by Sims (lit)
And they had plenty of gear. Like the others, Luca was wearing a black cotton BDU; but before they went in they’d add body armor and Kevlar helmets with visors; each would carry tactical forearm 15,000 candlepower flashlights and an HK submachine gun equipped with double 30-round translucent magazines.
He hoped to use that weapon. He wanted that sim, yes, but wanted Cadman and Sullivan there too. Especially Romy Cadman. He wanted one last look at that pretty face before he put a bullet into it.
20
MINEOLA, NY
The racket—footsteps in the upstairs hallway, a fist pounding on a door, Betsy’s voice shouting—startled Romy awake. She found herself up and moving without knowing how or why.
“Wake up! Patrick! Romy! It’s time! We’ve got to go!”
Go? Where? She pulled open her door and caught Betsy as she hurried by. “What’s wrong?”
“Meerm’s in hard labor. We can’t hold off any longer. Got to get her to the hospital right now!”
Romy saw Patrick stick his head out of his room and called to him. “Did you hear?”
He nodded blearily. “What time is it?”
“Three-twenty!” Betsy cried, moving away. “Get dressed. We’ve got to move!”
Romy jumped into her clothes and was down the stairs in seconds, Patrick right behind her. They dashed to Betsy’s bedroom where they found a very confused and frightened Meerm lying on a cot and wrapped in blankets.
“Patrick, you carry her,” Betsy said as she yanked the spread and blankets off her own bed. “We’ll fix up the car.”
Romy followed her to the garage where they flattened the rear seats in the Volvo and spread out the bedclothes. Patrick appeared a moment later carrying the moaning Meerm. They nestled her in the rear section.
“Patrick, you drive,” Betsy said. “Do you know the way to the hospital?”
“No.”
“I’ll direct you, then. Romy, you stay here in the back with me.”
And then they were on their way, Betsy and Romy kneeling on either side of Meerm in the back as Patrick pulled out of the driveway. Romy opened her PCA and left a beeper message for Zero: “It’s happening. We’re on our way to the hospital.”
As she hung up she heard Betsy on her own PCA.
“…know it’s Christmas, Joanna, but this is more than just an emergency section, it’s an historical event…I wish I could say more than that, but I can’t. Have I ever lied to you? Well then, believe me, Joanna, youwant to be part of this. Okay, good. I’ll see you there.”
As Betsy hung up and punched in another speed-dial code, she glanced at Romy and smiled. “My surgical team. A dedicated bunch, but itis Christmas Day. My nurse anesthetist is Hindu, so she’ll be no problem; but both my scrub nurses have small children.” She shrugged. “One’s coming. I hope I can persuade the other. If not…do you faint at the sight of blood, Romy?”
“Me?” Romy said, caught off guard. “No, I’m okay with blood. But if you’re talking about assisting on a surgery…I don’t think…”
“Let’s hope you won’t have to, but be prepared. I may need you.”
Slice open Meerm’s belly? Romy didn’t know if she could help with that.
21
“Second floor—clear!”
“Office—clear!”
“Garage—empty!”
Luca stood in the center of Dr. Cannon’s living room listening to the reports through his headset, and felt ridiculous.
The op had started out perfectly. With the six team members divided between two Jeeps and a rented van, they’d arrived in town with time to spare. They’d left the Jeeps in the lot of an autobody shop and headed for Cannon’s house in the van. The plan was to ditch the van at the shop lot after the op and make it back to SimGen in the Jeeps. But now…
Shit, the house was empty.
Luca had had his first premonition the moment they’d pulled up in front: the lights were on. Upstairs and down. At four in the morning?
They’d crept up to the windows—no one moving about inside. They’d slammed through the rear door—no alarm.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs behind him. Luca turned and saw a helmeted figure approaching, recognized him as Lowery when he lifted his visor.
“Three bedrooms upstairs. The reports on her say she lives alone, but all three have slept-in beds. They’re not warm, but I’d guess they haven’t been cold too long. Looks like they left in a big hurry.”
Luca felt as if he were turning to ice. “You’re saying they might have been tipped?”
