Grant Blackwood - Dead or Alive

“True.”

“How’s our patient?”

“Doc cleaned out the holes, stitched ’em shut, and put him on antibiotics. He’s stable but in one hell of a lot of pain. Jack’s given him a permanent limp, probably.”

“Least of his worries now,” Hendley observed. “Is he talking?”

“Not a word. Where’re we going?”

“Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport. You’ll be met.”

“And then where?” Clark pressed. They had in their possession the world’s most wanted terrorist; the sooner they found a bolt-hole where they could regroup and plan their next move, the better.

“Someplace quiet. Someplace Dr. Pasternak can work.”

At this, Clark smiled.

Four short hours after they departed Las Vegas, they touched down on CHO’s single runway and taxied up to the executive terminal. True to his word, Hendley had a pair of Chevy Suburbans waiting; in formation, they approached the Gulfstream’s retractable stairs, did simultaneous three-point turns, and backed up to the bottom step. From the passenger door of the first Suburban, Hendley leaned out and signaled to Clark and Jack, who climbed into the backseat, while Caruso and Chavez, trailed by Pasternak, escorted their charges to the trailing Suburban. Within minutes they were off the airport grounds and heading north on Highway 29.

Hendley brought them up to speed. From what little Gavin Biery was able to glean from the flood of coded electronic traffic, Creech Air Force Base’s 3rd Special Operations Squadron had arrived at Yucca within forty minutes of Hendley’s call. Two hours after that, in a sure sign the Department of Energy, Homeland Security, and the FBI had descended en masse upon Yucca Mountain, the electronic traffic dried up.

“Are they onto the Emir’s house?” Jack asked.

“Not yet.”

“Won’t take them long to find Paragon Air.” This from Clark. “So spill it, Gerry. Where’re we going?”

“I’ve got a few acres of horse land and a country house outside Middleburg.”

“What’s a few?”

“Thirty. Should give us some breathing room.” Hendley checked his watch. “Dr. Pasternak’s equipment should be there by now.”

AFTER THE nearly constant adrenaline rush Clark and his team had experienced since touching down in Las Vegas twenty-four hours earlier, what followed immediately upon arriving at Hendley’s country house was anticlimactic. To his obvious disappointment, Pasternak announced that it would be another day, perhaps two, before his patient would be stable enough to undergo interrogation. That left everyone with plenty of time to waste and nothing to do but play cards and watch cable news. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a whiff of what had occurred at Yucca Mountain, but there was wall-to-wall coverage of what the networks had universally dubbed “The Heartland Attacks.” The Claymore mine blast at the Waterloo, Iowa, church had claimed thirty-two dead and fifty wounded; the mortar attack at the Springfield, Missouri, statue unveiling, twenty-two dead, fourteen wounded; the grenade incident at the Brady, Nebraska, swim meet, only six dead and four wounded, thanks to a quick-thinking, off-duty volunteer police officer who shot the perpetrator dead after he’d rolled only three grenades beneath the bleachers. The Waterloo and Brady perpetrators, both of whom had been tracked to their respective homes within hours of the events, had taken their own lives. Added to the other attacks, the casualties were climbing into triple digits.

Under the guiding hand of the FBI and Homeland Security, the near-miss chlorine attack aboard the Losan in Newport News had been attributed to a galley fire.

By four p.m. of their first day at Hendley’s country house, as the plastic-pretty female and lantern-jawed male anchors that dominated afternoon cable news collectively announced that President Edward Kealty would be addressing the American people at eight p.m. eastern, Clark got up and wandered off to find Pasternak. He found the doctor in Hendley’s woodworking shop, a fully appointed pole barn behind the house. The maple-topped bench had been converted into a makeshift medical suite, complete with halogen work lights, a Drager ventilator, and an EKG machine/resuscitator by Marquette, including manual external defibrillator paddles to convert an irregularly beating heart to normal sinus rhythm. Both machines were brand-new, fresh from their manufacturer’s shipping cartons, which now lay stacked a few feet away. Everything was ready and present, save the guest of honor, who was ensconced in one of the guest bedrooms under a rotating watch manned by Chavez, Jack, and Dominic.

“All set?” Clark asked.

Pasternak pressed a series of buttons on the EKG and got a series of apparently satisfying beeps in reply. He powered down the unit and looked at Clark. “Yeah.”

“Got second thoughts?”

“What makes you say that?”

“You ain’t exactly a poker player, Doc.”

Pasternak smiled at this. “Never was good at it. Guess it’s the whole Hippocratic oath-kind of a hard thing to shake. I’ve had over ten years to mull it over, though. After Nine-Eleven, I couldn’t figure out if it was just about revenge or about something bigger-the greater good and all that.”

“What’d you decide?”

“It’s both, but more of the latter. If we get something from this guy that helps save some lives, then I’ll figure out a way to deal with what I’ve done-what I’m going to do. Or God willing, when the time comes.”

Clark considered this, then nodded. “Doc, to lesser or larger degrees, we’re all in that boat. All you can do is decide what you think is right, go with that, and let the rest come as it may.”

The anticipation had everyone up at dawn the next day. Dominic, the best cook of the group, made a bowl of oatmeal and wheat toast for their guest, who, now fully awake and clearly in pain, stubbornly declined the meal.

At seven, Dr. Pasternak came to examine him. It took only a few minutes. Pasternak looked to Hendley, who stood in the doorway, the rest of the group behind him.

“No fever, no signs of infection. He’s good to go.”

Hendley nodded. “Let’s move him.”

The Emir neither struggled nor helped as Chavez and Dominic carried him out the back door and through the pole barn’s side entrance. It wasn’t until he saw the halogen-lighted workbench and makeshift leather restraints bolted to its surface that his face changed. Jack saw the fleeting expression but couldn’t quite put his finger on its nature: fear or relief? Fear of what was coming, or relief because he suspected martyrdom was at hand?

As practiced the night before, Chavez and Dominic laid the Emir on the workbench. His right arm was cinched into the leather restraint, while the right, the one on the same side as the equipment, was stretched across a folded towel and similarly secured. Finally, both legs were locked down. Chavez and Dominic stepped back from the bench.

Now Pasternak began powering up the equipment: first the EKG, then the ventilator, followed by a self-diagnostic test of the manual external defibrillator. Pasternak then turned his attention to the wheeled cart beside the table, on which lay an array of syringes and bottles. All of this the Emir watched closely.

He had to be curious, Jack thought, and he must be inwardly terrified. Nobody could be that indifferent to what was going on around him, all the more so a man who was fully accustomed to being the ultimate and total boss of everything that happened around him, used to having his every order obeyed with alacrity. The world around him was no longer in his control. There was no way he could be comfortable with that, but he retained a sense of dignity that was, in its way, rather impressive. Okay, he was courageous, but courage was not an infinite quality. It had its limits, and those in the room with him would be exploring those limits.