Cold Barrel Zero (19 page)

I heard the brush of his boots as he stepped away, then I leaped for him.

He had his hand on his pistol by the time I hit his back. I pressed the shears under his jawline, felt the skin stretch and tent, looked around the room, and found myself at the intersection of three gun barrels—Hayes's team, arrayed to one side. I kept my head behind Hayes's as much as possible. These guys had drilled hostage rescues in the dark, on bucking ships and planes, practiced shooting until their hands bled. Killing me would be as tough as opening a jar.

“Don't fire,” Hayes said. “Byrne, you have to listen.”

“Where's Kelly?”

“This isn't what you think.”

“Where the hell is she? Is she okay?”

I saw it in their eyes before I felt it. Someone was behind me. A hand clamped on my shoulder.

I turned, kept the shears on Hayes's neck, and hit the person behind me with my forearm.

“Tom!”

Kelly stumbled back.

CARO AND RIGGS
waited in the wardroom, a cramped dining area with vinyl-upholstered chairs; luxurious by shipboard standards. Riggs ran his thumb over the handle of an empty coffee cup and glanced at the clock.

“Where are they?”

Caro had traced Nazar's call releasing the evidence. It had gone to an estate lawyer named Shah in Laguna Niguel. Caro sent his men to Shah's office to intercept him before he could deliver the evidence.

That had been forty minutes ago.

Caro checked his phone. “I don't know. I can send—”

The mobile buzzed in his hand. He answered it, and the other man's voice came through the line. “You're sure?” he asked.

The other party spoke.

“Do not move. I'll deal with you later.”

He ended the call.

“What happened?” Riggs asked.

“They found Shah. He must have seen them. He fled. A hundred and twenty miles an hour on the Five in his Jaguar. He couldn't handle it, lost control, and went headfirst into a divider. He's dead.”

“The evidence?”

“He exited his office with a strongbox. They were able to take it before the police and EMTs arrived, pulled it from the car. But it was empty.”

“What?”

“They think he was going to retrieve the evidence.”

“From where?”

“We don't know.”

Riggs threw the mug against the bulkhead. The ceramic shattered.

“Now what the fuck do we do?”

“Nazar is still alive?” Caro asked.

“Yes. No one touched her.”

“Good. Because she's the only one who can lead us to it.”

“She'll never give it up.”

“There are ways. What about this mess up in LA at the Egyptian embassy?”

“I don't know. There's no word.”

“And Hayes?”

“We have narrowed it down to his rally site, Italy. We'll have a team there in five minutes.”

“It's not his style to wait. We have to assume he's coming for us.” Caro took a photo from his pocket and slid it across the table. It was a woman holding a child.

“Who is that?”

“Hayes's wife and daughter,” Caro said. “Cox found their address. It's near Raleigh.” Lauren Hayes had gone back to her maiden name, Parker, and moved three times since the scandal. She had cut off all contact with the command and the other unit wives in an attempt to distance herself from her husband's crimes.

“We should have gotten to them first. We need the leverage.”

“There are still ways to use her to control Hayes, even after the authorities get involved,” Caro said. “Tell them that she is dangerous and involved in the plot, harboring, collaborating. We can still get to her. Hayes will have to choose between coming after us and saving his wife.”

“I'll get started.”

“Leave Nazar to me,” Caro said.

He climbed down the ladders to the third deck. Hall stood outside the compartment. Caro approached, dialed in the combination to the door, and opened it.

Riggs remained in the passageway as Hall followed Caro inside. Caro flicked open the knife and moved toward the old woman chained to the bulkhead. She looked up, stared straight into his blue eyes.

“You couldn't kill me before, and you can't kill me now, Aziz.”

Of course it was his mother. Always the whore for whatever army passed through.

He wasn't going to kill her. That was true. Not yet.

“Leave us,” he said to Hall.

The door slammed shut behind him. He balanced the knife in his hand and took a step closer.

“KELLY!” I SAID
and reached for her as she stumbled back. She caught my hand and kept herself from falling. “Are you okay?”

