Patient Zero

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Five

The Liberty Bell Center / Saturday, July 4; 12:28 P.M.

A FRESH WAVE of Secret Service agents were the first to enter the Liberty Bell Center. Dressed in hazmat suits, they surged through the building until they found the First Lady. They whisked her away through a back door. Paramedics came to get us. Bunny lingered in the doorway to the office where Ollie and the others lay dead. EMTs worked on Top Sims, putting compresses on over a dozen slashes and stab wounds before loading him onto a gurney. Bunny hovered over them like a mother hen, giving them evil looks every time he thought they were a little too rough. He followed them out, offering a string of suggestions on how to do their jobs. They were probably happy their protective suits hid their faces.

I later learned that Skip Tyler had sixteen broken bones and a ruptured liver, apart from all the pencils Top had rammed through his kidney. Must have been one hell of a fight, but I was only marginally sorry I missed it. I’d had enough of violence. Maybe enough for the rest of my life. Even the Warrior who lurked in the back of my soul was glutted for now.

Ollie Brown and the fallen Secret Service agents were zippered into black rubber body bags. Skip and El Mujahid were left to lie where they were. Forensics teams would need to take pictures first. They could rot for all I cared. The EMTs all stopped and stared at the two pieces of El Mujahid. They gave me strange looks and didn’t get too close.

Grace sat beside me, her hand on my shoulder, as the EMTs plastered me with bandages and ice packs. When they were done, I said, “How bad was it?”

She was a long time answering that. “Bad,” was all she said.

I took her hand and held it. Her fingers were cold as ice.

“Rudy?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

She nodded. “Safe.”

When I felt able to walk she and I went back to the Bell Chamber. Brierly saw us and came over. “They tell me you and your man saved the First Lady.”

“Men,” I corrected. “First Sergeant Bradley Sims and Lieutenant Oliver Brown. They both did their part and Ollie died in action.” I paused. “I wanted you to know that Ollie died serving his country.”

Brierly nodded. “Thanks, Captain. He was a good man.”

“Yes,” I said. “He was.”

We shook hands and he took Grace aside for a conference call with Church. “I’ll be back,” she said.

“I still owe you a drink.”

“Yes,” she said, giving me a sad little smile, “you bloody well do.”

There were no more crowds. The victims lay in rows and men in white plastic suits were draping sheets over them and searching for identification. Someone had rigged blue Tyvek tarps over all of the windows, but the crowds were gone; all of Independence Mall had been cleared and the whole city was under martial law. The National Guard occupied Center City and dozens of choppers packed with federal agents, scientists, medical personnel, and a lot of other folks were descending on the town.

Rudy sat on the edge of the podium, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, the ends of his tie hanging limply from either side of his throat. He looked up at me and started to offer his hand, but both of our hands were stained with blood. He withdrew his hand and sighed.

“Dios mio, cowboy.”

“Yeah.”

“Bunny told me that it was Skip after all. Not Ollie. We were wrong.”

“Everyone was. Even Church thought that it might be Ollie. Ollie looked best for it. These bastards probably picked Skip as much for his innocent face as for his greedy black heart. They fooled us and it almost cost everyone here their lives.”

I sat down next to him and for a long time neither of us said a word. His gaze was fixed on a point across the room and I followed his line of sight to where a man in a Hawaiian shirt lay sprawled. Someone had rammed the broken end of a wooden flagpole through his eye socket.

“I didn’t know it could be like this,” Rudy said at length. “I mean, I’ve counseled hundreds of cops, but ” He shook his head.

I understood and I could hear the deep hurt in his voice. But what could I say? We’d all had to do our parts; and I knew there would be long summer nights to come where we’d sit out in his backyard and watch the stars wheel overhead and drink beer as we talked it through. But that time wasn’t now and we both knew it. Across the room some of the Secret Service agents were standing like ghosts, their faces pale, their eyes haunted, as they tried not to look at the bodies lying under sheets.

“It must have been terrible for them,” Rudy said.

“For you, too, man.”

He shook his head. “I mostly watched. I I’m not sure I could have done what they did. They had to shoot congressmen, civilians ”

“You blame them for gunning down these people?”

“God, no. They’re heroes. Every one of them.”

I nodded. “They don’t think so.”

“No,” he agreed.

“They’re marked,” I said. “This is what you were talking about. The look on their faces, in their eyes. It’ll never go away. Violence always leaves a mark. You taught me that.”

He sighed. “We ask so much of the people who protect us. Firemen, cops, soldiers They sign up to do some good, to make a difference, but we sometimes ask too much.”

“They’re warriors,” I said softly. “Some of them will be stronger because of today. For some people battle is a clarifying experience. It forces all of the senses to come awake, it makes you become totally aware, totally alive.”

“And some of them will be broken because of today,” he said quietly. “Not everyone has a warrior soul. You taught me that, Joe. Some people have only so much courage, only so much tolerance for violence, even when it’s for the right cause. For some of these people this may be a breaking point. Today might kill some of those young folks. Not right away, maybe not for twenty years, but a few of them may never shake the memory of what they had to do today, what they were forced to do. They’ll know all the logic about how it had to happen, how they had no choice; and for a while that will keep them steady but some of them will never survive this. Not ultimately.”

I wanted to argue with him, but I knew that he was right. Being a hero doesn’t mean that a person can become comfortable with being a killer, too.

“They’re going to need you, Rudy.”

“I can’t help them all.”

“They couldn’t save all the people here,” I said. Rudy closed his eyes for a moment, then he stood up and looked down at me.

“And what about you, cowboy? Have you reached your limit?”

When I didn’t answer, he sighed and nodded. He patted my shoulder then turned and walked over to the group of agents. I watched him go, saw the process of change that happens when he goes from being my friend Rudy to Dr. Sanchez. He always seems bigger, taller. A rock for those who need something to cling to. But I knew the truth: he, too, was marked, and like the rest of us he would carry this with him forever.

So what about me? I wondered. I could already feel the shock ebbing within me. As the adrenaline washed its way out of my bloodstream my deep grief and horror was dipping lower and lower. In the reeds there in the back of my mind the Warrior was already beginning to sharpen his knife again. I knew it, I could feel it.

I looked at the agents, and all of them looked so young and so hurt. Only one looked back at me and held my gaze. He was in his late twenties, not all that much younger than me, but his eyes were older than his face. His expression reflected less shock than the others. He read my face and I read his, and we exchanged a brief nod that none of the others saw, or if they did then they didn’t understand it. They weren’t of the same species as we were. The young agent turned back and listened to Rudy, but I was sure that he was already working through the experience in his own head. The way I was. The way warriors do. He and I did not need to be marked by our experiences. We were born with that mark.