Backfire fst-16

by Catherine Coulter

  One of the boys asked, his voice shaking with a mixture of fear and excitement, “Is she dead?”

  Savich barely registered the question. It was outside of him, not important, only she was important. He could see he was pressing on a deep gouge the bullet had made along the side of her head. But how deep? There was so much blood with a head wound, too much. He pressed down harder on the wound and put the fingers of his other hand against her bloody neck to find her pulse, to reassure himself again it was there. He touched her vivid hair curling over his hands, wet with blood.

  He said, more to himself than to anyone else, “She’s alive.” Saying the words helped to make them real.

  One of the boys said, “The nine-one-one operator said everyone in the city is rushing to the Fairmont.”

  “Billy, what are you doing? What is going on here?”

  “Mom, we’re okay. We’re helping the FBI. One of the agents got shot.”

  Savich blocked out the parents’ voices, leaned close to Sherlock’s bloody face. “It’s okay, sweetheart, you’re going to be fine. You’ve been shot—well, let me say it’s more than a graze, but still, the bullet didn’t hit your brain.” He pressed his cheek against her bloody hair, and thanked God the shooter’s aim wasn’t true. He wondered for only an instant who the shooter was.

  “Savich! Where’s Sherlock?”

  It was Eve. Billy’s parents pulled him and the other two boys out of the way. Eve fell to her knees beside her.

  Savich raised his face, now nearly as bloody as his wife’s. “I saw the explosion blow out that window in Xu’s suite. Are you all right?”

  Eve waved that away. “Your face—”

  “It’s Sherlock’s blood,” he said.

  Eve said, “Is—is she okay?”

  He made himself nod. “The bullet didn’t kill her. She’s alive, but she’s out—” There weren’t any more words. He pressed his shirtsleeve hard against the wound, his eyes not leaving her face.

  He didn’t care about Xu, didn’t care if the Fairmont burned to the ground, only about Sherlock. No, get yourself together, Sherlock’s alive. You have to take charge, there’s no one else. She’d captured Xu and then someone else had shot her. Who? It didn’t make sense; Xu was alone, always alone. Wasn’t he?

  He looked over at the three boys, Billy’s parents standing protectively behind them, and Savich registered that Billy was as redheaded as Sherlock, tall, gangly, and skinny as a plank. He nodded at them, and manufactured a calm, steady voice. He said to Eve, “These boys protected Sherlock from the crowd. Get their names.” He managed a smile at Billy’s mom.

  “Ma’am, your son is a hero, all three of them are heroes. Thanks, all of you.”

  He looked back down at Sherlock. “Eve, where’s Harry?”

  “He went after Xu.”

  No more words; he never looked away from Sherlock’s face until Eve touched his arm. “The EMTs are here, Dillon. Let them take care of her.”

  EMT Nathan Everett lightly touched Savich’s shoulder. “You all right, sir? Yes, okay, I see now it’s her blood. You need to let us take care of her now.”

  Savich raised his face to a man he’d never seen before in his life. “She’s going to be all right.”

  “Yes, sir, yes, she will,” Nathan said, and turned to direct two other EMTs to bring a gurney.

  Eve pulled Savich to his feet. He watched them lift Sherlock onto the gurney. She looked nearly lifeless. No, she would live, she had to. “I got the boys’ names and addresses.”

  Savich forced himself to focus on Eve’s face. “Are you okay, Eve? And Harry and Griffin?”

  “Yes, we were just rattled.”

  “Have Harry and Griffin gone after Xu?” He looked at her face, really registered it for the first time. “You look like you’ve been in a war.”

  She nodded. “All three of us do. The fire and smoke was from an incendiary device, but we made it through. Xu even had a bomb rigged in the room. Luckily, we’d gotten out before he blew it.”

  The crowd melted away from Sherlock’s gurney as they rolled her to the ambulance. Savich walked quickly after her. He said over his shoulder, “Who shot her? It sure wasn’t Xu, since I saw her cuffing him. So who was it?”

  “We’ll find him,” Eve called after him, as he climbed into the ambulance with Sherlock and they shut the door.

