Fractured: V Plague Book 15

by Dirk Patton

  “We have seen no one!” he barked. “Now, be on your way.”

  “She is my woman,” Igor said, not put off by the command to leave. “I know they were picked up by someone with a snowmobile. The tracks pass through this village.”

  He pointed at a small patch of ground where the marks from the two leading skis and the tracked drive were visible. The old man didn’t bother looking down.

  “Those are old tracks, frozen in the ice. No one has passed through here, other than you. Now go! I shall not warn you again.”

  As he spoke, the man’s eyes flicked briefly to the side before returning to bore into Igor. It would have been easy to miss and had been a reflex that the speaker was probably unaware of, but Igor saw it and understood the meaning.

  “They here,” Igor mumbled to Strickland in English.

  “He tell you that?”

  “No.”

  As he’d been speaking, the SEAL had been busy cataloging each man within a hundred and eighty-degree radius of where he stood. Fixing their positions in his mind, he visualized the movements necessary to raise his weapon and kill each of them. Igor had done the same for his half of the circle.

  “Fight or leave?” Strickland asked.

  Igor paused, then nodded at the old man.

  “We are leaving. I am sorry to have disturbed you,” he said, switching back to Russian.

  Taking a step back, he bumped the American with his arm. Slowly, they began moving to the south. The old man watched them for a moment, then raised his hand and flapped it in the air. The men to Strickland’s front moved to the side, clearing a narrow path for them.

  All the men watched them closely as they exited the village. Once they were clear, Igor gestured at the edge of the forest and followed Strickland until they could no longer be seen.

  “What the fuck, Ivan?”

  “They there,” Igor said. “See in his eyes.”

  “What the hell are they doing with them?”

  Igor shrugged and pointed at the night vision goggles resting on top of Strickland’s head.

  “Keep look,” he said.

  “Watch. Keep watch, not look, Ivan,” the SEAL said as he lowered the goggles.

  Igor shook his head before melting into the darkness.

  37

  It was a warm night, the black asphalt radiating the last of the previous day’s heat. Well-spaced light poles provided illumination, but just enough to see objects. It certainly wasn’t bright. I lit a cigarette and turned a slow circle, surveying the surroundings before opening the rear door for Rachel. Dog tried to jump down ahead of her, staying put when I told him to, but giving me a hurt look that he wasn’t being included. Remembering the video of our deaths, I took a moment to lean in and ruffle his ears before closing the door in his face.

  “You sure this is a good idea?”

  Rachel snagged the cigarette out of my hand and turned to look at the hospital. Standing next to her, I put my arm around her shoulders, her wet hair cool against my skin. We’d needed to be out in public and hadn’t had a chance to clean up since the night before we left Lucas’s compound. If we strolled in, streaked with sweat and grime and stinking of burnt gunpowder, we probably wouldn’t make it very far. So, we’d taken the time to shower and dress in clean clothes at the safe house.

  “Not much choice. Too many to go against alone. I need Lucas.”

  Rachel nodded and handed the cigarette back.

  “Let’s go,” I said a moment later, grinding the butt out on the asphalt.

  Walking across the dimly lit expanse of pavement, I removed the eye patch and stuck it in my pocket before making sure the weapons on my body were hidden, but readily accessible. I only had a pistol and knife, but didn’t really expect to run into any trouble. I wasn’t going to get into a firefight with the medical staff or the police, so there probably wasn’t even a need to be armed. But the days when I was willing to be without a gun were long behind me.

  The main entrance was closed, a large sign directing visitors to the Emergency Department. Rachel had warned me to expect this at this time of night and I wasn’t concerned. Turning onto a sidewalk that was bordered by neatly trimmed shrubbery, I intentionally walked faster than her, opening room between us. We didn’t want to walk in together.

  Approaching the glass doors that fronted the ambulance bay, I noted the parked police car that had followed us. The driver was alone, head bent as he typed on a data terminal mounted between the seats. Paperwork, or maybe emailing his girlfriend. It didn’t matter and he didn’t look up as I passed without changing my pace.

