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"Watch your back, buddy," Major H. Richard Miller said.
Castillo pushed the END key, slipped the telephone in his pocket, and looked at Munz.
"May I suggest, Karl, that before we enter the hospital, it might be a good idea to take the round out of the chamber of your pistol?"
"Jesus Christ, I forgot about that! How did you know?"
"I saw the pistol at Sante Fe Circle," Munz said.
When I looked in the window of the BMW.
Castillo took the Beretta from the small of his back, removed the magazine, ejected the round from its chamber, put the round in the magazine, and then put the magazine back in the pistol. [TWO] The German Hospital Avenida Pueyrredon Buenos Aires, Argentina 1920 24 July 2005 Castillo got to the intensive care unit of the hospital just as Special Agent Schneider was being wheeled on a gurney out of one of the glass-walled treatment units. There were so many hospital personnel around the gurney that Castillo had trouble getting a good look.
One of the medical people was pushing what looked like a clothes tree on wheels. There were three plastic bags hanging from it, with clear plastic tubing leading from them to under the blue sheets. One of the bags contained human blood.
Charley could only guess what the other two bags held.
Betty was wrapped in pale blue sheets. They were fresh and crisp but bloodstained near the groin and in the side. Her head was swaddled in white bandage, also bloodstained. Her eyes were open, but there was no reaction when, as the gurney was rolled out of intensive care toward a bank of elevators, he pushed one of the nurses aside to look down at her.
"I don't see any reaction," Charley said.
"I don't speak English," a man in surgical greens answered in broken English.
Charley repeated the question in Spanish.
"She has been sedated," the man answered.
They reached the elevator bank. A button was pushed and eventually a door whooshed open.
"We are taking the patient to the operation theater," the man in surgical greens said. "You are forbidden."
Charley was about to say, "Fuck you and your forbidden!" when he felt Munz's hand firmly on his shoulder.
"The chief of surgical staff will explain what's going to happen to her, Karl," Munz said gently. "You just can't go into the operation theater with her." The chief of surgical staff looked like Santa Claus with a shave. His more than ample belly strained the buttons of his white nylon jacket. His name tag read JOSE P. ROMMINE, M.D.
There was an X-ray viewing device on one wall of his office, holding so many large X-ray films that in places three and four were pinned by the same stainless-steel clip.
"I regret my English is not good," Dr. Rommine said, as he shook Castillo's hand.
"Herr Castillo speaks German," Munz said in German.
"That would be easier," Rommine replied in German. "I took my university in Germany. First at Philipps, in Marburg an der Lahn, then at Heidelberg."
"I know the schools," Castillo said.
German doctors-and I'm sure she had the best- couldn't keep my mother alive. I hope you can do better for Betty, Herr Doktor Santa Claus.
Please, God, let him do better!
"We're interested in your diagnosis, Herr Doktor," Munz said.
"Of course," the doctor said, turning to the X-rays and picking up a pointer. "As you can see from this, the wound to the leg, while it has of course done some muscle damage-and there will be more as the projectile is removed-could have been much worse."
Yeah, sure, those bastards could have used a 20mm and blown it off.
Jesus, if they wanted to whack me, and they obviously have access to weapons, why didn't they use a hand grenade? Once they got Roger to lower the window, all they would have had to do was drop it inside the car. Heroic stories to the contrary, when a grenade lands close, very few people have ever been able to toss it back.
Castillo had an unpleasant image of Roger Markham desperately searching for a grenade on the floorboard, and then finding it just before it went off. Grenade shards would have gone through the upholstery and thin sheet metal of the seats without trouble. And of course probably bounced off that wonderful bullet-resistant glass.
