case that resembled a laptop computer. “Trying two hundred joules,” he said, withdrawing a pair of defibrillator paddles. “Stand clear.”
On the other side of the gurney, Charlie took a step back, at once hoping and bracing himself.
Gaillard aimed the paddles. Both paramedics’ absorption was such that they seemed oblivious to the tire- screaming arrival of a sporty black Fiat, until a young brunette in a floral-print cocktail dress climbed out of the passenger seat, gun in hand. Stanley followed from the driver’s seat, a sidearm drawn as well.
Charlie’s jumbled emotions were slashed away by fear.
Stanley looked through him to the paramedics. “Gentlemen, I’m Special Agent Stanley and this is Special Agent Lanier, FBI.” He waved an FBI badge. “These two men are wanted for capital crimes in the United States. We need to take them into our custody.”
Gaillard, poised to use the paddles, looked down at Drummond. “He’s in ventricular fibrillation. I need to shock him
Lanier pointed her gun at him and pulled the trigger. The muzzle flash spotlit Gaillard’s shocked face. The paramedic dropped behind the gurney, apparently dead before reaching the sidewalk. The defibrillator clunked down beside him.
55
Shielded from Lanier and Stanley by the gurney, Charlie watched the surviving paramedic, Morneau, leap into the rear of his ambulance and disappear behind one of the van’s double doors.
Dropping to a knee, Lanier leveled her gun at the section of door likely between her and the paramedic’s heart.
The roar from the barrel, the metallic fracture, and Morneau’s wail all resounded within the cul-de-sac.
Charlie looked at his father, hoping the din would rouse him. The only movement was Drummond’s EKG, descending, accompanied by a lethargic blip that lasted for at least a minute.
Or so it seemed to Charlie, adrenaline surging into his veins, accelerating his mental acuity and, he sensed, slowing the pace of the rest of the world.
He reached through the undercarriage of the gurney for the defibrillator, on the pavement at the edge of a pool of Gaillard’s blood. He drew it back, trying to weave through the gurney’s elaborate network of springs and crisscrossing shafts. A sharp bolt ripped a red strip into his forearm. He felt nothing.
Gripping the handles on his side of the gurney, he propelled Drummond toward the ambulance.
Lanier rotated toward them, slow as a second hand in Charlie’s heightened sense of things. She tweaked her aim.
Before she could fire, Charlie pulled the trigger of his Glock twice. The first bullet plowed into the Fiat’s passenger-side mirror, sending the mirror’s chrome housing bouncing end over end along the asphalt. Unfazed, Lanier dropped behind the passenger door to the street.
Charlie’s second bullet sailed into the crack between the windshield and the open driver’s door. Blood spouted from Stanley’s shoulder. Writhing, he fell from view.
Charlie adjusted the Glock and snapped the trigger again. He was conscious not only of the thwack of the firing pin, but of the explosion of the primer, and the heat pushing on the base of the bullet-hotter and harder until there was enough force to overcome the frictional bond between the bullet and its casing. With a plume of flame, the projectile leaped from the barrel and seemed to wade into the Fiat’s windshield, just in front of the steering wheel. Particles of glass wafted into the air like confetti. Blood spurted from Lanier’s right arm. Her gun arm.
The front of the gurney banged into the ambulance’s rear bumper. Charlie vaulted in, hauling Drummond after him. Drawing him really; Charlie wasn’t experiencing weight or friction as he normally did.
The ambulance wasn’t a van so much as a hospital on wheels, its multitude of cabinets, compartments, and pouches crammed with supplies. Charlie set Drummond on the floor, then fired the Glock over his shoulder, exploding more of the Fiat’s windshield.
Lanier’s barrel, propped on the dashboard, sashayed sideways as it discharged.
Charlie threw up his left arm, shielding Drummond’s head. The bullet slashed into Charlie’s shoulder, picking him up. Tearing out of him, it dragged him to the floor. He crashed face-first into the grainy metal.
He tried to use his newfound command of his senses to turn off the searing pain. It didn’t work. He had been hit by a bullet once before-it had just grazed him, really, yet felt like certain death.
Drummond lay still, two shades bluer than before. Morneau was slumped beside him, trying to adhere an enormous bandage to his own belly, over a hole that oozed blood with each beat of his racing heart.
“Here,” Charlie said, making his way to the front of the van. He handed the man the defibrillator. “Can you try and use this now?”
A bullet smashed a cavity in one of the rear doors. The glass casing of a wall clock shattered, raining shards.
“Now’s not such a good time,” Morneau stammered. “They’re still shooting at us!”
“I noticed.” Charlie jumped for the driver’s seat and released the parking brake. “How about this? You take care of my father, I’ll take care of them.”
He mashed the clutch, shifted into first gear, and flattened the gas pedal. The van lurched forward. He watched in his side mirror as the lanky paramedic lowered himself to the floor.
Another bullet pounded through the back before digging into the radio, releasing an acrid stench of burning rubber.
“We’ll never get away from them in this thing,” Morneau cried.
“Best we can do is try.” Charlie aimed the ambulance toward the street behind the consulate. “And if it works, we won’t be dead.”
With a relenting sigh, the paramedic turned to Drummond. “He probably needs more atropine.” He drew a syringe from a drawer, too slowly, his rigidity suggesting he was bracing for the next bullet.
“I’ll tell you a story my father once told me,” Charlie said. “My grandfather-well, not my grandfather, actually, but a hit man in witness protection whose cover was my grandfather-he lived in Chicago during Al Capone’s heyday. You know who Al Capone is?”
“Of course.” Morneau sounded concerned for Charlie’s sanity. But at least he was administering the atropine to Drummond.
“Every once in a while, Grandpa Tony would hear machine-gun fire. He would peek out his window and see these mobsters racing by in a Cadillac that had been shot up like Peg-Board, and chasing after them were the cops, in a police wagon, same condition. The point is, every single time, everyone was alive. The moral of the story: It’s extremely difficult to fire from one moving vehicle at another with any degree of accuracy. They’re just trying to fluster us.”
Morneau pressed a button on the defibrillator and set the paddles on Drummond’s chest. The charge wasn’t as percussive or otherwise dramatic as on TV medical dramas-the jolt of electricity merely quivered Drummond, but a healthy pink returned to his face. He opened his eyes.
“Pulse is much better,” Morneau exclaimed.
“Dad?” Charlie cried, his excitement tinged by disbelief.
“I’m fine,” Drummond said, obviously as white a lie as had ever been told.
Still, the words were music to Charlie. He crushed the accelerator and, with a screeching slide that pushed the van to the brink of capsize, swung onto the street, remarkably with no more disturbance than a compartment door swinging open and a spool of gauze rolling out.
The sideview mirror showed the black Fiat rocketing after them, however.
56
