Dead Wrong

by Allen Wyler

  Hell, if the CIA, FBI, or whatever, had used torture to learn about the 9/11 attacks before they happened so they could prevent them, would people in their right mind argue that torture wasn’t worth it? Hell no! So what’s the big ethical dilemma here?

  “That’s it? They’re worried about political blowback?” Wyse asked.

  “No. They also worry that your numbers are too small to convincingly prove it works. They want longer follow-up on your implanted subjects too. In other words, before they stick their necks out, they want assurance that it works without any problems. And I’ve got to tell you that although the Russell interview is convincing, it sure as hell didn’t help us any.”

  “Then they missed the whole point. Need I remind you that you agreed to use the Russell interview? It’s a convincing demonstration precisely because ninety-nine percent of married men aren’t going to describe strangling a goddamn hooker to death while boning her. I assume you emphasized that point to your little group of choir boys?”

  “Of course. I’m just telling you how it played.”

  Wyse was seething now.

  “And that,” Cunningham continued, “brings us back to the McCarthy problem.”

  “Wait, we haven’t finished this topic yet. Answer me this, do you think they’re going to buy it or not?”

  “Truthfully, I don’t know. Eventually. Maybe. But I didn’t push it because I didn’t want to appear too eager. At this point my best strategy is to lobby each member of the committee until I can get solid support. Right now, we’re not even close.”

  “What kind of timeline we talking about?” Fuck! This was all McCarthy’s fault.

  “How should I know? Look, just do your job, and let me do mine. Do you understand this concept?”

  “But you will work on it. And work it hard?”

  Cunningham said, “Hey look, I have just as much at stake in this as you. Maybe even more.”

  The fuck you do! “Maybe even more?” Wyse barked a sarcastic laugh. “What the hell do you have on the line? Another star on your cap? This blows up, you still have a nice fat pension. Me? I’ll have nothing.” He caught himself before letting slip about the overdue mountainous debt.

  Silence.

  Wyse managed to reign in his emotions. “Sorry. I interrupted. What were you going to say about McCarthy?”

  “Apparently he was called into surgery early this morning, so he wasn’t in the office when it opened. But I’ve been assured matters are being taken care of now.”

  WYSE HAD DEVELOPED a fascination in the Nobel Prize in grade school. Not the peace prize and the other pantywaist social ones, but the hardcore medals for physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine. The appeal wasn’t their academic or intellectual significance; it was the fame bestowed to the recipient. Not rock star, Brett Favre, or Alex Rodriguez type fame. Rather, a tuxedo-clad, distinguished fame. Or perhaps respectful adoration more aptly described it.

  By senior year in high school he was an encyclopedia of facts about obscure winners, like Gabriel Jonas Lippmann, winner of the 1908 prize in physics for a method of color photography based on the phenomenon of interference that became known as the Lippmann plate.

  By college he realized the odds of winning a prize were miniscule. No one ever set out in life to win the prize like some do for becoming president of the United States or winning on American Idol. The usual winner spent a career pushing the horizons of a phenomenon they had stumbled onto early. Only years later, sometimes even posthumously, did the Stockholm committee call with the good news. Winning depended on happenstance and a lot of luck. Like Bill Gates and Microsoft.

  On the other hand, there were tangible things one could do to increase the odds of being recorded in the annals of history. Like the lottery advertisements preach, you can’t win if you don’t buy a ticket. For starters, one should be in a likely field. High school English teachers don’t win a Nobel Prize in medicine. So Wyse narrowed the choices. Not being able to handle complex math made chemistry and physics out of the question. Medicine became the only realistic option. Not that that was a chip shot either.

  The subject that interested him most was memory, but that particular topic had been mined too many times to still hold Nobel-winning potential. So, if the prize was out, the next best road to fame was to have a disease named after him, like Alzheimer did. Another option was to devise a kick-ass treatment like the Whipple procedure. But, he didn’t have an inventive gene in his body.

