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  She heard the conflict in his voice and turned to face him. After all he’d been through, why wouldn’t he want it disabled? “I thought we’d agreed. That thing is dangerous. There’s no telling what they could program into it, or already have.”

  Ian frowned. “I guess that’s right. Maybe I’m just not liking all the long sharp things on the table.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “This one should be quick. We’ll just use local anesthetic.” She attached the tip to the bovie and dropped the stylet onto the sterile field.

  Her hands moved automatically, overlearned from a decade of practice. In two minutes she was ready. She put on her gloves, popped the top off of the small sterile bottle of lidocaine in the tray, and drew up a 10 cc syringe with the clear fluid. She changed needles and then turned to Ian.

  His eyes fixed on the 2-inch needle at the edge of the syringe. Oops she’d forgotten to sterilize his chest. The nurses always took care of that.

  She put the needle down. “Need your shirt off.”

  Ian unbuttoned the shirt and slid his arms out.

  “You know I’m starting to get turned on by this routine.” he said with what sounded like false bravado. “A few more surgeries and I’ll need a cigarette after.”

  “Just close your eyes,” she said softly. “This is an easy one, I promise.” She took the brush and painted the orange soap over the scar on his chest. With one hand, she took a few pieces of gauze and dabbed at the soap, resting her hand on his chest.

  She didn’t want to move her hand. Maybe she was just tired, but the touch felt so welcome, even through the glove. What she wanted to do was sweep her hand along his chest, comfort him.

  Julia slid the needle next to the scar as gently as she could, injecting the anesthetic like a clock face sweeping around the scar with small movements. Then she turned the needle deeper, and injected the muscle. Ian kept his eyes closed.

  She replaced the needle on the table and clasped her hands together, waiting while the anesthetic worked. She was glad to be helping. No question she was in deep trouble, but right then, seeing him on the table in flesh and blood, she didn’t care about anything else. Career. Marriage. Too complicated. This was easy.

  Julia spread the drape over his chest, square hole over the scar. Then she took the scalpel, and sliced through his chest. She flipped the bovie on and singed the spots of blood that pooled on the edge of the incision with the familiar crackling sound and smell of charred flesh.

  “Doing OK?”

  “OK.” Voice tight.

  She spread the wound with a hemostat, then used forceps to probe the outline of the implant computer. She knew exactly where it was. Now where was the battery? Gingerly, she traced the contours of the electronics, trying to remember the layout. There. Lower right corner. She made a small incision through the muscle, in the direction of the fibers, and quickly stopped the bleeding.

  An instant later she had the battery between the tip of the forceps. She gave it half a turn and teased it loose. It was done. “Battery’s out,” she told Ian. His breathing slowed.

  “Hello – oh, so sorry!” a gruff voice spoke from the doorway.

  Julia turned to see a uniformed security guard, on the heavy side, one hand still on the doorknob.

  “Hey, wait a minute. Who are you? Where’s Dr. Mernoosh?” There was a moment of indecision where he stood confused in the doorway trying to make sense of what was going on. Something dawned on his face. “You’re those two… You wait right there!”

  “Wait!” Julia called out as the security guard turned around to leave. Damn! What could she do?

  Before she could think, there was a crash from the table beside her and the blue drape flew in the air as Ian lunged off the table and toward the door in two unbelievably fast bounds.

  “Ian! No!” She instantly regretted using his name.

  But it was too late, he swung around the door and caught the arm of the security guard, yanked him back into the room.

  The security guard’s voice trailed off into a radio held in his other hand. “This is Lamar! I need backup now!” The radio flew across the room and smashed into the wall.

  Ian grabbed him with one arm around his neck, the guard’s mop of gray hair inches from the open incision.

  “Ian! Stop!”

  The guard trembled in fear, his eyes looking at Ian in terror. He looked like he wanted to speak, but made no sound.

  Ian turned to Julia. “We’ve got to go.”

