The survivor

Seventy-One

Striker and Felicia took the east wing elevator to the third floor of St Paul’s Hospital. When they reached the locked entrance to the Critical Care Unit, Striker grabbed a gown from the bin and put it on. He tied the ends behind his back and looked around for a nurse. Moments later, the same nurse he’d dealt with last time came out of the staff lounge. He called her over and requested the doctor.

She furrowed her brow. ‘He’s on break.’

‘This is a police matter.’

‘It’s the first break he’s had in nine hours.’

‘And we haven’t had one in twelve. Get him. I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t crucial.’

‘I guess I could try paging him.’ She spoke the words with obvious reluctance, then walked down the hall without so much as another word.

Striker watched her go, then looked at Felicia. ‘Is she getting him, or not?’

Felicia threw up her hands. ‘This is bullshit. Wait here, I’ll find one myself.’ She marched down the south branch of the hallway, turned the corner, and disappeared from Striker’s view.

With the nurse and Felicia gone, the interconnecting area of the hall was empty, and Striker was alone. He thought of Courtney, as he’d been doing all day, and of the fight they’d had two nights ago.

The guilt, it was always the one thing he could count on.

He pulled out his BlackBerry, called home, got nothing. He tried calling her cell phone and got the machine. She was screening the calls, he knew. Avoiding him. Like she always did when she got pissed. He waited for the beep, and was about to leave a message when he peered through the windowed door into the Critical Care Unit and noticed something that bothered him.

The cop guarding Kwan’s room was gone.

Striker snapped his cell closed. He took a quick look around for a nurse, doctor, janitor — anyone with a pass card to get him through the door — but found no one. The place was as devoid of life as a mausoleum. He got on his cell, called Dispatch and asked them to radio the cop who was guarding Kwan’s room. He was put on hold for nearly two minutes, and when the dispatcher came back on the line, her voice sounded concerned.

‘He’s not responding.’

‘Get units here now. Code Three.’ Striker pocketed the phone and kicked open the door. The swipe receptacle snapped off the frame and a loud, high-pitched alarm filled the halls. Striker ignored it. He drew his Sig, ran thirty feet down the hall to Kwan’s room, and threw open the door.

In the far corner of the room, Patricia Kwan lay on the bed. Standing to her left, his back to Striker, was one of the hospital janitors. The man was cleaning the array of hospital equipment that flanked Kwan’s bed. Besides the missing cop who was supposed to be guarding the room, nothing seemed amiss.

Striker relaxed a little, let his gun fall to his side. ‘Hey, man, have you seen the doctor?’

‘On break. Come back ten minutes.’ As the janitor spoke the words, he glanced back over his shoulder, and Striker saw his eyes — those cold, dead eyes.

Red Mask.

‘Don’t fuckin’ move!’ he yelled, and raised his gun.

But Red Mask had already reacted. The gunman spun around, crouched, and took cover behind Patricia Kwan. He raised his gun over her bed and began shooting.

Bullets slammed into the wall behind Striker. He dropped low, took aim — and couldn’t get a shot off, not without hitting Patricia Kwan, who still lay helpless in the hospital bed. Without cover, he was screwed. He scampered leftward across the room.

Red Mask remained hidden behind Kwan’s bed. He pulled the trigger fast, in rapid fire — four shots, five, six, seven — and all of them punched into the wall to the far right of Striker.

Three feet from their intended target.

At first, when the bullets missed him by several feet, Striker counted his lucky stars. But then a cold feeling ran through him. He’d battled Red Mask twice now, and the gunman was no novice. He had displayed exceptional gun-fighting skills back at the high school and at the Kwan residence, where he had kept Striker pinned down in the foyer with suppressing fire.

There was no way his shots would be that far off their target.

Unless Striker was not his intended target.

Striker kept low and looked in that direction. What he spotted made his heart race — someone had left an oxygen tank directly beside the door, and the bullets were landing all around it.

If the tank got hit, it would damn near obliterate him.

Striker lunged to the washroom door, reefed it open, and spotted the dead cop inside. The sight of the body slowed him for a split second, and in that moment, one of Red Mask’s bullets finally struck the oxygen tank.

