to—”
“Find me something to stop him from bleeding out. Gauze, tape . . . anything. Look for a first aid kit.
As Petain began her frantic search, Kealey did his best to keep pressure on the wound. It was almost impossible; Ghafour was writhing around on the dirty floor, screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Shut up!” Kealey screamed. “Stop moving around! I’m trying to save your life, asshole!”
Petain, who’d been digging through a stand-alone closet in the corner, suddenly yelled, “I got it!” She stood up and sprinted the few feet between them, then dropped to her knees by Kealey’s side. She struggled with the lid for a few seconds, and then the kit sprung open, its contents scattering over the floor. She scrambled to collect the gauze and tape, and Kealey—pushing as hard as he could on the wound with his left hand—reached out with his right to grab the tape.
He shot a look at Petain and, over Ghafour’s continued screams, yelled, “I need something heavier, something thicker than this gauze. Your shirt . . .”
She looked down at her blouse and caught his meaning immediately. She pulled it off as fast as she could, struggling to free her arms from the tight cotton sleeves. Once it was off—revealing a tank top underneath—she looked around the desk, found a utility knife, and began cutting strips of material. Each was approximately 2 feet in length and 6 inches wide. As she was working, Kealey was wrapping the gauze around Ghafour’s spurting wound. Once he had taped it into place, Petain handed over the first length of cloth, and Kealey used it to cover the gauze, tying a nonslip knot to one side of the small wound. Then he wadded up a second strip, placed it directly over the small hole in the Algerian’s thigh, and secured it in place with a second strip of Petain’s blouse. This time he tied a nonslip knot directly over the wound.
Ghafour was still moaning in between ragged, shallow breaths. His screaming had stopped, which wasn’t a good sign, but his eyes were wide open, and he was alert enough to respond to questions, which was all that mattered to Kealey. Retrieving a couple of cushions from the couch in the corner, he lifted the Algerian’s feet and slid the cushions under. It worked to keep the man’s legs well above the level of his heart, which would help to slow the bleeding. It was the best he could do without applying a tourniquet, but he wasn’t willing to take that step just yet.
The adrenaline started to dissipate, and Kealey found he was suddenly exhausted; he had yet to catch his breath, and his limbs felt incredibly heavy. He suddenly realized he might have been hit. He checked quickly, his pulse pounding hard in his ears, but nothing seemed to be out of place. Looking over, he saw that Petain was on the phone, telling Ramirez what had taken place in short, terse sentences. Kealey was relieved to see she was relaying the information quickly but calmly. He knew he needed to give the operative in the van some instructions, so he immediately began thinking along those lines. But then he looked down at his hands, and he lost track of his thoughts completely. His hands and arms were dripping with bright red arterial blood. Glancing over, he realized that the Algerian had already lost about a pint of the vital fluid, and while the pressure dressing would slow the bleeding, it wouldn’t stop it completely. If Kealey was going to get the answers he needed, it would have to be soon.
Petain looked over and caught his attention. “Ramirez wants to know what to do,” she said urgently. “They don’t—”
“Tell him to sit tight. There’s nothing else he can do right now.”
Petain looked like she wanted to argue, but she pushed down her doubts and relayed the message. Seconds later, she snapped the phone shut and stared at him anxiously. “Ryan, do you hear that?”
Distracted by his efforts to slow the Algerian’s rate of bleeding, Kealey had allowed the noise outside the trailer to fade into the background. Now he listened intently, and he caught her point immediately. Above the confused shouts of construction workers and the distant rumble of traffic, he heard a sound that changed everything: the two-tone scream of a police car’s siren. The previous day, Kealey had seen a car flash past them using the same siren, and he realized the responding units belonged to the CNP, the National Police. Another siren joined in seconds later, completely drowning out the traffic on Calle de San Leonardo de Dios. Kealey studied Ghafour for a few seconds. His face was pale and covered in sweat, and his eyelids were starting to droop. Sliding over, he quickly checked for a pulse, pressing two fingers hard against the man’s clammy skin. The pulse was weak, but still there. Finding it didn’t do much to relieve his concern, as the Algerian was clearly sliding into hypovolaemic shock. Kealey knew that unless he did something immediately, Ghafour would pass out, and there was a good chance he’d never regain consciousness.
Lifting his gaze, Kealey scoured the medical supplies scattered over the floor. Before long, he saw what he wanted. “Hand me that syringe,” he said to Petain. She looked uncertain for a second, but then she reached down and picked it up. She checked the markings quickly and handed it over.
“Epinephrine. Do you think it will work?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. He pulled the protective cover off the syringe and tried to block out the sound of rapidly approaching sirens. Judging by the speed with which the first cars had responded, they’d be completely surrounded in a matter of minutes. “But we have to keep him awake, and we need him to start talking. We’re running out of time.”
“You’re wrong,” Petain said, her voice shaking with tension. She was standing at one of the small windows, using two fingers to separate the blinds. “We’re
CHAPTER 16
SIALKOT, PAKISTAN
The house was perched atop a small hill in the Gujrat district of Sialkot, reachable only by a rutted driveway bordered on each side by patchy grassland. A number of sheep grazed in the open fields, which were separated from the road by a tangled row of scrawny trees. It was a quiet area just south of the Kashmiri foothills, small homes dotting the landscape. There were no natural wonders, nothing of interest for miles around. For this reason alone, few people would have noticed that the house was unusual for the area—
indeed, for the country itself. It was like something out of the English countryside: thick stone walls that stood up to the hard northern winds, a garden trellis wrapped in jasmine and white orchids on one side, the building itself with a fine slate roof and double-glazed windows. The interior space was just as extraordinary. The living room featured a large stone fireplace, with exposed timber throughout and oil-fired central heating. The second- floor rooms stayed warm even in the coldest winter months, a rare benefit in the impoverished villages of northeastern Pakistan. It had taken Said Qureshi many years to purchase the house. It was easily the most important thing in his life, other than his children, whom he hadn’t seen in years. It also represented the only thing he had salvaged from his time in England: a love of British architecture. His family had immigrated to England when he was fifteen, and though it was hard to admit now, it had been the happiest time of his life. It was what he had secretly wanted from the time he could read and write—to leave Pakistan, to escape the squalor of Saddar Town, where he had spent his youth, and find something better in another land. And he had worked to make the best of the unexpected opportunity. He had shrugged off the callous remarks made by his classmates, most of which related to his skin color, and he’d devoted himself to his studies. His efforts had earned him a place at St. George’s Medical School by the time he was twenty-one. Following graduation, he had worked for nearly a decade at Guy’s Hospital in southeast London, where he specialized in cardiothoracic surgery. He had risen through the ranks with astonishing speed, despite the intense competition. It seemed as if he could do no wrong, until a failed surgery in 2004 resulted in the death of an eleven-yearold boy. It was a small mistake, a nicked blood vessel they had caught too late, but that was all it took. Everything from that point forward had been a downhill slide. He could have argued that stress played a role, that his impending divorce, as well as the inevitable custody battle over his three children, had distracted him from his duties. He could have said that his drinking played a lesser role. There would have been penalties, but alcoholism was better than incompetence, and he might have been forgiven in time. But it wasn’t the truth, and he wasn’t one for making excuses. Instead, he quietly resigned his post—they had given him that option, at least—and moved to the Cornish coast a month later, taking up residence in a small cottage on the
