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“April 19th was when the battles of Lexington and Concord happened,” said Harvath, quiet for several moments as he thought before responding. “Then the night before would have been when Paul Revere was charged with taking the message to Concord that the British were coming.”
“Very good” replied DeWolfe. “You know your stuff.”
“Yeah, I only wish I knew Gary’s stuff.”
“You seem to know him pretty well. Like I said, it is probably going to be something that was significant for him and easy for his operatives to remember. Do you have any idea what numbers would have been memorable or significant for Gary? They’d need to be numbers that his men could also relate to.”
Harvath racked his head for strings of numbers that would have meant something to Gary, but which also would have held relevance for his operatives. That meant, though, that anything personal to Gary, like his a
When it came to logistical and organizational competence, Gary had both of those qualities in spades, but like it or not, the old man would have had to have used some sort of math to organize his burst transmissions. Harvath wondered if maybe he was over-thinking the problem before him.Keep it simple, stupid, he heard from somewhere in the back of his mind.
He spent the rest of the drive trying to free associate, but without very much luck.
When they arrived at the hospital, Herman was waiting for them at the nurses’ station. Harvath quickly introduced DeWolfe and then followed Herman down the hall to the recovery room, where Hollenbeck and Longo were standing guard outside.
“They just brought Gary in,” said Hollenbeck.
“How’s he doing?” asked Harvath. “Has he come around yet?”
“Dr. Trawick’s with him. It’s pretty serious,” replied Longo, stepping aside and holding the door open for Harvath. As Herman and DeWolfe tried to follow, Longo held up his arm. “Too many people inside already. I’m sure you guys can understand.”
Harvath looked back and gave his companions a polite nod that indicated he would be okay by himself.
“Sure,” replied Herman. “We understand. Scot, if you need anything, we’ll be in the waiting area.”
Scot smiled his thanks and pushed through a set of double doors where a nurse promptly blocked his path and pointed to a sink where he was required to scrub in.
His hands and forearms scrubbed, Harvath do
“How’s he doing?” asked Scot as he heard the rhythmic click of a ventilator and saw the tube protruding from Gary’s mouth. A myriad of monitors, with brightly colored displays, quietly whirred and beeped around the head of Lawlor’s bed as if they had come together to form some sort of protective technological halo.
“Not great,” replied Skip. “The bullet just missed his heart, but managed to do some major arterial damage and nicked his aorta. He went into deep hypothermic cardiac arrest. They had to do a cardio pulmonary bypass.”
“Jesus,” said Harvath. “Is he going to be okay?”
“At this point, nobody’s sure. It’s not looking very good.”
“When do you think he’ll be coming around?”
“It was a pretty long surgery. The anesthesiologist told me he used Isoflurane. It’s an inhalation agent, so we have to wait for Gary’s lungs to excrete it before he comes to.”
“How much time are we talking about here? I have some very important questions to ask him,” replied Harvath.
“Twenty to thirty minutes probably, but Scot, you have to be prepared for the fact that he might not be able to answer any of your questions.”
“They’re going to extubate him when he wakes up, right?”
“Probably not. They’ll want to watch him for a while and see how he’s doing and then the decision will be made. If they don’t think he’s strong enough, they’ll leave him on the vent.”
“Will he be able to write? I’ll get him a pen and pad.”
“Scot, listen. Gary is not a young man. On top of the bullet wound, he aspirated a lot of blood and they had to insert a chest tube. He also took some very serious blows to the head, which means there is a high probability that he has some acute intracranial injuries as well. His abilities, especially to communicate, could be severely impaired.”
“Skip, if I have to sit here and take notes while the man blinks out Morse code, then I’m going to do it. The information he has in his head is critical to our assignment.”
“I understand that and believe me, I appreciate what’s at stake here. I just want you to be prepared in case he can’t be of any help to you.”
“If he can’t,” said Harvath, drawing up a chair to the side of Gary Lawlor’s bed and sitting down, “we’re all in a lot of trouble.”
It was one of the recovery room nurses who first noticed Gary Lawlor’s eyelids fluttering. She slid past a dozing Harvath and began speaking to Gary in English as she checked his vital signs. Trawick, who had been across the room speaking with one of the other nurses, saw the commotion and quickly made his way over to the bed. Harvath, now wide awake, slid his chair back and stood up as he watched the nurse soothe her groggy patient and urge him to resist the urge to pull out the tube.
When Gary had sufficiently awakened and she was confident that he wasn’t going to try and pull the trach tube from his throat, she nodded to Dr. Trawick and then proceeded to the foot of the bed to a
Dr. Trawick took a look at Lawlor’s vitals and shook his head before turning to Scot and saying, “A couple of minutes at most, Scot. Okay? Take it slow. And whatever you do, don’t upset him.”
Harvath nodded his head, assuring Skip that he understood and then slid his chair back over next to the bed as Skip and the nurse left them alone. Lawlor’s eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to be focusing on anything in particular.
“Gary?” said Scot, trying to get his attention. “It’s me, Scot. Can you hear me?”
It took a moment, but Lawlor’s eyes slowly tracked over until they made contact with Harvath’s face. Scot couldn’t be sure, but he thought he detected a flicker of recognition. Taking the man’s hand he said, “You’re going to be okay. You’re in Berlin’s Charité Hospital. You were shot, but everything is all right now. As soon as you’re stable, we’re going to move you to Landsthul.” Landsthul Regional Medical Center, located five kilometers south of Ramstein Air Base in the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz, was the largest American hospital outside of the United States. There, Lawlor would not only get the continuing medical attention he needed, but also the security, as LRMC was located on a permanent American military installation.
Lawlor released Harvath’s hand and weakly pantomimed writing. He wanted to tell him something.So much for taking things slow, thought Harvath.
He produced the pen and pad he had borrowed from one of the nurses and, lifting Gary’s hand, helped him grip the pen in his fist and placed it on the pad where he could see it.
Each motion of his hand was extremely labored and whatever he was doing seemed to take forever. Finally, he finished and began drawing slow circles around what he had written on the pad. Harvath looked down and saw the lettersHD followed by a question mark. They made no sense to him and he decided to press harder. “I have spoken with Frank Leighton and-”
Lawlor wasn’t listening. He had begun writing again.H.E.L.M.
Harvath wondered if Gary even knew he was in the room talking to him.