Resistant (11 page)

Two crewmembers in red-and-white jumpsuits emerged from the aircraft and raced to Cap’s side as the rotors were still slowing. They were followed by the pilot a minute later. Lou had provided them with details of the accident they would be dealing with, and what they could expect to find. The trauma nurse, Julie Bellet, sounded skeptical of the description of Cap’s injury, and what had been accomplished by doctor and patient in the forest. Lou didn’t blame her. He was still having trouble believing it himself.

He quickly exchanged names with the team. Daniel, a paramedic, was a muscular man in his twenties with the grip of a bear trap. He hauled a trunk-sized mobile crash cart over to where Cap lay, carrying it as if it were a toy. Julie Bellet carried a much smaller case, which Lou assumed held instruments. She was an attractive woman, perhaps in her early fifties, silver-haired, fit and intense. She made a brief survey of their patient, focusing for a few extra seconds on the splint and tourniquet. Then, straight-lipped, she looked over at Lou and minutely nodded her approval.

The pilot, Captain Dorothy Tompkins according to her name tag, was a slender five-six or -seven, maybe thirty-five, with short chestnut hair, and an EMT patch on her sleeve. She and Daniel removed a stretcher from the back of the aircraft, carrying it still folded over the damp, soft soil before snapping it open. For Lou, watching the team work was like immersing himself in the music of a top-notch jazz trio.

“Stay close, Dr. Welcome,” Bellet said, “in case we need another set of hands.”

Doubtful,
Lou thought, realizing at the same time that if they needed him, there was serious trouble.

Floyd’s wife had supplied him with a tattered flannel work shirt and a pair of hand-sewn cotton pants that fit him just fine. She and Floyd stood well off to one side, reminding Lou of the stoic farm couple in
American Gothic.
Just another typical day in the forest.

“Squeeze my hand if you can hear me, Mr. Duncan,” Bellet was saying, her voice calm and unhurried. “You’re going to be okay, my friend. We just have to get you stabilized and then over to the chopper. If I do anything that hurts you, just signal me.”

“Lou … comes … too…,” Cap managed.

“We got room for one patient and one passenger, Mr. Duncan,” Daniel said, fixing oxygen prongs and a cervical collar in place. “You want this one, you got him. Besides, after seeing that splint and that litter, we’ll be making him an honorary member of the team anyway.”

“Me, too,” Cap said, smiling around nearly clenched teeth. “I … helped.”

“We’ll get you a set of wings when you’re settled in the ER at Arbor General. Okay, a little stick, now.”

The IV, hooked to a large-bore catheter, was in and taped down faster than a Cap Duncan jab.

“You make these?” Daniel asked Lou, gesturing to the makeshift contraptions as he took down the dressing.

“All three of us,” Lou said as if apologizing for the workmanship. “We were pretty desperate.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been doing this job for five years and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I was taught by paramedics.”

Bellet completed her evaluation with Cap still drifting in and out of consciousness. Even beyond his leg, his rock-hard body seemed somehow compromised, and for the first time in Lou’s memory, his best friend looked his birth certificate age.

“We go as soon as we pour some antiseptic into that wound and get it redressed,” Bellet said. “Moving him isn’t going to be that easy. I think we should lift the drag litter as is. Daniel and Dr. Welcome, that’s your job. Sir, you and our pilot can get our stretcher set up in the chopper.”

“Everyone just stay low at all times,” Captain Tompkins warned. “You don’t get a second chance to make up for forgetting that one.”

Daniel gave Cap some more morphine.

“How tough is this guy?” he asked Lou.

“They don’t come much tougher.”

“How long on the tourniquet, Dr. Welcome?” Bellet asked.

“An hour forty.”

“Mr. Duncan, I’m going to loosen this tourniquet. Sorry if I hurt you.”

The trauma nurse waited until Daniel had redressed Cap’s gash, then gingerly removed the stick and set it aside, leaving the band of cloth in place. For a minute or two, the group waited in silence. No oozing. Julie looked over at Lou and again nodded. This time she was smiling.

“You must be a hell of an ER doc when you’ve got some real equipment around you, and not just a bunch of sticks and ropes.”

“As long as the nurses are as sharp as you are, I’m pretty good,” Lou replied.

“I believe you are. Okay, let’s get your friend to a real bed.”

