Michael Palmer - Fatal

"Lewis," he said, "I'm going to numb this the best I can, but it's still going to hurt."

"More er less then bein' shot?"

"Good point."

Matt used a scalpel blade to stab a hole in the numbed skin, then he cut the tip of the siphon tube to a point.

"Deep breath, Lewis, then hold it and get ready for me to push," he said. "Okay, now!"

Clamping the pointed end of the tube as tightly as he could in the needle-nose pliers, he jammed the pliers in until he felt them hit rib. Then he slid them beneath the rib, through the intercostal muscle, and drove them into the space created when the lung collapsed. Lewis, sweat dripping from his forehead, briefly cried out in pain, then lay still. Matt withdrew the pliers, leaving the tube in place. For several seconds all was quiet, then the condom began to flutter as air under some force rushed through it.

Eyes closed, Lewis lay there, breathing evenly, utterly exhausted. Matt waited several silent minutes, then listened to his chest. The lung wasn't fully reinflated yet, but there were breath sounds where none had been a short while ago. He wondered how many others had ever actually used one of the techniques from the field manual. Someday, provided Lewis and he made it through this ordeal alive, he was going to write a letter to the author.

Once he had threaded ten inches of tubing into Lewis's chest, Matt sutured the tube in place and dressed the opening. He listened again. More breath sounds, more expanded lung.

"Well?" Frank asked.

Matt gave Lewis a high-dose injection of antibiotic.

"Well," he replied, aware of the tinge of astonishment in his own voice, "the doggone thing appears to have worked, at least for the moment. I'll sneak some oxygen and other stuff that I need out of the hospital and come back as soon as I can."

"Ya done good, Doc," Frank said.

Lewis's color improved almost instantly. He opened his eyes.

"Ah knowed we 'uz smart ta give ya thet money when ya come knockin' on our door fer yer baseball team."

"We get you shot, we fix you up," Matt said. "That's our motto."

He was still overwhelmed that a technique he learned reading in the John had quite possibly saved a man's life. What would the gang at Harvard have to say about this one?

"Hey, Doc?" Lyle said.

"Yes?"

"If'n you ain't gonna be usin' thet other rubber, kin I have it back?"

Lynette Marquand prided herself on being, as she phrased it, precise, punctual, and predictable. In the appropriate company, she would, with a wink, add passionate to the mix. Five days a week, when not on vacation, she was up at 4:30 A.M. and in her East Wing office at five. On Saturday, she slept until six, and on Sunday until seven unless her husband had need of her affection before breakfast and church. This predawn Wednesday morning, a rainy one in D.C., she had only one name written in her appointment book, Dr. Lara Bolton.

Lynette had, at best, lukewarm feelings toward almost every one of her husband's cabinet appointments, but Bolton was an exception. Six-foot-one and black, the Secretary of Health and Human Services had been depicted by more than one political cartoonist as a stork, and with her clipped Boston accent was an easy mark for the Saturday Night Live impressionists. But her brilliant mind and political savvy made her a frequent visitor to both Lynette's office and the Oval Office in the West Wing.

Bolton, as usual dressed in a crisp navy suit, knocked and entered Lynette's office at precisely five-fifteen.

"Well, Lara," Lynette said after the Secretary had poured a cup of decaf from a carafe, "my staff is lighter by one."

"You did the right thing. Janine Brady has been in this game for a long time. She knows better than to assure you a vote will be unanimous without checking and rechecking."

"So, where do we stand now?"

"Well, it appears Ellen Kroft does have serious misgivings about Omnivax."

"Damn."

"She's the consumer representative on the panel, so there's no way any of the pharmaceutical grant providers can put any pressure on her."

"Was one of my people consulted before she was appointed?"

"I hate to say it, but it was Janine Brady. Wait, though, I was consulted, too, Lynette. Kroft seemed absolutely harmless — a token offered up by the people at PAVE. If she was more militant, we never would have approved her appointment. No one expected anything like this."

"So?"

"Our man Poulos on the committee tells me he's dealing with the problem. He's optimistic something can be worked out."

"Is it worth my meeting with her?"

"You can try, but I've learned that she contributed fifty dollars to Harrison's campaign last election and upped it to seventy-five this time."

"Oh, that's just terrific. We're three points down in the latest polls. Jim is counting heavily on Omnivax to eliminate that. And here is a Harrison supporter threatening to screw up the whole thing."

"If Kroft remains on this path, we're getting prepared to make the whole thing look political, being as she is a known Harrison backer."

"That isn't going to give us back those three points."

"I know."

"What about our plans for the first inoculation?"

"I think we're there, Lynette. We have two women here in D.C. due to deliver at the right time, so that their babies will be four days old when we're ready. Both attend the neighborhood health center in Anacostia, both are anxious to have their kids be the first to receive Omnivax."

"Uneventful pregnancies?"

"No problems."

"Do we know the sex of the babies?"

Bolton grinned. "Mrs. First Lady, you said you wanted a girl; whichever mama we choose, we got you a girl."

"It'll be great theater, Lara. There's three points in this, mark my words there are. Maybe more."

"Maybe more," the Secretary echoed.

Nikki's drive from Boston to Belinda, West Virginia, was a somber, introspective one, filled with music — country-western, jazz, classical, and all manner of bluegrass. In addition to Kathy Wilson's two albums, there were a number where she played as a studio musician, backing up star performers, several of whom were singing songs she had written. Kathy's musicianship was transcendent on several instruments, but especially on mandolin, which she played as well as anyone Nikki had ever heard.

A chief selling point for Nikki's Saturn had been its sound system, which was surprisingly potent in all ranges. She drove most of the trip with the volume cranked up and the moon roof open. The backseat and trunk were packed with Kathy's books, clothes, stereo, personal belongings, and instruments, including her most prized possession, a Gibson F-5 mandolin, built, she was proud to tell anyone who would listen, whether or not they knew mandolins, by Lloyd Loar.

The day, like the one before, was sparkling and not too warm. Nikki had spent the night in a Best Western just outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and had left the motel early enough that morning to make Belinda with an hour or so to spare before the memorial service. Between the music and her reflections on the life and death of Kathy Wilson, hundreds of miles had passed virtually unnoticed.

The autopsy Joe Keller had performed on Kathy revealed disappointingly little. Her brain, at least on gross examination, appeared normal. No tumors, no old strokes, no vascular malformations or occlusions, no scars — in short, no explanation for the pervasive psychological transformation that had ultimately taken her life. The microscopic sections of her brain would be ready to be read as soon as today or tomorrow, but Nikki wasn't expecting anything from that or, in fact, from the detailed toxicology examination of her blood.

Tongue-in-cheek medical wisdom had it that internists knew everything but did nothing; surgeons knew nothing but did everything; and pathologists knew everything, but a day too late. In Kathy's case, the old saw couldn't have been further from fact. What they would be left with, even after a most exhausting postmortem examination, were questions — questions with precious few answers.