'Let's go,' Frick said, and they all headed for their rental cars.
'FBI is on the phone,' Delia called out.
Frick came back and took it. 'This is Ernie Sanders again. FBI, Washington, DC.'
'I know who you are,' Frick said, 'and I'm busy.'
'We don't want to interrupt you, but we do want to caution you.'
'Yeah, you are the guys who take calls from the cop killer and expect me to listen while you talk about civil rights.'
'No need to be hostile,' Ernie said. 'I'm just calling to tell you that it would be good if there were no more dead or wounded citizens.'
'Yeah, well, that's not necessarily up to me,' said Frick. 'You go back to your job and let me do mine.'
'I understand the frustration of local law enforcement when two of their number have been shot. I'm telling you that we know Robert Chase, and our experience is much different from yours. So we're not jumping to any conclusions. Under the law we have no authority to tell you to halt a murder investigation. What I can tell you,' Ernie said,
'is not to tread on the United States Constitution.'
Ben sat in what appeared to be a veterinary doctors' surgical suite consisting of one sparse room with off- yellow walls and an attached alcove on the far side of a pass-through area, where the surgical packs were kept. The room had a stainless-steel hydraulic operating table about five feet long by 2'/2 feet wide. There was a stainless-steel extension to the table to gain over six feet in total length and they apparently intended to use that for him; a monitor cart to track the various vital signs; a rolling surgical tray, where the surgical packs were opened and kept during the surgery; overhead lights of the sort common in hospitals; an anesthetic machine; and a second monitor sitting on a separate rolling cart, which looked as if it had come from a hospital.
Somewhat depressing, there was also an electro-cautery machine. They tended to use electro-cautery on dogs to stop the bleeders in lieu of hemostats where possible, and he wondered if he would be treated more like a dog or more like a human.
Ben had been around medical establishments, both human and animal, and was pretty familiar with everything. It all looked impressively businesslike.
They were rigging the IV that would run the paralytic drug succinylcholine into his arm.
It had no painkilling properties whatsoever and would serve only to leave him staring at the ceiling, able to hear, feel, and see the world around him, but unable to so much as spit over his chin. The man with the Arabic accent-who, Ben could now see, was tall and had long black hair-was showing him a stainless-steel bowl that looked rather like a large salad bowl.
'This is the bowl into which we will put your intestines. We will open your belly, tie off the bleeders, carefully lift out your innards from just below the duodenum to the middle of the large bowel, everything pretty much remaining intact and still connected, and then we will put them in here. We are putting on these straps because when we give you the antidote to the sux, you will be able to move, and we don't want you moving around and opening up bleeders. Once we have neutralized the succinylcholine, you will be able to talk, and if you start talking about important things, we will initiate a spinal block to dull the pain. Realize, please, that if you tell us everything, we will immediately anesthetize you, carefully put your intestines back inside your abdomen, and sew you up. However, I'm sure with your education, that you have determined that this is not a surgical suite designed for humans and there is a real risk of infection even if I do good work.'
Ben could barely comprehend what they intended. It was clearly worse than anything he might have imagined.
'Would you like to speak now and spare all of us the surgery?' the man asked.
'Why don't you fry them,' Ben said. 'Tripe's actually quite good, I understand.'
The man looked at him with amusement in his eyes. He knew who would win, and Ben now believed that they would disembowel him. Suddenly his joke didn't seem so clever.
'We'll have you take off your shirt and the rest of your clothes and lie down there. We'll begin a sterile prep, start the IV, and get you on the ventilator.'
Ben stood feeling like the next few steps were the death walk. He glanced at Stu.
'Hey, man, you don't want to do this,' Stu said.
'Gas pains worse than green apples?' With that, Ben now believed himself to be clinically insane, laughing at his own demise.
Stu, Ben, and the Arab watched while Ben removed all his clothes.
'Get on the table,' the Arab said. Ben just stood there staring at the gleaming stainless steel and the round holes in the perforated surface that would allow his blood to run down inside the table. He wondered where the blood went. 'We can do it the hard way,'
Len said
'Go to hell,' Ben said.
Someone threw open the door to the exam room.
'Wait a minute!' another man said. 'We're going to get Sarah James. The boss says to use her for the rough stuff. Anderson won't be able to take it and he'll be more coherent that way than with his guts in a bowl.'
The Arab man sighed and turned away. 'That is a complete change of plans.'
Ben felt a new level of fear at the mention of Sarah's name. Was this true? Was it a choreographed act? A bluff?
'We'll be taking Dr. Anderson to her location,' the new man said. 'You can do it there.
She's by herself in her house. We'll have her in minutes. Unless, of course, Dr. Anderson wants us to stop, wants to spare her the terror.'
'We may take out her uterus first. See how he likes that,' the self-styled surgeon said.
'Animals,' Ben said.
Ben took a closer look at the newly arrived man. He carried a small automatic rifle and wore a camouflage suit. His face triggered a faint glimmer in Ben's memory.
CHAPTER 18
Sarah James sat in the kitchen of her cedar home in a wooden chair that was not as comfortable as the chairs or sofa in the great room. But she had no interest in relaxing or watching more of Flick's manufactured history on the evening news. She had turned out the lights, believing it was safer. She worried about Ben.
The great room off the kitchen had a high-prow point that looked out into the second-growth forest, but it did not provide a view up the driveway. For that, she would need to stand and look out the kitchen window. In the dark, though, the lights of any approaching vehicle did illuminate the interior of the kitchen, turning the cedar golden.
So she waited for the tiny photons to arrive in their inexplicable waves.
She wore a dress for Ben; he was old-fashioned enough to like them, although on her he never seemed to notice-at least until recently and then she wasn't sure. It was painful but true and she didn't believe in kidding herself. Her romantic interest in Ben had been relatively recent and very secret and frankly had surprised her. He was twenty years her senior and she hadn't known that she could feel such physical love for an older man until one day she was looking at him and wanted to go crazy on his desktop.
Tonight, under her dress, she wore a bathing suit-not for flirtation but as a necessary part of the next step in their journey. She glanced at her watch: about fifteen minutes left.
She used memories of Ben to stave off the anxiety. One of her favorites had occurred on a Friday afternoon several months previous. It had been time to go back home to gardening, tennis, maybe a little golf.
She and Ben were discussing lab supplies and new summer interns from the university.
They were standing close and, for some reason after all those years, she had felt so familiar that she inexplicably put her hand on Ben's belly and sort of patted it. There had been some conversation about whether he was getting fat. He wasn't.
Then he took hold of her hand and looked down at her and Sarah knew he was going to kiss her. But he
