Resistant (10 page)

“Well, tell me, does that field of yours have enough space in it to land a helicopter?”

CHAPTER 11

           On the heels of the Social Security Act, the work of Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur and his Committee on the Costs of Medical Care lies in wait, readying to unleash a flurry of new legislation with a bite far bigger than its bark.

        
—LANCASTER R. HILL,
Climbing the Mountain
, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1941, P. 72

The pounding inside Special Agent Tim Vaill’s head showed no signs of letting up. If anything, it might have been getting worse. The rhythmic beating against his temples made him think of The Who’s Keith Moon, fanatically pounding away on his bass drum.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Vaill squinted, trying to block out the light, but that only seemed to make his headache worse.

Where in the hell am I?

What happened to me?

Feeling dizzy now, Vaill struggled to get oriented. In fits and starts, like free-floating pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, his thoughts began drifting into place. He remembered falling—falling backward.

Where?

Stairs … he had fallen backward down a flight of stairs.

But why?

Had he been pushed? Bit by bit, his memory returned, bringing with it a different sort of pain, this one spiked with anger.

Burke. I was shot by fucking Alexander Burke.

That thought quickly led into another—an image vivid and powerful enough to tighten around his throat like a python.

Maria!

His heart stopped. Maria had been there right beside him. Vaill concentrated, trying to wrangle more pieces of those shrouded events from his aching and battered brain. He winced from the effort. Out of desperation, he bit down on his tongue, trying to redirect some discomfort from the amplified thumping in his skull. The spike in pain did little to jar loose his memory of her. No matter how hard he concentrated, he had no clue as to her fate. But somewhere at the edge of his awareness he sensed it was bad.

Vaill pawed the grit from his eyes and forced them open.

How long have I been asleep?

He took some time to assess his surroundings. He was lying on a comfortable bed.

What bed? Where?

Glancing down, he saw that his left hand was wrapped in some sort of gauze bandage. An IV line had been attached to a vein alongside the wrist of his right arm. A nearby purple bruise suggested it had not been an easy vessel to nail. There were a pair of windows in the wall to his left. The blinds were open, allowing bright sunlight to spill into the room. It had been late in the day when he’d been shot. Prayer time for Dr. Kazimi.

How long?… How long have I been here?… Maria. What happened to Maria?

He was seized by an image of her—a distorted mental picture, woefully out of focus, swirling like smoke. She was falling—melting like the witch in
The Wizard of Oz
. Moments later, faces intruded on the unsettling picture.

Who are they? When will the pain in my head go away? Where’s Maria? What happened to her?

“Tim, are you with us? Can you hear me?… Will he be able to speak?”

The words dragged Vaill out of his fog. He recognized the steely, authoritative voice immediately. It belonged to Beth Snyder, FBI director of Special Operations—his boss. Snyder, whose notion of time off was a Sunday afternoon nap in the office, rarely went to see an agent in person unless it was to attend their funeral or visit them in the hospital. Barring some great cosmic joke, the hard-boiled woman was far from Vaill’s idea of heaven, so he assumed he was in a hospital somewhere.

“Give him time,” a man with an accent said. “His wound was not life-threatening, but it was a serious injury.”

Wanting to change positions, Vaill pushed back on his elbows to prop himself up. Even that slight movement sent lightning bolts crackling through his head. Clenching his teeth, his vision having gone white, he forced himself to move past the pain. He needed to look Snyder in the eyes and ask the question he could not seem to answer for himself.

“Maria,” he managed. His voice was a strangled croak, with barely enough power to escape his parched throat. He tried again, digging deeper, ignoring the pain the way he had been taught at Quantico. “Maria … where is she?” Even though Vaill wanted water more than air, all he could do was keep asking for her. Each time he spoke her name he expected a sliver of memory to return, but nothing came.

“Agent Vaill, you should try to keep your movements to a minimum.”

The stranger’s accented voice again—a doctor of some sort, Vaill now believed.

“Who … are you … Where is Maria?”