  “Don’t hurt him,” Julia pleaded.

  “Get me some rope.”

  Julia stripped off her bloody gloves and ran into the supply room. She came back with half a dozen packages of IV tubing.

  Ian ripped open the packaging. In less than a minute, he had the guard’s hands and feet secured. He grabbed a role of tape and two blue towels off the instrument tray, wadded the towels in the guard’s mouth and wrapped tape around his head to hold them in place. Then he opened a broom closet next to the supply room, and shoved the guard in. He slid the table from the center of the room against the door with a crash and locked the wheels.

  Then he took the radio and said to Julia, “We’re leaving.”

  Julia felt completely overwhelmed, shaking her head. “I’ve got to close the wound. It’s going to get infected, and you’re still bleeding.”

  Ian was already in the hall. Julia grabbed a hemostat and some sutures off the table. She looked around at the mess of instruments and blood, then threw her hands up. She grabbed Ian’s shirt with one hand, and ran after him.

  Ian never broke stride. He ran down the deserted hallways the way they had come and out the side door into the night.

  Chapter Twenty-five:

  “Hubert, I need that program now. You know, the one we talked about.” Sarah Redd poked at the bottom of her coffee cup with a stirrer while she held her phone in the other hand.

  “I thought you said it was low priority, just something to work on in my spare time.” Chang’s voice was irritated, cranky. “Well it’s not any more. Agent Westhelle has escaped, he’s killed half a dozen federal agents, and likely to kill more. He has Dr. Nolan hostage and we have to neutralize him. You’re our best hope to take him out.”

  “If he’s not there, how can I run the program? I need a transmitter in close range.”

  “Let me worry about that. How long before I can get the program?”

  “You can have it now. It only took an hour, plus one more to test it on a baboon. How are you going to upload it?”

  “We’ve got their location, but we have to move now. Somebody spotted them at a hospital in southern Utah.”

  “Good thing I had it done, eh?”

  “Hubert, if you’re fishing for compliments, I’m a little busy. Can you upload the program to the database so they can access it from the C-130, same as last time?”

  “I’ll do it right now. Can’t guarantee it’ll work, though. It’s one thing to cause seizures in a baboon. It’s more complicated in a human.”

  “Spare me the details. Just make sure it will neutralize the target.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  #

  “Can you hold still?” Julia held the needle over Ian’s chest, trying hard to keep his arms from brushing the open wound as he turned the wheel.

  “They’ll have satellite on all the local freeways. And we can’t go back to 191.” Ian jerked the wheel hard left as he turned onto Central Street.

  Julia took a breath and jabbed the needle through the lip of the incision, then out the other side as she put a single stitch through the hole in Ian’s chest. No time to close the muscle. She could tell from the way Ian winced that the anesthesia was wearing off. “So where do we go?”

  Ian accelerated as the stoplight flashed red, turned left on 5th East, headlights off, squinting in the dim light of the streetlamps. “Off the highways. fast.”

  “Eina!” Ian shouted as Julia jabbed him again with the needle.

  “If you’d just ho
ld still this would be a lot easier.”

  “Fifteen minutes, sweetheart, and we’ll have kerels all over us.”

  “Kerels?”

  “Cops, sorry.” Ian slowed the car as he drove by a row of houses. “That one.”

  Julia tied off the knot and cut the thread in the crotch of the hemostat. It wasn’t pretty, but at least it was closed. She ripped open a package of gauze and held it with one hand while she tore off a long piece of tape with her other hand. She put two long strips of tape across the gauze pad and pushed down as tightly as she could. He was sweating, and she didn’t want this one to come off.

  By the time she tacked the last piece of tape down, the car was stopped and Ian was reaching for the door handle. “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Switch me places. Hurry.”

  “Huh?”

  Julia leaned out the window and watched Ian as he grabbed the guns from the trunk and crouched behind a Buick Regal parked on the curb. “You’re driving! Meet you two clicks down the road,” he whispered.

