Need You Now (28 page)

57

T
he whirring blades of a Sikorsky S-76B blew puffs of snow across the heliport as the BOS corporate helicopter touched down in Boston. Touchdown was delayed more than thirty minutes due to weather. Mongoose hurried into the terminal and retrieved a detailed voice mail message from Barber. It laid out the plan.

As instructed, Mongoose took a taxi to Lemuel Shattuck Hospital and went to the food court on the ground floor, an enclosed mall-like area that was completely separate from the prison unit. He sat away from the crowd, alone at a table outside a sandwich shop that had already closed for the evening. From there, it was a classic case of “hurry up and wait.” The package arrived twenty minutes later. The courier didn’t introduce himself, but Mongoose recognized an operator from a private military firm when he saw one. He’d dealt with dozens of them when he was with the CIA. He assumed that Barber had hired the same private firm to pay Evan Hunt a visit while Mongoose was in Ciudad del Este; Hunt’s job had “contract” written all over it. Mongoose took the package, no questions asked, and went into the men’s room.

Three minutes later, he emerged wearing hospital scrubs and a photo-identification badge that bore the name Henry Bozan, Nurse Anesthetist.

A nurse? Really?

As he passed a doughnut shop, he checked his reflection in the plate glass window. He hadn’t liked the plan from the beginning but, seeing himself in nursing scrubs, he really didn’t like it.

You are a disgraceful waste of talent.

Those words, buried in his memory, were suddenly burning in his brain. It was the blunt answer he’d gotten after confronting his platoon leader and demanding to know why he wasn’t recommended for advancement to SEAL Team Six, the elite of the elite. Raw talent had never been an issue. He’d been one of many incredible young athletes, all former high-school and college stars in their own right, who’d entered basic underwater demolition/SEAL training in California. Six months of intense training—everything from two-mile ocean swims and “drown proofing” in frigid water to four-mile timed runs in soft sand and mountain endurance runs wearing forty-pound rucksacks—had whittled down the field of 250 candidates. Mongoose had emerged as one of nineteen who’d actually finished. But his platoon leader had never liked him—or maybe he’d just seen through him. It was often said that men who survived the rigors of training to become SEALs possessed much more than physical strength. Under any adversity, even in unbearable pain, they had the depth of character to put aside their own pain and fear to help a struggling buddy. There were always one or two who lacked that commitment to higher purpose, a few who managed to beat the odds in service of their own ego. A SEAL, however, was no tenured professor. The bad fits were inevitably rerouted, forced to stand aside as their former platoon performed “kill or capture” missions in the “sea, air, and land” war on terrorism, from the elimination of Iranian-trained snipers at the bottom of the pyramid to the takeout of bin Laden at the top. For Mongoose, the bitter irony was that his reroute to the Treasury Department’s financial war on terrorism had led him to the end of the road—a bullet to his spine, disabled by chronic pain.

He was the expendable pawn in Joe Barber’s Operation BAQ.

“Excuse me, which way is the nurses’ lounge?”

Mongoose turned to see a blue-haired senior citizen staring at him, a hospital volunteer.

“Hell if I know, lady.”

He continued around the corner and found an alcove beyond the elevators. Barber’s voice mail message had told him not to call, but he didn’t care. He dialed the private number.

“I’m not in a place where I can talk,” Barber said.

Mongoose heard the crowd noise in the background, could even hear a band playing “Stardust.” “You’ve got two minutes to call me back,” he said, then put away his phone and waited.

Two minutes more to consider his place in history. Rare indeed was the former SEAL and CIA agent who murdered civilians and turned against his own government. Some might put him in the category of Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret who butchered his two daughters, ages five and two, after stabbing his pregnant wife thirty-seven times. Others would equate him with Robert Hanssen, the FBI counterintelligence agent who acted as a paid spy for the Soviet Union and Russia for two decades, telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was the money. Mongoose saw himself as neither. It wasn’t really about the money. He hadn’t snapped under pressure. He was making idiots like Joe Barber pay for their arrogance, their narrow-mindedness, their sweeping definition of “collateral damage.”

