The RX Factor (29 page)

"I have to hand it to both of you. You're not easy to kill. Bureau training is good." He sneered towards Ryan. "But it doesn't beat my training."

Ryan was curious.
Renegade Agent? Freelancer working for FSW? Who is this guy, and how does he know my background?
One thing Ryan knew for sure: the man was a stone-cold killer. He could see it in his eyes.

Recognition followed in an instant as his memory spun into action, and through his anger and confusion, he placed his opponent's face. "You were Stedman's chief of security, the thug who escorted me out of FSW."

The cold eyes brightened. "That's right. The last time I saw you I was hauling your ass out of Fisher." Craven was unable to resist talking about himself. "Of course, before this gig I worked Black Ops for Uncle Sam, cut my teeth on the Phoenix Program."

"Oh yeah, I see it in your eyes—Grade A nut job." Ryan was buying time to come up with a plan. He had to get the jump on Craven and hoped to provoke him into making a mistake. But Craven was too cautious, too cool, too deliberate. He kept them at a safe distance, even though he was armed and they were not.
One wrong move will earn me a quick bullet and a fast death. This sadist is enjoying hearing himself talk. Good, let him talk. I won't go down without a fight.

"And now you're a hired punk for some bigwigs, is that it?" Ryan challenged, his voice tinged with an equal dose of sarcasm and contempt.

"Oh, I'd say I'm more than that." Still smirk ing, he turned and addressed Huggins. "How convenient for me to find all of you here together. Give me that file, you little turd."

The terrified man was beginning to come un-glued. "I'm on your side," he babbled. "Get rid of them and let me go. I won't tell anyone."

"You were supposed to destroy these test results five years ago," Craven said, staring a hole into Huggins. "I had a feeling a stupid little shit like you would hold on to the records. What were you planning on doing, blackmailing the company?"

"No, no, that's not it," Huggins wailed. Craven seemed amused by the terror that clouded the man's eyes. Like a whipped dog, Huggins handed the file to Craven, who promptly dumped it into a wastepaper basket. Pointing the gun at Ryan and Jordan, Craven motioned them away. He retrieved a cigarette lighter from his pants pocket, flicked it, and ignited the contents of the wastepaper basket. The papers caught fire and went up with a
whoosh.
A pall of brownish-white smoke emanated from the engulfed receptacle.

As everyone watched, seemingly mesmerized by the flame, Huggins made a dash for the door. It was a poor decision for an out-of-shape older man. Two quick shots from the Colt .45 dropped him in a crumpled heap in the doorway.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Ryan lunged at Craven, knocking the pistol from his hand. While Ryan was in shape, Craven was a raging bull. Soon, by way of brute strength alone, Craven had regained the advantage and was sitting astride Ryan. He grabbed his pistol from the floor and pointed it toward Ryan's head. Craven squinted with delight as he steadied the weapon.

Desperate, Ryan used both hands to grab his assailant's hand, as the barrel of the gun swung closer to his face. He considered cocking his fist and slugging the man, but he knew that he would have to release one hand, and before he could strike, it would be all over. Ryan knew the .45 was not a hair-trigger weapon, but it didn't take all that much pressure to fire it, either.

When he was nearly looking straight down the barrel, he saw Craven's finger begin to tighten. Beads of perspiration covered Ryan's forehead. His eternity was about to arrive on a high-caliber bullet to the brain when Craven suddenly collapsed. A trembling Jordan was standing over them, a dented fire extinguisher in her hand.

With his hands tied behind his back and his legs anchored to an office chair, Craven came to with a start, the muzzle of his own Colt .45 trained at his chest.

Ryan cocked the gun. Craven didn't flinch.

"Didn't think you were capable."

"Capable of what?"

"Killing a man in cold blood."

"There'd be nothing cold-blooded about killing the likes of you."

"A Bureau man all the way. A real hard-ass."

"You can buy yourself a few minutes by telling me something."

"And that would be?"

Ryan grabbed a lab chair, straddled it, and searched the man's eyes for a spark of compassion. "Why? Why would the company want to suppress a cure for ovarian cancer that promised to make them billions?"

