Fatal

CHAPTER 11

Ten minutes passed in absolute silence and darkness before Matt dared to switch on the flashlight. Lewis lay still, facedown, breathing shallowly, as Matt examined him. The left side of his overalls, sweatshirt, and the tattered T beneath it were soaked with blood. A bullet hole — the entry wound, Matt surmised — was next to Lewis's shoulder blade, at about the level of the sixth rib. Blood was still oozing from it, albeit slowly. Gingerly, careful to keep the flash shielded beneath the bloody shirts as much as possible, he rolled Lewis onto his right side.

Using his own shirtsleeve, Matt mopped some of the blood away. He sighed in relief when he spotted the exit wound, just to the left of the nipple. Mentally, he drew a line between the two holes. If the path of the bullet was true, it passed directly through the upper lobe of Lewis's left lung — the larger of the two lobes on that side. But he knew from experience with any number of shootings that, depending on the caliber of the bullet and many other factors, a straight path through the body was often not the case. He had seen a low-caliber shot to the chest where the bullet entered near the spine and exited next to the breastbone without ever passing through the chest at all. It had traveled instead halfway around the torso in the muscle just beneath the skin. In another case, the victim, an elderly shopkeeper shot while thwarting a holdup, had no symptoms except shoulder pain and numbness in his little finger. The entry wound was in the left upper arm, but there was no exit wound, and no bullet in the shoulder or arm on X ray. Eventually, the slug was found inside the man's stomach, having ricocheted down between ribs and lung, puncturing the lung four times before piercing the diaphragm and, finally, the stomach wall.

Matt set his hands on Lewis's back and tried unsuccessfully to determine if the left lung was expanded. Then he put his ear near the entry wound and listened for breath sounds. It was simply too awkward a situation to tell.

"Lewis, how's your breathing?" he asked, checking the pulses in Lewis's arms and neck, which were all strong and steady.

"Be better if'n Ah could have me one a them cigarettes in ma back pocket."

Lewis grunted as he spoke, and stopped twice to cough.

"They'd be soaked. Everything's soaked," Matt said, aching at what he had caused to happen to his old friend.

"Ah put 'em in a baggie. Matches, too."

"Why am I not surprised. Listen, Lewis, as soon as we're away from here I'll give you one. Promise." Matt cut the light. "What do you think we should do right now?"

"Not stay here. Thet's fer certain."

"Can you walk if I help?"

Matt guessed that fifteen minutes or more had passed since Lewis was hit by one of the wildly ricocheting bullets. Over that time, they had traveled quite a ways through narrow, low, winding tunnels. The man might be in his sixties and slight of frame, but he was an absolute bull.

"Ah kin try," Lewis said.

Carefully, as silently as they could manage, they inched their way down the hill, sliding on their backsides. At the bottom they waited again, listening. Finally, Matt slipped his arm around Lewis's waist and helped him first to his feet, then across the narrow clearing between the hill and the woods. From somewhere in the distance they could hear voices, but the threat of discovery — at least imminent discovery — was gone.

By the time they had gone fifty yards into the forest, it was clear that Lewis was not going to be able to make it back to the motorcycle. Now, breathing more rapidly, he sank down against the base of a pine tree.

"Don' this jes friggin' beat all," he said, punctuating the observation with an abbreviated burst of coughing. "Ah spent two year in Nam without gettin' a scratch. Now this."

"You look like you're having more trouble catching your breath."

"Ah'll be okay."

"Lewis, I've got to get you to the hospital."

"Exceptin' Ah ain't goin'."

Again, he was coughing, only this time he couldn't keep himself from crying out in pain. Matt checked his wounds, which were almost clotted, and his pulses, which still seemed fairly strong.

"Listen," he said, "you've got to stay here while I go and get my bike. Then I'll take you to the hospital myself."

Lewis's eyes flashed.

"Zare somethin' wrong with yer hearin', boy? Ah sayed Ah weren't goin' ta no hospital. They's a chance them mine guards don' know who they 'uz shootin' at. But havin' me show up ta the hospital with a damn bullet hole in me would be lak a death sentence — an' probly one fer you, too."

He ran out of breath before he could say any more.

"Look," Matt said, "let me go and get the bike if I can find it. Then we'll talk."

"Ah done all the talkin' Ah need to," Lewis said, folding his arms across his chest.

As best he could manage, he gave directions to the path they had taken to get to the cleft. Matt took the flashlight and compass and prepared to set out. First, though, he knelt beside Slocumb.

