The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

"How's Schneider?"

"She's out of surgery. She's going to be all right. But she was pretty badly hurt. As soon as she can travel- tomorrow or the next day-I'm going to send her to Philadelphia. On that

Air Force Gulfstream. That's one of the reasons I'm calling."

"Before we get into that-how are you?"

"I'm all right."

"What do you need?"

"Can you arrange for somebody to meet the airplane? The surgeon who treated her-"

"Hey, Charley. She's Secret Service. We take care of our own." He paused, and then asked, incredulously, "You're not sending her alone?"

"Jack Britton will be with her. And a doctor and a nurse. The surgeon who treated her here has a packet of records-X-rays, her pharmacology, et cetera. Jack will have that. I want to make sure he's able to get it to-"

"There will be people at the airport. They'll do whatever has to be done. Have the pilot send an in-flight advisory as soon as he enters American airspace. Okay?"

"I've got the name of a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania who's supposed to be very good."

"Give me his name. I'll check him out."

"William Rieger, M.D."

"What does Schneider need?"

"She took a nine-millimeter bullet in the jaw. Plus two others in the body. But the problem is the jaw. The medical specialty is-you better write this down."

"Ballpoint in hand."

"I don't even know how to say this. She needs an orthognathicist. I'll spell that." He did.

"Got it. Anything else?"

"A plastic reconstructive surgeon and an orthodontist," Castillo finished.

"She'll have them."

"Thanks."

"What happened, Charley? All we got is that she was shot and her driver got killed."

"They ambushed my car…" In the back of his mind, he heard Jack Britton's warning: "If you keep up this 'it's all my fault' bullshit somebody important's going to hear you and they'll keep you off the investigation." Castillo stopped himself.

"And?" McGuire pursued.

Castillo stuck to the basics. "It was stopped at a traffic circle near Masterson's house. Somebody got the driver to lower his window, stuck a Madsen in it, and emptied the magazine. The driver, a Marine sergeant named Markham, took at least two hits in the head as he was trying to back off. The doctor thinks what hit Schneider were ricochets off the bulletproof glass."

Did that sound professionally dispassionate enough? Or is McGuire going to see right through it?

"It's 'projectile resistant,' not 'bulletproof,'" McGuire corrected him absently. "You said it was your car. You think they were trying to get you?"

"I don't know, Tom."

"Just an ordinary 'let's whack an American, any American' assassination? I don't think so. These people are obviously professionals. Why would they risk something like this going sour for them just to take out a Secret Service agent? Unless maybe (a) they expected you to be in the car, and (b) they know that you're not just a Secret Service agent but the President's agent. That would put you in the same category as Masterson, somebody important enough to whack-for whatever reason."

"That brings us back to: Why did they kill Masterson? And not Mrs. Masterson when they had the chance?"