  He figured no one became famous by being a family doctor working thirty hours a day in Butt Fuck, North Dakota. You needed to specialize. And do so in a big city. Although he started med school without a specialty interest, he knew it’d be some sort of surgeon. The simplicity, glamour, and adrenaline rush of trauma appealed to his naive sense of drama, as did neurosurgery’s cachet as an elite specialty.

  And there was the answer: Combine the two. Become a trauma neurosurgeon.

  Sure, medicine held a fascination, but not as much as business. Market opportunities, especially. He had a knack for that. Making it a natural to combine neurosurgery with business.

  Perfect. But where was the opportunity, the untapped disease?

  Spinal cord tumors? Tragic, but not a big enough market to consider.

  Lumbar disc disease? A huge market but already trampled to death by med-tech companies.

  Head trauma? Profit margins too thin.

  Posttraumatic stress disorder? Whoa, that was huge. And the really appealing thing was, there weren’t any effective treatments. So there it was: his calling.

  Numerous times when asked why a neurosurgeon would devote a career to a nonsurgical problem he spouted some drivel about the personal agony PTSD inflicted on its victims, but the unstated answer was, he would make it a surgical disease. The concept was amazingly simple: The memory of the traumatic event triggered acute symptoms. Localize that specific memory within the brain and remove it, thereby removing the symptoms. Exactly the approach neurosurgeons use to treat some forms of epilepsy. Wyse believed in the elegantly simple logic. And guess what? Most great ideas appear so simple that the moment one hears them, one says, “Why didn’t I think if that?”

  And now McCarthy was sticking his nose into the medical history of two of his patients. Given enough information, McCarthy would figure it out. Once that happened, that bastard would try to destroy his one big chance at fame. Wyse would make sure he never got the chance to interfere.

  8

  DOCTORS HOSPITAL

  MCCARTHY HEARD THREE rapid thumps quickly followed by a deep guttural groan behind him. He stopped crawling to listen harder, expecting to hear movement from Washington. Instead, he heard a Sikes yell, “Washington. Listen up. I got the sombitch.”

  Washington didn’t answer.

  Hmmm, a ploy to trick him into moving and giving away his position? But that groan, so real, so full of agony—and those thumps so familiar. Then it clicked: He’d heard those thumps when Washington shot Maria.

  Jesus, had Sikes accidentally … No, it couldn’t be.

  He cocked his head to listen harder but only heard water trickling through a nearby pipe and the humming of the same fluorescent light fixture. The passage he just crawled through remained only dark shadows and no movement. The back of his head prickled, urging him to get going in spite of being afraid of a trap.

  “Hey, Elroy. Sound off.” Sikes again.

  No answer.

  Sikes sounded what? Angry? Concerned? Whatever it was, it struck him as genuine. Something had happened. Okay, so now what? Keep moving in the same direction or double back? Instinct said to move as far away as possible. Logic told him that Washington’s gun was probably not more than fifteen feet away. If the man was injured or dead, could he retrieve it before Sikes did?

  He crawled back to the right-angle turn and cautiously poked his head around the corner enough to see Washington lying face down and motionless, right arm draped over the same pipe that had ripped Tom’s pants. He stretched ou
t and tapped Washington’s hand. The man didn’t move. Tom quickly grasped the wrist. Flaccid. He felt for a pulse but felt none. More confident now, he slid forward enough to do the same with Washington’s neck. No carotid pulse either. The man was seriously dead.

  Another search revealed Washington’s gun inches from his hand and a small LED flashlight further to the left. Tom grabbed both, tucking the light into his pocket and the gun under his waistband. The weapon made him feel less vulnerable and in possession of more options—although he wasn’t sure what those might be.

  Who were these guys? Real government agents or something else?

  Yeah? Like what?

  He ran his hand over Washington’s suit coat, felt a hard rectangle in the right pocket, and pulled out a full clip of ammunition, which he pocketed.

  “Washington, goddamn it man, answer me.” Sikes’s voice was closer now. Time to go.

