Ashley nodded.
“If men died in Canada so my husband can live, I would like their names and as much information as you’re able to provide about the circumstances under which they were lost,” she said. Her voice had lowered another notch, and Megan realized she did not want to chance it carrying across the room to Gordian. “Thanksgiving’s just a few days from now. I need to call their families… express my gratitude and indebtedness. And my sorrow. They should know how important they are to me. That I’ll always be available to help them as best I can.”
Megan looked at her.
“It’s going to be difficult,” she said.
“Yes,” Ashley said. “I expect it will.”
Megan studied her face a moment, then took her handbag from where she’d hung it over the back of her chair.
“We’d better head down to the cafeteria,” she said.
Ashley nodded again, and went to the bed table to pick up her own purse, stepping away from the window.
The sniper breathed, gripping the stock of his weapon. There was a point when it took a tremendous act of will to refrain from firing. When everything was aligned, and you knew you had a sure kill, the target was almost inviting you to take the shot. But this wasn’t about either of the women. His orders were to wait for the signal.
Ashley had almost moved out of his sight picture when he finally got it.
Three shots, that was how many Megan would remember.
Three, fired in swift succession. She didn’t see any muzzle flashes. Didn’t hear any audible reports. The room simply appeared to begin exploding around her. But she was fairly certain of the number of shots.
The first obliterated most of the window just as she was about to rise from her chair. Glass pelted over her in a shower of hooks and needles, a large shard cutting deep into her left temple. She dove to the floor, saw Ashley standing frozen in place, looking from the knocked out window to Gordian, plaster spouting from the wall across the room now, bits and pieces of it flecking her blouse, shot number two. “Ashley, get down!” she shouted, blood streaming over her face in rivulets.
Ashley gave no indication that she’d heard her. Eyes wide with shock, she started toward the bed, toward her husband.
“Listen to me, Ash! The bullets can’t hit him over there, he’ll be okay, please,
Even before the third shot came, Megan was scrambling toward her on all fours. But the guard had already launched off his seat, propelling himself at Ashley, clutching her around the waist, taking her down to the floor, protecting her with his own body.
There was another crash as more jagged fragments of glass blew from the window frame, round number three, singing through the air, impacting the wall inches from the previous shot, punching a wide hole into it.
Then Megan saw the door fly open, and people rush into the room. Sword guards, hospital personnel, maybe eight or ten of them seeming to flood through the door all at once. She didn’t know whether it was the gunshots or the closed-circuit television cameras below the ceiling that alerted them, didn’t particularly care. She was just glad they had arrived.
Somebody was yelling to move Gordian out, move him
“Looks like you’ve got a nasty cut,” the man who’d raced over to Megan was saying. He helped her off the floor, urging her to keep her head below the windowsill. Meanwhile, she could see Ashley being hustled out of the room. “We’ll move you out of here, find a doctor to take care of it….”
She wiped a trickle of blood from her face, felt an awful stinging as her fingers passed over the gash.
“That can wait,” she said. “I want to make sure the boss is okay.”
“Ms. Breen, I’m not sure that’s advisable—”
“I’m doing it anyway,” she said.
As a youth in South Philly, Pete Nimec had learned how fiercely combative people could be about their turf, and the rough lessons driven home with fists and bats had stayed with him into adulthood. In negotiations to put Sword manpower on someone else’s beat, he never forgot the rules of the street. Keep the boundaries in mind. Pay your due respects. Know when to stand your ground — and when to meet your opposite number halfway.
The administration at San Jose Mercy had expressed a slew of reservations about his desire to take charge of Roger Gordian’s security on hospital premises, most of which revolved around matters of civil liability. Although they had been willing to tinker with routine security mechanisms, the board members were leery of any perceived attempt to infringe on their responsibility for a patient’s safeguard.
Nimec’s comeback was to advance a version of the arrangement he’d worked out with many of the foreign nations that played host to UpLink facilities. Absolute consideration would be given to San Jose Mercy’s legal and ethical obligations, with all procedures implemented by Sword to be subject to the board’s review. His plan had called for a single Sword employee to join the hospital’s uniformed security personnel at key entry and exit points, the establishment of a fixed guard post in the corridor leading toward Gordian’s room, installation of a Sword- monitored CCTV camera inside the room, and the designation of an additional space to which Gordian could be rapidly transferred in an emergency situation, its location to be known only to top members of his caregiving team. These specifics had been approved without exception. A final request that Sword techies be allowed to conduct a thorough security rundown of the hospital’s computer network was vetoed, but Nimec had expected that would be a touchy issue, and been prepared to abandon it for the sake of expedience.
It was Nimec’s inability to convince the hospital to let him protect its data resources — this single blanket restriction imposed on him — that gave the infiltrator a soft spot that could be exploited.
In a room just a few turns of the hall from the commotion stirred by the shooting, the man wearing the intern’s coat held the intravenous bag he’d readied, and listened as Roger Gordian was delivered to him. Laced in with the feeding solution’s carbohydrates, vitamins, and other nutrients was a massive concentration of digitalis — a glycoside effective at slowing rapid heartbeats when prescribed in therapeutic dosages — that was sufficient to bring about full cardiac arrest in the healthiest individual. Given his fragile state, Gordian would be dead within minutes after the drug entered his bloodstream.
It had been so easy, the infiltrator thought. Almost effortless. Hacking into the hospital’s computer system. Adding a name to the electronically generated list of staffers who were permitted access to Roger Gordian’s room. Then forging identification to match, a laminated card worn on his breast pocket, again nothing complicated. And while there was no official record of an area designated for Gordian’s emergency use, the nearness to his room of a conspicuously blocked off section of the ward had marked it as a probable fallback — and the infiltrator’s vigilance over the past few days had borne out that suspicion.
Now the sound of movement in the hall grew louder, nearer. Suddenly the door to the room swung open, and Gordian was rolled inside, surrounded by a bustle of orderlies, plainclothes guards, his wife, and the other woman who had been with him when the infiltrator radioed his firing command to the nearby rooftop.
He stepped back from the entry as the bed was pushed through, urgently waved the orderlies toward a nest of monitoring and life-support equipment.
Easy, so easy.
“Over here!” he said, raising his voice above the clamor. “Let’s get him hooked up!”
