Patient One: A Novel

by Leonard Goldberg

  “Perhaps we should choose a backup Special Ops team that’s closer to Los Angeles,” Alderman suggested.

  “And settle for a second-best unit?” Halloway countered. “Remember, we’ll only have one chance to rescue the President.”

  Alderman nodded slowly. “I’m aware of that. But we must keep in mind the Navy SEAL team is over five hours away. That translates into at least four dead hostages.”

  “I know, I know,” Halloway said softly, again wondering who the terrorists would kill first. A Russian in the initial round, she decided, then an American. “We’d better hope that Secret Service team has some luck to go along with their skills.”

  “I think we’re putting all of our marbles in one basket,” Toliver groused. “We’re banking on this Secret Service team to save the President, and they can’t even take out a Mexican drug lord efficiently.”

  “That was primarily my fault, not theirs,” Alderman said, trying to keep his dislike for Toliver out of his voice. “I had the operation aborted in the middle of a firefight, which no doubt complicated matters. They were fortunate to get out unscathed. And remember, they did complete their mission.”

  Toliver shrugged, unconvinced. “They even screwed up at the airport.”

  “But when all is said and done, the drug king was killed and our men are alive,” Alderman countered.

  “But at what cost? Look at how many people they—”

  “Enough!” Halloway glared at Toliver. “The Secret Service Special Ops is our best bet, and we’re going to use them. Now if you want me to put it to a vote, I will.”

  Toliver sulked in his chair. He knew the vote would go against him. And where the hell was the Attorney General, who would almost certainly agree that the Secretary of Defense should be in charge, since the operation now involved the military? “I was just pointing out flaws.”

  Oh, yes, Halloway thought disgustedly, aware that Toliver was covering his own ass. If the rescue attempt failed, he would make sure the world knew that he alone had been against the plan to use the Secret Service team from the very start.

  “All right,” Halloway said, nodding to Alderman. “Let’s get back to the Secret Service Special Ops team and see what they have in mind.”

  Alderman switched on the speakerphone. “This is Director Alderman.”

  “Yes, sir,” Geary responded immediately.

  “We know you’re still receiving information, but we want plans for a rescue ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How soon can we expect to have those plans?”

  “Within minutes of us obtaining the final pieces of critical information.”

  “Which are?”

  “The thickness and construction of the walls, ceiling, and floor in the Beaumont Pavilion,” Geary answered. “We also need a detailed diagram of the crawlspace in the ceiling where there is a complex of metal grids and pipes.”

  “The latter should be readily available,” Alderman told him.

  “It’s not,” Geary said. “And we have to have it so we can coordinate our activities with the man we now have in the crawlspace.”

  The Vice President sat up abruptly and pulled the speakerphone to her. “Did you say you have an agent in the crawlspace?”

  “He’s not an agent, ma’am,” Geary replied. “He’s a staff doctor on the Pavilion who managed to escape during the firefight.”

  Halloway’s spirits sank. “A doctor won’t be of much use in a rescue attempt.”

  “This one will,” Geary informed her. “Before he went to medical school, he was in Special Ops.”

  Everyone in the Situation Room jerked their heads forward, their eyes and ears focused on the speakerphone. “Just how good is this man?” Halloway asked pointedly.

  “Very,” Geary reported. “If one goes by his past record, he is one tough hombre, ma’am.”

  “Give me an example,” Halloway ordered.

  Geary hesitated, then said, “His Special Ops team was sent into Somalia to take out a terrorist warlord. Nobody knew his whereabouts or would talk about it. So our man captured the warlord’s top lieutenant and persuaded him to give us his boss’s location.”

  Halloway asked, “How did he manage to do that?”

  Geary hesitated again, longer this time. “He stuffed a stick of C-4 up the lieutenant’s rectum and threatened to detonate it.”

  The room went silent again as people tried to envision the horror of having a powerful explosive stuffed inside one’s body. With a cold-blooded warrior holding the detonator and glowering at you. It had to cause nightmares.

  “What happened to the lieutenant?” Halloway inquired.

  “After the information was obtained and verified, the C-4 was detonated.”

  Alderman nodded to himself, thinking that was a smart move. The lieutenant would have replaced the soon-to-be-killed warlord. And besides, he thought on, the lieutenant had no further value as a prisoner. Alderman leaned toward the speakerphone. “How long ago was this?”

  “In the early nineties, sir,” Geary answered. “So he may be a little rusty, but he’ll be very useful for reconnaissance.”

  “Is he able to look after the President?” Alderman asked.

  “Apparently so,” Geary replied. “He sends down messages to a nurse on the floor.”

  “And he can keep us informed on the President’s condition as well,” Alderman noted.

  “And relay other pieces of useful information via his cell phone,” Geary continued on. “For example, we now know that the President and all the others became ill because of a toxin that was placed in the caviar.”

  Alderman and Halloway exchanged knowing glances. So that was how they did it! They poisoned the caviar, accurately predicting that the President would be rushed to the nearby University Hospital. And there they had killed the innocent chefs and waited for the moment to come up the dumbwaiter.

