Thorn saw Helen lying motionless on one of the stretchers already aboard and stopped, rooted in place by his own despair. Paramedics surrounded the stretcher, working feverishly to stabilize her condition long enough to get her into surgery. One had his hands clamped around her thigh, holding the artery closed, while another slid a blood pressure cuff as high up as he could over the wound and started pumping it up, using the device as an improvised tourniquet.
An
FBI
agent he didn’t recognize stepped in front of him, motioning him away. “Sorry, sir. Medical personnel only. You’ll have to move back.”
A red mist floated in front of Thorn’s eyes. He moved forward, ready to fight his way through.
Flynn grabbed the agent and pulled him aside. He turned back to the blank-faced Army officer. “Go on, Pete,” he said gently. “Ride with her. I’ll take care of things here.”
Still not trusting himself to speak, Thorn nodded abruptly and climbed into the waiting helicopter. He crouched next to Helen’s stretcher, trying to ignore the muttered exclamations from the paramedics working on her.
“God, what a mess! I’ve got a major impact wound right near the sacrum … Jesus, it shattered her pelvis… bone splinters everywhere…”
“She’s deep in shock and bleeding out… keep that pressure up!”
“Trauma, this is Medevac One-One. Request immediate clearance. Suggest you alert surgical team…”
Helen’s eyes opened suddenly, bright blue against skin so pale it was almost transparent. She looked up into his worried face and said in wonder, “Peter?”
He leaned closer, whispering, “I’m here. Remember that I love you.”
She smiled drowsily and closed her eyes. “First time you ever told me that…” She slid away into unconsciousness.
The Blackhawk lifted off, climbing steeply as it flew north toward the hospital. Peter Thorn sat silently, holding Helen’s hand. Tears ran unnoticed down his face. He had some of the answers he had been so desperately searching for.
But the price had been terribly high. Too high.
DECEMBER
5
Trauma Unit, Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
“Colonel Thorn?”
Peter Thorn stopped his pacing and turned abruptly at the sound of his name. He found himself facing a haggard, unhappy-looking man still wearing a surgical smock.
“My name is Doyle. I’m one of the trauma unit surgeons here. I understand you’re waiting for news about Agent Gray?”
Thorn nodded, holding his breath. He’d been besieging the medical center’s volunteers for information since the paramedics first wheeled Helen off the helicopter and straight into emergency surgery. After making an awkward call to her parents back in Indiana, he’d been left with nothing to do but stare at the pastel walls in the visitors’ lounge. Either that or to sit watching the clock as the hours ticked past.
He fought to control his voice and asked, “How is she?”
“Not good, Colonel,” Doyle said bluntly. He shook his head. “She suffered two very serious wounds. The first injury, the one to her femoral artery, was bad enough. We’ve repaired the artery after some pretty delicate vascular surgery. But she’d already lost a lot of blood and she was pretty shocky when she came in. Despite the units we’ve put into her, her blood pressure is still abnormally low.”
The surgeon frowned. “I think that’s from shock, but I want to monitor her very closely over the next several hours. If her pressure doesn’t start coming back up soon, that could be a sign of continued internal bleeding. I’d have to reopen her to make sure we didn’t miss anything the first time through.”
Thorn nodded grimly. He’d seen enough soldiers wounded in combat to know how dangerous shock could be. It was often the first killer. Helen had survived the first crisis point, but going back into surgery in her weakened state might be more than she could stand.
“Frankly, though, Colonel,” Doyle said slowly, almost reluctantly, “it’s Agent Gray’s second wound that worries me.”
The surgeon lowered his voice. “She took a 7.62 mm ricochet that shattered her pelvis. The impact pushed bone splinters and bullet fragments into her peritoneal cavity.” He spread his hands helplessly.
“So we’re looking at a severe risk of infection even a likelihood, I’d say. I’m starting her on a massive multi-antibiotic regime to fight that off, but it’ll be touch and go for the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”
“Christ.” Thorn closed his eyes in pain for a moment and then opened them. “Is that the worst of it?”
