Robert Walker - Fatal Instinct

She had but one shot left if she was to stop Archer. She concentrated with every fiber in her being, remembering all the years of practice since childhood, everything her father had taught her, all that she had learned at the academy and on the firing range. She guessed at what point below the square of the cab Archer's head would be if he were sitting in an upright, driving position. She drew a bead on the imaginary cranium below the metal rooftop. Her finger was steady, her reasoning good, her eyesight perfect when she pulled hard on the trigger and the clap of the bullet's response came seconds later.

She'd fired through the roof of the moving truck but it remained on the road, moving easily off. She'd missed.

More bullets rained around her, and the helicopter was now within range. Her own people were about to kill her. She stood up, holding the weapon high above her head, her white coat flapping about her like a flag of truce.

For one horrible moment, she feared the men in the flying machine were going to open fire, fillet her with their automatics, but they held as the helicopter put down on the roof and she

tossed away the. 38.

She then relaxed and leaned back against the ledge, turning to stare down at the brown and beige security truck. Suddenly it toppled like a dying elephant off the roadbed and into a ditch.

“ Christ,” she said to herself, “I did it… I got him.”

The euphoria she felt wasn't dampened even by the rough handling she was suddenly receiving and the handcuffs that locked her arms behind her. As she was being searched for other weapons, Alan Rychman rushed out onto the rooftop and pushed people from her, shouting, “It's Dr. Coran, you fools! Step aside! Let her go!”

He took her in his arms, holding on firmly, her hands still cuffed behind her back. She thought he would crush her. “Jess, oh, Jess! I thought… I thought that he… that he got to you.”

“ He almost did. But he underestimated me.”

“ Where is he?”

“ You'll find him on the road out there, in that truck that's turned over.” She pointed it out to him with a flick of her head and her eyes. He followed the gestures down to the truck.

“ You made a hit like that from here?”

“ I had to stop him, to place him at this scene. You'll find a security guard dead along with a stand-in for the Claw named Frakley and my serologist, Dr. Robertson.”

“ Robertson's all right,” said J.T., who had followed Rychman up.

“ We found two dead security guards below,” added an agent, who ordered that Dr. Coran be released from the cuffs.

“ He must've been crazy to try a stunt like this here,” said J.T.

“ He was a lunatic,” replied Rychman.

“ I don't think he planned to kill me here. He and Frakley meant the paralyzing agent for me, not for Robertson. I think they meant to overpower me, take me somewhere else to torture and kill me.”

“ It's over now,” said Alan. “That bastard can never again hurt you or anyone else.”

Alan strengthened his hold on her and helped her toward the stairs. J.T. and the other men watched until J.T. shouted, “All right, secure this area. M.E.'s going to want to go over this area just the same as down in the lab and the lobby. Get a photo man up here. I'll call in our people for evidence-gathering. We don't want anything screwed up here. We've got to protect our own.”

Simon Archer was in desperate, horrid pain, his eyes having gone blind with the last impact to his cranium, his body slumped so tightly below the wheel and on the floor of the cab that he had to be pried out by the hands that reached him. He was bleeding from three wounds, the head wound the most severe. It would likely kill him within hours if not minutes. The ambulance attendants nonetheless began their regimen, placing him on fluids and IV-drip, stabilizing him as much as possible as the ambulance driver got the signal to transport. This was all happening as Jessica and Rychman got to the ground floor and came out to the waiting car that would take her home.

“ Dammit,” she said, “he's not dead. He's not dead!”

Her eyes were bulging with a murderous rage.

“ He's in the hands of God now, Jess. Leave it… come away,” said Rychman, pulling at her. She tugged back and came away with the gun from his shoulder holster, pointing it at the ambulance just as the attendant closed the door, the man's eyes going wide at seeing her. Rychman grabbed the gun and sent the muzzle skyward, but she didn't pull the trigger.

“ Are you crazy? You might've hit one of the attendants.”

“ That's the only reason I hesitated.”

He took the full measure of her hatred in all at once, and he found it immeasurable.

She lifted her cane. “You got any scars to match this, Rychman?”

“ If you want to match scars, let's do it somewhere more private, shall we? Come on, Jess. Enough for one night. You've got to let it go now.”

“ In God's hands? Do you think God will put that bastard in a cell next to Matisak?”

He had no answer for her. Instead, he held her once more in his arms. She wrapped her own arms around him and sobbed.

The bullet entered here.” The doctor pointed to the occipital lobe of the brain represented by the plaster-cast model he was using. “It completely fractured the occipital bone, here; and this in turn destroyed much of the occipital artery, which is why the man is on a heart-lung, because that artery supplies the head and scalp with blood from the carotid.”

“ Is he in any pain?” Jessica wanted to know.

“ When he's conscious, which isn't often, yes, considerable pain.”

She nodded. It was all she wanted to know. But the doctor continued with his explanation just the same.

“ We've done successive brain scans to determine the sites of blood clotting and the extent of damage. Radioisotopes indicate far more damage than can be repaired in any one operation, and in his condition any single operation could kill him.”

Alan Rychman pointed to a computer chart beside the brain model. “What's this, Doctor?”

“ Oh, the BEAM.”

“ Beam?”

“ Brain map, brain electric activity map,” he replied, lifting the chart and pointing out the evidence of brain activity going on inside the head of the dying man not fifteen feet from them. “The computer map of the brain responds to the brain's electrical signals, monitoring them and creating a map for us every hour. Abnormal patterns, blocked and distorted signals, like those you see here and here indicate extensive damage. Of course, you realize the violent jarring of a bullet into the brain is, well, tantamount to a Hiroshima bomb exploded in that contained miniature world. Little wonder his body reaction is one of paralysis and long periods of unconsciousness. I'm surprised the man has not lapsed into irreversible coma and brain death.”

“ But he will, eventually, won't he?” asked Jessica.

“ it's very difficult to say.”

She took the BEAM chart from him, staring at it and asking aloud, “What do you suppose he's thinking in there? What kind of thoughts are going through his mind?”

“ Mostly just pain and suffering, I should think.”

“ Who deserves it more?”

There was 3 silence among them which was only accentuated by the blips and electronic hum of the life-support system that Simon Archer was attached to.

“ As I said, there is extensive damage throughout the brain. Even if he should, by some strange force, manage to live, he would be a simpering idiot.”

“ A jury would be hard-pressed to give a simpering idiot the death penalty,” she said coldly. “Despite the fact he engineered the deaths of so many others.”

“ It's out of our hands, Jess,” said Alan, trying to lead her away.