bouncers that this fair-haired young man was a twenty-one-year-old from Wilmington. His classmates wanted Delaware driver’s licenses of their own. He went into business, and business had boomed, enough that a college degree in economics was redundant. Because it was illegal in the United States to possess, produce, or distribute falsified government documents, he set up shop in Thailand, where counterfeiting was something of a national pastime. He now sold $500,000 worth of fake U.S. driver’s licenses over the Internet per year. Passports, much easier to forge, netted him ten times as much money.
If Alice were to spend three minutes on the Homeland Security tips site now, Stewart Fleishman aka Russ Augenblick would face extradition, at the least.
“I need you to hack into the customs database,” she told him. “I want you to make me a passport with the information of an American, Canadian, or Brit actually traveling in Switzerland right now.” With such a passport she could waltz out of the country.
He grumbled. “Buy me a mescal shot too and I’ll try. A double.”
After their drinks, she followed him through the back exit and down a windy but otherwise quiet side street to his vintage VW love bus.
Demonstrating surprising courtliness, the forger trudged through slush to open the front passenger door for her. The entire van, apparently restored without regard to cost, smelled new.
With a hint of fresh male perspiration.
Alice knew without looking, but turned anyway. Four men in black jumpsuits and matching body armor sat in the back of the van, each gripping a Sig, the silenced barrels pointed at her.
By way of greeting, the man closest to her said, “
51
Despite the antiseptic scent unique to medical facilities, along with walls, cabinets, and a sparkling tile floor that matched the hospital white of a medic’s lab coat, the lack of windows suggested that the infirmary originally had been a locker room or showers.
Sergeant King said, between gasps, “He’s not breathing, Ginny.” The medic’s badge read GENEVIEVE in big block letters.
“I don’t think he’s got a pulse either,” said Corporal Flint, angling Drummond’s feet toward the examination table.
“Set him down and we will see if we can fix that,” Genevieve said.
Although barely into her twenties, she had the composure of a battle-hardened veteran. She whipped a fresh sheet from the roll of paper at the foot of the table, clamping it into place just as Drummond’s head hit the headrest. Lifting his chin upward with one hand and pressing back on his forehead with the other, she tilted back his face. She opened his mouth and checked for obstructions, finding none. No breathing either.
Pinching his nostrils shut, she fit her mouth over and around his, then commenced breathing for him, inhaling and exhaling slowly into his mouth. His chest rose and fell, again signifying no obstruction. She provided two more breaths, each about a second long, then pressed two fingers to the side of his throat.
“No carotid pulse, as far as I can tell,” she sighed, not so much a lament as a prognosis.
“What can we do?” asked King.
“Call for an ambulance. Say the casualty is having a cardiac arrest.”
King said, “Corporal?”
Nodding, Flint ran out.
Pointing to a white blanket, Genevieve said to King, “Sergeant, if you could roll that up and use it to elevate his feet by about fifteen inches …”
He did, offering better blood flow to Drummond’s heart, which Genevieve prepared to resuscitate by placing the heel of her right hand two or three inches above the tip of his sternum. She lay her left hand on top of her right and interlaced her fingers.
“It was probably his damned pills,” King said.
“What pills?” Genevieve locked her elbows and moved herself directly above Drummond, so that she could use the weight of her body, rather than her muscles, to perform the compressions, minimizing fatigue.
“Some kind of Alzheimer meds. Could that have anything to do with this?”
She nodded. “Do you have them?”
The sergeant whisked his hands over Drummond’s pockets without finding the bottle. “I’ll be right back.” He tore out of the infirmary.
Genevieve compressed Drummond’s chest wall by about three inches, or enough to break a rib, the desired amount. Compressions any weaker were ineffective. The point of squeezing the rib cage, after all, was to pump the heart.
She had repeated the process fifteen times, at a rate of approximately one hundred compressions per minute, when Drummond decided that it was time to end the cardiac arrest act he’d initiated by swallowing eight of his ten remaining pills. The experimental drug’s beta-blocker components-atenolol and metoprolol-had weakened his pulse to the point that it was undetectable, at least by harried marine guards and a medic in an under-equipped infirmary. He’d augmented the effect with a ploy as old as predators and prey, holding his breath.
He may have done the job too well, he thought, as he tried to get up from the examination table: A chill crept over his body, leaving him cold, clammy, and feeling weighted down, as if he were at the bottom of a deep sea. His extremities stung and the pressure neared skull-crushing. Everything around him blurred. The hiss of the overhead lamps, Genevieve’s breathing, and the rustling of her lab coat had the effect of trains blowing past. And both vomit and diarrhea burned within him.
Had he miscalculated the dosage?
Highly likely. His faculty for making calculations lately had been like an old television set that gets reception only at certain angles. Still, getting reception at all had been fortuitous. His son was locked in a detention room. And any moment might bring the return of the Cavalry agent who had tried to kill them-what was his name?
Steve?
Stanley?
Sandy?
Like the beach.
Saint Lucia’s beaches were as white as sugar.
Until he’d seen them for himself, he’d thought “sugar sand” was just the hyperbolical concoction of an advertising copywriter.
Drummond felt his thinking careening off the rails.
What matters, he told himself, is that Steve or Stanley or whoever
The world seemed to revert to its normal pace.
Drummond exhaled, with a cough, for effect.
Genevieve jumped, pleasantly surprised.
He tried to raise himself on his elbows and fell flat.
“Easy,” she said.
“I accidentally swallowed some …” he said just above a whisper before letting his voice trail off.
She leaned closer to hear. “Yes?”
He shot up his left arm, encircling her neck, clamping the crook of his elbow at her trachea.
She tried to cry out.
With his left hand he grasped his right bicep, placing his right hand behind her head, then brought his elbows together, applying as much pressure as he could generate to both sides of her neck, restricting the blood flow to her brain.
