The back of his quarry’s head appeared in the lower right corner of the window.
Calderon took slow, shallow breaths as he edged his crosshairs to the left and quartered the target. His heartbeat slowed to a crawl.
Conditioned responses took over — his finger tightened around the trigger. The neural circuit between his right eye and trigger finger had long ago fused into a reflex. He simply allowed it to happen.
It didn’t happen fast enough. The head disappeared from his scope.
He blew out a chestful of air. “Shit.”
Luke edged forward on the couch when the close-up shot of a female gymnast replaced the newscaster’s image. The camera panned back just in time to catch a perfectly executed dismount from a balance beam.
He thought of Megan, and his mind’s eye played remembered images of her smile during their better times together.
Then he thought of her in Guatemala, and a vague chill passed through him.
He stood and started walking the room.
Calderon blinked away the dryness in his eyes.
What happened next seemed surreal. The sonofabitch got up from his couch, paced the room a few times, then stood at the window looking directly at him, as if to say, Okay, take your shot.
This he did exactly 0.8 seconds later, right after he placed the crosshairs squarely on the bridge of his target’s nose.
The bullet left the end of the barrel traveling at 915 meters per second and reached its destination just three thousandths of a second after the target turned his head to the left.
Calderon felt the kick of the rifle at the same moment he realized his shot was off target.
But only by an inch. A hole appeared just above his quarry’s right eye. An instant later the body slumped out of view.
He watched, spellbound. A wave of satisfaction washed over him as a thousand shards of glittering glass hung in the air for a long second. They quickly gave way to a large spatter of dark red tissue on the far wall.
25
Megan stood along the haggard bucket brigade, passing and receiving water-filled vessels to persons on either side of her. No one was in a hurry. The battle to save the clinic had ended hours ago; the fire had won. Extinguishing scattered embers was all that was left to do.
The acrid stench of smoldering wood filled her nostrils. The memory of her father — his musty scent when he walked through the front door after battling a blaze — flitted in her mind.
She took in the town for the first time as a bloom of orange sunlight rose in the eastern sky. A sea of corrugated tin roofs reflected the first light of day, revealing the mostly squalid wooden shacks that collectively formed the pueblo of Santa Lucina. The town was an island of human deprivation floating in an ocean of lush tropical vegetation. The surrounding hillsides were thick with vines and plants that wrapped around one another in some sort of botanical mating ritual. The sounds of jungle life poured over her in cascading waves.
Villagers who had come to the clinic site were either helping to smother the last remnants of the blaze or busy clearing debris. Children hardly old enough to hold a bucket worked alongside their parents. Everyone seemed to approach their work with a quiet fortitude, as if this type of thing was simply a part of their everyday lives.
A short, stout man wearing an Atlanta Braves baseball cap walked toward Megan through the charred rubble, his shoes making wet crunching sounds with each step. It was Paul Delgado, the clinic manager.
He said, “Not much of a welcome, I’m sorry to say.”
Megan shrugged while reaching out to take a plastic water jug from the man standing next to her. Their wrists collided and water splashed out, drenching her shoes. It wasn’t the only part of her that was wet. Even at sunrise, the air was thick and pasty.
Paul glanced at her shoes with the impassive expression of someone accustomed to physical discomforts.
“Listen,” he said, “I’ve already arranged transportation back to Guatemala City for everyone.”
“We’re leaving?”
“Not me — you.” He took off his cap, ran an arm along his forehead, and looked back at the rubble. “Nancy, my wife, and I have gotta stay here and rebuild this place.”
“That’s it? Just the two of you?”
“Joe Whalen and Steve Dalton are making a trip out to the aldeas—the villages. But except for that—”
“I’ll go with them.” She knew both men. Joe Whalen was a second-year pediatric resident at University Children’s, and Steve Dalton was one of the Attendings at her hospital.
“Listen, normally we don’t even go to these villages. They’re too far away, in the middle of nowhere. Conditions are tough out there, what you might call primitive. The only reason Steve Dalton’s going is that he knows the area, and well”—he looked around at the charred timbers—“there’s not much for him to do around here.”
“Seems I’m in the same boat.”
Paul appeared to study her. “Steve’s a pretty rugged guy. He knows what he’s getting into.”
“And Joe Whalen?”
Megan knew Joe well. His physique bore a striking resemblance to pudding.
“Look, I appreciate your enthusiasm, I really do,” Paul said. “But I don’t know if we even need two doctors on this trip, let alone three.”
She grabbed another pail of water from the man standing on her right and passed it to a small boy. “They going anywhere near Josue Chaca’s village?”
“How do you know about him?”
“I was working in the E.R. the night he arrived at the hospital.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “Well, Steve and Joe are going to some aldeas not far from there, but not his. The people who live in Josue’s village — Mayakital — they tend to keep to themselves. We’ve never been invited, and now I suppose it’s not likely that’ll happen anytime soon.”
Paul picked up a scorched metal emesis basin from the ground and slapped it against his pant leg. “Tell you what. You can stay with Nancy and me for a few days. After that, if you still wanna go out to the aldeas, there’ll be other trips.”
He started to walk away.
“I’m not going to change my mind.”
He turned back to her. “Well, if your mind’s made up, then grab your things and come with me. Steve and Joe are heading out in about thirty minutes.”
Ben came off the elevator and plowed through foot traffic on the fifth floor hallway like a tractor in heat. He didn’t want Elmer to hear the news from some cop showing up at his office door.
Sweat was running down his neck by the time he found the elder McKenna standing with a group of interns and residents outside one of the patient rooms. They were in the middle of morning rounds, the daily procession around the ward during which the house staff discussed each patient with the Attending physician.
When Ben reached the periphery of the group, he waved his arms at Elmer.
The elder McKenna held up a finger and mimed the words, Give me a minute.
One of the interns — his badge read CHEWY NELSON, MD — wiped the last remnants of a jelly doughnut from his lips and began his case presentation. “The next patient is a five-year-old girl, ce-e-e-eute as a button but a real crankmeister. Her illness began five days ago with the onset of a fever and cough…”
Ben cleared his throat loudly.
Elmer held up a finger and nodded.
“…the patient’s X-ray showed a right lower lobe pneumonia, and we started her on IV Cefuroxime. She’s been stable off of oxygen, no fever in the past twenty-four hours, and we’re thinking of sending her home today.”