Doyle paused. “No, sir. I wish it was. You see, that second bullet struck very near the plexus of nerves at the base of her spine. If those nerves were irreparably damaged… well, she might never walk again.”
Thorn stood silent, afraid to trust his own voice. The thought of Helen, so alive and so graceful in every move permanently confined to a wheelchair was too terrible to contemplate. Finally, he croaked, “Can I see her?”
The surgeon shook his head firmly. “Not now, Colonel. She’s in intensive care and we have her sedated. Leave me a number where I can reach you and I’ll contact you as soon as a visit would be advisable.”
He reached out and put a hand on Thorn’s shoulder. “We’ll do our best for her, Colonel. I promise you that. She’s young and she’s strong. She has a fighting chance to pull through. That’s more than a lot of people who come in here start out with.”
Thorn nodded blindly, barely noticing when the other man left him. After his father’s long, losing battle with cancer, he’d shut part of himself off from others, preferring loneliness to vulnerability. But then, despite all his defences, Helen had found her way into his heart. What would he do if he lost her now? And if she lived, what would she do if she found herself reduced to a life so dependent on others?
“Colonel Thorn?” The young student volunteer’s hesitant contralto cut through his misery. “You’re wanted on the phone. It’s a priority call, sir.”
He took the portable telephone she offered him without comment.
“Thorn.”
“Pete, this is Joe Rossini.” He could hear the deep concern in the older man’s voice. “How’s Helen?”
Fear and sorrow gave his answer a harsh, monosyllabic character. “Not good. She may die. If she lives, she may not be able to walk.”
“Jesus, Pete. I’m sorry.” Rossini stopped for a second and then continued. “Maria and I will pray for her.”
“I’d appreciate it, foe.” Thorn had known that the Maestro and his wife were fairly devout Catholics. He’d always been something of a skeptic himself, but agnosticism was cold comfort now. Prayer might not help Helen, but it certainly could not hurt her. If he had ever needed to believe in the existence of a just and loving God, it was now.
“Have you been able to visit her?” Rossini asked gently.
“Not yet,” Thorn answered. “She’s in intensive care. From what one of the doctors just told me, it might be days before she’ll be out of danger.”
“You can’t stay there that long, Pete. Not now.”
“I know.” Thorn knew he had to set his personal anguish aside at least for the moment. The nation still faced a crisis, and Helen and her
HRT
teammates had put their lives on the line to obtain the information he and his analysts needed. His job now was to make sure their sacrifices hadn’t been in vain. “Has the Bureau turned up anything useful in that damned house yet?” “Some,” Rossini said guardedly. “Look, Pete… this isn’t really a secure line.”
“Hell. Sorry.” Thorn ran a hand across his weary eyes. He must be losing it to overlook something so elementary. He’d come dangerously close to blabbing classified information over the open airwaves.
From the first breathless television news bulletins he’d seen, Flynn had handled the situation perfectly. The
FBI
had sealed off the entire area around the terrorist safe house. No residents or media people were being allowed anywhere close by. The Bureau’s preliminary statements said only that its agents had surprised a suspected neo-Nazi group inside the house, and that there had been a prolonged firefight one in which all the terrorists were killed. Reporters were being told that the house itself had been utterly destroyed by fire either in a blaze set accidentally or tear-gas grenades or as part of a suicide pact by those trapped inside. They were also being told that all the bodies found inside the ruins were charred beyond easy identification.
There were still other terrorist cells operating in the United States, and Flynn was determined to conceal just how much information the
FBI
had been able to recover from the safe house.
“Sam Farrell wants you back pronto, though,” Rossini advised. “I’m told there’s a helo enroute to Walter Reed now.”
Though his sorrow remained, Thorn felt part of his Fatigue drop away. If the commander of the
JSOC
wanted him back at the Pentagon that badly, the information recovered in the raid on the terrorist hiding place must be pretty hot. “Understood, Maestro. I’m heading for the pad.”
The Pentagon Thorn scrambled down out of the helicopter and hurried toward the nearest entrance. Rossini was there waiting for him. Already briefed, the security guards and soldiers stationed at the doors passed the pair of them through with a minimum of fuss.
