Camouflage

Chapter 25

Don Eppes stood with his team and surveyed the hallway outside the room where technicians were setting up the lab. Through the doorway he could see Donna Bainbridge already at work, instructing the lab techs, organizing materials. Don rubbed his chin and frowned.

He didn't like the location much; the lab room was private and a decent size, but it was only one room away from double doors that provided access from the ER to the rest of the hospital. One room sat next door, between the lab and the ER, and that room appeared to be fully outfitted for a patient. Right now it was empty, and although it was true that most of the traffic in the hallway would only be patients on gurneys coming from the ER and heading to rooms upstairs, it wouldn't be hard for someone to slip into the ER from the admitting area pretending to see a patient, and then make their way through to the back entrance, through those double doors to this hallway. He knew that firsthand; he had just come through those doors from the ER after getting his arm stitched and his thigh bandaged. Colby had also just returned from the ER, after getting his shoulder attended to. Don lowered his hand from his chin, flexed his sore arm and winced.

His father was standing with them, and he said, "How's the arm?"

"Okay," said Don, sighing. He glanced up and down the hallway – he could see Dr. Schilling a few feet away in conversation with some of his colleagues, reaching for his cell phone. Schilling stepped away and put the phone to his ear. Don looked past him, down the hall.

He could see a man coming down the hallway toward them carrying a gift bag, and he stepped back into the lab for privacy, motioning at Colby, David and Megan to follow with a jerk of his head. As they funneled through the doorway, he saw his father step back out the way of the approaching man, and then drift toward Dr. Schilling, who was still on his phone.

Don glanced at his team. "We need to set up security here." The man passing them in the hallway gave them a curious look, and then walked past them and through the double doors into the ER. As the man moved away, Don indicated him with a nod of his head. "There's going to be traffic in this hallway, and there is easy access to the outside through the ER. I want one of you in the ER itself watching anyone who heads for those double doors from that direction, one right here on the lab doorway, and one down the other direction at the end of the hallway. We'll set up our own security until we can get a guard detail arranged with LAPD. We need to have protection on her while she's here, and then we need to figure out where we'll put her afterward."

Through the doorway, he saw Doctor Schilling shut off his phone, turn suddenly to Alan and speak sharply, and he saw his father go pale. Don felt his heart clutch, and he broke off abruptly and pushed through his agents, out into the hall. His father and Schilling were already breaking into a trot down the hallway, and Schilling waved him to follow, his face grim.

"It's Charlie," said Alan, in a choked voice.

Don broke into a run after them, and turned his head and yelled back over his shoulder, "Stay here, and set up, like we discussed!"

Jackie Gruselli walked through the ER carrying his bag, and right on out into the waiting area and out the doors to the parking area, smiling to himself.

After leaving the professor's room, he headed straight for the first floor, which held the ER, the labs and radiology. If Bainbridge was still alive, Murciano had told him chances were good she would be in a lab. He had glanced into the rooms near the professor's room on the way out, just in case she had been set up in a room close to him, but no dice.

He had also struck out in the main lab area. It was actually hard to get a look at all of it – he could see into a front room through a window in the door, but there was a back room that he couldn't see into. So he pretended to be lost and deaf to boot, walking right through the first room to get to the back, ignoring the protests of one of the lab technicians, and then pretending to be confused when he pushed through the rear door and found an empty room. It was late, and the two lone technicians in the front part of the room were the only inhabitants. He apologized and got himself out of there and out in the hallway, scratched his head. There were no agents in the main lab, and no Donna Bainbridge.

He poked around the hallways a bit more, strolled through radiology, which appeared to be closed for the evening for outpatient screenings, and then walked over to the entrance to radiology and studied the directory that was posted there. No more labs anywhere else in the hospital; they were all on the first floor. He shook his head. She wasn't at her apartment or in Stevenson's lab, and if she were in the hospital, it would be here, on the first floor. Maybe she didn't make it, after all. It was time to get out of there and regroup before someone found the professor. He glanced at the map again. The fastest way out from where he stood was through the ER, around the corner and down a hallway – he'd enter the back of the ER, walk through it and go out the entrance to the parking lot.

