by Radclyffe
The door to the conference room burst open and one of the other members of the class burst in. “Jesus, Bobby, you gotta see what’s happening. It’s on TV right now. Some nut job ambushed two cops in West Philly about twenty minutes ago. They got him cornered in a 7-Eleven at Sixty-third, but he’s got hostages.”
“Shit! Who responded?”
“Looks like your station got the call. SWAT’s there already, and HRT.”
“Well, fuck. I gotta get out there.”
The two men rushed out and Ali hurried after them, following the sound of excited voices to the staff lounge. A television bracketed high up on the wall in one corner of the crowded room was tuned to a local news station, and the grainy footage revealed a dozen emergency response vehicles—police cruisers, fire engines, EMT vans—ringing a minimart, their lights illuminating it in harsh bands of white and red. Shadowy figures garbed in black, faces obscured by alien-looking helmets, brandishing all manner of artillery skulked between vehicles and along the sides of the building. The tableau reminded her of news footage she’d seen on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A reverent-sounding newscaster over-voiced the images, her words trembling with a thread of excitement. “Information is scanty at this time, but there are reports of hostages and possibly multiple wounded inside.”
Ali needed to alert trauma admitting to expect mass casualties, but she couldn’t take her eyes from the television. Beau’s station had responded, but Bobby just said Beau had gone home. Beau wasn’t out there. She wasn’t in danger. But even as Ali thought it, she knew in her heart she was wrong.
*
Beau pulled the body armor on over her tank top, slapped down the Velcro tabs to secure it, and tamped down her impatience while the tech ran wires from the transmitter clipped to the back of her pants up to her shoulder. Then she pulled on her shirt and he clipped the combo microphone and video camera inside the collar.
“Go ahead,” the tech said.
“Testing, testing, one-two-three,” Beau whispered.
“Got it. Nice and clear.”
Beau tucked in her shirt and grabbed her emergency field kit. She started for the back of the van, but Captain Jeffries stopped her.
“Remember, your job is to evaluate the injured and secure passive reconnaissance. You’re not to intervene. SWAT should be in position by the time you get inside. Hopefully he’ll let you bring out the wounded.”
“Roger, Cap,” Beau said.
“I’m serious, Cross.” Jeffries glared at her. “I’m letting you go because you’re faster than anyone else if you have to make a run for it, and maybe the guy will be less threatened with a woman. I don’t want to have to write up an injury report on you.”
Beau grinned. “Copy that, sir.”
The captain clapped her on the shoulder. “Be careful.”
Beau clambered down the steps from the mobile command center and worked her way through the knots of officers around the SWAT commander. “All set.”
SWAT relayed the message to the hostage negotiator, who Beau could make out observing the building from a few yards away. The negotiator, a striking redhead with cool eyes, raised the cell phone she carried and said something into it. Then she waved Beau over. “He’s agreed to let you come in and evaluate the wounded.”
“He said I can bring them out?”
“No. This is step one. Once we get you inside, we’ll work on step two. In the meantime, I need you to fix the positions of all the hostages, try to sweep each one with your camera if you can. Just remember, your number one priority is to evaluate and treat the injured.”
“Roger.”
“As soon as you get inside, put your kit down and open it so he can go through it. He will probably frisk you. He’ll be expecting you to have a vest on. If he makes you strip, he’ll find the camera.”
“Okay.”
“It’s a tossup as to what he’ll do if he finds you’re wired. He may expect it and do nothing. It may anger him and he could hurt you.”
“I’ll tell him we wanted medical backup to see the wounded so we’d be sure to get the critical ones out first.”
The negotiator seemed to consider. “That might work. Use it.”
Beau nodded. “Okay.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I volunteered.”
“You understand the—”
“I understand.” Beau felt the redhead looking her over, assessing, deciding. The negotiator didn’t look anything like Ali, but her focus and intensity reminded Beau of how Ali looked in the middle of a trauma. Her stomach twisted. “I don’t plan on anything going wrong. Just in case, my sister’s name is Jilly. And there’s a woman—a doctor at University Hospital. Ali. Tell them I wasn’t trying to be a hero.”
