Chapter 5 third chapter
The most unusual or risky thing that Pakistani regular Musharraf Ali Shah has ever done is get married.The reason for saying this is not because of the marriage itself, but because of the woman he married.
In 1979, at the age of twenty-five, single, he was soon sent to the Siachen Glacier area.The place was at the northernmost point of his country, a wild mountain pass bordered by India, Pakistan's sworn enemy.Then, between 1984 and 1999, a low-intensity border war broke out in Siachen, which intensified.But looking back, it was just a cold mountain pass, a difficult and arduous assignment.
At that time, Lt. Ali Shah, like most Punjabis in Pakistan, was considered in need of a "good" marriage.His parents thought so.Perhaps the daughter of a high-ranking military officer, to help his cause; or the daughter of a wealthy businessman, to help his bank balance.
He should be lucky, because not only is he not a thrill seeker, but he is also the kind of person who follows orders to the letter.He's well-behaved and orthodox, just like Chapati.But in that winding mountainous area, he met a local girl and fell in love with her.The girl's name was Suraya, and she was very, very beautiful.Although the family did not allow them and did not bless them, he still got married.
The woman's family was delighted, thinking that the combination with an officer of the regular national army would allow them to go to the big cities on the plains, perhaps to have a big house in Rawalpindi, or even Islamabad.Plus, Musharraf Ali Shah is the kind of guy who goes by the book.In his thirties he would have completed his years as a lieutenant colonel and obviously would have risen higher. In 1980, he had a son named Zulfikar.
Lieutenant Ali Shah was attached to the Armored Infantry and was 21 years old when he received his rank in 1976.He stayed in that grueling post for four years and came back promoted to captain with a pregnant wife.He found a modest house in the officer ghetto of Rawalpindi, a few miles outside the capital, Islamabad.
After marriage, he didn't do anything special anymore.All Pakistani officers change assignments every two or three years.There are two types of delegation: "hard" and "comfortable".Cities like Rawalpindi, Lahore or Karachi are more comfortable places to bring your family.However, Multan Fortress, Kalyan, Peshawar, the Khyber Pass leading to Afghanistan, or the Swat Valley where Tibetans live are all considered to be more difficult places, and generally only unmarried officers are appointed.In one assignment after another, the little boy Zulfikar has gone to school.
All the fortified cities in Pakistan have schools for officers and children, roughly divided into three levels, the worst are the national public schools, then the military public schools, and the top private schools are for those rich families.Apart from a very modest salary, Ali Shah has no other income.Zulfikar attended the military school, which has a good reputation and is free.Many officers' wives were teachers there.
At fifteen, the boy was admitted to the Army Academy, where he studied engineering at his father's behest.This profession can guarantee that the army will definitely hire him or award him a military rank. In 1996, his parents noticed a change in their third-grader son.
Ali Shah was now a major.He was of course a Muslim, obedient but not fanatical.It would be unthinkable not to be able to go to the mosque every Friday, or to pray when the need arises, but that's about it.For reasons of honor, he usually wears military uniform, but if he must wear civilian clothes, he wears the sari kameez, the country's traditional male attire: wide trousers and a long, open-fronted robe.
He noticed that his son had grown sideburns and wore a pious beanie with a fringe.He bowed down five times a day for prayer.When he saw the whiskey his father and officers drank, he would storm out of the house to express his disapproval.His parents saw this devotion and intense religious devotion as a transitional stage.
He started reading a lot about Kashmir.The disputed border territory has been poisoning Pakistan-India relations since 1947.He started leaning towards the extremist violent group Lashka Tabai.This terrorist organization later created the Mumbai tragedy.
His father tried to console himself with the thought that his son was a year away from graduating.Joining the army or a good job as an engineer are the result of hard work of the Pakistani elite.However, in the summer of 2000, he dropped out in the last semester.This appeared to his father to be a disaster, and he attributed it to his studies instead of his studies.He started learning Arabic, the language he had to learn if he wanted to learn it.
For the first time, the incident created a series of violent quarrels between father and son.Major Ali Shah tried everything he could to plead that his son was unwell and to get him a chance to resume his final semester of studies.At this moment, the "9.11 incident" happened.
Like families with TVs all over the world, the whole family watched in horror as the plane crashed into the Twin Towers—except for their son.When this scene was played repeatedly on TV, Zulfikar was very happy and cheered loudly.It was then that his parents realized that their son's dislike for the United States was due to his intense religious devotion, frequent reading of the writings of jihadist founder Saeed Qutb and his disciple Assam, and his hatred of India. And the whole West is full of hatred.
That winter, the United States invaded Afghanistan.Within six weeks, the Taliban government was overthrown with the help of the US military's vast special forces and air power.Osama bin Laden, a guest of the Taliban government, fled across the border into Pakistan in a certain direction.The eccentric one-eyed leader of the Taliban, Mullah Omar, fled into Pakistan's Balochistan province, and in the city of Quetta, made a deal with the Quetta People's Legislative Assembly.
For Pakistan, this is far from a theoretical question.The Pakistan Army, in fact, all Pakistani forces are effectively controlled by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as it is commonly known.All Pakistani soldiers are in awe of the ISI.It was the Taliban that was first created by the ISI.
Moreover, most of the ISI officers belong to Islamic extremist forces.As much as they have to pretend, they are not going to abandon the Taliban or Al Qaeda clients they created and turn their allegiance to the United States.This pustule has plagued U.S.-Pakistan relations like never before.Not only did the top ISI officers know that bin Laden was holed up in the walled compound in Abbottabad — they built it for him.
In the early spring of 2002, a high-level ISI delegation traveled to Quetta to consult with Mullah Omar and his Legislative Council.Under normal circumstances, they would not need to deign to invite the low-key Major Ali Shah to accompany them.But there was a problem, two of the top ISI generals could not speak Pashto and the mullah and his Pashto followers could not speak Urdu.Major Ali Shah also doesn't speak Pashto, but his son does.
The major's wife is a Pathan from the northern wilderness. Her native language is Pashto, and her son is fluent in both languages.Zulfikar was overwhelmed with excitement and felt extremely honored to be with the delegation.On his return to Islamabad, he and his ultra-traditional father broke out in yet another violent argument, and eventually he stormed out of the house, leaving him staring stiffly out the window.His parents never saw him again.
