“Nate!” Tracy scrambled off the bed and rushed to the doorway, just ahead of Sharon. She put her arms out to block the other woman from rushing out. “Hold up!”
Grabbing her arm, she yanked the nurse out of the doorway just as three shots whizzed past, shattering the window on the far wall. They were followed by a metallic ping, then something small, round and smoking rolled into the room to stop under the bed.
Grenade! Tracy’s thought hadn’t even fully formed before she pulled Sharon into the bathroom and slammed the heavy door closed. “Cover your ears!” she said, dropping her pistol to do the same and closing her eyes.
“What’s happening—?” Sharon had just clapped her hands to her head when a deafening explosion erupted in the outer room. The fire alarm and the sprinkler system went off. The cool water soothed the pounding ache in Tracy’s head, and she grabbed her gun, pulled open the smoking door and stepped out, leading with the pistol.
The room was a shambles. The bed had taken the brunt of the blast, and now lay on its side in a tangle of steel frame and smoldering mattress. Pieces of it had been blown around the room, with several rods embedded in the walls. The rest of the broken window had been obliterated by the explosion, and every wall and the ceiling was scorched and blackened. Water poured down from the sprinklers, soaking everything.
“Nate?” Tracy shouted over the earsplitting din of the fire alarm. When she didn’t hear a reply, she scrambled out to the hallway and came upon the sodden body of the imposter doctor. Large red splotches covered his upper chest. The hallway was wet from the sprinklers, and Tracy looked around for Nate through the downpour, her hair plastered to her face and the dripping hospital gown molding itself to her body until she peeled it off and tossed it aside. Noticing a strange bulge in the gunman’s left coat pocket, she patted it down and came up with another grenade. She stuffed in her pocket.
“Tracy! Come on!” Nate had to shout at the top of his lungs to get her attention. He stood at the stairway, trying to hold the door against a sudden tide of people being evacuated from the floor.
Tracy turned back to Sharon, who was standing, staring at the body, her face pale with the knowledge of how close she had come to death.
“Sharon?” The nurse looked up at her. “The patients need you now. He doesn’t.”
Sharon nodded and walked down the hall, calling for the patients to evacuate in an orderly fashion. Tracy followed in her wake until they reached the stairway, then Nate took the lead. Rushing past frightened gown-clad patients as they made their way down the steps, helping when they could but always moving toward the bottom level, they were aware their remaining suspect was closer to escape with each passing second.
They reached the main floor just in time to hear screams and gunfire. Nate drew his pistol, eliciting gasps from several patients.
“Department of Homeland Security, please clear the way and stay back!” he shouted. He jerked the door open and swept the outside corridor with his pistol, then glanced back at Tracy. “You ready?”
She nodded, and Nate held the door open and covered the right side while she stepped out and used the door for cover to sweep and clear the left. They crouched to stay under the wire-mesh-covered glass window.
Nate ran toward the main doors, and Tracy rose and followed. Along the way they saw several dozen patients crouched or huddled on the ground, apparently cowed by the fleeing terrorist. “I am a federal agent with the Department of Homeland Security! Everyone get up now and move in an orderly fashion toward the nearest exit! This is not a drill!” Nate’s voice shocked many out of their pa-ralysis, and they started streaming toward the doors. Two paramedics were working on a downed security guard, one pumping up and down on his chest, the other performing mouth-to-mouth. Tracy’s lips tightened as she watched them, knowing that she and Nate were responsible.
A few steps before reaching the double doors, she stopped and stared in shock. In front of her was the Mexican woman she had saved at the farm the day before. She was sitting in a wheelchair, and her small daughter was trying to push her toward the door. She looked around for an orderly or nurse, but they were all helping more critical patients.
“Come on, Tracy, we’re gonna lose him!” Nate hadn’t broken stride.
“Help me, just for a second.” Tracy swept Julia up in her arms while Nate ran back and grabbed the wheelchair’s handles, maneuvering it through the doors and off to one side. “Stay with your mama, little one,” Tracy said as she de-posited her by the chair. She ran after Nate, who was already in the staff parking lot, where he’d parked the Silverado.
As he ran, a dark blue sedan roared straight toward him.
Nate leveled his pistol, but ended up diving out of the way as the car flew past, the driver spraying bullets out of his side window as he tore out of the driveway. The car didn’t stop, but ran straight through a red light, clipping a sub-compact and sending it spinning across the road, where it stopped by slamming into a light post.
“Jesus!” Rising from where she had ducked behind a car, Tracy looked back, checking for injuries. The gunman had been aiming high. Although the front of the building was pockmarked with bullet holes, and two more windows were broken, no one seemed to be hurt.
“Let’s go!” Nate had backed the Silverado out of its place and gunned it right to her. Tracy leaped in, and barely had time to get her seat belt on before he laid rubber out of the parking lot. They both heard the distant whine of sirens as they hit Rim Road, then turned north on Oregon, following the trail of honking horns and stopped cars the terrorist was leaving in his wake.
“Get on the phone to your FBI buddy and see if they can set up a roadblock in the next mile. I’m calling in reinforcements!” Nate snatched the radio mike from its stand as Tracy flipped open her phone.
“Dammit, this shouldn’t be that difficult.” Kate paced back and forth in front of her screen, monitoring the chaos at the hospital, along with the status of the midnight team en route to Texas and their hackers’ attempts to break into the network for Spaceworks, Inc.
While the security of the rocket company network was top-notch, Born2Slyde hadn’t thought it meant anything out of the ordinary at first.
“They’re in a high-tech field, probably lots of corporate espionage,” B2S had typed as she continued her explora-tory foray. “Nothing too spooky here yet.”
“Good, then accessing it shouldn’t be an issue—I want you inside as soon as possible,” Kate said.
“Okay, but I’ll need mainframe access for this if you want it ASAP,” the hacker typed.
“You got it.” Kate opened a screen to the DHS mainframe system in Washington and gave her limited access.
“Just get access to their rocket telemetry systems—nothing else.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Kate’s screen flashed, signaling an incoming call. The ID said it was Tracy Wentworth. “Finally.” Kate hit her earpiece. “Agent Stephanie Cassell.”
Tracy’s voice was faster than normal, but still in control.
“Stephanie, Nate and I set a trap at the hospital to try and lure one of the terrorists, but they blew up a hospital room, and almost got me with it. We took one out and are chasing—watch that minivan, Nate!—the other north-northwest. We’re trying to set up a roadblock to stop him in the next mile.”
“How close are you to him?” Kate asked.
“About twenty yards behind.”
“Okay, press star-nine-star-five-star-one on your phone.
Do it right now.”
Kate heard the beeps, and on her satellite map of the chase, the pursuing truck was now the centerpoint of a red circle that moved with it, enveloping the fleeing car in the crimson field, along with several others that they passed.
“What did that do?” Tracy asked.
“You’ve just jammed his cell communications, along with everyone else’s in a fifty-yard radius—we don’t want him alerting his bosses that we’re on to him.”
“My phone just did that? But mine still works—”
“Yes. Tell Nate he needs to take this guy out now,” Kate said.
Tracy relayed the message and heard a furious Texas drawl in the background. “What in the hell does she think I’m doing, playing tag with him?”
Kate smiled grimly at the border agent’s tone. “Hardly.
Look, we’ve uncovered a company that we think may be involved in the plot. Spaceworks, Incorporated. Do you
