Thibodaux lumbered in with the last member of Grigor’s crew draped over his shoulder, out cold, arms trailing.
“This one decided he didn’t want to leave so bad after all, l’ami,” the Cajun grunted, tossing the limp body on the floor next to the others.
“Jacques Thibodaux,” Quinn said, nodding toward Deuben, who now used her fingers to comb tenderly through the Sikh’s long beard examining his wounds. “I’d like you to meet Dr. Gabrielle Deuben and her bodyguard, Belvan Virk.”
Virk extended his hand. Deuben nodded, but continued to fuss over the Sikh, ignoring the fact that her thin cotton gown was torn from shoulder to hip. Soft tut-tuts and tender chidings said their relationship had moved well past the bodyguard and client relationship.
“It is a pleasure to meet the brother of a little brother,” Virk said, eyes fluttering at the attention from the woman who was surely his lover.
Quinn gestured toward Grigor’s body. Even unconscious, the man’s mouth turned up in a crooked smirk. “Seems as though I’ve happened by again when you’re in the middle of an adventure.”
“This is Kashgar, Mr. Quinn,” Deuben said. “The Wild West of China. Each and every day is fraught with this sort of adventure. You just happened by on a Tuesday.” She let her hand linger on Virk’s shoulder. “You’re going to need stitches, mein schatz.”
Moving quickly as if she’d come to some decision, she strode across the room to the bed. Deuben possessed the sensibilities of a physician when it came to nudity — even her own. She peeled the gown over her head and tossed it in the corner garbage bin and stood naked while she searched through a basket of laundry for something else to wear.
“You have forgotten our company, my dear,” Belvan said, who looked naked even in a pair of slacks without his customary turban and Sikh crest.
“Ha! I know how a man’s brain works.” She gave a dismissive laugh. “I was much less modest in that bit of torn gown than I am out of it completely.”
“I do not blame her.” Virk rolled his eyes at Quinn. “But with her experience, sometimes I wonder that she likes any men at all.”
“I like the strong ones,” Deuben said, glaring at the unconscious Grigor while she stepped into a pair of clean khaki pants. “It’s the weak bastards who pretend to be strong at the expense of women who disgust me.”
Across the room, Quinn saw Thibodaux shudder.
After pulling on a white T-shirt, Deuben grabbed a traveling medical kit out of the closet and opened it on the bed. She filled several small syringes from various ampules she got from the bag. Then, holding all but two of the syringes in her teeth, she squatted beside the still unconscious Russian. She used the first to inject something straight into his stomach and then gave him several small shots from the second on the side of his head and neck.
Moving from person to person, she gave each of the other three men a single injection in the hip, through their clothing.
“There,” she said as she finished the last shot. “That should keep them all sedated, for the near term at least.”
“You gave Grigor more shots,” Thibodaux said, squinting as if he really didn’t want to know the answer. “What was that all about?”
“ ‘First, do no harm,’ ” Deuben said, groaning as she used the timber column to get to her feet. “I have taken an oath as a physician. The second syringe was a local anesthetic to make it less painful when you cut off his ear. If you wish to maintain the respect of a man like Grigor The Mongol, you must follow through on your word.”
Chapter 10
Ran Kimura sensed the threat before she saw it, low, almost painful in her belly. Small in stature, she made up for her size with an uncanny skill from a lifetime of training. The edge of a dark tattoo showed above the low V at the open collar of her silk blouse. She’d been standing just inside the doorway to the Chief of Staff ’s office, waiting to follow McKeon toward the Oval. It was only by happenstance — and her abhorrence of being anywhere near the idiot President Drake for one second longer than she had to — that she’d waited instead of going on to meet him there.
She moved the instant the man entered the room — a place where he had no business being. She saw his hand sweep the tail of his suit jacket as he reached for his sidearm, already crouching slightly the way American law enforcement did when they prepared to shoot.
Going through a process sometimes called the OODA Loop — Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — it took the average police officer a little over two seconds to decide to draw and fire. Something out of the ordinary might disrupt this loop and make the actor have to start the process of orientation over, slowing the time toward action. Though the man, an agent from the way he moved, had already decided to kill McKeon, he was, in his heart, one of the good guys and wanted to do so without taking an innocent life.
Ran screamed as she moved, using the most fragile and terrified voice she could muster. Stunned by the cry, the agent paused for a split second, giving her time to spring forward, slamming the point of her shoulder into his floating ribs and driving him backwards. Her own hand shot to the collar of her light wool blazer during the rebound, snatching a razor-sharp thumb dagger from inside the reinforced lapel. A flick of her hand severed his carotid artery, spraying an immediate arc of blood across the room at the same moment his pistol cleared the holster. A consummate professional, Knight could have still shot and killed McKeon before he bled to death, but Ran was still moving. She ignored the swath of spraying blood and caught the hand that held his pistol as it rose toward the intended target. Letting the thumb dagger fall to the carpet, she trapped Knight’s hand in hers, and stepped toward him, turned his wrist inward on itself in a tight circle. This kote-gaeshi, or wrist reversal, used Knight’s own weight and momentum to snap the small bones in his wrist. His trigger finger convulsed when the weapon was turned, the round impacting him just below his diaphragm. Ran wrenched the gun away after the initial stunning round, putting three rapid shots into the man’s neck to obliterate the work from her thumb dagger.
She pushed away, dropping the gun beside the dying man and falling to the floor in the process, soaking the seat of her slacks in his blood. She scooped up the thumb dagger and dropped it in the pocket of her blazer. She summoned a flood of tears — she used them just as effectively as she had the dagger and pistol.
The entire process, from Ran’s scream to the attacker’s head hitting the floor, took just under three seconds. A Secret Service agent named Harper burst into the room with pistol in hand. Legs splayed, tears streaming down a stricken face, Ran raised her open hands and turned her head away to keep from being shot.
Secret Service agents are trained to protect before they investigate. When he didn’t find anyone to shoot, Harper grabbed the Vice President by the scruff of the neck and hustled him out the door away from the blood and into the arms of a cadre of arriving agents. Claxons sounded up and down the hall, calling for a general lockdown of the West Wing. Inside the Oval Office, the President’s Secret Service detail would be surrounding him in a bristling phalanx of ballistic vests, pistols, and submachine guns and rushing him to the bunker.
Ran stopped crying immediately once she found herself alone in the room with the dead body and a pallid, trembling David Crosby. She stood to face the Chief of Staff, wiping her bloody hands on the thighs of her slacks, not because she was disgusted, but because blood was slick and she wanted to be ready if another threat presented itself.