ambulance, sweetheart. You’re driving. You other two can stay here.”
“I can’t perform CPR with one arm! Godammnit if we don’t get this woman to the hospital, she’ll die. Her death will be on your head!”
“I can live with that,” the woman said with a smirk. “Stay back!” she snapped at Kristian as he edged toward her. “Unless you want me to shoot out your kneecaps.”
Gnawing on his cheek, Kristian held his place while the two women climbed into the ambulance cab. He shot panicked eyes towards the remaining paramedic. “Can you save her?”
The medic was shrugging out of his flack jacket to perform his own triage. He shook his head. “Her chances just went down badly unless you can get another ambulance here.”
The engine in the heavy duty F-450 ambulance kicked into life, its sirens shrieking as it inched away from the curb. Without thinking, Kristian launched himself forward. Leaping onto the broad rear bumper, he plastered his body against the aluminum doors, his flattened palms scouted until his fingers latched onto steel hooks embedded in the metal body, placed there to hold the doors open. He remained spread like a starfish against the ambulance doors, his feet fighting to keep purchase. His one thought was to ride the ambulance to the hospital and get another one for his mother. It was the only chance he had to save her life.
Chapter 27
Columbus General Hospital, Manhattan
Thursday, 26 April
Cole stood in the shadows afforded by the 24-hour parking garage that serviced the apartment blocks lining Ruby Street in front of Columbus General. He hoped he was invisible to the casual observer. From this location he had a full view of the main entrance, almost adjacent to the emergency entrance, scant meters to the side. Two spindly trees sprouted from the sidewalk to bracket the sliding glass doors into the hospital lobby.
Noise from the Brooklyn Bridge overpass drummed through his ears.
Ruby was a busy two way street. The hospital and the cocky, pointing finger that housed QBE occupied one whole block between two one-way streets. Eisley had scooted down one of these to stake out the rear service entry.
Cole decided Eisley was right about wearing a jacket. As the night closed in the temperature dropped. He had also sheltered against the overhang from the nearest apartment block to avoid being drenched in a sudden shower.
A steady stream of ambulances rotated through the emergency driveway. Every time a new ambulance arrived, Cole spared it a few seconds of attention, but mainly his eyes scanned the pedestrians coming and going through the sliding glass doors. They alighted from cabs and private cars, or walked from the nearest bus stop.
Cole checked his watch. The hands on the face were coming up to 9:00 p.m. Surely visiting hours were over for the day and they would be turfing Dresden out of Lander’s room?
He stamped his feet and took a quick turn up and down the street. The red and white body of an ambulance screeched past him, slowing as it approached the emergency driveway. Cole did a doubletake at the sight of a young kid clinging grimly to the back doors, his feet almost sliding off the rear bumper. Cole’s eyes cut to the cab as he ran along the sidewalk, hoping to attract the driver’s attention. What he saw instead was a hooded profile in the passenger seat.
His heart was pounding but not from exertion. Had the kid attempted an unsuccessful hijacking? Or was he trying to steal drugs from the ambulance? The passenger obviously wasn’t emergency personnel, so who was he? His brain whirred with possibilities.
Cole stayed across the street, craning his neck to see who stepped out of the passenger side. The figure was short enough for him to suspect a woman. Moving briskly to the other side of the vehicle, there was something familiar about her gait that triggered his memory. And suddenly he knew who badly wanted to get inside the hospital undetected. Damn, if it hadn’t been for that crazy kid on the back he wouldn’t have even looked twice at the ambulance!
Cole barely hesitated before dashing across the street. He needed to confirm his suspicion with a visual sighting!
* * *
Dresden pulled on a spare yellow flack jacket, jammed on the regulatory hard hat and slung her backpack over her shoulder as the female driver rolled the ambulance to a stop in an emergency bay. She hadn’t asked the woman’s name. She didn’t want to know and it wasn’t necessary. Dresden’s plan was to dump the technician in a storage cupboard as soon as she gained access to the hospital so that she couldn’t raise the alarm.
“No tricks. Wait in the cab till I get around to your side.” Dresden held the gun pointed at the woman, but low enough to be out of sight of the windshield. It felt heavy and unwieldy in her hand. She wasn’t comfortable with the weapon but she hoped it didn’t show.
As she opened the cab door, her eyes flicked to the side mirror, widening as she caught sight of Kristian stumbling from behind the ambulance.
How in hell had he hitched a ride on the back of this rig?! Admittedly they hadn’t traveled far, but it showed some nerve. Bollocks! She couldn’t let him loose to sound the alarm.
She shot out of the cab, striding purposefully to the back, the gun held down by her side away from prying eyes. Kristian was on his knees, cradling his hands to his chest.
More ambulances pulled in, technicians and nurses swarming into the area. Someone in scrubs paused to bend down to Kristian.
“I’ve got this,” Dresden said, rushing closer to him. Hauling him to his feet with one hand, she pressed the gun barrel against his ribs with the other. “Just a little prank that we’ll clear up inside,” she continued with a friendly nod and pasted on smile to go with her fake American accent. “You’ve got bigger worries to deal with.”
