Davies swore softly. “He’s trying to force us out.”
“Or he’s coming back to finish the job under the blackout. We hold this room,” Hayes said, racking his slide. “Nobody crosses that threshold.”
Sarah shook her head. “You don’t understand. If the batteries die I have to bag him by hand. I’ll need light, and I’ll be completely exposed. There are six other critical patients on this floor. Their batteries are draining too.”
The killer had weaponized the entire intensive care unit.
The darkness of a dead hospital is unnatural—thick, suffocating, smelling faintly of ozone and panic. The overlapping alarms made it impossible to hear approaching footsteps. Penhaligon slipped through the emergency stairwell door on the fourth floor wearing night-vision goggles. The pitch-black ICU glowed sharp green. He moved with silent predatory grace, silenced Heckler & Koch USP raised. He could see the frantic flashlight beams near room four. The agents were blinded by their own light, pupils constricted, vulnerable to the shadows beyond.
Sarah moved desperately from room to room, a solitary ghost illuminated only by the tiny circle of her penlight. She checked on Mrs. Gable (severe sepsis) and Mr. Henderson (triple bypass), silencing the most glaring alarms to conserve battery life, whispering hollow assurances into the dark. The responsibility of keeping seven people alive without electricity pressed on her like a physical weight. She returned to room four just as Thomas’s ventilator gave a frantic double chirp. The battery indicator dropped to fifteen minutes. His lungs, stiffened by blast trauma, required more torque and drained power faster than the manufacturer’s estimate.
“We’re running out of time,” she whispered to Davies, crouched behind a tipped-over medication cart.
“Backup tactical teams are breaching the ground floor,” he replied, eyes never leaving the hallway. “They have to clear floor by floor. At least twenty minutes.”
“We don’t have twenty minutes.” Sarah grabbed a bright blue Ambu bag from the airway cart. “I need to disconnect him from the mechanical vent and bag him by hand, but I need to see his chest rise. I need constant light.”
“If we turn on a high-lumen light we become perfect silhouettes,” Hayes warned. “Sitting ducks.”
“If I don’t breathe for him he dies anyway,” Sarah shot back. “Which way do you want to lose him?”
Davies gritted his teeth. “Do it. Hayes—covering fire at the first sign of movement.”
Sarah disconnected the heavy plastic tubing. Air hissed out. She attached the Ambu bag, gripping the mask with one hand and squeezing the ventilation bag with the other. Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. Release. She watched his chest rise and fall in the dim glow of the remaining monitors. It was exhausting physical work, forcing air into heavy, damaged lungs.
Out in the hallway Penhaligon watched through his night-vision optics. He saw the nurse manually ventilating the target. He saw the two agents crouched defensively. He needed a distraction. He silently unclipped a heavy steel D-cylinder of compressed oxygen from a nearby transport stretcher, rolled it into the center of the hallway, and with pinpoint accuracy fired a single suppressed shot into the valve.
The explosion of pressurized gas was deafening. The heavy steel cylinder rocketed down the corridor like a wild torpedo, smashing into walls and medical carts with terrifying violence.
“Get down!” Davies roared.
In the momentary chaos and the blinding swing of flashlight beams, Penhaligon moved. He closed the distance in seconds and stepped smoothly into the doorway of room four. Through green-tinted lenses he aimed directly at the center mass of the SEAL in the bed.
As his finger tightened on the trigger, a blinding searing white light exploded in his face.
Sarah, anticipating an attack from the darkness, had grabbed the heavy portable defibrillator unit. She had not charged the paddles. Instead she activated the machine’s high-intensity diagnostic LCD screen and angled the brilliant unshielded backlight directly toward the doorway. The sudden intense burst overloaded Penhaligon’s night-vision goggles. A bright white flare blinded his optical sensors. He fired blindly. The suppressed round hit the medical monitor above Thomas’s bed, showering the room in sparks and plastic shrapnel.
“Gun!” Hayes screamed, firing twice into the doorway.
Penhaligon staggered back, ripping the useless goggles from his face, vision swimming in purple spots. He raised his weapon again, squinting into the darkness, but his advantage was gone.
Agent Davies lunged from behind his barricade, flashlight illuminating the assassin. He did not hesitate. Three rapid shots struck Penhaligon in the shoulder and chest, spinning him around. He crumpled heavily to the floor, weapon clattering against the baseboards.
A heavy ringing silence fell, broken only by the rhythmic ragged sound of Sarah continuing to squeeze the ventilation bag. Squeeze. Release. Squeeze. Release.
“Target is down,” Davies breathed, keeping his weapon trained on the unmoving form. He kicked the gun away and rolled a flashlight over to illuminate the killer’s face. Hayes clutched a grazing wound on his arm but nodded. “I’ve got him covered. Check the perimeter.”
Sarah did not stop bagging. Her arms ached. Her shoulders burned with lactic acid. But she kept a steady perfect rhythm. She looked down at Thomas Kavanaugh. Despite the gunfire, the darkness, and the chaos, his chest rose and fell perfectly in time with her hands. He was alive.
Ten minutes later heavy boots echoed in the stairwell. Tactical breach teams flooded the ICU, weapon lights cutting through the dark. Paramedics rushed in behind them with portable high-capacity battery generators. As the overhead emergency lights finally flickered back to life, bathing the devastated unit in harsh fluorescent glare, Sarah carefully reconnected Thomas to a freshly powered ventilator. She watched the digital waveform stabilize. A profound wave of exhaustion washed over her.
Davies walked over, suit covered in dust and blood. He looked at the shattered monitors, the bullet holes in the walls, and the nurse calmly adjusting an IV drip as if it were just another Tuesday night.
“You’re a hell of a soldier, Jenkins.”
Sarah paused, looking at the sleeping Navy SEAL, then back at the agent.
“I’m not a soldier, Agent Davies,” she replied softly. “I’m a nurse. And nobody dies on my shift.”