The entire room shook with the boom.

One moment Striker was scrambling into the washroom; the next, a thunderous explosion filled his ears and he was sent flying forwards, arms wind-milling and body twisting, until he slammed hard into the toilet and wall. He dropped to the ground, landing half on top of the dead cop, half on the hard white floor tiles. A high-pitched ringing filled his ears, and yet everything was quiet, muffled.

The gun -

Where the fuck was his gun?

He spotted the Sig behind the toilet base. Snatched it up. Gun in hand, he climbed back to his feet, stepped out of the washroom, and fell sideways onto the ground.

The room was spinning. His equilibrium was all but gone.

He raised the gun and scanned the room, but saw no sign of Red Mask. Where the oxygen tank had been sitting a giant hole had been blasted into the wall, and the entire doorframe had been blown out in the process. The door lay flat in the middle of the hall.

But where was Red Mask?

Striker struggled to get to his feet. As he did so, his head pounded and his stomach tightened. He fought off the urge to puke, stumbled to what was left of the doorway, and glanced down one end of the hall.

Halfway down, he spotted Red Mask. The gunman was running, his pale green gown flapping behind him. When he reached the end, where Striker had kicked open the CCU doors, he stopped, spun about and opened fire.

Again, his bullets were way off the mark, and when Striker looked ten feet down the hall, he saw another oxygen tank. He ducked back into the recovery room, preparing himself for another explosion, but none came.

When the sound of the bullets ceased, Striker peered back into the hall. The oxygen tank was still there, but there was no sign of Red Mask.

Striker raised his pistol and entered the hall. He moved east down the corridor, keeping close to the wall, out of the centre line of fire. When he reached the doorway and entered the cross-section of diverging halls, he ran right into Felicia. She had her gun out. At the sight of him, a look of horror covered her face.

‘Jacob, you’re bleeding!’

He reached up with his free hand, touched his brow and felt the warm stickiness of fresh blood. He pulled his hand away, saw red.

‘He’s here. In a hospital gown. Red Mask.’ Striker looked around. Felicia had come from the south, and he had followed from the west, so there were only two ways the gunman could have fled. He ordered Felicia to take the north while he searched east.

At the end of the hall, the door to the outside fire escape was ajar. Striker kicked it open and stepped outside. He looked down and found a discarded pale green gown and janitor clothing. But the rest of the staircase was empty. As was the alley below.

Red Mask was gone.

Striker reached for his cell phone to call for units to Burrard Street, then realised he’d lost it somewhere in the mayhem. No radio either. And with the time already passed and Red Mask nowhere in sight, Striker knew they had lost him.

Again.

He scanned the streets below and the buildings all around him. Across the way, on the rooftop of the next building, a tall Asian man stood looking at him. He was thin, with overly long legs and arms, and his face looked tight and angled wrong, as if his skull was too big for his skin. He stared back at Striker, offering nothing. Not a wave, not a smile, not anything.

Striker called out to him. ‘You see a guy run down these stairs?’

The man looked back, said nothing.

‘You see him?’ Striker asked again.

‘No.’

Striker stepped back inside and slammed the fire-escape door closed. Dizziness overtook him. He leaned against the wall, felt a moment away from collapsing. He fought through the weakness, returned to the hallway and spotted Felicia. She gave him the thumbs-down gesture.

‘No luck.’

‘He went that way,’ Striker said, and passed her by. She asked him something he couldn’t make out, but he ignored her and hurried back down the hallway to Patricia Kwan’s room. As he marched through the blown-apart doorway, he heard agonised sounds coming from the bed.

What he saw took his breath away.

Felicia entered the room just behind him. She saw Patricia Kwan, stopped hard and put a hand over her mouth. ‘Oh dear Christ.’

‘Just get a fucking doctor.’

Striker ran to Patricia Kwan and reefed her out of the bed, so hard he tore the IVs from her arms. He dragged her limp body into the washroom, turned on the water and began flushing her face.

He prayed to God he wasn’t too late.