Huge thanks go to kate221b for the amazing medical jargon! Warning... this instalment contains a lot of blood!
Borderline Chapter 18
It wasn't like the movies. No, nothing at all. That's what she always told the annual batch of Hollywood-indoctrinated students. Whenever they got a gunshot wound in, it gave her an opportunity to demonstrate to naïve first-years that there was no dramatic force throwing someone across the room, or, or, a lot of blood splattering for all the world to see. No, the laws of physics made a bullet efficient, insidious, it would push through skin and adipose tissue and muscle and bone at over fourteen hundred feet per second. Most of the time you would just keel over in shock and death would crawl beneath your soul before anyone noticed. In the case of Sergeant James Hale, it had been still more stealthy.
All Molly could do was watch the drama unfold in front of her like a dark flower, feeling like she wasn't in her own body. People moved as if they had been choreographed, a strange dance where the Corps de Ballet wore black and she didn't know the steps.
The firearms officers burst into the workshop, securing the room and forcing all three of them to the floor. She lay trembling on her stomach on the cold floor, John's hand still on her head where he'd pushed her down. She couldn't see Tom. The smell of diesel and dairy rose up from the concrete.
Half a dozen members of the tactical team proceeded efficiently through the complex, checking doors and sounding off to each other.
One of the police officers scrambled over to them, slinging his MP5 to his back and removing his mask and balaclava to reassure the civilians with a human face. He spoke into his radio, "got an ID on Doctors Watson and Hooper and Mr Kazimierz. No casualties."
Molly lifted her head and their eyes met. This was probably not the time to notice that someone was mildly good-looking. Sandy hair, laughter lines. He swiftly introduced himself, "I'm Detective Sergeant James Hale, CTC. I'm to get you out of here. Where's Mr Holmes?"
"He went after the leader," Molly heard John say.
She observed the instant camaraderie between James and John as they nodded acknowledgement to each other.
James helped her to her feet.
They crouched behind the table, waiting for the signal to bug out in single file, but the order never came.
As the armed officers tried the last door, it flew open and Robert Wade stepped arrogantly into the workshop, holding a handgun to The Needle Bitch's head. Molly hadn't hit him nearly hard enough, she realised with dismay.
The officers took a step back and began shouting stand down, stand down…
It must have been quick, but to Molly everything had slowed down and she was wading through treacle, like in a dream. John reached out and pushed her to the floor again, hissing, get down. From her vantage point she could see the sweat on Wade's brow, glistening in the police torch-light, his hostage's neck in the crook of his elbow. But something was wrong with the picture. She looked at The Needle Bitch. She didn't seem scared, just blank. She wasn't struggling or trying to communicate fear to the police officers, the way those who were about to die pleaded with their eyes. In what must have been only a split second, she heard herself shouting, she's one of them, and the police were firing on Wade and he was dropping to the ground, The Needle Bitch too.
Molly was left gasping in shock with John steadying her. Where the hell is Tom?
As if in response to the firing, the door opened again and out came another man, one she hadn't seen before. A blunt and burly human canvas, littered with tattoos. Without the slightest hesitation he opened fire on the police. Barely another split second passed before they dropped him with another ear-splitting pop-pop. But he didn't go down without getting off a couple of rounds from his defeated position on the floor. Three or four heavily armed officers piled onto him, wrestling away his weapon.
Molly took her hands from her ears and looked down. Sergeant Hale was on the floor, grasping his neck, and blood was spurting between his fingers like a pathetic, sticky fountain. He writhed and pushed against a futile enemy with his feet, his face contorted in pain and fear. John leaped into action and ripped off the man's helmet to get better access to the wound.
He must've been hit by one of the henchman's stray bullets, she thought, detached from the chaos that was going on around her.
Nine millimetre parabellum, filled down to inflict maximum damage. Illegal and inhumane.
One of the other police officers ran over, throwing off his mask and shouting into his radio, man down, man down, I need medics, unit two…
"Molly," someone was saying, "Molly!"
John looked up at her from his patient.
"Huh?" she said.
"Molly I understand you're in shock right now, but I need you."
"Right, yes, sorry, whatever you need…" she shook off the suspended state of her senses, going into full on emergency-room mode.
"Medics are on their way," said the ashen team leader.
"He hasn't got that long; he's going to bleed out in two minutes." John turned to Molly, holding his jumper to the wound, checking James' breathing and feeling for a pulse, "looks like he's been hit in the carotid. We need something like forceps or a clamp."
James writhed and spluttered under the pressure of John's hands on his neck. Molly sorted frantically through the workshop tools for inspiration. Nothing. Fuck, even a bulldog clip would do.
Echoing her thoughts John cursed. "Why do I never travel with a full medical kit? You'd think I'd learned my lesson by now."
She looked at the patient and then at John. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"There's only one thing for it," he said. "You're gonna have to plug it with your fingers. Mine are too big."
