BALTIMORE, MARYLAND
“He’s breathing!”
The words shot through the FBI radio system like a bullet. While four agents secured room 306 in the Hilton Hotel, two others performed crude field triage on the agent who lay in front of the broken door. His partner on the advance team was dead, with a bullet wound to the head, but this man was alive, with three holes in his left side.
Medics arrived in less than a minute, pulling off the bulletproof vest, which was putting pressure on the chest and increasing blood flow to the injuries. While one prepared an IV to replace the blood that was dripping onto the carpet, the other turned a pocket flashlight on the wounds.
“Point of entry-no serrations,” he said.
The other man nodded and said into his shoulder radio, “Debrief on-site.”
There was a crackled acknowledgment. The medic continued with his work. The clean wounds suggested not just a point-blank assault but a high-velocity penetrating intra-abdominal injury. In addition to the damage caused by the bullets themselves, the kinetic energy each one had generated would have caused severe trauma to adjoining organs. One of them had entered under the armpit and could not have avoided passing near the heart. The organ was probably already swelling. That injury alone was likely fatal.
The medics refused to think about anything beyond each passing second. The goal was to keep the victim alive as long as possible. His life was important, of course. So was information. Epinephrine would be part of the cocktail being administered.
The victim’s breathing was shallow. There was a bubbling sound deep in his throat. Blood. There was no point to surgical management. Adhesive bandages were placed on the wounds. A second medical unit arrived with a stretcher, along with a senior agent, an intelligence specialist.
The dead agent had been covered with a sheet from the hotel room. The IS knelt beside him, leaning close to his partner.
“Did you zap him?” he asked the medics.
“Just now,” said the agent with the IV. “Heavy dose. Give him a few seconds.”
A terrible quiet lay upon the hallway. The gurgling in the agent’s throat gave way to a sudden, vacuum-like inhalation. Then he gagged, coughed, lay still, wheezed, and opened his eyes.
He was not looking at anyone in particular. Perhaps he was peering into the near future or into the past. They would never know. He said just one thing before he died, spoken clearly and without equivocation.
“One… of… us.”