Crap.
Helen surged to her feet and sped down a hallway that led to the last two bedrooms and bath. DeGarza dogged her heels.
Without pausing, she kicked open the door to one room and rolled back away as the other HRT agent dove inside. She risked a glance and got a hasty impression of a small, starkly furnished room containing nothing but an unmade bed and a few closed suitcases. A bullet-riddled portable computer lay in pieces near the bed. That explained the gunfire they’d heard.
Damn it! They’d needed the information that shattered machine had once contained.
She swore again in sudden realisation. If the man who’d destroyed that computer wasn’t in there, then…
Helen whirled as the door to the bedroom behind her flew open. A fourth terrorist, this one a fair-haired man with pale blue eyes, stepped out into the hallway, already raising an AKM assault rifle in her direction. He was too close, and there wasn’t any cover she could reach in time.
The world around her slowed to a crawl. In the long, seemingly endless blink of an eye, she recognised the face she had stared at for so many weeks. The face captured in black and white by a Metro security camera. The cruel, arrogant face of the man who had planted the National Press Club bomb.
Reacting instinctively, Helen threw herself forward and slammed her submachine gun down across the AKM’s longer barrel, pushing it toward the floor. Her finger tightened on the MP5’s trigger.
Both weapons fired at the same time.
Helen felt something punch across her thigh and ignored it at first. Then she was falling backward as her leg buckled. She felt a second impact, as another steel jacketed round ricocheted off the concrete floor and slammed into her lower back below her body armor.
She tumbled to the floor still clutching her submachine gun. Clenching her teeth, she raised her head high enough to see the terrorist she’d shot. He lay propped up against the doorjamb. Her bullets had torn his chest open.
The fair-headed man stared back at her, breathing in shallow, gasping pants as the blood pumped out of his wounds. “A woman,” he whispered in amazement. One corner of his mouth twisted upward in a terrible smile and then froze. He was dead.
Helen shivered, suddenly horribly, terribly cold colder than she had ever been in her life. She could sense something wet spreading across her back, but she couldn’t feel anything below her stomach.
“Oh, my God.” DeGarza dropped to his knees beside her and smacked his hands over her thigh, desperately trying to hold back the blood spouting out of her severed femoral artery. “Hotel One, this is Sierra Two! I need a medic! Sierra One is down and hit bad!”
Helen slid slowly into an icy, black void.
Blight with an ashen Mike Flynn at his side, Peter Thorn pushed through the crowd of grim-faced policemen and FBI agents surrounding the Blackhawk. Medical teams were busy loading stretchers into the helicopter as it spooled up for an emergency hop to the trauma unit at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Blankets covered most of the faces. All four terrorists caught inside the shattered safe house were dead. Two members of the HRT assault force, Ricks and Emery, were also dead. Helen and Frank Jackson were still alive but only barely.
Thorn saw Helen lying motionless on one of the stretchers already aboard and stopped, rooted in place by his own despair. Paramedics surrounded the stretcher, working feverishly to stabilize her condition long enough to get her into surgery. One had his hands clamped around her thigh, holding the artery closed, while another slid a blood pressure cuff as high up as he could over the wound and started pumping it up, using the device as an improvised tourniquet.
An FBI agent he didn’t recognize stepped in front of him, motioning him away. “Sorry, sir. Medical personnel only. You’ll have to move back.”
A red mist floated in front of Thorn’s eyes. He moved forward, ready to fight his way through.
Flynn grabbed the agent and pulled him aside. He turned back to the blank-faced Army officer. “Go on, Pete,” he said gently. “Ride with her. I’ll take care of things here.”
Still not trusting himself to speak, Thorn nodded abruptly and climbed into the waiting helicopter. He crouched next to Helen’s stretcher, trying to ignore the muttered exclamations from the paramedics working on her.
“God, what a mess! I’ve got a major impact wound right near the sacrum … Jesus, it shattered her pelvis… bone splinters everywhere…”
“She’s deep in shock and bleeding out… keep that pressure up!”
“Trauma, this is Medevac One-One. Request immediate clearance. Suggest you alert surgical team…”
Helen’s eyes opened suddenly, bright blue against skin so pale it was almost transparent. She looked up into his worried face and said in wonder, “Peter?”
He leaned closer, whispering, “I’m here. Remember that I love you.”
She smiled drowsily and closed her eyes. “First time you ever told me that…” She slid away into unconsciousness.
The Blackhawk lifted off, climbing steeply as it flew north toward the hospital. Peter Thorn sat silently, holding Helen’s hand. Tears ran unnoticed down his face. He had some of the answers he had been so desperately searching for.
But the price had been terribly high. Too high.
CHAPTER 22
TARGET ACQUISITION
“Colonel Thorn?”
Peter Thorn stopped his pacing and turned abruptly at the sound of his name. He found himself facing a haggard, unhappy-looking man still wearing a surgical smock.
“My name is Doyle. I’m one of the trauma unit surgeons here. I understand you’re waiting for news about Agent Gray?”
Thorn nodded, holding his breath. He’d been besieging the medical center’s volunteers for information since the paramedics first wheeled Helen off the helicopter and straight into emergency surgery. After making an awkward call to her parents back in Indiana, he’d been left with nothing to do but stare at the pastel walls in the visitors’ lounge. Either that or to sit watching the clock as the hours ticked past.
He fought to control his voice and asked, “How is she?”
“Not good, Colonel,” Doyle said bluntly. He shook his head. “She suffered two very serious wounds. The first injury, the one to her femoral artery, was bad enough. We’ve repaired the artery after some pretty delicate vascular surgery. But she’d already lost a lot of blood and she was pretty shocky when she came in. Despite the units we’ve put into her, her blood pressure is still abnormally low.”
The surgeon frowned. “I think that’s from shock, but I want to monitor her very closely over the next several hours. If her pressure doesn’t start coming back up soon, that could be a sign of continued internal bleeding. I’d have to reopen her to make sure we didn’t miss anything the first time through.”
Thorn nodded grimly. He’d seen enough soldiers wounded in combat to know how dangerous shock could be. It was often the first killer. Helen had survived the first crisis point, but going back into surgery in her weakened state might be more than she could stand.
“Frankly, though, Colonel,” Doyle said slowly, almost reluctantly, “it’s Agent Gray’s second wound that worries me.”
The surgeon lowered his voice. “She took a 7.62 mm ricochet that shattered her pelvis. The impact pushed bone splinters and bullet fragments into her peritoneal cavity.” He spread his hands helplessly.
“So we’re looking at a severe risk of infection even a likelihood, I’d say. I’m starting her on a massive multi-