  Alderman kept his expression even, but his mind was racing, digesting all the facts and putting them together. Everything had to be planned far in advance. The terrorists had to know every detail of the banquet. They had to know who would eat the caviar and where and when it would be served, and how the hospital would handle the President and send him to the Beaumont Pavilion, and a hundred other things. They had to have somebody on the inside. And it had to be a Russian who was a Chechen sympathizer. It was their caviar, which they’d insisted on including at the cocktail party.

  “There’s a goddamn Russian traitor behind this!” Toliver blurted out. “There’s a leak on their side!”

  “Obviously,” Alderman agreed. “And it has to be high level.”

  “Please repeat,” Geary requested.

  “That was just side conversation, Agent Geary,” Halloway told him.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Geary said. “And there’s something else you should know. We have a second individual in the crawlspace. A female physician named Karen Kellerman.”

  “Does she have military experience, too?” Halloway asked.

  “No, ma’am,” Geary answered. “It looks like she’s always been a civilian, but we may have a problem here. She spent three months in Chechnya with Doctors Without Borders, working as an anesthesiologist.”

  “When was this?” Halloway asked immediately.

  “Two years ago,” Geary replied. “And last year she wrote a generous check for the Chechen Hospital Fund. We’re trying to determine if the fund is a front for Chechen terror groups.”

  “Christ!” Halloway muttered under her breath, then said, “I’m going to put you on hold for a moment.” She hurriedly pressed a button on the speakerphone and looked over to Alderman. “What do you think, Arthur?”

  Alderman held up a hand, as if in the midst of deep thought. But he was silently berating himself. Stupid! Stupid! I igno
red the obvious. The Chechens no doubt arranged for the caviar to be poisoned and that required a Russian on the inside. But the details of the hospital would best be provided by an employee of the medical center. A staff member would be the perfect mole.

  Alderman glanced down at a thick dossier before him. It held all the pertinent information on the Beaumont Pavilion that had been gathered by the Secret Service agents on site. He didn’t bother opening the dossier because he’d already memorized its contents.

  Finally Alderman said, “It would make sense for the terrorists to have a collaborator in the hospital. They would greatly value someone who has intimate knowledge of the Beaumont Pavilion, with its private kitchen one floor down and the elevator that connected the two. And they had to know the size of the elevator and how it worked and a dozen other small but important details.”

  Halloway considered Alderman’s conclusion at length before saying, “They could have gotten all that information by careful reconnaissance.”

  “True,” Alderman agreed. “That’s why it is so critical to determine if this charity Karen Kellerman donated to is a terrorist front. And we should also check to see if she was originally scheduled to be on call tonight, or whether she asked someone to switch so she could be in the hospital at the time of the attack—in case the terrorists required more information.”

  “Good,” Halloway approved. “And we should alert Dr. Ballineau of our suspicions. She may have been waiting for the chance to give away his location to the terrorists.”

  Alderman nodded, but his thoughts were far more sinister. If the woman was proven to be part of the terror group, Ballineau would have no choice but to kill her. “She could also pass on to the terrorists all the information we’re transmitting to Dr. Ballineau. This of course would give the Chechens advance warning of what’s about to come their way.”

  “So the terrorists would love to have her stay in the ceiling space with Dr. Ballineau as long as possible,” Halloway reasoned.

  Alderman nodded again. “It would be like the Chechens having a seat at this table.”

  Halloway quickly reached for the speakerphone. “Agent Geary, let us know the moment you learn more about this Kellerman woman.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now let’s get back to the rescue plan,” Halloway went on, refocusing her mind. “Within the next hour I want two options on how we should go about rescuing the President. And with each option we need to know relative risk and predicted casualty counts.”

  “Roger that.”

  “And remember, rescuing the President and his family is priority one,” Halloway said, then added a grim reminder before clicking off. “Everybody else is expendable.”

  Fourteen

  From the crawlspace in the ceiling, David crooked his neck but still couldn’t clearly see the cardiac monitor in Marci’s room. In the dimness he could hear her struggling to breathe. David quickly moved to the area over the bathroom and climbed down onto the marble countertop. He paused a moment to detect any sounds before tiptoeing to her bedside. Hurriedly he glanced at the cardiac monitor, then at Marci. Although her vital signs had stabilized, she continued to have a tachycardia of 104 per minute and her respirations were noisy and labored. And she had the dusky color of someone not receiving enough oxygen.

  David reached for his stethoscope and placed it softly on Marci’s chest, then listened carefully. Her heart sounds were so faint they were difficult to hear. It was the classic sign of a large pericardial effusion. A wall of fluid was now trapped between the outer lining of the heart and the heart muscle itself. This would blunt any sound the heart made. And, as the fluid increased, it would constrict the heart and press down on it, like a tight grip squeezing on a partially inflated balloon. Unless treated promptly, it would kill her.

  Marci’s eyes fluttered open. She stared at David for a moment, then said between gasps, “Hi, Dr. Ballineau.”