Old Mr. Kendrick opened the front door to a man in military uniform.The other party was not wearing a tuxedo, but a neatly ironed camouflage uniform, with unit insignia, rank insignia, and other accessories.He recognized his guest as a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, and he was impressed. This is what the tracker wants.At TOS, full suits are almost never worn by trackers because they attract attention.Attention, something he avoided at all costs in his environment.But Jimmy Kendrick was a boiler man at a local school, responsible for the school's central heating system and cleaning the hallways.He was not used to having a lieutenant colonel of the Marine Corps on the doorstep, and he would be overwhelmed. "Mr. Kendrick?" "yes." "I'm Lieutenant Colonel Jackson. Is Roger home?" James Jackson was one of his aliases. Of course Roger was home.He never goes out.Jimmy Kendrick is very disappointed with his only son.The boy suffers from severe public phobia, afraid to leave his familiar attic hideaway and the company of his mother. "Of course he's upstairs." "Can I have a word with him? Can I?" He led the uniformed Marines upstairs.The house is not big, with two downstairs and two upstairs.An aluminum staircase leads to the upstairs duplex.The child's father rushed forward and shouted. "Roger, someone's coming to see you. Come down." There was a shuffling sound upstairs, and a face appeared in the opening above the stairs.Pale, like a creature of the night accustomed to dim light; youthful, fragile, anxious.He looked eighteen or nineteen years old, very nervous, and his eyes didn't make contact with anyone, as if he was looking at the carpet laid between the two men below. "Hi Roger, I'm James Jackson. I need your advice. Shall we chat?" The boy considered the request seriously, showing no curiosity.He just accepted the strange visitor and his request. "Okay," he said, "do you want to come up?" "There's no room up there," the boy's father said, and then he said loudly, "Come down, son." Then he said to the pursuer, "You'd better talk to him in his bedroom. Unless his mother is there, Otherwise he doesn't like to go downstairs to the living room. Her mother is a cashier at the grocery store." Roger Kendrick came down the stairs and into his bedroom.He sat on the edge of the single bed, staring at the floor.Next to a small closet and wardrobe, there is a straight chair.The tracker sat down on a chair.His daily life is in the space of the roof.The tracker glanced at the child's father.Father shrugged. "Asperger's syndrome," he said helplessly.He was clearly frustrated by the child's state of health.Other people's kids could date girls, be groomed to be auto mechanics, and his kids... The Tracker nodded at him.The meaning is very clear. "Betty'll be back in a minute," he said. "She can make some coffee." Then he left. The man from Fort Meade was careful with his words, but he didn't know how careful or how.Before coming, the tracker had researched both Asperger's syndrome and public place phobia. Like Down syndrome and cerebral palsy, both health conditions can have degrees of severity.After chatting routinely with Roger Kendrick for a few minutes, it became clear to the tracker that there was no need to treat him like a child or speak to him. The young man was very timid about human conversation, a timidity reinforced by his fear of the environment outside the home.But the Tracker figured that if he could switch the conversation to the teenage's comfortable territory — cyberspace — he'd find someone quite different.He is right. He was reminded of the case of British cyber hacker Gary McKinnon.The U.S. government wanted to try him, and London declared he was too fragile to travel, let alone go to jail.But he hacked into the secretive parts of NASA and the Pentagon like a knife through butter, penetrating some of the most sophisticated firewalls ever designed. "Roger, there is a guy out there, hiding somewhere on the Internet. He hates our country. His name is Missionary. He preaches on the Internet in English, asking people to convert to his ideas, to kill Americans. My job is to find him and stop him. "But I can't. There, he's smarter than me. He thinks he's the smartest guy in cyberspace." He noticed that the moving feet stopped.For the first time, the teenager raised his head and made eye contact with him.He is thinking about going back to the only world.It was natural for him to live there.The tracker unlocked a pocket and removed a memory card. "Roger, he's posting stuff online, but he's hiding his IP address so no one knows where he is. If we knew, we could stop him." The boy played with the memory card with his fingers. "Roger, I'm here to ask you, can you help us find him?" "I can try it," said the boy. "Tell me, Roger, what kind of gear do you have upstairs?" The boy told him.Not the crappiest machine on the market, but just average store stuff. "If someone came to you and asked, what do you really like? What is your most desired configuration, Roger?" The boy came alive.Passionate on the face.He looked at the tracker again. "My favorite is a system with dual six-core processors, 32G of memory, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 6 or higher." Trackers don't take notes.The tiny microphone in the medallion he wore recorded everything.Moreover, he had no idea what the kid was talking about.Those nerds will get it, though. "I'll see what I can do," he said, standing up. "Look at this material. Maybe you can't. But thank you for trying." Within two days, a van carrying very expensive computer equipment and three men had arrived at the house on a back street in Centerville.They crawled around the duplex structure until everything was installed.Then left this very vulnerable nineteen-year-old boy and left.The boy stared at the screen, ecstatic.He read a sermon on some jihadist website and started typing.
The killer hunkered down on his scooter, pretending to be working on the engine.Across the road, the state senator left his residence, stuffed his golf clubs in the trunk of his car, and sat behind the wheel.It was a sunny summer morning just after seven o'clock.He didn't notice the man on the scooter behind him. Killers don't need to get too close.He's done this twice before.I was dressed differently than this time, jeans and a top with a headscarf, very inconspicuous.Senator is going to the golf course.He followed the Senator's car through Virginia Beach for five miles.He saw the Senator park his car, get his clubs, enter the field, and disappear. The killer drove past the clubhouse entrance, turned left onto the slip road, and disappeared into the woods.He drove two hundred yards on the side road, then turned left again onto the boulevard.Despite the strange attire of the rider, the cars coming from the opposite side did not see him. He had just had his head cropped, a white crocheted beanie, and a snow-white robe that covered him from neck to ankle.He drove along the tree-lined road, passed several country houses, and when he reached the "Waterfall Golf Area", the fifth hole of the golf course, he drove out of the tree-lined road and entered the morning sun.He then pulled off the driveway and threw the bike into the tall bushes next to the "pinch green" on the fourth tee. Other tees were already being played, but they were so engrossed that no one noticed him.The young man in white walks calmly along the "pinkball area" until he gets to the bridge and dives into the bushes until he's out of sight and waits there.He had come to observe before and knew that anyone who played the whole course would come to the fourth fairway and cross the bridge. He stayed there for half an hour.There are two couples of men and women who have completed the "falling pinch ball area" and headed for the "waterfall ball area" of the fifth hole.He watched from hidden depths and let them pass.Then he saw the Senator.He was walking with another man of similar age.The Senator is wearing a green windbreaker on the court today, and his partner is wearing a similar color. While the two old men were crossing the bridge, the young man came out of the bushes.The two golfers glanced at him, didn't care, and didn't stop.Maybe it was the clothes he was wearing, or maybe it was his detached stillness, but when he was about ten paces