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.