  “Hey, Marci,” David said quietly. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not so good,” Marci panted. “I think the effusion is coming back.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “Wi … will you have to take it out with a needle?”

  “Probably,” David replied.

  Marci nodded weakly. “Anything is better than not being able to breathe.”

  “But first we’ll give the medicine a little more time to work. Okay?”

  Marci nodded again. “Are the terrorists still here?”

  “Yes,” David said, keeping his voice low. “I had to sneak up the back way, and I don’t think they saw me. Now it’s very important they not know I was here. Because if they capture me, they may not let me treat you. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “So it has to be our secret.”

  “Can I tell Carolyn?”

  “No,” David said firmly. “Now go back to sleep.”

  “I’ll try.”

  David adjusted the position of the nasal prongs to make sure the flow of oxygen into Marci’s airway was unimpeded. Her breathing now seemed a little less labored. He waited for her to close her eyes, then hurried into the bathroom and jumped up on the marble countertop. He glanced back at Marci and watched her again straining to breathe. She’s going to die, he thought glumly, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. The IV Solu-Medrol helped, but not much and not for long. Soon her effusion will increase and her symptoms will worsen drastically. Only a pericardiocentesis would give her relief, and we have neither the equipment nor facilities to do it on the Pavilion. Marci is already as good as dead, and her struggle with death is sure to be slow and agonizing. David glanced at his wristwatch. It was nearly 11 p.m. In all likelihood, Marci Matthews would not live to see midnight.

  David shook his head sadly, then climbed up into the crawlspace and headed for the presidential end of the corridor. Once more he concentrated on avoiding the metal pipes, knowing that if he made another metallic noise it would tip the terrorists off to his presence. And this time they wouldn’t walk away.

  As he came to Diana Dunn’s room he heard the actress’s demanding voice. She was arguing with Carolyn.

  “I will not be confined to my room,” Diana was saying.

  “You don’t have any choice,” Carolyn told her. “Because if you walk out into the corridor, they’ll shoot you.”

  “Who will shoot me?”

  “Terrorists.”

  “Terrorists! What is this, some kind of joke?”

  “It’s not a joke,” Carolyn informed her. “A group of Chechen terrorists have taken over this floor, and everyone on the Pavilion is now a hostage. If you stick your head out of the door, it may be the last thing you do on the face of this earth.”

  “Do they know who I am?” Diana huffed.

  “They know and they couldn’t care less,” Carolyn went on. “Their main interest is a patient at the end of the corridor. His name is John Merrill, and he happens to be the President of the United States.”

  Diana’s eyes bulged. “Holy shit!”

  “So if you value your life, stay put!” Carolyn ordered.

  David moved on. Diana Dunn had picked a bad time to come out of her hepatic coma and become rational. She would have been better off staying slumberous and confused. But then again, she had no control over her hepatic encephalopathy, which came and went unpredictably—and would continue to do so until she received a new liver.

  A ghoulish thought suddenly came to David’s mind. Suppose—just suppose—a rescue attempt was successful and all the terrorists were killed except for one, who was barely alive and brain-dead. And suppose his liver was a perfect match for Diana Dunn. Could they grab his liver for transplant? Of course. The paperwork would be tricky, since removing a brain-dead patient’s organs without permission was a criminal act—an honest-to-God felony—even if the patient
was a terrorist. But there were ways around that. And it would be poetic justice. The terrorist bastard would end up actually saving a life. Yeah, right, David brought his mind back to reality. The chance of a rescue mission succeeding was poor at best. In all likelihood, any rescue attempt would fail and result in everyone being killed, including Diana Dunn.

  David abruptly came to a dead end. Directly in front of him were intersecting pipes that were hot to the touch and radiated their heat into the crawlspace. As he backed away, beads of perspiration broke out on his brow and forearms, reminding him that he was already losing the fluid he had consumed in the kitchen. Soon he would need water again. And obtaining it would be doubly dangerous now. The terrorists were looking everywhere for him, even unexpectedly sticking their heads and shoulders up through the ceiling panels and scanning the crawlspace with powerful flashlights. On one occasion, a beam of light came within a foot of David’s head as he was tucking himself under a large pipe. It’s becoming a game of cat and mouse, he thought gloomily, and the cats are closing in.

  David felt the vibration of his cell phone. He quickly reached for the phone, but it began to slip from his sweaty hand. In the dimness he tightened his grip, but one of his fingers accidentally pressed on the button that switched the vibration off. The cell phone suddenly chirped. David hurriedly returned the phone to vibration mode and silenced it, then held his breath and listened for a reaction to the sound from below. Everything stayed quiet. No yells, no footsteps. The only thing he heard was the pounding of his heart in his ears. Jesus Christ! he grumbled, breathing a sigh of relief. He brought the cell phone up and spoke in a barely audible voice. “Yes?”

  “Hi, Dad,” Kit said. “I’m under the covers and wanted to say goodnight.”

  “Oh, thank you, sweetheart,” David whispered.

  “Why are you talking so low, Dad?” Kit asked. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, no,” David lied. “I’m in a surgery room and I’ve got to be quiet.”