away from the two Americans, one of them asked him, "Help me, kid?" At this moment, he was pulling his right hand out of the robe, as if to give them something.That "thing" was a pistol.Neither had a chance to say anything more before he opened fire.The two old men were dressed alike, both green windbreakers and wide-brimmed baseball caps, which puzzled him slightly.He shot each of them twice at very close range. One bullet went off and was never found.Two shots struck the Senator in the chest and throat, killing him instantly.The remaining round hit the other man in the middle of the chest.The two men who had been shot curled up next to each other.The gunman raised his eyes to the duck-egg-blue sky in the morning and murmured, "Allah is great," before sticking the barrel of the pistol into his mouth and shooting himself. The four players who played before had almost passed through the "pinch ball area" of the fourth hole.Later, they all said they turned in the direction of the gunfire just in time to see the bloody head of the man who swallowed himself before falling to the ground.Two people ran towards the scene of the incident; the third person was already sitting on his electric car, he turned his head, started the electric engine, and drove towards the killer; the fourth person opened his mouth, looked at it for a few seconds, and then Pull out the phone and call 911. The call was connected to a telecentre behind Police Headquarters on Princess Anne Road.The on-duty telephone operator took a basic note and then notified emergency medical services and police headquarters across the building.The staff of the two agencies are experienced local residents, and they drove directly to the Princess Anne Golf Club without guidance. The first to arrive at the scene was a police patrol car, which had been patrolling 54th Street.Police officers on the boulevard saw more and more people gathering on the fourth green and crossing the lawn of the crime scene with no seriousness.On-duty Inspector Ray Hall from Police Headquarters arrived ten minutes later and took control of the scene.Police had the situation under control when an ambulance from Pinehurst Center arrived three miles away on Viking Road. Detective Howle confirmed that two men had died.He knew the senator, he was pictured occasionally in the newspapers, and he had seen the senator at a police awards ceremony six months earlier. The young man with the black sideburns, believed to be the killer by four terrified golf fingers, was also dead, gun still in his right hand, lying twenty feet away from his victim.The second person who was attacked was shot in the chest and was critically injured but still breathing.The detective stepped back and let the paramedics do their work.There were three of them, plus a driver. They took a look and found that only one of the three people on the dew-dropped lawn needed their care. The other two no longer had to waste time, and they didn't need to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation like drowning or gas poisoning. Go to the morgue.Paramedics call the situation a "load and go". They were equipped with ALS -- Advanced Life Support System -- which they needed to stabilize the man who had been shot during the three-mile drive to Virginia Beach General Hospital.They loaded the wounded into the car, sounded the sirens, and sped away. It took them less than five minutes to drive down First Colonial Avenue.There is less traffic in the morning, and it is a weekend, and there are no commuters.The siren cleared the way, other vehicles on the road gave way, and the driver stepped on the accelerator all the way. In the back of the car were two other paramedics trying to stabilize the dying man.At the same time, a third person radioed in advance everything they found.At the entrance of the emergency center, a professional trauma treatment team has assembled and is on standby. In the building, an operating room has been prepared, and a surgical team has also been prepared.Cardiovascular surgeon Alex McRae hurried to the emergency room after eating half of his breakfast. Detective Hall is still on the fairway on the fourth hole.He was left with two dead bodies, a terrified crowd, unwitting Virginia Beach citizens, and many other inexplicable occurrences.His companion, Lindy Mills, was looking up names and addresses, and he himself already knew two things.All the eyewitnesses were sure that there was only one killer; after shooting the two old men, the killer immediately swallowed the gun and killed himself.Looks like there's no need to find an accomplice.Police also found a small one-person motorcycle in the bushes beyond the fairway. The second thing he can be sure of is: the witnesses are all rational and mature people, calm and calm, and the evidence they provide is also very credible and effective.But it still begs the question, first of all: what the hell happened?Why? Whatever it was, it was unlike anything that had ever happened before in the quiet, unhurried, law-abiding city of Virginia Beach.Who is the killer?Who is that man who is struggling on the verge of death? Agent Howle put the second question first.Whoever the wounded man was, he must have lived somewhere, perhaps with a wife and family, or relatives somewhere.With the trauma he saw on his chest, he must have desperately needed to find his loved ones before dark today. No one outside the crime scene perimeter seemed to know who the Senator's companion was.The purse or wallet must have been taken by ambulance, unless they left it at the clubhouse.Leaving Lindy Mills and two other officers who were continuing their routine investigation, Ray Howe hopped on a court trolley and headed back to the clubhouse.There, the ashen-faced club staff addressed one of his problems.The late senator's companion was a retired general.He is a widower who lives alone in a gated retirement community a few miles away.The exact address was pulled from the list within seconds. He called Lindy on his cell phone, told one of the officers to stay with her, and told the other to bring the team's police car over. While they were on the road, Agent Howle checked with his sheriff on the police frequency, leaving headquarters to deal with the media—the questions were overwhelming, and no one knew the answers yet.Headquarters also had to do the sad thing of notifying the late senator's wife before the news was released. The sheriff told him that a second ambulance—or rather, a body truck—was on its way, and that the medical examiner in the hospital morgue was at the ready. "Sheriff, please check the killer first," Hall said into the microphone. "He's wearing what looks like a Muslim fundamentalist. He's acting alone, but there must be someone else behind him. We need to know who he is." Who — lone ranger or part of a gang." He asked for a sample of the killer's fingerprints to be compared in the AFIS (Automatic Fingerprint Identification System).He also requested that the motorcycle be inspected at the Virginia Department of Vehicle Licensing.Yes, it's the weekend, but they have to be roused from bed to work.Then he hung up the phone.At this time, he came outside the general's residence. The gated community given by the golf club apparently hasn't heard what's going on on the "Lucky Pine Green".There are more than forty bungalows scattered among the lawns and woods.There is a small lake in the center.The community manager's house is also here. The manager had just finished eating a late breakfast and was about to mow his lawn.Hearing the news from the inspector, his face was as white as paper, he sat down heavily on a chair in the garden, and said "Oh, my God" repeatedly in a low voice countless times.Finally, he took a key from a board in his own foyer and led Agent Howle to the general's quarters. The general's house stood in the middle of a quarter acre of manicured lawns.The underground flower-beds were planted with flowering shrubs, tasteful and without much labor.The room was neat and orderly, like the quarters of a veteran accustomed to good order and discipline.Hall began his not-so-elegant work of rummaging through people's private lives.The manager was as helpful as possible. The Marine Corps general moved into the neighborhood about five years ago, shortly after his wife died of cancer. "Any