Thanks to morphine and Cap’s advertised toughness, the transport and transfer went off with just a few moans of pain. As soon as the cardiac monitoring equipment was in place, Daniel gave Tompkins the thumbs-up sign for liftoff. Lou took Cap’s hand in his and held it.

It was time to leave the woods.

Sound-dampening earphones in place, Lou knew he would remain on edge for the entire seventy-five-mile flight from the field beside Floyd and Rebecca Weems’s cabin to the Arbor General Hospital helipad. He was actually ready to climb into the chopper before he managed to wrangle a post office box number in the river town of Sledge Crossing.

Weems felt certain he would have no trouble replanting the damaged part of their field. He had offered it up as a landing pad even before he learned that he would be saving Cap the pain of having to be hoisted up using a winch and basket. As he settled into his seat, Lou vowed that it was not the last time he would see the eccentric woodsman and his wife. He also knew that whatever material thanks he passed on to them would be insulting if not rejected altogether, unless it were carefully thought out.

“We’re ready to lift off,” Tompkins yelled back over her shoulder. “Put on your helmets.”

“Thank you again, Floyd!” Lou shouted out the open hatch.

“Tain’t nothin’ I did. You two are good people. Jes get him healthy. Come back and visit Rebecca and me anytime. My woods are your woods.”

The helicopter’s rotors sped up as the burly paramedic pulled the hatch closed and latched it. Through the porthole, Lou could see Floyd using his arm to cover his eyes as he backed away. The chopper wobbled a bit as it gained lift, and then settled down. Moments later, they were on an angled ascent, steadily gaining speed.

Lou watched as the couple, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, became enfolded in their world, and silently thanked the vast forest that had somehow been small enough to deliver Lou and Cap a savior.

CHAPTER 13

           The true means to provide sound and adequate protection against the vicissitudes of modern life may be found in self-reliance, a return to family values, embracing the pioneering spirit of our forefathers, and the shared belief that God, not government, is the determinant of life and death.

        
—LANCASTER R. HILL,
100 Neighbors
, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1939, P.50

He could not believe he was alive. As consciousness returned, Ahmed Kazimi moved his arm, expecting to find it restrained—chained to a wall, perhaps. To his surprise, he could move both his arms and legs freely, although his whole body felt stiff and achy, as if he’d been passed out in the same position for hours. Instead of his familiar work attire, he was clad in shimmery red silk pajamas.

He imagined, as he opened his eyes, that he would be awakening in a barren, concrete room, the floor covered in damp straw reeking of urine—the sort of prison he’d come to expect from television shows and movies. Instead, he sat upright on a firm, king-size mattress, underneath black silk sheets of the highest possible thread count. He was cocooned within diaphanous white draperies that hung down from a beautifully ornate mahogany canopy frame.

Massaging his throbbing temples, Kazimi tried to clear his blurred vision, but without much success. Where was he? Why had he been taken in such a way? The questions swirled in his mind like windblown sand. Who was Burke? How had he infiltrated the FBI? Kazimi had been forced to the floor beside the window of his bedroom, so his image of Burke killing the two other agents protecting him was indistinct. The rest of what happened was even more hazy. He had been shoved out his third-story window into … into what? An open-bed truck filled with foam padding. The last thing he remembered was Burke injecting him with a drug that quickly made him feel like someone had poured concrete into his ears.

Gradually, Kazimi’s vision came into focus. He crawled out from the canopy and found himself in a richly appointed room adorned with magnificent oriental carpeting, laid on an exquisite fieldstone floor. The same stone covered the lower half of the walls, leading him to think of a medieval castle. The upper half was an ornate fleur-de-lis design done in crimson velvet.

The air was scented from three massive bouquets of fresh-cut flowers arranged in crystal vases. Directly across from him stood a black lacquer bureau, inlaid with mother of pearl, and above it hung an ultra-modern plasma television, currently powered off, but with a remote attached to it by Velcro strips. In addition to a well-volumed bookcase, there were five beautifully framed and lit paintings that Kazimi, hardly an expert at such things, believed were a Degas, a Picasso, a Monet, and possibly two of the Dutch masters—almost certainly all original.