She straightened up, touched her face. “Drop the shears, Tom,” she said. “These guys saved us, both of us. They weren't the ones shooting at us. It was Riggs and his men.”

She had a gun holstered on her hip. If she was being coerced, there's no way she'd be armed. I saw it in her manner as well: she was telling the truth.

My hand fell to my side. Hayes hovered to my left, close enough to take me down.

The shears dropped from my fingers to the floor, and I wrapped my arms around Kelly, feeling her warmth and the heart beating in her chest.

“Thank God you're okay,” I said.

“You too.”

A faint red mark showed on her cheek where my arm had hit.

“Sorry about that,” I said.

“Don't worry. I thought you knew how to throw a punch.”

That got me smiling, Hayes too.

A neat row of stitches ran just above her hairline. “That's nice work,” I said.

“Hayes did it,” she replied. “He and Cook had to fight their way to us.”

That made sense. I hadn't been able to understand how I'd managed to buy time with my 9 mm against two guys with MP7s.

A crumpled menu lay on the counter—Volare Pizza Restaurant. “Let me guess. We're in Italy.”

“Yes. Should be safe for now.”

I looked into the living room and saw a man lying on the floor, bandages covering his shoulder and neck. Standing over him was a man I barely recognized. The last time I had seen him was back at the safe house near the Mexican border. It was Hayes's medic.

His left hand was bandaged, the broken fingers still splinted. The neck wound was covered but clearly wasn't causing any problems since he was in good enough shape to be checking on the casualty.

“Green, was it?”

“Yeah.”

“How are you doing?”

“All right. Takes some getting used to.” He lifted his hand. “Thanks for fixing me up.”

“Don't mention it. What happened to him?”

I knelt over the casualty. It was Cook, the youngest of the crew. His right cheek and most of the ear was gone.

“Multiple gunshot wounds, shrapnel. Blunt-force trauma to his chest.”

“Was that for us?” I asked Hayes.

“He was doing the job, that's all. Don't worry about it.”

“Had him stable, but something's off. Heart rate is rising, BP is dropping.”

Cook looked up at us with terror in his eyes. He tried to talk but could only pant.

I looked at his trachea, shifted almost imperceptibly to his left. His chest seemed hyperexpanded.

“This is going to suck for a second, okay?”

Cook nodded. He was barely breathing now. If this kept going, circulatory collapse was a few minutes away.

I put my ear to his chest, tapped it on the left and then the right. The right sounded like a drum, and there was no trace of air moving.

I looked to Green.

“Tension pneumothorax?” he said.

Trauma to the chest, often a broken rib, can tear a lung. With each breath the patient takes, air enters the lung and then escapes into the chest cavity. Sometimes the tear works like a one-way valve, allowing air to leave the lung and enter the chest but not letting the air back out. Pressure in the chest cavity builds, causing the lung to collapse and, as with Cook here, compressing the vena cava and other major blood vessels, obstructing the blood flow to the heart.

“You have a chest tube?” I asked.

“No. Just the needle kit.” He handed me a package containing a 15-gauge needle catheter attached to a syringe, a length of tubing, and a valve, and we both put on gloves.

“You want to do it?” I asked as I tore open the plastic, doing my best to keep everything sterile. Green had been shattered, but he could rebuild.

He looked from me to the kit and back. Cook moaned and blacked out.

“Sure.” 

Green took the needle catheter in his right hand as I swabbed the right side of the chest wall with Betadine. He inserted it into the skin about two inches below the middle of the collarbone. His hand didn't shake.

He advanced the needle into the chest, pulling back on the plunger, and suddenly air rushed into the syringe. Green smiled as he threaded the catheter farther into the space and then removed the needle and syringe. The trapped air that had been compressing the heart and lungs now had a way out. He'd just saved this man's life.

I grabbed a stethoscope and listened; the lung had partially reinflated, and there were breath sounds bilaterally. “Good,” I said as I secured the catheter.

Green reached for a Heimlich valve, a one-way valve that would let air out when Cook exhaled but seal off when he inhaled, preventing another tension pneumo.