  McCarthy scrambled back behind the ventilation duct and turned to watch the opening where Washington had entered the crawl space.

  Sikes’s head poked into view, Washington’s feet inches from his face. Sikes muttered, “Fuck me!”

  Tom turned away from Sikes to disguise where his voice came from and called, “Nice shooting, Sikes. You nailed your own man.”

  Sikes shook Washington’s ankle. “Elroy, get the fuck up, man!” The rage in Sikes’s voice made Tom’s skin crawl.

  Sikes stared in Tom’s direction for several seconds, radiating anger. “You are responsible for this, McCarthy.”

  McCarthy pulled Washington’s gun from his waistband. “The hell you talking about? You shot him, Sikes.”

  “You have his weapon?”

  Tom’s fingers tightened on the grip and realized that no answer gave him a slight advantage.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, McCarthy.”

  “Done what?” He crept a few inches away from the corner, retracing his original route, trying for as much distance—and sheet metal—between himself and Sikes as possible.

  “Shoot your girl and Washington.”

  He backed up a few more inches, slow and carefully, making certain to make no sound. He was pretty sure Sikes couldn’t actually see him but was talking in his direction by assumption.

  Sikes continued. “You started the day in serious trouble, boy. But then, to make matters worse, soon as we identified ourselves, you freaked and grab Elroy’s gun and shot him down like a dog. See? You’re not only guilty of spying, but you murdered two innocent, helpless people in an attempt to flee. You realize, of course, this leaves me no choice but to shoot you down.”

  Tom’s right knee slipped. Reflexively, he leaned left, his foot hitting the duct with a solid thump. He froze, swearing silently. At least the sheet metal might provide some protection from a bullet. Or deflect it. But if Sikes noticed his legs in the space between the bottom of the duct and the ceiling tiles, he’d be a sitting duck. He waited, afraid any movement, including breathing, would give away his position.

  SIKES WASN’T A hundred percent sure, but he swore the noise came from the one-o’clock position, give or take a few degrees to either side. The problem was that sound bounced off hard surfaces, making precise targeting difficult. And he needed a kill shot, although a totally disabling wound might work. Anything less and McCarthy might return fire—assuming he was in possession of Washington’s weapon. This scenario raised a series of questions: If McCarthy had the gun, would he use it? And if so, did he have weapons training? If so, how accurate is he? It made Sikes nervous, exposing his head like this.

  And sure as shit, even though the weapons were outfitted with suppressors a round hitting metal would send sound reverberating through this floor—perhaps the entire building—like a fucking PA system. Someone hearing the noise might call security. Sikes planned on notifying security anyway, but not until after properly staging the scene. Meaning his first priority was put McCarthy down.

  “Still there, McCarthy?”

  There! Another rustle from approximately one o’clock. And that, he realized, was probably as good as he was going to get. He aimed and squeezed off a round.

  Wham! The sound was like a baseball bat slamming a garbage can. Must’ve hit a fucking ventilation duct.

  A second later a muzzle flash appeared just below and right of where he’d aimed. The round pinged off the water pipe inches above his right shoulder and ricocheted into the ceiling above his head, showering him with concrete fragments.

  Sikes dropped into a crouch on the desk, moving his head below the ceiling tiles. “Son of a mother bitch.” He wanted to jump off the desk and pepper the ceiling with shots, catching that motherfucker full force in the line of fire. But that would make staging the scene impossible. He’d have to settle for another way to take McCarthy down. Suddenly the mission changed from one of national security to personal vendetta.

  Well, that answered one question: McCarthy was armed. And if that traitorous bastard possessed half the smarts of a good coon dog, he’d be hightailing it out of there. Leaving Sikes only one reasonable option: Seal the building, then personally hunt the motherfucker down. This wing of mostly offices was isolated from the rest of the main hospital in that it connected to it only on the first and basement floors. Nine floors high, long and narrow. Lewis and Womack guarded the first floor exits as backup. There was no way for McCarthy to escape without being caught. All they had to do was move up slowly, sweeping each floor, narrowing the places the bastard could hide until they had him cornered. Sikes activated a throat mike. “Chickens, this is Mother Hen, you copy?”

