Extreme Measures (2 page)

“You go on in to dinner now, Mary,” the man said. “Else you’ll get nothin’ to eat tonight.”

Without even a gesture of acknowledgment, the woman shuffled off.

“My … my name’s Marilyn Colson,” Marilyn said, clearing the fear from her throat. “This is my husband, Richard. We … we’re lost.” She smiled inwardly at her husband’s likely discomfiture with the admission. “Our Jeep has broken down about half a day’s walk in that direction. We were hoping someone in your town might be able to help us get it towed in and fixed.”

“How’d you get here?”

“I just told you, we walked from where our—”

“No, no. I mean
here.”
The man gestured to the spot where they were standing.

“We came from the north,” Richard said, stepping forward. “Over those hills, then down along an arroyo, and up into your cornfield. I’m amazed at how you can get irriga—”

“What do you want?”

“Want?” Marilyn echoed with a hint of anger. “What about someone to talk to who isn’t pointing a gun at us?” The man lowered the shotgun a fraction. “And then we could use a place to stay and some help with our Jeep. Isn’t there anybody in this town who does cars?”

“This ain’t no town,” the man said, spitting through a gap between his front teeth.

“Pardon?”

“I said, this ain’t no town.” He spat again, then added matter-of-factly, “It’s a hospital … a mental hospital.”

“Richard?”

“Yes.”

“Okay if I move my bed next to yours?”

“Sure.”

“I’m sorry for the way I talked to you today. I was upset.”

Marilyn Colson pushed her metal-frame bed close to Richard’s and lay on her side, staring through the window of their bungalow at the infinity of stars spattered across the ebony desert sky. Slowly she slid her hand up her husband’s leg and began stroking him the way he liked.

The day, one of the worst in a marriage full of such days, had taken a marked turn for the better. After a tense few minutes with the “mental health worker,” as Garrett Pike, the shotgun-toting man, called himself, they had been escorted to a low cinder-block building—the clinic—and turned over to Dr. James Barber, the director of the Charity Project.
Barber, a psychiatrist, was a balding, cheery man, with an open smile and manner. And although he had explained little of the project, beyond that it involved the reclamation of an old ghost town and was a federally funded experimental installation for dealing with the criminally insane, he had made them feel welcome. Further, he had promised assistance with their Jeep as soon as his maintenance man returned from a trip to “the city” with the only four-wheel-drive vehicle the project owned. His only requests were that until that time—probably by the following morning—they stay within the confines of the clinic and its fenced-in yard, and that they ask no further questions about the operation.

Now, after a hot shower, a meal of chicken-fried steak and red wine, and an after-dinner conversation in which Barber showed himself to be well-read and thoughtful in a number of areas, they were alone in the guest bungalow, just behind the clinic.

“Richard?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you think this is sort of romantic? I mean, how many of our friends have ever done it in a mental hospital?”

Richard continued to lie on his back, hands locked behind his head, unresponsive to her touch.

“Something’s wrong,” he said finally.

“What are you talking about?”

“Just what I said. Something’s not right here. Remember after dinner when I mentioned Stack-Sullivan’s theory on maturation inversion in traumatized children?”

“Actually, I don’t, no.”

“Well, I described it completely backwards.”

“You what?”

“Merely for the sake of discussion. And Barber just agreed with what I said. He’s either an absurdly uninformed psychiatrist, or—”

“Richard, let me get this straight. Here’s this
man, being incredibly hospitable to us, and you’re running a goddam test on him?” She pulled her hand away. “I can’t believe you!”

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Well, I don’t think we should talk about it anymore. For all I know, this cabin is bugged.”

“This is crazy, Richard. He probably just wasn’t paying much attention to you. God knows I wasn’t. You’re not exactly riveting when you get going with that psych theory shit of yours.”

Richard’s response was cut short by a fit of coughing. He sat up on the side of his bed, hands on knees, until it subsided.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I’m having a little trouble catching my breath. I had asthma as a kid, but nothing for years.”

“Maybe there’s some mold in here or something. Or maybe it’s unexpressed stress.”