other family members?" Hall asked.He was scanning his desk, looking for letters, insurance policies, and traces of relatives.It appears that the general has given most of his personal papers to lawyers or banks.The manager called a good friend of the General's in the community.It was a retired architect who lived here, with his wife, and often invited the general over to share real home-cooked meals. The architect answered the phone, shocked.He wanted to drive straight to Virginia Beach General Hospital, but Agent Howle got on the phone and stopped him because the hospital wouldn't allow visitors at this time. "Has he any relatives?" he asked. "He has two daughters, somewhere out west," said the architect, "and a son, an active Marine officer, a lieutenant colonel, but I don't know where he is." Back at headquarters, Howle joins Lindy Mills and his unmarked police car.There is new news.The motorcycle was tracked down, and it belonged to a twenty-two-year-old student whose name was apparently Arabic or an offshoot of Arabic.He was from Dearborn, Michigan, and was an engineering student at an advanced technical college fifteen miles south of Norfolk.DMV remake via a photo. The face in the photo was clean, without the black sideburns, not like the face Ray Hall had seen on the fairway green.Due to the tremendous force of the bullet explosion, the face on the grass was distorted badly, and the back of the head was gone.Still, it's similar enough to this one. He called Marine Corps Headquarters.The headquarters is next to Arlington Cemetery, just across the Potomac River from Washington.He waited for the other party to answer without hanging up. Finally, a major in charge of public affairs answered the phone.Hall explained who he was, where he was calling, and briefly described what had happened five hours earlier at the Princess Anne golf course. "No," he said, "I can't wait until after the weekend. I don't care where he is, I'm going to speak to him now. Major, now! It might be a miracle if his father sees the sunrise tomorrow." There was a long silence.Finally, the voice said, "Inspector, please wait by the phone. I or someone else will be on hand shortly." Only waited five minutes.Changed to a different voice.Another major, this time in the personnel files department. "The officer you're trying to speak to is unavailable," he said. Hall was angry. "You and I both know that unless he is in space or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, he must be reachable. You have my private phone number. Please give him the number and let him call me back as soon as possible." Finished , he hung up the phone.Now, it's up to the Marine Corps to call the shots. He grabbed an energy bar and a sizzling soda for lunch before leaving headquarters with Lindy for the hospital.For a healthy diet, this is more than enough.They followed the branch road off First Colonial Avenue--the branch road had a strange name--the "Woman's Fire Road" and turned around into the entrance of the emergency center.The first stop was the morgue, where the medical examiner was almost done. There were two bodies on a steel tray, covered with a cloth.An assistant is putting them into the freezer.The medical examiner stopped him and removed one of the cloths.Agent Howle looked down at the face.The face was scarred and badly deformed, but it was still recognizable as the young man in the DMV photo.Black sideburns jutted upward, and the eyes were closed. "Do you know who he is?" asked the medical examiner. "yes." "Oh, you know more than I do. But there may still be some things you don't." The medical examiner removed the cloth to the ankle. "Have you noticed?" Ray Hall looked hard for a long time. "He has no body hair, except for the beard." The medical examiner covered the cloth, nodded to the assistant, and signaled him to push the steel pallet and its contents into the freezer. "I have never seen it with my own eyes. I only saw photos. It was at a seminar on Islamic fundamentalism two years ago. This is a symbol of religious rituals to wash away sins, and it is a preparation for going to Allah's paradise." "A body bomb?" "A suicide killer," said the medical examiner, "on the destruction of an important figure in the Great Satan, and the gates of bliss are opened to those martyred servants. In America, we rarely see these, but in the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, this Very unusual. There was another lecture on this at the seminar." "But he was born here and raised here," Agent Hall said. "Then, someone must have converted him," said the medical examiner. "By the way, the people on your case team have taken his fingerprints. There is nothing left on this man except fingerprints. As for the gun, I believe Already matched the gunshot wound." Agent Howle's next stop was upstairs.He found Dr. Alex McRae in his office.It was long past lunchtime and he was eating a can of tuna for lunch. "What do you want to know, Inspector?" "Everything," Hall said.The surgeon then told him: The general was badly wounded, and when he was taken to the emergency room, Dr. McRae ordered an immediate IV.Then they measured vital signs: oxygen saturation, pulse and blood pressure. The anesthesiologist found a good place for intravenous infusion along his jugular vein, inserted a large-caliber cannula, and immediately began to infuse normal saline and two units of O-type Rh-negative plasma for maintenance. deal with.Finally, the anesthetist took a sample of the patient's blood to the lab for cross-matching. As soon as the patient was stabilized, Dr. McRae began examining the inside of his chest cavity. A bullet hole could be seen, but no wound had penetrated.Apparently, the bullet was embedded in it. He carefully considered whether to use X-rays or CT scans.In the end, instead of moving the patient on the gurney, he decided to slide the tray under the delirious patient under the X-ray machine and take the X-ray from above. The X-ray showed that the general had been shot in the lung, and the bullet was embedded in the root of the lung, very close to the hilum.He has three options to bet on.Surgery with a cardiopulmonary catheter is a good option, but it is likely to cause more serious lung damage. The second option is to perform immediate disembowelment and remove the bullet visually.But that would also be very risky.The exact extent of the injury is still unclear, and it could have been fatal. He chose the third option - no further intervention for twenty-four hours.Although regaining consciousness has taken a lot of physical strength so far, the old man is expected to regain some consciousness and stabilize.This can lead to a higher success rate of opening surgery. The general was then moved to the intensive care unit.While the detective was conferring with the doctor, he was lying there with all kinds of tubes inserted into his body. On one side of the neck is a central venous catheter and on the other side is an IV cannula.Nasal oxygen tubes extend up into the nostrils to ensure a continuous supply of oxygen.There is a monitor next to the bed, which shows the blood pressure and pulse, and the heartbeat can be seen at a glance. Finally, a chest drain was placed under the left armpit between the fifth and sixth ribs.It traps the air that occasionally leaks from a punctured lung and directs it down into a large glass jar on the floor, which is one-third full of water.The gas exits the chest cavity, emerges from the bottom of the water, forms bubbles, and floats to the surface. The gas cannot then be sent back into the pleural cavity, which would cause lung failure and cause the patient's death.The patient must breathe oxygen through oxygen tubes placed in the nostrils. Agent Howle was told that it was absolutely impossible to speak to the general for several days.He then left and returned to his car parked behind the emergency center entrance.He asked Lindy to drive for him, and he had to make a few phone calls. He first called Willoughby College, where the killer, Mohammad Barry, had attended.The detective called the dean of admissions and asked the dean to help him verify whether Mr. Barry was a student of Willoughby.The director confirmed it without any hesitation.But when he told her what had happened at the Princess Anne golf course, the person on the phone was speechless. He told the phone that the identity of the killer in this morning's homicide has not been released to the media.He will be at school in twenty minutes.He needs the director to have all the records of this student and the key to his dormitory ready by then.