Thorn returned their salutes impatiently and glanced at the older man.
“How much have Flynn’s people been finding?”
To his relief, Rossini clearly understood that he needed to work right now more than he needed a sympathetic ear. The analyst started filling him in, limping slightly as he tried to keep up with the rapid pace Thorn set through the Pentagon’s corridors. “A lot. That place the
HRT
knocked over was a miniature armory. The FBI’s still cataloging all the weapons and explosives they found, but they’ve learned enough to tie the people inside to the press club bombing and those blown-down transmission towers for sure. The C4 and detonators match the traces left at both scenes.”
“What about the bodies?”
“No firm identification yet,” Rossini answered. “Two were clearly Caucasian. The other two could be either Hispanic or Middle Eastern in origin…”
“Some rabid, neo-Nazi group,” Thorn interrupted bitterly. “Those bastards were pros.”
“Uh-huh. Looks like our hunch was right,” the older man agreed. “Mike Flynn said pretty much the same thing. He’s having the bodies shipped to their D.C. lab for more detailed examination.”
Thorn nodded. The FBI’s forensics experts should be able to develop a fair amount of information about their dead terrorist John Does. Even if their fingerprints were not on file here or anywhere abroad, dental work and the evidence of old injuries or illnesses could provide useful clues as to their places of birth or prolonged residence. That level of forensics work would take time, however certainly days and probably weeks. He had been hoping the
HRT
raid would produce more immediate results. “Any documents or papers turn up?”
Rossini shrugged. “Several sets of false ID passports, driver’s licenses, even credit cards. All topnotch work.”
“Naturally.” Thorn started down the stairs leading to the Pentagon’s basement. “Nothing else, though?”
“Nothing on paper, Pete.” Rossini limped after him. “But the NSA’s still going over the laptop computer Helen found.”
“What?” Thorn stopped dead, narrowly avoiding a collision with the older man. “I thought that was destroyed. Flynn said one of the suspects blew it to hell with an
AKM
burst.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Rossini said. He explained. “Apparently a round clipped the hard drive, but the
NSA
techs think they may still be able to recover some of the data it contained. They’re working on it now.”
National Security Agency headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland
Greg Paige, a gangly, twenty-something computer specialist in the NSA’s T Group, finished readying the damaged hard drive sent over by the
FBI
for his data retrieval attempt. Not a particularly difficult job, he thought with a mild trace of contempt for the cyber-challenged. A portable computer’s hard disk was less than three inches wide and barely an inch thick. It was also buried inside a concealing case. Wrecking the information a portable contained by hitting a target that small was staking more on luck than most people realised. And in this case, the shooter had not been lucky.
One round had utterly mangled the machine’s floppy drive and internal modem. Another had torn a gaping hole in the computer’s battery. But a third bullet had only scored the outer casing of the hard disk itself. The drive’s bearings and heads were completely undamaged. Finding out what it contained required little more than transferring the assembly to another machine and running a simple diagnostics program.
Humming a made-up tune off-key, Paige finished making the last cable connections and hit the power switch. He swung back to his keyboard as the new machine’s monitor blinked on.
“Piece of chocolate cream cake,” the
NSA
specialist mumbled to himself. He quickly scrolled through the hard disk’s directory, ignoring standard listings for off-the-shelf commercial word processing, communications, and accounting programs. If he didn’t find anything else more intriguing, he could always go back through those hunting for signs someone had buried other, less innocent pieces of code inside them.
As he had expected, a few of the disk’s sectors were damaged rendered unreadable when the bullet clipped its casing but most were fine.
Paige stopped scrolling when he reached a program whose name he did not recognise:
BABEL
.
EXE
. He shook his head in disbelief. “Well, well, well… how very cute.”
Someone the
FBI
was interested in had a very dry sense of humor.
He probed deeper into the program, summoning up its inner workings. Line after line appeared on the screen an intricate interweaving of complex algorithms clearly intended to turn plain text into meaningless gibberish and back again. Paige smiled. Pay dirt.