She looked at him knowingly. His use of the code meant a crisis of the gravest nature had occurred, and that he did not want to go into details about it in Ricci's presence.

"Roger been informed?" she asked.

He nodded.

"We'd better check in with him," he said. "Got a feeling he's going to want us back in San Jose right away." The doctors knew they had their job cut out the moment he was brought into the emergency room.

It would have been clear even to an untrained observer that he was in terrible shape; clear from his near-comatose state; clear from all the blood that had soaked from the gaping hole in his belly through his clothing, the thin blankets covering him, and the uniforms of the technicians who had delivered him on the stretcher; clear from the blue cast of his skin and the weak, irregular rhythm of his breath.

To the expert eye, these physiological signs pointed toward specific life-threatening complications that would have to be assessed and treated without losing an instant. The severe hemorrhaging alone would have led them to evaluate him for shock, but his lividity left scant doubt of its onset, and the blood pressure cuffs placed on his arm as his stretcher was rolled in had given systolic and diastolic readings of zero over less than zero, indicating a near-cessation of his circulatory processes. His thready breathing also suggested that a tension pneumothorax--in laymen's terms, an air pocket between the lungs and their surrounding tissues developing as a result of shock--was putting pressure on the lungs and causing them to fully or partially collapse.

The condition would lead to respiratory failure and certain death unless relieved by external means.

Managing a medical crisis requires a constantly unfolding and frequently accelerating series of prioritizations. In this case the priority was to stabilize his vital functions even before the injuries to his internal organs could be determined by Xrays and exploratory abdominal surgery. Only then would it be known with certainty how many times he'd been shot, or what path the bullet, bullets, or bullet fragments had taken.

With the clock ticking, the surgeon in charge at once began giving directions to his assistants in a rapid and assertive manner.

"I want MASTs ..."

This being an acronym for medical shock trousers, which could be slipped onto the patient and inflated with air to force blood up from his lower extremities to his heart and brain.

"... seven units of packed RBCs ..."

Shorthand for red blood cells, the hemoglobin-rich component of blood that provides life-giving oxygen to body tissues. In a typical situation requiring transfusion, the patients's serum is cross-matched for compatibility with a sample of the blood product to be administered, but because he was an employee of UpLink, this man's type was already on file on the doctors' computer database, eliminating that step and conserving precious minutes.

"... a big line ..."