Patient (30 page)

After Harry Laughlin had disarmed the detonator in Quincy Market, Stan Moyer and two other agents had been outfitted as maintenance men, given copies of the sketch and description of Stefan as well as monitors set to the detonator’s frequency, and left inside the building.

Two of the locations were now secured and under observation. The third had proven to be incredibly difficult. Alex stood beside Laughlin, halfway up one of the stair cases in the Government Center station, overseeing the search. The demolitions expert had to be near retirement age, if not past it, yet he looked as fresh after nearly twenty-four tension-filled hours on the job as he had when they started.

“What are you going to do if we can’t find it?” he asked.

Alex shrugged. “What do you do when you can’t find a bomb?”

“It depends on how much we believe the tip we got.”

“I believe this one hundred percent.”

“Then we keep looking.”

“We’ve gone over every inch of this place, Harry. Most of it twice.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“We haven’t gone over the inch that includes the device. We need to try and think about what we’re doing wrong.”

For several minutes the two of them stood there, elbow to elbow, watching, thinking. Then Harry began nodding as if he had just realized something.

“What? What?” Alex asked.

“Look at them all down there.”

“Yeah?”

“What do you see?”

“I see a huge number of men and women searching—some of them hunched over, some on their hands and knees.”

“Where
aren’t
they searching, bucko?”

“I don’t understand.”

“For hours we’ve been looking down—under benches, behind trash cans, alongside the tracks, in alcoves. That’s where the other two cylinders were—down. But—”

“Hey, everyone!” Alex called out without waiting for Laughlin to finish. “I want all the spotlights and all your eyes focused up along the I-beams and across the ceiling. Start from your original grids. Those of you who don’t have a grid, just pair up with someone and work the same area. Remember, what we’re looking for is probably encased in black. It’s not going to be easy to spot.”

“I admire a man who can make a decision,” Laughlin said.

Fifteen silent minutes passed. ...

“We have about another half an hour, Harry,” Alex said as they continued surveying the deeply shadowed areas overhead. “Then we’re going to have to open those gates up there and let the passengers in. If there’s a fourth location, sealing this one off much longer is going to be like asking them to set that one off. These people aren’t stupid.”

“Neither are we, boyo,” Harry said suddenly, pointing upward and outward. “Neither are we.”

Alex followed his line of sight for about fifty or sixty feet to the place where one of the dozens of support beams met the ceiling. There, virtually blending into the shadows, was the barely visible outline of a rectangular casing.

“Does the Boston Police Department appreciate how good you are?” Alex asked as they raced to the base of the beam.

“I think they might,” Laughlin said. “I applied for retirement three years ago and haven’t heard a word from them yet.”

It took twenty minutes on a ladder before Harry announced that the package had been neutralized.

“Well, bucko,” the policeman said after he had climbed down and most of the troops had been dispatched back through the tunnel to the Haymarket station, “that’s three out of three. Are you going to go after the hostages?”

“Not yet, Harry. If I was certain it was three out of three and not three out of four I might try and think of some way. But as long as Malloche doesn’t know how much we know, I think the hostages are reasonably safe. We’ve got to see if we can flush out this Stefan.”

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, then 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.