  It was slow going getting through the snarled traffic, the gawkers milling around, but finally the ambulance pulled onto Market Street on the way to San Francisco General.

  Savich held her hand between his, never looking away from her face.

  “I know it’s a lot of blood, sir,” Nathan said, “but head wounds are nasty like that.”

  “Yes, I know,” Savich said. “I’ve seen them before.”

  He watched the EMT check her pupils again and look at her head wound. He prepped her arm and slid a needle into a vein at her elbow. “My name is Nathan. The bleeding from her scalp has stopped. She needs this IV in case we have to give her medication. She’s getting saline now, nothing more.”

  Savich nodded. “My name’s Savich. Give me an alcohol pad and I’ll wipe the blood away.”

  Nathan Everett wanted to say No, you shouldn’t touch her, but he saw the big man with only one shirt sleeve, his black leather jacket on the floor beside him, was desperately trying to keep control. “Sure, here you go. But stay away from the wound; we don’t want it to start bleeding again.”

  He watched Savich lift up her hair and wash it with sterile dressings Nathan had soaked in saline from a plastic bottle. He was gentle, his touch light. After a half-dozen dressings, he got most of the blood cleared from her hair.

  Nathan handed him another dressing. “You need to wash your face as well, sir.”

  Savich did as he said. So much blood, he thought, as he wiped his face.

  Thank goodness, Nathan thought; the wound wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. It was a deep gouge along the side of her head. But was her skull fractured? Her brain injured? Was she still bleeding inside her skull from a lacerated artery? Nathan didn’t know, but he did know the bullet had passed only a few millimeters away from exploding her head open. Nathan swallowed. The important thing now was that she wake up soon. The sooner she woke up, the better the chance she was still the person she was. He said aloud what he was hoping for. “It isn’t fatal, but she needs to wake up. Are you an FBI agent?”

  “Yes, I’m Agent Savich, Dillon Savich.”

  “You work with her? Is she an agent, too?”

  “Yes, she’s an agent. I live with her as well. She’s my wife.”

  Nathan nearly fell over backward when he said that.

  “You’re kidding.”

  Savich only shook his head. He listened to the ambulance siren blare loud and insistent as traffic pulled over in front of them. Odd, but he hadn’t heard the sirens before now. He wiped a streak of blood off her face. She was pale, nearly as white as Sean’s two percent milk. It looked obscene. It nearly broke him.

  Her eyes opened. She looked dazed, like a prizefighter who’d gone too many rounds.

  Savich leaned in close, his hand squeezing hers. “Sherlock?”

  She blinked, licked her lips. “Why are you up there, Dillon? Or why am I down here? What happened?”

  “You don’t remember? It doesn’t matter. You were shot, but you’ll be fine.”

  She looked confused, as if she hadn’t understood what he’d said. “Dillon, my head really hurts.”

  “I know, but we’re nearly to the hospital now. You had a small accident—nothing, really—only a small hit.”

  “A small hit?”

  Nathan said, “That’s right. Try to stay awake. That’s right, can you focus on my face?”

  “Her name’s Sherlock.”

  “Sherlock, what color are my eyes?”

  She didn’t say anything, simply closed her eyes again.

  Nathan saw Savich’s face go blank and said quickly, “She woke up, she was herself, an
d that’s an excellent sign. Six more minutes and we’ll be there. She’s not going to die, Agent Savich.”

  For the first time, Savich looked and actually registered the face of the man beside Sherlock. He was in his early forties, on the heavy side, with pockmarked skin, deep brown eyes, and a reassuring smile, but most important, as he’d spoken, Savich hadn’t seen any lurking doubt in his eyes.

  Nathan cleared his throat. “Who shot her?”

  “I don’t know,” Savich said. “I don’t know much of anything except there was a bomb in the Fairmont and she caught the man who blew it up and someone else shot her.”

  Nathan said, “Was the man a terrorist?”

  A terrorist? “No,” Savich said. “He’s a very careful, very well-prepared man who deserves to be in shackles.” He added, never looking away from Sherlock’s face, “I hope no one died in that hotel.”

