Fatal

by Michael Palmer

  More gunshots. It seemed to Matt that there was no way they were going to outrun their pursuers, but Lewis had other ideas. They made a sharp right-hand turn, then dropped down into a series of back-scraping crawls that Matt didn’t remember from the trip in. The pounding in his chest and tightness in his throat intensified as it always did when he was in a confined space. He forced himself to keep crawling ahead. Suddenly, he was thinking about his father. What had it been like for him those last seconds after the cave-in? Did he have time to be afraid? Would he have been afraid even if he did? Did the explosion kill him instantly, or was it the crush of rock?

  Bullets continued to ping off the rock walls and crack into the stone beneath them. Then abruptly, the shooting stopped.

  “This way!” Lewis called back, cutting his light. “They cain’t see us no more. Thas why they’s stopped shootin’.”

  He broke into a spasm of coughing, but hesitated only a few seconds and pushed on.

  “You know where we are?” Matt asked.

  “Les put it this way. Ah know whar Ah am.”

  He laughed moistly and again began coughing.

  “Lewis, are you okay?” Matt asked.

  The older man didn’t answer. Instead, he dropped to his belly and wriggled through a ragged ten-foot-long crevice not more than a foot and a half high and two feet wide. He was grunting loudly but moving ahead gamely. Matt closed his eyes and followed along the narrow passage, fearing that at any moment he was going to pass out, throw up, or simply get stuck and go insane. Two feet of extra headroom at the end of the crevice brought him the same sort of relief as the cessation of a dentist’s drilling.

  After what seemed like an eternity on their hands and knees or bellies, the ceiling sloped upward. The air began to taste fresher. Lewis rose to his feet rather shakily and his head and shoulders disappeared into the ceiling. Matt crawled over to him, tilted his head back, and felt a fine rain on his face. About eight feet past Lewis’s shoulders, up a narrow chute, he could see the lighter shade of blackness that was the sky.

  “Kin ya climb out thet?” Lewis asked, whispering again.

  “If I don’t get stuck, I believe I can.”

  “Kin ya boos me up?”

  “I think so. I’m going to put my head between your legs and stand up. Just don’t punch me for getting fresh.”

  Lewis missed Matt’s tepid humor because he was coughing again.

  “Ya sure ’bout this?” he asked when he had caught his breath. “Ah ain’t no flyweight, ya know.”

  “If it means getting out of here, I could lift an elephant. Just rest your hands on the top of my head, and as soon as you can grab someplace to pull yourself up, go ahead. Once I’m standing, I’ll push your feet up. Ready? Okay, one, two, three.”

  Lewis couldn’t have weighed more than 130, 140 tops. Matt had more than enough push in his legs to stand up, steadying Lewis by holding his sides, then his feet. Lewis groaned, cried out softly, and then pulled himself up the chute and out of the hole.

  “Quick, an’ be real quiet,” he whispered down.

  Matt looked up and this time feared he might not have the strength or purchase on the wet rock to pull himself out. As he was scanning the walls, he became aware that his right hand was wet and sticky. He sniffed his palm and tried to see it, although he really didn’t have to try too hard. He had been involved with enough severe crunches in the ER to know the feel and scent of blood.

  He braced his back and shoulders against one side of the chute, reached overhead until his fingers curled over some rock, then brought his knees up until he could wedge himself in place. Inch by inch he worked his back up the rock until he could pull his knees up and repeat the maneuver. Finally, he felt the toe of his boot push down on a minute ledge of rock. A moment later, Lewis grabbed him by the collar and helped him out.

  They were on a hillside, amidst dense trees. Twenty feet below them, two men with flashlights were searching along the base of the slope. The guards must have radioed for help.

  “I’m telling you,” one of them was saying, “if they make it out at all, it’ll be through one of the places down that way. We ain’t doing anyone any good looking around here.”

  The second man scanned the side of the hill, missing their prostrate quarry by no more than a foot. Then the two of them moved on.

  Matt, who had been holding his breath, moved over to Lewis, who lay quite still on the sodden, leaf-covered ground, breathing heavily.

  “You’re bleeding from someplace,” Matt said.

  “Tell me somethin’ Ah don’ know,” Lewis replied, grunting the words and stifling a cough. “If’n ya check m’ left side, rot between m’ ribs, Ah think yew’ll find a bullet hole.”

  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.

  “Fer 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 fee
t 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.