The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [147]
"Residue?" Dominic asked.
"You can ask Rick about that. He'll give you chapter and verse."
"What are we using to deliver the drug?"
"One of these." Granger opened his desk drawer and took out the "safe" blue pen. He handed it across and told them how it worked.
"Sweet," Brian observed. "Just stab him in the ass, like?"
"Exactly right. It transfers seven milligrams of the drug-it's called succinylcholine-and that pretty much takes care of business. The subject collapses, is brain-dead in a few minutes, and all-the-way dead in less than ten."
"What about medical attention? What if there's an ambulance just across the street?"
"Rick says it won't matter unless he's in an operating room with doctors standing right at his side."
"Fair enough." Brian picked up the photo of their first target, looking at it, but really seeing young David Prentiss. "Tough luck, buddy."
"I see our friend had a nice weekend," Jack was saying to his computer. This day's report included a photo of a Miss Mandy Davis, along with a transcript of her interview with the Metropolitan Police Special Branch. "She's a looker."
"Not cheap, either," Wills observed from his workstation.
"How much longer has Sali got?" Jack asked him.
"Jack, it's better not to speculate on that," Wills warned.
"Because the two hitters-hell, Tony, they're cousins of mine."
"I do not know much about that, and I do not want to find out. The less we know, the less problems we can have. Period," he emphasized.
"You say so, man," Jack responded. "But whatever sympathy I might have had for this prick died when he started cheerleading and funding people with guns. There are lines you can't cross."
"Yeah, Jack, there are. Be careful that you don't step too far yourself."
Jack Ryan, Jr., thought about that for a second. Did he want to be an assassin? Probably not, but there were people who needed killing, and Uda bin Sali had crossed over into that category. If his cousins were going to take him down, they were just doing the Lord's work-or his country's work, which, to the way he'd been brought up, was pretty much the same thing.
"That fast, Doc?" Dominic asked.
Pasternak nodded. "That fast."
"That reliable?" Brian inquired next.
"Five milligrams is enough. This pen delivers seven. If anyone survives, it would have to be a miracle. Unfortunately, it will be a very unpleasant death, but that can't be helped. I mean, we could use botulism toxin-it's a very fast-acting neurotoxin-but that leaves residue in the blood that would come out in a postmortem toxicology scan. Succinylcholine metabolizes very nicely. Detecting it would take another miracle, unless the pathologist knows exactly what to look for, and that is unlikely."
"How fast again?"
"Twenty to thirty seconds, depending on how close you get to a major blood vessel, then the agent will cause total paralysis. Won't even be able to blink his eyes. He will not be able to move his diaphragm, so no breathing, no oxygen through the lungs. His heart will continue to beat, but since it will be the organ using the most oxygen, the heart will go ischemic in a matter of seconds-that means that without oxygen, the heart tissue will start to die from lack of oxygen. The pain will be massive. Ordinarily, the body has a reserve supply of oxygen. How much depends on physical condition-the obese have less oxygen reserves than the slender among us. Anyway, the heart will be the first. It will try to continue beating, but that only makes the pain worse. Brain death will occur in three to six minutes. Until then, he'll be able to hear but not see-"
"Why not?" Brian asked.
"The eyelids probably will close. We're talking total paralysis here. So, he'll be lying there, in enormous pain, unable to move at all, with his heart trying to pump unoxygenated blood until his brain cells expire from anoxia. After that, it's theoretically possible to keep the body alive-muscle cells last the longest without oxygen-but