Vaill inched his head around to face the man—an Indian or Pakistani, wearing turquoise hospital scrubs beneath a long, white coat with his name stitched in blue script above the breast pocket. Beth stood beside him, her expression grave.

“Agent Vaill, my name is Dr. Nayan Gunter. I’m a neurosurgeon here at Eisenhower Memorial Hospital—
your
neurosurgeon. You were shot while on duty. You’ve suffered a fairly significant injury to your left temporal lobe, but the bullet was easy to remove, and you seem to be recovering nicely.”

The gunshot.

Vaill’s memory began to solidify. A bullet had struck him mid-chest, impacting his Kevlar vest hard enough to knock him off balance. He was falling backward when a second bullet hit. The fall prevented what most certainly would have been a kill shot to the head.

“Maria … where is she?”

Beth spoke now. “Tim, you’re doing well, but it’s going to take some time for you to recover. It’s a miracle that you’re alive.”

Then why don’t I feel like a miracle? What’s gnawing at my guts? Why do I feel like I’ve been handed some sort of death sentence—something that would leave me crippled for the rest of my life?… Maria …

Beth took hold of his hand—not a normal gesture for her. Her heart had been calcified from years of wading waist-deep in human misery.

“Tim, you need to brace yourself,” he heard her say.

Then it came to him, like a tsunami crashing down, drowning him in despair. He swallowed back a jet of bile. What was a hazy recollection gave way to vivid detail. Maria’s head snapping back … The hole in her forehead … Blood exploding out from her ruptured skull … The gruesome crimson spray on the wall behind her … Her body going limp as though she’d been unplugged from some life-giving machinery … Her horribly vacant eyes.

Vaill remembered now. He remembered his programming kicking in with knee-jerk speed. He remembered going for his gun, obsessed only with shooting Alexander Burke dead. But either the man was simply faster, or seeing Maria crumple had cost Vaill a split second. Now, he was imprisoned in a hospital room, about to be told by his boss that his wife was dead.

Tears stung the corners of his eyes as Snyder talked on, but he battled them back. He would cry for Maria later. He would cry rivers. But first, there was a promise to be made—a commitment to vengeance. Vaill had always been cautious when it came to making promises. But not this time.

He and Maria had dated for two years after they met at Quantico and fell instantly in love. More than once over those two years, she laughed at the irony that he was afraid of nothing except commitment. His response was that he had been raised never to break a promise, and the promise of marriage was a commitment unlike any other. A month after that, she gave him a final chance to step up or lose her, and he proposed on the spot. He had never once regretted making that pledge, nor had he ever had any problem keeping it. Now, as Beth Snyder talked on, Vaill made another promise. He would find Special Agent Alexander Burke and kill him … or die.

“Tim, I’m so sorry,” Snyder was saying. “Every agent at the Bureau is working nonstop to find the bastard. We’re going to get him, Tim. I promise we’re going to nail him.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Two days now.”

Vaill’s throat tightened. Each breath was an effort. Maria had been dead for two days and until this moment, he did not even know it. What was her family doing? Who had been notified? Where was her body? When was her funeral? He should have been with her family, grieving alongside them, not lying helpless in a hospital bed. In twelve years of marriage, he had grown as close to Maria’s family as he was to his own. He and Maria had not been blessed with children of their own, but they had plans. Now, in a burst of noise and smoke, those plans had all been blown away.

“I need to talk to you alone,” Vaill said to Snyder, his whisper stronger than it had been.

Snyder looked to the doctor. Reluctantly, it seemed, Gunter nodded.

“He needs rest,” the surgeon said. “Given the nature of his injury, his recovery is quite remarkable, but the damage to his temporal lobe might be significant.”

“I’m sure a few minutes alone with me won’t do him harm,” Snyder said. “Thank you, doctor. Thank you for understanding.”

Vaill waited until he heard the door close. His parched throat begged for water. Snyder, sensing his need, gave him some ice chips on a spoon, followed by a small sip through a plastic straw. She was as tough as anyone Vaill had ever worked with, but her compassion was genuine. Vaill knew she was sick with guilt at having been taken in by a dirty agent.

