‘Dominique may need a Caesarian. The OR’s ready, but the mob’s getting worse. I thought Chaney was sending the National Guard?’
‘Yes.’ Steinberg struggles to keep up. ‘That’s what we were told.’
The security guards step aside, allowing the doctor and rabbi to reenter the private birthing room.
Edith is at the window, peeking between wooden shutters at the scene three stories below. The night is torn by sirens and swirling lights that streak the surging crowd blue and red. Mesoamerican Indians, news reporters, and religious fanatics have jammed the parking lot and hospital entrance to jostle with local police. The deep thrumming from news choppers pounds the humid air, their white-hot search lights cutting through palm fronds, casting bizarre shadows across the glass-faced building.
‘There must be ten thousand people out there. Where’s the National Guard?’
‘Owww!’ Dominique moans as she rides another crest. Sweat mats her black bangs to her forehead, beads of perspiration rolling past her cheekbones. She grabs the doctor by his arm, burying her nails into his skin. ‘Get these babies out of me!’
Dr. Wishnov releases the brakes on her roller bed. ‘Hang in there, we’re moving you to an operating room.’
‘No! No Caesarean! It’s time. Just get them out… owwww!’
The doctor kneels between Dominique’s legs and lifts her gown. ‘You’re right, you’ve dilated to ten centimeters.’
‘No shit!’
The sounds of the mob grow louder. ‘Okay, forget the Caesarean, we’ll do this the old-fashioned way. Where’s that nurse?’
‘Selling us out to the media,’ the rabbi says. ‘I don’t want her in here.’
Dr. Wishnov shoots the rabbi a harsh look. ‘Then scrub up, I’ll need your help.’
The black limousine continues north on Route 441, inching its way toward the hospital through bumper-to-bumper traffic. Designed by the United States Army, the ‘smart-limo’ contains a variety of offensive and defensive systems. Tinted bulletproof glass and lightweight Kevlar armor shields the chassis. High-voltage door handles and pepper-spray blasters keep hostile crowds at bay. Conformal arrays of super-bright LED lights in the front, sides, and rear can blind enemies looking directly at or pursuing the vehicle. A retractable antenna and bowling-ball-sized weapons platform can deploy from inside the trunk, providing night-vision images and laser-designation capabilities.
Two men are seated up front. Riding shotgun, sporting a trimmed black beard and mustache, is Mitchell Kurtz. At five-foot-eight and 160 pounds, the forty-year-old Caucasian looks anything but dangerous, but the CIA-trained assassin has killed a dozen times in the line of duty.
What he lacks in physical stature Kurtz more than makes up in advanced gadgetry. His sleek wraparound ‘smart’ sunglasses contain tiny lasers embedded in the frames that beam light into his eyes, offering crisp wide-angle images from the miniature cameras. The camera lenses are telescopic, enabling him to zoom in on objects over great distances, using either day or night vision.
Concealed beneath the former FBI agent’s shirt, strapped to his right forearm and powered by a waist-worn battery pack is a ‘pain cannon.’ Designed for riot control, the weapon fires pulses of millimeter waves at its target, heating the victim’s skin as if the subject had just touched a hot lightbulb. The pain cannon can scatter every living being within a three-hundred-yard radius or deliver a death blow to a specific target up to half a mile away.
Driving the limo is Ryan Beck, an immense African-American, whose six-foot-six frame carries 285 pounds of sculpted muscle. The former Green Beret holds black belts in several martial arts, is an expert with guns and knives, and once took a bullet for California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The scar is still present beneath the man’s shirt collar.
Affectionately known around the Oval Office as ‘Salt and Pepper,’ the duo have spent the last ten months guarding one client.
President Ennis Chaney stares out the tinted rear windows of the limo, growling to himself. Security has been breached once more, despite Homeland Security’s having changed Dominique Vazquez’s identity three times over the last seven months, and the media has turned the event into Ringling Brothers meets the Second Coming. Terrorist threats, intercepted on-line by the FBI over NREN (National Research and Education Network) have forced the president to bypass the scheduled helicopter ride from Fort Lauderdale airport to the hospital, while a computer virus has crippled Homeland Security, causing the National Guard to be delayed by two hours.
The president rubs sleep from his deeply set owl-shaped eyes as the limo rolls to a stop in front of a police barricade.
Pepper, seated driver’s side, lowers his window.
A cop reeking of garlic breath pokes his head inside. ‘Sorry, pal, this area’s closed. Now turn this boat around and get outta here.’
Pepper holds up his I.D.
‘White House? Yeah, right.’
Chaney leans forward from the backseat and shoots the cop one of his infamous ‘one-eyed-jack’ glares. ‘You need glasses, son, or you just stupid?’
The cop’s complexion pales as he recognizes the heavy rasp. ‘Mister President? Geez, I’m sorry, sir-’
‘Shut up and let us through before we have to shoot you.’
Pepper grins, shutting the window in the cop’s face. The limo proceeds past the barricade and continues north on Route 441 another three miles before turning onto a side street leading to the hospital.
The access road is wall-to-wall people.
Pepper shakes his head. ‘Look at all those freaks. This is worse than one of your damn Republican conventions.’
Chaney leans forward, gazing out the windshield. Up ahead on the right is a mob of protesters, carrying signs that read: KILL THE ANTICHRIST.
‘Goddam Peter Mabus. Salt, clear ’em out.’
‘All of them? Cops too?’
‘All of ’em.’
With a mischievous grin, Kurtz activates the moon roof and stands, his upper torso protruding out the hatch. He scans the crowd, his computer optics calculating distance.
A sixteen-year-old Caucasian male with a blue goatee and a dozen facial piercings saunters over, a fourteen-year-old girl handcuffed to each tattooed wrist. The girls, high on Ecstasy, climb onto the hood of the limo. ‘Hey, Dr. Shades,’ the male calls out, ‘you here to witness the birth of the Messiah Twins?’
Kurtz rolls up his shirtsleeve, revealing his weapon. ‘Yep. Me and the other two wise men in the limo brought the frankincense. Open wide, here comes the mirth.’
Salt fires the cannon, its invisible beam of millimeter waves igniting screams from the crowd. Several dozen fanatics leap into the nearest canal, the rest disperse in every direction, yelping as if their skin was on fire.
The tattooed teen cries out like a banshee as he and his girls tear at their scorching tongue rings and handcuffs.
‘It’s a school night, junior. Go home and study.’ Kurtz ducks back inside the vehicle as Pepper drives up to the nowdeserted hospital entrance.
‘I can see the first one’s head… easy while I turn the shoulders. Okay, push!’
Dominique bears down, grunting as she squeezes the newborn from her birth canal.
‘Beautiful.’ Dr. Wishnov holds the blood-streaked, fair-haired child in both hands, momentarily dazzled by the infant’s bright azure-blue eyes.
‘Hey, no breaks here!’ Dominique yells.
‘Sorry.’ The obstetrician quickly runs a suction tube down the newborn’s mouth and throat, clearing the airway before cutting the umbilical cord and passing him to Steinberg.
The rabbi places the wide-eyed child into the incubator as instructed. He mutters a prayer in Hebrew, watching as the warmth of the semienclosed chamber turns the infant’s skin a healthy pink.
Incredibly, the newborn seems to be watching him.
The rabbi shakes the ridiculous thought away, returning his attention to Dominique as her second son is birthed.