"Lewis, I'm really, really sorry for what's happened to you," he said. "I wish it were me instead."

"Well, Ah sure as shit don," Lewis twanged. "Ma brothers'd kill me in a lamb's heartbeat if'n they thunk Ah let ya get shot. Yer our doctor."

"I'll be back soon," Matt said. "You stay put."

"Ah 'uz plannin' on doin' that," Lewis replied.

With his senses on red alert, Matt skirted the hill, giving it and the men searching its base a wide berth. He had never navigated by compass, and after a time, he abandoned the attempt as too difficult and uncertain. It was now after four. It seemed likely that the new day would bring an intensified search for them. In the dark it was impossible to appreciate whether or not Lewis was well concealed. Spurred by the thought that he might not be, Matt sped up, stumbling more than once on thick, exposed roots. Using the flashlight was still chancy, but after he tripped and lurched headfirst into a juniper bush, he decided it was a chance worth taking.

With a rough notion of where the hill was, he plunged on, searching for the small clearing where the Kawasaki Vulcan was chained. Getting to the motorcycle was requiring implicit faith in Lewis's directions and a hell of a lot of luck, but not nearly as much luck as he was going to need to get the five-hundred-pound bike back through the dense forest.

Locating the Vulcan turned out to be surprisingly easy. The key was maintaining a notion of where he was relative to the hills and keeping on until he hit the stream. Then he made a cautious right turn onto a narrow path and carefully inspected the woods until he spotted the bike.

Matt unlocked the machine and pushed it twenty feet or so over the uneven ground. Roots stopped him short, and even small rocks threw him off balance. He had estimated half a mile from the clearing where he had chained the motorcycle to the base of the hill. There was a chance that the damp, heavy air would swallow the noise of the engine, provided he didn't go too close to the men who were searching for them. But even if he managed to ride the bike through the forest to a spot equidistant to where Lewis was waiting, he would have to turn to the right and head back toward the hills where the guards were patrolling.

Were there any choices?

One possibility was to ignore Lewis's wishes and get the police and rescue squad involved immediately. Beyond trespassing in an area that wasn't even posted, they had really done nothing wrong, and whether their actions were lawful or not, their findings clearly showed the mine was guilty of storing and dumping toxic waste. Still, involving the Belinda police felt chancy at best. There was little sympathy for any of the Slocumbs in the official quarters of town, and it was well known that Police Chief Bill Grimes was tightly connected with Armand Stevenson.

Perhaps it would be worth contacting his uncle, he thought now. Hal was tight with Grimes, as he was with most of those in town.

Matt knew that if he didn't get help and something serious happened to Lewis, he would forever have trouble living with himself. But he would also have trouble living with himself if he betrayed the man's trust.

It was my clinical judgment, Lewis.

Well, screw yer clinical jedgment, boy. You jes signed our death warrant.

His stomach churning like a rock polisher, Matt checked the direction of the hill using his compass, started the engine, and swung the bike west into the dense forest. So much for clinical judgment.

Bushwhacking through heavy brush on a moonless night aboard a five-hundred-pound motorcycle built for the street was as challenging as running a disaster drill in the ER, and a hell of a lot more dangerous. Keeping his feet off the rests and his legs out straight for balance, Matt weaved between trees and under low-hanging branches, all the time trying desperately to keep from revving the engine too much. Brambles whipped across his visor and gouged his chin and lips. Once, the Vulcan skidded sideways on a thick root and fell over. Matt barely managed to keep his leg from being pinned underneath it or fried on the exhaust pipe. Five minutes… ten… Surely the engine noise had attracted attention by now. They probably had four-wheel ATVs and were already after the sound. Fifteen… It seemed like time to turn right toward the hill.

Hang on, Lewis.

Matt checked the compass, then cut the headlight and instead used the flashlight to illuminate the way. If they hadn't heard the growl of the 900cc engine by now, they would soon. Half a mile out, half a mile back. He checked the odometer every couple of minutes, as well as the compass. So far, so good. When he reached four-tenths of a mile, he stopped and cut the engine. Immediately, he was enfolded in a heavy silence. He waited a minute to let his senses adjust. Somewhere in the distance he thought he could hear voices. He had left Lewis about seventy-five yards from the hill — a bit less than a tenth of a mile. It was time to search on foot.

