by Randall Wood
“What are they saying?” he asked Sydney.
She pulled the finger from her other ear before replying, “I’m not sure. Some talk about some friends. Ft. Bragg. Still a lot of laughing. I . . . I don’t know.” She replaced the finger and continued to listen.
Greg watched it all on the TV. He was more than happy to let them talk all night if they wanted; nobody was going anywhere. He looked over his shoulder at Eric.
“Did you have something to show me, son?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve got his laptop, here. We’ve been cracking it for the last half-a-day, and just a few minutes ago we found this letter written to Jack.” He laid the laptop down on the map and began pounding the keyboard.
“Sir?” One of the agents working the map.
“Yeah?” Greg answered.
“If they have a clean shot, why are we waiting? This guy already shot the senator.”
“One, are you sure it was him?” Greg answered. “Two, I pulled his file. His name is in the author section of your sniper handbook. Call it professional courtesy if you like, but I’ll give Jack a chance before I greenlight taking him down. He knows we have him. We wait.”
“Here it is. You better read it.” Eric slid the laptop around so Greg could see it.
With a last look at the TV, Greg leaned in and began reading.
• • •
“Epi and Atropine are in!” Janice announced.
“Okay, get ready to do it again.” Ron turned the dials on the monitor. “Stop for a minute, Stan,” he added.
The screen went back to flatline as Stan stopped chest compressions. Ron watched for a moment as he continued to bag. No change, the line remained flat.
“I’m gonna try pacing him, guys. Janice, he’s gonna start twitching. It’s okay to touch him and the IV; you won’t get shocked. Understand?” Ron set the rate for eighty before turning on the pacer. He quickly dialed up to one-hundred and forty milliamps—the maximum output the monitor could deliver. No reason to mess around. He’d “go big or go home,” as they liked to say.
He glanced at Janice to see her watching the senator’s body jump in rhythm on the stretcher. Stan had a couple of fingers at the neck. He looked at the screen and saw that he had electrical capture. Now if only the heart would follow.
“Anything?” Ron asked.
“Nothing here,” Stan said with a shake of his head.
Ron stared at the screen, hoping to see the signs that the heart was being stimulated by the repeated shocks he was giving it. No luck. All he saw were the pacer spikes.
“Damn it.” He shut the pacer off and returned the screen to its regular mode. “Back on the chest.” What was he missing? He looked at the IV. It was much slower now.
“How hard is it to push?” he asked Stan. “I mean, is it harder than when you started?”
“Now that you mention it, yeah, his chest feels stiffer.”
“Keep going,” Ron instructed. He stopped bagging long enough to reach over and turn the three-way stopcock which he had inserted in the lower chest wall. He got a little blood, but not much.
“How about now?”
“No change,” Stan replied.
“Janice, take the bag.” Ron let go of the bag as she grabbed it and reached over the monitor for the IV tray.
“What are you thinking now?” Stan asked.
“Tamponade.”
“Tampon-what?”
“Tamponade. Blood around the heart. I’ve gotta get it out, it’s squeezing the heart, not letting it beat. Janice, switch with me.” Ron stuck a 60cc syringe in his mouth, before grabbing the overhead rail and stepping over the senator’s head. He flopped down in the seat and pulled the syringe from his teeth. He placed an 18-gauge spinal needle on the syringe, and held it with his right hand. With his left, he felt the senator’s chest for the xiphoid process at the bottom of the sternum. When he found it, he stuck his thumb in the spot. His pinky went on the left nipple. He swabbed the area next to his thumb with Betadine.
“How’s the road look?”
“We’re gonna stop in just a second. Traffic at the light,” Stan said after looking out the windshield.
“Don’t stop bagging,” he told Janice. He got a nod in reply.