“I’m going out into the yard for a bit.”

“Should we go see the doctor?”

“I tell you, he’s no—”

Once again a spasm of coughs cut him off. He pushed to his feet and stepped out of the bungalow into the cool night air.

Marilyn lay alone on her bunk, wondering how she ever could have thought the two of them were the match for a lifetime.
Well, the hell with it
, she decided. She had given it her best shot. Now it was time to move in other directions. Unable to get comfortable, she rolled over, and then rolled back. She bunched the pillow beneath her head. The air felt heavy and stale. Finally she went to the armoire and brought back a second pillow, which she bunched on top of the first.

Better
, she thought as she lay back in bed.
Much better
.

One minute passed, then another. She began to feel calmer. Her eyes closed. Her breathing slowed
and seemed to come more easily. The last sound she heard before the darkness of sleep drifted over her was her husband’s coughing.

It was seven-thirty by her watch when the loudspeaker bell woke Marilyn from shallow, fitful sleep. She had been up for most of the night, in part from Richard’s entering and leaving the bungalow several times, in part from his spasmodic racking cough, and in part from her own increasing shortness of breath—better when she sat up, more marked when she lay back.

She was alone in the cottage. Pale morning sun washed through the east window, highlighting a dense, shimmering mist of suspended dust. Marilyn found the mist reassuring. Small wonder they had had such a difficult night. She pushed herself off the bed, aware of a persistent, unsettling tightness in her chest—a band that seemed to prevent her taking in a full, deep breath.

“Richard?”

She called his name, waited a moment, then stepped into the small courtyard. He was seated, facing away from her, in a high-backed wicker chair.

“Richard, you should see all the dust in the air in there. It’s no wonder—”

She crossed in front of him and stopped in mid-sentence. Her husband was awake and meeting her gaze, but she had never seen him look worse. His color was an ashen, dusky gray; his eyes, hollow, flat, and lusterless. His breaths, drawn through cracked, pursed lips, were rapid and shallow. It was as if he had aged decades in just one night.

“I’m sick,” he managed to say.

“I can see that. Richard, I’m going to get Dr. Barber.”

Before he could reply she hurried off. By the time she had reached the clinic, not fifty feet away, she had to stop and catch her breath.

Barber, wearing a white lab coat over his sport clothes, listened to her account with concern.

“It’s almost certainly an allergic reaction,” he said. “Last year a congressman who came out to check on the program had a similar reaction. The mold, probably. I’m a psychiatrist, but I have some training in internal medicine as well. I’ll have a look at your husband. Some Benadryl, and maybe a little bit of Adrenalin, and he’ll be better in no time.”

Within a few minutes of receiving the medication Richard did seem better, although Marilyn was not certain whether the improvement was due to Barber’s treatment or the news that the mechanic had arrived back with Charity’s Land Rover and was confident he could repair their Jeep. At Barber’s insistence, she allowed herself to be checked over and dosed with two capsules of Benadryl and a shot of Adrenalin.

Then, after packing their knapsack and taking a supply of Benadryl from Barber, they set off in the Land Rover to retrace the trail to the Jeep indicated by Richard’s careful notes and compass readings. The mechanic, a taciturn Native American who gave his name only as John, seemed to know the desert well.

“Nine mile,” he said. “That is how far you walked.”

“Seemed farther,” Richard managed before yielding once again to a salvo of violent coughing.

“Nine mile,” John said again.

Marilyn reached over and wiped a bit of pink froth from the corner of her husband’s mouth. His complexion had once again begun to darken, and his fingernails were almost violet. Still, he sat forward gamely, following his notes as, one by one, they passed the landmarks he had noted. Watching him, Marilyn sensed a rebirth of the pride and caring that had long ago vanished from her feelings toward the man.

“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 up 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 away her resolve. 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 dropped limply to his side.

“Richard? 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 lifeless. Thick pink froth oozed from the corners of his mouth.

Marilyn undid his seat 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.

FEBRUARY 25

I
t 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 Northern 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.