He'd hit Karkinnen as she came out of the operating room, from the doorway of the stairwell. Then he'd drop the two-by-four between the bottom step and the door, so it couldn't be opened. He'd go back up the stairs, down the halls, and be gone in one minute.
With the two-by-four in place, he went back to the observation room, squeezed through the door, quietly as possible, looked down, and saw the woman in the center of the OR, straight below him.
A man next to him, in a doctor's jacket, was watching so intensely that his mustache seemed to bristle. Cappy asked him, quietly, "Where are they?"
"Almost there. Five minutes," the man said.
Cappy checked the observation room: no cowboy. He could hear the people talking below, but it was so cryptic, so medical, that he understood very little of it. He took a seat.
Then the woman said, "Cap," and Cappy stiffened. Had she said his name? What? There was some shuffling around, and she looked up at him, and then away. The guy who moved in front of her was large, and all he could see was her head. He sat back, watching, tense. Nothing happened. Had he misheard?
She never looked back up. Still, he was uneasy. Then the other doc said it: "Cap." This time, he was sure of what was said, "Cap," but not what it meant. Nobody was looking at him.
What was happening? Maybe nothing. Stilclass="underline" maybe take a quick look in the halls, then come back and wait until she left the OR. Karkinnen started and ended the operations, so she'd be coming out soon. He stood up, backed through the door, and walked away. KRISTY BURST into the hallway, looked both ways, saw Lucas leaning against the wall with the long-haired guy who'd been watching Weather. She hurried down toward them. Lucas straightened as she came up, and she said, "Weather said to tell you, the skinhead is in the observation room. She's scared."
Lucas and the other man never spoke to her, but both sprinted to the stairwell, the long-haired man pulling a pistol from the back of his coat as he went through the door, and then they were gone. Kristy stood in the empty hall for a moment, wondering what had happened, and whether she should go back in the OR or… hide. LUCAS STOPPED at the top of the stairwell and asked, "You set?"
"Go," Virgil said.
Lucas pushed the door and peeked. A man was walking away from them, a hundred feet down the hall, a skinhead, he thought. He was afraid to call out, because the actual skinhead might still be inside the observation room. Instead, he pulled back and said, quietly, "I think he's in the hall, but I'm not sure. I'm going after him. You check the observation area."
"Okay."
Lucas stepped out in the hallway and they both walked down toward the observation room. The man ahead of them looked back, as he turned a corner, a kind of double take, and Lucas said, "Fuck it, that's him," and shouted, "Hey!"
The skinhead disappeared around the corner, running, and Lucas and Virgil sprinted after him. At the corner, they stopped, did a quick peek-and saw the skinhead another hundred feet down the hall, running hard.
Lucas shouted, "Stop," feeling stupid, because the guy wasn't going to stop, and then they were after him again, a hundred feet, clearing the next corner in time to see the skinhead clear the next corner, going after him again.
At the next corner, the skinhead was in the open in a long hall of locked doors, and the skinhead turned and looked back at them and his arm came up with a pistol, and he fired once, a deafening boom, and they both jumped back behind the wall as buckshot broke plaster at the T of the intersection of the hallways.
"Holy shit," Virgil said, "that's a shotgun or something," and he cleared the hallway and fired a single shot after the skinhead, missing, and the slug popped into the brick wall thirty feet down the corridor.
"Ricochets," Lucas shouted, and the skinhead turned another corner, and then they were both half jogging, weapons extended in front of them, and Lucas said, "Can't be much more of this," and Virgil said, "Easy, easy, he could ambush us at one of these corners, take it easy…"
They eased up to the next corridor, did a peek, and found the adjoining hall empty. "He's in a stairwell," Lucas said. He'd spotted the door, and they hurried up to it, pulled it open carefully, heard the clattering of feet on the stairs below them, and Lucas started down. Virgil held back, hanging over the rail looking down, his pistol dangling in front of him, and two floors below, the skinhead stopped to look up. Virgil could see his face, leg, and foot, and fired another shot.
The skinhead screamed, and Lucas was after him and then Virgil heard him yell, "No, no, get back," and Lucas was running up the stairs toward him, face white, legs churning, taking the stairs two at a time, and Virgil yelled, "What?" and then below them, a grenade went off like the end of the world, and a cloud of concrete dust rose up the stairwell.
Virgiclass="underline" "Oh, Jesus."
Lucas: "You okay?"
"Yeah. You?"
"I almost ran right into it," Lucas said. He peered down the stairwell. "I think you hit him, weird as that sounds."
"He yelled something… what do you think?"
Lucas was already on the way down again, through the cloud, and when they crossed the landing at the bottom, Lucas said, "We got blood," and he did a peek at the door, and was through, Virgil a step behind. There were bloody spots on the tiles down the hall, and they went after them, around the corner, the blood still there, intermittently, and Lucas said, "I think you hit him in the foot."
Virgil said, "Another stairwell."
Lucas pulled the door open and all they could hear was the rack-rack-rack of something metallic bouncing down the stairs, and Lucas shouted, "Another grenade," and slammed the door and they both ran back down the hall, and a minute later, a second explosion rattled through the hallways.
"This is fuckin' nuts," Virgil said.
Lucas yanked the doorway open and looked through another cloud of concrete dust. Not a sound from the stairwell, and they started up, moving slowly now, scared.
A spot of blood. Came to the second floor, and Virgil saw another spot of blood, heading up to three. Virgil went that way, gun in front of him, while Lucas had his cell phone going, 911, "We got a police shooting going on at University Hospitals. This is Lucas Davenport of the BCA. We've had two grenade blasts, a man armed with a pistol and grenades, we're in pursuit, we need help…" CAPPY TURNED in the hallway and saw them coming, the cowboy and the big guy he'd seen when he was buying Joe Mack's van. The way they were coming, the way they were fixed on him, there was no point in pretending. He was freaked, but not so freaked that it froze him. He took off, and they followed him down the tiled hallways, yelling at him. He yanked the Judge out of his waistband.
One long stretch, too long, and he turned and fired, and saw the cowboy's pistol coming up, and he ran, and the cowboy fired at him, and he banged through a stairway door and ran down and around the stairs, and he heard the door bang open above him. They were gaining, he thought. He reached the bottom and paused to look up, to assess, but they were in the stairwell; and there was a flash and muzzle blast, like a cherry bomb going off in his ear, and his foot was smashed and lead fragments spit around him. He pulled a grenade from his pocket, pulled the pin, and when he went through the door at the bottom of the stairwell, he dropped the grenade behind him and kept moving, limping now, pain arcing through his foot.
He was leaving a blood traiclass="underline" didn't know what to do about that, then he was in another stairwell, going up this time, not far from the closet. He made the turn to the third floor, smeared some blood on a stair tread, then dropped the second grenade when he heard the door open below.