Death. Once more, the bridge was covered in it.
“Shit.” Vince reversed, turning the rig so that they faced oncoming traffic, and switched on their front and side flashers. “You ready for this?”
She nodded. “Go.”
Charlie jumped out, running behind to yank open the doors and grab their carry-ins. She paused only long enough to stuff two handfuls of bandages into a side pocket before she trotted around and tossed Vince’s bag to him. Her partner ran to the two victims in the road while she went to the officer.
“Officer, why are you . . .” She stopped as she saw the telltale spiderweb of cracks around the small hole in the patrolman’s front windshield, and the corresponding hole in the officer’s forehead. She reached in to check for a pulse that no longer beat before she grabbed her handheld. “Dispatch, Echo one-M-seven, EMP Charlie Marena, ten ninety-seven S-one pylon, ten one-oh-eight, officer down, GSW to the head, request immediate assistance—”
Something cracked sharply, then whined in her ear as her radio unit exploded in her hand. At the same time a man’s voice shouted, “Get down.”
Charlie wrenched open the trooper’s door and crouched behind it, looking out at Vince, who was trying to shield the victims with his own body.
Another disjointed thought stream began jabbering inside her head: Golden giant midnight girl all here now master I see I can do this I can take them bring them have my reward live forever yes live forever at his side his forever always eternity yes I can do this forever and ever and ever.
“Charlie.” Vince grabbed both bodies by the collars of their clothes and began dragging them toward her. “Shooter.”
Staying crouched over as far as she could, she met her partner halfway and seized one of the bodies under the arms.
“The cop?” Vince demanded.
“Dead.” She saw her patient’s chest move and the blood oozing from the head wound of Vince’s vic. “But these two aren’t. Let’s move it.”
They managed to drag the two victims behind the patrolman’s unit and grab Charlie’s bag before another shot rang out. This time it shattered the back window of the limo.
As they went to work on the victims, Vince popped his head up to look around. “Did you see where he is?”
There were no other vehicles at the scene, and hardly anyplace on the bridge where a gunman could hide. But the morning fog had effectively blanketed the bridge deck all the way past the south tower, so for all Charlie knew he could be standing out in the open on one of the walkways, or even atop the safety railing.
As the gunman fired again, she grabbed Vince’s shoulder and jerked him down. “Careful.”
“Always . . . right.” Her partner swayed and then slumped over, blood streaking down his face from a long, deep gash in his scalp.
“Vince.”
She eased him down and straddled him, working quickly to probe and then dress the wound as she tried to rouse him. “O’Hara? Come on, partner. No sleeping on the job.”
His eyelids fluttered, and he groaned. “Fucker . . . caught me.” He squinted at her. “How . . . bad?”
She checked his pupils with her penlight, and felt a surge of relief when they reacted normally. “I think you’re going to be parting your hair differently from now on.”
“Charlotte, are you hurt?”
Hearing her name being called out by the man from the limo made Charlie frown. “We’re fine.” He must have heard her using her radio and assumed Charlie was short for Charlotte. “Stay where you are. Are you injured?”
“No. My driver was shot in the chest,” he called back. “He’s lost a great deal of blood.”
The driver had to be the one whose thoughts and pain she’d picked up. Or this driver might not exist and Limo Guy was the shooter, trying to lure her out in the open. Until she got closer to them she wouldn’t know. “Sir, do you know where the gunman is?”
“South tower,” he answered. “Left side.”
Charlie glanced over the edge of the vehicle at the tower, but at first saw only fog and shadows. Then the first rays of the sun pierced the fog, and a tiny glint of light flashed from the base of the tower. A second later another window blew out on the limo.
Charlie’s relief was short-lived. Limo Guy wasn’t trying to make her victim number seven, but the man by the south tower would, and to be able to do this much damage from that distance meant he had the skills and accuracy of a highly trained sniper. Hearing the wail of approaching sirens didn’t improve the situation; if the gunman had enough ammunition, he could shoot anyone who set foot on the bridge.Somehow Charlie had to warn the cops.
Quickly she searched through the clothing of the two victims to look for a mobile phone, but found nothing. “Sir,” she called out toward the limo. “Do you have a phone with you?”
“There are two in the car,” he said, “but I can’t leave James.”
