First Strike: A Thriller by Ben Coes

Author:Ben Coes [Coes, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, United States, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers & Suspense, Spies & Politics, Political, Terrorism, Thrillers
ISBN: 1250043174
Amazon: B017RBWIEK
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2016-06-28T05:00:00+00:00

37

OVAL OFFICE

THE WHITE HOUSE

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Less than thirty seconds later, Terry O’Brien, the White House physician, appeared at the end of the hallway, sprinting to the Oval Office. Behind him was a swarm of people from the medical unit, along with senior White House staff.

Calibrisi’s eyes shut just as the full force of the coronary hit him and sent his 230-pound frame into a horrible spasm of seizures.

O’Brien stormed into the room, dropped to the floor by Calibrisi’s side, ripped off his shirt, and pressed his fingertips into his neck, searching for a pulse.

A medical assistant attached Calibrisi to a portable heart monitor as O’Brien started performing CPR.

O’Brien looked up at Dellenbaugh.

“Tell them to get the Traumahawk ready, Mr. President,” he said as he pumped his hands up and down on Calibrisi’s chest in a timed rhythm. “We don’t have much time.”

The Oval Office was crowded with cabinet members, various high-level Pentagon officials, and senior national security staff. An eerie silence took over the room.

After two minutes of CPR, O’Brien again searched for a carotid artery pulse in Calibrisi’s neck but felt nothing. The heart monitor told him the same thing.

“Lifepak!” he said.

He got higher on his knees and began an urgent, faster-paced, more violent form of CPR.

A few seconds later, a nurse moved a defibrillator to Calibrisi’s side. She handed O’Brien a pair of paddles, which he placed against Calibrisi’s chest. He waited for the tone, indicating the charge was set, then barked, “Clear!” ensuring no one was touching Calibrisi. He pressed the handle buttons and sent a searing two hundred joules of electric current into Calibrisi’s body.

His eyes shot to the monitor. It blipped, then went steady, a green line laid out across the screen. After a few seconds, the defibrillator’s high-pitched tone went steady again, and O’Brien repeated the blast of electric current to Calibrisi’s heart, trying in vain to bring him back to life.

After a third attempt, a small green triangle appeared on the monitor, then another, and a third, all accompanied by a soft blip; he was alive.

“Let’s go,” said O’Brien.

They lifted Calibrisi onto a gurney. Someone opened the French doors. O’Brien and three others—two medical assistants and Dellenbaugh himself—sprinted as they wheeled the gurney, charging through the doors, across the Rose Garden, toward the South Lawn.

Calibrisi clung to life, his heart pumping in a weak, uneven pattern that O’Brien knew would last only a few minutes.

When they reached the South Lawn, a wall of wind hit them as they approached the bright red Sikorsky HC-60 Traumahawk. The chopper’s rotors cut frantically through the air above their heads. They tucked the gurney into the chopper. O’Brien and one of his assistants, a physician named Lovvorn, climbed aboard. The chopper shot into the cloud-crossed Washington sky.

Lovvorn administered CPR as the chopper moved east, slashing the air as the pilots jacked the ferocious chopper to the max.

O’Brien leaned into the cockpit.

“Where to, sir?” asked the copilot, yelling above the loud engines.

“Bethesda!”

“I’ll radio ahead!”

“Tell them to find Marc Gillinov!” yelled O’Brien above the noise of the chopper, referring to one of Walter Reed’s heart surgeons.

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