Part I: fight or flight
He checked his rearview mirror again.
Nothing.
But he was sure he was being followed; he could feel it in his gut and that was all he needed to know. He made it to his house on East Summit Street and pulled into the garage, hitting the button and closing the overhead door even before he turned off his truck’s motor. He went inside and showered, then made a reservation at the Marriott in the French Quarter for the next night, staying four nights, then he called Quintana on one of his burner phones.
“I’m blown.”
“Too bad. But the truck goes to New Orleans as planned?”
“Yes. I’ll put the product and other stuff you requested under the seat.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“Bueno. The boy will be there in an hour.”
He hung up and powered off the phone, then went to the bathroom and shaved his head and then his face, even trimming his eyebrows unrecognizably short. He grabbed his go bag and waited for the courier to show up.
Once the truck was gone and headed to New Orleans he called an über to pick him up at Barbaro’s and then strapped a huge prosthetic stage belly around his waist and slipped out the side door, putting his ragged old go-bag over his shoulder and now walking with a cane, hunched over and limping like an old man. He passed a black Ford Explorer parked down the block from his house, two DEA agents looking at his house through binoculars. He limped past the Ford and made it to the pick-up just in time.
The über took him to a large self-storage complex just west of Lackland Air Force Base and he went to his unit and opened the door. His motorcycle, a new BMW R1250GS, was already packed and fueled, and he had fifty thousand dollars stashed inside the foam seat and another 300,000 in Mexican pesos in the tank bag. He unhooked the battery charger and started the motor, and while the engine warmed he changed into a one-piece riding suit after he discarded the fake latex belly. With that done, he locked the unit before he drove out onto Highway 90, westbound for Del Rio and the Mexican border.
The sun was still up on this hot September evening as he approached Uvalde, Texas, and he stopped at the Whataburger on the east side of town, then he topped off the bike’s fuel tank, paying cash now for everything before continuing on to Del Rio. He filled up the tank again before crossing, uneventfully, into Mexico. He found a quiet-looking inn on the south side of town and put the cover over the bike before he set the alarm, and once in the little room he didn’t even bother to get out of his riding gear; he just flopped down in the bed and promptly fell into a deep sleep.
He spent three days making his way to Chihuahua, and once there he found a mechanic to change the oil and the filters, then, after another night in a sleepy little inn, he turned west into the mountains, not quite sure where he was going but confident he’d know the right place when he got there.
+++++
He stumbled into the village of Batopilas on his seventh night in Mexico, and he was by then beyond exhausted. He pulled into a very upscale-looking lodge and inquired about a long-term stay.
“How long did you have in mind?” the proprietor asked.
“I’m a writer,” the man lied, “and I’m looking for someplace quiet to spend a few months.”
“We have two casitas for rent by the week, but soon it will be the off-season and I am sure we could work something out.”
“Sounds good. Now, how about tonight?”
“Of course. I’ll just need your passport. Will you be paying cash, in dollars?”
“If you prefer, certainly.” He handed over his passport, one of two bogus passports he had with him.
“Ah, Dr. Eugene Smith, of Duluth, Minnesota?”
“Yes,” he lied.
“Are you a physician?”
“I am, yes. General surgery.”
“And you are writing about surgery?”
“No, I’m writing a novel about the Gulf War. I was in Iraq.”
“I see. Well, unlike Iraq it is quiet here, that much I can assure you.”
“Perfect. And is there a bank in town?”
“Yes. There are two, and in addition to the dining room we have here at the lodge, there are several restaurants in town. And of course, breakfast is included with your room.”
“Internet?”
“Just here in the main building. We have a computer, but it uses a dial-up modem, I’m afraid. The canyon walls are too steep for satellite coverage, and our village is still too small for other services. Here are the instructions, and the computer is in that room,” the proprietor added.
“Alright.”
“Will you need help with your luggage this evening?”
“No, I’ve got it.” He paid cash for a week’s stay then returned to the bike and carried his bags to his room, and then he showered and changed into lite summer street clothes before returning to the bike. He pulled the seat off and removed the tool kit stored inside the seat and while he checked his tire pressures he also removed his stockpiled cash and put the lead foil packets inside his tank bag before setting off down the street to find a restaurant. Every muscle in his body ached, but his ass most of all.
After dinner, he fired off an email to Quintana from the restaurant’s computer, and then returned to his room to wait for the firestorm.