Craven shook his head as if he were disappointed. "I guess your old buddy Maynard was right."

"About what?"

"About you. He said you didn't get it and that you never would. That you had a scientist's brain but no head for business. It's too bad. If you'd had a head for business and wasn't a former FBI agent, Stedman would have clued you in. In which case, your wife and kids would still be alive, and you'd be a millionaire many times over."

Ryan's gun hand shook from the tremors in his heart. He wanted to rid the world of this vermin. But first, he needed information. "My wife and kids died in a plane accident, you asshole."

"For the man who invented a cure for cancer, you're really kind of stupid."

Ryan pressed the barrel of the gun hard un derneath Craven's chin.

"Your wonder drug worked, Doc. Your wife was cured. It was only a matter of time before you would have figured it out."

Ryan's mind whirled as his brain tried to absorb the information. "What are you saying?"

"If you just hadn't stolen the drug and given her the last injections, everything would have been fine. She would have died of cancer like all of the other patients who participated in the trial. But you did, and those final injections cured her. Before long, you would have figured it out and told your story to the world, and Tricopatin would have ended up back in clinical trials. And this time it might have actually been approved."

"So?"

"So the only way to stop you from figuring it out was to make sure she died. That's why I had her plane blown up over the Atlantic."

Ryan put the gun down, leaped at the bound man, and pummeled him with all the rage and fury that his tortured soul could muster. "Why did you have to kill my family? You bastard! You fucking scumbag!"

By the time Jordan managed to pull him off, Craven was bloody, his eye swollen and lip split. But being the hard man that he was, he remained conscious. His bloody lip was twisted into a wry grin, an outward sign of pride for being able to withstand the beating.

Ryan picked up the gun and pointed it at the man's head. "I still don't know why FSW didn't want to release a cure for cancer."

Craven spat his bloody drool to the floor. "Of course not. You're not a businessman. You'll never see what makes this country the richest in the world. You know nothing about the corporate culture that's made America great."

"And you believe what, that you're some sort of a patriot?"

Craven stared at Ryan through his good eye and, with all the coolness of a man in complete control, said, "I am."

"A corporate warrior, maybe, but nothing more than that. You're sure as hell no patriot."

Craven's grin was made even more sinister by the blood running out of his mouth. "I like the way that sounds. Yeah, that's what I am, a corporate warrior. I used to fight my country's battles on the battlefield. Nowadays, I'm fighting on the corporate battlefield."

Jordan stared at him in disbelief. "That's a sick philosophy."

Craven turned his beaten face toward her. "Not that I expect you to understand, missy, but there are as many enemies to our way of life that want to destroy our country from within as there are foreign. Without our wealth, would we be as great as we are?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Jordan responded.

"But how are you defining greatness? And are you defining our wealth as a people strictly by how much money we have?"

Ryan interrupted. "Jordan, let's not dignify this piece of shit with the notion that his philosophy, whatever it is, has any relevance to human beings."

Ryan felt good drawing a distinction between people like himself, a dedicated scientist and researcher, and the corporate thugs he was battling. Of course, Craven only did the dirty work for the real corporate thugs. Guys of Craven's ilk were sadistic robots who got a perverse joy out of following cruel and merciless orders from men like Stedman, who were even more vile and despicable. They were evil men who would never give human lives more value than the almighty dollar. Profits had always trumped ethics in big business, and they probably always would. A large automaker would rather pay $100 million in legal claims for dead drivers than spend $300 million to recall a car with faulty brakes, just as a major pharmaceutical company would rather hide possible grievous side effects and risk hundreds of millions in lawsuits rather than pulling a multi-billion dollar per year blockbuster maintenance drug off the market. Ryan was glad he had never sold out his soul for a buck. The business end of things never had taken precedence over the scientific. Yes, he'd made money from his research—but at least he could live with himself.