So that was what he did – and that was where he finally got lucky. As he rounded the corner on the way to the ER, he almost stopped short at the sight of the agents standing in the hallway – he recognized Eppes and his team from the pictures Murciano had shown him. To turn around, however, would look suspicious, and so he kept coming. The gift bag containing the football gave him a little anonymity; he looked like a visitor. As he approached, the agents ducked into a doorway, and as he looked past them he could see people working in what was apparently a small lab – and there she was, Donna Bainbridge herself, bent over a lab table. He recognized her from the pictures that Murciano had pulled up from the news footage of the Stevenson case. Bingo.

As he walked out into the parking lot, he couldn't help smiling to himself. Even thought she was alive, it was a perfect set-up, really – in a short period of time, someone would discover Charlie Eppes, dead, and the news would undoubtedly pull at least Don Eppes away, leaving the lab protected by what appeared to be only a crew of three agents. Jackie needed to get Rocky over here, fast, with some materials for a distraction.

It would be easy, he mused, if they did it right. They didn't even need to kidnap her – that would have been a lot more difficult. Murciano had decided to cut his losses, and just wanted her dead. All they needed was a few moments, a little confusion, and a clear shot. Then Eppes would be minus a brother and minus a case, and Murciano and his man Frank would be in the clear. Jackie could see a fat paycheck coming his way – maybe in as few as a couple of hours.

Don dashed into the elevator on his father's heels and as the door closed, rapped at Dr. Schilling, "What's going on?"

Schilling was frowning. "A nurse on your brother's floor thinks someone tampered with your brother's morphine pump."

"What?" said Don, weakly. The sudden lift of the elevator made him feel dizzy, and he leaned against the wall for support. He had expected some kind of setback in Charlie's health – but not an attack by someone else. That kind of thing was his job – something he should have accounted for. He was so consumed with setting up protection for Donna Bainbridge he had failed to think of setting up any protection for Charlie. And it hadn't made any sense to, he told himself. They had already poisoned him – but not to kill him necessarily – it had been meant to obtain leverage, or so he had thought. Charlie had been worth more alive than… He stopped that thought and looked at Schilling. "How much morphine did he get?"

"We're not sure," said Schilling. "I need to talk to the nurse. If he got all of it in a short period of time it could depress his respiratory system – which is already not working correctly – so much that he stops breathing. We're not sure right now how much he got."

"I should have stayed with him," Alan moaned, running a hand over his face. "He was sleeping – I thought it would be a good time to leave…"

"It wasn't your fault, Dad," said Don, grimly. "If anything, it was mine. I should have set up protection." Fighting a rising sense of anxiety, he puzzled over the possible motives. Charlie's poisoning was a bargaining chip. Why would they risk killing him? Had Charlie stumbled upon some evidence in his computer searches, something that Don didn't know about? And how would they know, if he had? Of course, the attack on Charlie in parking lot hadn't made sense, either. Was there a purpose to this, or was it just an opportunistic attack? Don shook his head, chagrined. He should have had protection on Charlie's room, no question.

There was a cluster of people in Charlie's room, and a man in scrubs looked up and said tersely, "He's breathing, but his respirations are slowing. We sent the pump down to the lab to measure how much morphine is left in it. He didn't get all of it – Mary caught it and stopped it. We just don't know how much. We're monitoring his vitals, and I ordered Naloxone."

Schilling nodded and stepped over to Charlie, who was lying unnervingly still, pale under the oxygen mask. Schilling gently lifted an eyelid; Don could see that his brother's pupil had contracted to a pinpoint, a small unnatural-looking black dot in the brown iris. Schilling nodded and stepped back, murmuring, "Continue to monitor. Do you have a crash cart?"

The man nodded. "Standing by."

Schilling turned and held out a hand, ushering Don and Alan out into the hallway. "He's in good hands. We'll find out how much he got, and the Naloxone that was ordered is an antidote – it will offset the effects of the morphine."

An antidote, thought Don miserably. While Bainbridge was trying to develop an antidote for one toxin, someone had come up to Charlie's room and administered another poison – in the form of morphine.

