Jihad (4 page)

“Explain that you are not Turkish and that’s why you’re using English,” said Rockman, sounding like a play prompter when an actor went off script during rehearsal.

Lia, knowing it was unnecessary, ignored the voice in her head. She helped one of the nurses set up a blood pressure cuff. Asad’s blood pressure had been low in the ambulance and was even lower now—a deviation from the script considerably more severe than Lia’s dropped line.

“We need the neurologist very quickly,” the young doctor told one of the nurses. “And get Dr. Kayseri, the trauma expert.”

DEAN WATCHED RAMIL stare up at the ceiling as Dr. Ozdilick explained the situation. A prominent visitor, a businessman from Syria, had been involved in a car accident and had an unknown head injury. The hospital’s chief trauma expert had not answered his home phone, and their neurologist was on his break at a local Turkish bath; it might be a half hour or more before either arrived.

“Of course we must help,” said Ramil, glancing at Dean. “Where is the emergency room?”

“This way,” said Dr. Ozdilick, nodding gratefully. He started toward the elevator.

“Lia’s downstairs in the emergency room,” said Rockman from the Art Room as Dean got into the elevator. “Everything’s going great.”

THE ELEVATOR STOPPED but the door didn’t open right away. Ramil’s stomach lurched. For a half second he was sure the elevator had malfunctioned and they were trapped here.

To be tripped up by a ridiculous mechanical failure ...

The door sprung open. People rushed at them. Ramil followed Dr. Ozdilick down the hall. It was all very familiar—they’d constructed a set just like this in an abandoned warehouse near Baltimore.

“We can wash up here,” said Dr. Ozdilick, gesturing to the left. “I’ll find you a coat.”

During the rehearsals, Ramil had bantered with the actor playing Ozdilick, saying things like, “Do you arrange these emergencies for all your guests?” or, “Cutting down on staff costs by using visitors?” But he couldn’t find the words now. His stomach roiling, he wanted to fast forward everything, just get the knife into his hand, relax, focus on what he was doing.

Ramil glanced back at Dean. The Deep Black op wore the expression he always wore: stoic watchfulness. For some men, such an expression masked deep fear, but in Dean’s case it was an expression of who he was. From what Ramil knew of him, Dean never felt fear, or even butterflies in his stomach.

Ramil scrubbed his hands at the sink so thoroughly even the old doctor who had supervised his first residency would have been pleased. Dr. Özdilick had found white physician’s coats for him and Dean; Dean’s looked a size too small, but Ramil’s was a perfect fit.

“This way, doctors,” said Dr. Ozdilick.

A door swung open at the end of the corridor and Ramil caught a glimpse of daylight from the windows in the clinic beyond. His colon twisted ever tighter as he followed Dr. Özdilick down a corridor of examining spaces formed by curtains suspended from the ceiling. One flew open abruptly; Ramil jumped back as a man with a stubble beard and an ill-fitting suit loomed in the middle of the passage. He had a gun in his hand, and he pointed it at Dr. Özdilick.

“Help him,” demanded the man. “In the name of God, help him. He is dying.”

CHAPTER 7

WILLIAM RUBENS LOOKED up at the large screen at the front of the Art Room, watching the feed from one of the security cameras in the Istanbul hospital. If there was a commercial computer system in the world that Rubens’ team of computer specialists couldn’t break into, they hadn’t found it yet. Conveniently for Desk Three, the hospital’s security videos shared the same mainframe that housed its impressive—though not entirely secure—patient information system, where Asad’s vital signs were just now being recorded by a special set of instruments.

Contrary to the calculations of the experts who’d said the accident wouldn’t produce any real injuries, the driver of Asad bin Taysr’s car had suffered a compound leg fracture, but otherwise everything was proceeding smoothly. Lia had indicated that Asad had been stunned but not hurt, exactly as planned. Now, however, Rubens realized that the terror leader’s blood pressure numbers were not what they had expected. He walked up the wide steps at the center of the Art Room to a set of consoles where an NSA doctor was monitoring the situation, standing by to give the team advice if needed.

“Asad’s blood pressure—is it wrong?” he asked.

“It’s low,” said the doctor. “It’s the opposite of what was supposed to happen from the drugs Lia gave him. Perhaps it’s a reaction to the knockout gas.”