  The double glass doors slid open as I drew close and I stepped through, immediately assaulted by the myriad of smells common to emergency medicine everywhere. The acrid stink of sweat from people who are afraid and in pain. The cloying stench of unwashed bodies and old tobacco smoke. The sickly-sweet aroma of vomit and underlying it all, the sharp tang of disinfectant that could never completely eliminate the other odors.

  To my right was a vast waiting area, molded plastic chairs kept in neat rows by being bolted to chromed steel frames. About a third of the seats were occupied by people waiting to be seen. Some of them had injuries, others showing no obvious reason for their presence. None of them even glanced in my direction.

  Directly ahead was a large, circular desk with two women wearing pale green scrubs seated behind it. A large sign hung from the ceiling over their heads declaring they were triage nurses. Both were busy with patients and neither looked up as I strolled past. Beyond, a solid looking pair of wooden doors was set in the wall. To the side, a large button that would activate rams to push the doors open.

  Still moving like I belonged, I walked up to the door on the right and, ignoring the automatic opener, grasped the handle and pulled. It moved fast and I and came to an abrupt stop, face to face with a uniformed police officer. He had to be the other guy from the cruiser parked outside and had pushed on the door to exit as I’d pulled.

  For a heartbeat, we stared at each other. I saw in his eyes when he recognized me, remembering my face from the stoplight where we’d sat next to each other. He squinted, probably trying to reconcile my features without the eye patch.

  “Sorry, mate,” I said, using the Aussie accent I’d worked on so hard earlier in the day.

  With what I hoped was a disarming grin, I stepped back, holding the door so he could pass through. Only he didn’t. He stayed right where he was, looking at me curiously.

  “Do I know you, sir?” he asked, the curious expression changing to a frown.

  “Don’t think so, officer,” I said.

  “What’s your business here?” he asked, eyes pointedly looking at my street clothes before flicking toward the triage station behind me.

  “He’s with me, officer,” Rachel said as she appeared next to me and looked up at my face. “Get lost again, honey?”

  “And who are you, miss?” the cop asked, giving Rachel’s clothes the same scrutiny he had mine.

  While his eyes were on her, I glanced over his shoulder. A long, empty hallway running past a nurses station that was unoccupied at the moment. There was no one visible, though I could hear muted conversations from behind curtained exam areas.

  “I’m Doctor Bailey. I just started here and my husband is always getting turned around.”

  The cop didn’t move for a beat, then his eyes flicked back and forth between us. Maybe he was buying Rachel’s story, but I didn’t like it when he glanced at each of our faces and the frown on his deepened. This had to end now, before we drew more attention or the cop outside walked in and saw his partner talking to us.

  “Is there a problem, mate?” I asked, still smiling.

  As I spoke, I raised my hand in a questioning gesture. He should have watched my hands, but he was still peering at our faces. Without any further warning, I struck, driving my fist directly into his solar plexus. It was a short, powerful punch, and unless someone had been looking directly at us, they wouldn’
t have noticed.

  I went with the momentum, shoving him back into the empty passage. The blow had paralyzed his diaphragm. If you haven’t trained for this and experienced it, it’s terrifying as hell. You can’t move air in or out and you feel like your body has shut down. Other than being unable to breathe for several seconds it causes no damage, but the attack is effective because people freeze when their lungs stop working.

  Moving quickly, I cleared the doors and wrapped him up from behind, one arm around his throat as I ripped his weapon free of its holster. Rachel followed, glancing behind as the door sighed closed and I shoved the pistol at her. She took it from my hand, then I had to apply more leverage as the cop began to struggle. Rachel stepped close, pressed the muzzle of his gun against his chest with one hand as she held a raised index finger in front of pursed lips in a shushing gesture. The cop stopped resisting other than pulling on my arm which was tightly constricting his neck and cutting off his air.

