Chapter XVIII
The surgical team met them on the heliport and the Director of the FBI, D.O. Kelstrom came down from his office at Quantico to personally take charge. Jed and Alice went with them to the OR doors and were escorted to the waiting room by insistent nurses.
“We’ll call you when we’re through surgery. Or if anything changes. He’s in good hands, our trauma surgeons are the best in the world.”
He paced, she sat and worried her lip. The big clock on the wall tottered like an old man on his last legs.
“Coffee?” She asked the agent and he shook his head. “Tell me about the boy,” she asked to distract him. “Where is he from? How did he get that way? Where do those eyes come from?”
Jed spent the next two hours telling her about Cale Snowden’s last six months and then by gentle questioning, he got her situation out of her and her involvement with Billy Trask.
“So you thought all he was doing was selling kids to adoptive parents?” He questioned.
She laughed ruefully. “Pretty naïve, huh? What will they do to me?”
“We have no proof of anything criminal on you, Alice. Why would we go after you? You helped Cale to escape.”
“He engineered his own escape,” she returned.
“What do you mean?” He turned those laser eyes on her drawn face.
“He told me to use the O2 tank as a bomb and use it to open the cargo container doors,” she explained.
“Cale did? Not Granny Elkins?”
“No, it wasn’t her voice. It was a frightened little boy.”
“He’s trying to come back,” he mused and lapsed into silence, deep in their own thoughts while they waited for word on the teen’s condition. The surgeon bounced into the room an hour later and he looked pleased as he approached the pair.
“Special Agent Deleon,” he held out his hand and shook Jed’s. “I’m Doctor Larabee. We have him in stable and fair condition. It was touch and go for a while there. We had to replace several units of blood, redo his chest tube and clean out the punctures. Suture a vein. He’s on forced oxygen and a respirator to give his lungs a chance to heal; he has a breathing tube so he can’t speak. He’s still unconscious and probably won’t wake up for six or seven hours. You can come in and see him for 15 minutes each as soon as he comes out of recovery.
“His heart is strong, O2 levels are up and his BP is good. Given his age, he should recover quickly. We are a bit concerned over his weight and his CAT scan. Director Kelstrom gave us his medical history; it’s unusual to say the least.
“We have hopes that his withdrawal will revert now that the threat to him has been removed.”
Alice looked from one to the other. “The buyer is still out there and he’s increased the bounty on the boy to $250,000. The threat is still out there.”
“The best thing for him would be to be declared dead,” Jed mused. “You can release that information to the Press, doctor. There are reporters outside already gathering about the wreck and by now, they had the identity of the victims. Declare him dead; transfer him to Walter Reed under another name.” He flipped his sat phone open and spoke to the Director for several minutes.
“All right,” the doctor agreed. “I’ll schedule a press release. Right now, you have 15 minutes to see him. Do you have a name?”
“Mark Elkins,” Cassie suggested.
Jed shook his head. “Not Elkins. They know Cassie’s name. Use Kelstrom, the Director suggested it. Mark Kelstrom.”
He nodded and led them into the recovery room off the PEDs ICU. Nurses in cheerful scrubs were checking his monitors and his vitals. His eyelids were blued, with black circles underneath, his face pale and drawn. The hiss and thump of the respirator lifted the skinny chest that barely made a dent under the sheets and warmed blankets. Tubes and drains came out of various places on his body.
Alice’s eyes were drawn to the monitors. “Everything looks good, O2 SAT levels are great. Sinus rhythm’s up and normal.”
Jed gave her an annoyed look. “You see a patient, I see a little boy who’s been through hell.” He picked up one of Cale’s thin arms and squeezed his fingers gently. “Cale, I’m here. Alice and Cassie sent me. We’ve got you safe in the hospital away from the Sheriff and the child snatching gang. We’re going to tell the press that Cale Snowden died from his injuries and will be buried in Texas on his ranch next to his family. You’ll be transferred to a rehab hospital in Virginia under an assumed name and into a safe house under Dir. Kelstrom’s direct care. No one but he and I will know where that is.” He continued to talk to him and kept physical contact with the teenager, thought he saw the eyelids flicker but was not aware of the night nurse’s silent return until she put her hand on his shoulder.
Quietly, she said, “that’s 20 minutes, sir. We need to let him rest.”
Jed got up and followed her out to the ICU waiting room. A crowd of people had joined them, several soldiers from the Marine base, Jamison Snowden and Kyle Beebe, as well as Dir. Kelstrom. He raised his eyebrows at Jed as he reported on Cale’s condition.
“Critical but stable. Just what the hell does that mean?” They asked.
“It means he’s holding his own but he can go either way at the drop of a hat,” he explained.
“The place is besieged with reporters,” Jamieson noted. “There are stories in the Enquirer about him, for God’s sake. They’re calling him some kind of mind freak. How did the press find out about Cale, anyway?”
“They monitor police band frequency and listen for newsworthy events. They probably heard about Cale’s kidnapping and tracked him.”
Kelstrom took Jamison Snowden aside, stared at the strange eyes and more mature face and saw what the boy might become as a man. He explained quietly what they were going to do and Jamison’s face paled.
“Can you handle it?” The Director asked and the boy’s uncle slowly nodded.
“Do I have a choice?”
“There will be a press conference, so be prepared,” he warned.
Still, when the doctor came back in to announce that Cale’s blood pressure had plummeted and his heart stopped, it was a shock. “We tried for 45 minutes to resuscitate him but his heart just wouldn’t fibrillate,” he sighed. He looked exhausted as if he’d fought the battle single-handedly. “I’m going to notify the Police and the Press. Officially, it’s now a murder. I am sorry for your loss.”
“Can we see him?” Someone asked.
“Immediate family only,” the Doctor denied. “I had to crack open his chest and we didn’t get to close.”
“I want to say goodbye,” Jamieson choked.
“Me, too,” Alice added and Jed took her aside, let her away as the doctor brought Snowden into the recovery room to stand over his nephew.
The doctor shook his head. “He did crash and we did have to shock him. The only thing different is that he did come back.”
His face above the sheet was gray with black shadows under the closed lids, the breathing tube in his lungs hissed and thumped in an endless monotone. Sweat beaded his forehead, his black curls were lank and matted showing the elegant shape of his skull. He looked more like a porcelain doll than a corpse. Jamison stifled a sob and stroked his nephew’s cheek, reached under the sheet and picked up one of his hands. They had rewrapped his wrists where the restraints had abraded the stitched areas still healing. “Cale,” he murmured. “Cale, come back, please. We love you. Come back please.” There was no response, the hand remained lax and the fingers slightly curled.
The doctor escorted him out to the waiting room, explained what they had to do to release the body and make arrangements and then notified everyone that he was going to make a statement to the Press.
In 15 minutes, they watched him on the room’s TV telling the assembled crowd of Press and Detectives that Cale Snowden had succumbed to his injuries, passing away at 2:45 AM of respiratory failure. It was now a murder investigation involving an Interstate sex ring and that the FBI was on the case. Arrests were imminent, three men had already been taken into custody and one, a Sheriff was dead. He turned it over to the FBI liaison and detectives from Virginia. They had questions but he deferred to the FBI spokesman and left the room.