Sea of Shadows eBook - Navy Thriller.com

Witness Larry S. Burke:
WTN-16/CA-23077
Detective Scot J. Barnes:
ARLINGTON PD [3127]
Witness Larry S. Burke:
WTN-16/CA-23077
Detective Scot J. Barnes:
ARLINGTON PD [3127]
SEA OF SHADOWS 181
Upset? There’s your understatement of the year.
He was fucking furious! Started yelling at me in
Arabian, or Egyptian, or one of them rag-head
languages. Excuse me. I mean some kind of
Iranian talk, or something. Shocked the hell out of
me when he started going ballistic on me. Hamid
was always one of the quiet ones. Hard worker.
Good attitude. I could use a half-dozen more
workers just like him.
Did he calm down after you sent the truck out?
Not really. He collapsed. His knees just sort of
folded, and he went down like a sack of bricks. He
didn’t look like he was breathing right. That’s when
I called 911. The paramedics said it was his
appendix. He had it bad, like it was rupturing, or
something. The paramedics said he’d have been
dead in another half-hour or so.
Thank you. Now, tell me more about this Jerome
Gilbert.
Harrington closed the transcript and returned it to the stack. Hamid had
been slated as the third man in the attack; Harrington had no doubt of that.
The FBI and Washington police were searching for Hamid, and the
American immigration authorities were watching the airports for him. But
Harrington was nearly certain that Hamid was neither hiding nor trying to
flee.
He pulled a telephone directory from his desk drawer and thumbed
through to the government section. He found the listing he was looking
for under Army Medical Directorate. It took him nearly ten minutes of
conversations with underlings to actually lure a doctor to the telephone,
and then another two minutes to explain who he was. At last, Dr. Kenneth
Hale seemed to be prepared to answer his questions.
“I’ll try not to keep you long, Dr. Hale,” Harrington said.
“I appreciate that,” Dr. Hale said. “I am busy on the best of days, and
this doesn’t happen to be a very good day at all.”
Harrington kept his voice carefully neutral. With another telephone
call or two, he could have easily compelled Dr. Hale to appear in person.
He hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. “Doctor, I’d like to discuss the
human appendix for a moment.”
“What would you like to know?”
“First of all,” Harrington said, “how difficult is an appendectomy? And
what is the normal postoperative recovery time?”