His throat had closed up once before, halfway around the world.
Before coming to work for David’s company, he’d been in the military. Special Forces. Most recently Afghanistan, November 2001, as part of Operation We Think Bin Laden’s Here So We’re Going to Bomb You Back to the Stone Age, and he and his crew had been duking it out with some obscure Afghan warlord in the desert south of Kandahar. A warlord who just so happened to have a few canisters of ricin lying around. A skirmish went wrong; Ethan and his fellow gunmen found themselves tumbling into a medieval-era sandpit, and the warlord—some screw-head named Muhammad Gur—danced around the edge of the pit, throwing in his precious canisters of ricin, cackling.
Ricin, Ethan later read, was manufactured from the waste of castor beans. In weaponized mist form, ricin asks your body to stop making certain important proteins.
Okay, it’s not really
All Ethan knew was that his throat was closing up.
He’d been hit the worst out of anybody. He could have sworn that Muhammad Gur jerk had been aiming for him personally. Luckily, Ethan’s colleagues blasted their way out of the pit and dragged Ethan across the desert, looking for help. But when somebody looked down and saw Ethan frantically pointing at his throat, it quickly became clear that he might not make it to the medical supply tent.
A tracheotomy is a quick but complex procedure. In an emergency situation, you find the Adam’s apple, slide down a bit until you feel the next bump—the cricoid cartilage—then find the little valley between the two. Congrats, you’ve found the cricothyroid membrane. That is where you cut: half inch horizontally, half inch deep. Pinch the sides so that the incision opens like a fish mouth, then insert the tube. Don’t have a tube? Use a straw. Or the plastic tube of a ballpoint pen (with the ink stem removed, of course).
Out in the desert south of Kanadhar, Ethan’s savior had a Swiss Army pocketknife and a plastic straw. Saved his life.
But here, inside the fire tower at 1919 Market Street … Ethan was pretty much screwed.
Suffering from a serious Muhammad Gur flashback, Ethan stumbled backwards and imagined, if only for a few seconds, that he was trying to cling to the side of that medieval sand pit. Actually, it was a set of concrete stairs, leading down to the half landing between the thirty-sixth and the thirty-fifth floor.
Ethan tumbled down them. Backwards.
Every step hurt.
But not as bad as the agony in his throat.
This felt worse than ricin.
Castor beans his ass.
This was something else.
Amy stepped back from the door. She thought she heard something on the other side. The pounding of feet? People? Maybe security guards? Cops? A black bag crew? Someone dispatched to clean up their presumed-dead bodies?
Never mind. It could be help.
“Hello?”
She caught herself before pounding on the door. Just on the off
“Hello! Can you hear me?!”
Ethan recognized Amy’s voice immediately. Her sweet voice. He wished he could answer her.
Still, he was strangely pleased that she’d come looking for him. So much so, Ethan was even willing to forgive her the French martini thing.
Yes, honey, I can.
I wish I could tell you to come on in. But for one, my throat is sealed up tight, and for another, I’m thinking you’d receive a face-blast of the same chemical agent if you walked through that door.
Instead, Ethan found himself scrambling through his bag, searching for a pen.
Amy wanted to open the door, but worry gripped her hard. Even an off
But what if help were on the other side?
Help would have answered. Wouldn’t it?
The inner office door behind Amy opened.
Molly stood there, tears streaking down her face. Looks like she didn’t go to the bathroom after all, Amy thought. She must have been wandering around the office in a daze. It was understandable. How often did you shoot your boss in the head?
Amy felt bad for Molly, even if she had been part of David’s plan from the beginning. She’d said it herself: She knew the phone lines had been cut. Their cells disconnected. She even claimed to have seen the packages of sarin.
But who knew what David had done to her? She must have been too terrified to do anything but obey.
She certainly looked terrified now.
“Are you okay?” Amy asked redundantly.
Molly shook her head.
“Come on.” Amy opened up her arms.
Whatever was behind the north fire tower door would have to wait.
David Murphy had taken bullets before. Once in West Germany. Another time, the Sudan. Never a head shot, though. And this one felt fairly serious. Just the ricochet effect alone—the slug jarring his skull, transmitting aftershocks to the rest of his skeletal structure—was enough to make him want to roll over and go to sleep. Anything to stop the aching. He just felt …
Molly was a damn good shot.
Never would have guessed.
When his bosses sent her six months ago, David assumed he was being reprimanded. David loved salsa and wasabi; here was a woman who was plain vanilla yogurt. Nondescript hairstyle, mousy features, no build whatsoever. You could iron a shirt on her chest. David had carried on a bit with his previous charge, and it had gotten in the way—in the opinion of his handlers. It wasn’t as if David had forgotten about the network of hidden cameras throughout the floor; he just thought his handlers wouldn’t care.
David was wrong. They presented him with grainy black-and-white photos of a particularly steamy tryst on a lazy Tuesday afternoon. Dress pants were bunched up around ankles; skirts were hiked; lipstick smeared; hair mussed. His handler told him this was behavior unbecoming someone of his stature. Told him the object of his affection was being moved to a station in Dubai. Molly arrived the next day.
Sometimes, David thought about his previous charge. Thought about Dubai. They had built a fake ski resort right there in the middle of the desert. He wondered if she ever had the opportunity to enjoy it. He’d promised her they’d go skiing sometime.
But Molly didn’t look like she enjoyed skiing.
She didn’t look like she enjoyed much of anything.
His employers had a strange idea about staffing.
David had been brought in during the early, tentative days; his special blend of charm and ruthlessness carried him to the upper echelon of the fledgling intelligence organization—but not to a hiring position. That operation was always performed by other people. People David had never met.
David wished he would, someday. Just so he could slap them silly.
Look at Molly. Okay, okay, subtract the act of gross insubordination where she shot her own boss in the head.
