Michael Palmer - Extreme Measures

Laura felt herself sinking beneath the weight of her sodden clothes, but the icy chill almost instantly cleared her head and she struggled back to the surface. Scott was nowhere to be seen. Above her, Lester Wheeler appeared at the end of the pier, fixed his weapon on her once again, and fired. She ducked back beneath the surface as first one bullet, then another, skimmed past her face.

She had instinctively taken a decent breath, and now she desperately forced herself to calm down and concentrate. She was about four feet below the surface, and was being maintained in calm perfect buoyancy against the salt water by her clothes. This was her world, she realized, her element. Above her was the man who had just murdered her brother.

When it seemed he had nothing left, Scott had reached inside and found enough to save her. Now she had to do the same for herself She had to move, then breathe, then move again. If she could just hold out and fight the cold, she could beat him. She could beat him!

Ignoring the overwhehning chill and the air hunger burning in her chest, Laura forced herself down another two feet and kicked back toward the pier.

Not yet, she screamed to herself as she pulled ahead. Not yet, not yet, not yet!

Water seeped through her nose and into her lungs.

Still, eyes closed, she swam.

Finally, with her head pounding and her chest screaming for air, she kicked to the surface.

The original buildings of Metropolitan Hospital of filled most of two blocks between the South End and Roxbury sections of the city. In the days before medicare and Medicaid, it was the busiest of all the Boston hospitals, at times running as many as five hundred patients a day through its emergency room. Now, with a progressive drain to many newer facilities, its patient load had dropped off, and two of its three medical school affiliations had pulled out. Still, with its location near the poorest section of the city, there were plenty of severe trauma cases and medical crises.

With the E.R. at White Memorial inaccessible to him, Eric had chosen to use the frantic pace of Metro to provide him with a weapon he could use to break down Haven Darden. The ride there took fifteen minutes-precisely the same amount of time it took him to find a place to park. He set the material taken from Donald Devine's safe on the floor of the Celica, and entered the hospital through the main entrance.

The key to moving unnoticed about any hospital, Eric knew, was simply to look and act as if one knew precisely what one was doing. He also knew that the bigger and busier the facility, the less precise one had to be.

His first stop was in the house officers'quarters, located on the fifth floor of a crumbling red brick building named for a nineteenth-century surgeon, and probably built not long after his death.

About half the doors on the floor were unlocked.

There was nothing of use in the first two rooms he checked.

Opening another door, he had actually stepped inside before realizing that a nurse and resident were on the narrow bed locked in flagrante delicto, their uniforms in a heap on the floor. The couple glimpsed him just as he was slipping back out the door, pulled a sheet over their heads, and giggled.

In the next room he tried, Eric found what he needed. He undressed there and emerged wearing someone's discarded surgical scrubs and a white clinic coat. Next, he headed to the E.R.

He crossed the waiting room and entered the treatment area. Every room, it seemed, was in action.

A nurse hurried past, taking no notice of him. A second nurse smiled at him as she entered the room of a new trauma victim.

Purposefully, he continued down the busy corridor and into the med room, which was deserted. In less than a minute he was out. His hand was buried in his clinic coat pocket, concealing a filled 10cc syringe, hooked to a 11/2-inch-long, 22gauge needle. Then, casually, he strolled from the emergency room back to the house officers' building to change.

The game was on.

The drive from Moab along unmarked dirt tracks took Bernard Nelson nearly three hours in his Land Rover.

Before college, Nelson had spent six years in the marines, most of those with a wilderness survival unit.

Once, during his training at Camp Pendleton, he had been flown far out in the Mojave Desert by helicopter, and set loose by himself with enough rations and water for two days. The trip back to civilization had taken five days, but the things he had learned about survival and about himself had proven well worth the danger, He was sure the skills he had stored away were still there.

After finding the bodies of Richard and Marilyn Colson, he and Chippy had flown to within distant sight of Charity. Following their return to Moab, Smith had drawn up a remarkably detailed map, including sketches of varioos distinctive rock formations and arroyos. Now, according to Bernard's compass and watch, he was close enough to go on foot. His safety net was Chippy, who had promised to fly out with help if twenty-four hours passed without word from him.

In addition to warm clothing, was, fuel, and some food, Bernard had brought along his Smith amp; Wesson and a new Nikon with a telephoto lens.

With luck, he could get close enough to the town to take pictures without ever having to go in.

It was midafternoon by the time he found a large overhang beneath which he parked his Land Rover and prepared his gear. He slid his wallet and those of the Colsons beneath the front seat, and made his way toward the fields shielding Charity.

Near the top of the hill he crouched down and moved forward on his hands and knees. He believed he had followed the pilot's map to the letter, but there was always the chance something had gone wrong.

Flattening out even more, he held his breath and peered over the crest.

Below him, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, was the town.

Using his telephoto, Nelson could make out several people working in a remarkably robust cornfield.

The village beyond seemed neat and well maintained.

Staying low, he dropped into'a dry creek bed, and worked his way down.

At the edge of the field he knelt and watched as three men in work clothes trudged in slow silence back and forth from the tall stalks to a wheelbarrow, loading it one ear of corn at a time.

Through his lens Bernard studied the men's faces, each of which bore the expressionless mask of heavy tranquilizing medication.

Fearing he was too close to chance the noise of a shutter, he crawled along the dusty margin of the field and crouched down in a gully not twenty feet from the rear of the first structure. The air was still and hot, the town eerily silt-nt. Carefully, Nelson withdrew his revolver and released the safety. At that instant he heard a soft scraping noise behind him. He whirled to see the butt of a shotgun flashing down from the dazzling blue sky. It connected joltingly just above his right ear.

His teeth snapped together and pain exploded through his head. Then, amidst an overwhelming flood of nausea, he toppled face first onto the dry ground.

By the time his consciousness began to return, Bernard was face up in a wheelbarrow, awash in his own vomit. His head was tilted backward, giving him a view of a man's groin. His fingers scraped along the dirt roadway as they moved ahead.

"Don't move," the man warned.

Nelson choked briefly on some food and stomach acid, and closed his eyes against the overwhelming nausea. His spine, pressed against the metal rim of the wheelbarow, felt as if it were about to snap in two.

"I'm not a threat to anyone," he heard himself say.

"Shut up!"

"Please, listen to me."

The dirt changed to pavement. Nelson opened his eyes a crack. He was being wheeled along a walkway, through a gate in a chain-metal fence, and up to a low cinder-block building.