  Rachel reached out with her free hand and flicked open the edge of a curtain. She glanced in, then pulled it aside and tilted her head toward the opening. I moved backwards, bringing the cop with me, Rachel following and closing the drape.

  “I’m going to let you take a breath,” I muttered into the man’s ear. “Make a sound and I’ll snap your neck. Understand?”

  He stopped tugging on my arm and after a beat, tapped it with both hands. Carefully, I relaxed the pressure and he gasped before taking a deep, ragged breath. I didn’t feel good about what I was doing, but there wasn’t another option.

  Holding tightly to the smaller man, I cut my eye around the room and spotted a grey metal cabinet with a glass front. Several vials were visible on a pair of interior shelves. Glancing back at Rachel, I flicked my eye toward the drugs when she looked at me. Nodding once, she stepped back and opened the door.

  When the cop saw what she was doing, he began struggling again. Suddenly kicking out, he came within a hair’s breadth of knocking the pistol out of Rachel’s hand and renewed his efforts to break my hold. He tried dropping to tear free as he clawed at my arm, but I’d been ready for the move from the moment I’d grabbed him. Clamping down tightly, I rode him down to the shiny floor, pinning him under my much greater body weight.

  He kept fighting, black uniform shoes drumming on the tile and leaving dark marks with each contact. Getting a knee beneath him, he levered up, trying to slam me back against the metal railing on the exam table as he threw elbows into my ribs. I twisted, pulling him around and pinning one of his arms when he flailed behind his head in an attempt to claw my eyes.

  We wound up with me on my back in the middle of the floor, the now wildly struggling cop on top. He tried to spin in my grip so we would be facing each other. He was panicked, fighting for his life, and was beginning to turn. I was in a bad spot. Despite what he thought, I had no intent nor desire to kill him. That kept me from doing several things that would have ended the struggle, but unfortunately, they would have all been permanent.

  He was still kicking, heels of his hard shoes finding my shins more often than not. It hurt like hell, but I couldn’t let go. If I did, the only way I’d gain control again would be to seriously injure him. But it was rapidly approaching that point and I was trying to decide the best way to handle this when Rachel threw herself across the cop’s legs.

  She grabbed his free arm, struggling until finally pinning it against her body. A large syringe was in her hand and I gripped the man tighter as she leaned her weight onto the arm she’d captured. It took her three tries, but she managed to stab the needle into his arm and press the plunger. Removing it, she tossed it aside and wrapped him up.

  We held him like that for a minute, then his struggles began to weaken. I took a chance and eased the pressure on his throat until I heard him draw a deep breath. Prepared to immediately clamp back down, I paused when he stopped fighting. Then his body relaxed. I could feel his chest moving as he breathed and after a few more seconds, Rachel released him and climbed to her feet.

  Bending, she checked his pulse and held a hand in front of his mouth to feel his breath. Raising his eyelids, she looked closely, then straightened and nodded at me. Extricating myself from beneath the limp body, I took a few deep breaths before squatting and gathering him up. With Rachel’s help, I put him on the gurney and pulled a white sheet up to his neck.

  “What the fuck did you give him?” I asked quietly, breathing hard.

  “Ketamine,” she answered, also huffing slightly. “He’ll be out for a few hours.”

  “Won’t take that long for his partner to come looking,” I said. “We’ve gotta move.”

  I took a second to remove the unconscious man’s badge from his shirt and slip it into my pocket. You never know when something official looking will come in handy.

  38

  After a quick peek around the edge of the curtain, Rachel and I stepped out and hurried past the nurse’s desk. A corridor ran to the right, lined with more privacy curtains. Somewhere in that direction, a man was screaming in pain. Whatever was wrong with him was bad enough to have apparently pulled in all the staff and we disappeared deeper into the hospital without being seen.

