Page 89 of The Session

Muskrat turned the engine back on and spun the wheel, taking them at top speed down the hill and toward the power station.

Door Man

Muskrat drove the SUV through the gate Rolex held open and up to the front of the building. Kade and Norm exited first, forming a human wall ahead of Mark. He slipped out of the truck and waited for Norm’s hand signal before following behind.

Mark glanced back at the dead body lying by the gate. He didn’t know the young man, and there was nothing he could do for him now. He pushed the guilt aside and moved ahead.

Broken glass crunched under Norm’s and Kade’s boots as they entered the lobby. It was brightly lit, but char marks showed where explosives had gone off. A flickering LCD monitor sat behind the front desk.

“They must have hit it with a flash-bang,” Kade observed.

Norm pulled open a large metal door to the left. Kade entered with her rifle pointed toward the ground, then motioned for them to follow. “Gamma team entering,” she called out.

“All clear. We’re in the control room,” Burton shouted from down the hall.

Kade and Norm picked up their pace, and Mark hurried after them down the corridor. They turned right into a room with one wall covered in equipment that looked like it came out of a mad scientist’s laboratory. Four rows of monitoring workstations filled the center.

Burton and the others were kneeling at the far end of the room.

An engineer wearing a paisley tie and lanyard was sprawled on the floor, his chest riddled with bullet wounds. In the back-left corner, Mark saw what he assumed was a gang member slumped over dead, blood dripping from his face and chest onto the tile. In the opposite corner, another gang member lay on his side, a pool of blood forming around his head.

Burton was kneeling by Blackjack while Link pressed a hand to his torso. The other men sat on the ground with various wounds, including what Mark identified as burns on two of their faces.

“Blackjack took a round between the plates here,” Burton reported.

“Let me see,” Mark replied. He slid his hand beneath Link’s fingers to hold the wound shut, then used his other hand to cut away the fabric around the area with his scissors. Mark could feel Blackjack’s pulse through the wound as blood pushed against his fingertips.

“How you feeling there, Blackjack?” Mark asked.

“Fine. When the pain hits, I’ll be sure to scream in your face and let you know how I really feel,” he muttered.

“Screaming’s good, man,” Mark replied, trying to distract him as his right hand reached around to Blackjack’s back, where the exit wound should be. He felt more blood as he wedged his fingertips into the area beneath the body armor.

“Goddamn it, Bookmark. Do you have to finger fuck me from both sides?” Blackjack growled.

“Well, you’re not going to like this part. That’s not my finger. That’s the round. Looks like it went straight through you, hit your body armor, and decided to stick around,” Mark explained.

“Delightful,” Blackjack groaned.

“Link, hand me the orange pouch there—the hemostatic gauze,” Mark instructed. “I’m going to pull the bullet, pack the back, then work on the front.”

He pulled his hand from Blackjack’s back, ripped open the top, grabbed the wadding, then reached behind him again. Using his thumb and forefinger, he slid the deformed slug out, then gently pushed the gauze into the wound. He’d studied how to avoid making the situation worse. You don’t plug a wound like shoving in a cork—or a tampon, as some battlefield medics had improvised—unless it’s absolutely critical. The goal was to keep them from bleeding out while letting the body do its job and form natural clots. Mark grabbed a bandage and slapped it over the exit wound, then placed gauze at the entry point and sealed it up with an antibiotic.

“We’re ten minutes away from an airport. We can get them on a jet and fly them to Santo Domingo or Miami. Your call,” Norm offered.

“I say Miami,” Blackjack grunted.

“I don’t think an airplane flight is what you need right now, given the state of your insides. We need to get you to the nearest hospital, get a proper surgeon to clean up the wound, make sure we didn’t hit anything internally, and, most of all, make sure you don’t get an infection,” Mark advised.

“The fastest way to get an infection here is to go to the fucking hospital,” Blackjack groaned.

“I’m not going to let that happen,” Mark insisted.

“The good news is Ortega is already at the hospital and waiting,” Burton added.

“Is there a cot or something around here we can use as a stretcher?” Mark asked.

“Incoming,” Norm shouted. “I saw one in the other room. Be right there.”