Lowery shrugged. “Who’d tip them? You and me were the only ones who knew where we were going. Maybe they got spooked. Maybe they spotted us watching the place and decided to take off.”
Luca turned away and ground his teeth. He should have kept someone here until the raid, but without Snyder and Grimes he was short-handed. What did he do now?
“All right,” he said into his helmet mike. “Everybody back to the van. We’re outta here.”
They’d return to the other cars, but not to SimGen. Not yet. He was staying in this area. Maybe he’d split up the team and send them looking for Cannon’s Volvo. Slim chance there, but better than doing nothing.
Needed time to think. No question now that Cannon and the sim were together. Find the doc and he’d have the sim, and Cadman and Sullivan too, no doubt.
Butwhere?
22
Zero watched the surreal scene below with a by-now-familiar mix of anticipation and dread. The faint aftereffects of the Scotch had evaporated when he received Romy’s message. He’d arrived at the hospital shortly after Betsy and the others, and left Tome and Kek parked in the van while Patrick admitted him through the doctor’s entrance. Like every other department in the hospital, security was a skeleton crew because of the holiday; so Zero, wearing a hat pulled low, dark glasses, and a scarf around his lower face, made it to the OR suite without being stopped.
Betsy had commandeered the amphitheater OR, and now Zero gazed down at a brightly lit operating table fifteen feet below, where a nurse was scrubbing and shaving Meerm’s distended belly. The sim lay tense and trembling with IVs running into both arms. The hovering dark-skinned anesthetist, who Betsy referred to as Madhuri, was ready to put her under.
The scrub nurse looked up and said, “Hey! Who’s the guy in the mask?”
Zero leaned back out of sight. He’d replaced the hat and scarf with his usual ski mask.
“A trusted friend,” Betsy said. “Don’t worry about him, Joanna. Just get our patient prepped.”
Betsy had told him she’d chosen the amphitheater for its audio-visual system, and Zero thought that an inspired idea. They could still lose this war; maybe an A-V record would provide some insurance. The problem was how to get the system up and running.
“There,” Patrick said, close at his side as he sighted along the top of the mounted camera. “That’s pointing in the general direction.”
Zero turned and seated himself at the computer console. “Good. Now let’s see if we can get a picture.”
“You know how to work this sort of rig?” Patrick said, leaning over his shoulder.
“Not really, but it seems to be a dedicated system, and if the menu’s at all intuitive…”
The menu formed on the screen and Zero groaned. It looked like a crossword puzzle with numbered feeds and rows ofinput from andoutput to and acronyms he didn’t understand. Suddenly the air in the balcony seemed too thin. He ripped off the mask and took a deep breath. He looked down at his trembling fingers poised over the keyboard. It wasn’t just the computer program, it was everything…the huge responsibility that he’d taken on over the past couple of years…he felt as if it were all crashing down on him at once. Everything he’d been living for hinged on what he and these good humans did here tonight.
He took another breath and focused on the screen. He could handle this.
A little trial and error, a lot of intuition…he could do it. He had to do it
.
Meerm so ver fraid. Not fraid needle. Fraid this place. And fraid hurt. Hurt so bad.
“Okay now, Meerm,” say mask lady. Nice lady. “I’m going to make the hurt go away.”
Meerm feel warm, feel hurt go. This ver nice lady.
“I’m going to put you to sleep now, Meerm,” lady say. “And when you wake up, you’ll have a baby. Won’t that be nice?”
Yes. Baby. Meerm baby. So nice. Meerm want hold, want kiss. Make baby safe. Hold-hold-hold and nev let go.
Sleepy now, but not stop think baby…Meerm baby…Meerm ver own baby…happy Meerm…
23
“Stop!” Luca shouted. “Pull over right now!”
Lowery slammed on the brakes. As the Jeep screeched to an unexpected halt, the two following vehicles skidded past and swerved to stops ahead.
“Where’s the blower?” Luca shouted. “Give me the fucking blower!”
“Here,” Lowery said, slapping the PCA into his palm. “What’s the matter?”
“I am so stupid,” Luca said, punching in 4-1-1. “So fucking stupid!”
