Storm Prey

by Sandford, John

  “Ah, shit,” Cooper said. She glanced sideways and saw Cooper with blood spattered on his operating glasses. In cutting the scalp away from the skull, he’d cut through a tiny artery, which squirted blood up into his face and glasses. He cauterized it, and the smell of burning blood drifted through the room.

  When she thought she was ready, with a little to spare, Weather said, “Cap,” and a neurosurgeon moved in with a composite piece marked with tiny orientation grooves. He got it the right way around and placed it in the defect, and Weather saw it almost click into place. The cap would be held down by two tiny stainless-steel screws, and, finally, by the scalp, as it grew back.

  The surgeon said, “You do good work, Rick,” and, “Drill, please.”

  Weather stepped back from the table, holding her hands against her stomach to keep from bumping anything non-sterile, and glanced up at the watchers. Only a glance, and then she kept her head resolutely down, for she’d seen, in the glance, the skinhead. Virgil and Lucas had described him, and there was no doubt about it.

  “First screw is in,” the neurosurgeon said, and behind him, Cooper, working on Ellen, said, “Cap,” and a moment later, another neurosurgeon said, “Just like the cap on a Ball jar.”

  Weather kept her eyes down, thinking. A surgical pen, last used by Hanson, was sitting on an equipment tray. She reached out, picked it up, stepped behind the neurosurgeon, and wrote on the sleeve of her operating gown, “DO NOT LOOK UP. Go in the hallway and tell my husband that the skinhead is in the observation area. DO NOT HURRY.”

  She said to one of the circulating nurses, whom she’d known for a while, and who knew who Lucas was, “Kristy, could you get me one of the large gauze pads, please?”

  The nurse stepped over to a supply cabinet, picked up a pad, slit the packaging without touching the sterile gauze, and brought it over to Weather. Weather held out the arm with the writing on it, still concealed behind the neurosurgeon’s back, slowly pulled the gauze pad out of the packaging.

  Kristy looked down at the writing on Weather’s sleeve, and she almost looked up, but didn’t. Her eyes came to Weather’s, and she gave a tiny nod. No dummy.

  Weather took the gauze pad and moved up beside the neurosurgeon, to watch him place the final screw.

  “Second screw is in ... as my girlfriend said to me last night,” the neurosurgeon said. The women in the room booed him, and he said, cheerfully, “Just trying to speak truth to power.”

  Weather moved back up and stretched the loosened scalp over the cap.

  Maret asked, “Is there enough?”

  Weather said, “Of course. I’m even better at topology than Rick,” and Hanson, the bone-cutter, who had been sweating the fit on the caps, made a rude noise. Out of the corner of her eye, Weather saw Kristy push out of the OR and into the scrub room.

  Weather thought, He might have a hand grenade. Oh my God, don’t let him have a hand grenade, then put it out of her mind and began suturing the scalp.

  Maret asked, “Hearts?”

  “Ellen is looking shaky. She’s been worse,” a cardiologist said.

  “Sara’s good,” said another.

  Weather was tying as she went along the suture line, adjusting the skin as she went. Some of the edges were drying, and since she had a bit extra, she snipped it off and sutured the more viable scalp.

  She did a knot, couldn’t help herself, and glanced up again:

  No Lucas, no Virgil, no skinhead. He’d gone.

  19

  CAPPY SCOUTED the halls from the back of the hospital down toward the operating rooms. He’d spent enough time cruising the various wards that he knew most of the ins and outs of the place, but still got lost from time to time.

  The storage closet was the center of his explorations. If he hadn’t been there to kill somebody, he might have thought about moving in. Nobody ever came to the closet, and he rarely saw anybody in the adjacent hallways. There were plenty of toilets and showers around. Hell, maybe he could have gotten a job. He’d spent quite a bit of time pushing patients around the hallways, was beginning to understand their ways.

  But, he was there to kill somebody.

  He didn’t mention it to Barakat, but he’d put two grenades in his jacket pocket on this last day, along with the Judge in his belt.

