Page 90 of The Session

Mark stood and scanned the room. “What about the other staff here?”

“Toussaint got hit when they came in the room,” Raccoon answered. “We haven’t seen Wesley. He’s the night manager.”

“Well, that sounds suspicious,” Kade noted as she used an alcohol wipe to clean flecks of blood from Raccoon’s face.

“No, he’s a good guy,” Raccoon insisted.

Mark walked over to the workstations and spotted one with a coffee cup, a half-eaten doughnut, and an ashtray.

“Load him up,” Mark called to Norm as he came in with the stretcher. “Somebody, come with me.”

Kade followed as Mark raced down the corridor to the opposite end of the power station. Mark turned right and entered a large room with a roll-top door on one side and a metal door on the right, propped open by a rock.

He pulled out his flashlight but let Kade go ahead, using the light on her gun to cut through the dark outside. She swept the beam around the loading dock. A picnic table sat to one side next to a trash can, with a large industrial dumpster immediately to Mark’s left.

“I don’t see anything,” Kade reported.

Mark stepped outside and aimed his flashlight into the bushes behind the door. Something plastic and shiny reflected the light back.

He knelt for a closer look and saw an identity badge attached to a lanyard wrapped around the neck of a man lying on his side, blood oozing from his temple.

“Over here!” Mark shouted.

He grabbed the man by the shoulders and gently pulled him out of the bushes. Mark heard a faint groan.

“He’s alive!” Mark shouted. “Tell them to bring the truck around after they’ve loaded Blackjack.”

Kade called into her radio and relayed the instructions to Burton.

Mark wiped away the blood on Wesley’s temple to reveal a large gash and a bruise. It looked like he’d been hit with the butt of a gun.

In movies, getting pistol-whipped seemed almost nonviolent. In reality, it could lead to concussion or death. It was the equivalent of getting hit in the head with a hammer.

Mark placed a bandage over the wound, then used his flashlight to check Wesley’s pupils for dilation.

Thankfully, they shrank to tiny dots. If they hadn’t, things would have been much worse.

Mark turned at the sound of squelching tires and an idling engine. Norm hopped out of the passenger seat, ran around the back of the SUV, and opened the tailgate.

“You got company,” Norm shouted to Blackjack, who was lying inside.

Mark and Kade picked Wesley up, with Mark taking extra care to keep his head stable. They loaded him into the back of the SUV with Norm’s help. Mark wedged himself between the two wounded men to keep them still on the way to the hospital.

“You okay?” he asked Blackjack.

“At least I don’t have to listen to Wesley talk about his brother-in-law for the duration of the trip.”

“Does that get annoying?” Mark asked.

“How many times do I have to listen to somebody complain that their brother-in-law is the prime minister and they’re stuck working the night shift at a power plant?”

How bad do things have to get when you need to put family members in charge of keeping the lights on? Mark wondered.

Outside Man

Mark stood in the back of the operating room, watching as the doctor and nurses worked on Blackjack’s wounds. They seemed competent and attentive, and Dr. Benson had a better idea of what to do than Mark would have. Still, he had agreed to observe at Burton’s insistence, ensuring Constellation had eyes on everything. Benson had objected at first, but reconsidered when he realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to deny a simple request from armed personnel who were there at the Haitian government’s request.

“How’s it looking, Bookmark?” Blackjack asked Mark. The injured man was lying on his side so Benson could properly clean out the wound.