Shock Therapy, page 18
I turned to Lucia. “Look for the medicine bag.”
The doctor must have one ready to take with him on his regular visits to Almeyda, filled with all the medications and emergency measures he needed to treat his specific case. All I had to do was exchange his drugs with mine so that on his next visit to his employer an hour from now, he’d give him the infected, toxic treatments I’d prepared.
Two minutes later, we both stood panting, exchanging manic glances. No such bag was around.
We ran to the other doctor’s quarters, repeated our breaking and entry and search routine and—nada.
I couldn’t believe it! Those guys stood in front of their mini-pharmacy every few hours and picked and chose different combinations of what they needed before going to their master patient? This way I’d have to exchange all the damned drugs and supplies they’d possibly use in treating Almeyda to make sure they’d end up with my doctored ones no matter what they picked.
This meant one thing. I needed an impromptu alternative plan. One that would yield certain results. Now think!
Almeyda had to be relatively stable at the moment, if he was arranging banquets. He must be on frequent puffs from his metered-dose inhalers and their visits could be just to check him over with no further medications administered. The one sure way to give him the attack I needed in the timeframe I needed was to sabotage the inhalers he had in his personal space.
This meant I had to get to his quarters.
Before I worried about how I’d do that, I had to wrap up here. I had to prepare the second stage in the new scenario.
Working on the assumption that I would replace his inhalers with mine, the moment he took his next puff he’d manifest with an explosive status asthmaticus. All I had to do was put myself in the doctors’ shoes, anticipate their actions then.
With so many maintenance drugs, I couldn’t have possibly anticipated their maintenance method of choice to exchange the drugs they’d use. But as they ran to treat the emergency they were kept around for, I could anticipate their intervention measures down to the last detail.
The first thing they’d reach for would be oxygen.
I gestured towards the cabinets. “Get this and this open.”
Lucia pounced on her chore as I threw my bag open, produced my prepared substitutes.
“Done, Cali. What do you need?”
“Oxygen tanks.” She reached for the first two, tossed them to me. I tossed back the tanks filled with nitrogen dioxide.
If all went to plan, Almeyda would take the next puff from his inhaler and gulp down pure nitrogen dioxide laden with colonies of mega-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria, the number one cause of pneumonia. As he wheezed and vomited and fought for breath as my mixture ate through his already tattered, emphysematous lungs, they’d come to the rescue and force a steady supply of the highly toxic, severely irritating gas down his lungs. Since NO2 targeted the deepest parts of the respiratory tract with their damage, the exacerbation they’d have on their hands would be one for the medical history books.
At this point, shocked out of their wits, they’d scramble for the second line of defense, the drugs that relaxed the spasm in his airway that shut down his lungs down to the alveolar level and suffocated him. They’d hope some heavy-duty bronchodilation would let him breathe again until they figured out what had gone so wrong. I’d replace those, too.
“What are the Beta2-agonist agents they have?”
Lucia had already looked. “Albuterol and salbutamol are front and center.”
I’d send them a thank-you note later for being so by-the-book. I had their doctored duplicates right here, in ampoules that masqueraded as them but were filled with saline teeming with more bacteria. “Exchange the first row with these.”
On to the third line of defense. The life-saving corticosteroids that would be their last hope to decrease the intense airway inflammation and swelling and potentiate the effects of beta2-agonist agents.
Lucia was already onto my train of thought. “They have methylprednisolone and prednisone. Toss me your substitutes.”
I could go for fourth and fifth lines of defense medications, but that would be hyperkill. Even if at some point the doctors suspected their treatments were the cause for his cataclysmic plunge and started from scratch with different medications, he’d be in beyond-reach Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome and pan-system failure.
Lucia put everything in order, locked up, a look of relief and urgency staining her features even through the course disguise. She thought this was over. Had to disappoint her.
“Hook up with the others and create a diversion. Make it for as long as you can. I need to get to Almeyda’s quarters.”
Her groan shivered down my back as we exited the room. Yeah, just how I felt. My original plan had fallen apart and every step I was taking to fix up an alternative one could plunge us deeper into a one-way road to catastrophe.
But it was all I could come up with to make sure he died before our deadline expired.
I knew the way to his quarters, knew that he had two armed guards on each of the two doors dividing the great corridor leading there 24/7, adding the two on his bedroom door, they totaled six.
I hid behind a curtain before the corridor’s first door, waited to see how they reacted to Lucia’s diversion. In a minute I heard shouts. I recognized Lucia’s voice, raised on laments that she’d lost her retarded cousin. In seconds I heard feet stomping past me. Problem was, I counted only three sets of feet. Out of each post, one of the guards went to investigate, the other kept position.
I could take all three down. And expose the whole thing.
This meant I had to bypass two then figure out what to do with the last one, the one at Almeyda’s door.
I slipped on climbing gloves, adjusted my backpack, opened the window behind me. I jumped onto the ledge, closed the window and took stock of my situation.
This area overlooked the stables. Hoped anyone looking up right now would be one of our accomplices. I had enough to worry about with the dress and the two-inch foothold on my path to the window near the last sentry’s position. At least I was wearing mountain climbing shoes for the terrain we’d walked over getting here. They were snug and sticky-soled, hard for edging without sacrificing friction. With the gloves I should have a good grip.
