The Solomon Scroll (12 page)

The ER was having a busy night. Nick watched a parade of injuries and cops come through the doors. All of them looked like they needed emergency treatment, including some of the cops.

Elizabeth came through the big doors. She dodged around a parked gurney and headed over to the uncomfortable chairs where Nick and the others sat.

"How bad?"

"They're both in surgery. Lucas took a hard hit in his shoulder," Nick said. "He veered away when the shooting started. It changed the trajectory of the bullets or they'd both be dead."

"Stephanie?"

Nick looked down at the floor and sighed. He looked up again. "There are a lot of superficial cuts on her face and scalp from flying glass. None of that is serious. A round went through her right lung and she lost a lot of blood. They won't tell us anything more than that."

Elizabeth was whiter than usual. "What about the baby?"

"Like I said, they won't tell us anything. I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope."

"There's always hope," Elizabeth said.

"The police gave us a lot of trouble. You're going to be hearing from them and probably the president too. Some civilians were hit by those assholes who shot at us and the cops are wondering if it was us. We only got out of there because of the presidential ID."

"Don't worry about it, I'll take care of the cops. And the president."

Elizabeth sat down.

"What do we know?"

"Not much. The shooters knew where we were coming from and what vehicles we were driving. They must've had someone watching the compound. They had radios. When Lucas came up to where they were waiting, they opened up."

"That's it?"

"I went through their pockets before the cops got there," Diego said. He pulled out a wallet he'd taken from one of the dead men. "This is all there was. The others didn't have anything on them."

"Pros," Nick said. "Except for one."

He opened the wallet and showed it to her. It held twenty new one hundred dollar bills and a New York driver's license under a plastic window. The picture was of a man with a narrow face, receding black hair and close set blue eyes. His ears stuck out from the side of his head like handles.

"Patrick O'Malley. It gives an address in Brooklyn."

"Irish?" Elizabeth said.

"I don't think he's Russian with a name like that."

"I'll get..." She stopped and took a deep breath.

"What were you going to say?" Selena asked.

"I started to say that I'd get Steph to run the ID through Interpol. I'll do it when we get back to the compound. We can trace the bills. That might give us a lead."

"We'll get these bastards," Nick said. "They have no idea what they've started."

They waited. It was three hours later before Ronnie said, "There's a doctor coming."

They stood up as the doctor approached. The man looked tired, as if he been up for days.

"Who's in charge?" he asked. His name tag ID'd him as Miller.

"I am," Elizabeth said. "You can talk in front of all of us."

Doctor Miller looked at the group and at the holstered guns.

"Are you police?"

"Something like that," Elizabeth said. "Stephanie works for me and she's our friend. I need to know how she is."

"Are you a relative?"

"Doctor Miller, I work for the president. I suggest you tell me immediately how she is."

Harker's tone left no room for argument

Miller looked at his clipboard.

"The bullet entered the right thoracic cavity slightly posterior and lateral to the middle lung, causing internal bleeding and collapse before exiting through the front of the chest wall under the breast. The internal damage was extensive. We've managed to repair it. You got her here in time. Another half an hour and she wouldn't have made it. She's in intensive care."

"She'll be all right?"

"Barring complications, yes. She's a healthy young woman. She won't be running a marathon anytime soon, but in a couple of months she should be fine."

"What about the baby?" Selena asked.

He shook his head. "I'm sorry. The hydrostatic shock was too much for the fetus. She had a miscarriage. If there's any good news in this, she can have another. Assuming there are no further complications. Best not to worry about it."

"What about Lucas?"

"That was close. The bullet that hit him nicked the subclavian artery. He almost bled to death. It missed everything else that was vital and shattered the shoulder joint and clavicle as it exited out the front. There are bone fragments and a lot of tissue damage. He won't be using that arm for quite a while. He's sedated and in recovery."

An announcement paged Miller.

"I'm sorry, I have to go. If there's nothing else..."

"Thank you, Doctor," Elizabeth said.

