Catherine Coulter - Backfire

When they reached the elevator, they looked up and down the now-empty hospital corridor. They watched the doors open, and five people squeezed into the elevator around the bed. The doors closed behind them.

An SFPD officer waited with them for the other elevator, which seemed to be tied up on the seventh floor, while yet another deputy marshal used the stairs. They stood quietly, watching the arrow of Ramsey’s elevator leave the fourth floor and hover at the fifth floor.

They heard a loud clanging noise and the sound of muffled gunfire.

Savich ran to the stairs door, yelling over his shoulder, “Sherlock, Harry! Find out where the shooter got access to the elevator! Get him!”

When he burst out of the stairwell door onto the fifth floor, he was greeted with the yells of hospital staff and the screams and shouts of patients standing at the doors of their rooms, staring at smoke seeping out between the closed elevator doors. Half a dozen hospital personnel were trying to pull the elevator doors open, but no luck. Savich ran to the fire extinguisher case and pulled out the ax. He shouldered through and slipped the edge between the doors and pulled down across the safety beam. The doors sprang open.

Thick black smoke billowed out. When it was cleared enough to see inside, Savich saw blood spattered everywhere.

San Francisco General Hospital

Fifth floor

A shout came out of the chaos. “The shooter’s on the roof of the elevator! Officers down!” Officer Eddie Hughes stumbled out, panting and coughing, holding his bloody arm and trying to keep Deputy Marshal Allen Milton upright, blinded by the blood streaming down his face. Both men still had their guns in their hands.

SFPD officer Jay Mancusso staggered out, his Glock at his side, his eyes tearing from the smoke, coughing. He wheezed out, “He threw a smoke bomb down through the top of the elevator and opened fire. Barbieri, she’s with Judge Hunt. I don’t know-” And he bent over in a fit of coughing. At least he hadn’t been shot that Savich could see.

The orderly was trying to pull himself up, blood soaking his white pants.

All of it had happened in seconds.

Savich was coughing, fighting to see through the gray haze of smoke still clouding the elevator. A frantic voice came through the chaos, “Judge Hunt! How is Judge Hunt?”

Savich managed to push his way in, and his heart stopped. Eve was lying stretched out on top of Ramsey, and she wasn’t moving. He was afraid to touch her. “Eve? Answer me!”

Slowly, Eve raised herself off of Ramsey. She was in pain, obvious to Savich, but he didn’t see any blood. She turned to look at the myriad faces staring down at her, then settled again on Savich’s face. He helped her slide off the bed. She stumbled, and he helped her right herself. “Sorry, the bullets knocked me silly. I’m okay.” She pulled away from him and looked down at Ramsey’s white face. “Ramsey-talk to me.”

He opened his eyes. “Hi, Eve.”

“Are you all right?”

A doctor and a nurse squeezed into the elevator beside them and eased them aside to tend to Ramsey. “Yes, I’ll live.” He coughed and moaned. “All the smoke and gunfire. How is everyone else? How are you, Eve?”

“I’ll live, too. He shot me three times in my back, missed my head, thank goodness, or I’d be a goner. The impact knocked the breath out of me, that’s all.” She gave a wild grin, even though she felt like she’d been whacked by a two-by-four too many times. “Thank the good Lord for Kevlar.”

A doctor tapped Eve on the shoulder. Ramsey gave her hand a squeeze, and reluctantly, Eve released his. They wheeled him out of the elevator. He said to all of them, “I’ll be all right, don’t worry about me.” Three doctors, including Dr. Kardak, panting from running from surgery to get here, hovered over him as they wheeled his bed down the hall, two SFPD officers and one deputy marshal flanking them.

They heard Ramsey say, “You’d be wheeling me down to the morgue in the basement if not for Eve. I’m going to kick her butt for taking such a chance.”

Eve waved into the elevator car. “It looks like a war zone in here.” She pointed up, nearly groaning at the pain in her back. “Would you look at the ceiling? Our guys shot the crap out of it. They fired nonstop, but I don’t know if we hit him.”

She closed her eyes. It had looked like the end, but no one was dead. She sent a prayer of thanks upward. “Please tell me you got this idiot.”

Savich said, “Sherlock and Harry are on it; they’ll be here soon.”

Harry Christoff gently picked up an elderly man by his elbows and set him aside. He shoved two police officers out of his way and stood in front of Eve, panting from running down three flights of stairs. He took in her tearing eyes, her blond straggling ponytail, her smoke-blackened face. “Good grief, woman, look at you. You’re all right, aren’t you?” He saw that she was hunched over and touched her arm.

Eve smiled at him. “I’m okay, thanks to the miracle of Kevlar. We all survived.”

Sherlock burst out of the stairwell, panting.

Savich said immediately, “Ramsey’s okay. Everyone’s alive. Is he still inside the building?”

She started toward Eve, but Eve said quickly, “I’m in one piece. Did you get the guy?”

Sherlock ignored the god-awful mayhem in front of her and forced herself to calm. “He made it out of the elevator shaft. We started a search, but we can’t lock down the whole hospital. He’s probably out on the street by now.”

“How could he have pulled this off?” Eve asked.

Sherlock said, “Okay, he had to case out the elevators and hang out close enough to the ICU to find out when Ramsey was going to be moved. It looks like the shooter called both of the east elevators to the roof. There’s an access hatch up there for servicing. He immobilized one of them and settled himself on top of the working elevator when it was called down. He loosened the ceiling hatch and waited. We don’t know how long he was up there, but he must have cut this pretty close, otherwise someone would have called for service on the immobilized elevator, and he didn’t want that.”

“But how did he know?” Eve smacked the side of her head. “Am I an idiot or what? I’ll bet even the dishwashers in the cafeteria kitchen knew when Ramsey was being moved.”

Sherlock said, “It’s even better than that. He didn’t even have to look in. The shaft acoustics are incredible, so he could hear Ramsey being pushed into the car, got himself set. The moment the car started up, he shoved the hatch aside, dropped the smoke canister in, and started firing. He couldn’t see any better than you guys could through all the smoke, but he must have seen where Ramsey’s bed was, focused his fire there. Eve, what happened inside?”

Eve tried to straighten, but a jab of pain punched her ribs. She felt Harry’s hand tighten on her arm. She said, “I didn’t think; I threw myself on top of Ramsey, and right away three shots hit me in the back-in the blessed Kevlar. He kept firing, but our guys were firing back, so his shots were pretty wild. Whatever he hit was random after that. I’ll tell you my heart nearly stopped while I was lying there, thinking of how helpless Ramsey was.” She paused for a moment. “You know, I’m betting the shooter thinks he killed Ramsey.”

Sherlock stared at the blood splattered on the elevator walls, stared at Eve and at Harry standing behind her. She knew that three close-range shots in the back, even through Kevlar, would make you feel like you’d been beaten with a baseball bat. “If you hadn’t been wearing the vests, he’d have killed all of you.” She felt such rage she was shaking with it.