Saving Faith By: David Baldacci

tarmac, lift into the air; their only hope would be gone in seconds.

She ran down the asphalt, directly at the aircraft, waving the pistol,

the badge, screaming, “FBI!” at the top of her lungs. The plane came

racing at her, as Buchanan and Lee, carrying Faith, burst onto the

runway.

The pilot finally focused on the woman waving a pistol and coming at

him. He pulled back on the throttle and the aircraft stopped its roll;

the engines whined down.

Reynolds reached the plane, held up the badge and the pilot slid open

his window.

“FBI,” she said hoarsely. “I have a badly wounded person. I need your

aircraft. You’re going to fly us to the nearest hospital. Now.”

The pilot looked at the badge, the gun and nodded dumbly. “Okay.”

They all climbed on the plane, Lee cradling Faith against his chest.

The pilot turned the aircraft around again, went back to the end of the

runway and started his takeoff roll once more. A minute later the

plane lifted into the air and rushed toward the embrace of the quickly

lightening sky.

CHAPTER 53

THE PILOT RADIOED AHEAD AND A LIFE-SUPPORT ambulance unit was waiting

on the tarmac at the airstrip in Manteo, which was thankfully only a

few minutes of flight time away. Reynolds and Lee had used some

bandages from the first-aid kit on the plane to try to stop the

bleeding, and Lee had given Faith oxygen from the small canister on

board, but none of it seemed to have any effect. She had not yet

regained consciousness; they could barely get a pulse now. Her limbs

were beginning to grow cold, even as Lee clung to her, tried to give

her heat from his own body, as though that would do any good.

Lee rode in the ambulance with Faith over to Beach Medical Center,

which had an emergency and trauma center. Reynolds and Buchanan were

driven there in a car. On the way to the hospital, Reynolds called

Fred Massey in Washington. She told him just enough that he was

already running to catch a Bureau plane. Just him, Reynolds had

insisted; no one else could come. Massey had accepted this condition

without comment. Perhaps it had been the tone of her voice, or simply

the stunning content of her very few words.

Faith was immediately taken to the emergency room, where doctors

labored over her for almost two hours, trying to get her vitals up, her

heart regulated, the internal bleeding stopped. None of it looked

good. Once, the crash cart even had to be called.

Through the doors Lee watched in the numbest horror as Faith repeatedly

jerked under the impact of the electrical current surging through the

paddles. Only when he saw the heart monitor go from flat line to its

regular peaks and valleys did he find he could even move.

Barely two hours later they had to cut her chest open, spread her ribs

wide and massage her heart to get it going. Every hour seemed to bring

a new crisis as she barely clung to life.

Lee paced the floor incessantly, hands shoved in his pockets, head

down, talking to no one. He had said every prayer he could remember.

He had made up some new ones. He was helpless to do anything for the

woman, and that’s what tore at him. How could he have let this happen?

How could Constantinople, that old, bulky sonofabitch, have gotten that

shot off? And him right beside the guy? And Faith, why had she taken

the round? Why? Buchanan should be the guy lying on that gurney with

people swarming over him, trying desperately to push life back into his

wrecked body.

Lee slumped against the wall and slid down to the floor, covering his

face with both hands as his big body shook.

In a private room, Reynolds waited with Buchanan, who had barely spoken

a word since Faith had been shot. He just sat there and stared at the

wall. To look at Buchanan, no one would have guessed that anger was

building in him: the absolute hatred he was holding for Robert

Thornhill, a man who had destroyed everything he cared about.

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