Michael Palmer - Fatal

"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.