Chameleon

Immediately behind her the two cruisers screeched to a halt. The drivers were out in a second, perched behind their doors, guns out of holsters.

“Stop! Police!” they shouted in unison.

Gil carried on helping a bloodstained and barely conscious Dee out of the back seat of the van.

“Either shoot me, or come and help. This woman is dying!” Gil yelled.

The two policemen looked at the woman who was wearing a leather jacket over a blue bra, holstered their guns and ran to assist. Gil could be arrested and handcuffed when the sick woman was safely on a gurney.

Chapter 7 2

Darvell Salvage Yard, East 7 th Street, Richmond, Virginia. USA, Monday 3pm.

By the time Steve Post arrived at the co-ordinates he had been given, along with significant back up, there was no need for the requested silent approach. Already there were curious office and factory workers gathering outside the entrance, alerted by gunfire and a speeding minivan crashing through the gates. Steve manoeuvred his SUV over the wrecked gates and into the yard, jumping from the car when he saw human activity.

Gun drawn, he followed the voices and found himself in a clearing in the midst of scrap metal. He holstered his gun when he saw the carnage. A paramedic from a neighbouring factory had fastened a tourniquet around a balding man’s handless wrist and bent his arm double, fastening a second tourniquet around the forearm and upper arm. The man screamed in pain as the paramedic pulled the second tourniquet tight, forcing the folded arms together in a tight embrace. The bleeding slowed dramatically but Mitchinson lost consciousness.

The paramedic looked at the approaching FBI man, who was wearing a blue windbreaker with the FBI logo in gold, and spoke urgently.

“These tourniquets will lose him his arm but they may save his life.”

An ambulance siren approached. Steve looked around; there was no sign of Dee anywhere. What was going on here? Dan Peterson, who had travelled with Steve, secured the crime scene and issued orders to uniformed cops, who were now arriving by the dozen.

Another office worker was attending to Donkin, who was showing signs of life, his eye lids flickering. She correctly identified a neck injury and tried to prevent the police from searching him, knowing that any movement could make it worse. She was unsuccessful, and Donkin was carefully frisked.

“My God, Dee, what happened here? Where are you?” Steve inadvertently said out loud.

***

The two ambulances had left the junk yard, sirens blazing, and the crime scene technicians were now bagging evidence, including the remnants of a man’s right hand.

Steve’s phone rang. It was Richmond PD.

“Special Agent Post?” The policeman wanted confirmation.

“That’s me,” Steve acknowledged.

“Sir, we have three women here at the Da Vita Community Hospital. One is being prepped for surgery, two are OK but one of them has committed a string of driving offences. The mouthy one - they are all English, by the way - said she refused to leave the hospital until you arrived. She said she is the daughter of Senator Miles, so we thought we should call before we arrested her.”

“Hold those women there. I’ll be there in ten minutes to take charge of the situation, Officer.....”

“Sergeant Trelawney, sir.”

“OK Trelawney, secure the hospital until I can figure out what’s going on.”

Steve concluded the call, grabbed Dan Peterson and they headed off to the hospital, leaving the bloodbath behind.

Chapter 7 3

DaVitaRichmondCommunity Hospital, Virginia. USA. Monday 3:30pm.

Barry was drowsy from blood loss and morphine. His wound had been sealed temporarily, and he was co

He was going to lose his right arm below the elbow, but that would not be done at this hospital and nor could it be attempted until his blood count stabilised. However, the doctor was concerned less about the loss of the limb than he was about serious irregularities in heart pattern, which suggested that Barry may have suffered damage to his heart muscle.

The policeman listened with interest, but insisted that the patient be secured as he was likely to be charged with kidnap, serious assault and, potentially, murder. One armed or not, Barry realised that he was destined to spend his remaining days in a hellhole of a US prison.

The doctor agreed to keep him secured but comfortable until such times as it was safe to transfer him to a unit with more coronary support. The room fell silent and Barry drifted back into a dreamless sleep.

***

Mere yards away from Barry’s cubicle, the hard pressed medical staff were even more downbeat. Rob Donkin had suffered a cervical spinal injury that had paralysed him from the neck down. His first and second vertebrae were badly damaged. The doctors had stabilised him, but he was in an induced coma and he would remain unconscious until they could get him to a specialist spinal unit. This would be harder than it sounded because of the shortage of spinal surgery beds on the eastern seaboard, due to the high number of spinal injuries arriving back from the war zones. It would also be difficult because Donkin had no visible signs of insurance.

The most likely outcome would be extradition, by an air ambulance transfer, to the UK. The US police would have liked to prosecute him, but they recognised that he was already imprisoned in a body that would never work again.

***

Dee Hammond had fared better than her two attackers. She was still in surgery but no-one was harbouring negative thoughts about the outcome. Test after test had been carried out and eventually, after much discussion, the surgeon had agreed to continue with the procedure. No-one would tell Gillian or Katie why they had delayed surgery. All they were told was that she would be fine and that she would be expected to make a full recovery.

The bullet wounds themselves would offer little challenge, even to a small community hospital surgical team, but there were complications. The bullet had nicked a kidney and other organs on its way through to shattering her twelfth rib, sometimes referred to as a floating rib because it is not attached to the sternum.

Steve Post listened carefully to Katie Norman’s story of the day so far, and was surprised at the maternal protection offered to her by Gillian Davis. Gillian filled in the gaps as she held Katie’s hand. What she had to say shocked Steve Post and forced him to reconsider his preconceptions about the former Chameleon.

She spoke as if she was being officially debriefed, and Steve realised that she must have been through this process many times before, so he sat and listened without interruption as Dan Peterson recorded the session on a handheld dictation machine.

“I knew that Dee Hammond was unhappy with me, and although I have always accepted my culpability, that is often not enough for some people. Wary of her intentions, I decided to keep track of her whilst in the USA. Purely for my self preservation, you understand.”

She smiled, and continued. “I cloned her phone using my adapted IPhone and IPad and some security software used in law enforcement circles, called TriposDub. I also fed her Sim card details and GPS details into my iPad tracking application. I thought that I’d been very clever doing all this while she was asleep, but when she awoke and found her phone battery was flat I think she suspected. She didn’t say anything, however, so I may have been a little paranoid.

When I overheard the first call from Donkin I knew that she might be in trouble and so I had a choice - leave her to it or keep an eye on her. At that point I had no idea what Donkin wanted, nor that he was working with Mitchinson, and so I gave it some considered thought and decided I couldn’t sit by and watch her or Katie be hurt.