He woke in the middle of the night with gut ripping cramps accompanied by a spiking fever and chills, and he knew he’d picked up a nasty GI bug. And then he realized he’d not remembered to pick up any Ciprofloxacin before he left Texas. He shrugged, knowing there wasn’t a lot he could do right now, so he concentrated on drinking bottled water between bouts on the toilet until 0600 when the front desk supposedly opened. By 0530 there was blood in his stool and he groaned: he was going to need antibiotics and this tiny little village couldn’t possibly have a doctor — or a pharmacy.
“The closest clinic is in Guachochi,” the proprietress advised, “at the Mission Hospital.” She handed over a bottle of bismuth subsalicylate with a smile, and he popped the top and took a long slug right there at the desk.
“How far is it?” the man groaned as his gut did another barrel roll.
“Are you on a motorcycle?”
He nodded. “Yup. Lucky me.”
“It will take all day, I’m afraid, but if you leave soon you will avoid the rains.”
“Rains?”
“Yes, but there may be some snow at higher elevations.”
His eyes wide open now, he had to confront the reality that he wasn’t back in Texas anymore, and that there wasn’t a pharmacy just down the street across from a well-stocked supermarket, and that he had for all intents and purposes run from that life with the DEA and probably the FBI hot on his tail — but at least here he was a free man. “Alright,” he sighed. “Do you have a hotel safe? I want to leave a few things if you do.”
“Of course,” the woman said. “I’ll have some rehydration fluid ready for you.”
“Thanks.”
He went to his room and put his riding suit back on, then put his dollars in a small Pelican case and locked it before heading back up to the desk. The woman gave him a bottle of ORF, or oral rehydration fluid, and she gave him a couple of packets of the mix to add to bottled water as he crossed the mountains.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he said as he walked out to his bike. He put his helmet on and fired up the engine, then entered the clinic’s address into the GPS as he stretched — but no…he ran for the restroom off the lobby and made it just in time.
+++++
He pulled into the clinic parking lot a little before eight that evening, and he was shaking now, and he knew he was borderline hypothermic. The bike’s engine heat, and the heated grips on the handlebars, had been the only thing between him and death for the past two hours. Snow in September? In fucking Mexico? Well, mountains are mountains no matter where you find them, but having to stop every half hour to shit on the side of the road had only added insult to injury — and now he was near the end of his rope.
He just got the bike on the side-stand and made his way through blowing sleet to the clinic entrance and passed out just inside the door.
+++++
He felt the stinging pinch of the IV, heard the calm, reassuring voice of a physician giving orders to a nurse and he relaxed — until he remembered he was in Mexico and these people were speaking English! Had the DEA caught up to him?
He grimaced and opened his eyes, and he saw a youngish looking American girl drawing blood from a stick in his right arm and another, even younger girl looking at his EKG, then this girl turned and looked at him.
“Oh, you’re up!”
“Where am I?”
“Guachochi. At the Tarahumara Mission Hospital, and I’m Dr. McKinnon.”
“Shouldn’t you be, oh, I don’t know, in Glasgow, maybe?”
She smiled. “Med school in Mexico City, my public service commitment here,” she shrugged.
“UTMB Galveston,” he smiled.
“You’re a doc? Where at?”
“Minnesota. Taking a year off to do some riding.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice suddenly dull, flat, and comprehending. “Well, your core temp was 95.6 so I put some heat packs under your arms and I’m running Cipro wide open. You should be good to go in the morning.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s your specialty?”
“General surgery?”
“Really? I’ve got a kid with a hot belly and no cutter. Think you can do an appendix?”
“When? Now?”
“You should be hot to trot in an hour,” she said, knocking his knee with her clipboard. “And look at it this way…you do me a favor and I’ll do one for you.”
“You got a gas passer?”
“A nurse practitioner. Well, kind of.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’ll figure it out.”
He shook his head and looked at his watch; he’d been out for several hours — but he really was feeling a lot better. He shivered once and the nurse draped a hot blanket over him and he fell into a deep sleep…again.
+++++
The overhead lights weren’t the best but the instruments were clean and the OR was spotless, and he stood over the eight-year boy and checked off his landmarks for the incision, making a few dots with a marker on the boy’s belly before he swabbed betadine over the site.
Patty McKinnon had taped hot packs to his axial pits and inside his thighs and at least he wasn’t shaking now, so when the anesthetist, a girl from San Diego named Debbie Surtees, gave him the go-ahead he made his incision and dissected muscle to expose the kid’s appendix, and forty-five minutes later he closed the incision and just made it back to his bed before he passed out. Again.