Part 11 (1/2)

”Your credibility shouldn't be at issue here.”

Ricci's features beamed with sudden intensity. ”I told you I don't need to be defended. Not by you or anybody else.”

Megan raised her hand in a curtailing gesture.

”Wait,” she said. ”I'm not trying to be antagonistic, and apologize if that's how I came across. It's been a wearing day.”

Ricci looked at her in silence, those penetrating eyes back on her face.

”I think we should take a step back,” she said. ”Concentrate on your feelings about the job with UpLink.”

Ricci looked at her a while longer. At last he exhaled audibly.

”I don't know,” he said. ”To be straight, I'm not sure it's something I'd want any part of, or even that I've got the background for. This is big stuff. Seems to me you ought to be looking at heavy artillery, not a Police Special.”

Nimec leaned forward, his hands clasped on his lap.

”Except that the background you're so quick to dismiss includes four years with SEAL Team Six, an elite within an elite created for ant.i.terrorist operations,” he said. ”And that's just for openers.”

”Pete--”

Nimec cut him short. ”After leaving the military in '94 you joined the Boston police, earned your first-cla.s.s detective s.h.i.+eld in record time. Worked deep cover with the Organized Crime Task Force, an a.s.signment for which you were particularly well-suited because of your experiences with ST 6, where one of your special areas of expertise was infiltration techniques. Upon conclusion of a major racketeering investigation you requested a transfer to the Homicide Division and stuck with it until the bad affair we've been talking about.”

Ricci knelt there by the stove, looking across the room at him.

”Running down my stats doesn't change how I feel,” he said. ”There are ten years between me and the service. That's a long time.”

Nimec shook his head.

”I don't get you, Tom,” he said. ”n.o.body's twisting arms, but this isn't a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. It deserves fair consideration. By all of us. We should at least agree to--”

He abruptly broke off. Set to its vibration mode, the palm phone in his s.h.i.+rt pocket had silently indicated he was receiving a call.

”One second,” he said, holding up his pointer finger.

He took out the phone, flipped open the mouthpiece, and answered.

His features showed surprise, then sharp attention, then a mixture of both.

It was Cody from Mato Gra.s.so.

Speaking in the same tone of controlled urgency he had used with Roger Gordian, Cody ran down the situation in Brazil for the second time in less than ten minutes, his voice routed via that nation's conventional landlines to an UpLink satellite gateway in northern Argentina, transmitted to a low-earth-orbit communications satellite, electronically amplified, retransmitted to a tracking antenna operated by a local cellular service in coastal Maine, and sent on to Nimec's handset all virtually instantaneously.

Nimec asked something in a hushed voice, listened, whispered into the phone again, and ended the call.

”Pete, what is it?” Megan said, reading the deep concern on his face.

He kept the phone open in his hand.

”Trouble,” he said. ”A level-one in Brazil.”

She looked at him knowingly. His use of the code meant a crisis of the gravest nature had occurred, and that he did not want to go into details about it in Ricci's presence.

”Roger been informed?” she asked.

He nodded.

”We'd better check in with him,” he said. ”Got a feeling he's going to want us back in San Jose right away.” The doctors knew they had their job cut out the moment he was brought into the emergency room.

It would have been clear even to an untrained observer that he was in terrible shape; clear from his near-comatose state; clear from all the blood that had soaked from the gaping hole in his belly through his clothing, the thin blankets covering him, and the uniforms of the technicians who had delivered him on the stretcher; clear from the blue cast of his skin and the weak, irregular rhythm of his breath.

To the expert eye, these physiological signs pointed toward specific life-threatening complications that would have to be a.s.sessed and treated without losing an instant. The severe hemorrhaging alone would have led them to evaluate him for shock, but his lividity left scant doubt of its onset, and the blood pressure cuffs placed on his arm as his stretcher was rolled in had given systolic and diastolic readings of zero over less than zero, indicating a near-cessation of his circulatory processes. His thready breathing also suggested that a tension pneumothorax--in laymen's terms, an air pocket between the lungs and their surrounding tissues developing as a result of shock--was putting pressure on the lungs and causing them to fully or partially collapse.