Craven wasn't finished. In fact, he seemed eager to talk. "Listen, I'm no business genius, but the way I see it, it's simple. Sure, it sounds good on the surface to have a cancer cure to sell, and at first, the company might make a nice profit. But think about it, Matthews, Americans never have and never will pay for good medicine. They turn to the insurance companies to foot the bills, and do you think the insurance companies are going to pay what Tricopatin is really worth? Hell no. Tricopatin is worth millions of dollars per patient, but who's going to pay for it? Not the insurance companies, and certainly not your average Joe."

Ryan stared at him, dumbfounded.

"There would be a public outcry. The lobbyists for the major health insurance companies would pressure their bought-and-paid-for politicians, and before you know it, they'd be practically giving Tricopatin away. Poor Aunt Betty shows up with cancer and no insurance. What do you think would happen to the company if they didn't give her the miracle cure? No, my bosses are not about to let that happen. Not only would they take a bath on Tricopatin, they'd lose billions on the other cancer treatment drugs that they sell today. Why do you think they were willing to pay so much for your old company to begin with? They weren't going to allow you to cure ovarian cancer and rob them of the billions they make selling maintenance drugs to treat the same cancer. No, they bought Immugene with the sole intention of burying Tricopatin. A couple hundred million is nothing compared to the billions they would have lost if Tricopatin had hit the market."

"Incredible," Ryan said. "So that's it. Why cure people when you can soak them with maintenance drugs for the rest of their lives? I guess healthy people don't buy drugs, huh?"

"Hell's bells. You finally got it!"

"Yeah, I get
that,
asshole. But why peddle the drugs in Mexico?"

Using his shoulder, Craven managed to wipe some of the blood dripping down his chin. "By killing the FDA approval and selling it outside the U.S. for millions a pop, we get the best of both worlds. Hell, Matthews, this is done all the time. Your cure just happened to be a blockbuster cancer cure and not one for minor ailments. Do you really believe that the best the top research scientists in the world can come up with is a pill you need to take every single day just to get a hard-on?"

Ryan leveled the gun at Craven's head. "Are you done?"

Craven spat. "Yeah, I'm done."

"I'm more than happy to send you to hell with a bullet. Hell is where you belong."

Though he was no sadist, Ryan nonetheless took delight in watching Craven's face morph with its first outward sign of fear. Or perhaps it was with his realization that he had been outsmarted and overwhelmed by amateurs. Ryan knew that this bothered Craven even more than the prospect of losing his life.

Craven watched Ryan's finger on the trigger, analyzing every nuance. As Ryan began to squeeze, the bound man shouted, "If you kill me, there will be hundreds more on your tail. I burned the last shred of evidence and killed the last witness. The company is untouchable, but you're not. If you kill me, you'll be going to jail for the rest of your very short life. It'll be tough to claim self-defense with me tied to a chair. Even if you untie me afterwards, the forensic guys will determine I was tied up when you shot me. Why don't you just let me go? There is no more evidence against Stedman, the company, or me. We have no reason to come after you. Hell, I won't even tell anyone you and the girl are still alive. You can just disappear." Craven was speaking with the desperation of a man who knew he was playing his last card.

Ryan became thoughtful, his rage subsiding. He looked at Craven and then, turning to Jordan, said, "Cut him loose."

"What? You can't mean that. Let this monster go?"

"Do it, Jordan. I know what I'm doing."

She grabbed a scalpel off of the countertop and slashed Craven's bonds, inching back beside Ryan.

Craven stood slowly. He stretched his arms over his head and, lightning fast, dove behind a shelf, making a half roll to the left and then to the right. With a lunge, he reached for his ankle holster and came up with a .38 aimed at Ryan. Craven squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. Ryan opened his fist and flipped his hand over. As the bullets to the .38 clattered harmlessly onto the floor, he asked Craven one final question: "Looking for these?"

Craven's eyes went flat. His gun hand lowered and his mouth fell open as he waited for his own death.

Three shots rang out and Craven's body slumped to the floor, his cold blue eyes staring upward.

"What a mess."

Jim Crawford was staring at Craven's bloodied body on the file-room floor. His gaze shifted a dozen feet to Dr. Huggins's dead body, still crumpled in a heap in the doorway. "Tell me something," he said. "How come the guy you shot looks like he was put through the ringer but you don't have so much as a scratch on you?"