  “What’s wrong with this car?” Julia slid over to the driver’s seat.

  “In ten minutes half of Langley will be playing ‘Where’s Waldo’ with this Toyota. This Buick says old person from a mile away. She won’t miss it for hours, probably days. Time for a jollie patrollie.”

  The Buick door was unlocked. Ian threw the guns in the back seat. He swept his hand under the frame behind the rear wheel. “All too easy. Love old people,” he whispered through the window, and climbed into the front seat. “Come on! Let’s go!” Ian popped open the hide-a-key and jumped behind the wheel, pulled onto the road as Julia followed.

  Ten minutes later Julia and Ian had ditched the Toyota and were driving east on Highway 491 toward Cortes. Traffic had begun to pick up a little, with a handful of cars headed west along the red rock-lined highway.

  “You didn’t by chance pick up my shirt, did you?” Ian looked apologetic.

  Julia reached onto the back seat and picked up the shirt. She tossed it on Ian’s lap and grabbed hold of the wheel. “Don’t expect me to do the laundry around here too.”

  “I’ve been doing my own since last year. Mom got fed up with it.” He pulled the shirt over his head and then paused with the shirt halfway on, draped over his shoulders.

  “It’s OK. I’ve got the wheel,” Julia said.

  No response.

  Then Julia noticed the car was accelerating. She could see Ian stiffen. “That’s a little fast, don’t you think?”

  Ian’s entire frame was shaking. Not shaking. Convulsing.

  Shit! Julia pushed against his leg as his foot stretched out on the accelerator, which jerked the car in rhythmic movements. His foot wouldn’t budge.

  She dropped both hands off the wheel and pushed with all her strength. His foot slid off the accelerator but landed on the brake. The car jerked backward, threw her from her seat, hurtling to the side.

  She grabbed the steering wheel. It was spinning and tore at her hand, but she held firm. It jerked her elbow and she pulled herself up to look over the dashboard. The car had veered over the median and careened back and forth. She saw the headlights flashing of a car bearing down on them.

  Ian writhed more violently now, bucked against her movements, pushed against her grip on the wheel.

  She turned the wheel hard right and braced for impact as the oncoming headlights skidded off to the side, narrowly missed the side view mirror, and passed with horn blaring. The Buick was slowing quickly, and Julia spun around to see if anyone was behind them.

  Nobody.

  She eased the car off onto the shoulder and yanked off the ignition.

  Ian’s neck twisted at an unnatural angle, shirt around his neck, his eyes rolled back in his head, entire body jerking.

  No drugs. Probably triggered. He didn’t have long.

  Julia grabbed his hand and pulled it away from his body. What was that code?

  She started to panic. Not now. She had to remember.

  Then it came to her. 2 - 3 - 1 - 3 - 4 - 2. Reset implant. She moved his fingers in broad strokes.

  Nothing.

  She did it again, this time holding down Ian’s left arm as she moved his fingers.

  Ian still convulsed under her arms, which ached from trying to hold him still. He was too strong; her elbow was going to give.

  Then the jerking movements softened, then stopped as abruptly as they had begun.

  It worked!

  Before Julia could even take a deep breath, the shaking started again. She grabbed his hands and pulled Ian’s fingers in sequence once again. Just as the shaking motion started to get worse, it once again eased off.

  Five more times, Julia felt Ian stiffen. Each time she reset the implant before the convulsions overpowered her ability to hold him still.

  The last time Ian remained still.

  Her hands were white, holding his hand as tightly as she could around the palm, her thumb and forefinger poised to deliver the code again.

  But the shaking didn’t come back.

  She slid her hand onto his wrist, felt for a pulse. It was there, but weak.

  His chest moved slowly with each breath.

  How long had he been seizing?

  “Ian!” Julia shouted.

  He opened his eyes, but stared into space, expression glazed.

  “Ian!”

  His face didn’t move. Post-ictal, Julia thought. It was common for patients to be confused, delirious for up to a half hour after a seizure.

