Five Scarpetta Novels (32 page)

He did not know what to say as he leaned against a console with enough controls to fly us to the moon. Video displays on walls showed that both reactors were shut down, and areas in a grid lighted up red warned of problems I could not comprehend.

“Hey, Wooten, take it easy.” One of his peers lit a cigarette.

“Let's open the bags of ice now,” I said. “I wish we had a tub, but we don't. I see some books on those countertops, and it looks like there's a lot of stacks of paper over there by that fax machine. Bring anything like that you can for a border.”

Men brought to me all sorts of thick manuals, reams of papers and briefcases that I assumed belonged to the employees they had captured. I formed a rectangular border around Hand as if I were in my backyard making a flower
bed. Then I covered him with fifty pounds of ice, leaving only his face and an arm exposed.

“What will that do?” The man called Wooten had moved closer, and he sounded as if he were from out west somewhere.

“He's been acutely exposed to radiation,” I said. “His system is being destroyed and the only way to put a stop to it is to slow everything down.”

I opened the medical chest and got out a needle, which I inserted into their dying leader's arm and secured with tape. I connected an IV line leading to a bag on a stand that contained nothing but saline, a harmless salty solution that would do nothing one way or another. It dripped as he got cooler beneath inches of ice.

Hand was barely alive, and my heart was thudding as I looked around at these sweating men who believed that this man I pretended to save was God. One had taken his sweater off, and his undershirt was almost gray, the sleeves drawn up from years of washing. Several of them had beards, while others had not shaved in days. I wondered where their women and children were, and I thought of the barge in the river and what must be going on in other parts of the plant.

“Excuse me,” a quavering voice barely said, and at least one of the hostages was a woman. “I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Mullen, you take her. We don't want nobody shitting in here.”

“Excuse me, but I have to go, too,” said another hostage, who was a man.

“So do I.”

“All right, one at a time,” said Mullen, who was young and huge.

I knew at least one thing the FBI did not. The New
Zionists had never intended to let anyone else go. Terrorists place hoods over their hostages because it is easier to kill people who have no faces. I got out a vial of saline and injected fifty milliliters into Hand's IV line, as if I were giving him some other magic dose.

“How's he doing?” one of the men loudly asked as another hostage was led off to the bathroom.

“I've got him stabilized at the moment,” I lied.

“When's he going to come around?” asked another.

I took their leader's pulse again, and it was so faint I almost could not find it. Suddenly, the man dropped down beside me and felt Hand's neck. Digging his fingers in the ice, he pressed them over the heart, and when he looked up at me, he was frightened and furious.

“I don't feel nothing!” he yelled, his face red.

“You're not supposed to feel anything. It's critical to keep him in a hypothermic state so we can arrest the rate of irradiation damage to blood vessels and organs,” I told him. “He's on massive doses of diethylene triamine pentaacetic acid, and he is quite alive.”

He stood, his eyes wild as he stepped closer to me, finger on the trigger of his Tec-9. “How do we know you aren't just bullshitting or making him worse.”

“You don't know.” I showed no emotion because I had accepted this was the day I would die, and I was not afraid of it. “You have no choice but to trust that I know what I'm doing. I've profoundly slowed down his metabolism. And he's not going to come to any time soon. I'm simply trying to keep him alive.”

He averted his gaze.

“Hey, Bear, take it easy.”

“Leave the lady alone.”

I continued kneeling by Hand as his IV dripped and melting ice began to seep through the barricade, spreading over
the floor. I took his vital signs many times and made notes, so it seemed that I was very busy in my attendance of him. I could not help but glance out windows whenever I could, and wonder about my comrades. At not quite three
P
.
M
., his organs failed him like followers that suddenly aren't interested anymore. Joel Hand died without a gesture or sound as cold water ran in small rivers across the room.

“I need ice and I need more drugs,” I looked up and said.

“Then what?” Bear came closer.

“Then at some point you need to get him to a hospital.”

No one responded.

“If you don't give me these things I've requested, I can do nothing more for him,” I flatly stated.

Bear went over to a desk and got on the hostage phone. He said we needed ice and more drugs. I knew Lucy and her team had better act now or I probably would be shot. I moved away from Hand's spreading puddle, and as I looked at his face it was hard for me to believe that he had so much power over others. But every man in this room and those in the reactor and on the barge would kill for him. In fact, they already had.

“The robot's bringing the shit. I'm going out to get it,” said Bear as he looked out the window. “It's on its way now.”

“You go out there you're probably going to get your ass shot off.”

“Not with her in here.” Bear's eyes were hostile and crazed.

“The robot can bring it to you,” I surprised them by saying.

Bear laughed. “You remember all those stairs? You think that tin-ass piece of shit's going to get up those?”

“It's perfectly capable,” I said, and I hoped this was true.

“Hey, make it bring the stuff in so no one has to go out,” another man said.

Bear got Wesley on the hostage phone again. “Make the robot bring the supplies to the control room. We're not coming out.” He slammed the receiver down, not realizing what he had just done.

I thought of my niece and said a prayer for her because I knew this would be her hardest challenge. I jumped as I suddenly felt the barrel of a gun against the back of my neck.

“You let him die, you're dead, too. You got that, bitch?”

I did not move.

“Pretty soon, we got to sail out of here, and he'd better be going with us.”

“As long as you keep me in supplies, I will keep him alive,” I quietly said.