“Are you going to tell me—?”
“Cannon’s answering service! They’ll know where she is!”
He got the number from information, punched it in, and asked for Dr. Cannon.
“Dr. Cannon’s not available,” a woman’s voice told him. “Dr. Moss is covering.”
Shit! “I really need to speak to Elizabeth personally. This is her brother and we’ve got a family emergency that needs her immediate attention.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I’ll try her house and—”
“I’ve already called and she doesn’t answer.”
“Maybe she’s at the hospital. I can page her if you wish.”
“Would you? That would be wonderful.”
Luca waited on hold, feeling the time drag by, and then the operator was back on.
“I just spoke to the hospital. Dr. Cannon is in surgery. I can leave a message for her as soon as she gets out.”
Surgery? Could it be…?
“Which hospital?”
“Nassau Community. Do you want me to—?”
He cut her off and turned to Lowery. “Nassau Community Hospital. You know where it is?”
“Not a clue. Give me the address and the GPU will—”
“Right.”
Luca punched 4-1-1 again. He’d call the switchboard and ask for the address.
“Why didn’t I see it?” he shouted. “The sim’s in labor! That’s why Cannon’s house was empty. Everyone’s at the hospital. She’s having her baby.”
Lowery grinned. “And we didn’t bring any cigars.”
“Yes, we did,” Luca said, patting his HK. “The exploding kind.”
24
Romy, capped, masked, and garbed in surgical green, stood between Betsy and Joanna at the stainless steel sink and learned how to scrub. Betsy’s other scrub nurse had begged off, refusing to leave her five-year-old son to open his Christmas presents without her. That left Romy to fill in.
“Work the lather into the skin,” Betsy was saying, her voice slightly muffled by her surgical mask, “especially between the fingers and around the nails.”
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Romy said. She was shaking inside. “It’s not the blood or the cutting, it’s just that I’ve never even seen—”
“You’ll be fine,” said Joanna to her right. “I’ll handle the technical stuff. The most you’ll have to do is hang on to a retractor while—”
“She’s crashing!” cried an accented voice from the operating room. “Something’s happened!”
“Oh, God, her uterus!” Betsy said. “It’s ruptured!” She grabbed three packets of sterile gloves and handed them out. “Just put them on! Forget about gowns and sterile procedure. We’ll worry about sepsis later. Right now we’ve got to move or we’ll lose her!”
The next ten minutes were a crimson-tinged blur through which Romy watched Betsy and Joanna work like a single four-armed organism. Their communication seemed almost telepathic as Joanna would slap an instrument into Betsy’s palm as soon as she thrust out her hand. Romy repressed a cry of anguish as Betsy cut quickly through Meerm’s abdominal wall, releasing a torrent of blood that gushed down her flanks and soaked the table. Joanna said something about a uterine artery and Betsy was calling for suction but Romy’s eyes were locked on the glistening bloody dome of Meerm’s uterus floating in that sea of red. And the surreal aspect of being able to glance up at the TV monitor suspended in a corner and view the scene from a different angle. And then Betsy was cutting into that muscular sack, reaching through the slit and pulling out a limp, bloody, silent baby. She held it up by its feet, slapped it once, then again, and with that the little arms jerked outward and the baby emitted a piercing cry. And then Betsy was clamping and cutting the cord as she called for Zero or Patrick, she didn’t care who, to get down here and take charge of this baby because she needed everyone here to help her stop Meerm’s hemorrhaging before she died.
Seconds later, Patrick, looking even more frightened than he had after they’d been run off the Saw Mill, stumbled through the doors into the OR.
“What do Ido ?” Patrick said as Joanna deposited the squirming, squalling, scrawny, blood-slippery bundle of baby into his arms. It terrified him. God, what if he dropped it? “I don’t know a thing about babies! I’ve never—”
“No Butterfly McQueens allowed,” the nurse told him. “Madhuri will talk you through it.” Then she turned back to the furious activity on the operating table.
Patrick turned to the anesthetist. “Madhuri?”
