Balance of Power

    The child lay on her back, chest stained with blood. The paramedic touched her wrist. "Bring a stretcher," she called out. "This one's still alive."

* * *

    Entering the baggage area, Inspector Charles Monk passed a team of paramedics hurrying a dark-haired child to an ambulance.

    It was rush hour. There was no heliport at SF General; the sheriff would have to block Highway 101, freezing traffic so that the ambulance could weave its way to the emergency room. Fifteen minutes, at least. Perhaps a lifetime.

    Stopping, Monk surveyed the crime scene.

    There were at least six dead—a slender woman of middle age; a plump woman of perhaps thirty; a blonde teenager sprawled backward on the carousel, arms akimbo; two clean-cut men in identical sport coats, one white, the other Hispanic; and, perhaps forty feet away, a skinny man in a T-shirt lying beside a spatter of his blood and brains.

    Nearby was the empty box of a child's Lego set. A Lexington P-2 lay beneath his outflung arm.

    Can't accomplish all this with a knife, Monk thought.

    The scene was quieter now. The emergency response team had done its work: the baggage area was sealed; the media cordoned off; crime scene investigators sifted through the debris; the police were interviewing witnesses. A cop sat with a young woman, slumped in a chair near the entrance, eyes dull with shock.

    Kneeling in front of her, Monk felt his weight, his age, the throb in his damaged knee. "What happened here?" he asked.

    She could not form an answer. "This is the President's family," the cop said softly. "The shooter was his brother-in-law."

TWENTY -FIVE

Dr. Callie Hines was staring at her office wall when the beeper went off.

    She had just finished patching up a sixteen-year-old Asian kid with an abdominal knife wound—unusual in Callie's experience, which featured gunshot wounds at the rate of one a day. But this was the rhythm of an emergency room surgeon: crazy energy, stasis, then a beeper. She snatched it out of her pocket.

    It was a nine hundred call; whoever they were bringing in was at risk of dying. Rising from her chair, Callie walked briskly to the elevator, a lean black woman with a model's figure, a smooth lineless face, and cool seen-it-all eyes. She had just reached the emergency room area when her cell phone rang.

    This was the paramedic team. There had been a mass shooting at SFO; glancing at her watch, Callie envisioned Highway 101 at rush hour. In the background, she could hear the piercing whine of sirens. "Who's the patient?" Callie asked.

    "A six-year-old girl." The woman's voice was taut. "It's a Room One case."

    Inwardly, Callie winced. Gunshot wounds for teens were common, but not a child this small; Operating Room One was reserved for patients at death's door. "What kind of wound?" she asked.

    "Abdominal. Her blood pressure's low—we intubated her, applied pressure to the wound, and started an IV."

    "Is she conscious?"

    "Yes." A slight pause. "This one's a VIP."

    The remark was unusual—the ER was not a status-conscious place. "A VIP six-year-old?" Callie asked.

    "It's Lara Kilcannon's niece. Her mother and one sister died at the scene."

    Callie prided herself on nervelessness; now she drew a breath, calling on her reserves of calm. "I'll be waiting," she said.

• • •

"Mr. President."

    Turning, Kerry saw a shadow walking quickly through the sea grass, backlit by the waxing moon above the sand dunes. "Mr. President," Peter Lake repeated, more softly now.

    Something had happened, Kerry thought; perhaps they had found Al Anwar. He felt Lara's hand clasp his.

* * *

    Peter knelt. In the darkness, Lara tensed: though he had called out to Kerry, Peter was looking at her.

    "I have bad news." Peter's face was bleak, his voice hesitant and strained. "There's been a shooting at SFO. Your mother and Joan are dead."

    "No . . ." For an instant Lara could not see; Kerry's grip tightened, as if to pull her back from some abyss.

    "What about Mary?" she asked. "And Marie?"

    Her voice sounded calm, as though someone else had posed the question. "Mary's all right," Peter answered, then glanced at Kerry. "But Marie was wounded. They're taking her to SF General."

    Kerry pulled Lara close. Resistant, she twisted her face toward Peter. "Was it John?"

    "Yes."

    Lara felt her stomach knot, heard the thickness in Kerry's voice. "Get me the hospital," he demanded.

* * *

    Callie Hines stood near the slick whiteboard, watching a resident enter the name of new patients in Magic Marker. In the last few minutes, she had seen a parade worthy of a Brueghel painting: two prisoners in manacles; a homeless black man with pneumonia; a twenty-year-old Hispanic woman with AIDS, overdosed on heroin; a bipolar white man, HIV positive, who had slashed his wrists; a cocaine addict pregnant with her fourth child, her left arm amputated.