Kazimi took a few tentative steps. He was wobbly and weak at first, but gradually regained his balance. Standing in the center of the room, he made a more extensive survey of his posh accommodations, and was both amazed and repulsed by the decadence surrounding him. He had always been a man of simple values, for whom material possessions had meant nothing. Perhaps, he mused, knowledge of that philosophy is why his captors elected to imprison him inside such opulence.

Moving to the corner of the room next to the bookcase, Kazimi scanned the bar, stocked with the finest spirits and bottles of wine, most likely from the very best vintages. Though alcohol would never pass his lips, he knew the value of wine bottled decades ago. In front of the bar was a glistening ebony table with four Louis XIV chairs, also most likely not reproductions. As a frequent guest of international conferences on bacteriology, he had been put up in hotel suites before. This room made even the most luxurious of those look like some of the concrete homes of his native Pakistan.

Automatic lights came on as he stepped into a cavernous bathroom tiled in spectacular white marble flecked with gold, and featuring a shower, steam room, and Jacuzzi tub cast in what appeared to be pure copper.

Glancing at his reflection in the oversized mirror, he winced at his raccoon eyes and sickly pallor. Again, the questions:

What drug did Burke give me?

Where am I?

What do they want with me?

How can I fight them?

How can I escape?

He rested his hands on the granite countertop until he felt steadier on his feet. Then he left the bathroom and crossed to the shuttered, black-lacquered double doors, which he assumed exited the garish room.

Locked.

He examined the walls and even under the carpet, searching for another way out. Only then did it register that the space had no windows. A velvet and silk dungeon.

At that instant, a sharp knock on the door startled him.

“Come in,” he managed. His voice, hoarse from disuse and possibly from his having been drugged, sounded foreign.

A key turned in the lock. The double doors swung open on soundless hinges and in walked a stoop-shouldered man with graying hair, neatly parted on the right. He was impeccably dressed in a butler’s uniform, and was wheeling a food cart bearing several trays. The pungent aromas were as familiar to Kazimi as they were pleasing.

“Good evening, sir. My name is Harris. I’m the head butler here. Welcome to Red Cliff.”

“Where is this place? What is it?”

“I have been instructed to tell you that all of the food products and ingredients meet with the dietary restrictions of your religion. I hope you find the preparation to your liking.”

“You’ve been instructed by whom? Who told you to bring me this food?”

“If you’ll excuse me, sir. My orders are to deposit the food cart and then be on my way, and I have maintained my position here at Red Cliff over the years because I always follow orders. Your host will be joining you shortly. Would you like me to set the food out for you, or would you prefer to do it yourself? The utensils you will need are right here.”

Harris pointed to a rolled-up cloth napkin. Kazimi immediately noticed the pointed end of a knife poking out the top. His eyes narrowed as he began thinking of ways he could use the knife to aid in an escape, but he knew the timing was bad. He wanted answers. Who had taken him and why? Who had orchestrated the murders of two FBI agents? First he needed to meet his host. Then he would consider escape.

“Just set the food out,” he ordered disdainfully.

Harris closed the door with his foot.

“I’m sorry, sir, but it locks automatically. If you wish, I’ll stay with you until your host arrives.”

For the next several minutes, Kazimi paced the silk and velvet dungeon while the butler identified, then set out dishes of food on the ebony table—lamb in a turmeric gravy, white potatoes in a rich red sauce, gogji beans with turnip in black pepper gravy, sweet green tea with cardamom—food from the Kashmir region of Pakistan, Kazimi’s home during his early years. Another knock on the door. Harris immediately stopped what he was doing and stood beside Kazimi like a trained dog.

“Come in,” Kazimi called out.

A key sounded in the lock. The double doors swung open, and in walked a moderately overweight, suave-looking man, fifty or so, who stood there as calmly as if he were assessing a pair of ballroom dancers. His right hand was wrapped around a walking stick capped with the tennis-ball-sized head of a lion, either bronze or, more likely given the opulence of Red Cliff, gold. His other hand comfortably grasped a tumbler of whiskey. Kazimi, who had lived his life in relative self-denial, disliked the man at once. He had a broad and flat nose and the coal-dark eyes of a predator. The impressive cane was more than decoration. The new arrival walked with a modest limp, favoring his right leg. Kazimi’s thought of overpowering him lasted only until two beefy men—one white, one black—materialized behind the man, filling the doorway.