With a last concerned look, the nurse moved on, just as Dresden had hoped.
She dragged Kristian with her. His joints had locked and he walked stiff-legged beside her. Dresden yanked open the cab door and the technician tumbled down the steps.
“Take me to the hospital’s maintenance area,” Dresden hissed. Kristian’s presence meant a quick rearrangement of plans and she believed a maintenance area would be less crowded, without the influx of patients or nursing staff. “And no funny business or sound from either of you if you want to stay alive.”
As they bustled through the glass doors Dresden caught a reflection and tossed a look over her shoulder, floored to recognize Cole Mackinley tearing down the driveway, dodging moving vehicles!
“Hurry,” she snapped, shoving her two hostages ahead of her.
Chapter 28
Columbia General Hospital
Thursday, 26 April
The wail of sirens and a swirl of rotating red light surrounded him as Cole skipped lightly between parked vehicles. Frantic attendants wheeled patient trolleys from stationary ambulances.
“Systolic’s seventy! We need to cross match with O-Neg!”
Cole barely spared a glance for the emergency unfolding around him. The woman he believed to be Dresden was disappearing out of sight down a hospital corridor. She was in close proximity to the young male and an EMT staff member. Hostages? Accomplices? He couldn’t tell.
He spoke into the mic cuffed to his lapel. He had thought Eisley wiring him up with an earpiece was overkill, but now he was grateful.
“Bluebird is in the building,” he mumbled. “I’m going in to get a better look. Stay at your post in case she exits via the rear.”
He barreled past bustling medical staff, following the last trail he had seen of
Dresden. As he careened into the corridor, the slick soles of his shoes almost slipped from beneath him. A darting look caught the closing doors of a service elevator with a large sign that said “no unauthorized entry” while the light above illuminated the down arrow.
He retreated into the main thoroughfare, grabbing a nurse and flashing his ID and FBI visitor’s warrant in front of her face.
“FBI! I need to access the elevator at the end of the corridor. Can you let me in?”
Frightened blue eyes regarded him with incomprehension. He repeated his question, before realizing he’d either scared her out of her wits or she couldn’t understand his accent. Impatiently he ripped her ID from the halter around her neck and sprinted back into the corridor. If she screamed for security, so much the better!
Cole jammed his finger against the elevator button going to the basement, backing against the side wall to make himself a smaller target when the doors opened. The space in front appeared empty. Stepping cautiously out of the elevator he was faced with double automated doors. A large sign proclaimed “Central Sterile Environment. Authorized entry only.”
He held the nurse’s staff card to the security reader and the doors whooshed open. Glancing into the dimly lit area, he saw stacks of stainless steel shelving and banked up stainless steel carts, all of which were filled with equipment and instruments. There was a large drainage dump in the middle of the floor and Cole guessed this was a cleaning and prep area for the hospital’s equipment. As the automated doors closed on him, he scooted forward.
“Stay right there!” Dresden’s voice rang out, echoes bouncing hollowly around the metallic environment.
Cole halted, swinging his head around to determine from which direction the sound originated. When the overhead lighting flared on it made him blink with its brightness. After a few seconds he was able to make out figures at one end of the room. He could see the EMT woman, stripped of her hi-vis jacket, had a bomb vest strapped to her chest. The color had been sucked from her face, her whole body was quaking with tremors. Beside her stood the youth and beside him was Dresden.
The youth lunged forward, his elbow angling for her arm, the motion awkward and too slow to be effective. Dresden swung her gun at his head, whacking him smartly across the temple. A sharp cry escaped his lips before he crumpled. Cole used the diversion to duck behind a loaded cart.
“Don’t do anything foolhardy!” Dresden called. “The odds are not in your favor, Cole! If you’ve been on my tail, you’ll know what damage I can do with a bomb. So please show yourself now.”
“First, remove the bomb vest from the woman!”
Cole considered shoving the trolley forward to careen into Dresden, but was afraid he was too far away to be effective and she would be able to dodge it as she had Kristian’s unsuccessful maneuver.
“I’ll remove it if you substitute for her.”
Cole could hear amusement edging her voice. Offering himself would play into Dresden’s hands but it might buy some time. He brought his jacket lapel to his mouth, his lips barely moving as he whispered to Eisley, “Confirmed sighting of Dresden in basement sterile environment unit. Hostages in tow. Potential bomb on site.”
“You have three seconds before this offer is rescinded!”
Cole tugged the earpiece from his ear, tucking it below his collar as he stood up, his hands in the air and moved into the open.
“Keep your hands where I can see them.”
Dresden moved behind the woman and ripped apart the Velcro straps.
“Take off your jacket,” she ordered Cole.
Cole shrugged out of his coat and she held the loaded vest towards him so he could slip his head and arms through the holes, then twisted around while Dresden made the woman Velcro it closed. Dresden pulled another bomb vest out of her backpack. At her feet, a groaning Kristian raised himself off the floor.
“Put this on spunky here.”
“He’s just a kid. I’m enough of a hostage for you, Dresden.”
“I beg to differ, Cole. Now, do as I say and put the vest on him.”
