The Patient

by Michael Palmer

  He gestured to the six undercover police who were now positioned around the area, waiting for the morning crush.

  “I think I’ll hang around until you do,” Laughlin said.

  “Hey, that’s not necessary.”

  “Hell, this is all a movie, right? I want to see how it comes out.”

  CHAPTER 40

  IT HAD BEEN NEARLY TEN YEARS SINCE JESSIE had adjusted the green felt doctoral cape over her shoulders and strode up onto the stage to accept the parchment that would forever make her a doctor of medicine. Over those years, over those countless hours in the hospital and the operating room, she had never knowingly done anything to injure a patient … until now. Throughout the day, every hour or two, she had been injecting Claude Malloche with Valium or with Haldol, another major tranquilizer—the former into his IV line, and the Haldol into a muscle. The combination of the drugs had resulted in a somnolence bordering on coma. Malloche could still be aroused, but only with a great deal of stimulation, and then only for a matter of seconds. The trick was to maintain him in that state without causing a life-threatening depression in his ability to breathe.

  If Arlette had been planning to leave EMMC—and it certainly seemed as if she was—her husband’s turn for the worse had delayed their departure. Throughout the day, she had maintained a nervous vigil near Claude’s bed, leaving only to pace the hallways like a cat, checking in on the hostages and her people. At noon, Gilbride’s post-op patient, Lena Levin, was found dead in bed from her infection. Arlette’s only reaction was to have the door to her room closed. Otherwise, the hours crept on monotonously and without incident. Now, it was nearly seven.

  Jessie knew she was flirting with disaster. Claude was breathing, but not deeply enough to keep his lungs fully expanded. Mucus was starting to pool in his alveolar sacs, and pneumonia was probably already beginning. He had been an operative marvel. Now, his surgeon was celebrating her success by slowly killing him. And if he died, there was no way any of them would survive Arlette Malloche’s fury.

  “What do you think?”

  Arlette’s question startled Jessie, who was wondering what was going on with Alex, assuming he and Derrick hadn’t killed each other, and how he planned to approach rescuing forty-five hostages on a floor mined with explosives and controlled by three well-armed professionals.

  “I don’t know for sure,” she lied. “I think it must be brain swelling.”

  “You’re treating him for that?”

  “I am.”

  “Can he travel?”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Well, he’s going to have to, and soon.”

  “Then it’s on your head, whatever happens.”

  Arlette grabbed Jessie by the shirt and shoved her roughly against the wall with surprising strength.

  “No, it will be on your head! Believe me, it will.”

  She stalked out of the room.

  A few seconds after that, her husband stopped breathing.

  “Jesus, Em,” Jessie whispered, her heart pounding. “Quick, give me the Ambu bag. Michelle, there’s a black gym bag in the med room filled with equipment and drugs. Bring back whatever equipment you need to intubate him, please.”

  “Here’s the breathing bag,” Em said.

  Her expression left no doubt that she understood the gravity of the situation.

  “Suction up, please.”

  Malloche’s complexion was already beginning to darken. His oximeter reading on the monitor screen began to edge downward. His pulse immediately jumped from eighty to a hundred as his body commenced the frantic search for more oxygen. Jessie deep-suctioned his throat, pulled his chin up to straighten his airway, and with one hand tightened the triangular rubber seal over his nose and mouth. Then, with the other, she began rhythmic compressions of the breathing bag, monitoring that air was getting in by the rise and fall of his chest.

  “What else can I do?” Em asked.

  “What’s your connection with the Almighty?”

  “Decent enough.”

  “Talk to her, then.”

  At that instant, Malloche took a breath. Jessie suctioned him again. This time, he gagged and managed another, gurgling inhalation. Then another. Michelle Booker hurried in with the equipment to intubate. When she saw the improved situation, she stopped and sighed audibly.

  “Ka-ching!” she said. “The bullet is dodged.”

  “Not by much,” Jessie replied.

  She knew she had to stop. If Alex hadn’t figured things out by now, he wasn’t going to. She had to back off on the meds and let Malloche wake up.