这期间，她不能告诉任何人，包括这个学生在密歇根的父母。 第二个电话是给指纹鉴定处的。是的，他们从停尸间弄到一套质量非常好的十个手指的指纹，并且通过自动指纹识别系统进行了比对。没有匹配的，死掉的这个学生没在系统里。 如果他是个外国人，移民局就会有记录，上面会有护照申请时间。不过情况渐渐明了了，巴里先生是美国人，他的父母是移民。但他们是从哪儿移民来的呢？生为穆斯林，或者皈依伊斯兰教的人，谁给他改的名？ 第三通电话打去了弹械鉴定科。瑞士造格洛克十七式手枪，装满的弹夹，打了五发。他们正试图追踪枪械登记的持枪人。枪的主人不是巴里，而是住在马里兰州巴尔的摩的什么人。枪是偷来的？买来的？学校到了。 死掉的这个学生是索马里裔。威洛比学院认识他的人说，大约六个月前，他似乎性情大变。原本蛮正常的一个学生，外向、活泼，之后变得沉默寡言、离群孤僻，像个隐士。主要的原因可能是宗教。学校里还有另外两个穆斯林学生，不过他们没有变成那样。 死者不再穿牛仔裤和防风夹克，开始喜欢穿长袍，每天上课都会抽出时间做五次祈祷。他的这种行为得到了准许，校方没有任何异议。这里对宗教信仰非常宽容。他慢慢蓄了须，黑色连鬓的胡子，非常浓密。 这是今天第二次，雷·豪尔发现自己在搜查另外一个人的私人物品，不过和之前那次完全不同。除了工程学的课本，所有的书本上都是阿拉伯语的文章，豪尔探员一个字也看不懂，只能全部收走。关键是那台电脑，至少可以让雷·豪尔知道他之前在做什么。 他找到了一个又一个的布道，说的不是阿拉伯语，而是流利的英语，非常有说服力。布道者脸上戴着面具，两眼炯炯有神，号召人们顺从安拉，做好万全的准备来侍奉真主，为他而战，为他而死。还有最重要的，为他杀戮。 豪尔探员从未听说过“传教士”。他关上电脑，先扣了下来。所有他收走的东西，他都做了签收，还允许学校通知这个学生的父母。只是，如果他们要来取走儿子的遗物，必须得给他打电话；他同时也会通知迪尔伯恩的警察。他装了满满两个垃圾袋的书、课本和笔记本电脑，回到警察总部。 电脑里还有其他东西，包括克雷格列表网络的一份搜索记录：一个男人有把手枪要卖。这条记录会让卖家受到严重的指控，不过那是以后的事了。 他的手机响起来的时候，是晚上八点整。一个声音介绍自己是那名受伤的将军的儿子。他没说自己在哪儿，只说他得到消息，正坐直升机前来。 It was already dark.警察总部后面有块空地，不过没有泛光灯。 “最近的海军基地在哪儿？”那个声音问道。 “奥西安那。”豪尔说道，“不过你能获得许可在那儿降落吗？” “是的，我可以。”那个声音说道，“从现在算起，一小时后抵达。” “我来接你。”豪尔说道。头半个小时等着的时候，他在全国的警察记录中寻找近期发生的类似刺杀事件。让他惊讶的是，一共有四起。高尔夫球场的这起凶杀案是第五件。之前的四件中，有两个案件的凶手都立刻自杀了。另外两个案子的凶手被活捉，正等着一级谋杀罪的审判，而且都是单独行动。所有的凶手都是被网络布道转化成极端主义分子的。 九点钟，他在奥西安那基地接到了将军的儿子，开车带他去往弗吉尼亚比奇市。路上，他讲述了从早上七点半一直到现在所发生的事。 他的客人非常仔细地问他都从穆罕默德·巴里的学校宿舍找到了些什么，然后低声说了句：“传教士。”豪尔探员以为他说的是一种职业，没觉得那会是一个代号。 “我想是的。”他说道。他们到了医院的大门，没有再说话。 “重症监护室里那个将军的儿子到了。”前台通知了个什么人，亚历克斯·麦克雷从他的办公室出来了。他们往重症监护的那层走，医生解释伤势有多严重，甚至妨碍了做手术。 “康复的希望很渺茫，”他说道，“现在还很危险。” 将军的儿子走进房间。他拖过一把椅子，借着昏暗的灯光，注视着那张满是皱纹的苍老面孔。老人被固定在自己的床上，靠机器维持着生命。整个晚上，他都坐在那儿，握着沉睡中的老人的手。 早上快四点的时候，将军睁开眼，心跳也快起来。他的儿子所看不见的，是那床后面地板上的玻璃罐这会儿正迅速地被鲜红的动脉血灌满。胸腔深处，一根主血管断裂开来，将军失血速度太快，没法救了。 他的手感受到自己握着的那双手极其轻微的一点握力。他的父亲盯着天花板，嘴唇轻轻动着。 “永远忠诚，儿子。”他低声说道。 “永远忠诚，父亲。” 屏幕上的示波线从波峰滑落，走平；短促的哔哔声变成了长鸣。急救小组出现在门口。亚历克斯·麦克雷也在这些人中间。将军的儿子坐在那儿。麦克雷迈步走过他的身旁，查看床后的瓶子，然后冲着急救小组举起一只手臂，轻轻摇了摇头。组员们退了出去。
几分钟后，将军的儿子站起身，离开了房间。他什么也没说，只是对外科医生点了点头。重症监护室里，一名护士向上拉起被单，将它盖在将军的脸上。将军的儿子拾阶而下四段楼梯，走向停车的地方。 豪尔探员坐在自己的车里，离着二十码就感觉到了些什么，从瞌睡中醒来。将军的儿子穿过停车场，停下来抬头看着。还有两个小时天才亮。月亮已经落下去了，天还黑着，远远地，有星光闪动，或明或暗，无止无休。 这些隐没在暗蓝色天空里的星星此时也照着另外一个男人，一个隐身在某个荒漠深处的男人。 这个站着的男人向上看着星星，说了些什么。弗吉尼亚的探员没有听清。追踪者说的是： “你把这件事弄成私人恩怨了，传教士。”
Notes:
Old Mr. Kendrick opened the front door to a man in military uniform.The other party was not wearing a tuxedo, but a neatly ironed camouflage uniform, with unit insignia, rank insignia, and other accessories.He recognized his guest as a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps, and he was impressed. This is what the tracker wants.At TOS, full suits are almost never worn by trackers because they attract attention.Attention, something he avoided at all costs in his environment.But Jimmy Kendrick was a boiler man at a local school, responsible for the school's central heating system and cleaning the hallways.He was not used to having a lieutenant colonel of the Marine Corps on the doorstep, and he would be overwhelmed. "Mr. Kendrick?" "yes." "I'm Lieutenant Colonel Jackson. Is Roger home?" James Jackson was one of his aliases. Of course Roger was home.He never goes out.Jimmy Kendrick is very disappointed with his only son.The boy suffers from severe public phobia, afraid to leave his familiar attic hideaway and the company of his mother. "Of course he's upstairs." "Can I have a word with him? Can I?" He led the uniformed Marines upstairs.The house is not big, with two downstairs and two upstairs.An aluminum staircase leads to the upstairs duplex.The child's father rushed forward and shouted. "Roger, someone's coming to see you. Come down." There was a shuffling sound upstairs, and a face appeared in the opening above the stairs.Pale, like a creature of the night accustomed to dim light; youthful, fragile, anxious.He looked eighteen or nineteen years old, very nervous, and his eyes didn't make contact with anyone, as if he was looking at the carpet laid between the two men below. "Hi Roger, I'm James Jackson. I need your advice. Shall we chat?" The boy considered the request seriously, showing no curiosity.He just accepted the strange visitor and his request. "Okay," he said, "do you want to come up?" "There's no room up there," the boy's father said, and then he said loudly, "Come down, son." Then he said to the pursuer, "You'd better talk to him in his bedroom. Unless his mother is there, Otherwise he doesn't like to go downstairs to the living room. Her mother is a cashier at the grocery store." Roger Kendrick came down the stairs and into his bedroom.He sat on the edge of the single bed, staring at the floor.Next to a small closet and wardrobe, there is a straight chair.The tracker sat down on a chair.His daily life is in the space of the roof.The tracker glanced at the child's father.Father shrugged. "Asperger's syndrome," he said helplessly.He was clearly frustrated by the child's state of health.Other people's kids could date girls, be groomed to be auto mechanics, and his kids... The Tracker nodded at him.The meaning is very clear. "Betty'll be back in a minute," he said. "She can make some coffee." Then he left. The man from Fort Meade was careful with his words, but he didn't know how careful or how.Before coming, the tracker had researched both Asperger's syndrome and public place phobia. Like Down syndrome and cerebral palsy, both health conditions can have degrees of severity.After chatting routinely with Roger Kendrick for a few minutes, it became clear to the tracker that there was no need to treat him like a child or speak to him. The young man was very timid about human conversation, a timidity reinforced by his fear of the environment outside the home.But the Tracker figured that if he could switch the conversation to the teenage's comfortable territory — cyberspace — he'd find someone quite different.He is right. He was reminded of the case of British cyber hacker Gary McKinnon.The U.S. government wanted to try him, and London declared he was too fragile to travel, let alone go to jail.But he hacked into the secretive parts of NASA and the Pentagon like a knife through butter, penetrating some of the most sophisticated firewalls ever designed. "Roger, there is a guy out there, hiding somewhere on the Internet. He hates our country. His name is Missionary. He preaches on the Internet in English, asking people to convert to his ideas, to kill Americans. My job is to find him and stop him. "But I can't. There, he's smarter than me. He thinks he's the smartest guy in cyberspace." He noticed that the moving feet stopped.For the first time, the teenager raised his head and made eye contact with him.He is thinking about going back to the only world.It was natural for him to live there.The tracker unlocked a pocket and removed a memory card. "Roger, he's posting stuff online, but he's hiding his IP address so no one knows where he is. If we knew, we could stop him." The boy played with the memory card with his fingers. "Roger, I'm here to ask you, can you help us find him?" "I can try it," said the boy. "Tell me, Roger, what kind of gear do you have upstairs?" The boy told him.Not the crappiest machine on the market, but just average store stuff. "If someone came to you and asked, what do you really like? What is your most desired configuration, Roger?" The boy came alive.Passionate on the face.He looked at the tracker again. "My favorite is a system with dual six-core processors, 32G of memory, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 6 or higher." Trackers don't take notes.The tiny microphone in the medallion he wore recorded everything.Moreover, he had no idea what the kid was talking about.Those nerds will get it, though. "I'll see what I can do," he said, standing up. "Look at this material. Maybe you can't. But thank you for trying." Within two days, a van carrying very expensive computer equipment and three men had arrived at the house on a back street in Centerville.They crawled around the duplex structure until everything was installed.Then left this very vulnerable nineteen-year-old boy and left.The boy stared at the screen, ecstatic.He read a sermon on some jihadist website and started typing.