"What about the contamination?"
"He hasn't got a chance anyway," he hissed, "we'll worry about the polonium later."
"I need gloves - "
"My pocket."
She slipped her hand into John's jeans pocket and urgently pulled on the latex gloves. Blood was pooling rapidly around James' head, his face wan and fading, his pupils dilated with adrenaline.
John was the picture of professionalism. "Right, Tom, we need some light. I'll keep his head still. Molly, you go for the carotid. Ready?"
No.
"Yes. Go."
"Removing the pressure pad… now!"
The wound instantly started gushing again, but she moved quickly, quicker than she thought she'd be able to manage in her compromised state, but then it was like riding a bike, wasn't it? Tom helpfully hovered over the scene with his pen-light, looking a bit green around the gills, but she didn't have time to worry about him now…
She pushed the sternomastoid out of the way and slid her fingers laterally up the trachea. If only they had a scalpel so they could dissect down to the artery, or at least suction, so that she could see what she was doing. She closed her eyes, feeling her way in the dark. It was like a well worn path. Her daily commute to work. Places where your feet, or your hands, or muscle memory just took over from your brain.
"Spinal cord Okay," she muttered absently, "trachea and oesophagus intact. He'll need a CT scan to check for perforations later - "
"Have you got it?"
"I'm trying - "
"Have you got it - "
"I'm trying!" she almost shouted in John's face.
James stopped struggling.
"We'll lose him if you don't - "
"Ah!" She'd located the severed carotid under all the carnage and plugged the spurting with her fingers. She wiped sweat from her brow awkwardly with her shoulder. "This is so much easier when they're dead."
The team leader looked horrified, to add to his concern about his colleague.
"Don't listen to her," John reassured him, barely taking his eyes off the injured man, "she doesn't get out much. Has he got any allergies, regular medications?"
"Not that I know of," the grizzled cop told him, "James is the fittest of the lot of us. Came top one hundred in the London Marathon this year… Is he going to make it?"
"I've seen people survive a lot worse."
"Where are those paramedics?" asked Molly, craning her neck, unable to move from the patient's side.
Tom looked like he was going to vomit at any moment. John sat on his haunches, completely absorbed with the patient's welfare, his jumper sodden with arterial blood and smears of deep red up to his elbows.
There was a commotion on the other side of the workshop and paramedics rushed in.
One of them went over to the unmoving criminals to check for vital signs, but Molly didn't give a flying fuck whether they lived or not.
Two of them ran over to James. John spoke rapidly, "we've got a thirty five year old male, normally fit and well, no medication, no allergies that we know of, shot in the right side of the neck at close range. Airway is patent, breathing isn't compromised at the moment, he's tachypnoeic at thirty breaths per minute, heart rate is one forty, pulse weak and thready, he needs fluids and a vascular surgeon asap - "
"Alright, can you remove your hands please, Miss - "
"Don't you fucking dare – Molly, you stay right where you are. She's not bloody removing them because she's the only thing keeping him alive."
One of the medics stuck in a cannula and began to squeeze fluids into James, working around Molly, while the other phoned ahead to the trauma centre.
Once they'd got him relatively stable, they began to get him on the scoop, Molly still attached.
She gave Tom a glare of accusation for being useless as they all manoeuvred their way out of the workshop.
"Found him kneeling out back in some kind of catatonic state," The Annoying One said to his boss, handing him Sherlock's black rucksack. "He had this on him."
DCI Chris McCullough. Should have known.
He'd been checked over by hazmat-suited HPA officials shortly after being found still kneeling in the dirt, given the all clear, and frogmarched toward the hub of activity now surrounding the entrance to the farm. Police cars, ambulances, The Works. They'd clearly arrived very shortly after Sherlock and his comrades had broken in.
"So you're my brother's new lap-dog are you?" Sherlock was ushered up the steps of the mobile unit that currently served as McCullough's centre of operations. "Got you running round the countryside after me?"
The Annoying One left them. McCullough didn't answer right away, just pretended to check his phone for updates. It was a well-worn technique that those in authority used to set people on the back foot. Sherlock knew this game.
"On the contrary, Mr Holmes; you are the lap-dog. 'Wind him up and let him go', they said. Manipulated perfectly into position to deliver the suspects straight into our hands. And I must say, you haven't disappointed me. We've been after this lot for well over a year."
"Glad to be of assistance." Sherlock wrestled internally with his feelings toward the arrogant prick. Mycroft, he would have to deal with later. "Only… You don't have your chief suspect. You frightened him away - "
"Oh yes, your fabled son of Baron Maupertuis. Doesn't exist, I'm afraid."
"You can't prove someone doesn't exist. Serbia has a matrilineal tradition, the child took his mother's name - "
"You realise how this sounds, don't you? It sounds like you have trouble letting go. This obsession you have with the past," he paused to sigh scornfully, "it starts to call all your work into question."