This was nothing like Worthington’s sleek-exterior house climbing where suction gear had gotten us up and down its surface in under a minute. This house was built with unfinished rock from Patagonia’s quarries and warranted the mountain climbing gear in my backpack. But since I didn’t have a ‘second’ to remove them, I couldn’t afford to leave behind belays, quickdraws and grappling hooks.
I summoned every scaling/climbing/human-fly skill Damian had drilled into me, and took my first step. OK. Not bad. The next step was better. After a dozen, I was getting the hang of it, nearing my destination. Just fifty more feet and… No!
I plummeted in silence. Almost pulverized my upper teeth on the ledge as I plunged past it. My hands shot up, my fingers clawed an anchor at its edge at the last microsecond.
I dangled. Couldn’t even afford to shake. My fingers were breaking off, phalanx by phalanx, my skin shearing off inside its protective layer. Pain stormed my stamina, eroded my fear, started to make falling down the three stories to serious injury or death look like a viable way out.
Just plant a belay so you wouldn’t plunge to your death.
No—dammit. I hadn’t come this far to blow our stealth to kingdom come leaving behind incriminating climbing evidence.
So I hated buildering, and the only free solo climbing I’d done had been with a huge net beneath me. But I had done it, hadn’t needed the net. I’d do it again now.
Now breathe, block out the pain.
I did, channeled all adrenaline to my fingertips, my feet finding wafer-thin edges in the wall to push against. And I started the sideways crawl over the wall. What I’d give for some insect-like talents right now.
I’d grazed my knees, probably said goodbye to my surgical hands and dropped about two-dozen years off my life expectancy by the time I hauled myself up to my target window.
I maneuvered it open, jumped in. I couldn’t afford more than ten seconds behind its curtain to succumb to the ordeal.
Gulping shearing breaths, I peeked from behind the curtain. The guard was facing my direction, alert, waiting to find out the reason for the disturbance. I had to get rid of him fast before it ended and his comrade came back.
I’d use the combo of sodium nitroprusside and bradykinin that Damian had stopped me from using on Worthington’s guard. But for it to work he mustn’t know what hit him. I had no way to blow the dart from behind the curtain with any accuracy. I’d need to widen the crack between it and the wall to get a good visual. And then he’d see me.
I closed my eyes, dredged up the layout of this area. The corridor was a blind one ending in a stained-glass window. I could borrow a leaf from Damian’s book, catapult a rock through it. This I could do blind. But it wouldn’t be attributed to a bird this time and I’d just about killed myself to avoid leaving suspicious evidence scattering the scene in our wake.
If I got to leave the scene.
I had to make him look the other way right now. Maybe if I threw the rock lower, had him turn at the noise… No. The first thing he’d do would be looking my way to see who’d thrown it.
And it came to me. Someone impossibly calling out from the deadend would drag and imprison his attention long enough for me to me to pump him full of my vasodilatory knockout combo.
I delved into my bag, produced the sound emitter I used to misdirect enemies into thinking there was more than me during a fight, especially in dark conditions. It had recordings of men’s shouts. Yeah, I had to admit those worked better in intimidation during a fight.
In seconds I catapulted the emitter from the tiny crack. It was too tiny to make a sound hitting the ground. I waited a couple of seconds then I pressed its remote activator. The shout came, the guard turned, presented me with his broad back. I was interested in his nape. I sprang from behind the curtain, blew my dart, connected, dove back behind the curtain as he clapped his hand on the sting and turned.
It was less than a minute when I heard the distinctive sound of a huge guy impacting the ground.
I ran out, swooped down to snatch the emitter then ran back, worked the lock over his fallen body.
Ready with another dart, I entered the room expecting a déjà vu, Almeyda facing me like Worthington had done.
The huge room was deserted. But I knew it couldn’t be. He had to be in the bathroom. Run, do it.
I sprinted to his nightstand, snatched open the drawers, found his many inhalers. I snatched them out of their plastic holders, substituted each one with mine. I was done in under a minute. Then the bathroom door opened.
Almeyda saw me at once. Our eyes locked across the distance in a moment of surreal stillness. Then he opened his mouth and let out a wheezing shout for help.
My heart fired, a flood of adrenaline inundating my system. I didn’t have time to fumble for the dart I’d put away.
OK, here came the ultimate improvisation.
I erupted from the bed, charged him, slammed him against the bathroom door, met eyes black as mine blasting with fear and pain and outrage. He opened his mouth again and I kneed him, with just enough force to silence him, to make him stop struggling while leaving him on his feet so I could drag him back to bed. I threw him down on it, dragged my bag open beside me as I straddled him. I had to make sure he wouldn’t be in any condition to tell on me from now till the moment he died.
I produced a few ampoules of acetyl salicylic acid and ketofan. Both ASA and the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug were painkillers, but were also potent asthma inducers. I mixed mega doses of them together in one syringe, dumped them in his cephalic vein in one push.