When he felt the brakes engage, he lined up the needle and plunged it into the chest next to his thumb. He had it aimed right at his pinky finger, and advanced it an inch or so before applying negative pressure to the syringe as he advanced. Feeling an increase in resistance, he added pressure to push through. A splash of bright red blood entered the syringe and he stopped advancing. Being careful not to yank the needle in or out, Ron pulled until he had passed the 30cc mark. He glanced at the IV chamber and saw the drip rate increase. He continued to draw until the syringe had a full 60cc’s of blood in it. Stan’s hand grabbed Ron’s shoulder to steady him as Danielle wheeled through the traffic. At this point, Ron pulled the needle from the chest and tossed it in the sharps container.
“Wow,” was all Janice could offer.
“Back on the chest. Switch with me.” Stan and Janice moved quickly to comply, and Ron was soon in front of the monitor again. He turned the dials to engage the pacer.
“Pacing again. Janice, another epi, please.”
The senator’s body began the rhythmic jerking as it had before, but this time Ron was rewarded with the signs of both electrical and mechanical capture.
“Got a pulse?” Ron asked.
Stan checked the carotid. “Yeah, weak but there.”
“Try a femoral.”
Stan probed for the artery in the man’s groin. “Maybe, I’m not sure.”
“Epi’s in.”
Ron slumped back in the seat. “Okay.” He made another notation on his glove. He was suddenly quite tired. He looked up to find Stan grinning at him.
“Why the hell are you grinning?” Ron said.
“Nothing.” Stan continued to grin.
“We’re here!” Danielle shouted from the front.
Ron pulled himself up. “Let’s get him packaged for off-load.” He reached for his stethoscope to double check his tube.
The siren gave its last wail before slowly dying.
The Federal Government holds 179,059 inmates in its prison system.
—FIFTY-ONE—
“Remember Davis?” Sam asked.
“The country boy from Virginia?”
“West Virginia,” Sam corrected. “Boy couldn’t march in step to save his life. Dead scared of anything female. How he made it into the army, I’ll never know. You made me keep him. What happened to him?”
“Last I heard,” Jack replied, “he went home, and his girlfriend’s brothers met him at the bus stop and gave him a ride to the house. He walked in to find both his family and her family assembled and his girl in a white dress.”
“You’re shittin’ me. Shotgun wedding?”
“You got it. Seems he had too good a time on his last leave. They even had a suit ready for him. He was married before he got to hug his mama.” Jack barely got it out before he started laughing. Sam joined him.
Finally, they both came up for air. “Why did you keep him, anyway?” Sam asked.
“He was a good troop. Big and strong. I could load him up with twice as much gear as anybody else, and he would march it till I told him to stop. Run all day if he had to, and best of all, he could shoot expert with anything I handed him—first time. He was a natural. Plus, the kid was patriotic and afraid of failure. He knew he wasn’t the smartest in the bunch, but he wanted to really make it. So I kept him. Kicking him out of the army would have killed him.”
“Where’s he now?” Sam asked.
“Got scratched in the Gulf and went home with a slight limp to the family farm, and is still there far as I know. Probably has ten kids by now.”
“Probably,” Sam echoed. He fell silent as he remembered his own troops. They had all had a Private Davis from time to time.
His thoughts were interrupted by the pain. I
t returned without warning, hot and stabbing. Sam felt himself grow cold as the sweat returned to his forehead. The gun in his hand became slippery, and he tightened his grip to keep from dropping it. The pain forced him to double over and show himself to Jack. He turned his head to see his friend watching him in horror. Sam saw his lips moving, but could not hear the words. The graffiti on the walls became a blurred mosaic of colors that changed with the passing searchlights of the helicopters. He saw Jack rise to come help him. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Sam waved Jack back with the Browning.
Jack sank back into his seat and watched as Sam did battle with his own body. It was soon apparent who was winning.
Sam suddenly doubled up again and vomited. A splash of bright red appeared on the floor, and Sam took several deep breaths before vomiting a second time. Several more breaths and he leaned back in his seat, once again out of Jack’s view.