  Two FM carriers hissed as Buck Lewis and Ernest Womack double-clicked their transmitters.

  “Be advised of a situation. Alert level five, delta, for our target. Target is confirmed to be five foot, eleven inches, white male, approximately one hundred seventy pounds, medium build, brown eyes. Wearing white dress shirt, striped tie, tan pants, cordovan loafers, no jewelry other than a watch. He is armed with one of our weapons. Use of deadly force is operative and preferred. He is presently in the ninth floor ceiling. I’ll request hospital security seal the area. Immediately commence an upward sweep of the building for him. Is this an affirmative?”

  Again both carriers double clicked.

  From overhead came a muffled hollow metallic thump, which Sikes interpreted as McCarthy accidently bumping the ventilation duct, which undoubtedly meant he was on the move again. At the moment, Sikes had more important things to do than pursue him. Let his team do that. The more pressing task was to stage the scene for local law enforcement. He cautiously peeked into the crawl space. Everything appeared the same as it had moments ago, so he reached out and grasped Washington ankles and tugged. Fucker weighted a ton.

  After muscling Washington down onto the desk, Sikes searched his pockets but didn’t find his weapon. He flicked on a small brass desk lamp and angled it into the crawl space. Not there either, which was pretty much what he expected.

  Perfect. When captured, McCarthy would be holding the gun that killed the receptionist. Ballistics would support Sikes’s version of events.

  He hated losing Washington—they’d become tight during the past year working together—but his death served a very useful purpose: It justified blowing McCarthy’s traitorous ass to hell and back.

  After brushing dust from Washington’s clothes, he positioned the lifeless body in the hallway. Next, he exchanged the bullet-damaged ceiling tiles in McCarthy’s office with identical ones from the small lavatory at the end of the hall where they’d never be noticed. Finished, he stood back to inspect the scene and rehearse his story. Then, to be absolutely sure of not making an error, he reenacted the story from the spot he’d claim McCarthy fired. The angles and body position seemed perfect.

  Now satisfied, he phoned hospital security. They, he figured, would immediately notify the Seattle police. But because the case involved stolen, highly sensitive classified material, Colonel Cunningham would intervene to squelch any further forensic investigation
by the locals.

  He checked his watch. Lewis and Womack should be closing in on McCarthy any minute now. Truth be told, he was amazed they hadn’t already called in to report capturing him. After all, McCarthy was a terrified amateur and running for his life. Easy pickings.

  With the situation now under control, he allowed his rage to boil over. He was furious. Not just because McCarthy stole Washington’s weapon and fired at him, but because Washington said the office girl had left for the day. When they had entered the office and seen it empty, Washington assumed the staff closed the office early for the long weekend. Now looking back on everything, nothing had gone as Washington had anticipated. Starting with McCarthy not arriving at his office first thing in the morning. Had things unfolded according to plan, Colonel Cunningham would know exactly what McCarthy had done with the stolen information and McCarthy would be dead. Washington’s fault from beginning to end.

  Well, not entirely. McCarthy had to shoulder a substantial portion of the blame too. Sikes would make damn sure he paid with his life. The traitorous bastard!

  9

  SARAH HAMILTON COULDN’T shake the amorphous, gnawing dread deep inside her chest, a warning of something terrible about to happen, although she didn’t know who or what it might involve. Yet the intensity made it seem it would involve someone she cared about.

  She knew the clinical term for the feeling: free-floating anxiety. But objectifying it did little to lessen the effect on her.

  In retrospect, subtler symptoms had been festering since finding out about Bobbie Baker’s forged Valium prescription. She doubted that knowing who gave it to Bobbie would relieve her dread. Still, it was worth a try. Besides, she needed to find that out anyway.

  She checked the time. 1:15. Still too early. Last time she called the CICU they hadn’t drawn the blood gas to determine if the intensivists could pull Bobbie’s endotracheal tube.