Matt leaned the bike against a tree and cautiously moved forward. The men's voices were clearer now, coming from somewhere to the right. He still couldn't make out any words, but the tone seemed urgent.

"Lewis," he whispered loudly. "Lewis, it's me."

He moved another ten yards toward the hill. From somewhere far to his right, he heard a whining, high-pitched engine noise — probably an ATV.

"Lewis! Where are you?"

He felt as if he was the right distance from the base of the hill, but there was no way of knowing whether he had ridden too far before turning right, or not far enough. There was also the possibility that Lewis was either captured or, worse, beyond responding.

The whining engine seemed closer now, and Matt sensed himself beginning to panic. He cursed and called out to Lewis again, this time in a near-normal voice. Suddenly, he was grabbed from behind and hauled to the ground. He landed heavily, but keeping his wits he spun away from his assailant and whirled, preparing to be hit. Lewis knelt beside him, a finger to his lips.

"Per a damn doctor ya ain't so bright sometimes," he said, pausing every few words to catch his breath. "They ain't so far away now thet they woun't hear ya if'n you bellered much louder 'n thet — even over the racket a thet damn Honda they're ridin'."

"How do you know that?"

"They 'uz here. Two of 'em. Not twen'y feet thet way. Dang near run me over."

"The bike's fifty yards from here. Can you make it?"

"Jes gimme a hand an' Ah kin. This sucker's startin' ta bother me."

Lewis's bravado could not mask his obvious pain and shortness of breath. Again Matt slipped his arm around his waist. This time it seemed as if he was leaning on him more.

"Hospital?" Matt asked hopefully.

"Ah'd go ta hell first."

By the time they reached the Vulcan, Lewis was coughing again.

"This isn't going to be easy," Matt said, helping him to straddle the passenger seat. "The bike didn't do that well navigating through these woods."

"Then you'd best move quickly. Thet thang they're drivin's made fer these woods."

"Can you handle it?"

"Jes crank 'er up an' go, brother," Lewis said.

He set his right hand on Matt's shoulder and grasped his shirt, holding his left arm in tightly to splint his chest. Matt had constructed emergency kits in the saddlebags of both the Harley and the Vulcan. But this wasn't the time to play doctor. He hit the starter and began slowly retracing the route he had taken in from the path. Within seconds, they heard an increase in the engine noise behind them and to the left. There was no way they were going to sneak off.

"Bust it!" Lewis ordered. "Don' worry none abot me. Ah'll manage. Head thet way. It'll be shorter."

Matt switched on the high beams and set his foot on the gearshift. He had never tested the Kawasaki off road at any speed, but now was the time. With a slight twist of the accelerator, the Vulcan shot forward into the heavy brush. The next quarter mile was as terrifying as anything Matt had ever done on a motorcycle. He drove between twenty and thirty, paying attention only to the larger trees. The dense undergrowth he simply plowed through. The Vulcan bounced mercilessly over roots and rocks. Several times, he felt as if Lewis was about to be thrown, but somehow the man managed to regain his grasp and hold on. Branches snapped across Matt's visor and ripped at skin that was already lashed raw. More than once they went airborne, landing with just enough momentum to remain upright. Then, after a series of vicious jolts that had Matt close to laying the bike down, they broke free of the forest and onto the path, headed away from the hills. Matt decelerated momentarily. There was no sound other than the steady thrum of his engine.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Jes get me back to the farm," Lewis grunted. "An' All thank ya not ta take me fer no Sunday drives agin."

Just minutes after their arrival at the farm, Lewis's brothers were in action. Kyle wheeled Matt's motorcycle back to the barn, removed the first-aid kit from the saddlebag, and then concealed the bike beneath a tarp. Frank helped Matt bring Lewis to a tattered couch in the large, cluttered living room. Above them, a balustrade ran along the second-floor hallway, fronting several doors. Matt watched as Lyle opened a closet there and began removing all manner of rifles, shotguns, and even two semiautomatic weapons.

"What's he doing?" Matt asked.

"Them mine people's pretty crafty bastards," Frank said matter-of-factly, gesturing up at the arsenal. "We don' lak ta tek no chances."

Matt used a pair of shears to cut off Lewis's blood-soaked shirts. Kyle returned and set the first-aid kit down by the sofa. Then he went to the kitchen and brought out an unlabeled jar half filled with some sort of thick, pungent, beige-colored goo. He rubbed the paste over Lewis's face and wiped off the equally pungent black. Beneath his camouflage, Lewis was pale and tight-lipped. He looked at Matt and read his thoughts.