It was a full minute before he heard Sam call him.
“Jack?”
“Right here, Sam.”
“Do you see now?”
Jack paused. “Yeah.”
“I’ve done all I can. It’s up to you and the politicians now, the press, whoever. I just wanted to wake them up. Show them what the system has become. I respect the law, Jack, you know that. We just don’t have command of the process anymore. The process owns us now. You, me, everyone who follows the laws, we’re now at a disadvantage to those who don’t. What the hell happened? What happened to us? This country is eating itself. You gotta stop it, Jack, you gotta stop it. They don’t fear us anymore. Remember? Remember the fear?”
Jack listened to his friend. He did remember.
Sam’s hand appeared on the pole holding the partition. It was pale and thin. Not the strong hands of the best shooter he had ever known. He watched as the hand crept up the pole and tightened its grip. The feet were then drawn back and planted. Sam appeared slowly as he pulled himself to his feet. He finally stood. One hand clutched the rail, and the other held the gun tightly against the abdomen, guarding against the pain. The blood running from the corner of his mouth was overshadowed by his eyes. They appeared at peace.
Jack finally understood. He rose to his feet and faced his friend.
• • •
“Movement. We have movement of the subject. This is Sierra Three. Subject is standing, facing the rear of the car. I am on target. Repeat, Sierra Three is on target.”
“Shit.” Greg had been watching the news coverage of the train on the other screen. A line of city busses was waiting to take the people emerging from the last car to a nearby high school gym, somewhere they could be questioned out of the press’s reach. He now turned to see two figures standing in the first car.
“Sydney?” He snapped his fingers to get her attention. She covered the phone out of habit before she replied.
“They were talking and laughing for a while. Then I thought I heard someone throw up. Now I can’t really hear anything. I just . . . I don’t know.” She stuck the phone back in her ear on one side and placed a finger in the other.
Greg spun to his own man and pointed. The man just shook his head. One of his operators addressed him.
“Sir, Sierra Three wishes to know if he is weapons free”
Greg contemplated the situation before replying. “No change.”
“Sir?”
Greg spun around. “I said no change! Do not fire unless the man threatens the driver or our agent! Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” The man repeated the instructions over the radio network. Greg listened as the acknowledgments came back. When this whole thing was over, the politicians were going to have his head on a plate, but right now, he was still in charge. Screw ’em.
Come on, Jack, he thought as he scanned the screens. End this thing.
• • •
Ron reattached the bag to the tube and squeezed it as soon as the wheels of the stretcher hit the ground. He was almost blinded by the flash from the cameras, and had to look away as they started moving toward the double doors. Security was everywhere, and they found themselves surrounded as they rolled through the doors. As soon as the doors closed behind them, Ron raised his head to see a familiar face.
“How you doing Ron?” Art asked.
“Not good. Lost him once. Got him back, but he’s bleeding into his pericardium. We need blood. Who’s on tonight?”
“Dr. Plaisier.”
“Good.”
As they approached the trauma room, Ron could see the hallway crowded with people. Radiology staff with their portable x-ray machine and heavy lead vests, phlebotomists with their trays of tubes, and new interns eager to see a gunshot wound. Ron dismissed them all and concentrated on the tall thin figure, dressed in the blue scrubs, calmly waiting with his arms crossed next to the empty bed.
Danielle turned in the doorway, and they spun the cot to enter the room headfirst. Ron took a deep breath and, with his command voice, let them have it:
“Sixty-year-old male, shot in the upper left chest from an unknown type rifle. Entrance and exit. External bleeding controlled. You have a 7.5 at 23cm, central line in the right subclavian, decompressed on the left side both anteriorly and laterally with frank blood. Running the second liter of lactated ringers in now. Coded once. Total of four epi and three atropine. Chest got stiff. 60cc’s of arterial blood from the pericardium. Return of pulses with pacing. Stop!”