Some might even say he was a patriot.

Mongoose checked the time, and his phone rang. Barber was back on the line with ten seconds to spare on his deadline.

Mongoose pulled no punches. “I’m not going in as a nurse, completely unarmed. If I go in as a corrections officer I can at least pack a sidearm.”

“It’s too risky to involve the Department of Corrections,” said Barber. “This way we need no one’s approval, no one’s cooperation to get you in.”

“Are you saying that I’m going in without anyone from corrections knowing anything about this?”

“Correct. Our techies have already hacked into the prison-unit records to add Henry Bozan to the list of approved practitioners on the pain-management team. You’ll sail through security check-in.”

A naked undercover mission. That made things more interesting. “You could have at least made me a physician.”

“Going in as a nurse anesthetist gives you another layer of protection. If anyone questions what you’re doing, tell them that you’re following the directions of the anesthesiologist in charge of the team. The only treating physician in the prison unit right now is a general practitioner named Alice Kern. If she has a problem with anything you’re doing, she’ll have to follow up with the anesthesiologist. You can be in and out of there by the time she gets any answers.”

This discussion was making him all the more aware of his own chronic condition, the pain that never stopped running down the back of his leg. “All right. I’ve seen enough pain-management specialists to pull this off.”

“Not that this is a complicated assignment. You go straight to room eight thirty-four and check on the patient. The prison unit typically uses Demerol in an IV to manage pain for cancer patients. The maximum dosage for someone his size is one hundred milligrams every two hours. Whatever he’s getting, adjust the drip to one hundred every hour. Leave before his breathing begins to slow. By the time you’re outside the building, the patient will be in fatal cardiac arrest.”

“What if Mandretti’s son is still in the room?”

“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know who you are or what you look like. He has no reason to believe that you’re not simply there doing your job.”

“I still don’t like going in unarmed.”

“You can’t adjust the IV dressed as a corrections officer. If someone were to walk into the room, or if a security camera were to pick up a corrections officer messing with medication, the only way out would be a gunfight. It’s much cleaner this way. And it’s too damn late in the game to change plans.”

Mongoose couldn’t argue, but he was naturally suspicious. “Fine,” he said, “but remember what I told you. If I don’t come out of that hospital alive—”

“My memo goes viral. I understand.”

“Be sure you do,” said Mongoose.

He ended the call and crossed the food court, following the signs marked A
UTHORIZED
P
ERSONNEL
O
NLY
on his way toward the prison unit.

58

I
couldn’t stop talking. I was leaning on the bed rail, my father’s hand in mine, telling him stories.

The minutes had passed too slowly in silence, and I’d suddenly felt the need to tell him everything I’d been doing for the past fifteen years. The stories kept coming, evaporating the gloom, and it didn’t matter that he couldn’t hear me. Maybe he could, on some level. I wondered how deep and restful his sleep actually was. My poor mother had married a man who snored like a grizzly bear. This was clearly drug-induced sleep, something altogether different. Quiet. Quiet awareness, maybe. Who knew?

I was telling him about my graduation from college when the door opened.

“Hello, I’m from the pain-management team.”

The man didn’t introduce himself as a physician, but he acted like one. Even after introducing myself, I still didn’t get his name. He walked around to the other side of the bed and checked the monitors. If Dr. Kern was a model of bedside manner, he was more in line with my preconceived notion of prison-unit health care.

“Are you a doctor?” I asked.

“Henry Bozan, nurse anesthetist. How long has the patient been sleeping?”

“He was out when I got here. That was around nine.”

“I thought I heard you talking.”

It was an odd tone, almost accusatory. “I’ve been telling him stories as he sleeps,” I said.

“So he hasn’t told you anything?”

Another odd question. “No,” I said.

“You may want to get some rest yourself. He probably won’t come around until morning.”

“Hopefully sooner than that. Dr. Kern reduced the Demerol.”

