Tom Clancy's Op-center Balance of Power - Tom Clancy [6]
"Help!"
The man unlocked the gate and rushed over. Aideen told him to keep pressure on the wound. He did as he was told and Aideen rose. She looked back at the booth. The sentry was crouched there, shouting into the phone for assistance. There were people across the street and in the road. The only ones left in front of the palace were Aideen, the man beside her, the guard-and Martha.
Aideen looked at her boss in the growing darkness. Passing cars slowed and stopped, their lights illuminating the still, awful scene. Martha was lying on her side, facing the booth. Thick puddles of blood were forming on the pavement beneath and behind her body.
"Oh, Jesus," Aideen choked.
The young woman tried to rise but her legs wouldn't support her. She crawled quickly toward the booth and knelt beside Martha. She bent over her and looked down at the handsome face. It was utterly still.
"Martha?" she said softly.
Martha didn't respond. People began to gather tentatively behind the two women.
"Martha?" Aideen said more insistently.
Martha didn't move. Aideen heard the sound of running feet inside the courtyard. Then she heard muted voices shouting for people to clear the area. Aideen's ears were cottony from the shots. Hesitantly, she touched Martha's cheek with the tips of two ringers. Martha did not respond. Slowly, as though she were moving in a dream, Aideen extended her index finger. She held it under Martha's nose, close to her nostrils. There was no breath.
"God, oh God," Aideen was muttering. She gently touched Martha's eyelid. It didn't react and, after a moment, she withdrew her hand. Then she sat back on her heels and stared down at the motionless figure. Sounds became louder as her ears cleared. The world seemed to return to normal motion.
Fifteen minutes ago Aideen was silently cursing this woman. Martha had been caught up in something that had seemed so important-so very damned important. Moments always seemed important until tragedy put them in perspective. Or maybe they were important because inevitably there would be no more. Not that it mattered now. Whether Martha had been right or wrong, good or bad, a visionary or a control freak, she was dead. Her moments were over.
The courtyard gate flew open and men ran from behind it. They gathered around Aideen, who was staring vacantly at Martha. The young woman touched Martha's thick, black hair.
"I'm sorry," Aideen said. She exhaled tremulously and shut her eyes. "I'm so very, very sorry."
The woman's limbs felt heavy and she was sick that the reflexes that had been so quick with those street kids had failed her completely here. Intellectually, Aideen knew that she wasn't to blame. During her weeklong orientation when she first joined Op-Center, staff psychologist Liz Gordon had warned Aideen and two other new employees that if and when it happened, unexpectedly facing a weapon for the first time could be devastating. A gun or a knife pulled in familiar surroundings destroys the delusion that we're invincible doing what we do routinely every day-in this case, walking down a city street. Liz had told the small group that in the instant of shock, a person's body temperature, blood pressure, and muscle tone all crash and it takes a moment for the survival instinct to kick in. Attackers count on that instant of paralysis, Liz had said.
But understanding what had happened didn't help. Not at all. It didn't lessen the ache and the guilt that Aideen felt. If she'd moved an instant sooner or been a little more heads-up-by just a heartbeat, that's all it would have taken-Martha might have survived.
How do you live with that guilt? Aideen asked herself as tears began to form.
She didn't know. She'd never been able to deal with coming up short. She couldn't handle it when she found her widower father crying at the kitchen table after losing his job in the Boston shoe factory where he'd worked since he was a boy. For days thereafter she tried to get him to talk, but he turned to scotch instead. She went off to