  Sherlock jerked, took a hitching breath.

  Savich felt her hand tighten briefly around his fingers before she let go again. He clasped her hand tighter, and his own breath hitched. He was terrified.

  He felt Nathan’s hand on his shoulder. “I do, too, Agent. We’re here, sir.”

  San Francisco General Hospital

  Tuesday afternoon

  Fifteen minutes later, half a dozen FBI agents rushed into the emergency room, thankfully not at all crowded, Cheney at their head. Savich was standing by the registration desk, speaking quietly to a nurse.

  Cheney forced the words out: “Eve said it’s a head wound. How is she?”

  Savich looked at Harry, Eve, and Griffin, with four other agents whose names he didn’t know crowding in behind them, some of their faces and clothes blackened with soot. One of them had blood smeared on his shirt. His or someone he’d pulled out of the hotel?

  Virginia Trolley and Vincent Delion came running in behind them.

  Savich said, “She’s awake. I’m not with her because they’re doing a neurological exam and the doctor said there wasn’t room and since I couldn’t add anything useful, I needed to be out here.” He nodded to the nurse. “Nurse Blankenship is going back and forth, telling me exactly what they’re doing and why.”

  “How bad is it?” Virginia Trolley came up to put her hand on his shoulder.

  Savich said, “The bullet gouged a trench along the left side of her head, above her left ear.” He touched his fingers to his own head to show them. “If it had been a couple of millimeters to the right, she’d be dead.” Savich felt his throat close. He swallowed. He stood as stiff as a fence post, trying to get himself together. “She was a little groggy when I left her, but she seemed okay. They were shaving off a square of her hair so they could put stitches in.” Odd, but saying those words nearly broke him. He said nothing more. He knew he needed to stop to keep control.

  Nurse Blankenship looked from Savich to the group, and said to all of them, “As I told Agent Savich, the fact that they’re ready to stitch her scalp so soon is great news. They’re not taking her to CT right away, and that means they’re not worried about a skull fracture and her neurological exam must be normal, or nearly so.”

  “Is there something wrong with her exam?” Savich asked.

  Nurse Blankenship hastened to say, “No, sorry—I only meant she’s had a concussion, that’s all. I tell you what, I’ll go back in and check on them again, so you’ll know what to expect, okay?”

  She smiled at them all, walked quickly down the hall into Sherlock’s cubicle, and returned in under a minute. “They said she’d be going for a CT scan in a few minutes, just to be sure. The doctors say the odds are good the scan will be normal and that she’ll be staying for only a day or two, that she’ll make a complete recovery with only a small scar for a souvenir.

  “Now, if all of you would repeat to Agent Savich that his wife should be up within the week, I would appreciate it.” She patted Savich’s arm and excused herself.

  There was a collective sigh of relief. Harry studied Savich’s face, saw he’d finally accepted Sherlock wasn’t going to die. Savich turned toward them, focused again. “What information do you have? Do you know who shot her? Do you know what happened to Xu?”

  Harry said, “A couple of Virginia’s officers who were positioned two blocks up on California ran into a young guy waving his fists and yelling after a white Infiniti that was fishtailing down the street. Xu had jerked open the guy’s car door, clouted him in the head, and shoved him into the road. We’ve got an APB out on the car and the license plate number.

  “Xu is hurt. One of us”—Harry nodded toward Eve and Griffin—“shot him in the suite from behind a wall of flames. Agent Gaines, our maid in the hallway, said Xu was shot in the upper arm and bleeding pretty heavily when he took off down the stairs. He broke her nose but didn’t kill her. When she got herself together, she came in to help us get out, a good thing, since Xu had left a bomb to detonate when he got clear. Griffin’s singed a bit around the edges; we all are, inside and out, coughing a bit, but nothing worse.

  “We followed Xu’s blood trail down the stairs to the lobby, and we were in the stairwell when he detonated the bomb. There was pandemonium in the lobby, but we didn’t stop to help, we ran directly outside to find Xu. You were already there, leaning over Sherlock.” Harry looked at the others. “That’s all we know.”

