Michael Palmer - The First Patient

It was time.

Twenty-five miles outside the city, he was convinced enough that he wasn't being followed to pull off into a rest area on I-270 and open the package from Ellen Williams. The carefully wrapped box consisted of a Tupperware container with five sealed plastic Baggies, each containing two large gauze pads, soaked with liquid.

SPECIAL MIXTURE, the label on the Tupperware read. APPLY ONE OR TWO AS NEEDED.

Gabe's heart told him one, but his head insisted on two.

If things didn't work for him and Drew Stoddard, there would not be a second chance. Word would get out that the president had behaved irrationally, and within no time a button would be pushed by someone and the First Patient would suffer either a public episode similar to the one Gabe had witnessed in the White House or, worse, one identical to the episode he had witnessed in Ferendelli.

With that notion grimly dominating his thoughts, Gabe set the package aside and checked the map Drew had given him locating the stables. Then, staying well under the speed limit, he headed north to Thurmont, Maryland, and, just beyond it, Camp David.

I'm sorry."

The words had been spoken so softly, barely more than a whisper. Had Constanza really said them, Alison wondered, or was it the fallout from the drugs Griswold had forced into her? Could the woman have possibly just left her in such a horrible situation? The answer, of course, was yes. Ten years. That was how long Constanza had been under Treat Gris-wold's control. Ten years.

Battling to breathe and to keep her leg muscles from seizing up, Alison closed her eyes and drifted off. The pain was so much more tolerable that way.

When she awoke, after a few minutes or a few hours, she was still spread-eagled on her back, her wrists and ankles still tightly bound. The visit from Constanza had been a dream, she realized despondently-only a chemically induced dream.

Then she felt the knife resting in her palm. Slowly, painfully, she closed her fingers around the handle and craned her head to the right to see. It was a sturdy kitchen knife-black plastic handle, serrated six-inch blade. And it was almost certainly not a dream.

Why hadn't Constanza simply cut the rope?

The answer wasn't hard to discern. Alison had already experienced Griswold's power and lack of caring for human life and pain. He was a patient master at bending subjects to his will. In less than forty-eight hours he had all but broken her. What had ten years of manipulation, chemicals, and abuse done to Constanza? It seemed highly likely that the poor woman couldn't bring herself to go through with such an act of rebellion against the man who had taken her from her home before she had even reached her teens. Setting the knife in place was simply the best she could manage.

Now it was Alison's job to go the rest of the way.

For a while, she lay still and listened, preparing herself. There was only stillness-an intense silence. The house was empty. She felt certain of it. Constanza and Beatriz were gone. Slowly, desperate not to let the blade slip away, she turned the handle in her swollen, stiff fingers until the serrations lay against the rope. Then, no more than a fraction of an inch with each stroke, not worrying whether she cut rope or flesh, she began to saw. There would be no resting, she vowed, no taking the chance that sleep would overcome her. Her muscles ached terribly, and she had little strength. But Treat Griswold had given her the power to cut through the cords. He had given her the hatred.

Twenty minutes? Thirty? An hour?

Alison would never know how long it took. She would only know that she never stopped. A fraction of an inch with each awkward stroke. The blade cut through her skin, but the pain was nothing compared to what she had already endured. Her biggest fears were that she would saw through a tendon or hit an artery. At the moment when it felt like even her hatred for Griswold wasn't going to be enough to keep her fingers moving, the cord snapped apart.

She sat on the edge of the cot for a long time, waiting for the dizziness to subside and for her legs to give her some sort of a sign that they were ready to bear her weight. Then she cut several strips of pillowcase and stanched the blood flow at her wrist. Finally, using the bed frame for support, she pushed to her feet. Just as quickly, her legs buckled at the knees, her quadriceps muscles all but spent. A second try again dropped her awkwardly to the concrete floor. The third time, her legs wobbled, then held.

Her clothes were still neatly folded by the wall. Her pocketbook and wallet weren't there, nor was her ID lanyard. But there was one thing Griswold had not yet disposed of or hidden. One thing he hadn't counted on that she would ever need or use again.

With consummate effort, she sat on the edge of the tawdry cot and dressed herself. Then once again she stood. Her legs were stronger this time, more willing. She took a step toward the staircase, then halted. Her smile was vicious. The moment she had stopped believing would ever come was here.

"I'm coming for you, you son of a bitch," she rasped, testing the battery on Griswold's mistake, her two-way radio, then hooking it to her belt. "I'm coming for you."

Three hours to go.

So far so good.

The mantra had started up again of its own accord as Gabe adjusted himself in the saddle of a muscular black stallion named Grendel, opened the trail map that the stable head, Joe Rizzo, had given him, and headed off into the state forest to plan where he and the president might break away from his Secret Service guardians. Gabe had parked the Impala in town and taken a cab to the visitors' entrance to Camp David. Then, cleared for entry by the president, he walked straight through the 125-acre compound and out the guarded north entrance to the nearby stables.

There would probably be three agents accompanying them on their ride, Drew had said-all decent riders and armed with handguns that they knew quite well how to use. If things went as Gabe projected, by the time the agents realized that their mounts were not responding to their commands to speed up and the president and his doctor weren't responding to their commands to slow down, they would be too confused and too far out of range to risk a shot. If he was wrong about that, the first shot one of the agents did take would undoubtedly be at him.

So far so good.

His concern for Alison remained acute, but for the moment there was nothing he could do, and the task ahead was daunting. There were so many variables to consider-so much that could go wrong. In just three hours, if things went as he hoped, he would have become the second most wanted man on the planet.

The afternoon was cool and overcast. Grendel was anxious to pick up the pace but responded nicely when Gabe called for a walk. His first goal was to determine how far out on the trail they would be after twenty-five minutes. At that point, with luck, the Secret Service horses would be in no shape to match the speed with which he and Drew would take off. After their break from the agents, on the first acceptable trail to the left, the two of them would cut toward the paved road, which was smudged on the map but might have been Route 491.

Twenty-five minutes.

Gabe had subtracted five minutes from the thirty Ellen Williams had estimated in order to make up for the time it would take them to get back to the stables from where they would have mounted up at the rear entrance to Camp David.

Twenty-five minutes.

Gabe grinned at the notion of treating this operation as if this were some sort of science. The size of the horses minus twice the weight of the agents plus the rate of absorption of the Williams potion squared minus the angle of the sun equaled… twenty-five minutes. No problem.