Chapter Two
6:21 p.m.
Whoever had designed the hazmat suit either had a hell of a sense of humor, or they hated all their coworkers.
River hit the mute button on his ECC device. As far as he knew, Dr. Rodrigues and Lloyd were the only two people besides him with communication units, but he wasn’t 100 percent sure about that, and he didn’t want just anyone listening in as he prepared to kill another human being.
He sighted down his scope, settling the crosshairs on the back of the head of the idiot wearing the backpack. The full-body condom wasn’t making it easy.
The damn thing was bulky, in the way, and he hated how it dulled his senses, making even simple things like detecting outside vibration or feeling the direction of the wind impossible. Both those things were very necessary to making the shot for a man trying to hit a nut job and missing the woman he had hostage.
“I hope to fuck someone is tracing that phone call,” he said to the general population of law-enforcement types milling around him.
“We are,” one of the FBI guys answered. “But it’s not as easy to do as the cop shows make it look on TV.”
“Don’t kill him,” the Homeland agent in charge, John Dozer, ordered. “We need to question him.”
“You think there’s going to be anything left of his brain after the fever he’s got?” River asked conversationally. “That’s if I manage to give him a John Wayne shot?” He shifted his target a little, trying to find a spot on the kid’s shoulder or arm that wasn’t near any major arteries or veins, but the angle was bad. It didn’t matter where he hit the guy. He was probably going to bleed like a stuck pig.
Then River caught a glimpse of Dr. Lloyd’s face in his scope.
Her expression morphed in that second from a polite mask to full on horrified.
No soldier ever ignored his gut instinct when it told him to shoot. River didn’t intend to start now.
He breathed out and squeezed the trigger.
The terrorist jerked and slumped forward, the cell phone falling out of his hand to clatter on the concrete beneath him.
Dr. Lloyd ducked, but when nothing more happened, she straightened to look around before staring at backpack dude.
“We need to send in medical,” Dozer said. He sounded bored.
“I am medical,” River told him, pulling himself out of his shooting position.
Cell phones and radios on the various officers and agents around him began to squawk.
“There’s been an explosion at Cielo Vista Mall,” one of the cops called out to the group.
Before anyone could move, an FBI agent shouted, “A suicide bomber just hit the main gate at Fort Bliss. At least six dead.”
“Fuck,” Dozer said, not looking a bit bored now.
“I’ve got this,” River told him. “You’re going to have your hands full with two secondary locations going up in smoke.”
“I’m setting up a command post right here,” Dozer said through clenched teeth.
“This area is too exposed and too close to that backpack I’m assuming is full of explosives.” River nodded at the man he’d just shot. “Speaking of which, I’m going to need a bomb disposal unit and an ambulance.”
Dozer was already on his phone barking orders, but he nodded at River before turning to direct law-enforcement traffic.
River secured his weapon, grabbed the pack next to him, and strode off toward Dr. Lloyd, who looked much too young to be the kind of experienced specialist Dr. Rodrigues had described—a doctor who was trying to stop the terrorist from bleeding to death with nothing more than her hands.
He should be so lucky. If Homeland had its way with the kid, he’d disappear into a very dark, painful hole and never find his way out.
River turned the mute button off on the ECC. “I’m inbound to your location,” he told the doctor, then reengaged the mute.
She glanced up and saw him coming. Her gaze took in his hazmat suit, the first-aid kit, and his sniper rifle. It stayed on the rifle. “Did you shoot this man?” she asked. The appalled expression on her face had only gotten more pronounced.
“It was that or let him blow you up, along with this place,” River said as he came to a stop next to her. She was small, young, and brown-haired. Reminded him of a sleek little mouse. “I’ve got pressure bandages for that wound.” He stripped the backpack off the guy, picked up the cell phone slash detonator, and deposited both of them cautiously on the concrete in the center of the open-air space. That put it about twenty feet away from Dr. Lloyd and the man she was trying to keep alive. Not nearly far enough away, but better than having it sit right next to them.
River opened his first-aid kit then shifted backpack dude onto the cement. It took a moment to get the pressure bandages secured in place on the terrorist’s chest and back, thanks to the hole the bullet drilled through him.
River took out a small portable heart monitor, connected the three leads to the guy’s chest, and turned the machine on.
Dr. Lloyd grabbed the stethoscope out of River’s pack and listened to the bomber’s chest. “You missed his lung,” she said, relief clear in her voice. She might look like a mouse, but she sounded like one of those women on a phone sex line. Furry, soft, and sexy.
“Can’t get answers from a dead man,” River replied.
She tensed up a little, but didn’t look away from her patient. “Are you a sniper? With the police?”
“I’m Army Special Forces, which means I can do a lot of things most people don’t want the details of.” They didn’t, not your ordinary civilians, anyway. They’d shit their pants if they knew how many ways he could kill someone.
“Yeah,” she muttered in a disapproving tone. “I know all about that.”
He snorted. Right.
“I investigate infectious diseases,” she explained, pinching her lips together. “My mother washes her hands before, during, and after I visit.”
The ECC thing in River’s ear beeped. He unmuted it, then answered the second call. “River.”
“This is Dr. Rodrigues. What’s the status of the man you shot?”
“He’s unconscious, but alive. He’s going to need surgery and a blood transfusion soon, though. And when I say soon, I mean right now.”