A nurse, a woman of about forty, approached them. "There was a man in here," she said, her words tumbling out quickly. "I saw him go in and I hadn't seen him before, plus it was after regular visiting hours, so he wasn't supposed to be there. I knew the professor was asleep and that there was no one else in there, and so I went to check. The man was standing there, looking at Dr. Eppes' chart. I asked him if I could help him – not in a nice way, you understand – I was trying to hint that he should leave. He made some lame excuse but he started to go, so I walked back down the hall. When I got to the desk I turned and looked, expecting to see him walking away, but he wasn't out of the room yet so I walked back down. He was coming around from the other side of the bed – where the IV is set up and I thought that was odd, but it didn't hit me at first what he had been doing. Then he picked up his bag and left."

"It took me a minute to understand what he'd done. I watched him go to make sure he got on the elevator; then I walked into the room – and then I realized the pump was running too fast. I ran around and clamped off the tube, and then I shut off the pump. I'm not sure how much morphine got into him before I shut it off." She wrung her hands apologetically, her face twisted with regret.

"It's okay, Mary – you did great," said Schilling, gently.

"Can you describe him?" asked Don.

"Yes," she nodded firmly. "He was about six foot two, maybe mid-thirties, wearing a green shirt and a dark windbreaker and dark pants. He had dark hair – he was not bad looking, but his eyes were odd – empty-looking – I'm not sure how to describe them."

A sudden flash of recollection hit Don – she had just described the man in the hallway downstairs – he had walked right past them, and he had looked right into the lab. It was likely that he had seen Donna Bainbridge. He must have just come from Charlie's room.

Alan was frowning. He stepped back to the doorway of the room, looked in, and shook his head and turned to Mary. "You said he had a bag with him? A gift bag?"

"Yes." She nodded.

"What?" asked Don. He frowned, remembering. The man downstairs had been carrying a gift bag.

"He took Charlie's football," said Alan, in a bewildered tone. "Why would he do that?"

It was Don's turn to look puzzled. "Football?"

"Deondre Wiseman stopped by earlier with a football for Charlie," said Alan. "It was in a gift bag – it had all of the team signatures – I think it was a standard replica, but six of them autographed it personally. Why would the man bother to steal a gift after what he'd done?"

"I didn't realize he'd stolen it," said Mary. "I thought he brought it in with him."

Don frowned. "Probably just took it to use it as a prop – as cover. Made him look like a visitor - ," he broke off. "Wait, Dad, you said six players signed the football. Are you sure it was six? Do you remember who they were?"

Alan stared at him, then scratched his head. "I'm not sure. Wiseman was one, uh…" He bowed his head and rubbed his face, obviously exhausted. "God, I can't think." He turned to look in the room at Charlie, and then back at Don and Schilling. "I'd like to go in and sit with him. If someone gets me a team roster, I'll try to pick out the names on the football."

Don shook his head. "No, Dad, don't worry about it now. We'll figure it out later."

He dialed David on his cell phone and told him what had happened, and about the man with the gift bag, and told him to watch for him. Then he sat with his father and Mary and the doctors, watching, waiting for the information on the morphine pump to come back, his heart beating faster, the more Charlie's slowed. Waiting for the Naloxone to work, wondering what would happen if it didn't…

The information came back from the lab – Charlie had gotten about a quarter of what was in the pump, Schilling told them. "Not as bad as we thought, but still a lot for him to handle; his system isn't metabolizing as it should. Still it helps us – we will know how much more Naloxone to give him."

They went back to sitting, Don staring at the thin, still form in the bed, willing him to breathe, a little more quickly, a little more deeply. He felt helpless, waiting, and he tried not to think about doing this again, if Donna Bainbridge's antidote didn't work…

Finally, the man in scrubs heaved a sigh, and said, "I think he's out of the woods. His respirations are nearly up to what they were prior to him getting the overdose. He'll probably wake up soon. If his situation should change, call me." He walked out, with a brief nod at Alan's heartfelt thanks, and it occurred to Don that the man had likely just saved his brother's life, and he didn't even know his name. He hadn't thought to ask, until it was too late. He rubbed his face; he was tired, and wasn't thinking straight.