Reluctantly Cole did so. Dresden snapped handcuffs around his right wrist, dragging him towards a chunky autoclave. She threaded the handcuffs through the bars, before snapping the other cuff onto Kristian’s left wrist. They were now shackled together around the body of the sterilizer, their backs against the metal surface as they faced outwards. She then made Cole empty his pockets, kicking both phone and wallet out of his reach, before she cable-tied together their other hands so they fully encircled the autoclave, their arms stretched like starfish.
The loose ends of a second pair of cuffs clanked against each other as she pulled them from her pack. She attached one cuff to the woman, threaded the chain around the support pole of a heavy duty shelving unit some distance away from the men, before snapping the second cuff closed on her other wrist.
Then Dresden strode back to Cole.
“Did you think I wouldn’t see that when I attached the cuffs?” she snorted as she ripped the earpiece and wiring through the fabric of his shirt. “Who are you in touch with, Cole? Is it Wynter? Did she come to New York with you?”
The anticipation he heard in Dresden’s voice caused sweat to break out under his armpits. He wanted to leap at her, pin her to the ground and throttle her before she could hurt anyone else. Instead he had walked willingly into her trap and let her immobilize him. He watched her calmly remove a phone from her backpack and take a photo of him and Kristian.
“I wasn’t talking to Bex. I’m here with the New York field office of the FBI.”
“Bex is it? That sounds cozy. You two were getting along nicely when I was forced to leave, if I remember.”
He hated the excited gleam in her butterscotch eyes and cursed himself for letting even that snippet of information slip. He prayed that Bex would keep her promise tonight and stay away from QBE.
* * *
Dresden rode the elevator to the fifth floor and Wyatt Tomei’s office. She crossed the expansive reception foyer, empty except for the expensive artwork on the blank walls and the sound of her footfalls striking the lavish bamboo flooring.
Tomei sprang from his seat behind his desk as she barged into his office. Still dressed in a hi-vis yellow jacket, he first mistook her for one of the emergency staff. He registered her identity at the same moment she drew the gun from her pocket. His pulse rocketed as he faced down the barrel.
“I think it’s best for everybody in this facility if my husband is discharged immediately. I have two bombs installed in the hospital’s basement that I would be happy to detonate if things don’t go my way.”
Tomei’s right eye twitched so violently it seemed like he was winking at her, but he didn’t argue. If the freaking psycho in front of him wanted to take her husband without the modifications that would safeguard the exoskeleton’s network connection from being hacked, she could suffer the consequences.
“Since we had patient 82TP912 scheduled to leave tomorrow the paperwork has already been prepared. All it needs is my final signature and then you can take him home. It’ll take me less than five minutes.”
“Does that mean you’ve installed the new tech?”
The relief Tomei felt anticipating the Dresdens’ removal from his facility faltered. He considered lying. For the next few seconds all that filled his thoughts was the sound of his own heavy breathing.
“Ah, the sound of silence. I take that as a negative,” Dresden said.
Tomei realized he’d lost his opportunity to fob her off. He hoped she wasn’t about to lose her shit. He spoke quickly. “The software in your husband’s exoskeleton hasn’t yet been upgraded. I gave my IT source a deadline so he’ll be installing it later tonight. That’s why I’m here, waiting for his arrival.”
He interpreted the way Dresden’s bow-shaped mouth twisted as a smile, but her next words proved him wrong.
“Don’t wait any longer. Make the deadline expire now. I’m not blowing smoke up your arse a
bout you wanting us out of here, Doctor. If the FBI or the police get here before Lander and I can leave, I’m taking this whole facility with us. So, contact your source and apply some pressure. Get the update happening now.”
She held out her phone, showing him the photo of Cole and Kristian clothed in their bomb vests. Tomei felt his jaw working as a counterpoint to his ticking eye as he was forced to swallow his bitter protests. He was so close to perfecting his SCI treatment! He wasn’t going to let this mad woman spoil a decade of research and underhanded maneuvering!
“In that case, I need to make a phone call,” he said. His hand shook as he reached for the keys to his bottom drawer.
Chapter 29
42nd Street, Times Square,
Thursday, 26 April
“Honestly, Dad, did you come into the city just to have dinner with me? You hate New York. The last time you visited was for my wedding!”
On the table between them the pile of bones and skewers from the pulled pork spare ribs and baby back skewers looked like the carcass remains from an archeological dig. Contemplating the demolition Bex wondered if it was too soon to buy some elastic-waisted maternity pants.
“That pulled pork was so tender, I swear it floated into my mouth all by itself,” Steven Kirwan replied. “This dinner was well worth the hassle of city traffic.”
Bex rested her chin on her palm, trying to catch Steven’s evasive eyes.
“So, Dad, what really brings you to New York? You and mom have always considered Armonk the center of the universe.”
“I might not like the city, but I come here more often than you think,” he contradicted her. “I’m meeting a contact later tonight to finalize some software, so I’ve booked myself a room at the Crowne Plaza. I hope you don’t mind me treading on your turf. Although I probably won’t get in till the early hours of the morning, I thought we could meet for breakfast.”
Bex Wynter Box Set 2 Page 55
