Lethal Exposure by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2013-01-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Thursday, 6:12 a.m.

Fox River Medical Center

Silence. He stopped just outside the hospital room.

The hallway was deserted. No visitors, no sounds. Nearly six in the morning, too early for the nurses to be making their rounds, yet late enough that the floor nurse would be dozing. He had checked only seconds before. All clear.

The hall lights were dimmed, half the medical center’s fluorescent banks shut down. The only sounds from the other rooms were faint snoring, a cough down the hall, and the constant ping of an assisted breathing device. Hospitals never entirely shut down, but they certainly became quiet.

Every movement required stealth, any misstep might cause a disaster. Murder was a tricky business, if you didn’t want to get caught.

He stepped up to a dark, unguarded room. No plaque gave the patient’s name, but this had to be it—a private room, an updated checklist for the radiation-health specialist… a small Ukrainian flag taped over the name-plate. The bastard had never officially renounced his citizenship. The gall!

He glanced down the hallway as someone walked past the cross corridor whistling an old Top 40 tune that echoed through the sleeping building. His first instinct was to flee, to dive into the shadows and hide—but he kept moving, untroubled, unnoticed. That was the key. The night worker paid no attention to him.

Perfect disguise, chameleon, blend into even this odd environment. He wore stolen green surgery garb, and the mask and cap gave him anonymity; a stolen ID badge gave him an appropriate name, if such was required.

He pushed open the door to Georg Gregorivich Dumenco’s room. The hinges were quiet, the lights out. A dim trickle of dawn gleamed through the slitted blinds, dappling the waxed floor. The old scientist lay on his side snoring gently, a sheet pulled up nearly to his head and the blanket twisted around his feet. An IV line hung from a bottle and snaked into the old man’s arm. No one sat vigil with him, waiting to hear deathbed confessions—no family, no friends, no graduate students. Even here, even now, the physicist had isolated himself from his family.

The legendary Ukrainian scientist, all alone. Helpless.

Reaching into a long pocket beneath the baggy surgery pants, he withdrew a tightly folded sterile green cloth. He quickly unwrapped the cloth to expose a thin surgical knife, carbon steel, razor sharp. The blade caught a flicker of light in a crazy pattern dancing against the wall.

Dumenco didn’t stir. It would be like slicing the throat of a sleeping bull, a powerful enough animal when awake, but now unprotected and powerless. How many times had Dumenco been this close, so helpless? The timing was never right, the circumstances never so crucial. Only recently had things changed enough to demand action.

Dumenco just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Padding silently across the room, he stood beside the dying man’s bed. Clear target. He did not want to risk reaching over the old scientist, whose arm could block the slicing motion across the throat. The cut

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