  Agent Kain, who’d been one of the agents manning the van with Sherlock, said, “Sherlock spotted Xu. She didn’t say a word, jumped out of the van and took off. We ran after her fast, but there were people clogging the road and the sidewalk. Then that window blew out on the top floor, and people were screaming and trying to escape the flying shards of glass. When we got to you, Savich, you were with her along with those three teenage boys.”

  A second agent said, “She had him flattened on his belly with one of the cuffs already snapped on when we heard that single shot. It sounded like a rifle, which meant it could have been fired from anywhere behind us. We’ll have a trajectory as soon as they get forensics out there.”

  Savich said, “But who? Xu didn’t know we’d be there at the Fairmont waiting for him. How could he have arranged for someone with a rifle to be covering his back?”

  Cheney said, “I don’t know, Savich, but how likely is it that a brand-new player suddenly shows up when Sherlock has Xu down and nearly restrained and then, for whatever reason, shoots her?”

  Savich slammed his fist down on the counter. “She had him, it should be over, but now he’s in the wind again. And it must be that Xu isn’t flying solo.”

  “The Chinese?” Eve asked.

  “It’s possible,” Savich said, “but I don’t see the Chinese doing this. In their position, I would have shot Xu, if anyone, not Sherlock.”

  Virginia Trolley said in a voice that could cool boiling water, “We’ve got half the force out near the Fairmont. Someone must have seen him, seen something. Keep the faith, Dillon.”

  Cheney said, “It’s a mess at the Fairmont, the streets blocked with fire trucks and police cars. We moved your Taurus, Savich, not to worry. So far, Sherlock’s the only one they seem to have ambulanced out. There were only cuts and bruises, from what I could see.”

  “The media were already there when we left,” Eve said. “It’s national by now, since it’s the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. They’ve got everything going for them with this story—a bomber they’re calling a terrorist and an FBI agent shot in the head.”

  Cheney’s cell rang. He glanced down and frowned. “It’s KTCU.” Savich watched him think for a minute, then answer. He turned away from them as he said, “Agent Stone.”

  Almost immediately, Cheney said, “Yes, yes, but I’m not there. What do you know for a fact, so I’ll know if I can add anything?”

  Smart, Savich thought, pulling information from the media for a change.

  Cheney punched off his cell, rejoined the group. “That was the anchor of the six-o’clock news. He told me only a corner suite on the sixth floor of the Fairmont was badly damaged. Natur
ally, he had no idea it was Xu’s suite. I didn’t tell him I already knew from my own people it was completely gutted, a lot of smoke and water damage on that whole floor, but he did tell me the fire’s out.

  “The anchor wanted to know if a terrorist was holed up in the Fairmont and if he managed to shoot the FBI agent in the street. He wondered if the FBI had bombed the suite to get the terrorist to come out.”

  Cheney grinned at them. “Where do they get this stuff? Like the FBI carries grenades around with them in their holsters. I told him I was only now finding out anything, and to give me an hour.”

  Eve asked, “What will you do when he calls back?”

  “I’m going to give him our photograph of Xu to put on TV. Given the bomb was at the Fairmont, you can bet everyone will be watching the news to find out what happened, which means everyone will know what Xu looks like by tonight. If the media wants any more than that, I’ll tell them to talk to the police commissioner.”

  “Many thanks,” Virginia said.

  Cheney said, “Now, tell me about the bombs, Harry. Was the first one a hand grenade?”

  Eve wondered how the devil Harry would know, when Cheney added, “Harry was in Special Forces before he joined the Bureau.”

  Harry said, “It wasn’t a conventional grenade or some of us would be dead, Xu included. There was no shrapnel, too much boom, and too much blinding light. It was a flash-bang. We used those suckers a few times in Afghanistan, when the situation called for something debilitating but not fatal, like cleaning out an enemy nest.

  “Flash-bangs are powerful, they’re effective, and they’re pretty small. I’ll bet Xu carried one around in his pocket, in case he ever found himself in trouble.