by Matt Lincoln
“Yeah,” she mumbled as the elevator came to a stop on the third floor with a loud ding.
I heard the sounds of an argument the moment the doors opened.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t—whoa! Just calm down!” one of the voices yelled.
“Crap,” Hills grumbled as he reached for the gun at his hip. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“What’s happening?” the receptionist squeaked, her heels clattering against the floor of the elevator as she rushed backward against the wall reflexively.
Hills, Chapman, and I rushed out of the elevator toward the source of the commotion. At the other end of the hall was a large, circular reception desk. From this angle, I could see a group of men wearing identical gray and blue sweatsuits. I recognized the clothes instantly as the same ones that the Coast Guard had provided to the survivors of the crew rescued from the water. They were turned away from me, and just beyond them, I could just make out a few nurses in scrubs, all holding their hands up defensively.
“Let’s just all calm down here,” one of the nurses, a tall man with thick, square-framed glasses, said calmly as he slowly backed away from the men. I counted four men in total, and though their backs were turned to me and I couldn’t see their hands, I could safely assume that they must be holding some kind of weapon to elicit the frightened response of the nurses.
A few of the other nurses and even some patients had poked their heads out of the rooms along the hall in response to the noise. A small sitting area with a few couches and a thin coffee table sat between us and the reception desk at the other end of the floor. Between the physical obstacles and the countless civilians between the suspects and us, we were going to have to be very careful.
Without warning, one of the men suddenly lunged forward with an angry roar toward the male nurse. One of the other nurses standing beside him screamed at the same moment, and less than a second later, three other nurses quickly typed something into their pagers.
“Hey!” I yelled the moment the man moved. While I preferred to have the element of surprise on my side, we couldn’t just stand by while they assaulted innocent civilians, and the fastest way to get their attention off of them and onto us was to yell.
The men turned around at once, and as I thought, three of them were holding long, serrated blades. I pulled my gun from my holster and held it out in front of me.
“Get down on the ground!” I shouted.
Of course, the men did just the opposite and immediately took off, crashing through a door on the left side of the floor.
I kept my gun trained on them, but in the end, I couldn’t fire. There was too high of a risk that the shot might hit one of the nurses standing nearby, and even if it didn’t, firing at all in an intensive care unit that was certain to be filled with copious amounts of oxygen was just a bad idea in general.
I swore as I shoved my gun back into its holster and took off down the open floor toward the door that the men had disappeared through.
“Junior, check on the nurse!” Hills shouted from behind me as he sprinted down the hallway. “We’ll go after the suspects.”
“Got it!” Chapman called back as he leapt nimbly over the reception desk in one fluid movement. I assumed the male nurse must be lying on the floor behind the desk, since I couldn’t see him anymore. I’d have to trust Chapman to see to him, though. Hills and I needed to apprehend the suspects as quickly as possible before they managed to hurt anyone else.
The door they’d fled through opened into the stairwell. I pushed it open forcefully as Hills and I raced through. I could hear footsteps echoing from seemingly everywhere, and it took me a moment to realize it was because they were coming from both above and below us. The men had split up and run in two different directions.
“I’ll take down!” Hills exclaimed as he took off down the stairwell.
I, in turn, began to climb up the steps as quickly as I could. I heard the footsteps come to a stop somewhere above me, and I quickened my pace. A moment later, I frowned as I heard what sounded like banging, getting louder and louder until it was suddenly followed by a grating, metallic crack.
I turned the corner up a flight of stairs just in time to see them rushing through a busted open door and onto one of the floors. Screams and shouts erupted from through the open door the moment that they did.
I hurried up the final flight of stairs and realized with horror that the floor they had just broken into was the pediatric ward.
“Stop!” I heard a nurse in a set of baby pink scrubs yell as she stood between the men and a set of rooms at the end of the hall. “Don’t come any closer!”
To my relief, it looked like all the rooms on this floor were already closed and even shuttered. Only a few nurses were still out on the main floor, including the one who was blocking the men’s path.
“Don’t take another step!” I yelled again as I quickly drew my gun from the holster again. I pointed it toward the two men, but once again, I couldn’t get a clear shot. The nurse was standing right behind them, and behind her was a large, open room filled with beds full of sick children. There was no way I could shoot.
One of the suspects, a stout, square-shaped man with an unfriendly sneer on his face, suddenly reached over to the wall and yanked something off of it before launching it at me. I ducked out of the way as the heavy picture frame shattered on the ground behind me.
The other man, taller than the one who’d thrown the frame and with oily hair slicked into a messy ponytail, took advantage of the distraction to rush at me. I gritted my teeth and carefully aimed at the man’s knee, deliberately shooting low to ensure that even if I missed him, my bullet wouldn’t strike any of the civilians nearby.
The man groaned with pain as my shot struck him in the leg, but I could barely hear him over the eruption of screams that exploded from the surrounding rooms. The nurses and kids hiding inside the rooms must have been frightened by the sound of gunfire.
The shorter suspect didn’t spare a thought for his fallen comrade before suddenly reaching backward to grab the nurse who’d bravely stepped in front of him to shield the kids from the suspects. She screamed as he gripped her by the hair and pressed his knife to her throat.
