"He's not out of the woods yet," said Dr. Sean Kelly, one of Walter Reed's hundreds of Marcus Welby look-alike staff physi- cians. "In cases like this, we operate in the dark. The chest wound is nasty, but that's not the danger; it's the head wound. The brain is a real funny area."
Tyrone's FBI identification was required to get him and Scott in to see Dr. Kelly. As far as anybody knew, Pierre Troubleaux had been killed over the weekend in an explosion in his hospital room. The explosion was faked at the suggestion of the manage- ment of dGraph, Inc. after Pierre's most recent assailant was murdered, despite the police assigned to guard his room. Two of Ahmed's elite army had disguised themselves as orderlies so well that they weren't suspected when one went in the room and the other occupied the guard. The media was having a field day.
All would have gone as planned but for the fact that one of the
D.C. policeman on guard was of Lebanese decent. One ersatz
orderly emerged from the room and spoke to his confederate in
Arabic. "It's done. Let's get out of here."
The guard understood enough Farsi and instantly drew his gun on the pair. One of Ahmed's men tried to pull his gun but was shot and wounded before he could draw. The other orderly started to run down the hallway pushing nurses and patients out of his way. He slid as he turned left down another corridor that ended with a huge picture window overlooking the lush hospital grounds. He never slowed, shouting "Allah, I am yours!" as he dove through the plate glass window plummeting five floors to the concrete walk below.
The wounded and armed orderly refused to speak. At all. Noth- ing. He made his one call and remained silent thereafter.
The dGraph management was acutely concerned that there might be another attempt on Pierre's life, so the secrecy surrounding his faked death would be maintained until he was strong enough to deal with the situation on his own. The investigation into both the shooting and the meant-to-convince bombing was handled by the District Police, and officially the FBI had nothing to do with it.
Dr. Kelly continued, trying to speak in non-Medical terms. "Basically, we don't know enough to accurately predict the ef- fects of trauma to the brain. We can generally say that motor skills, or memory might be affected, but to what extent is un- known. Then there are head injuries that we can't fully explain, and Pierre's is one of them."
Scott and Ty looked curiously at Dr. Kelly. "Pierre had a severe trauma to the cranium, and some of the outer layers of brain tissue were damaged when the skull was perforated." Scott shud- dered at the distinct memory of the gore. "Since he was in a coma, we elected to do minimal repair work until he gained con- sciousness and he could give us first hand reports on his memory and other possible effects. That's how we do it in the brain business."
"So, how is he?" Scott wanted a bottom line.
"He came out of a coma yesterday, and thus far, we can't find any problems that stem from the head injury."