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Authors: Frederick Forsyth
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oddly named Will O Wisp Drive, and around the back to the ambulance entrance. His first stop was the morgue, where the ME was finishing up.
There were two bodies on steel trays, covered by sheets. An assistant was about to consign them to the cooler. The ME stopped him and pulled back one sheet. Det. Hall stared down at the face. It was now scarred and distorted but still the young man in the photo from the vehicle bureau. The bushy black beard jutted upward, the eyes closed.
“Do you know who he is yet?” asked the ME.
“Yep.”
“Well, you know more than me. But maybe I can still surprise you.”
The ME pulled the sheet down to the ankles.
“Notice anything?”
Ray Hall looked long and hard.
“He has no body hair. Except the beard.”
The ME replaced the sheet and nodded to the assistant to remove the steel tray and its cargo to the cooler.
“I’ve never seen it in person, but I’ve seen it on camera. Two years ago at a seminar on Islamic fundamentalism. A sign of ritual purification, a preparation for passage into Allah’s paradise.”
“A suicide bomber?”
“A suicide killer,” said the ME. “Destroy an important national of the Great Satan and the gates of immortal bliss open for the servant passing through them as
shahid
, a martyr. We don’t see much of it in the States, but it is very common in the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan. There was a lecture on it at the seminar.”
“But he was born and raised here,” said Det. Hall.
“Well, someone sure converted him,” said the ME. “By the by, your crime lab people have already taken the fingerprints away. Other than that, he had nothing on him at all. Except the gun, and I believe that is already with Ballistics.”
Detective Hall’s next stop was upstairs. He found Dr. Alex McCrae in his office, lunching off a very late tuna melt from the cafeteria.
“What do you want to know, Detective?”
“Everything,” said Hall. So the surgeon told him.
When the badly injured general was brought into the emergency room, Dr. McCrae ordered an immediate IVI—an intravenous infusion. Then he checked the vital signs: oxygen saturation, pulse and blood pressure.
His anesthesiologist searched for and found good venous access through the jugular vein, into which he inserted a large-bore cannula and immediately started a saline drip followed by two units of type O rhesus-negative blood as a holding operation. Finally, he sent a sample of the patient’s blood for cross-matching in the laboratory.
Dr. McCrae’s immediate concern, with his patient stabilized for the moment, was to find out what was going on inside his chest. Clearly there was a bullet lodged there because the entry hole was in view, but there was no exit wound.
He debated whether to use an X-ray or a CT scan, but chose not to move the patient from the gurney but to settle for an X-ray by sliding the plate beneath the unconscious body and taking the X-ray from above.
This revealed that the general had been lung-shot and the bullet was lodged very close to the hilum, the root of the lung. This gave him a three-choice gamble. An operation using a cardiopulmonary bypass was an option, but it would be likely to cause even further lung damage.
The second choice was to go for immediate invasive surgery with a view to extracting the bullet. But that, too, would be highly risky, as the full extent of the damage was still unclear, and it could also prove fatal.
He chose the third gamble—to allow twenty-four hours without further interference in the hope that, even though resuscitation so far had taken a huge toll on the old man’s stamina, he would achieve a partial recovery with further resuscitation and stabilization. This would enable invasive surgery to be undertaken with a better chance of survival.
After that, the general was removed to intensive care, where, by the time the detective conferred with the surgeon, he lay festooned with tubes.
There was one from the
There were two bodies on steel trays, covered by sheets. An assistant was about to consign them to the cooler. The ME stopped him and pulled back one sheet. Det. Hall stared down at the face. It was now scarred and distorted but still the young man in the photo from the vehicle bureau. The bushy black beard jutted upward, the eyes closed.
“Do you know who he is yet?” asked the ME.
“Yep.”
“Well, you know more than me. But maybe I can still surprise you.”
The ME pulled the sheet down to the ankles.
“Notice anything?”
Ray Hall looked long and hard.
“He has no body hair. Except the beard.”
The ME replaced the sheet and nodded to the assistant to remove the steel tray and its cargo to the cooler.
“I’ve never seen it in person, but I’ve seen it on camera. Two years ago at a seminar on Islamic fundamentalism. A sign of ritual purification, a preparation for passage into Allah’s paradise.”
“A suicide bomber?”
“A suicide killer,” said the ME. “Destroy an important national of the Great Satan and the gates of immortal bliss open for the servant passing through them as
shahid
, a martyr. We don’t see much of it in the States, but it is very common in the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan. There was a lecture on it at the seminar.”
“But he was born and raised here,” said Det. Hall.
“Well, someone sure converted him,” said the ME. “By the by, your crime lab people have already taken the fingerprints away. Other than that, he had nothing on him at all. Except the gun, and I believe that is already with Ballistics.”
Detective Hall’s next stop was upstairs. He found Dr. Alex McCrae in his office, lunching off a very late tuna melt from the cafeteria.
“What do you want to know, Detective?”
“Everything,” said Hall. So the surgeon told him.
When the badly injured general was brought into the emergency room, Dr. McCrae ordered an immediate IVI—an intravenous infusion. Then he checked the vital signs: oxygen saturation, pulse and blood pressure.
His anesthesiologist searched for and found good venous access through the jugular vein, into which he inserted a large-bore cannula and immediately started a saline drip followed by two units of type O rhesus-negative blood as a holding operation. Finally, he sent a sample of the patient’s blood for cross-matching in the laboratory.
Dr. McCrae’s immediate concern, with his patient stabilized for the moment, was to find out what was going on inside his chest. Clearly there was a bullet lodged there because the entry hole was in view, but there was no exit wound.
He debated whether to use an X-ray or a CT scan, but chose not to move the patient from the gurney but to settle for an X-ray by sliding the plate beneath the unconscious body and taking the X-ray from above.
This revealed that the general had been lung-shot and the bullet was lodged very close to the hilum, the root of the lung. This gave him a three-choice gamble. An operation using a cardiopulmonary bypass was an option, but it would be likely to cause even further lung damage.
The second choice was to go for immediate invasive surgery with a view to extracting the bullet. But that, too, would be highly risky, as the full extent of the damage was still unclear, and it could also prove fatal.
He chose the third gamble—to allow twenty-four hours without further interference in the hope that, even though resuscitation so far had taken a huge toll on the old man’s stamina, he would achieve a partial recovery with further resuscitation and stabilization. This would enable invasive surgery to be undertaken with a better chance of survival.
After that, the general was removed to intensive care, where, by the time the detective conferred with the surgeon, he lay festooned with tubes.
There was one from the
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