‘Could you see the surgeon’s face?’
‘No. Not really. He entered the room wearing a surgical mask and goggles. So did the assistant surgeon and the anesthetist. Everybody else wore standard surgical masks at all times. We used no names. Each of us was assigned a code name, which was used in the OR. Mine was Catwalk.’
‘Any significance to the name?’
‘None that I’m aware of.’
‘How many people in the room?’
‘Six. The surgeon. An assistant. A nurse-anesthetist. Me. Two other nurses. A very small team for a transplant. I wasn’t sure we’d be able to handle it, but the surgeon was very skilled.’
‘Did you talk to the others?’
‘Only to communicate what was necessary during the operations. No names were used. We kept our masks on until we left the building. We were told this was for our own protection.’
‘It was the same team each time?’
‘No. One of the nurses changed.’
McCabe considered the size of the team for a moment. That made it a fairly wide conspiracy. A lot of people involved. A lot of possible leaks.
‘The team – men or women?’
‘Both surgeons were male. The nurse-anesthetist was female. One of the other nurses was a man, one a woman.’
‘You said one was replaced.’
‘A female nurse replaced a female.’
‘How could you tell there was a change if you were all wearing masks?’
‘The new one was shorter, fatter. The voice was different.’
‘Was Spencer one of the doctors?’
‘I don’t know. He might have been. Right size. Hard to tell about the voice. He didn’t say much.’
‘How about the other surgeon?’
‘He seemed more slender. Slightly shorter.’
‘You were paid a hundred thousand euros for each operation?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who were the patients?’
‘They were all nameless old men. I assume they were all rich.’
They sat silently for a while, Sophie smoking, McCabe thinking.
29
Tuesday. 10:00 P.M.
The bullet from the sniper’s rifle traversed the five hundred yards separating it from its intended target faster than the speed of sound. For this reason, McCabe saw the windshield fracture and blood explode from Sophie Gauthier’s left arm a millisecond before he heard the crack of the shot. Expecting a second shot, he pushed Sophie down onto the seat and started the Bird’s engine. He slammed the gear lever into first, spun the wheel hard left, and floored the accelerator, making the Bird’s ancient innards howl with pain. It occurred to him Sophie was alive only because she’d leaned to the right to flick a cigarette out the window just as the shooter pulled the trigger. Chain-smoking, for once, saved a life.
McCabe pushed the big Ford V8 for all it was worth, and the Bird shot forward. On a straightaway, nothing less than a Corvette was likely to catch them. On a winding road in the dark, escape was less certain. In the rearview, McCabe saw headlights flick on several hundred yards behind, then start moving fast in their direction. The shooter was following. He must’ve seen that he missed and wanted to finish the kill. Still, it’d been a hell of a shot, even with a night-vision scope. McCabe glanced at Sophie. The bullet had struck an artery, and blood was spurting out of her upper arm in a pulsing arc.
Without saying a word, Sophie pressed her right thumb against a pressure point above the wound. The blood that had been coming out in spurts now flowed more slowly, but not slowly enough. She was lying down on the seat. She’d slipped her head onto his lap. She held her arm across her body. She was shivering, probably with shock, perhaps with cold. He leaned over and switched on the heater. He needed to get her to a hospital. He could drive her there. The bullet had punched a hole in the windshield and there was some spidering of the glass, but he could see through it well enough. The problem was that if he was driving he couldn’t apply pressure to the wound, and she’d soon be too weak to do it herself. If he couldn’t help, she’d bleed to death.
Option two was to lose the shooter, pull over, and call for help. He had no way to communicate from the Bird other than his cell. Steering with one hand, he punched in 911 with the other. ‘Officer needs backup. This is Detective Sergeant Michael McCabe, Portland PD. I’m being chased and shot at by a sniper with wheels,’ he shouted. ‘I need an ambulance. I have a wounded civilian in my car. Gunshot wound. Arterial bleeding.’
‘Where are you?’