“Arrangements are being made to get an ambulance to you to transfer him to a secure isolation room at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center, but with multiple explosions causing so many injuries and deaths, it’s going to take a while.”
“He hasn’t got a while. If you don’t get someone here within the next ten minutes, he’s going to bleed to death.”
“I can get the transfusion running if they have blood handy,” Dr. Lloyd offered tentatively. “It’s been a year or two, but I haven’t forgotten which end of a needle is sharp and which isn’t.”
He could, too, but he’d take anything that might create a team vibe between them. “Fucking-A,” he said with a grin. “Dr. Rodrigues, can you get someone to deliver a couple of IV sets and three or four units of O negative blood? Dr. Lloyd says she’ll push packed cells while we wait for transport.”
“Good idea. I’ll have someone do that.” The call ended.
“I think your boss just hung up on me,” River complained.
“Yeah, she does that when things are a little crazy.” Dr. Lloyd shrugged. “I’m Ava, by the way. Just Ava.”
“Not Dr. Lloyd?” he asked. “Most doctors seem hung up on people calling them doctor.”
She looked at him as if he were something on a petri dish. “I spend most of my time inside a lab or dressed like this in some kind of disgusting environment collecting samples. The only time I insist on being called doctor is at a staff meeting.”
Usually he was pretty good at charming the ladies, but his little mouse wasn’t impressed with him one bit. New tactic: find common ground. “How does this rate on your disgusting scale?”
“It doesn’t.” She rolled her eyes. “I worked for three months in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak. People were dying, lying in pools of their own blood, feces, and urine. That was if they were in a bed. Lots of them were just left in the street, in the mud, to die.”
“That’s pretty bad.” He had to admit, it was. “The worst thing I’ve ever seen was in Afghanistan, the aftermath of a family setting off an IED with their ancient truck. All we found were pieces…of them.”
“That’s…rough,” she agreed hesitantly. “I think you win.”
“Nah, it’s a draw. Invisible things that can kill you are scarier than any gun, knife, or artillery ever invented. Those things are limited by the skill of the person wielding them. Bacteria and viruses, well, no one is in charge of them, and that makes them far more dangerous.”
She glanced at him, startled. “Huh, I never thought of it that way.”
“Soldiers have a vested interest in anticipating all the ways a body can die. Especially if you want to be alive at the end of your deployment.”
She stared at him as if he’d suddenly spoken to her in an unknown language, but quickly turned her attention to the idiot they were trying to save. “Is that what you do? Security and risk assessment?”
“That’s part of it. We do a lot of different jobs when we work with other countries and organizations.” River paused to do a reading on their terrorist’s heart rate.
Way too high. And jumpy.
His ear beeped, and Dr. Rodrigues’s voice spoke to him again. “The equipment and units of blood are on their way.”
“Understood,” River said. “ETA?”
“About ten minutes.”
“I’m not sure this guy has got that long.”
Rodrigues’s voice sharpened. “What’s changed?”
“His heart rate is becoming erratic. He’s bleeding out fast.”
“Homeland Security is screaming at me to make sure he stays alive and well enough to answer questions.”
“Homeland can’t always get what they want,” River said, without any sympathy. “Besides, we can learn a lot about this guy by studying whatever goodies he has stashed on him and in his backpack.”
“I thought it was explosives.”
“We’re assuming that. No one has had time to look. Even if an explosive is all we find, the materials used to create it can tell us plenty.” River pushed the button on the portable heart monitor to get a new pulse, but there wasn’t a pulse to get. Only a long, flat line.
“He’s in cardiac arrest.”
Rodrigues made a frustrated noise, and then her end of the call went dead.
More shit hitting the fan?
Ava muttered, “Crap,” under her breath, then began chest compressions.
The heart monitor broke out into beeps, but they were haphazard, erratic, and in no way normal.
“Where’s that blood?” Ava demanded.
River looked around, but no one was making any effort to get any closer than the yellow caution tape. There were a lot fewer law-enforcement types around and a lot more civilians, some of them looking none too happy to see a couple of people in hazmat suits busy with a guy on the ground who was leaking out a river of blood.
“I think we’re on our own,” River said to her. “People are blowing up all kinds of shit all over the place.” He glanced at the man he’d shot. “Maybe it’s a coincidence, but something tells me whoever sent this kid here doesn’t want him to be able to talk.”
His mouse jerked her head in one direction to stare at the reduced numbers of cops and agents, and the increasing numbers of civilians, then in another direction and the next, until she’d confirmed his read on the situation.
“Didn’t we call for help first?” she demanded. “Shouldn’t we get the first ambulance?”
“Call me crazy,” River said to her, “but I don’t think anyone was all that interested in saving the life of a terrorist over an innocent bystander.”
“That is not how the health-care system works.” She sounded shocked, appalled, even.
“That’s how people work,” he countered. “I doubt there’s going to be much sympathy for him.”
“What about his family? Friends?”
River shrugged. “Little fish in a big pond.” He activated the monitor again, and again got nothing but flatline static. “Shit.”
Ava straddled the kid and performed textbook chest compressions, but after a minute, River put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Stop. He’s gone.”
She snarled at him, actually snarled, and said, “Fuck off.”
Well, shit, that was sexy as hell. Which only underscored how fucked in the head he really was.