“I see.”

“If it’s a reaction, I wouldn’t want to give him any more anesthetic. It might kill him.”

“On the other hand, he may really have a severe head injury requiring surgery,” said Rubens.

“Yes, that’s the problem.”

CHAPTER 8

LIA SAW DR. RAMIL freeze as the bodyguard demanded that he save Asad. His face paled and his eyes seemed to push back in their sockets. He was the perfect picture of fear.

“Brother,” she whispered in her Egyptian Arabic, tugging at the bodyguard’s shoulder. “The gun may not be a good idea here. The doctors are not used to being threatened. If they are nervous, they may not be able to do their job.”

The man turned and glared down at her.

“And someone who sees it might call the police,” added Lia.

Something flickered in the bodyguard’s eyes—hate, she thought, though she wasn’t sure whether it was toward her or the police.

“I will be nearby,” the bodyguard told her. Lia needed the translator’s help to untangle his quick Syrian tongue. “If they do the slightest harm to him, scream, and I will run and send them to hell where they belong.”

DEAN NUDGED RAMIL into the curtained cubicle. The emergency room physician gave Dean and Ramil a quick read of the patient’s vital signs and condition: shallow head wound, unconscious, low blood pressure.

“There are other patients arriving,” said the doctor. “Can you take him?”

“Of course,” said Ramil smoothly.

Dean took a small penlight from a nearby tray and checked for a concussion. The pupils were nonreactive; Dean gave a loud “hmmmm.”

“Mr. Dean, there appears to be a problem with the patient’s blood pressure,” said the specialist back in the Art Room. “There’s a chance it may be a reaction to the drugs. His heart beat also seems irregular. You’ll want to make sure Dr. Ramil makes a note of it.”

Dean glanced up at Ramil, who was just checking Asad’s eyes with a borrowed penlight.

“Can we have skull films?” Dean asked. “We should get them right away. If there’s a hematoma—”

“I would strongly recommend a CT scan,” said Ramil. “As a precaution.”

“Yes, by all means,” said Dr. Ozdilick.

“Blood pressure is low,” said Dean.

“Is it?” said Ramil, bending over Asad.

RAMIL HAD ALREADY seen the blood pressure, but he pretended now to notice it for the first time. He was not a neurologist, but he had extensive experience with trauma patients, and he knew that this was not only unexpected but a bad sign. It might mean not only that Asad had really been injured in the accident, contrary to expectations, but that the injury was life threatening.

On the other hand, there were no obvious signs of cranial swelling. There was no obstruction to his airways and he was breathing normally. His temperature was fine.

If anything, the drugs that Asad had been given should have raised his blood pressure slightly. So was this a reaction to them?

They had planned to check for a hematoma. It was part of the standard medical procedure for a potentially serious head injury. And since the bug could be spotted on a scan, the films taken before the implant could be substituted in the hospital’s high-tech system later on if Asad was kept overnight for observation. Now, though, they had to take the scan to really rule out a head injury.

In layman’s terms, a hematoma was a pool of blood that leaked into a place where it shouldn’t be; it had to be removed or a patient might die from the injury. If this was the case, the low blood pressure would cause the brain to receive less oxygen. At the same time, the arteries in the brain would attempt to overcome the flow restriction and dilate, increasing blood flow and amplifying the injury. The result would be fatal unless Ramil operated immediately to relieve the pressure.

He could do that. He hadn’t expected to, but he could.

Then again, the patient didn’t have any of the other symptoms Ramil would expect to accompany that sort of head injury. This might be a reaction to the drugs he’d been given.

Something which also could be fatal.

“We need to insure positive ventilation,” said Ramil. “Is there an anesthesiologist?”

“He’s been paged,” said the nurse.

“We can’t wait. We need an intravenous, and we’ll want to ventilate,” Ramil told the nurse, adding that she should prepare doses of morphine and fentanyl, and to have ephedrine on hand.

Ephedrine especially, he thought, but he had to play it as someone who didn’t know what was going on would.

“Pressure dropped a little,” said Dean. He wasn’t looking at the instruments, and Ramil realized he had probably been prompted by the medical expert back in the Art Room.