The killer hunkered down on his scooter, pretending to be working on the engine.Across the road, the state senator left his residence, stuffed his golf clubs in the trunk of his car, and sat behind the wheel.It was a sunny summer morning just after seven o'clock.He didn't notice the man on the scooter behind him. Killers don't need to get too close.He's done this twice before.I was dressed differently than this time, jeans and a top with a headscarf, very inconspicuous.Senator is going to the golf course.He followed the Senator's car through Virginia Beach for five miles.He saw the Senator park his car, get his clubs, enter the field, and disappear. The killer drove past the clubhouse entrance, turned left onto the slip road, and disappeared into the woods.He drove two hundred yards on the side road, then turned left again onto the boulevard.Despite the strange attire of the rider, the cars coming from the opposite side did not see him. He had just had his head cropped, a white crocheted beanie, and a snow-white robe that covered him from neck to ankle.He drove along the tree-lined road, passed several country houses, and when he reached the "Waterfall Golf Area", the fifth hole of the golf course, he drove out of the tree-lined road and entered the morning sun.He then pulled off the driveway and threw the bike into the tall bushes next to the "pinch green" on the fourth tee. Other tees were already being played, but they were so engrossed that no one noticed him.The young man in white walks calmly along the "pinkball area" until he gets to the bridge and dives into the bushes until he's out of sight and waits there.He had come to observe before and knew that anyone who played the whole course would come to the fourth fairway and cross the bridge. He stayed there for half an hour.There are two couples of men and women who have completed the "falling pinch ball area" and headed for the "waterfall ball area" of the fifth hole.He watched from hidden depths and let them pass.Then he saw the Senator.He was walking with another man of similar age.The Senator is wearing a green windbreaker on the court today, and his partner is wearing a similar color. While the two old men were crossing the bridge, the young man came out of the bushes.The two golfers glanced at him, didn't care, and didn't stop.Maybe it was the clothes he was wearing, or maybe it was his detached stillness, but when he was about ten paces away from the two Americans, one of them asked him, "Help me, kid?" At this moment, he was pulling his right hand out of the robe, as if to give them something.That "thing" was a pistol.Neither had a chance to say anything more before he opened fire.The two old men were dressed alike, both green windbreakers and wide-brimmed baseball caps, which puzzled him slightly.He shot each of them twice at very close range. One bullet went off and was never found.Two shots struck the Senator in the chest and throat, killing him instantly.The remaining round hit the other man in the middle of the chest.The two men who had been shot curled up next to each other.The gunman raised his eyes to the duck-egg-blue sky in the morning and murmured, "Allah is great," before sticking the barrel of the pistol into his mouth and shooting himself. The four players who played before had almost passed through the "pinch ball area" of the fourth hole.Later, they all said they turned in the direction of the gunfire just in time to see the bloody head of the man who swallowed himself before falling to the ground.Two people ran towards the scene of the incident; the third person was already sitting on his electric car, he turned his head, started the electric engine, and drove towards the killer; the fourth person opened his mouth, looked at it for a few seconds, and then Pull out the phone and call 911. The call was connected to a telecentre behind Police Headquarters on Princess Anne Road.The on-duty telephone operator took a basic note and then notified emergency medical services and police headquarters across the building.The staff of the two agencies are experienced local residents, and they drove directly to the Princess Anne Golf Club without guidance. The first to arrive at the scene was a police patrol car, which had been patrolling 54th Street.Police officers on the boulevard saw more and more people gathering on the fourth green and crossing the lawn of the crime scene with no seriousness.On-duty Inspector Ray Hall from Police Headquarters arrived ten minutes later and took control of the scene.Police had the situation under control when an ambulance from Pinehurst Center arrived three miles away on Viking Road. Detective Howle confirmed that two men had died.He knew the senator, he was pictured occasionally in the newspapers, and he had seen the senator at a police awards ceremony six months earlier. The young man with the black sideburns, believed to be the killer by four terrified golf fingers, was also dead, gun still in his right hand, lying twenty feet away from his victim.The second person who was attacked was shot in the chest and was critically injured but still breathing.The detective stepped back and let the paramedics do their work.There were three of them, plus a driver. They took a look and found that only one of the three people on the dew-dropped lawn needed their care. The other two no longer had to waste time, and they didn't need to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation like drowning or gas poisoning. Go to the morgue.Paramedics call the situation a "load and go". They were equipped with ALS -- Advanced Life Support System -- which they needed to stabilize the man who had been shot during the three-mile drive to Virginia Beach General Hospital.They loaded the wounded into the car, sounded the sirens, and sped away. It took them less than five minutes to drive down First Colonial Avenue.There is less traffic in the morning, and it is a weekend, and there are no commuters.The siren cleared the way, other vehicles on the road gave way, and the driver stepped on the accelerator all the way. In the back of the car were two other paramedics trying to stabilize the dying man.At the same time, a third person radioed in advance everything they found.At the entrance of the emergency center, a professional trauma treatment team has assembled and is on standby. In the building, an operating room has been prepared, and a surgical team has also been prepared.Cardiovascular surgeon Alex McRae hurried to the emergency room after eating half of his breakfast. Detective Hall is still on the fairway on the fourth hole.He was left with two dead bodies, a terrified crowd, unwitting Virginia Beach citizens, and many other inexplicable occurrences.His companion, Lindy Mills, was looking up names and addresses, and he himself already knew two things.All the eyewitnesses were sure that there was only one killer; after shooting the two old men, the killer immediately swallowed the gun and killed himself.Looks like there's no need to find an accomplice.Police also found a small one-person motorcycle in the bushes beyond the fairway. The second thing he can be sure of is: the witnesses are all