He looked at his watch; it read one-thirty a.m. – they had been up there for an hour. He looked at Schilling. "I'd like to move him, if we could. There was an empty room just off the ER, next to the lab we set up downstairs. It would be easier to keep a watch on both of them if they were close together. Can we put Charlie in that room, next to the lab?"

Schilling cocked his head, considering. "I suppose so. It is used to hold patients that have been admitted from the ER while they are being assigned a room. It is completely equipped. I'll look into it."

There was a soft moan from the bed and they turned to look. Charlie's eyes fluttered open; the pinpoint pupils had widened to a more normal diameter. He blinked at them sleepily over the oxygen mask; Don could see the question in his eyes at the sight of them all there, but he was too tired or too groggy to speak, and he closed his eyes again.

A half hour later, they were downstairs. Charlie was being set up in the room adjacent to the lab. Megan was just through the double doors, in the ER itself, watching for anyone suspicious trying to make their way through the ER to the hallway. Colby was stationed down at the other end of the hallway, where it branched out – radiology to the left and the main labs to the right, keeping watch down both hallways. David had parked himself right outside the doors to the lab and to Charlie's room, and Don stepped over to his side.

"Everything okay?" David asked, with a nod at Charlie. They could see him through the doorway, sleeping, as the hospital staff bustled around him, hooking up monitors and hanging his IV. Don had called a cab for Alan and sent him home to sleep; his father was clearly exhausted – too exhausted to drive safely, and the latest scare had seemed to take a toll on him.

"Yeah, it is now." Don gave him a short synopsis of what happened, then said, "That man who walked down the hallway, just before I went up to see Charlie – did you get a look at him? We think he might be the same guy who was in Charlie's room."

David shook his head. "I didn't. My back was to him, but when you called down a little bit ago, I went and told Megan and Colby, and Colby said he saw him – said he'd recognize him again. We've all got the description though, and we've been watching. No one's come through here except for one patient and an orderly from the ER. I talked to Merrick – he's getting hold of LAPD and they're calling in some officers on overtime to set up a watch. They'll be here in about an hour, maybe less."

"Good." Don nodded. "We can cover for that long." It was the first wrong statement he would make.

He stepped into the lab and as he approached Donna Bainbridge, she glanced up at him. "We're making good progress," she said quietly, indicating a set of vials and equipment in front of her. I have the first steps done – those vials need to go in a centrifuge for an hour and a half, and then I have just few more steps before I have something for a trial. We're ahead of schedule. When we get the vials out of the centrifuge, we'll get a blood sample from Charlie while I finish up the last steps, then apply the first batch of antidote to the blood sample, and get a look at it. It should tell us how well it's working, and how much we'll need to give him." She nodded at a lab technician as he picked up the rack of vials. "He's taking those down to the main lab to the centrifuge." She looked at Don apologetically. "I'm starving, and I'll bet you are too. We've got at least an hour while those vials go through the centrifuge and I think someone from the hospital ordered sandwiches. Do you want one?"

Don couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten, and his stomach lurched painfully at the thought of food. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that sounds good."

Jackie Gruselli stood next to his car and stepped forward as Rocky swung into the parking lot a block from the hospital. The lot was surrounded by shrubs and trees and deserted that time of night; and better yet, it was too small and the building in front of it too nondescript to warrant any cameras. Rocky was wearing a long dark trench coat and he tossed one to Jackie.

"Did you get the stuff?"

"Yeah," said Rocky, as he opened the trunk. He lifted two water bottles with cloth stoppers carefully out of a box and handed them to Gruselli, who had shrugged on his trench coat.

Gruselli put them into the deep inside pockets of the coat, and then took two more from Rocky along with a lighter and a bandanna, and stowed them as well. "Did you fill these bottles like I told you?"

"Yeah, they're ready."

"What are you carrying?"

Rocky showed him – two semi-automatic nine millimeters, and Gruselli said, "Okay, but take this, too," and went and pulled out a MAC-10 from his trunk. "It can fire 1000 rounds a minute," he said. "Don't use it unless you gotta. Keep it as back up. You got your cell phone? Give me your number."

