Trauma

CHAPTER 56

Carrie was on the two-way, trying to reach David, when a van pulled up to the rear entrance of the VA. The white cargo van without any windows was the kind that gave Carrie shivers anytime she passed one on the road. She set the radio down on the seat beside her and did not move. Twelve thirty in the morning. Floodlights partially illuminated the back lot, but not Carrie’s Volvo, which was parked directly opposite the van, maybe a hundred feet away. The van idled for a minute or two. No action. Just waiting.

Even though she was parked in the shadows, Carrie sank lower in her seat and peered out over the car’s front dash. She caught a flash of movement near the van. The hospital rear doors had come open, and out stepped Lee Taggart, dressed in street clothes and pushing a wheelchair. Seated in that wheelchair was a limp-looking man covered in a gray blanket, wearing a baseball cap on his head, which was slumped forward onto his chest. He looked unresponsive, likely very sedated.

It had to be Garrett McGhee.

The van’s rear doors sprang open and a huge figure emerged out the back. Carrie recognized him right away. It was Ramón Hernandez.

She’d suspected Taggart, but Hernandez? What was he doing here?

Confusion paralyzed Carrie’s mind. Pieces were on the table, but she still could not put them all into the puzzle.

Hernandez jumped to the ground and waited for Taggart to reach him. Together, the two men lifted the wheelchair holding McGhee into the back of the van with ease. To Carrie, to anybody, it looked like a hospital discharge, not a kidnapping. Seconds later, the van slipped into reverse and headed for the exit. And just like that, McGhee was gone.

Carrie waited until the van got some distance before she started her car’s engine. She was short of breath, but not determination. The van took a left out of the lot and Carrie followed. She glanced at the two-way radio on the seat beside her. No way to reach David now. He was probably in handcuffs by this point.

Sick as she was about David, she could call somebody for help. From her purse, Carrie retrieved her phone without losing sight of the van. At that moment, the van made a sudden left turn and Carrie pulled to a quick stop on the side of the road, confused.

The turn made no sense to her. The van had gone down the access road to the VA’s long-abandoned construction project on the hospital annex. The access road was a dead end, not a through street. Nothing was down that way but the boarded-up brick building.

A few seconds of contemplation, nothing more. She had to follow.

Carrie shut off her car’s headlights and took the same turn as the van. It was dark, and hard to see, but Carrie managed not to drive off the potholed road and into a ditch. The four-story building loomed large in front of her. Battered chain-link fencing surrounded the annex, a symbolic “keep out” gesture at best. The structure was built on what appeared to be a weed-strewn sandlot dotted with rusted trash barrels. At the rear of the annex, beyond the fencing, was a dense patch of scraggly-looking trees and a sea of unruly brush.

When Carrie reached the halfway point, she let up on the gas and pulled over to the side of the road. She could see the van in front of her, and that meant the people inside would be able to see her.

The van drove up to the fence and Taggart got out. He pried the fence open where there was not any gate, and secured the pliable metal flap using two bungee cords, creating a makeshift entrance wide enough for the van to drive through. They must have cut the fence so from a distance the perimeter would not appear to have been breached.

Hernandez brought the van close to the building, but kept the engine running. Taggart stayed with McGhee, while Hernandez put the van in reverse and drove back through the fence opening. Carrie panicked, thinking he would drive right past her car, but instead he drove off the road and down what appeared to be a path that cut through the growth behind the annex.

Just like that, the van was gone.

A moment later, Hernandez emerged from a thicket of trees and brush. He went back through the fence and undid the bungee cords holding the flap in place. He caught up to Taggart, who waited for him at what must have been a rear entrance into the abandoned building. Sure enough, Taggart opened a door, and soon all three men vanished inside.

Carrie rolled down her window to battle back a sudden wave of nausea. Only then did she realize she was completely soaked in sweat. She watched the building for a few minutes and felt certain nobody was coming out. Why would Hernandez have hidden the van if he planned to go somewhere anytime soon? The plan, Carrie thought. Get the evidence. Maybe there was a window, some way for her to take a picture without entering the building.