“It's broken,” Green said.

I found a sterile surgical glove, snipped off one of the fingers, cut the tip off that, then taped it to the end of the catheter. It looked like a small windsock hanging from a plastic tube.

As Cook exhaled, air passed through the latex sleeve. When he breathed in, it sealed off, wrinkling up against itself, maintaining the vacuum in the space around the lung.

“That's how we used to do it before the kits, with a glove or a condom.”

 “Hayes told me you were a corpsman. You're a full doctor now?”

“Yeah.”

“How long did that take?”

“A decade, not counting pre-reqs and military obligations.”

“Jesus. I'll be lucky if I can stick a vein.”

I pointed to his injured hand. “Let me take a look at that.”

He held it out. I unwrapped the bandage and inspected the damage. There was minimal swelling, and he had full strength and normal sensation in the splinted fingers. It wasn't as bad as I'd thought.

“A good orthopedist and you'll be a hundred percent.”

“I'll be lucky if I live to see tomorrow.”

“We'll make it,” I said, and I handed him a pair of shears. Medics and corpsmen wore them on their chests, clipped to the webbing of their body armor, almost like badges. “And then find an ortho guy. You'll be all right. From everything Hayes told me, you'd make a fine doctor.”

“Thanks.” He put the scissors in his chest pocket, then checked Cook's blood pressure, moving confidently.

“Hey,” Cook said, eyes closed and slurring the words as he came to. “Green. You're alive. That's fucking awesome.” He opened his eyes and focused on the tube coming out of his chest. The finger of the surgical glove filled and collapsed like a flag in a light breeze.

“What the hell is that?”

“A flutter valve. It's keeping you alive.”

“Okay. Cool. My face hurts, man. How's my face?”

“It's not too bad. You're going to be fine.”

“You're lying through your teeth, Green, but thanks. How'd I do?”

“You did great. Just take it easy.”

“It feels so good to breathe. Oh.” He closed his eyes again, took long deep breaths for a while. “Green…come here. I need to tell you something.”

“You should rest.”

“Green.” He waved him closer. Green knelt beside him like a priest administering last rites.

“What is it, Cook? Are you okay?”

“How many South Americans”—he paused, winced against the pain—“does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“I don't know, Cook.”

“A Brazilian.”

Green snorted, then started laughing.

I left them and walked back to Hayes. “So Riggs went after Nazar at the same time we did.”

“Yes.”

“Jesus. I thought…I thought you were coming for us.”

Hayes and his crew had done everything they could to pose as Riggs's men in order to mislead and provoke Nazar when they ambushed her. So when Riggs actually showed up, guns out, I assumed his shooters were Hayes and the team. “How'd they find us?”

“Ward picked up a second signal coming from Nazar's cell. They must have been tracking her, eavesdropping on her conversations. We tried to turn them against each other. We did our job too well.”

I took one of the water bottles, poured some out into my hand, and wiped my face off.

“I'm sorry,” I said to Hayes.

“You had no way of knowing who was taking shots at you. You trust me now?”

I drank some of the water. Swallowing made the pain in my skull flare up.

“I have to see that shipment you stole from the armored truck,” I said. “I need to know what I'm part of.”

Hayes crossed his arms. “For a guy who just tried to kill me, you're asking for a lot of trust.” He considered it for a moment. “You've earned it, but you can't see it. The trunk is gone, Byrne.”

“What is it?” I couldn't shake the images from Revelation, the seven seals, the seven trumpets. “Riggs had me thinking it was some kind of weapon, nuke or bio.”

“It's the ultimate weapon, really.”

“What did you do?”

“We dropped the trunk outside the Egyptian consulate. They should be opening it any second now, depending on their security posture.”

“And then what?”

“Nothing. It's empty. The trunk was a false front, Byrne, to smuggle the shipment in. The Egyptians will have it in a museum soon unless some cultural attaché turns it around on the black market. We just needed to get rid of it. What matters is what was inside.”

He walked over to a black trunk, one of eight stacked against the wall. I stepped closer, and he opened the lid.