“Take it to the table over there,” she replied in a voice that was at once lilting and rapid fire. “There’s a basin of warm water. Rinse it off, wipe it down, and then wrap it tightly in one of the blankets.”
“But—”
“Hurry! Get it wrapped up! You don’t want hypothermia! I’d help you but I can’t leave—” She glanced at a monitor and called out, “Heart rate up to one-sixty!”
Gingerly cradling the slippery baby in his arms, Patrick stepped to the cleaning table and placed it on a towel. And now, as it screamed and thrust out its skinny limbs, he could see that it was a girl. He dipped a towel in the basin of warm water and began wiping away the blood and clinging membranes. This caused an escalation in the wails. She was so small, so fragile looking. He hoped he didn’t rub too hard and break something, but he kept it up, working as quickly as he could. As soon as she was reasonably clean, he found a soft blanket at the rear of the table and wrapped it around her.
He looked over to Madhuri to ask, Now what? but she was busy hanging a new IV bag, a small, red one, on an IV pole so loaded with infusion bags it looked like a Christmas tree. The baby was still crying so he lifted her into his arms—he felt a little more confident now that she was dry and blanket wrapped—and held her tight against him.
Amazingly, her wails tapered off. And now that he had a chance to look at her, he marveled at how human she looked. He’d never seen a real live newborn. He’d seen photos, of course; whenever the associates at his old firm had entered fatherhood, they always brought in pictures taken right after birth showing these homely, scrunched-up elfin faces that everyone pronounced beautiful. But this babywas beautiful. Maybe because she hadn’t been extruded through a birth canal. A nice symmetrical face, a tiny nose, little bow lips, a light down of hair on her head but none on her body. Damn, she looked human. More so than some of those associates’ kids.
He turned to look at the operating table and met Romy’s dark eyes, the only part of her face visible between the cap and the mask.
“How’s Meerm doing?” he asked.
Betsy stood next to Romy, and answered without looking up. “I clamped the big bleeder but she’s not out of the woods yet. She damn near bled out. We’ve got packed red cells and volume expanders running full blast, and that should bring her pressure back.”
“Patrick,” said Zero�
��s voice over the loudspeaker, “hold up the baby so we can get a good view.”
Patrick turned, loosened the blanket, and lifted her toward the camera lens pointed his way from the balcony. Zero had got the video system working in time; now he seemed to have mastered it. Patrick glanced at the monitor and saw himself, viewed from above, holding the baby.
“Boy or girl?” Romy asked as Patrick turned back their way.
“Girl. A beauty.”
Betsy’s head snapped up. “Abeautiful girl?”
“A real doll.”
Patrick saw the confusion in Betsy’s eyes and was framing a question about it when Madhuri began shouting.
“V-fib! She’s in V-fib!”
Oh, no! Zero felt a pang as he saw the sudden frenzied activity around the operating table on the computer screen. You can’t lose her. She just became a mother.
He watched with growing dismay as Betsy performed CPR on Meerm’s chest, then applied the defibrillator paddles, shocking her heart again and again. His eyes drifted from the painful scene to the thumbnail feeds he’d accessed from the hospital’s security cameras—an easy task once he’d got the hang of the program. Almost five in the morning and all quiet at Nassau County Community Hos—
Zero stiffened as he saw two Jeeps and a van pull up at the emergency room entrance. No audio, but the way the vehicles rocked on their springs meant they’d been moving fast.
Most likely nothing, he told himself, but he kept watching, and his gut began a quick crawl when he saw six men in full SWAT gear pile out onto the pavement. He couldn’t see their faces through their lowered visors but he spotted “FBI” on the back of one of them. He didn’t believe that for an instant. This was SIRG through and through, and maybe Portero himself.
He glanced at the OR feed—Betsy was still laboring over Meerm’s inert, supine form—then at his upload indicator for the digital movie of the birth. Almost complete. But now he had to slow the invaders, mislead them, divert them.
As Zero slipped the ski mask back over his head, he had an idea…
25
Luca’s mind raced as he led his men from the emergency area to the lobby. First thing, he had to seal the building and cut off any escape. But for that he needed to know where the exits were, and the place to find out was Information.