rational and mature people, calm and calm, and the evidence they provide is also very credible and effective.But it still begs the question, first of all: what the hell happened?Why? Whatever it was, it was unlike anything that had ever happened before in the quiet, unhurried, law-abiding city of Virginia Beach.Who is the killer?Who is that man who is struggling on the verge of death? Agent Howle put the second question first.Whoever the wounded man was, he must have lived somewhere, perhaps with a wife and family, or relatives somewhere.With the trauma he saw on his chest, he must have desperately needed to find his loved ones before dark today. No one outside the crime scene perimeter seemed to know who the Senator's companion was.The purse or wallet must have been taken by ambulance, unless they left it at the clubhouse.Leaving Lindy Mills and two other officers who were continuing their routine investigation, Ray Howe hopped on a court trolley and headed back to the clubhouse.There, the ashen-faced club staff addressed one of his problems.The late senator's companion was a retired general.He is a widower who lives alone in a gated retirement community a few miles away.The exact address was pulled from the list within seconds. He called Lindy on his cell phone, told one of the officers to stay with her, and told the other to bring the team's police car over. While they were on the road, Agent Howle checked with his sheriff on the police frequency, leaving headquarters to deal with the media—the questions were overwhelming, and no one knew the answers yet.Headquarters also had to do the sad thing of notifying the late senator's wife before the news was released. The sheriff told him that a second ambulance—or rather, a body truck—was on its way, and that the medical examiner in the hospital morgue was at the ready. "Sheriff, please check the killer first," Hall said into the microphone. "He's wearing what looks like a Muslim fundamentalist. He's acting alone, but there must be someone else behind him. We need to know who he is." Who — lone ranger or part of a gang." He asked for a sample of the killer's fingerprints to be compared in the AFIS (Automatic Fingerprint Identification System).He also requested that the motorcycle be inspected at the Virginia Department of Vehicle Licensing.Yes, it's the weekend, but they have to be roused from bed to work.Then he hung up the phone.At this time, he came outside the general's residence. The gated community given by the golf club apparently hasn't heard what's going on on the "Lucky Pine Green".There are more than forty bungalows scattered among the lawns and woods.There is a small lake in the center.The community manager's house is also here. The manager had just finished eating a late breakfast and was about to mow his lawn.Hearing the news from the inspector, his face was as white as paper, he sat down heavily on a chair in the garden, and said "Oh, my God" repeatedly in a low voice countless times.Finally, he took a key from a board in his own foyer and led Agent Howle to the general's quarters. The general's house stood in the middle of a quarter acre of manicured lawns.The underground flower-beds were planted with flowering shrubs, tasteful and without much labor.The room was neat and orderly, like the quarters of a veteran accustomed to good order and discipline.Hall began his not-so-elegant work of rummaging through people's private lives.The manager was as helpful as possible. The Marine Corps general moved into the neighborhood about five years ago, shortly after his wife died of cancer. "Any other family members?" Hall asked.He was scanning his desk, looking for letters, insurance policies, and traces of relatives.It appears that the general has given most of his personal papers to lawyers or banks.The manager called a good friend of the General's in the community.It was a retired architect who lived here, with his wife, and often invited the general over to share real home-cooked meals. The architect answered the phone, shocked.He wanted to drive straight to Virginia Beach General Hospital, but Agent Howle got on the phone and stopped him because the hospital wouldn't allow visitors at this time. "Has he any relatives?" he asked. "He has two daughters, somewhere out west," said the architect, "and a son, an active Marine officer, a lieutenant colonel, but I don't know where he is." Back at headquarters, Howle joins Lindy Mills and his unmarked police car.There is new news.The motorcycle was tracked down, and it belonged to a twenty-two-year-old student whose name was apparently Arabic or an offshoot of Arabic.He was from Dearborn, Michigan, and was an engineering student at an advanced technical college fifteen miles south of Norfolk.DMV remake via a photo. The face in the photo was clean, without the black sideburns, not like the face Ray Hall had seen on the fairway green.Due to the tremendous force of the bullet explosion, the face on the grass was distorted badly, and the back of the head was gone.Still, it's similar enough to this one. He called Marine Corps Headquarters.The headquarters is next to Arlington Cemetery, just across the Potomac River from Washington.He waited for the other party to answer without hanging up. Finally, a major in charge of public affairs answered the phone.Hall explained who he was, where he was calling, and briefly described what had happened five hours earlier at the Princess Anne golf course. "No," he said, "I can't wait until after the weekend. I don't care where he is, I'm going to speak to him now. Major, now! It might be a miracle if his father sees the sunrise tomorrow." There was a long silence.Finally, the voice said, "Inspector, please wait by the phone. I or someone else will be on hand shortly." Only waited five minutes.Changed to a different voice.Another major, this time in the personnel files department. "The officer you're trying to speak to is unavailable," he said. Hall was angry. "You and I both know that unless he is in space or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, he must be reachable. You have my private phone number. Please give him the number and let him call me back as soon as possible." Finished , he hung up the phone.Now, it's up to the Marine Corps to call the shots. He grabbed an energy bar and a sizzling soda for lunch before leaving headquarters with Lindy for the hospital.For a healthy diet, this is more than enough.They followed the branch road off First Colonial Avenue--the branch road had a strange name--the "Woman's Fire Road" and turned around into the entrance of the emergency center.The first stop was the morgue, where the medical examiner was almost done. There were two bodies on a steel tray, covered with a cloth.An assistant is putting them into the freezer.The medical examiner stopped him and removed one of the cloths.Agent Howle looked down at the face.The face was scarred and badly deformed, but it was still recognizable as the young man in the DMV photo.Black sideburns jutted upward, and the eyes were closed. "Do you know who he is?" asked the medical examiner. "yes." "Oh, you know more than I do. But there may still be some things