  Once we moved beyond the brightly lit Emergency Department, we entered a long, dim hallway. The overhead was lined with banks of fluorescent tubes, but only about a quarter of them were currently lit. This created pools of light with long stretches of near darkness between. Made sense, as there was no reason for the hospital to waste power when no one other than a few staff members were walking around. Still, it made for a creepy environment, especially when you’ve been fighting infected for months.

  It wasn’t long before Rachel pointed at an unmarked door with a large basket of dirty scrubs parked beside it. There was also a bright yellow commercial mop bucket and a small cart with cleaning supplies that had been used to prop the door open. Through the gap, I could see a row of metal lockers with a long, wooden bench running the length of the room. Leaning forward, Rachel poked her head through the gap and looked around.

  “Empty,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  She pushed in, moving fast as I turned to check both directions of the hall. No one was in sight, which was just fine with me. The less people we ran into who might ask questions, the better. I knew I’d gotten lucky with the cop, catching him unprepared for a sudden attack, but I couldn’t count on being that fortunate two times in a row. If he’d been half a second faster, he might have been able to deflect the blow, backpedal and draw his weapon.

  “Ready.”

  I turned, pausing in surprise when I saw Rachel. She’d changed into a pair of blue scrubs and had even found a white lab coat to wear. A stethoscope was slung casually around her neck and her hair was up in a tight ponytail. Something that looked like a metal covered patient chart was in her hand.

  “Third floor, Pod B, room 2,” I said.

  Jessica had broken into the hospital’s computer system while I was on the phone with her and had identified the specific room Lucas was in. It had taken less time to actually hack in than it had to find him in the records. He had been checked in as John Doe and I hoped that meant he wasn’t providing a real name rather than he was too injured to speak. But according to Bering, he had only been grazed by a bullet. If that was the case, why the hell was he in the hospital?

  Finding the elevator and making it to the third floor was easy. Finding Pod B, on the other hand, was an adventure in frustration. We followed the signs that were posted prominently on the walls and wound up back where we’d started after making a big circle. Either I can’t follow directions, or there was an Aussie that had a twisted sense of humor.

  Setting off a second time, we ignored the sign that would have started us back on the loop, instead continuing straight. At the next intersection, we were rewarded with a sign that pointed straight ahead. An older, dark skinned man was operating a floor buffer, looking up and staring as we approached. I’d never met one of Australia’s Abo
rigines before and was surprised when he not only stared, but gaped as we drew closer.

  “What the hell?” Rachel mumbled under her breath.

  Before I could answer, the old man shut off the machine, turned and waddled away from us as fast as he could on arthritic legs. Rachel and I paused in bewilderment, exchanging a quick glance. I looked down at my clothes, making sure there wasn’t any blood from the wrestling match with the cop, but saw nothing. Checking my weapons, they were still out of sight. What the hell?

  “Let’s go,” I said, dismissing the odd behavior.

  We continued down the hall, made a sharp left and found ourselves in front of a pair of closed doors with a large B painted across them.

  “You good?” I asked Rachel.

  We’d spent a few minutes working on a script for her if one of the nurses questioned our presence. It was simple and believable, which is the best way to go when you’re trying to bluff your way into somewhere you don’t belong. Rachel nodded and I pulled the door open, holding it for her to enter ahead of me.

  Immediately to our left was the nurse’s station. The area was aptly called a pod as it was shaped like a three-quarter circle around where the staff worked so that without even having to stand, they could see all the patient room doors. Two young women wearing green scrubs were seated behind the curving desk. A small radio was playing hip-hop music and both had their feet up as they chatted.

  The door was nearly silent and they couldn’t hear us enter over the radio. Rachel moved to the counter and slapped the chart she carried onto its surface, the sharp noise seemingly as loud as a gunshot. The two women snapped their heads around in surprise and leapt to their feet.

  “I’m sorry, doctor,” the shorter of the two said after eyeing Rachel’s scrubs and coat. “We didn’t hear you come in.”

  “I need the chart for John Doe in room 2,” she said with a dismissive air about her.