“What is it?” she asked. “Trust me, Tim, you’re safe. We’ve got guards out there around the clock hoping that Burke tries to finish what he started.”

“I need to get him, Beth,” Vaill said. “I need to hurt him, and then I need to kill him.”

“Tim, you know we don’t operate that way. I want you to go on medical leave for a while. The agents, and me especially, want him almost as badly as you do. We’ll take care of it.”

“That’s what I knew you’d say. But I’m not going on any medical leave. I’m going back on duty and you’ve got to put me on the case to get him.”

“I’m sorry, Tim. I know you’re hurting, but I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Does it matter?”

Vaill took another few sips of water. This time he held the plastic cup himself.

“Beth,” he said, “you know how close Maria and I were. We were getting ready to adopt a kid. The forms have all been filled out. I can show them to you. It could have happened any day. That fucker killed her. He killed the only woman I’ve ever loved. You’re the one who put us together with Burke on the Kazimi detail.
Please.
You owe it to me to let me find him.”

Snyder took a step back from the bed.

“I’m not sure,” she said.

“But you’re not saying no?”

“I’ll talk it over with your doctor, and give the situation some serious thought, okay?”

Vaill nodded.

“She was my world, Beth. She was everything to me and I watched her head get blown apart.”

“You stay strong, Tim,” Snyder said, squeezing his hand. “I’ll speak with Dr. Gunter, then I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

Vaill dismissed her with a wave. Slowly, his eyes closed. He began to drift off wondering whether he had the strength to stand up, incapacitate his guard, and simply walk out of the hospital. If he had no other choice, it would happen.

Unable to sleep, he rolled onto his side and for a time, stared out the window. He was lost in a montage of lurid, bloody fantasies, when Dr. Gunter appeared at his bedside.

“Good news to share,” the neurosurgeon said, checking something in Vaill’s bedside chart.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“I had a long conversation with your chief, Agent Snyder. She told us of the discussion she had with you—specifically your desire to return to work as soon as possible and resume your investigative duties. I sent for the head of my department, Dr. Weitz. We reviewed your remarkable progress so far, and ended up assuring Agent Snyder that, barring any unforeseen complications, there is no medical reason why you would not be able to continue in the capacity to which you are accustomed. You are in fact one of the luckiest gunshot survivors I have ever encountered.”

Tell that to my wife,
Vaill thought savagely.

“Thanks, doc,” he said instead, turning back to the window.

The pounding in his head had intensified, and with it came an overpowering confusion. It was as if the passive neurologic process of thinking was a ball-peen hammer smashing down on his brain. He barely heard Gunter excuse himself and leave the room.

CHAPTER 12

           A true Neighbor must be pure of heart to take the Oath of Secrecy and in doing so, swear to uphold the ideals of the society before God.

        
—LANCASTER R. HILL,
100 Neighbors
, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1939, P. 167

The powerful rotors of the twin-engine helicopter flattened the young crops and tall grasses of the field beside Floyd’s cabin. Lou had been unable to pick up a cell phone signal until they were in sight of the cabin’s fieldstone chimney and the river. At that point he and Floyd still hadn’t settled on a method of getting Cap to a hospital that wouldn’t further shorten his already dwindling odds of survival.

The sparkling red-and-white paint job emblazoned on the cockpit doors showcased the company name—North Georgia Air Ambulance. It had taken forty minutes following Lou’s call for the chopper to arrive. Were it not for the GPS on his phone, it could have taken considerably longer. Lou had described the landing area to the pilot prior to take off. She required a hundred-by-hundred-foot minimum to land, more if there were surrounding trees or wires, of which there were none provided she made her approach from the south. Blessedly, the weather cooperated.

Floyd’s wife, Rebecca, an ample, rosy-cheeked woman, wearing a gingham housedress, shielded her eyes against the swirling dust and debris. The pilot of the impressive-looking aircraft took advantage of the low foliage along the river to make an angled approach, and made a picture-perfect touchdown on the improvised landing pad. Lou noticed that Floyd, tugging on his beard, was watching the landing with a reverent expression, as though he’d been transported from his simple frontier life into the distant future.