They exchanged numbers, and then Gruselli said, "Here's the plan. I'll drive back to the ER entrance and drop you off. You wait outside five minutes – have a smoke or something, like you're waiting for someone. Make sure you wait five minutes. When you go in, put the bandanna on to cover your face and you'll head straight back through the ER, past the receptionist, through the front ER doors, all the way to the back. The receptionist will probably freak and maybe call security when she sees you, but just keep going - you'll probably be done with what you're doing by the time they get there. When you get to the back, there are two doors that lead out into a hallway that leads into the rest of the hospital. Once you go through those, you're in a hallway. The first room to your left is just a room for a patient, but the very next one is a small lab, and that's where she's at."

"I don't want you to go through those doors, though – I don't want you to leave the ER. There are agents on the other side – and you'd better keep your wits around you in the ER, because they might have an agent there, too. If you see any agents in the ER and they try to stop you, take them out. Don't hesitate. Surprise is on your side, but only for a second. Then you need to jam those two doors. They have U-shaped metal handles. Did you bring the lock?"

Rocky nodded, reached in his trench coat in a deep inside pocket and pulled out a bike lock – the type with a long solid U-shaped bar. Gruselli nodded. "Perfect. Run that through the handles and lock those two doors. There was a spare gurney parked near them when I went through. Pull it over by the door, toss a couple of the Molotov cocktails on it and light them on fire. It will clear out the ER, and keep any hospital security occupied – and make it hard for anyone to deal with that lock without dealing with the fire first. You turn around and go right out with the crowd – try to slip away in the confusion, but if any security guard tries to stop you, take them out. Then run around to the front of the hospital and wait for me by the car – I'll leave it parked on the curb. If you see Eppes or Bainbridge run out through the front, take care of them – but I don't think they'll get that far."

Rocky looked at him. "What are you gonna do?"

Gruselli smiled. "While you're taking your five-minute smoke break, I'm gonna drive around to the front entrance and go in that way. When I get back to the hallway – there's a cross hallway that leads to the main lab and radiology, and then that short hallway where she is – I'm gonna toss a couple of cocktails in that cross hallway and start a fire. If there are any agents that way, they'll come running my direction – and I'll take them out. Eppes and Bainbridge will be trapped in that short hallway – they won't be able to go back out the ER because you'll have the doors locked. The smoke and fire in the ER should flush them out toward me, and I'll just pick them off – but if it doesn't, I'll head down the hallway and get them. If they should get past me somehow and get out the front, you take them out. When I get them, I'll run back out the front, we'll hop in my car, and go. Got it?"

"Yeah," said Rocky. "Yeah, sure." He was trying to look nonchalant, but Gruselli noted with satisfaction that he looked a little freaked – and Rocky was no rookie. Gruselli liked mayhem – the more destruction and death the better, and so if Rocky was freaked, he figured he had a good plan. It would create mass confusion in the hospital, which was what he wanted, but it was relatively simple to carry out.

He grinned, and pulled another MAC-10 from his backseat, then walked around and got in the driver's seat. "Okay, then, let's go."

With an hour break the lab technicians dispersed, and it was just Don and Donna in the lab. With David just outside in the hallway, Don allowed himself to relax, just a bit. He had reloaded his Glock, and he knew his team was on watch. He and Donna stood near the main doorway to keep their food away from the work tables and munched on sandwiches, and Don told Donna about the man upstairs and what had happened to Charlie. He saw the concern in her face, and he got the distinct impression it wasn't only for her own safety. He was warming toward her, and he asked her about herself, where she was from, her studies and other trivia, just to hear her voice and watch her face when she talked. They finished their sandwiches and she said, "So do you think that man will come back?"

Don shook his head. "Not here, anyway. I'm sure he saw us standing there – I doubt he'd take on a bunch of agents. That's why I moved Charlie down here – I figured he'd be safer." Just like that, he made his second and third wrong statements, in a matter of minutes.

And it was just a matter of minutes later that they heard the unmistakable pop-pop-pop of gunfire from the ER.

End, Chapter 25