“Put your gun down!” he barked at me as he pushed the knife against the woman’s skin, hard enough to cause a small trickle of blood to appear along her neck.
“Okay,” I replied calmly as I held my weapon out at arm’s length to show him that I was complying. As much as I wanted to avoid being disarmed around an actively hostile suspect, I couldn’t risk the nurse’s life. I’d have to figure out a way to stop him without it.
“There,” I murmured as I carefully set my gun back in my holster. The only two other nurses had gone deathly silent at the scene, and aside from the sound of a baby crying distantly in one of the rooms, the only noise in the hall was the weak groan of the suspect on the ground as he pressed his hands against his injured knee.
“Now… go away! Move back!” the suspect yelled, the hand holding the knife trembling against the woman’s neck.
“Okay,” I nodded slowly. “How about you let her go first? Then we can talk about whatever you want.”
“No!” the man exclaimed angrily as he pressed the knife against her skin again, slicing a new cut into it.
“Stop, please!” the nurse cried as tears streamed out of her eyes. “I don’t want to die!”
“Easy,” I cautioned him, careful to maintain my composure. As furious as I felt at what he was doing, I needed to be extremely careful not to trigger him into acting further. “Okay, look, I’m moving away.” I took several big steps backward to demonstrate that I was listening to him.
“More,” he growled as he tightened his grip on the woman’s hair.
I took a deep, calming breath and did as he asked, and I racked my brain to figure out what to do. The gun wasn’t an option. Even if I did manage to draw it before he cut her again, there was a solid chance I could hit the hostage if
I fired. Maybe I should try to stall until either Chapman or Hills arrived.
Before I could decide, the suspect suddenly moved. Without warning, he dragged the knife against the nurse’s throat and shoved her to the ground before turning and running off in the other direction.
“No!” I shouted in horror as I raced toward the woman. She was clutching at her neck as blood poured out of it, her eyes wide with fear and terror.
Every word of profanity I’d ever heard exploded inside my mind as I knelt next to the woman. I knew enough first aid to take care of myself and my partner should we get into a scuffle while on the field, but I certainly wasn’t equipped to deal with this.
“Move!” a commanding, high-pitched voice snapped at me as one of the other nurses who’d been standing nearby shoved me aside and pressed a thick wad of gauze onto the woman’s throat. “It’s okay, Tamara. You’re fine. Just look at me, okay? Slow breaths. We’re going to get you fixed up.”
Behind me, the other nurse was on the phone, relaying what had happened and calling for backup. Just seconds later, he was on the floor next to the nurse that had shoved me, helping to stem the flow of blood.
I realized then that there was nothing I could do to help by standing around here, so I got out of their way and moved over to the other suspect whose leg I had shot. I pulled him roughly to his feet before dragging him over to a heavy metal bench positioned against the wall. I sat him down next to it before cuffing him to the arm of the bench. It wasn’t ideal, but between the shattered knee and the weight of the bench, I doubted he was going anywhere.
I then pulled my phone from my pocket and quickly dialed nine-one-one as I raced down the hallway in the direction that the suspect had gone. It felt wrong to just leave an injured victim like that, but we were literally in a hospital, and she was already receiving medical attention. Right now, I needed to make sure the remaining suspect couldn’t hurt anyone else. As long as he was loose inside the hospital, it wasn’t safe.
“Nine-one-one,” the dispatch responder answered the call. “What is your—”
“I’m Agent Ethan Marston,” I cut her off. “I’m at the University of Miami hospital, the fifth floor on the children’s ward. I have one victim with a deep laceration to her neck and a suspect down with a bullet wound to the knee.”
“We’re already aware of the situation at the UHealth Tower,” she replied. “I'll let the police on the scene know about the injured parties. Do you have eyes on the assailant now?”
“No,” I huffed as I spotted a flash of movement around the end of the hallway. “There’s another suspect. He’s armed. I’m after him now. He’s heading up the stairs.”
“I’ll send backup to you,” the woman replied. I barely heard the end of her message before I hung up and thrust my phone back into my pocket. I’d only realized a few moments earlier that the end of the hallway led into a different stairwell.
My heart was pounding almost painfully as adrenaline rushed through my veins, but I increased my pace anyway as I pushed the door open. I could hear the suspect’s footsteps echoing above me, and I rushed up the stairs as fast as I could.
I heard a familiar thumping two flights later, and I gritted my teeth as I realized the man was attempting to break into another ward. Just how much chaos did he intend to cause?
As I made it up to the final flight of stairs, I realized that he’d actually made it all the way up to the door that led to the roof of the building. He’d pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall and was using it to bash against the locking mechanism holding the door closed.
“Stop!” I yelled from the base of the stairs as I drew my gun and pointed it at him. There were no civilians around to impede my line of fire here, so I wasn’t as hesitant to shoot as I had been.
The suspect turned and threw me a venous snarl before bringing the bottom of the extinguisher down against the lock once again, finally managing to send it flying off the door as it broke into pieces.
