Davey’s eyes found his and seemed to say he understood.
The stare brought a shudder to Bane’s gut.
He looked at me and he knew, knew everything… .
Bane pushed the thought aside. Gradually he eased the boy’s body off the bed and onto the white sheet lining of the dolly, its wheels now locked into place to prevent motion. An extra surgical cap lay on the bedside tray and Bane tucked it tight around Davey’s head to hide what remained of his hair. He would steer the dolly through the corridor, pretending to be on his way to the operating room. Before anyone could question him, Davey would be hidden and Bane would be on to the next stage of his plan: destroying Vortex.
He had unhitched the wheels and started to swing the dolly around when the door opened suddenly.
“What happened to the guards?” asked Dr. Teke.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Bane pushed back his fear an instant before it showed on his features. He recognized the bald man standing in the doorway, surgical mask dangling around his throat, clearly from Janie’s picture.
“I sent them for another dolly,” he said, not hesitating, realizing that Teke assumed he was the anesthesiologist.
“Well, this one will have to do. The colonel wants us to get started immediately.”
“In that case …”
“Is the boy under?”
Bane knew he couldn’t hedge in the slightest if his deception, born of fortune, was to last. He recalled the dead anesthesiologist’s intentions.
“I’ve just administered the final i.v. dose,” he said.
“The gas is ready in the O.R.?”
Bane just nodded.
Teke regarded him only briefly as he moved across the room, raising his surgical mask. Two orderlies followed in his wake, finishing the job of swinging the dolly for the door. Davey’s eyes sought out Bane’s briefly and then surrendered as the orderlies started to wheel him from the room.
Bane felt Teke draw up even with him, his bulbous head dripping rivulets of sweat. Only the dim light was saving him from recognition, Bane reckoned, but what would he do under the bright fluorescent lighting promised in the operating room? He had to take the risk that Teke, the only one present who might recognize him, would keep his attention focused on Davey. It would be to his great advantage that the surgeons who had arrived in the limousines were all relative strangers to each other and would have little way of knowing which faces belonged and which didn’t, especially beneath surgical masks. Bane considered making his move now, before they reached the operating room, but only briefly. The corridors were crowded, with staff and security personnel. His only hope lay in going along with the charade, even into the O.R. Except the charade at best could last only until one of the surgeons removed Davey’s lime surgical cap and saw his head still layered with hair. Bane had no way of knowing how far into the procedure that would happen.
Then, as he turned with Teke to follow the dolly out of the room, Bane noticed the black shoe of one of the dead security guards sticking out from the closet.
Teke’s eyes swept in that direction.
“I had a little trouble with the monitoring equipment in the O.R.,” Bane said suddenly, hoping the words sounded both professional and legitimate.
Teke’s eyes turned toward him, away from the closet. “Remedied, I trust.”
Bane shrugged, smothered a sigh of relief. “I’ll make do,” he said, setting up possible delays in the O.R.
He followed Teke out of the room, moving in two steps behind the dolly. He felt his heart flutter. His whole plan was finished, ruined. They had the boy and, worse, they had him. He was a prisoner of his own deception.
However, even as Bane moved down the corridor, a new plan was forming in his mind. He would have to time things perfectly and take full advantage of where the eyes of the others in the room were expected to be, but that was nothing new for the Winter Man. As anesthesiologist he was responsible for putting the boy out … or not putting him out. The levels of the anesthetic were his to control. He could see Davey’s eyes coming slowly back to life. If he held back more sedation long enough, the boy would regain his senses and with them would come his power. But would it be in time?
Suddenly the thought of using the boy as a weapon didn’t bother Bane.
He moved with the dolly in Teke’s shadow down the corridor toward the O.R. The rooms and people he passed became a blur. He followed Teke into the scrub room where they joined the rest of the team for a final washing.
“Are we ready, Doctor?”
Bane turned from his sink toward the man raising the question from the doorway and found himself looking directly into the cold cat’s eyes of Col. Walter Chilgers. His surgical mask was in place, but for a horrifying instant he thought Chilgers was looking at him with more than passive interest before he realized the colonel’s stare was fixed on Teke who stood just to Bane’s right.
“Right on schedule, Colonel.”
“Splendid. Then I’ll expect no complications.”
“There shouldn’t be any. Our surgical team has studied the case from all possible angles. Every step we’re about to perform has been planned to the letter.”
“I’ll watch as much of the process as I can from the viewing gallery.”
“We’ll try to give you a good show.”
Teke dried his hands. Bane did likewise, fearful of committing any action anomalous to standard surgical procedures. Just observe and follow, he told himself, observe and follow….
The next half hour of final prepping under the white hot lights of the operating room became a blur for him, one minute running into the next. He kept his eyes from meeting those of the others involved for fear the uncertainty he felt might betray him. His knowledge of this kind of medicine was limited to watching medics in the field and the emergency procedures he had learned himself. Nothing in his past even came close to preparing him to play the role of a full-fledged anesthesiologist in a sensitive brain operation. His only choice was to continue going through as many of the motions as possible. Past observation had shown him that no member of the surgical team ever watched the actions of the anesthesiologist closely during an operation. The more complex the surgery, the less they watched. They would, though, regularly ask for a reading on vitals, which meant Bane had to familiarize himself with the digital and wave levels curving all about the machines surrounding him. With any luck, the word “stable” was all he’d have to use until he grasped the complexities of the machines.
Bane’s chair was located on Davey’s right side, even with the boy’s forearm. Ordinarily, the anesthesiologist sat directly behind the patient, but in brain operations that was clearly the domain of the surgeons. He went through the motions of aiding the lab technicians to attach the wires that would monitor the boy’s vital signs and then set about studying the red, green, or white read-outs which flashed across an array of screens in constant motion behind his shoulder. It all looked like a bizarre electronic dance to Bane, and if he had still possessed the capacity he might have smiled beneath his surgical mask.
He stole a quick glance above him and caught a glimpse of Colonel Chilgers in the observation gallery, a semicircle lined with chairs and enclosed by thick, soundproof glass. Sensitive microphones poked out from its two near corners making the colonel and everyone else up there privy to any discussion the surgeons might have.
Thoughts of Chilgers made Bane’s right hand shift involuntarily down to his left calf where the.45 was strapped. The possibility that the slight bulge might be spotted never occurred to him. Nor did the possibility that the three bodies he had hidden in Davey’s room might be discovered soon. There was too much going on inside COBRA at this point for eyes to notice either.