you don't." The medical examiner removed the cloth to the ankle. "Have you noticed?" Ray Hall looked hard for a long time. "He has no body hair, except for the beard." The medical examiner covered the cloth, nodded to the assistant, and signaled him to push the steel pallet and its contents into the freezer. "I have never seen it with my own eyes. I only saw photos. It was at a seminar on Islamic fundamentalism two years ago. This is a symbol of religious rituals to wash away sins, and it is a preparation for going to Allah's paradise." "A body bomb?" "A suicide killer," said the medical examiner, "on the destruction of an important figure in the Great Satan, and the gates of bliss are opened to those martyred servants. In America, we rarely see these, but in the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, this Very unusual. There was another lecture on this at the seminar." "But he was born here and raised here," Agent Hall said. "Then, someone must have converted him," said the medical examiner. "By the way, the people on your case team have taken his fingerprints. There is nothing left on this man except fingerprints. As for the gun, I believe Already matched the gunshot wound." Agent Howle's next stop was upstairs.He found Dr. Alex McRae in his office.It was long past lunchtime and he was eating a can of tuna for lunch. "What do you want to know, Inspector?" "Everything," Hall said.The surgeon then told him: The general was badly wounded, and when he was taken to the emergency room, Dr. McRae ordered an immediate IV.Then they measured vital signs: oxygen saturation, pulse and blood pressure. The anesthesiologist found a good place for intravenous infusion along his jugular vein, inserted a large-caliber cannula, and immediately began to infuse normal saline and two units of O-type Rh-negative plasma for maintenance. deal with.Finally, the anesthetist took a sample of the patient's blood to the lab for cross-matching. As soon as the patient was stabilized, Dr. McRae began examining the inside of his chest cavity. A bullet hole could be seen, but no wound had penetrated.Apparently, the bullet was embedded in it. He carefully considered whether to use X-rays or CT scans.In the end, instead of moving the patient on the gurney, he decided to slide the tray under the delirious patient under the X-ray machine and take the X-ray from above. The X-ray showed that the general had been shot in the lung, and the bullet was embedded in the root of the lung, very close to the hilum.He has three options to bet on.Surgery with a cardiopulmonary catheter is a good option, but it is likely to cause more serious lung damage. The second option is to perform immediate disembowelment and remove the bullet visually.But that would also be very risky.The exact extent of the injury is still unclear, and it could have been fatal. He chose the third option - no further intervention for twenty-four hours.Although regaining consciousness has taken a lot of physical strength so far, the old man is expected to regain some consciousness and stabilize.This can lead to a higher success rate of opening surgery. The general was then moved to the intensive care unit.While the detective was conferring with the doctor, he was lying there with all kinds of tubes inserted into his body. On one side of the neck is a central venous catheter and on the other side is an IV cannula.Nasal oxygen tubes extend up into the nostrils to ensure a continuous supply of oxygen.There is a monitor next to the bed, which shows the blood pressure and pulse, and the heartbeat can be seen at a glance. Finally, a chest drain was placed under the left armpit between the fifth and sixth ribs.It traps the air that occasionally leaks from a punctured lung and directs it down into a large glass jar on the floor, which is one-third full of water.The gas exits the chest cavity, emerges from the bottom of the water, forms bubbles, and floats to the surface. The gas cannot then be sent back into the pleural cavity, which would cause lung failure and cause the patient's death.The patient must breathe oxygen through oxygen tubes placed in the nostrils. Agent Howle was told that it was absolutely impossible to speak to the general for several days.He then left and returned to his car parked behind the emergency center entrance.He asked Lindy to drive for him, and he had to make a few phone calls. He first called Willoughby College, where the killer, Mohammad Barry, had attended.The detective called the dean of admissions and asked the dean to help him verify whether Mr. Barry was a student of Willoughby.The director confirmed it without any hesitation.But when he told her what had happened at the Princess Anne golf course, the person on the phone was speechless. He told the phone that the identity of the killer in this morning's homicide has not been released to the media.He will be at school in twenty minutes.He needs the director to have all the records of this student and the key to his dormitory ready by then.这期间，她不能告诉任何人，包括这个学生在密歇根的父母。 第二个电话是给指纹鉴定处的。是的，他们从停尸间弄到一套质量非常好的十个手指的指纹，并且通过自动指纹识别系统进行了比对。没有匹配的，死掉的这个学生没在系统里。 如果他是个外国人，移民局就会有记录，上面会有护照申请时间。不过情况渐渐明了了，巴里先生是美国人，他的父母是移民。但他们是从哪儿移民来的呢？生为穆斯林，或者皈依伊斯兰教的人，谁给他改的名？ 第三通电话打去了弹械鉴定科。瑞士造格洛克十七式手枪，装满的弹夹，打了五发。他们正试图追踪枪械登记的持枪人。枪的主人不是巴里，而是住在马里兰州巴尔的摩的什么人。枪是偷来的？买来的？学校到了。 死掉的这个学生是索马里裔。威洛比学院认识他的人说，大约六个月前，他似乎性情大变。原本蛮正常的一个学生，外向、活泼，之后变得沉默寡言、离群孤僻，像个隐士。主要的原因可能是宗教。学校里还有另外两个穆斯林学生，不过他们没有变成那样。 死者不再穿牛仔裤和防风夹克，开始喜欢穿长袍，每天上课都会抽出时间做五次祈祷。他的这种行为得到了准许，校方没有任何异议。这里对宗教信仰非常宽容。他慢慢蓄了须，黑色连鬓的胡子，非常浓密。 这是今天第二次，雷·豪尔发现自己在搜查另外一个人的私人物品，不过和之前那次完全不同。除了工程学的课本，所有的书本上都是阿拉伯语的文章，豪尔探员一个字也看不懂，只能全部收走。关键是那台电脑，至少可以让雷·豪尔知道他之前在做什么。 他找到了一个又一个的布道，说的不是阿拉伯语，而是流利的英语，非常有说服力。布道者脸上戴着面具，两眼炯炯有神，号召人们顺从安拉，做好万全的准备来侍奉真主，为他而战，为他而死。还有最重要的，为他杀戮。 豪尔探员从未听说过“传教士”。他关上电脑，先扣了下来。所有他收走的东西，他都做了签收，还允许学校通知这个学生的父母。只是，如果他们要来取走儿子的遗物，必须得给他打电话；他同时也会通知迪尔伯恩的警察。他装了满满两个垃圾袋的书、课本和笔记本电脑，回到警察总部。 电脑里还有其他东西，包括克雷格列表网络的一份搜索记录：一个男人有把手枪要卖。这条记录会让卖家受到严重的指控，不过那是以后的事了。 他的手机响起来的时候，是晚上八点整。一个声音介绍自己是那名受伤的将军的儿子。他没说自己在哪儿，只说他得到消息，正坐直升机前来。 It was already dark.警察总部后面有块空地，不过没有泛光灯。 “最近的海军基地在哪儿？”那个声音问道。 “奥西安那。”豪尔说道，“不过你能获得许可在那儿降落吗？” “是的，我可以。”那个声音说道，“从现在算起，一小时后抵达。” “我来接你。”豪尔说道。头半个小时等着的时候，他在全国的警察记录中寻找近期发生的类似刺杀事件。让他惊讶的是，一共有四起。高尔夫球场的这起凶杀案是第五件。之前的四件中，有两个案件的凶手都立刻自杀了。另外两个案子的凶手被活捉，正等着一级谋杀罪的审判，而且都是单独行动。所有的凶手都是被网络布道转化成极端主义分子的。 九点钟，他在奥西安那基地接到了将军的儿子，开车带他去往弗吉尼亚比奇市。路上，他讲述了从早上七点半一直到现在所发生的事。 他的客人非常仔细地问他都从穆罕默德·巴里的学校宿舍找到了些什么，然后低声说了句：“传教士。”豪尔探员以为他说的是一种职业，没觉得那会是一个代号。 “我想是的。”他说道。他们到了医院的大门，没有再说话。 “重症监护室里那个将军的儿子到了。”前台通知了个什么人，亚历克斯·麦克雷从他的办公室出来了。他们往重症监护的那层走，医生解释伤势有多严重，甚至妨碍了做手术。 “康复的希望很渺茫，”他说道，“现在还很危险。” 将军的儿子走进房间。他拖过一把椅子，借着昏暗的灯光，注视着那张满是皱纹的苍老面孔。老人被固定在自己的床上，靠机器维持着生命。整个晚上，他都坐在那儿，握着沉睡中的老人的手。 早上快四点的时候，将军睁开眼，心跳也快起来。他的儿子所看不见的，是那床后面地板上的玻璃罐这会儿正迅速地被鲜红的动脉血灌满。胸腔深处，一根主血管断裂开来，将军失血速度太快，没法救了。 他的手感受到自己握着的那双手极其轻微的一点握力。他的父亲盯着天花板，嘴唇轻轻动着。 “永远忠诚，儿子。”他低声说道。 “永远忠诚，父亲。” 屏幕上的示波线从波峰滑落，走平；短促的哔哔声变成了长鸣。急救小组出现在门口。亚历克斯·麦克雷也在这些人中间。将军的儿子坐在那儿。麦克雷迈步走过他的身旁，查看床后的瓶子，然后冲着急救小组举起一只手臂，轻轻摇了摇头。组员们退了出去。
几分钟后，将军的儿子站起身，离开了房间。他什么也没说，只是对外科医生点了点头。重症监护室里，一名护士向上拉起被单，将它盖在将军的脸上。将军的儿子拾阶而下四段楼梯，走向停车的地方。 豪尔探员坐在自己的车里，离着二十码就感觉到了些什么，从瞌睡中醒来。将军的儿子穿过停车场，停下来抬头看着。还有两个小时天才亮。月亮已经落下去了，天还黑着，远远地，有星光闪动，或明或暗，无止无休。 这些隐没在暗蓝色天空里的星星此时也照着另外一个男人，一个隐身在某个荒漠深处的男人。 这个站着的男人向上看着星星，说了些什么。弗吉尼亚的探员没有听清。追踪者说的是： “你把这件事弄成私人恩怨了，传教士。”
Notes: