With his father flung over his shoulder, Charlie backed out the service door and onto the sidewalk, which was lit by the ambulance idling at the curb. Two paramedics, laden with cases and duffel bags, wheeled a gurney from the opened back of the ambulance. A glance at Drummond, now an alarming shade of blue, and they began to run.
In seconds, Drummond was lying on the thin mattress. One of the medics, a small young man whose name badge read GAILLARD, asked, “Sir, can you hear me?” He shook Drummond gently, trying to rouse him.
Nothing.
Gaillard looked up at his partner and said, “Still breathing. Pulse is faint.”
In seconds, the paramedics transformed their bags into a temporary hospital room. They elevated Drummond’s feet and fitted him with an oxygen mask fed by a cylindrical tank. A heart monitor and a cluster of other instruments whirred to life.
“BP is seventy over forty,” Gaillard read, which meant nothing to Charlie, but the paramedic’s tone made it clear that this wasn’t good.
Gaillard’s partner, a slender, middle-aged man named Morneau, hoisted an IV pole and hung two bags of clear fluid on it. “Point four mils of atropine and a milligram of epinephrine,” he said, adding, for Charlie’s benefit, “To get his heart rate back up.”
Gaillard launched into rapid chest compressions, counting to himself. “Un … deux … trois …” as Morneau scrutinized the readouts. “Dropping,” he said, biting his lip.
Gaillard ripped open Drummond’s shirt, sending buttons clicking onto the pavement. Next he snapped open a case that resembled a laptop computer. “Trying two hundred joules,” he said, withdrawing a pair of defibrillator paddles. “Stand clear.”
On the other side of the gurney, Charlie took a step back, at once hoping and bracing himself.
Gaillard aimed the paddles. Both paramedics’ absorption was such that they seemed oblivious to the tire-screaming arrival of a sporty black Fiat, until a young brunette in a floral-print cocktail dress climbed out of the passenger seat, gun in hand. Stanley followed from the driver’s seat, a sidearm drawn as well.
Charlie’s jumbled emotions were slashed away by fear.
Stanley looked through him to the paramedics. “Gentlemen, I’m Special Agent Stanley and this is Special Agent Lanier, FBI.” He waved an FBI badge. “These two men are wanted for capital crimes in the United States. We need to take them into our custody.”
Gaillard, poised to use the paddles, looked down at Drummond. “He’s in ventricular fibrillation. I need to shock him now.”
Lanier pointed her gun at him and pulled the trigger. The muzzle flash spotlit Gaillard’s shocked face. The paramedic dropped behind the gurney, apparently dead before reaching the sidewalk. The defibrillator clunked down beside him.