“I said stop!” I yelled as he put his hand on the door handle. I fired at him, but my shot missed and struck the extinguisher instead. A puff of thick white powder engulfed the suspect in an instant, and he yelled as the force from the sudden eruption sent the extinguisher flying out of his hand and sailing forcefully into the air.
I ducked as it ricocheted off the wall and toward me like an oversized bullet before finally coming to rest on the ground just beside me with a metallic clang.
The small stairwell quickly became hazy, and in a matter of seconds, my visibility went down to zero. I could hear the door opening above me, and I swore as I rushed up the stairs blindly after the suspect.
I blinked the fog out of my eyes as I broke through the other side of the mist and out onto the roof of the building. I could see the suspect standing at the other end, looking around frantically as though he might find some escape route up here.
“Just stop!” I yelled derisively. “What’s your plan here? Where do you think you’re going to go?”
“Shut up!” he screamed before turning on his heel and lunging toward me. I braced myself for the impact and reacted immediately, using his own body momentum to flip him over.
He landed on his back with an “oof!”
I leaned down to grab him, but he was fast and quickly rolled away from me and up onto his feet. He was surprisingly agile for someone so stout and boxy.
He threw a punch at me, which I dodged and returned with one of my own. He grunted at the blow, but barely showed any sign of distress before flailing his fists at me again. His moves were clumsy and unrefined, but he was strong and hardy and didn’t seem very bothered by my own hits.
Finally, one of my punches seemed to daze him, and he stumbled a little. The moment he did, I brought my leg up to knee him hard in the stomach before punching him again. He let out a strangled, pained cry of pain as he finally tumbled to the ground.
I wasted no time in crouching down and cuffing his hands behind his back. This guy wasn’t very skilled, but he was resilient, and I wasn’t about to allow him to get back up.
Once his hands were secured behind his back, I allowed myself a moment to relax. My heart was still beating wildly, and the muscles in my arms and calves were aching from having run all over the hospital in such a short time. Even as I did, I kept an eye on the man in front of me. Already he was struggling on the ground, pulling at the cuffs in an attempt to get free.
“Don’t even think about it,” I sighed as I pressed my hand against his back to keep him from clambering up onto his feet.
Just as I did, I heard the rhythmic, repetitive sound of a helicopter. I looked up just as the news chopper crested over the top of the hospital, most likely reporting the situation that was currently unfolding inside. It wasn’t every day that a bunch of wayward pirates went crazy inside a hospital full of civilians, after all.
Probably filming us right now, I thought to myself as I wondered if Holm was watching from his hospital room. The chopper was hovering just overhead as I maintained my hold on the suspect, and I could imagine that this must make for a pretty sensational image.
I only hoped that Hills had been just as successful in apprehending the pair of suspects he’d gone after.
12
Ethan
I took a deep breath as I leaned forward in my chair and massaged the back of my neck with my hand. One of the biggest downfalls to working this job was all the physical pain that came with it. While I had a pretty high pain tolerance, there was no avoiding the unpleasant crash that came after a sharp, rapid spike of adrenaline. Chills, body aches, fatigue. You always felt invincible when you were in the thick of it, but once the danger was gone and the body relaxed, all the ugly symptoms followed.
A few hours had passed since the suspects had gone on a rampage at the hospital. After getting ourselves checked out on Diane’s orders, we’d all retreated back to her office. We were currently sitting in her office, attempting to discuss what had happened while she fielded calls fro
m seemingly everyone.
“Well, this has been one eventful day,” Diane sighed wearily as she hung up her office phone.
“Who was it this time?” I asked from where I was sitting in one of the chairs in front of her desk.
“The hospital,” she replied. “The nurse who was attacked just got out of surgery. They believe she should make a full recovery. Thankfully, none of her arteries were severed.”
“Thank goodness,” I breathed as I ran a hand through my hair. My inability to do anything more to help her had horrified me. I knew that it wasn’t my job or even within my abilities. I was a federal agent, not a doctor, but still. The terrified look in her eyes as blood gushed from the wound in her neck was still fresh in my mind.
“That wasn’t your fault, Marston,” she stated firmly. “You did everything by the book. Hostage negotiation protocols all dictate that you should do exactly what you did. You remained calm and kept the suspect engaged. You couldn’t have known that he would suddenly do that.”
“I know,” I grunted as I sat up straight. “So, how about the other nurse? The male one that he attacked when we first arrived? Do we know how he is?”
“Davide LeFleur,” she mumbled as she scrolled through her tablet. “He’s fine as well. One of the suspects stabbed him in the ribs, but the wound was shallow.”
“Sure bled a lot,” Chapman muttered, his face twisted into a frown at the memory.
“It could have been a lot worse,” Diane noted as he set her tablet back down. “In total, there were only two serious injuries. According to the report I received, the nurses on the third floor were able to send out a warning over their pagers alerting everyone that there was an armed assailant in the building.”
“That explains why all the doors were closed in the pediatric ward,” I muttered as I recalled how very few people had been out on the main floor.
“Yes, all hospitals have protocols for those kinds of situations,” Diane replied curtly. “Unfortunately, that’s the reality we live in. They shouldn’t have been able to get into the ward at all, but according to this, they broke the locking mechanism completely off the door.”