Michael Palmer: Extreme Measures

"John, will you direct us to the nearest hospital?" she asked, aware of the band once more tightening around her chest.

"St. Joe," the Indian replied. "TWenty-five, — six mile due east from where your Jeep will be."

"Half a day?"

"Maybe. Maybe more."

Struggling to ignore her own increasing shortness of breath, Marilyn wiped off the sheen of dusty sweat that covered Richard's forehead.

"Richard, maybe we should go back to the clinic."

"No… I'm okay," he rasped, coughing between words. "Let's just get… the Jeep fixed… and get… the hell… out of… here."

Marilyn washed another Benadryl down with a swig from their canteen, and then helped him do the same. Minutes later, in spite of herself, she, too, began to cough.

The nine-mile drive over roadless terrain took most of two hours.

The repair of the Jeep took considerably less than one. Richard tried to help, but by the time John had finished, Richard had given and was slumped in the passenger seat, leaning against the door, bathed in sweat.

"Okay, Mrs." John said. "Start her up."

The engine turned over at a touch.

"Could You follow us for a ways?" she asked, fighting the sensation in her chest with all her strength.

"Ten, twelve minutes is all. Dr. Barber needs me back. There's a dirt road nine, ten mile due east.

Impossible to miss. Turn south on it. Go ten mile more to Highway Fifty. Then right. I hope your husband feel better soon."

Marilyn thanked the man, attempted unsuccessfully to pay him, and then drove off as rapidly as she could manage, trying at once to keep track of the compass, Richard, and ruts in the hard desert floor.

Strapped into his seat, Richard had mercifully fallen asleep.

After one-half mile by her odometer, John tooted, gave her a thumbs-up sign, and then swung off to the south.

She hadn't driven another half mile when the tightness in her chest intensified. Relax, she urged herself. Don't panic…

Don't panic. An audible gurgling welling up from her chest began to accompany each breath. Fear, unlike any she had ever known, swept her restive. She stopped the Jeep.

"Richard, wake up," she gasped. "I can't breathe. I can't-" She reached over and touched his arm. His hand drop to his side.

Richard!"

The name, though she screamed it, was barely audible. She grabbed her husband by the chin and turned his face around to her. It was puffed and gentian; his eyes were open but sightless. Thick pink froth oozed from the corners of his mouth.

Marilyn undid his web belt. As she staggered around the Jeep to the passenger door, she felt liquid percolate into her throat She stumbled and fell heavily to her knees at the moment she pulled open the door.

Richard's body toppled from the seat and landed heavily on her, pinning her to the ground. She struggled to push him aside, but her strength was gone. Soon, her will was gone as well. She slipped her arms around him and locked her thumbs in his belt loops.

Directly above her the sun drifted into view and passed across the sky without hurting her eyes or even causing her to blink. Over what seemed minutes, but might have been hours, she felt a strange peacefulness settle in. With that peacefulness came another feeling-a connection to Richard, a sense of closeness to him more intense than any she had ever known.

And she was sure, as she felt the weight of him lessen and then vanish, that he was alive. He was alive, and he knew she was there with him.

Marilyn's breathing grew less labored. Inwardly, she smiled.

Outwardly, the sun had set A chill evening wind rose from the west, sweeping a film of fine desert sand over the Jeep and the two inert figures locked in embrace on the ground beside it.

It was just after two o'clock in the morning. Outside of Warehouse 18 the East Boston docks groaned eerily beneath a crust of frozen snow.

Inside, wedged in the steel rafters thirty feet above the floor, Sandy North made a delicate adjustment in the focus of his video transmitter and strained to catch the conversation below. But even if he missed part of the exchange, it was no big deal. At this distance, the souped-up Granville pickup he had brought with him to Boston could record a hiccup.

For nearly three months, under the deepest cover, North had been working the docks for the Bureau of Alcohol, 'tobacco, and Firearms.

He was, in essence, on loan to them through an agency that specialized in providing such personnel. And although his agency had no official name, it was known to those in its employ, and those who from time to time required its services, as Plan B.

North had been sent in to pinpoint the source of a steady trickle of weapons from Boston to Belfast, in rthem Ireland. What he had stumbled on instead was drugs-a shipment and sale of heroin that looked to be as big as any he had encountered on his several assignments with the Drug Enforcement Agency.

And to boot, from what he could pull from the conversation below, one of the two men doing the selling was almost certainly a cop.

Frustrated by his lack of progress on the weapons shipments, and with no time to set up trustworthy backup, North had opted to video the drug sale himself..of all the filth, all the shit his work for Plan B required him to wade through, drug dealers were the most repugnant to, him, and the most rewarding to bring down. At least, he reasoned, if he was pulled off his weapons assignment, the months in Boston wouldn't have been a total loss. On the down side, if something went wrong, if by working on his own like this he blew the weapons operation, his boss at Plan B would have his nuts.

But nothing would-go wrong. He had checked the rafters from every angle and had picked a spot that was absolutely hidden from view. He had taken the sort of comprehensive and imaginative precautions that had made himyen among the highly skilled operatives at His agency-something of a legend. Now, all he had to do was keep filming, and wait.

Far below him the deal was essentially complete.

The cop and his partner had taken two suitcases of money and left. The buyer, who had arrived in a van with a chemist and three bodyguards, was supervising the transfer of his purchase from shipping containers to the van. He was small and wiry and nattily dressed, and he issued orders to his men with the crispness of one who was used to power.

One of the Gambone brothers, North ventured, trying to recall what he had once memorized about the powerful New England family.

Possibly Ricky, the youngest. North shifted his weight a fraction to get a better look at the man, and felt something move beneath his thigh.

Instinctively he reached down, but it was too late. A bolt, probably wedged on the beam since the construction of the roof, rolled off the edge and clattered to the cement floor below.

In seconds North was at the intersection of two powerful flashlight beams. Following the shouted orders of one of the men below, he dangled his revolver in two fingers and flipped it down.

Then, cursing himself, he inched across the rafter and down the narrow access ladder.

It was going to be one hell of a long night.

Over God-only-knew how many dicey assignments, North had been taken just twice before tonight One of those times, in Buenos Aires, he had intentionally allowed his own capture in order to free two political prisoners The other time, in Uganda, he had endured two hours of torture before his backup arrived. Now, he silently vowed to keep the physical punishment he had to absorb to a minimum. He would have to be easy, but not too easy; frightened, but not so much that hurting him would become sport.

One of the goons took his camera, and another punched him viciously in the gut. He dropped to his knees, whimpering, They pulled him up by his jacket and threw him into a chair.