"No hospital," he rasped.

Matt worked his stethoscope into place around his neck and knelt beside Lewis.

"Please get me a pan of fairly warm water," he said. "Put some soap in it if you have some — dishwashing soap would be best. A clean towel, too."

The bullet holes, not at all helped by the jarring ride out of the forest, were nearly clotted now, although blood was oozing from the edge of the exit wound. Matt set his hands on Lewis's back and watched them as Lewis inhaled. The right side definitely moved more than the left. Listening with the scope confirmed what he suspected. A large portion of Lewis's punctured lung had collapsed. He slipped a BP cuff around Lewis's right arm and inflated it to occlude the brachial artery that ran beneath the crook of his elbow. Listening over the artery with his scope, he slowly deflated the cuff until he heard blood begin pulsing through the vessel. The sound marked the top number of Lewis's blood pressure, which was 110, equivalent to the force needed to raise a column of mercury 110 millimeters. Could have been worse — much worse.

"Lewis," he said, "your lung has collapsed. The only way I can inflate it is by putting a tube into your chest. And the only place I can do that is the hospital."

Lewis shook his head grimly and looked away.

"All right, all right," Matt said. "I'll do what I can. Frank, there's a small room upstairs with a bed in it. I want that room cleaned out and I want the cleanest sheets you have put on the bed and also two pillows with clean covers on them. Got that1?"

"Gimme ten minutes," Frank said.

"There's more. I'm going to need a pair of needle-nose pliers."

"Got one."

"And a plastic tube like the kind you use to siphon gas. "

"Got thet, too."

"Good. And finally, I'm going to need a rubber glove from the first-aid kit." He groaned. "Darn it, never mind. I took the gloves out and put them in my backpack. Listen, for what I want to put together, a condom would be even better. You know, a rubber. Can one of you hurry into town and get me a pack of three:1"

There was a momentary silence, then Lyle said simply, "I got a couple here."

Matt looked from brother to brother as Lyle went to their bedroom and returned with two Trojans. If the Slocumbs thought there was anything unusual about the revelation, their bland expressions hid it well. Smiling toothlessly, proudly, Lyle handed over the two condoms. The foil wrappers were crumpled but intact.

"I don't want to know," Matt said to no one in particular. "I don't want to know."

While Matt waited, he allowed Kyle to swab goo on his back.

"Ouch, that stuff stings!"

"Looks lak ya may be needin' ta get ya a new razor, Doc," Kyle said.

As soon as the upstairs room was ready, Lewis was moved there. His breathing was more labored now, and his color was clearly duskier. Matt had read about the emergency chest tube insertion in a manual of field emergency measures that he kept on the tank in his bathroom. Most of the methods described by the former Vietnam corpsman were imaginative. Some, like the emergency thoracotomy tube insertion he was about to perform, were downright spectacular. The key to the procedure was the condom. Once it was unraveled and the tip was cut off, he would use tape to attach the base of it to the end of the siphon tube that protruded from the chest. The collapsed latex tube would then function as a perfect one-way valve, allowing air to escape from the lung cavity without allowing any to get in. Cutting the fingers off a rubber glove might have worked, but probably not as well, and not nearly as colorfully.

The sheets on the upstairs bed — a faded floral print — were surprisingly clean and smelled that way. Ten minutes of boiling had removed the gasoline and any other contaminants from the six-foot-long, quarter-inch-wide siphon tube and the needle-nose pliers. The first-aid kit was a comprehensive one that included a magnifying visor, suture material, powerful injectable antibiotics, and the local anesthetic Xylocaine. Matt cleansed the bullet holes, packed them with antibiotic cream, and dressed them. Then he used Xylocaine to numb a spot just below and lateral to the exit wound.

"Lewis," he said, "I'm going to numb this the best I can, but it's still going to hurt."

"More er less then bein' shot?"

"Good point."

Matt used a scalpel blade to stab a hole in the numbed skin, then he cut the tip of the siphon tube to a point.

"Deep breath, Lewis, then hold it and get ready for me to push," he said. "Okay, now!"

Clamping the pointed end of the tube as tightly as he could in the needle-nose pliers, he jammed the pliers in until he felt them hit rib. Then he slid them beneath the rib, through the intercostal muscle, and drove them into the space created when the lung collapsed. Lewis, sweat dripping from his forehead, briefly cried out in pain, then lay still. Matt withdrew the pliers, leaving the tube in place. For several seconds all was quiet, then the condom began to flutter as air under some force rushed through it.