  Made him feel weird; like a suicide bomber.

  On the other hand, he’d had a vision, the last time he’d been in his bed. The vision was simple enough: he’d been running through the halls of the hospital, trying to find a way to get out. He was being chased. He dropped a grenade and turned a corner, and the chasers were stopped. That was all: a long, long chase, with dropped grenades blowing behind him, keeping the chasers away.

  Only trouble was, he always seemed to be running out of grenades, the chasers never quit, and the hallways were endless.

  IN THE CLOSET, he changed into the uniform, picked up a piece of two-by-four that he’d found in the kitchen, and headed out, nodding at nurses here and there, the grenades in his leg pockets like medical instruments, or maybe a tool, bouncing against his thigh, the Judge stuck in his waistband, under the long untucked uniform shirt. He walked around the observation room in a big circle, looking down the hallways at the door. He saw people coming and going, but never saw the cowboy. Satisfied that he was okay, at least for the moment, he left the two-by-four tucked behind the stairs in the stairwell going down to the operating floor.

  He’d hit Karkinnen as she came out of the operating room, from the doorway of the stairwell. Then he’d drop the two-by-four between the bottom step and the door, so it couldn’t be opened. He’d go back up the stairs, down the halls, and be gone in one minute.

  With the two-by-four in place, he went back to the observation room, squeezed through the door, quietly as possible, looked down, and saw the woman in the center of the OR, straight below him.

  A man next to him, in a doctor’s jacket, was watching so intensely that his mustache seemed to bristle. Cappy asked him, quietly, “Where are they?”

  “Almost there. Five minutes,” the man said.

  Cappy checked the observation room: no cowboy. He could hear the people talking below, but it was so cryptic, so medical, that he understood very little of it. He took a seat.

  Then the woman said, “Cap,” and Cappy stiffened. Had she said his name? What? There was some shuffling around, and she looked up at him, and then away. The guy who moved in front of her was large, and all he could see was her head. He sat back, watching, tense. Nothing happened. Had he misheard?

  She never looked back up. Still, he was uneasy. Then the other doc said it: “Cap.” This time, he was sure of what was said, “Cap,” but not what it meant. Nobody was looking at him.

  What was happening? Maybe nothing. Still: maybe take a quick look in the halls, then come back and wait until she left the OR. Karkinnen started and ended the operations, so she’d be coming out soon. He stood up, backed through the door, and walked away.

  KRISTY BURST into the hallway, looked both ways, saw Lucas leaning against the wall with the long-haired guy who’d been watching Weather. She hurried down toward them. Lucas straightened as she came up, and she said, “Weather said to tell you, the skinhead is in the observation room. She’s scared.”

  Lucas and the other man never spoke to her, but both sprinted to the stairwell, the long-haired man pulling a pistol from the back of his coat as he went through the door, and then they were gone. Kristy stood in the empty hall for a moment, wondering what had happened, and whether she should go back in the OR or ... hide.

  LUCAS STOPPED at the top of the stairwell and asked, “You set?”

  “Go,” Virgil said.

  Lucas pushed the door and peeked. A man was walking away from them, a hundred feet down the hall, a skinhead, he thought. He was afraid to call out, because the actual skinhead might still be inside the observation room. Instead, he pulled back and said, quietly, “I think he’s in the hall, but I’m not sure. I’m going after him.
You check the observation area.”

  “Okay.”

  Lucas stepped out in the hallway and they both walked down toward the observation room. The man ahead of them looked back, as he turned a corner, a kind of double take, and Lucas said, “Fuck it, that’s him,” and shouted, “Hey!”

  The skinhead disappeared around the corner, running, and Lucas and Virgil sprinted after him. At the corner, they stopped, did a quick peek—and saw the skinhead another hundred feet down the hall, running hard.

  Lucas shouted, “Stop,” feeling stupid, because the guy wasn’t going to stop, and then they were after him again, a hundred feet, clearing the next corner in time to see the skinhead clear the next corner, going after him again.