“Noted,” the negotiator said calmly. “If I thought you were, you wouldn’t be going.”
“Yeah. Let’s do it, then.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Wynter hurried into the trauma bay and asked Ali, “What’s going on? The OR nurses said you needed me down here.”
“There’s a hostage situation at the 7-Eleven at Sixty-third. Unconfirmed reports of multiple wounded. We’ll get some.”
“Any idea when?”
Ali was already headed for the door. “I’ve been watching it on television like everyone else. I’ll be down the hall in the lounge.”
Wynter grabbed Ali’s arm and pulled her out into the hall away from inquiring eyes and curious ears. “You look like hell. What else is going on?”
“They just sent a paramedic inside the store to evaluate the wounded. I’m pretty sure it’s Beau.”
The TV news cameras hadn’t picked up the face of the paramedic in the dark jacket, regulation cargo pants, and ball cap with PFD in bold yellow letters on the back, but as the figure jogged across the deserted parking lot to the minimart, Ali recognized the cut of her shoulders and the easy grace of her stride. She didn’t have to see Beau’s face to know it was her. Of course it would be her. Lives were at stake, someone needed to take the risk—someone needed to be willing to put their own life on the line, and of course it would be Beau. Beau, who believed she was living on stolen time to begin with. Ali shuddered and sagged against the wall, her head and heart battered and bruised. “I feel like I’m losing Sammy all over again, but it’s so much worse.”
“You don’t know that. Beau isn’t Sammy. She’s a professional, and everyone around her is too.”
Ali closed her eyes and searched for the calm that always carried her through a crisis. She swam through the panic, carried on tides of memory, until she found solid ground. To her surprise, the anchor she so desperately sought was exactly what she thought she’d lost. Beau. Beau was real and her strength unwavering. Capable and strong. When Ali imagined reaching out for comfort and guidance and connection, it was Beau’s hand that grasped hers, Beau’s smile that welcomed her. Beau’s body that shielded and completed her.
“Oh God,” Ali whispered. “How could I not have seen?”
Wynter stroked her arm. “It’s okay. You do now.”
“I need to see what’s happening to her.”
“Are you sure you want to?” Wynter asked.
“I have to. If she’s out there, the least I can do is watch on TV.”
“You go ahead, then,” Wynter said. “I’ll get things ready in the unit.”
Ali clasped Wynter’s arm. “If she’s hurt, if anything happens to her, I’ll need you—”
“I’ll take care of her. I promise.” Wynter hugged Ali quickly. “But let’s not go there now. Trust her.”
“I do,” Ali said, and the truth freed her.
*
Beau knelt on the grimy tile floor in front of the check-out counter in the 7-Eleven, her hands laced behind her head, her eyes on the pregnant woman curled up on the floor a few feet in front of her. The woman’s thin raincoat was twisted behind her, exposing the red maternity smock stretched tightly over her protruding abdome
n. She looked to be in her early twenties. A gash on her forehead splashed crimson drops onto the floor. Her arms clutched protectively around her middle, her pale blue eyes locked on Beau’s, imploring her to end the madness.
“Where the fuck are the narcs?”
Beau turned her head slightly toward the sallow-faced, sweat-soaked man who pawed through her equipment box, tossing out supplies randomly. His long black hair was plastered to his neck in greasy strands, his wispy goatee straggly, and the dark eyes he turned on her were glazed and wild. If she had to guess, she’d say PCP or maybe meth. He was wired and coming unglued.
“We don’t carry many drugs in the fiel—” She barely had time to register the backhand blow coming at her and relaxed her neck just as his knuckles grazed the corner of her mouth. She let her head snap around on contact and managed to keep her balance. She swiped her tongue over the blood at the corner of her mouth. “Second tier, far right. There ought to be a tab of Percocet.”