Eyes closed, Lewis lay there, breathing evenly, utterly exhausted. Matt waited several silent minutes, then listened to his chest. The lung wasn't fully reinflated yet, but there were breath sounds where none had been a short while ago. He wondered how many others had ever actually used one of the techniques from the field manual. Someday, provided Lewis and he made it through this ordeal alive, he was going to write a letter to the author.

Once he had threaded ten inches of tubing into Lewis's chest, Matt sutured the tube in place and dressed the opening. He listened again. More breath sounds, more expanded lung.

"Well?" Frank asked.

Matt gave Lewis a high-dose injection of antibiotic.

"Well," he replied, aware of the tinge of astonishment in his own voice, "the doggone thing appears to have worked, at least for the moment. I'll sneak some oxygen and other stuff that I need out of the hospital and come back as soon as I can."

"Ya done good, Doc," Frank said.

Lewis's color improved almost instantly. He opened his eyes.

"Ah knowed we 'uz smart ta give ya thet money when ya come knockin' on our door fer yer baseball team."

"We get you shot, we fix you up," Matt said. "That's our motto."

He was still overwhelmed that a technique he learned reading in the John had quite possibly saved a man's life. What would the gang at Harvard have to say about this one?

"Hey, Doc?" Lyle said.

"Yes?"

"If'n you ain't gonna be usin' thet other rubber, kin I have it back?"

Lynette Marquand prided herself on being, as she phrased it, precise, punctual, and predictable. In the appropriate company, she would, with a wink, add passionate to the mix. Five days a week, when not on vacation, she was up at 4:30 A.M. and in her East Wing office at five. On Saturday, she slept until six, and on Sunday until seven unless her husband had need of her affection before breakfast and church. This predawn Wednesday morning, a rainy one in D.C., she had only one name written in her appointment book, Dr. Lara Bolton.

Lynette had, at best, lukewarm feelings toward almost every one of her husband's cabinet appointments, but Bolton was an exception. Six-foot-one and black, the Secretary of Health and Human Services had been depicted by more than one political cartoonist as a stork, and with her clipped Boston accent was an easy mark for the Saturday Night Live impressionists. But her brilliant mind and political savvy made her a frequent visitor to both Lynette's office and the Oval Office in the West Wing.

Bolton, as usual dressed in a crisp navy suit, knocked and entered Lynette's office at precisely five-fifteen.

"Well, Lara," Lynette said after the Secretary had poured a cup of decaf from a carafe, "my staff is lighter by one."

"You did the right thing. Janine Brady has been in this game for a long time. She knows better than to assure you a vote will be unanimous without checking and rechecking."

"So, where do we stand now?"

"Well, it appears Ellen Kroft does have serious misgivings about Omnivax."

"Damn."

"She's the consumer representative on the panel, so there's no way any of the pharmaceutical grant providers can put any pressure on her."

"Was one of my people consulted before she was appointed?"

"I hate to say it, but it was Janine Brady. Wait, though, I was consulted, too, Lynette. Kroft seemed absolutely harmless — a token offered up by the people at PAVE. If she was more militant, we never would have approved her appointment. No one expected anything like this."

"So?"

"Our man Poulos on the committee tells me he's dealing with the problem. He's optimistic something can be worked out."

"Is it worth my meeting with her?"

"You can try, but I've learned that she contributed fifty dollars to Harrison's campaign last election and upped it to seventy-five this time."

"Oh, that's just terrific. We're three points down in the latest polls. Jim is counting heavily on Omnivax to eliminate that. And here is a Harrison supporter threatening to screw up the whole thing."

"If Kroft remains on this path, we're getting prepared to make the whole thing look political, being as she is a known Harrison backer."

"That isn't going to give us back those three points."

"I know."

"What about our plans for the first inoculation?"

"I think we're there, Lynette. We have two women here in D.C. due to deliver at the right time, so that their babies will be four days old when we're ready. Both attend the neighborhood health center in Anacostia, both are anxious to have their kids be the first to receive Omnivax."

"Uneventful pregnancies?"

"No problems."

"Do we know the sex of the babies?"

Bolton grinned. "Mrs. First Lady, you said you wanted a girl; whichever mama we choose, we got you a girl."

"It'll be great theater, Lara. There's three points in this, mark my words there are. Maybe more."

"Maybe more," the Secretary echoed.