  “Exactly what is going on here?”

  Arlette approached the bed and gestured at all the emergency equipment.

  “He had a momentary slowdown in his breathing,” Jessie said. “He’s doing better now.”

  Arlette stroked his hair and moved the plastic oxygen mask aside to kiss his still-violet lips.

  “He had better be,” she said. She turned to Grace, who was standing by the doorway. “Call the chopper in,” she ordered. “We’re moving in an hour.”

  As Grace hurried off, Arlette stepped back and leveled her machine gun at Jessie and the others. Then she opened her cell phone and made a call. She spoke rapidly in French, but Jessie picked up the name Stefan and the phrase il est le temps: it is time.

  “No,” Jessie pleaded. “Please don’t.”

  “Shut up!” Arlette snapped. “You just take care of my husband, and you may keep a lot of people you care about from getting hurt.”

  She disdainfully jabbed the barrel of her gun at Jessie, then hurried from the room.

  “She’s going to do it,” Jessie said. “She’s going to have the gas released to create enough chaos for them to escape by helicopter.”

  Emily put her arm around Jessie’s shoulder.

  “There’s nothing you can do about it, Jess, except to pray that your friend Alex made it out of the hospital, and that he’s been able to find where the gas was hidden. And also pray this guy keeps breathing.”

  In fact, not only was Malloche breathing more comfortably, but he had started to move his head and arms. Michelle listened to his lungs, gestured up at the improving oximeter reading, and made a thumbs-up sign.

  “Jessie, that woman doesn’t seem disposed to shooting anyone right now. But I’m upset she’s going to take you when she goes.”

  “If she does, she does,” Jessie said. “As long as Claude needs me, I’m safe enough. Once it’s obvious he’s recovered, I’m banking on them making me an honorary member of the gang.”

  “That certainly would be quite a tribute.”

  “I just wish I could have convinced them not to set off that gas. I watched what it does, and it’s a horrible way to die.”

  “It was their plan the whole time. Malloche wasn’t going to be talked out of it.”

  “I guess.”

  Helpless, the three of them worked on their patient, reversing the effects of nearly twelve hours of sedation.

  “Do you think the police’ll try and storm Surgical Seven?” Emily asked.

  “I think the moment that gas goes off, they’ll seal up this place and start negotiating with the Malloches for our release and the location of the other tanks of gas.”

  On the bed between them, Claude coughed, moistened his lips with his tongue, and began to blink.

  “He’s baaack,” Michelle said.

  “I liked it better when there was only one Malloche to worry about,” Emily added.

  “Maybe being deeply stoned has been an epiphany for him,” Jessie whispered, “like Mr. Scrooge. He’ll wake up ready to devote his life to the lepers of the world. Here, help me pull him up in bed.”

  Before anyone could move, Arlette burst into the room, breathless and agitated, her pistol in her hand. Behind her, machine gun ready, was Armand. She crossed to her husband.

  “Claude? It’s Arlette,” she said in German. “Can you hear me?”

  Claude groaned, th
en nodded. Her eyes flashing, Arlette whirled to face Jessie.

  “You two, come with me,” she said, motioning first at Jessie, then at Michelle. “You stay here with Armand and take care of my husband,” she said to Emily.

  She directed them down the hallway to the area by the nurses’ station. Then suddenly, fiercely, she jammed the muzzle of her gun against Michelle’s temple and forced her to her knees.

  “You have ten seconds, Dr. Copeland, to tell me what went on in the operating room, and what they know.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Nine.”

  “Please”

  “Eight.”

  “Stop! Stop! Okay.”

  Jessie looked around. They were at the exact spot where Lisa Brandon had been killed. At least a dozen patients and staff were watching, transfixed. Tamika Bing, with whom Michelle Booker had spent a good deal of time over the thirty hours since Malloche’s surgery, was looking on in mute, wide-eyed terror.

  “Quickly,” Arlette demanded. “And no more lies. If you hesitate, if I even think you are lying, I will blow her brains out and start on someone else.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Jessie was shaking. “The FBI agent used a drug of some sort—a truth drug. He asked about the gas.”

