“What are you taking for it?” asked Bloom.
“Aspirin.” She shook her head. “I’m OK.”
“We have hydrocodone.”
“No. You’ll need them for real patients.”
“As if you’re not hurt? You think you’re more stoic than the next person?”
“I saw a hell of a lot worse at Kruk.”
Bloom gathered a stethoscope, a thermometer, and gloves from a basket at the left side of the desk. “How do you know Gerard?”
“I have no idea who he is.”
“Lupo?”
Melissa shook her head. “He was a convenient ride. I needed to go. It sounded like a good solution.”
“You travel with people you don’t know?” said Bloom, her voice once more harsh. “That’s very dangerous.”
“One of my supervisors said he could be trusted. He’s a criminal, I know,” added Melissa. “But he didn’t try to hurt me.”
“How much did you pay him?”
“When my friend comes, I’ll give him a hundred dollars.”
“You have it?”
“My friend will have it. I don’t.”
“I hope your friend has a gun,” said Bloom. “Several.”
Melissa rose and started to follow Bloom out of the office. As she opened the door, they heard gunfire in the distance. Bloom tensed.
“What’s going on?” asked Melissa.
“I don’t know.” She turned around and went to the cabinet behind Melissa. Reaching inside, she took out a pistol — an older Walther automatic. She put it in her belt under her lab coat. “Get ready for anything.”
Danny drove the car to the clinic’s front door, scattering a flock of birds pecking at the dirt. A thin man in a white T-shirt coming out of the building jumped back, fear in his eyes as Danny slammed on the brakes. The two men on the back leaped down and pulled open the doors, helping the wounded out of the car.
Except for the soft purr of the engine, it was eerily silent. Danny picked up a woman who had been shot in the arm and carried her inside. She was a limp rag, passed out from the loss of blood but at least breathing.
That was more than he could say for the man they’d lain across the backseat. Danny stopped the two guards as they picked him up and moved him out of the car. He put his finger on the man’s pulse and shook his head.
They carried him in anyway.
The last person in the car was a young boy, unconscious but with a good pulse and steady breathing. Six or seven large splinters of wood were stuck in his face; small trickles of blood ran down across his chin and neck to his clothes. There was a stain on his pants where he’d wet himself, and another — this one caked blood, near his knee.
Danny picked him up, cradling him in his arms as he walked him inside the clinic. The reception room had become an emergency triage unit, with the patients spread out in the center of the floor. The people who’d been inside already stood at the far end, occasionally stealing glances at the wounded, but mostly trying to look anywhere else. Danny wanted to talk to Melissa, but she was tending one of the wounded, and he worried that going to her now would blow her cover, or his.
One of the men he’d come with tapped his shoulder, indicating that they should go back. Danny followed him silently. He glanced at the little boy as he left, hoping to give him some sign of encouragement. But the boy’s eyes were still closed. Danny wondered if the kid would ever overcome the real wounds of the day.
“The Chinese man put him up to this,” Nuri told Gerard as they surveyed the ruined pavilion. “Where is he?”
“I’ll kill him,” said Gerard. His glassy stare had been replaced by one even more frightening; his eyes were almost literally bulging from his sockets. Two veins pulsed in his neck.
“I’ll pay good money for him,” said Nuri calmly. “I know people who will pay us if we give him to them alive.”
“I kill him.”
“He’s worth more to me. To us. More alive.”
“Why would you save a murderer?”
The Mercedes rounded the corner, Gerard’s men hanging out the windows. Nuri went over to help the last of the wounded get in. Gerard stopped him as he bent to an old man.
“He’s not hurt,” said Gerard gruffly.
“He’s holding his side.” The man wasn’t bleeding but seemed in obvious pain. “We have to get him in the car and take them to your clinic.”
“No, they will find their own way,” said Gerard. “You must take me to my house in the hills.”
“I have other places to go.”
“Take me,” demanded Gerard.
The bodyguards bristled.
“What about the wounded?” asked Nuri.
“If you are my friend,” said Gerard, “you will help me, not them.”
“Get in the car,” said Nuri, deciding it was the wisest thing to do.
Chapter 27
It had gone to hell so quickly that Kimko couldn’t process all that had happened. But the basics were clear enough: Girma had shot up the center of town, killing or wounding at least a half-dozen people, all allied with Meur-tse Meur-tskk. There was certain to be a lot more fighting.
Kimko might have viewed the conflict as good for business if he hadn’t been mixed up in the middle of it.
His best plan, he thought, was to get away as quickly as possible. But Girma didn’t look ready to let him leave.
“You will see our great victory,” Girma told him as the Range Rover sped across the desert to the foothills where Sudan the Almighty First Liberation had a fortress. “We will crush our enemies.”
“You will need more ammunition. I can fetch it.”
“We are fine. After the battle.”
“Not before? Are you sure?”
“You will admire our mortars in action.”
“What are you going to do with mortars?”
“We will fight. We will destroy our enemy.”
“You can’t attack them in the city.”
“Don’t tell me how to fight!” screamed Girma. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out more khat leaves, thrusting them into his mouth.
Li Han studied the laptop screen, looking at the coding he had retrieved from the UAV’s brain. With the proper connection — and power from the batteries — getting in was easy.
Relatively.
The control interface was written in a variation C++. If he’d been back in his lab in Shanghai, accessing the underlying code would be trivial; he’d have any number of tools and a large number of computers to help him. But