  At the next corner, the skinhead was in the open in a long hall of locked doors, and the skinhead turned and looked back at them and his arm came up with a pistol, and he fired once, a deafening boom, and they both jumped back behind the wall as buckshot broke plaster at the T of the intersection of the hallways.

  “Holy shit,” Virgil said, “that’s a shotgun or something,” and he cleared the hallway and fired a single shot after the skinhead, missing, and the slug popped into the brick wall thirty feet down the corridor.

  “Ricochets,” Lucas shouted, and the skinhead turned another corner, and then they were both half jogging, weapons extended in front of them, and Lucas said, “Can’t be much more of this,” and Virgil said, “Easy, easy, he could ambush us at one of these corners, take it easy ...”

  They eased up to the next corridor, did a peek, and found the adjoining hall empty. “He’s in a stairwell,” Lucas said. He’d spotted the door, and they hurried up to it, pulled it open carefully, heard the clattering of feet on the stairs below them, and Lucas started down. Virgil held back, hanging over the rail looking down, his pistol dangling in front of him, and two floors below, the skinhead stopped to look up. Virgil could see his face, leg, and foot, and fired another shot.

  The skinhead screamed, and Lucas was after him and then Virgil heard him yell, “No, no, get back,” and Lucas was running up the stairs toward him, face white, legs churning, taking the stairs two at a time, and Virgil yelled, “What?” and then below them, a grenade went off like the end of the world, and a cloud of concrete dust rose up the stairwell.

  Virgil: “Oh, Jesus.”

  Lucas: “You okay?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “I almost ran right into it,” Lucas said. He peered down the stairwell. “I think you hit him, weird as that sounds.”

  “He yelled something ... what do you think?”

  Lucas was already on the way down again, through the cloud, and when they crossed the landing at the bottom, Lucas said, “We got blood,” and he did a peek at the door, and was through, Virgil a step behind. There were bloody spots on the tiles down the hall, and they went after them, around the corner, the blood still there, intermittently, and Lucas said, “I think you hit him in the foot.”

  Virgil said, “Another stairwell.”

  Lucas pulled the door open and all they could hear was the rack-rack-rack of something metallic bouncing down the stairs, and Lucas shouted, “Another grenade,” and slammed the door and they both ran back down the hall, and a minute later, a second explosion rattled through the hallways.

  “This is fuckin’ nuts,” Virgil said.

  Lucas yanked the doorway open and looked through another cloud of concrete dust. Not a sound from the stairwell, and they started up, moving slowly now, scared.

  A spot of blood. Came to the second floor, and Virgil saw another spot of blood, heading up to three. Virgil went that way, gun in front of him, while Lucas had his cell phone going, 911, “We got a police shooting going on at University Hospitals. This is Lucas Davenport of the BCA. We’ve had two grenade blasts, a man armed with a pistol and grenades, we’re in pursuit, we need help ...”

  CAPPY TURNED in the hallway and saw them coming, the cowboy and the big guy he’d seen when he was buying Joe Mack’s van. The way they were coming, the way they were fixed on him, there was no point in pretending. He was freaked, but not so freaked that it froze him. He took off, and they followed him down the tiled hallways, yelling at him. He yanked the Judge out of his waistband.

  One long stretch, too long, and he turned and fired, and saw the cowboy’s pistol coming up, and he ran, and the cowboy fired at him, and he banged through a stairway door and ran down and around the stairs, and he heard the door bang open above him. They were gaining, he thought. He reached the bottom and paused to look up, to assess, but they were in the stairwell; and there was a flash and muzzle blast, like a cherry bomb going off in his ear, and his foot was smashed and lead fragments spit around him. He pulled a grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin, and when he went through the door at the bottom of the stairwell, he dropped the grenade behind him and kept moving, limping now, pain arcing through his foot.

  He was leaving a blood trail: didn’t know what to do about that, then he was in another stairwell, going up this time, not far from the closet. He made the turn to the third floor, smeared some blood on a stair tread, then dropped the second grenade when he heard the door open below.

