Chapter 3 - The Ghost Protocol
"Someone's here," Leo whispered, his face turning an translucent shade of white. His fingers were still buried inside Nicholas Russo’s chest cavity. "Claire, what do we do? If they look through the window..."
"Keep cutting," Claire ordered, her voice drop-dead quiet but filled with an absolute authority. "If you stop now, his heart will starve for oxygen. Don't look at the door."
She slipped away from the table, her rubber-soled nursing clogs silent against the floor. She approached the heavy wooden door of OR 4. The upper half contained a small rectangle of wire-reinforced glass. Through it, she could see the silhouette of a man in a long, wet trench coat walking down the dark hallway. In his right hand, partially concealed beneath the fabric, was the distinct shape of a silenced semi-automatic pistol.
He was checking the door handles. He was three rooms away.
Claire scanned the dark operating room. Beside the utility closet stood a massive, stainless steel linen hamper filled with heavy, discarded drapes from the day before. She pushed it silently against the door, jamming the wheels beneath the handle. It wouldn't stop a determined man, but it would buy them seconds.
She ran back to the table. "Did you find it?"
"Got it," Leo breathed, sweating profusely. With a dull clink, a flattened 9mm slug dropped into the metal basin. "The lung lobe is lacerated but the main pulmonary vessels are intact. I'm running a continuous suture now. But his abdominal bleed is worsening. The third bullet is in the retroperitoneal space."
"We don't have time for a full laparotomy here," Claire said, looking at the door handle, which suddenly rattled violently.
Outside, a heavy shoulder slammed against the wood. The linen hamper groaned, shifting two inches.
"Open the door!" a harsh voice barked from the corridor. "Hospital security! We have a report of a hazardous leak in this wing!"
"That's not security," Claire whispered. She looked down at Nicholas. His vitals were stabilizing slightly from the blood transfusion, but he was nowhere near stable enough to move.
"Hey!" the voice outside shouted, followed by the terrifying, metallic sound of a gun slide racking.
Claire grabbed a large glass bottle of highly flammable isopropyl alcohol from the counter. She poured it liberally over a pile of discarded surgical gauze near the door, grabbed a box of matches from the anesthesia cart—used for testing old gas lines—and struck one.
"Leo, get ready to move the gurney toward the back exit!" she yelled.
She dropped the match onto the gauze. A bright, blue-orange wall of flame erupted against the door, triggering the ceiling sprinkler head directly above the entrance. Instantly, cold water hissed down, creating a dense wall of blinding smoke and steam as the fire fought the chemicals.
The man outside fired two shots through the wooden door. The bullets whizzed through the upper drywall, showering the room in plaster dust, but the fire and smoke blinded his sightline.
"Move!" Claire screamed.
Leo unlocked the gurney wheels. Together, they shoved the heavy bed through the rear scrub-room exit just as the main door was kicked open behind them. They burst out onto the building's exterior fire escape, the freezing rain immediately washing away the blood and sweat from their faces.
Waiting in the alleyway below wasn't an ambulance—it was a massive, matte-black armored SUV. The door threw open, and three men in tactical gear emerged, their rifles raised.
"Don't shoot!" Claire screamed, shielding Nicholas’s body with her own. "He's alive! But he needs to get out of here now!"
The lead tactical man, a massive scarred warrior named Marcus, recognized his boss on the gurney. "Get him in the back! Move, move, move!"
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Before Claire could step away, Marcus grabbed her by the arm, pulling her into the luxury interior along with the gurney. Leo tried to back away, but Marcus gripped his collar too. "You two are the only things keeping Mr. Russo alive. You're coming with us."
The heavy doors slammed shut, and the armored SUV roared out of the alleyway, leaving the burning, compromised hospital far behind.