The condition would lead to respiratory failure and certain death unless relieved by external means.

Managing a medical crisis requires a constantly unfolding and frequently accelerating series of prioritizations. In this case the priority was to stabilize his vital functions even before the injuries to his internal organs could be determined by Xrays and exploratory abdominal surgery. Only then would it be known with certainty how many times he'd been shot, or what path the bullet, bullets, or bullet fragments had taken.

With the clock ticking, the surgeon in charge at once began giving directions to his a.s.sistants in a rapid and a.s.sertive manner.

”I want MASTs ...”

This being an acronym for medical shock trousers, which could be slipped onto the patient and inflated with air to force blood up from his lower extremities to his heart and brain.

”... seven units of packed RBCs ...”

Shorthand for red blood cells, the hemoglobin-rich component of blood that provides life-giving oxygen to body tissues. In a typical situation requiring transfusion, the patients's serum is cross-matched for compatibility with a sample of the blood product to be administered, but because he was an employee of UpLink, this man's type was already on file on the doctors' computer database, eliminating that step and conserving precious minutes.

”... a big line ...”

A wide intravenous catheter used to get the RBCs into his system by quick, ma.s.sive transfusion.

”... and a needle aspirator in him stat stat!”

The needle aspirator being a large syringe used to drain the air out of the pneumothorax, inflate the lungs, and restore normal breathing; stat, medical jargon for I need it done five seconds ago, I need it done five seconds ago, a word derived and abbreviated from the original Latin a word derived and abbreviated from the original Latin statim, statim, meaning immediately. meaning immediately.

While the image of medical professionals working in conditions of ordered, clockwork sterility is a common one, nothing will dispel it faster than a glimpse inside a trauma room, where the battle to save lives is a close, tense, chaotic, messy, sweaty affair. Jabbing a 14-gauge big-bore needle into the chest of a powerfully built two-hundred-pound man, clenching the attached syringe in your fist and unsuccessfully attempting to insert it between hard slabs of pectoral muscle once, twice, and again before finally making a clean entry, then drawing out the plunger and getting a rush of warm, moist air in your face as the pocket that had formed around the lungs decompressed, was n.o.body's idea of a picnic--as the young doctor who had been hastily summoned on duty tonight, and who was now toiling away over Rollie Thibodeau here in the ISS facility's critical-care unit, trying to prevent him from dying before he made it onto an operating table, would have attested if he'd had the time. But he was too busy following the instructions called out by the chief physician, himself standing over the patient, working to get the big line and saline IVs connected to him in a hurry.

With the syringe in place and the air suctioned from the pneumothorax, it was essential to prevent its recurrence and keep the patient breathing. This meant going ahead with a full closed-tube thorascostomy.

The first step was to create an airtight seal around the tube. Barely registering the frantic activity around him, the young doctor lifted a scalpel from an instrument tray and sliced into the flesh between the ribs, making a horizontal incision. Then he took a Kelly clamp off the tray and pushed it into the incision, holding it by the shaft, expanding it to spread the soft tissue and create a tunnel for his finger. Blood splashed up around the clamp as he removed it from the opening and pressed his gloved finger between the lips of the cut, going in as deep as his knuckle, carefully feeling for the lung and diaphragm. After a.s.suring himself that he had penetrated through to the intrapleural area--the s.p.a.ce between the lungs and ribs where the air pocket had formed--he asked a scrub nurse for the chest tube and carefully guided it into the opening.

He paused, studied the patient, and exhaled a sigh of relief. The patient's breathing was stronger and more regular, his skin color vastly improved. A water collection system at the opposite end of the chest tube would keep the air draining from the patient's chest while insuring that no air was drawn back into it. To complete the procedure, the young doctor would suture the skin around the tube to preserve the seal.

A very long night still lay ahead, but Thibodeau would have something like a fighting chance as the doctors hustled him into the OR, opened him up, and got a look at the extent of the damage that had been done inside him.

SIX.