“Six milligrams of ephedrine,” said Ramil.

He caught Dean looking at him as he waited for the hypo.

“He’ll be all right,” said Ramil.

CHAPTER 9

“TOMMY, YOU’RE STILL at the bath? You have to get over to the hospital and back those guys up.”

“Rockman, you’re a worry wart, you know that?” Tommy Karr blinked as he stepped into the sunlight. After the damp, heavy air of the bath, the cool breeze felt bracing. He turned left, then right, getting his bearings. He was four blocks from the hospital and the rental car he’d left there, but none of the streets in this section of Istanbul ran in a straight line. His sense of direction seemed to have been scraped off with the dead skin and hair in the camel’s hair mitt. Finally he decided he was supposed to go right, and set out.

“The messenger reported the doctor was sleeping and wouldn’t wake up five minutes ago,” said Rockman. “What have you been doing?”

“Getting dressed. Paying the bill. What have you been doing? Where’s Sandy?”

“I’m going to run all three of you since you’re all supposed to be at the hospital,” said Rockman.

“I’m still on the line if you need me, Tommy,” said Sandy Chafetz.

“Ooo, a
ménage à trois
.”

“You’re in a goofy mood,” said Chafetz.

“I think the doc had something extra in his tobacco,” said Karr.

CHAPTER 10

“CT IS CLEAN,” the doctor in the Art Room told Dean. He sounded both relieved and surprised. “Great. It was just a reaction to the drugs.”

Dr. Ramil, across from Dean, stood at the computer screen, waiting for the image to appear. Also sometimes called a CAT scan, the computed tomography or CT device was a special X-ray machine that took pictures of the skull from different angles. It showed a cross section of the head and could detect bleeding and soft tissue injuries much better than regular X-rays. To Dean, who’d briefly owned a pair of laundromats in Arizona, it looked like a large front-loading washing machine.

“He does not seem to have a hematoma,” said Ramil. “Would you doctors care to have a look?”

Dean gestured to Dr. Özdilick, letting him go ahead. The scan showed a large clump of gray in the middle of the skull, with the different areas of the brain shaded like a black and white satellite photo of mountains. Had there been any bleeding, it would have shown up as a bright spot, pushing the brain toward the other side of the skull.

“I will address the superficial wounds myself,” said Ramil. “Can I work across the hall?”

“Absolutely,” said Dr. Özdilick. “Thank you for this.”

Dean glanced at Lia as they walked with the gurney back to one of the curtained cubicles.

“Where’s the bodyguard?” he asked in a whisper.

“Outside.”

“Trouble with him?”

“Not yet,” she said, eyes still fixed on the hallway.

RAMIL BEGAN THE way he began all operations, big or small: he held his hands out in supplication and prayed that Allah would guide him.

When was done, he reached to the tray of instruments, chose a scalpel and a pincers. Examining the wound, he slipped the scalpel into the edge and gently cut a deeper flap. He glanced over at Dean, made sure he was watching the entrance to the cubicle, then removed the plastic vial with the bug implant from beneath his gown.

Sweat poured down his forehead. Ramil snapped the end of the vial with the pincers and removed the device, holding it gently in the tool’s claws. Roughly the size of two match-sticks, the bug was a small radio that could broadcast its signal roughly two miles, far enough to be picked up by a booster unit and transmitted back to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland. Once inserted, it would turn al-Qaeda’s number three man into the most important—and unknowing—informer the West had ever had.

Ramil made sure the bug was oriented properly before pushing it into the slot he’d cut behind Red Lion’s ear, making a small flap beneath the occipital belly of the occipitofrontalis muscle.

What a work of wonder the human body was, he thought, folding the skin over; the intricate handiwork of God was displayed in the tiniest piece of us.

“Mr. Dean,” he said, looking up. “It’s ready to be tested.”

DEAN TOOK A small handheld computer from his pocket and placed his thumb over the reader at the base. When the screen snapped on, he held the unit up and softly spoke his name. Then he tapped the menu at the top and selected “Jaw-breaker” from the choices.

The screen filled with colorful little balls. A casual observer familiar with handheld computers would think the program was the popular game that came standard with many of the machines. But it was really a “skin” for a program designed to test the transmitting strength of the device Ramil had just implanted.