She’d purposely removed all the injectable narcotics from her kit before entry, and this would all be over, one way or the other, before he absorbed anything from a tablet. He cursed and pulled out the sealed unit-dose pack. While he fumbled with the plastic, she slowly twisted her torso, trying to pan the room with the camera clipped inside her collar. He hadn’t done more than open her jacket and pat down her pockets when she’d first come in. He was much more interested in the contents of her FAT box.
In addition to the pregnant woman, Beau could make out the motionless sneaker-clad feet of someone lying behind the check-out counter. She couldn’t see any more of the figure, who she presumed was the clerk. A middle-aged man in an expensive topcoat slumped against a cold case, his face bruised and bloodied. He appeared to have been pistol-whipped. Three teenagers, two boys and a girl, huddled in a jumble of arms and legs next to the coffee kiosk. Otherwise, the store seemed to be empty.
“Can I take a look at the injured?” Beau asked.
“Who?” The gunman seemed genuinely confused by her question.
“The person behind the counter and the one across the room? Can I see how they’re doing?”
“The one on the phone—the bitch who’s been calling me—she said if I let you come in, she’d make sure they kept the lights and the heat on. I don’t like the dark.” His speech was pressured and forced. He held an automatic pistol in a shaking hand and waved it between the pregnant woman and the unconscious man by the cold case. “So you’re in. Look. Then get out and tell that cunt I want a car.”
“I need my kit.” Beau’s arms were tiring but she didn’t move them from behind her head. Sweat trickled from beneath her hairline and down beneath the sweltering body armor.
“Yeah, yeah.”
His attention seemed to wander, so Beau reached for her kit and methodically replaced critical items that he’d strewn around as quickly as she could. Then, staying on her knees, she worked her way around behind the counter. The clerk had a ragged hole above his left eye with a trail of congealed black blood leading from it to the floor beneath his face. He was dead.
She didn’t say anything. The video feed would tell it all. Carefully, she made her way back into the main aisle and over to the other man. A quick check of his carotid showed his pulse was strong and steady. She flicked up an eyelid. Both pupils were constricted but equal. Hopefully he had a concussion but no localized brain injury. After opening his coat and confirming that he had no gunshot wounds or other bodily injuries, she returned to the pregnant woman.
“How you doing?” she said softly.
“Please help me,” the young woman whimpered.
“Are you having any contractions? Any pain in your abdomen at all?”
“No. He just hit me once and when I curled up on the floor, he stopped.”
“That’s good. You did great. You’ll be okay.” Beau swiveled back around to face the assailant. He was pacing in the narrow space between a display case stacked with potato chips bags and the large plate glass window. The gun dangled from his hand. Every few seconds his whole body would jerk and he’d spin back, the gun extended as if he expected one of them to be shooting at him. Beau hoped whoever was watching the video would realize that he was becoming increasingly paranoid.
“Can I take her out with me?” Beau indicated the woman on the floor. “You want her and her baby to be safe, don’t you?”
The man frowned as if he didn’t understand what Beau was saying.
“You wouldn’t want anything to happen to her, right?”
The phone on the counter next to the cash register rang, and Beau flinched, hoping the gunman hadn’t seen her response. Then she realized, watching him peer wildly around the room, that he was rapidly losing touch with reality. Whatever combination of drugs he’d taken was pushing him over the edge into psychosis. None of them would be safe much longer. As he fumbled for the phone, mumbling and cursing, she chanced whispering a warning.
“He’s not going to let us out. He’s losing it.” She inched back toward the woman on the floor.
Suddenly the gunman was raving, screaming obscenities, and then someone was shooting. Beau dove for the young mother-to-be, praying her body would be enough to protect her.
*
“We’re hearing shots,” the reporter announced breathlessly. “The SWAT team has opened fire on the 7-Eleven. Are those shots coming from inside? Does anyone know?”
The reply, if there was one, was lost in chaos.