  The grenade rattled down the concrete steps and he heard somebody scream again, then he was in the hall, and the second grenade went. He ran now with his bad foot tipped up, running only on his heel, toes off the ground, turned a corner, fumbled the keys, got in the closet, locked the door, turned on the light, listened.

  Nobody in the hall—they may have bit on the blood trail, at least for the moment, but there’d be a million cops in the hospital in five minutes. He tore the uniform off, pulled on his street clothes, ripped the sleeve off the uniform, pulled his shoe off, jammed the sleeve into his shoe, and then his foot; he didn’t take time to figure it out in detail, but it looked like he was missing most of his little toe and maybe part of the toe next to it.

  Dressed again, he listened, then was out the door, down the corridor to the security door, and into the parking ramp.

  Barakat had given him a key for his car, because of the problem with the van tags. He climbed inside, his left foot burning like fire, but got the car started and headed out. Sirens everywhere. Two blocks out of the hospital, a cop car passed him, running fast, and then he was on the ramp and down it and onto the interstate.

  The foot hurt, but he’d been hurt worse; he focused on navigating the slippery streets up to the first exit, snow falling hard all around. He made it to Barakat’s house in fifteen minutes, stopped, afraid to use his cell phone, and called Barakat on the land line.

  “Things are fucked up, man,” he said. “They know who I am.”

  “Are you calling—”

  “I’m at your place. Calling on your phone,” Cappy said. “I took your car.”

  “How did they know?”

  “Maybe Joe Mack called them. I don’t know. But I got to get the fuck out of here. And I’m hurt. One of them shot me in the foot, shot a toe off.”

  Barakat said, “Wait for me. In the bathroom cabinet there are three or four pill bottles. One of them is called oxycodone. If you have bad pain, take two of them. Lay on the bed, put your foot up on two pillows. If it’s bleeding bad, get a kitchen towel and press on the wound. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “I never got close to the woman. She’s still there . . .”

  Barakat said, quietly, “Man, about fifty cops just ran in. I must go. But: they think you are here, I believe.”

  COPS SWARMED the hospital, sixty or seventy officers from all the jurisdictions in the area—campus cops, Minneapolis and St. Paul police, Ramsey and Hennepin County deputies. Media trucks were right behind.

  Marcy got the cops in order, and they began sweeping through the hospital, working with janitors, opening every door, blocking every exit.

  There had been a half-dozen media people waiting in the cafeteria for the end of the twins operation, and now they were walking through the hospital, completely out of con
trol, questioning everyone. Marcy moved to get them out, and got filmed pushing a reporter.

  When the reporter screamed at her, Marcy shouted back, “What is it you don’t understand about hand grenades? You think this is a fuckin’ talk show?”

  Lucas, who’d been hiding, said with a grin, “That’s prime time.”

  IN THE MIDDLE of the carnival, a bomb-squad cop told Lucas, “The thing is, a grenade’s not all that powerful.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Think about it. People are supposed to throw these things—and they weigh almost a pound. Most guys couldn’t throw them a hundred feet, in an open field. They get maybe thirty, thirty-five yards, unless they’re really strong. And lots of times, they’re used pretty close-in. You can’t have them killing your own people. So you get solid kills out to about five yards, solid wounding out to about fifteen. After that, not so much.”

  “What if somebody drops one on you, when you’re in a stairwell?”

  “Well, in that case, you’re toast,” the guy said. “But, you slam the door ...”

  “That’s what we did.”

  “And you’re good. If you’d done that in a movie, the grenade would have blown down the door and most of the wall. In real life, you probably won’t even punch a hole in a fire door. You won’t punch through a concrete block.”

  WEATHER HEARD only one far-off grenade, which sounded more like a door slamming hard; but not quite like that. She looked up, and then back down. Slowing a little bit, taking twenty seconds for neatness.

  Then, “I’m out.”

  “I’m two minutes out, I think I’m okay,” Cooper said. The people up above, in the observation area, were standing now, watching him finish, and Weather realized that everybody in the OR was doing the same.