After Miller was gone they sat down again.

"Best not to worry about it," Selena said. "Easy for him to say."

"Stephanie will be all right," Nick said. "That's the most important thing."

"It might not be to Stephanie."

"One of us should stay with her," Elizabeth said.

Nick looked at her. There were deep shadows under her eyes and lines of strain etched into her pale face.

"We'll set up shifts," he said. "Everybody needs sleep. It's not going to do any good if we're all too tired to find out who came after us."

"I called Langley. Hood is going to post guards," Elizabeth said. "We can't do it by ourselves and whoever is behind this might try again. One of us should still be here for them."

"I'll take the first shift," Ronnie said. "Let's do a four hour rotation."

"Okay." Nick looked at his watch. "It's pushing midnight now. I'll relieve you at four. Selena, you take eight to noon and Diego noon to four in the afternoon. Then we'll do it all over again."

"You left me out of the rotation," Elizabeth said.

"You need sleep, Director. It would be better for you to come and go as you please. You've got damage control. You can get Interpol on our Irish shooter. "

"What about Lucas?" Ronnie said.

"They'll move him to a room once he's out of recovery."

"I'll see if I can arrange for them to be in the same room once Steph is out of the ICU," Elizabeth said.

"Whoever is on shift can look in on him once in a while. Tell him what's going on when he wakes up. I know Lucas. He's going to be pissed. The main problem will be keeping him in bed."

"I wonder if this has anything to do with what happened in Lebanon?" Selena said. "But that doesn't make sense. Why would someone come after us for taking out a lowlife like Abidi?"

"I don't think they would," Elizabeth said, "unless it's about the scroll. Then they might."

"Whoever they are, they're going to regret it," Nick said.

CHAPTER 23

Nick sat in a chair outside Stephanie's cubicle in ICU.  Hood had sent over two men from Langley. One now stood guard outside the unit. The other was assigned to Lucas.

Nick could see Stephanie through a large glass window, hooked up to monitors with moving digital readouts. An IV dripped clear fluid into one of her arms. Her face was marked with bandages and orange antiseptic. They'd shaved part of her hair away from her forehead.

Each time he looked at her fed his anger. Someone was going to pay for this.

A nurse came up to him, pretty. She was small like Harker, with curly blonde hair. A name badge identified her as Lois.

"Mister Monroe is out of recovery and awake if you'd like to speak with him. They've moved him to room 332."

Lois looked through the window at Stephanie.

"She's not going to be conscious for quite a while. You should get some rest after you see your friend."

"Thank you."

Nick stood and felt fatigue embrace him, like an insidious lover.

"332 you said?"

"That's right. Take a left when you go out the doors. The elevator is on the right about halfway down the corridor. When you get to the third floor go past the nurse's station and 332 is on the right."

"Thank you," Nick said again.

The elevator was stainless steel and big enough to hold a gurney with a body on it. It rose with silent efficiency. On the third floor Nick turned left past the nurse's station. There was no one there. A man sat down the hall, watching him approach. He stood as Nick came closer. Nick flashed his ID at Langley's man and went in.

Lucas was propped up in bed, his right arm immobilized. Both his eyes were blackened from the airbag. Like Stephanie, an IV fed something into his veins. Unlike Stephanie, he was awake and angry.

"Nick." Lucas cleared his throat. His voice was weak.

"How are you doing?"

"I've been better. What do you know about Steph?"

"She's stable. They've got her sedated in ICU. She's going to be okay. What did they tell you?"

"About the same, along with details about the surgery. She lost the baby."

"I'm sorry, Lucas."

"Damn it, Nick, what the hell happened? Did you get the bastards?"

"They're all dead, Lucas. One of them had ID on him. Harker is following that up. We'll find out who sent them and when we do, we're going to drop the hammer on them."

"They might've been targeting me," Lucas said.

"I don't think so. It doesn't feel right. Why wait until you were over at our compound to go after you, if you were the target? There are easier ways to get at you. I think they wanted to send a message to us. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Hood isn't going to be happy to have his new DCO out of commission," Lucas said.