He checked the drip hanging from the IV pole. “That’s not a good idea. This patient is in serious pain.”

“Dr. Kern said he’s already at the daily maximum.”

“I’m following the direct orders of the chief physician on the pain-management team.”

“I’d prefer that you talk to Dr. Kern about that.”

I heard voices in the hallway, someone approaching. The door opened. Dr. Kern entered with a distressed expression on her face and a corrections officer at her side.

“That’s him!” she said.

The ensuing moments were a complete blur. The corrections officer rushed past Dr. Kern and drew his weapon. I dived forward, shielding my father. The nurse anesthetist was suddenly like a gymnast on a pommel horse, pushing himself up on the bed rail with two strong arms, swinging his legs over the bed—over me and my father—and propelling himself feetfirst into the oncoming officer. Dr. Kern screamed as the gun flew from the officer’s hand, slammed into the wall, and fell to the floor. The nurse-turned-gymnast got there first and emptied two quick rounds into the officer’s chest, dropping him to the floor in a spray of blood. Then he slammed the door shut, grabbed Dr. Kern, and put the gun to her head.

“Don’t move!” he said, meaning me.

59

A
larms
sounded throughout the prison unit. Door after door slammed in the hallway as
the unit went into the hospital equivalent of lockdown.

Andie Henning raced down the hall from Room
826.

Andie’s plan had started with Patrick’s father.
“Call Patrick,” he’d told her, knowing the end was near, “and let him know that
there’s something I need to tell him, man to man.” With his approval, Andie had
taken it a step further, the key to her plan being that she would call Patrick
on his BlackBerry—a phone compromised with spyware. It was a virtual lock that
the eavesdropper would hear the news and take the necessary steps to stop
Patrick’s father from making a deathbed confession to his son about Operation
BAQ. The FBI’s plan had been hatched on the quick, but Andie’s instructions to
the Department of Corrections had been specific. Watch for red flags: a new
corrections officer, a new nurse, a new doctor, a new janitor—anyone trying to
enter the unit who had never entered before.Someone had obviously screwed
up.

Idiots!

It was like riot control in the hallway, a team of
corrections officers rushing to Room 834 in response to the gunshots.

“He could have hostages!” Andie shouted, but she
was too late.

The first officer smashed through the door, weapon
drawn. Shots erupted. The lead officer went down and fell into the room, his
feet motionless in the open doorway. Three other corrections officers crouched
into positions of cover, their backs flat against the walls in the hallway.

“Officer down!” Andie shouted as she came up behind
them, the alarm continuing to sound as she positioned herself near the intercom
in the hallway.

60

T
he guard went down hard to the floor, dropped by two quick shots that left him motionless. His pistol skidded across the tile toward the bed. I dived for it as the gunman took Dr. Kern and moved away from the window, toward the closet. I grabbed the pistol and took aim, but he was using the doctor as a human shield.

“I have hostages!” he shouted in a voice that was loud enough for the officers in the hallway to hear him.

A voice crackled over the speaker box on my father’s bed: “We hear you.”

I recognized the voice as Andie Henning’s.

The alarm went silent, and an eerie stillness came over the room. Two guards shot, my father barely alive. Andie’s voice continued over the intercom speaker:

“We want to get medical treatment for the injured officers.”

“They’re dead! And if you make another run at this room, they’re all dead!” Then he looked at me, his gun pressed to Dr. Kern’s head, and said, “Drop your gun!”

I held my aim, my finger on the trigger.

“Do it!” he said as he shoved the pistol even harder against the base of the doctor’s skull.

I didn’t move. Andie’s voice was on the speaker again.

“Patrick, do as he says. We don’t need your help.” She paused and then addressed the gunman directly. “Mongoose, there’s no escape. We know who you are.”

“Mongoose,” I said quietly, a reflex, as if there were at least partial closure in knowing what he called himself.

“It’s hopeless, Mongoose,” said Andie. “Joe Barber is being arrested as we speak. Drop your weapon and surrender now.”