  “And what did he learn?”

  Arlette jammed the pistol in so hard that Michelle cried out.

  “He … he learned there were three locations—Quincy Market, Filene’s, and the subway at Government Center.”

  “Only three?”

  Jessie felt herself go cold at the question.

  “Only those three.”

  Arlette lowered the pistol.

  “My husband is a genius,” she said to no one in particular.

  She dialed Stefan again on her cell phone. Jessie could pick out very little of her French this time, but she knew the essence of what Arlette was saying. There was a fourth soman site—a location that had been kept from Claude at his request—and she wanted the gas released.

  “I saved your husband’s life,” Jessie said. “Please don’t do this. You don’t need to kill all those people to get away.”

  Arlette put the phone away and again brought her gun up to Michelle’s head.

  “You lied to me, Dr. Copeland. That cannot go unpunished.”

  “Please, you said you wouldn’t hurt her.”

  “You are right, I did.”

  In one rattlesnake-quick motion, Arlette swung the pistol away from Michelle, pointed it into Dave Scolari’s room, and fired. The big linebacker, propped up in his bed, never even had the chance to move. The bullet hole materialized just above the bridge of his nose and just below the steel halo frame that had been immobilizing his neck. The impact drove his upper body back several inches. His pillow instantly became spattered with blood. Then, with wide-eyed disbelief frozen on his face, Scolari toppled off the bed and fell heavily, face first, to the floor.

  CHAPTER 41

  ALEX WAS IN GOVERNMENT CENTER STATION WHEN the radio call came in from Stan Moyer at Quincy Market.

  “Bishop, my monitor just started beeping! He’s here someplace and he’s tried to set the shit off! I have two people outside and me inside. We’ve all got the description you gave us and that little sketch. No sighting yet.”

  “Are you watching the package closely?”

  “I’m staring at the seat it’s under right now. A teenage girl is perched on it.”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t knock it over. You and your people keep looking. I’ll alert Vicki that our man’s probably on the move.”

  Alex radioed Filene’s.

  “Vicki, he just tried and failed at Quincy Market, but no one spotted him. I think he’ll write off the first failure as some sort of mechanical glitch, and go for one of the other two. That means there’s a fifty-fifty chance between your spot and mine, but we’re closer, right?”

  “Much closer. Right across the street, really.”

  “Okay, make that seventy-thirty. Keep your eyes on the prize, though. It’s possible this man isn’t even the one we’re looking for, but he’s the only one we’ve got any description of.”

  Alex slipped the radio into his belt. He had been going nonstop for more than thirty-six hours, but he was still riding on adrenaline rapids. He flashed on Jessie. She, too, had gone a day and a half now with virtually no sleep.

  Hang in there, Jessie, he urged. It’s almost over.

  He turned to Laughlin.

  “He’s coming here, Harry, I’m sure of it. The bastard’s beginning to panic, and he’s coming down here. Tell me again what you think the range of that transmitter is?”

  “There’s no way to say for sure, but it’s got to be far enough away so he can escape before any gas reaches him. I would guess he’s got to have a clear line of sight, though. So what—thirty yards? Forty at the outside.”

  Alex scanned the station. It was rush hour. There were probably two hundred students, shoppers, and commuters on their way home. Overhead, unseen in the shadow of the support beam, was enough poison gas to kill almost every one of them. And somewhere, approaching the area, was a man determined to release it. Alex made visual contact with two of the four men scanning the station, and pointed to his eyes. Stay sharp!

  “Harry, how long would it take him to get from Quincy Market to here?”

  “Five minutes. Not much more.”

  “Perfect. That gives me time.”

  “For what?”

  “For this.”

  “A candy bar?”

  “Not just a candy bar, an Almond Joy. I do them instead of cigarettes. Want one?”

  Laughlin looked at him queerly, then said, “Well, yes, boyo. As a matter of fact, I do.”

  “Okay. But first you’ve got to let me show you the right way to eat it.”