"I'm counting on it," Nick said. "We're going to need Langley's resources on this one. Besides, you're not out of commission. You won't be writing any reports for a while. That's what you've got secretaries for. A few days, you'll be back in the office."

"It depends on how Steph is doing."

"Sure. Hood is a decent guy. He's not going to give you a hard time about it. Right now it looks like she's going to be fine."

"They won't let me go see her."

"Lucas, somebody just tried to kill you and did a pretty good job on your shoulder. It's too soon for you to be running around. She's in good hands. When they move her out of ICU, they'll bring her in here. She'll be fine, believe me."

"Yeah. But the bastards who put her in here won't be, once I find out who they are."

You can take that to the bank,
Nick thought.

CHAPTER 24

Outside Elizabeth's office the sun was shining. A large orange cat snored in a patch of sun coming through the French doors leading onto the patio.

"That cat makes a lot of noise," Diego said.

"You hear him burp yet?" Ronnie asked.

"Burp?"

"Why do you think we call him Burps?"

"I never thought about it. He's a cat. I don't think about stuff like that."

"Then you have something to look forward to. Ask Nick to tell you about it sometime."

Elizabeth tapped her pen on her desk to get their attention.

"I talked to Steph a little while ago," she said. "She's out of danger."

"That's good news," Selena said.

"Lucas is already talking about getting back to work," Nick said. "A little thing like an AK round isn't going to keep him down for long."

Elizabeth said, "Interpol had a file on Patrick O'Malley."

"They can write closed on it now." Nick looked at her. "Tell me it's got something we can use."

"We do have something."

Elizabeth entered a command on her keyboard. A picture of a castle in Spain came up on the monitor.

"Damn," she muttered. "That's my screensaver. That's not what I was looking for. I wish Stephanie was here."

She tapped the keys and a prison mug shot of Patrick O'Malley appeared. Elizabeth scrolled down to his record.

"A mercenary," Nick said. "It figures."

"A hired gun from Ireland. He's on almost everyone's watch list as an undesirable. He did time in Dartmoor for aggravated assault."

"Sounds like a real winner," Selena said.

"The money in his wallet came through a bank in New York. A direct deposit was wired from abroad into his account. Guess where it came from?"

"Not Lebanon?"

"Straight from Beirut."

"Then this must be about that scroll."

Elizabeth nodded. "Nothing else makes sense."

"Not a smart move," Nick said. "They should have left well enough alone. We were at a dead end. I'm not so sure it was about the scroll. We could have been after Abidi for something that had nothing to do with the scroll. An arms deal, for example."

"How could they know who we were?" Selena asked.

"There were cameras in the nightclub," Diego said. "Someone could have gotten an ID on us from those."

"Selena, maybe," Elizabeth said. "Not you. You're too new."

"I'm not even officially part of the group."

"Do you want to be?" Elizabeth asked. "Now's as good a time as any to get that out of the way."

"When they seconded me to you, I thought you guys were just a bunch of civilians. Would I still be in the Army?"

"No," Harker said. "You'll be honorably discharged with all benefits and receive the same compensation as the others. You'll find it's quite a step up from a sergeant's pay. Nick will be your commanding officer in the field."

"The Army is my career," Diego said.

"You can go back to your unit and your involvement with us ends now. If you say yes and everyone agrees, this will be your new career."

Diego looked at her.

"Diego, things are getting complicated. We have to make plans and I need to know if you want in or out. Yes or no?"

Nick watched him. What would he decide?

"What the hell. Yes."

She looked at the others "Raise your hands if he's in."

All the hands went up.

"Welcome to the team, Boot," Nick said.

"All right. Let's move on," Elizabeth said. "Diego has a point. The only way someone in Beirut would know who we were is from what happened in the club. Who has the ability to identify Selena and make the connection to us? That would take familiarity with the intelligence world we live in. Who has that kind of knowledge?"