“That’s okay. Stay right there with him.” She slung the strap of her carry-in over her neck and cinched it so that it pressed against her chest. She lowered herself to the ground on her forearms and knees, letting the fog waft over her before she began crawling toward the limo.
It seemed to take forever, and the roughness of the asphalt scraped through her sleeves and trousers. Charlie held her breath as she moved across each open gap, praying silently that the fog was concealing her movements as much as she hoped. By the time she reached the shiny front bumper of the big car she was shaking all over.
As soon as there was enough limo between her and the sniper, Charlie yanked the strap over her head and rose in a half-crouched position, moving quickly to the two men taking cover behind the rear wheel well of the limo. One was a slim, dark-haired man wearing a chauffeur’s uniform with blood blooming on the right side of his jacket; the other man was a golden-haired, bearded hulk in a black trench coat. The hulk had the chauffeur cradled against his arm, and held a folded, red-splotched white silk scarf pressed against the wound in his chest.
He looked up at her with narrow black eyes that were all wrong for his Nordic golden hair and gorgeous mocha skin.
Something like déjà vu came over her. Charlie would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that she had never seen the man before this moment. He was too big, too odd, too unforgettable, and yet . . . she knew him.
The jolt of familiarity had to be some kind of fluke, she thought, shrugging it off. She’d seen someone like him once; that was all.
“He can barely breathe,” the man told her.
She glanced at the blue tinge around the driver’s lips and the distended veins in his neck, and her focus abruptly shifted back to her job.
“Were you shot?” she asked him as she tore open the chauffeur’s jacket and used her stethoscope to check his heart and lung sounds.
“I’m fine,” he said. “What’s wrong with James?”
“His lung has collapsed.” She reached into her case and pulled out her pneumothorax pack. “I have to bleed out the air trapped in his chest or his heart will fail. What’s your name?”
“I’m Samuel, and you are Charlotte.” He said her name precisely, and with a certain amount of satisfaction.
“Actually, I go by Charlie.” She smiled to remove the sting. “Now, let’s put James here down on his back.”
Once they had carefully lowered the driver onto the ground, Charlie pulled his clothing out of the way and took out the scalpel from the pack.
Samuel frowned. “You’re not thinking of operating on him. Not here.”
“No, I’m simply going to make a small incision so I can put in a tube to remove the air.” As she lined up what she needed on the driver’s chest, she saw Samuel’s expression. “I know this sounds scary, but I’ve done it a hundred times and I haven’t lost anyone yet. So don’t freak out on me, okay?”
He nodded.
“Here we go.” She made the incision, cutting through the skin and the underlying tissue, and then fed the decompression catheter into his body just above the ceph-alad border of the rib to avoid the intercostal vessels. Within a few seconds the driver’s breathing became less labored, and his lips began to turn pink.
“That’s more like it.” She taped the catheter in place and checked his breathing sounds again before she turned her attention to the blood-soaked scarf. “Sam, I need you to move your hand now. When James was shot, did you see any blood spurting from his gunshot wound? Like a little geyser or fountain?”
“It was more of a small stream. A pulsing stream.” As she reached for the edge of the scarf, he reluctantly took his hand away. “Is it his heart?”
She carefully lifted the side of the makeshift bandage and inspected the wound, noting the position of the small, neat hole and the seepage from it. “Doesn’t look that way. I think the bullet might have just nicked the lung. We’ll know better when we get him to the hospital.” She began dressing the chest wound. “Where exactly are the phones in the car?”
“One is in the front console by the driver’s seat,” he said, nodding in that direction, “and the other is on the right side of the rear-facing seats in the back.”
Neither would be easy to reach unless she opened the limo’s doors and crawled inside. “Dispatch doesn’t know about the sniper. I have to call this in before backup arrives.” She cringed as a shot pinged off the roof of the limo. “Son of a bitch. How much ammo has he got?”
“The backseats are in his direct line of fire,” Samuel told her as he moved to the other side of James’s still form. “I’ll retrieve the phone from the front.”
He was already moving toward the driver’s door before she could argue with him. “Keep your head down,” she called after him.
The sniper fired three more times before Samuel returned with the cordless receiver. As glass shattered over their heads, he ducked, lost his balance, and nearly fell over.