  After the lesson, the two men ate in silence, waiting, watching. They had just finished when Alex’s monitor began beeping. He could tell by the reaction of his men that theirs had gone off as well. He searched the crowd. Nothing. Then the stairs. A train came roaring into the station at the instant he spotted Stefan. The killer, if in fact it was he, stood out because he was motionless halfway down a flight of stairs on the opposite side of the tracks, maybe fifty yards away. It looked as if he was holding the transmitter or a cell phone. Alex slipped his radio from his belt.

  “Leaning against the railing on the stairs across the track from where I am!” he said. “Move slowly. We don’t want him to bolt.”

  But the man had probably reported the failure of his transmitter to Claude or Arlette and was already starting back up the stairs.

  “Harry, help me. He’s just reached the top of those stairs. There’s got to be a fourth vial, and I think Malloche has just told him to go set it off.”

  “He has a lot of options in this area. We’ve got to pick him up before he leaves the station, or else risk losing him. Don’t wait for me. I can still run, but I was no track star even when I was young. Go! I’ll follow.”

  Amid screams, Alex leaped down onto the tracks and pulled himself up the other side. Then he charged up the stairs, scanning everywhere for a tall, brown-haired man in a tan jacket. At the last possible moment, he spotted him, moving quickly against the crowd up another staircase to the street. Alex shoved his way up through the dense crowd of commuters, knocking many of them off balance. Curses were still echoing up the stairwell when he slammed through the exit door onto the street. Stefan was at least fifty yards ahead of him now, on the other side of a busy street, jogging slowly to the left.

  Sprinting between cars, Alex narrowly avoided being hit by one and rolled across the hood of another. The curses from the subway were replaced by the blasts of auto horns. By the time Alex reached the sidewalk, badly in need of some extra air, the killer had disappeared up a steep hill to the right. BEACON STREET, the sign read.

  “Go up Beacon!” Harry shouted from across the street. “He’s headed for the State House—the capitol building!”

  Poundin
g up the hill was agonizing on Alex’s knees. A stiletto-like pain had developed under his ribs. Not far ahead, Stefan was running now, probably alerted by the blaring horns. But still, the gap between them was narrowing.

  Ahead and to the right, early-evening sunlight glinted off the golden dome of the State House. Harry was right. Malloche’s man had hidden the fourth canister of gas somewhere in the capitol! Defying the pain, Alex was sprinting now, fighting to keep his head up. A few yards ahead of him, Stefan was approaching a chanting crowd at the base of the capitol steps, many carrying pickets that urged the defeat of capital punishment. Near them, an equally large and noisy group was chanting in favor of it. The TV network vans were there, too.

  As he reached the edge of the crowd, Stefan glanced back over his shoulder, tripped, and fell to one knee. He was stumbling to his feet when Alex launched himself in a flying tackle. The two of them hit the sidewalk heavily, already flailing at each other. Alex’s fist connected firmly with the side of the killer’s face—a blow that would have dazed most men. Nothing. Stefan was young, incredibly wiry, and strong in the way of men who worked at it. He landed one jackhammer punch to Alex’s cheek, then another to his mouth. Alex was driven backward and down. His head struck the pavement, and for an instant, his consciousness vanished. He came to spitting blood from a cracked lip, blinking through waves of unfocused color, and expecting to be shot. Instead, he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard Harry Laughlin’s voice.

  “You okay?”

  Alex rose shakily to one knee. “Where is he?” he asked.

  “He charged off through the crowd.”

  “See what you can do to empty the building out. I’ll go after him.”

  “You sure you can?”

  “Just get going!”

  Harry took off as someone came over and helped Alex to his feet. Battling a wave of nausea, he pushed his way through the pickets, catching enough snatches of conversation to realize that a vote on the death penalty must be imminent. Stefan was nowhere in sight, but there was only one place he could have gone. Begging his legs to cooperate, Alex pounded up the several dozen granite steps to the main entrance—single doors on each side of the stairs. Just as he reached them, he was driven back by a frightened mob of reporters, legislators, and lobbyists trying to escape an apparent bomb threat. Harry!