  But why had he seized? She’d removed the battery to prevent that very thing. Could she have damaged the computer in surgery? There had certainly been more than enough mayhem at the end of surgery. She hadn’t had a case end so abruptly since the time she was treating a gunshot wound in D.C. and the operating room was rushed by the guy who had shot her patient, coming to finish the job. It had taken a SWAT team to get the gunman out of the operating room, but not before it was too late for her patient.

  There had to be another battery. She knew when she had been briefed on the electronics in the implant that core systems were designed with redundancies. But the battery? She felt a wave of guilt. Here she was, project lead, and didn’t know such a basic question about the circuitry. She’d tried, spent the better part of a week reading the technical papers on the electronics, but it had been like learning ancient Greek. Now she wondered if they had kept it opaque on purpose. Focus on the medical details, Markov had said. We have the best engineers in the world working on the electronics.

  The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. The battery was the component probably most likely to fail. Integrate a smaller battery in the chip—a failsafe—and you could keep it running long enough to replace the main battery. But where would it be? She had no idea. And fishing around for another component was a very bad option. She’d be lucky enough if he didn’t get infected after this surgery. Question was, how long would the backup charge last? Days? Weeks?

  Ian started to stir, his face grimacing as he became aware of his surroundings. His shirt still hung around his neck. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

  Julia realized she was still holding his hand. It was cradled tightly in both of hers. She didn’t release it, but instead stroked her thumb along his palm. It felt so good she didn’t want to let go.

  Then she realized she was shaking. Not like Ian had been. But the emotion came pouring out now. Tears welled up, and she let go of Ian’s hand to wipe her face with the back of her arm.

  “Julia?”

  “It’s OK, Ian.”

  “What happened?”

  “You had a seizure.”

  “What? How? I thought you took out the…”

  “Just rest for a second. There must be a backup battery on the chip. Hopefully the charge won’t last long. Plane must have passed over. I think it’s out of range now.”

  “How did you…” Ian scrunched his eyes shut, still looked groggy.

  “I kept resetting
the implant. Seizures eventually stopped.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I know you’re out of it, but we’ve got to get moving.”

  “Right. You’d better drive. Cut south, off the freeway. We’ll go through the Indian Reservation then down to Arizona. We should be OK once we’re away from Four Corners. Let’s just hope the plane doesn’t come back before we can beat it out of here.” His voice sounded stronger, more composed.

  Julia walked around the car as he slid over into the passenger seat. But in her mind she couldn’t stop thinking about how it had felt holding his hand.

  Chapter Twenty-six:

  Julia and Ian approached the Mexican border south of Tucson, at Nogales. After a brief stop in Tucson to empty the safe deposit box, they had driven to Nogales, abandoned the car in a parking garage, tossed a duffel bag with the shotguns into a dumpster, and made for the border on foot. There was a regular crossing, where you could just walk into Mexico, but Ian said he didn’t like the looks of two men who milled around the gate, so they spent a couple of hours looking for another way across. Nogales was really two cities: one in Mexico and one in Arizona. A barrier wall divided the American town with the larger city to the south. Fencing angled from the top, toward Mexico. Green-striped border patrol vans and SUVs ranged up and down the wall, looking for illegal crossers.

  “You’d think we were in Baghdad or the West Bank,” Ian said after they probed the length of the wall as it stretched through town and beyond. “It’s all about control, I suppose.”

  “How are we going to get across?”

  “We’ll have to go back to the border crossing and try our luck.” He looked her over. “Let’s do something about the way you look.”

  “What’s wrong with the way I look?”

  She’d showered, even slept a little. They’d paid cash for a pair of hotel rooms on the outskirts of Tucson and she’d picked up a change of clothes and a few toiletries.

  “Nothing except that you still look like Dr. Julia Nolan on her day off. I want you to look like a woman crossing into Mexico on a day trip with her boyfriend. See the difference?”