The trauma team had removed the straps and untangled the lines to move the patient over to the other bed. Ron had passed the bag off to the respiratory technician, who was now bagging with one hand while programming her vent with the other. The team had been about to move when Ron had stopped them. He now had a hold of the board to physically prevent them from moving.
“What?” a nurse asked.
“Detach the bag first.” Ron pointed with his chin.
“I have it.” The respiratory tech replied with some annoyance. Ron shook his head. He’d had tubes yanked out in the past by a tech that wasn’t paying attention.
“Disconnect the bag or we’re staying right here,” he said.
The tech opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by the clear voice of Dr. Plaisier.
“Do what he says now.”
With a frown at Ron, she disconnected the bag.
“On three.” Ron looked up and down the bed. “Two . . . Three.” Four sets of arms and hands safely set the senator on the hospital bed. The monitor and its leads were carefully set between the patient’s legs. The bag was reconnected, and someone took over bagging from the tech, while she continued her programming. Ron grimaced as he noted they hadn’t had time to tape down the pads more. Danielle pulled the stretcher free from the crowd and disappeared out into the hallway. The void was quickly filled with people, and Ron was pushed out toward the wall.
“Ron?” Dr. Plaiser’s voice cut through the multiple voices. Ron looked to see the doc’s head above the crowd on the other side of the room. He was using his stool. Something they had all found odd when he had first come here, but it was really quite smart. By standing on it, he freed up a space at the patient’s bedside for his team to work, and yet he could still see everything. While he was addressing Ron, he still had his eyes on the actions of the trauma team.
“Yeah, uh . . . coded approximately—” Ron looked at the clock on the wall, “—just less than ten minutes ago. Had good CPR the whole way. He’s now paced at eighty beats per minute. Good carotids—faint femorals.” He paused as a new blood pressure came up on the monitor: 88/54. “That’s narrower than his last,” he informed them.
“Okay,” Dr. Plaisier spoke. “Stacie?”
“Tube is good.”
“Art?”
“All lines are good. Labs are sent. Getting an arterial stick. Pacer is holding.”
“Okay. Listen up. I want two units of O-neg. Head, neck, chest, and pelvis films. Set up for a chest tube on the left, alert CT and the OR. I need his medical history. Where’s that file?”
>
Ron backed out of the room as the team scrambled to comply with the doctor’s orders. He was about to turn and leave when out of the huddle he heard the doc’s voice.
“Nice job, Ron.”
Art’s head popped up for a second with a grin. Not every day a surgeon said that to a medic. Ron returned the grin before stripping off his gloves and leaving to find his partner. He strolled down the crowded hallway toward the ambulance entrance. There he found Stan and Janice leaning against the wall outside the EMS room. Janice was holding her gun belt in her hand and an ice pack to her head.
“Almost left it on the truck.” She shrugged.
“That would have been bad.” Ron smiled. “You two did great. Thanks for the help.”
“Yeah, nice job there, rookie.” Stan gave her a friendly punch in the shoulder.
“Who are you kidding? I had no idea what I was doing. All I know is that partner of yours grabbed me, tells my partner she needs me, and he just says go. I need to have a talk with him.” She grinned.
“Where is she, anyway?” Ron asked.
“Out in the rig, cussing at the mess and the reporters, I think,” Stan replied.
“I better go get her. I’m sure my boss will be here soon. Janice, if yours gives you a problem, give me a call or have them do it. I won’t leave you hanging.” Ron handed her his card.
“He’s on his way,” she replied. “What about the press?”
“Let the hospital’s people handle that. I’m not saying a thing.”
“Me neither,” Stan echoed.
The doors slid open and Danielle stormed in. She did not look happy. She peeled off her coat and tossed it in the EMS room before joining them.
“Would you believe some reporter got through security and tried to get in the back of my truck? I about decked him. We’re down for decon. I already told dispatch, and I can’t clean it up until those reporters leave. How’s he doing?”