A voice inside her head spoke up. She was unarmed, outnumbered, and untrained, while Hernandez was solid muscle and a skilled combat vet. No contest.

“Be smart here, Carrie,” she said aloud.

Then she remembered the call she’d been about to make. Carrie retrieved her smartphone and dialed a number stored in her contacts. The phone rang four times before somebody finally answered.

Dr. Finley sounded logy. “Yeah, hello?”

“Alistair, it’s Carrie. There’s an emergency. I need your help.” Her speech came out hurried and short of breath.

“Carrie, what on earth? What’s going on?”

“The VA Police have my friend David Hoffman in custody right now. You have to tell them he’s not a threat. He’s with me.”

“In custody? Why? And what do you mean he’s with you? What are you doing?”

“I don’t have time to explain, but there’s something terrible happening at the VA. Sandra Goodwin and Cal Trent are kidnapping the DBS patients.”

“What?” Dr. Finley sounded fully awake now, and appropriately alarmed.

“They’ve been experimenting on people, Alistair,” Carrie said. “It’s not DBS that’s curing them. It’s some sort of drug they’ve been given, I’m sure of it — something from CerebroMed, but it doesn’t always work. There are side effects like palinacousis, maybe others. And Ramón Hernandez, he’s involved, same as the nurse from the VA, Lee Taggart. I just watched them take Garrett McGee off of the neuro recovery unit.”

“Carrie, you realize you sound absolutely mad.”

“It’s happening, whether you want to believe me or not. Now, please — help my friend David and call the police.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the VA hospital annex construction site. That’s where they brought McGhee.”

“Okay, okay. Just get out of there. Get out now. I’ll call the police and I’ll call you right back.”

Carrie ended the call. She knew the smart thing to do: get out. Of course she should do just that.

But a thought came to her. What if the van takes off with McGhee inside before the police arrive? More proof gone. She should at least get the license plate. It might be a vital bit of evidence the police would need.

Carrie scolded herself for not taking video of the two men lifting McGhee into the back of the van. So much had happened so fast she had not been thinking clearly. She could at least get a picture of the license plate, and then get out of there. For Abington, for Fasciani, for all the vets who had been hurt because of Goodwin and Trent — she owed it to them.

Carrie fired up the engine, but kept the lights off as she drove ahead. If anybody saw her coming, she could slam the car into reverse and make a quick escape. A hundred feet from the chain-link fence, Carrie pulled to the side of the road. She kept the engine running as she got out.

Her feet crunched on the hard-packed dirt, and the glow of city lights in the distance shone like an artificial dawn. Blood pounded in her ears, but she could still hear the drone of millions of buzzing insects that infested the woods where the van had been hidden.

Carrie’s nerves were crackling. To her left she saw the path down which Hernandez had driven the van. She vanished inside the forest that bordered the access road and reached the van in a matter of feet. Her hands shook violently, but she managed to get a few pictures of the Massachusetts license plate.

The van itself was completely unremarkable, scuffed up some, dented in places. She did not linger and was soon headed down the path, back to her idling car. The whole trip took a few minutes at most. Carrie settled into the driver’s seat and let the feeling of relief wash over her.

As soon as her hands found the steering wheel, Carrie felt a presence rise behind her. Her eyes went to the rearview mirror and she took it all in: the short-cropped hair, strong jawline, broad shoulders. Almost immediately Carrie recognized the silhouette of Terry Bushman, the second vet she had examined.

“Never turn your back on a marine,” Bushman said. “We’re sneaky bastards.”

Carrie screamed and tried to get out, but Bushman reached his powerful arm over the seat and brought it down alongside Carrie’s neck. Bushman’s left hand pushed against his right wrist. He made a muscle with his right arm that bulged into the side of Carrie’s neck. The pressure was directly on her two carotid arteries, thankfully not her larynx or throat.

One second.

Carrie struggled to break free.

Two seconds.

She tried to scream.

Three seconds.

Her world was gone.