Sherlock was still shaken from his run-in with Maup Junior… shaved head, deep dimples, remember, remember, yes it was him… though he desperately tried not to show it. What if Mycroft was now doubting all the other 'eliminations' he'd performed during his time overseas? "He's getting away, you idiot."
McCullough looked at him for second that seemed to last for years. Then he spoke to someone in the truck behind them, "Storelli, have them extend the search northwards."
"Right on it, sir."
McCullough turned back to Sherlock and grasped his upper arm. "Happy now? Come with me." The Inspector guided him out of the trailer and down the few steps, as Sherlock read every last thing about him, including his irritating self-assurance. "Look around you," he said, releasing his grip, "what do you see?"
Basically, this was a flagrant misuse of his talents, but Sherlock answered him anyway, "I see the farm complex. I see your brainless goons milling around."
"I see a den of iniquity. I see one of the biggest coups we've ever made of organised criminal activity. I see a handful of arrests it's taken my team an entire year to secure."
"I fail to see the relevance of your frankly pitiful CV."
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't arrest your ass for even being here. It's not going to look to good in the papers, is it? 'Famous detective found in seedy brothel'. Not to mention your brother's threats of being detained indefinitely."
"Ohhhh," it finally dawned on him, "You haven't told him yet, have you? You haven't reported back to my dear old brother that you found me in your 'seedy little brothel' and you're making a power play. You don't really believe I'm making Maupertuis up. You're threatening me with professional denigration to make sure I give you tips. No better than the men you're trying to catch. Someone's already tried to ruin me, Inspector, and it's not a secret how that ended."
McCullough's posture changed slightly when he realised that Sherlock had burst through his façade. "I still have the power to put you away for a long time. I'm warning you, I have influence with the prosecution service - "
"Well, now you're just grasping at straws. If you're going to blackmail me into being your sniffer-dog and go after this terrorist for you, you could at least be a man and do it in plain English. None of these riddles and chicanery." McCullough just glared at him, nostrils flaring as Sherlock picked up speed. "Or you could just ask nicely - "
"Right," the other man blazed, "that's - "
But he was interrupted by a flurry of activity at the barn as the paramedics pushed through, carrying the injured firearms officer painstakingly over mud and gravel. Casualties were only to be expected in this kind of situation, but what Sherlock did not expect was to see Molly, half-dressed and somehow attached to the patient.
Her hair was a mess, she had no shoes on, but she was... alive! His elation turned to paralysing horror when he realised that her flimsy blouse was not red, but drenched in blood. It was too much like the image he held in his mind place. The innocent figure floating in mid air, dress flowing as if with the current of water, beatific face like a Millais painting... His heart palpitated irregularly – too much coffee – and for the second time that night he stared in abject fear at the scene playing out before him. It must be the police officer's blood, he calmed himself. It was the only explanation. His Molly wasn't allowed to get hurt.
He watched, face and body frozen, as the paramedics loaded the stretcher and Molly into the ambulance. She hadn't noticed him watching. The doors closed and the ambulance rocked for a few seconds, then the lights went on and it pulled away.
McCullough smirked at Sherlock's reaction as he observed Tom get into the passenger side of a waiting police car and follow the ambulance.
John, who'd trotted along beside the party of paramedics and had seen them off, was now getting a lot of attention from the HPA officials who were testing him for contamination and helping him clean up his blood covered hands. He hadn't noticed Sherlock watching from the other side of the yard either.
"So, what have we here, then?" McCullough roughly checked the rucksack and tipped Sherlock's grenades out onto the steps of his trailer. People working away inside turned their heads. He pulled on latex gloves and picked one of them up for closer examination. "I'm assuming these things are stable, or you wouldn't be carrying them around in a school bag."
"Thought they'd come in handy, that's all."
"You realise possession of explosive ordinance with intent to harm persons is punishable by life imprisonment - "
"It's not explosive," Sherlock said, rolling his eyes at the tedium, "it's an incendiary device. It just melts. It's not illegal. Check the Explosives Act eighteen seventy-five."
"I'm still going to have to arrest you."
Okay, running is not an option; the place is crawling with cops…
But he was saved by the bell, or rather one of McCullough's men crackling through on his radio, asking for him by name.
"Go ahead Sergeant."
"Sir!" He was rather out of breath. "Round the other side of the east wing, sector four… It's one of those twenty foot shipping containers. The victims are still alive, must've heard the sirens blip and started shouting."
"On my way."
The sergeant continued curtly, "It's welded shut. The hydraulics aren't making any headway and we're out of options… It's like Fort Knox, sir. These guys are professional - "
McCullough looked at the bag full of incendiary grenades. He gave Sherlock a brief glance. "Lets go," he barked.