The two cops came in and each took a hold under my armpits. I hung limp, although my left shoulder, where the bullet had grazed me, burned like somebody had dropped acid on it.

They laid me on a sleeping mat, and, much as I would’ve loved to sleep, the pain was too great. I could peek through one of my eyelids, although the other one seemed to be fused shut. A guard was positioned right outside the bars, reading a skin magazine and apparently waiting for a sign I was conscious. Choi probably had told him to let him know as soon as I was awake so they could bring me back in the interrogation room and ass-kick a confession out of me.

I, of course, did some thinking about the Whitehall situation, although I will admit it was not at the top of my give-a-shit list at that moment.

I had badly misjudged Michael Bales; that was obvious. He wasn’t Dudley Do-Right at all. He was Dirty Harry with a little extra malice thrown in. And he and his buddy Choi had knocked the crap out of Private Jackson, and probably Moran also, to extract their statements.

Anyway, so what, because I was facing another of their physical interrogations. The thought nearly made me sick. I was sure Choi was in there telling him, “Hey, Michael, stick with your fists so we can get this jerk-off to break.” Two hours passed, and just as it was starting to become late afternoon, I heard footsteps and keys jingling, and I guessed they had run out of patience. I lay still and played dead and prayed desperately for myself. Korean voices chattered in the distance. I felt so hopeless I wanted to die. I’d been lying perfectly prone long enough for my body to stiffen and my bruises and wounds to begin to ache terribly.

I couldn’t withstand another beating. If Bales or Choi wanted me to confess to killing everybody in that crowd, I’d do it and take the chance I could sort it out later.

I felt myself being lifted by a couple of pairs of strong hands. I moaned pitifully until I heard a voice.

“Oh God, Sean, what the hell did they do to you?”

I opened one eyelid, because the other was swollen completely shut from Bales’s final kick. I tried to smile but my lips were pretty swollen so it probably looked awful.

I never thought I’d be happy to see Katherine Carlson. I was, though. If my legs weren’t so wobbly, I would’ve rushed across the cell and hugged and kissed her.

But that was an empty, fleeting thought, anyway, because my body finally decided to give my nerve endings a break. I fainted.

CHAPTER 26

You’ll never guess the first face I saw when I regained consciousness. Captain Wilson Bridges, M.D., was standing, head bent at the neck, studying what appeared to be my medical chart. The good news was he was operating in his capacity as a surgeon rather than pathologist. His medical coat had lots of dried blood all over it. The bad news was a fair amount of it was mine.

I said “Hello, Doc,” but that’s not how it came out. I sounded like a bullfrog with laryngitis.

His eyes shifted from the chart to my face, and he moved closer. Holding a finger in front of my eyes, he said, “Follow this.”

I did so as he moved it back and forth.

Then he squeezed my left wrist and looked down at his watch, and I didn’t say a word because I didn’t want to disturb his concentration. It was my body he was scrutinizing. This was no time for him to make mistakes.

He jotted something on that ubiquitous clipboard and placed it back on a hook. I saw two IVs going into my arms.

Captain Bridges smiled. “You’re going to live, Major.”

To which I grumpily replied, “I hurt so damned much, I don’t want to live.”

He chuckled.

“Yeah. Yuck, yuck,” I said.

He chuckled again, which was easy for him, because he hadn’t been shot, knifed by a piece of glass, and had the shit kicked out of him by too many people to count.

“How long have I been here?”

“Since yesterday afternoon. We sent an ambulance to get you after your lawyer called. By the way, you’re a big hero.”

“Yeah? Tell me about that,” I insisted. After all, how often do you go from being a kung-fu punching bag to a hero?

“One of the network news cameras filmed you running through the crowd and chasing off a shooter. It’s been on all the news. Even CNN’s carrying it.”

This, I suppose, explained how Katherine got me released from the Itaewon station.

I said, “How bad was it?”

“You mean the massacre?”

The fact that he chose that particular word to describe what happened was my first indication. I nodded.

He shook his head. “We lost two more this morning. That makes fourteen dead. Ten of the wounded are here; the rest are being treated in Korean hospitals around the city. Our little basement morgue couldn’t handle it. We had to rent a refrigeration van for all the bodies. If you hadn’t chased away one of the shooters there’d probably be two or three more vans parked outside.”

Remember that old saying about how “all politics is local”? Apparently the same applies to hospital departments. The guy was more concerned about morgue space than the pathetic fate of the folks who got in the way of a bullet. Down the hall was probably some little old lady complaining about how many forms she had to type. Three doors away was a supply clerk moaning about… Well, you get the point.

And on that thought, I asked, “And how am I doing?”

“Not bad. You’re probably going to walk with a cane for a few weeks. You’ve got two broken ribs, but from the X rays it seems you’ve broken some ribs before, so you know the drill. I’ve taped them and you’ll have to refrain from exercise or strenuous activity for a while.”

This was no problem as far as I was concerned, because, oddly enough, I’d lost that urge I usually felt to get up and run a marathon.

He reached over and grabbed a hand mirror and placed it in front of my face. I took one look and immediately felt an elephantine wash of pity for the poor ugly bastard staring back at me. You could barely see a single square inch that wasn’t bruised or swollen or scabby. One tooth was missing and another was broken in half. My nose was skewed at an odd angle.

“You were beaten up pretty badly,” Bridges said, in what had to rank as the understatement of the year.

“Oh Jesus,” I murmured, barely able to recognize myself. He quickly yanked the mirror away.

“Hey, you won’t be getting any dates for a while, but it’ll all heal,” he assured. “And you’ll get some shiny enamel teeth that won’t get any cavities.”

Captain Bridges, I was learning, had the bedside manner of a rottweiler puppy.

He grinned and said, “Anyway, there’s a lady waiting outside to see you. She’s been here since you were brought in. In fact, I was instructed to keep you in isolation until she spoke with you. I can throw a towel over your face or put a blindfold on her and lead her in.”

Did I say a rottweiler puppy? I was wrong. A full-grown pit bull.

I was expecting Katherine, but in walked the heartless, bloodthirsty Miss Carol Kim. She stopped at my bedside and looked at my face, then picked up the doctor’s clipboard and studied something. Like I needed this. She was checking the name on the board to make sure the battered wreck on the bed was indeed me.

“Wow, you look awful,” she murmured, studying the clipboard.

I straightened a lock of my hair. “How’s that? Better?”

“Much,” she said with a cold smile, then lowered her tight little butt onto my bed.

She reached out and lowered the bedsheet to my waist. She clinically examined my body, and I looked down, too; there were more black-and-blue patches fairly regularly spaced. There was a bandage on my shoulder, and white tape running around my ribs.

“Wow, they really kicked the stuffing out of you.”

Like I didn’t know that already.