Jude Hardin - The Reacher Code - Timestream 1

“I told you to drop the gun,” Top said. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

Wahlman didn’t drop the gun.

“Where’s Reacher?” he said. “I need to know that he’s okay.”

“Drop it,” Top shouted.

The nurse started crying.

“Mr. Reacher is fine,” she said. “He had an x-ray ordered. They came and picked him up a little while ago.”

Top pressed the tip of the needle against the nurse’s skin. A drop of blood trickled down the side of her neck.

“Where’s the x-ray department?” Top asked.

“It’s all the way on the other side of the building,” the nurse said. “Next to the ER.”

Wahlman took a step forward, kept the gun aimed at Top’s chest.

“You might as well face it,” Wahlman said. “You’re not going to have time to try to find Reacher. And even if you do find him, he’s not going to be asleep, and he’s not going to be alone. Your plan to sneak up on him and give him an overdose of morphine just isn’t going to work out. So let the nurse go.”

Top growled something incomprehensible, and then—for reasons that weren’t immediately clear to Wahlman—he jabbed the needle into the side of the nurse’s neck and pushed the plunger. The nurse’s eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the floor. Top turned and bolted toward the patient beds and made it to the far end of the ward and pushed his way through a door marked EMERGENCY ONLY.

A buzzer sounded and then stopped as the door swung shut.

Wahlman couldn’t tell for sure if the nurse on the floor was breathing or not. It didn’t look like she was. The two other nurses raced around the counter to check on her. One of them reached over and grabbed the phone and punched in some numbers and said something to someone. A few seconds later an overhead speaker crackled to life and a female voice announced that there was a code blue on the third floor trauma unit. Now it was obvious why Top had injected the nurse with the morphine. Everyone would be focused on trying to revive her while he made his escape.

The perfect diversion, Wahlman thought. He slid the pistol back into his waistband. He needed to get out of there. Fast. He’d pulled some shifts in hospitals as a Master-At-Arms in the Navy, so he knew what to expect. A lot of people would be showing up soon. Doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists. And at least one representative from Security Forces. To make sure curious patients or other onlookers or non-essential personnel didn’t get in the way. Wahlman needed to be gone before any of that happened. And he needed to get back to Diane before the watch blew her to smithereens. He turned to head back toward the stairway that he and the doctor who’d pissed his pants had used, but before he took his first step that way, another doctor rounded the corner.

Probably the physician assigned to run the code, Wahlman thought.

He started walking, hoping that the doctor wouldn’t pay any attention to him as they passed each other in the hallway.

But the doctor did pay attention to him. In fact, the doctor stepped over into Wahlman’s path and planted his feet firmly on the tile floor and pointed the fat barrel of a semi-automatic pistol directly at Wahlman’s face.

“You need to come with me,” the doctor said.

Wahlman glanced down at the badge clipped to his shirt. It said Gregory Stahler, MD, Neurosurgical Services.

19

Wahlman had a feeling that Gregory Stahler wasn’t really a doctor. For one thing, doctors don’t usually carry firearms. Even in the military. And it didn’t seem likely that a licensed physician would ignore the code blue that had just been called. Even to apprehend a fugitive. It just wasn’t part of the job description.

And something else wasn’t right.

“You’re from the future, aren’t you?” Wahlman said.

“What makes you—”

“The pistol. It’s just like mine. That particular model isn’t going to be produced for another fifty years.”

“It doesn’t matter when it was produced,” Stahler said. “What matters is that it’s going to blow your head off if you don’t turn around and start walking.”

“You’re either with Topple, or with the FCYYC. Which is it?”

“Walk.”

“I’m going to guess that you’re with the FCYYC,” Wahlman said. “Because of the government-issue weapon you’re holding. It’s possible that a Topple operative would have one of those, but not likely. Which means that we’re on the same team. Which means that we should be working together. Which means that you should put the gun away.”

“I have my orders,” Stahler said.

“Let me guess,” Wahlman said. “You were my replacement. You were supposed to make sure that nothing bad happened to a patient named Jack Reacher. You’ve probably been on some recon spins over the past few days, and you’ve probably installed some cameras, and you probably knew that Reacher was transported to the x-ray department a while ago. It’s possible that you even arranged for that to happen. In the meantime, you were probably using the cameras to keep an eye on the trauma unit, just in case, and you probably saw the confrontation between William Top and me, and you probably saw Top make his escape. All of that would make perfect sense, if that’s how it happened. What doesn’t make sense is that you’re standing there aiming a gun at my face and demanding for me to come with you. I know you’re not going to take me home. I’ve been here too long. The frequencies are all scrambled. So what’s going on? Where is it that you want me to go?”

“I didn’t want it to be like this,” Stahler said. “I tried to talk them out of it.”

“Victor ordered you to kill me?”

“Yes. So that’s what I’m going to have to do.”

Wahlman heard footsteps in the distance. Multiple sets. Moving quickly. The code team. They were on the way. They would round the corner in a matter of seconds.

Stahler must have heard the footsteps too. He instinctively glanced toward the sound. It was just for a second, but it was long enough. Wahlman grabbed the barrel of the pistol and twisted it with a quick jerk, kneed Stahler in the gut and shoved him against the wall. Stahler still had the gun, but his right forefinger was bent at a very unnatural angle now and the bone was poking through and it was bleeding all over the place and he wasn’t able to use it to pull the trigger. Wahlman crushed the bridge of his nose with an elbow, which increased the amount of blood leaving his body exponentially and probably resulted in a level of pain that made the mangled finger and every other discomfort he’d ever experienced seem minor by comparison. He slid down the wall and collapsed onto his side and grunted something about a Renault Le Car, and then he passed out. Wahlman picked up the gun and tucked it into his waistband, next to the one that was already there.

Stahler was wearing a chain around his neck with a key on it. Probably the key to his motorcycle, Wahlman thought. He reached down and snapped the chain and slid the key into his pocket. It wasn’t likely that Stahler would wake up in the next few minutes, but it was possible. No point in giving him a chance to follow the LTD off the base.

Wahlman figured it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to try to walk past the code team at this point, so he turned around and ran back toward the ward. The two nurses who weren’t dead were busy performing CPR on the one who was. Wahlman trotted past them and made his way to the emergency exit that William Top had used, stopping briefly to look at the clipboard on bed fourteen.

He flipped the cover back and glanced down at the vital signs.

Jack Reacher’s vital signs.

His blood pressure. And his pulse. Temperature. Respirations. All right there in black and white, verifying that this was 1983 and that Reacher was a living breathing human being.