Mongoose glared at me from across the room, his eyes like lasers. “Put the gun on the floor and slide it toward me,” he said in a calm, but threatening tone.

The doctor’s eyes widened with fear. I should have done as I was told, should have followed Andie’s direction. But there was no guarantee that my father would ever wake, and I had Mongoose’s attention—a chance to get some answers. I couldn’t let go.

Mongoose tightened his stare on me and said, “There’s no one here worth dying for, Patrick. Your father is a traitor to the U.S. government.”

“You’re reaching,” I said.

“Your father cut a deal with terrorists.”

“Right. And yo’ mama eats worms. Now, put down the gun, asshole!”

“You think this is a joke?” he said, pressing the pistol even harder against Dr. Kern’s head.

It had been a knee-jerk effort to show Mongoose that he wasn’t in control, that I wasn’t afraid to shoot him. But the doctor’s terrified expression made me regret my words. “Not a joke,” I said, backpedaling. “Let’s put away the weapons and talk.”

“Just shut up and listen! I heard the truth last night from Manu Robledo. If not for your old man, Manu Robledo never would have seen the quant’s analysis showing that Cushman was a Ponzi scheme.”

I held my aim. Mongoose kept talking.

“Your father wanted to get someone riled up enough to kill Gerry Collins, and he didn’t care who else Robledo took out along the way. Didn’t care if he took
me
out.”

The anger in his voice was palpable. He seemed to hold as much animosity toward my father as he did toward Robledo—and, by extension, toward me.

Mongoose continued his rant. “For three years I was convinced that the government had forced your father to confess as part of Operation BAQ. Nobody
forced
him. Your father took the rap so that Robledo could stay out of jail and find the money that Collins had stashed away. We’re talking billions of dollars from terrorist financers who would have killed Robledo unless he got it back. Your father confessed for a cut of that money—money that he would leave to you and your sister.”

I had actually been with him right up till then—until the part about a cut of terrorist seed money. “You’re making this up.”

“Robledo spilled his guts last night.”

“I doubt that Robledo has ever told the truth in his life.”

“Trust me, he was in no position to be less than truthful.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I just spoke with Joe Barber. Even
he
can’t figure out who started this fiction about a government-forced confession.”

“Oh, now, there’s an honest politician.”

“I know a traitor when I see one. Your father is a traitor, Patrick.”

“You’re lying.”

“He
is
lying,” my dad said.

It happened in a split second. The Demerol wasn’t enough to force sleep through a gunfight, and the sound of my father’s voice had startled Mongoose more than me. I was standing in the marksman’s pose, holding a Glock that was identical to the one that Scully had taught me how to use in Connie’s apartment, the sights lined up, my finger on the trigger. Dr. Kern dived for safety, and I squeezed the trigger. The shot erupted like thunder, and in a crimson explosion, Mongoose’s head jerked back. His gun dropped to his feet as his body collapsed in a heap. Dr. Kern raced into the arms of the first officer to burst through the door.

I dropped the gun, fell on the bed, and squeezed my father so hard that I could barely breathe. Fifteen years of emotional confusion collided with a week of stress, anxiety, and my own near-death experiences to create a long, cathartic embrace. “I’m fine, it’s over,” I said. “Mongoose is gone.”

He laid his arm across my back, not really holding me, but doing the best he could with the strength that remained.

“ ‘Yo’ mama eats worms’? ” he said.

His muted chuckle was little more than a tremble, and I broke our embrace long enough to see a hint of a smile crease his lips. I wanted to laugh and cry in the same breath. It was beyond comic relief. It brought a moment of humanity to years of sorrow and separation.

And then it faded.

“Dad?”

I didn’t want to lose him. Holding on tight seemed like the only option.

“Go get your sister,” he whispered into my ear.

I took a breath and released him. I knew what he was telling me. “I’ll be right back,” I said, catching one last glimpse of Mongoose in a puddle of blood as I hurried out of the room.