Frozen, Ali watched her nightmare made real. Just as in her dreams, where Sammy died over and over again right before her eyes, she could do nothing but stand by while her world disintegrated. Within seconds the firing stopped and a dozen armed figures swarmed into the minimart. Everyone around her exclaimed in shock and surprise, and she strained to hear the announcer. Her ears rang as if the shots had been fired at her.
“Reports of wounded,” the announcer’s voice cut in.
Figures in turnout coats and flak jackets rushed from the 7-Eleven, transporting stretchers to the waiting ambulances. The sounds of sirens blaring from the television catapulted Ali out of the past and into the uncertain present. Incoming. She had a job to do.
As she turned on her heel and pushed through the crowd of medical personnel, patients, and visitors all fixed on the television, she ruthlessly shunted her fear and terror into the far corners of her mind. Methodically sealing her emotions behind insulated doors, she had shut down enough to function before she reached the trauma bay. But unlike all the times she had done this before, this time she felt herself bleeding inside. She had become the walking wounded, and she wondered how long she would survive without the one thing she needed to heal. What if it was too late, and Beau was truly gone?
Chapter Thirty-Three
Ali met the first stretcher as it came through the double glass doors into the trauma bay and quickly assessed the victim. A young Asian man, twenty-five at most, a GSW to the forehead. She didn’t even have to touch him to know he was DOA. She waved the EMTs to the far cubicle.
“Over there. Pull the curtain.”
Within seconds, the sound of another gurney trundling rapidly down the hall captured her attention. Would this be the one bringing Beau in? Injured, dying? Lost?
Ali had to concentrate on forcing air in and out of her chest, on keeping her focus. If Beau was hurt, she would fix her. She’d have to. She couldn’t let her go.
The next patient was a middle-aged man, incoherent but conscious. Ali directed the paramedics to the treatment table where Wynter waited.
“How many more do we have?” Ali asked sharply as the team passed her.
“Just one more,” one of the first responders answered.
Ali couldn’t wait for the final stretcher to reach her. She raced up the hall and grabbed the stainless steel railing. Running alongside as the medics pushed, she stared down into pale, frightened eyes she didn’t recognize.
“I’m Dr. Torveau,” she said, taking in the gravid abdomen. “How fa
r along are you?”
“Seven months.”
“Fetal heart rate?” she asked of the team in general.
“One-fifty and strong,” a female paramedic replied. “No contractions. No bleeding. Mother’s vitals are stable. Superficial lac on the forehead.”
“Good.” Ali brushed back the terrified young woman’s hair, checked the wound. Nothing serious. “You’re going to be all right. We’ll take good care of you.”
As soon as they got the pregnant woman transferred to the treatment table and one of the nurses called for a STAT OB/GYN consult, Ali grabbed one of the paramedics she recognized from her TER-OPS class and pulled him aside.
“Where’s Beau Cross?”
He stared at her as if he didn’t recognize her.
“Where’s Beau?” Ali didn’t realize she was shaking him until he blinked in surprise. She dropped his arm. “Sorry. Just—is she all right?”
“Oh, hey, Doc. Last I saw her, the SWAT guys were taking her into the command vehicle.”
“She wasn’t hurt?”
“Banged up a little bit, from what I could tell.” He grinned and shook his head. “But she was moving under her own power. Fucking Cross. She’s a wild woman.” As if realizing what he’d just said, he flushed bright red. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything—”
“That’s all right,” Ali said. “I agree with you completely.”
He signed his report and tossed the file into a bin on a nearby counter. “After something like this happens, everybody heads to Bernie’s. I’ll probably see her there later. Want me to give her a message?”
“No thanks.” Ali checked the clock, then the patients. The high-risk-pregnancy fellow was examining the young woman. Wynter was conferring with the neurosurgeon on call about the semiconscious man with the facial trauma. Two patrol officers stood just outside the curtain where the DOA would remain until next of kin had been notified. That was a police matter.
