The doctor turned to him and pulled away the blanket, revealing catheters in the man’s neck and groin. Then a nurse placed a scalpel in the doctor’s white-gloved hand and he started to cut into the man’s flesh.
The blade made a slanting incision just under the ribs on both sides of the abdomen that extended up over the breastbone. It passed through a layer of skin, white muscle, then pink flesh, and deeper through darker stages of red to dark red and almost brown.
The male nurse helped the doctor attach a circular clamp that pulled the man’s abdomen wide open and exposed his organs. Then the doctor carefully placed several metal clamps over arteries and veins to stop the blood flow to an organ that had a rough nodular surface.
He handed the scalpel back to the nurse, who set it on the little table and replaced it with a clean one.
The doctor turned, leaned over Olivia, and started to cut.
Sadness came over her as she watched from the ceiling. She wanted to beg him to stop, but the command from her brain didn’t seem to reach her body. Or did it? Because suddenly the doctor stopped and looked up as though he was going to address her. Instead, he turned to a woman in a white blouse and black pants standing at the door and shouted something in Spanish.
Crocker had entered eight rooms along the right side of the hallway, most of which held sleeping patients, and reached a double door, which was locked. His heart beating hard, he reared his right foot back and kicked it open. Immediately a woman charged at him, screaming. He shoved her away with his left arm so she fell back and hit the wall.
“Where’s the American girl?” he asked, grabbing her roughly by the jaw. “¿Dondé está la niña? ¡La niña Clark!”
“¡No puede entrar!” the woman spat back.
He didn’t see the scalpel in her left hand. As he leaned over, she reached up and cut him across the chin.
Crocker elbowed her, causing her head to snap back, and she lost consciousness. Crouched and ready in case someone else entered, he quickly taped her mouth, wrists, and ankles. He rose and checked the double doors to the operating room on his right. They were locked. So he took three steps back, lowered his left shoulder, and crashed through.
Blood spilling from the wound to his face, he confronted five shocked people in surgical masks-two doctors (a man and a woman) and three nurses (one of whom was a man). Seeing that he was armed, several of them raised their hands over their heads, and all of them backed away to the wall.
Breathing hard, he evaluated the situation in an instant: the two patients on separate operating tables-Olivia Clark on the one in front of him and the darker-skinned older man to his left. Both were connected to monitors, breathing through tubes, and had incisions in their abdomens, though the man’s was much bigger and wider.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the male nurse duck behind a monitor and dash toward a fire alarm switch on the wall.
“¡Pare!” he shouted, training the MP7A1 on the nurse.
The nurse continued, so Crocker squeezed the trigger and cut him down, splattering blood against the wall and over the dark-skinned man on the operating table. One of the women screamed.
“Quiet!” Crocker growled. “Another sound or sudden movement and you’ll all be dead! ¡Muerto!”
The male doctor nodded vigorously; others started to cry and pray out loud.
Crocker removed the handheld from his pants pocket and spoke into it urgently: “I need help at the east end of the hall. I found her.”
His mind moved fast, trying to ascertain how to get Olivia out safely and deal with the people in the room.
“Is that Ivan Jouma?” he asked, pointing to the man on the operating table with a clamp holding his abdomen open. “Is that the man known as the Jackal?”
The male doctor shrugged.
“You speak English?”
“A little, yes,” the doctor said through the white surgical mask.
Crocker ripped off the mask. “Is it Ivan Jouma, or isn’t it?”
“It is,” the bearded doctor said. “We had orders to do this. It wasn’t a choice.”
Crocker crossed to where Jouma was lying, removed the forced-air blanket, and ripped the tubes out of his mouth, stomach, groin, and arm. The female doctor gasped.
“He’ll asphyxiate,” she said in accented English, shooting him a hateful look. “Because of the anesthetics, he can’t breathe on his own.”
“Good.”
“It’s not good. No.”
She lunged forward and retrieved the breathing tube.
Crocker stopped her. “You want to die for this criminal?” he asked her.
The woman stared at him through black-rimmed glasses and shook her head vigorously. “No. I have a family.”
“Then sew the girl up. Quickly!”
She turned to the male doctor and started to stammer. “He…Dr. Ramos…he only started to make the initial…t-transverse sub-subcostal…incision, but because of the location I don’t know if the sutures will hold.”
“How deep is it?” Crocker asked.
“How deep is what?”
“The incision, goddammit. How deep?”
“Only as far as the skin and rectus sheath.”
“Then staple her together,” Crocker ordered. “She’s coming with me.”
The two doctors moved toward the operating table, mumbling to the nurses in Spanish. Crocker, who didn’t trust them, watched carefully as they prepared to close the incision.
Suárez entered, crossed to him, and whispered in his ear, “We’ve got to go, boss. Two guards are down. Manny and Akil are holding six people in a room at the other end of the hall.”
Crocker pointed his elbow at the table where the doctors were working on Olivia. “They’re closing her up now.”
“Is that the Clark girl?”
“Yeah. And that’s the Jackal.”
Jouma made a painful choking sound and stopping breathing. His face froze in an awful grimace. Crocker checked his pulse.
“Dead.”
“Excellent,” Suárez said. “I hope he burns in hell.”
“What have you given her in terms of anesthetics?” Crocker asked the female doctor.
“Fentanyl and naropine,” she answered.
“I’m gonna need a thick robe to keep her warm, slippers, a cap of some kind, morphine for pain, and antibiotics to guard against infection. I’m also going to need a laryngeal mask so we can remove her breathing tube. Do you have one?”
“I think so.” The woman bit her lip nervously. “But they’re in another room.”
“Close by?” Crocker asked.
“On this floor.”
“Okay.” Turning to Suárez, he said, “You go with her.”
They left together. Crocker watched the male doctor staple the three-inch-long incision shut, spread local tissue glue over it, and cover it with white gauze and tape.
The doctor warned, “You have to keep her dry and avoid sudden movements. Get her to a hospital as soon as possible.”
Crocker continued to scan the room with a straight finger over the trigger, measuring each second in his head, expecting Cuban soldiers to burst in any minute. The male doctor smeared antibacterial cream on the cut across his chin and covered it with a gauze bandage. Then Suárez and the female doctor returned with the supplies.
“You found the LMA, good,” Crocker said. “Now hand over your cell phones.”
Suárez collected them in a plastic bag. Simultaneously, the female doctor removed the breathing tube from Olivia’s throat and inserted the laryngeal mask, or LMA, which would allow her to breathe on her own until the anesthetic wore off.
Satisfied that it was working, Crocker spoke into the radio: “Manny, we’re moving. Lock the people in, take their phones, warn them not to try to leave for thirty minutes, and meet us at the stairway.”