He started struggling again. This time I squashed his testicles. He went flaccid between my thighs, his withered face coming apart in suffering. My heart almost knocked me over him. He was nothing like the bull-in-full-health Worthington, sallow and emaciated and barely able to breathe. Pity rose in a geyser in my throat and my programming, the blinding urge to care for the sick and the disabled threatening to take over.
Moron. He’s not a patient. He’s a monster who just happens to inhabit a sick shell. Do it.
With a heart still lurching behind my ribs, I reached over into his drawer, took out the inhalers I’d booby-trapped. I held his nose closed and he gasped, gulped down the dozen infected puffs I dumped down his airway.
I then put the final touch to my macabre impromptu scheme. I injected him with diazepam to knock him out, and a high dose of LSD in a slow-release vehicle. He’d wake up hallucinating so they’d discount his reports of the crazy woman who’d entered his room even if he could say anything past the barrier of severe respiratory distress. LSD also potentiated asthma, so it was a double-edged weapon.
There was no way this man would survive my multi-pronged attack. He was done. As I was here.
I snatched my stuff back into my backpack, sprang from the bed and the room, ran out over the stirring guard. I bet he’d be too embarrassed to report the voices he’d heard before inexplicably passing out. Not that I cared right now. Now I had to endure the same wall-sticking routine back to my start point.
I managed it in one piece, at least on the outside, got back to where I’d first gotten my bag, put it back in its hiding place. It would be brought back to us through the same sequence.
As I headed towards the kitchen, already in Lucia’s retarded-cousin mode, an incensed shout lodged between my scapulas, almost knocking me over. I bet harpies didn’t sound so hostile. I was so shaken, so depleted, reaction detonated like a depth mine within me. I started wailing and weeping again. This time there was far less pretense in the exercise.
This time slavedriver-woman just yanked me around, hit me hard across the face then dragged me behind her with her talons deep in my flesh. In a few moments both Lucia and me were thrown out of the kitchen’s backdoor with a couple of pans and dozens of obscenities hurled after us.
All in all, a perfect exit.
After we’d stumbled outside the estate’s boundaries, I wiped my tears. “OK. Are you up to running?”
Lucia took in my still shuddering face and frame with a concerned, suspicious look. “Are you?”
“I’m up to anything as long as it isn’t sticking to walls.”
I winced at the flare of interest in her eyes. Now I had to tell her every little detail of my adventures.
And I did as we hiked and climbed our way back over the twenty miles to our post through the most amazing nature I’d ever seen. Not that I’d been in any condition to appreciate it, on either incoming or outgoing trips. Then darkness descended and I couldn’t anyway. Somewhere in my muddied psyche Damian’s offer for a revisit someday whispered. Yeah, that’d be nice.
Back at the command post, we found the others primed for intervention. They were almost disappointed we hadn’t needed any. In two more hours our Latin men came back without any more incidents and with news of our mark’s nightmarish deterioration.
Damian fell into step with me as we hurried back to our jet, his frown locking on the marks I knew slavedriver-woman’s fingers had left on my face. “What happened?”
I shrugged. Everything cramped, inside and out. My groan had his hands clamping down on the pain, defusing it. “Tell me.”
“I just rewrote the whole script with even more diabolical twists, almost fell to my death playing Spiderwoman and found out how easy it is to be a hands-on monster all over again.”
His hands squeezed unspent anxiety into my aches. I winced. I couldn’t handle more angst now.
“I’m just shaken and sore all over. But I’m alive and he’s dying. Mission accomplished. Let’s go put our finale in motion.”
His eyes raged with the tempests that wrecked him whenever he was forced into helpless-bystander mode as I risked my life. I was intimate with the syndrome, suffered a full-blown episode every time he was out of my sight. Came with the territory. This had been the first warning on the manual, after all. In bold.
As soon as we boarded the jet he sat down and dragged me onto his lap. I nestled into him, into the sustaining knowledge that I mattered that much. I think I slept immediately.
In some other century, a buzz jolted through me. It dragged me from the depths of oppression. I woke up enough to realize it had been his phone. Then his voice reverberated in the void that filled my body and mind. Incensed, lethal.
I opened my eyes and was almost knocked back to unconsciousness by the force of his rage. “Wha…?”
“Ed. He’s escaped.
FIFTEEN
ED HADN’T ONLY escaped, he’d demolished Emergency doing it.
But that was nothing compared to his damage potential now. He was holding his knowledge of our survival and location hostage in return for Anna and his daughters.
And then it had gotten far worse.
An hour after Damian had gotten off the phone with Nina I’d had another call. Ed was now holding Sir Ashton hostage.
He’d called the Sanctuary, told them of his new bargaining chip, told them to tell me to be ready for a trade. Or else.
Denial had erupted first. He couldn’t have gotten to him!
Then I’d remembered who Ed was and it had turned to dread.
He had him. I’d made sure that he did. But where was he keeping him? What would he do to him if things went wrong…?
For the rest of the fifteen-hour flights to Buenos Aires then to L.A. dread demons had danced in a frenzy inside my head. It had felt like I’d been hurtling in a non-ending tunnel, trapped, as Sir Ashton faced the unstable danger Ed posed…