He removed the gun from my neck and I injected the last vial of saline into their dead leader's IV line. Beads of sweat were rolling down my back, and the skirt of the gown I had put over my clothes was soaked. I imagined Lucy this minute outside the mobile outpost in her virtual reality gear. I imagined her moving her fingers and arms and stepping here and there as fiber optics made it possible for her to read every inch of the terrain on her CRTs. Her telepresence was the only hope that Toto would not get stuck in a corner or fall somewhere.

The men were looking out the window and commented when the robot's tracks carried him up the handicap ramp and he went inside.

“I wouldn't mind having one of those,” one of them said.

“You're too stupid to figure out how to use it.”

“No way. That baby ain't radio-controlled. Nothing radio-controlled would work in here. You got any idea how thick the walls are?”

“It'd be great for carrying in firewood when the weather sucks.”

“Excuse me, I need to use the bathroom,” one of the hostages timidly said.

“Shit. Not again.”

My tension got unbearable as I feared what would happen if they went out and were not back when Toto appeared.

“Hey, just make him wait. Damn, I wish we could close these windows. It's cold as shit in here.”

“Well, you won't get none of that clean, cold air in Tripoli. Better enjoy it while you can.”

Several of them laughed at the same time the door opened and another man walked in who I had not seen before. He was dark-skinned and bearded, wearing a heavy jacket and fatigues, and he was angry.

“We have only fifteen assemblies out and in casks on the barge,” he spoke with authority and a heavy accent. “You must give us more time. Then we can get more.”

“Fifteen's a hell of a lot,” Bear said, and he did not seem to care for this man.

“We need twenty-five assemblies at the very least! That was the arrangement.”

“No one's told me that.”

“He knows that.” The man with the accent looked at Hand's body on the floor.

“Well, he ain't available to discuss it with you.” Bear crushed out a cigarette with the toe of his boot.

“Do you understand?” The foreign man was furious now. “Each assembly weighs a ton, and the crane has to pull it from the flooded reactor to the pool, then get it into
a cask. It is very slow and very difficult. It is very dangerous. You promised we would have at least twenty-five. Now you are rushing and sloppy because of him.” The man angrily pointed at Hand. “We have an agreement!”

“My only agreement is to take care of him. We gotta get him on the barge and take the doctor with us. Then we get him to a hospital.”

“This is nonsense! He looks already dead to me! You are lunatics!”

“He's not dead.”

“Look at him. He is white as snow and does not breathe. He is dead!”

They were screaming at each other, and Bear's boots were loud as he strode over to me and demanded, “He's not dead, is he?”

“No,” I said.

Sweat rolled down his face as he drew the pistol from his belt and pointed it first at me. Then he pointed it at the hostages, and all of them cowered and one began to cry.

“No, please. Oh please,” a man begged.

“Who is it who needs to use the john so bad?” Bear roared.

They were silent, shaking as hoods sucked in and out and wide eyes stared.

“Was it you?” The gun pointed at someone else.

The control room door had been left open, and I could hear the whirring of Toto down the hall. He had made it up the stairs and along a catwalk, and he would be here in seconds. I retrieved a long metal flashlight that had been designed by ERF and tucked into the medical chest by my niece.

“Shit, I want to know if he's dead,” one of the men said, and I knew my charade was over.

“I'll show you,” I said as the whirring got louder.

I pointed the flashlight at Bear as I pushed a button, and he shrieked at the dazzling pop as he grabbed his eyes and I swung the heavy flashlight like a baseball bat. Bones shattered in his wrist, the pistol clattering to the floor, and the robot rolled in empty-handed. I flung myself down flat on my face, covering my eyes and ears as best I could, and the room exploded in blazing white light as a concussion bomb blew off the top of Toto's head. There was screaming and cursing as terrorists blindly fell against consoles and each other, and they could not hear or see when dozens of HRT agents stormed in.

“Freeze, motherfuckers!”

“Freeze or I'm gonna blow your motherfucking brains out!”

“Don't anybody move!”

I did not budge in Joel Hand's icy grave as helicopters shook windows and feet of fast-roping agents kicked in screens. Handcuffs snapped, and weapons clattered across the floor as they were kicked out of the way. I heard people crying and realized they were the hostages being taken away.

“It's all right. You're safe now.”

“Oh my God. Oh thank you, God.”

“Come on. We need to get you on out of here.”

When I finally felt a cool hand on the side of my neck, I realized the person was checking for vital signs because I looked dead.

“Aunt Kay?” It was Lucy's strained voice.

I turned over and slowly sat up. My hands and the side of my face that had been in water were numb, and I looked around, dazed. I was shaking so badly my teeth were chattering as she squatted beside me, gun in hand. Her eyes roamed the room as other agents in black fatigues were taking the last prisoners out.

“Come on, let me help you up,” she said.

She gave me her hand, and my muscles trembled as if I were about to have a seizure. I could not get warm, and my ears would not stop ringing. When I was standing, I could see Toto near the door. His eye had been scorched, his head blackened, the domed top of it gone. He was silent in his cold trail of fiber optic cable, and no one paid him any mind as one by one all of the New Zionists were taken away.

Lucy looked down at the cold body on the floor, at the water and IV, the syringes and empty bags of saline.

“God,” she said.

“Is it safe to go out?” I had tears in my eyes.

“We've just now taken control of the containment area, and took the barge the same time we took the control room. Several of them had to be shot because they wouldn't drop their weapons. Marino got one in the parking lot.”