Kitabı oku: «Survival Reflex»

CHAPTER ONE

Mato Grosso State, Brazil

The battle never really ends. It’s true that guns stop firing, smoke clears from the field and politicians mutter through negotiations in the name of statesmanship—but what about those who fight and bleed?

Who tends the ragged wounds and clips the severed arteries? Who stitches or removes the ravaged organs? Who sets shattered bones and searches for new skin to cover burns?

I do, the surgeon answered silently. For all the good it does.

One truth Nathan Weiss had learned in years of military practice dogged his thoughts through every waking hour and in nightmares: no wound ever truly healed.

Bones mended. Torn flesh produced scar tissue. Spilled blood could be replaced. Some organs were expendable.

But what about the soul?

How did a man really recover after he’d been shot, stabbed, tortured, set on fire or blasted with explosives? Even if he learned to walk again without a cane or limp, if he could show a more or less unblemished visage to the world, what was going on inside?

What did he wish, hope, dream, regret?

How did he claim the life he had before?

Weiss couldn’t answer that one, and he’d long since given up on trying. Elbow-deep in blood again, he concentrated on the open body that demanded his attention at the moment. It was male, peppered with shrapnel wounds that seemed almost innocuous from the outside, but which wreaked havoc with the vital parts inside.

“Do something, please,” he said, “about these goddamned flies.”

His two assistants blinked at each other, each raising a bloody hand to point accusingly. They didn’t speak, but the expressive eyes above their surgical masks said everything the surgeon needed to hear.

“I’m sorry, never mind,” he told them. “Please, just keep them from the wounds.”

Heads bobbed in unison. They could do that, at least.

Flies were a part of working in the field, along with ants and roaches, the occasional pit viper, leaky tents and wheezing generators that could fail at any time and plunge the operating tent into lethal darkness with the job unfinished.

Just another day at the office.

The young man before him had suffered wounds to both kidneys, but one of them could probably be saved. The spleen was gone, which meant that the young man—assuming he survived the night—would have some difficulty fighting off infections in the years to come. His perforated stomach had been sutured and its spillage cleared away. Two feet of shredded small intestine had been excised, the remainder spliced. A deep wound to the prostate might or might not leave him impotent.

But none of that would kill the young man.

In the operation’s second bloody hour now, Weiss had moved on to things that took a bit more time. Two surgeons might’ve finished up the job by now, but he was on his own, as usual. There were no shortcuts, no Get Out of the OR Free cards in this life-or-death game.

He was the only surgeon in the area—or, anyway, the only one who’d work on battle wounds without a hotline heads-up to the same men who’d inflicted them.

And so he did it all, with two assistants who were learning as they went, eye-rolling when the blood flowed freely, grimacing as charnel odors filtered through their masks.

“Forehead, someone, please,” he requested. “I’ve got my hands full.”

One of his helpers found a sponge and moved around the table, careful not to block the surgeon’s field of vision as he dabbed sweat from the tan expanse of forehead.

“Thanks,” Weiss said. “Let’s clean this up and close.”

TEAM PANTHER WAS on schedule, closing on the target with determination borne of knowledge that there might not be another chance. They had already missed the target twice during the past six months. A third failure was bound to have unpleasant repercussions.

Following his point man down a muddy jungle trail, Team Panther’s leader thought, Strike three. You’re out.

A third miss wouldn’t cost his life, but it would be embarrassing. He’d lose prestige and likely be passed over on the next attempt. He might be shuffled to some post in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do but slap mosquitoes and type his resignation on a rusty portable.

An air strike might’ve done the trick more swiftly and effectively, but killing from the sky was not always reliable. The air force had no “smart” bombs in their inventory, and they could’ve strafed the jungle all day long without scoring a verified hit on the target.

So much for high technology.

When wet work was required, it still came down to men who weren’t afraid of dirtying their hands.

Behind their leader and the point man, moving through the rain forest in single file, two dozen soldiers focused single-mindedly upon their goal. It helped distract them from the swarms of biting insects, mud that tried to pull their boots off, lukewarm rain that fell just long enough to soak them to the skin then waited for their camouflage fatigues to nearly dry before it started up again.

The nagging irritations made them anxious for a fight.

Eager to kill.

They were the best at what they did, these men. Team Panther had a reputation to defend, which had been sullied by their failed attempts to burn the target in October and December. Now they had another chance, and every member of the team had sworn a blood oath to succeed this time.

The leader checked his compact GPS unit. Assuming that their information was correct, they had another half mile left to go, dense jungle all the way.

WEISS’S FIFTH PATIENT had once been fairly handsome, if his eyes and brow were any indication, but the bullets that had ripped into his cheek and jaw had spoiled his face forever. It was something of a miracle they hadn’t killed him on the spot, in fact, but there was grim determination in those eyes, before the morphine blessed him with oblivion.

Why do you bother? asked the small voice in his head. Why heal them, so that they can maim and kill?

Because somebody had to do it.

And Weiss wasn’t altogether sure that they were wrong.

Shouting outside the operating tent distracted him, but he recovered so quickly his aides never noticed. Split-second hesitation on the scalpel stroke, but when he made the cut it was deep, clean and sure.

A runner burst into the tent and stopped short on the threshold, gaping at the deconstructed form in front of him.

Shifting to half-baked Portuguese, Weiss told the newcomer, “You’re risking this man’s life by coming in here. Turn around and leave.”

The interloper stood his ground, though he was trembling as he said, “They’re coming, Doctor.”

“Who is they? More casualties?”

“The enemy.”

That made the surgeon pause. He glanced up at his two assistants, found them staring back at him, and swiveled toward the messenger. “How long?”

“Perhaps a quarter of an hour.”

“That’s too soon. I still have work to do.”

He knew the words were nonsense, even as he spoke. The surgeon’s enemies wouldn’t withdraw until he finished with his patients. They had come to stop him, after all. If they could finish off the job they’d started with the wounded, it would just be icing on the cake.

“What should we do?” the messenger inquired.

“Get ready to evacuate. And buy some time.”

“We’ll try,” he said, and fled the tent. Weiss wondered whether he had sent the messenger to meet his death.

Too late to think about that now.

He had a short while left to finish with the patient on his operating table. Enough time, anyway, to close the last incision, though he couldn’t manage any of the fine work needed to reduce scarring.

All wasted effort if the patient couldn’t be evacuated safely in the time that still remained to him. There’d be no mercy from the enemy when they arrived. They’d come in killing and be quick about it this time, trying to make sure no one escaped.

Weiss glanced back toward the corner of his makeshift operating room that served as sleeping quarters when he wasn’t carving flesh. Jungle fatigues lay folded there, and resting on the bundle of his hiking clothes, an Uru submachine gun.

Kill or cure.

This day, perhaps, he’d do a bit of both.

TEAM PANTHER’S leader listened to the terse report from his point man. The target lay five hundred yards ahead, though still invisible from where they stood, surrounded on all sides by looming trees and dangling vines like ropes in a gymnasium.

“How many did you see?” the leader asked.

His scout considered it, a moment dragging as he did the mental census. “Six or seven men with weapons, sir,” the point man said at last. “They carry others in and out of tents.”

“And did you count the tents?”

“One big, three small, sir. Also, they have an open space covered by tarp on poles, with men laid out on stretchers. And a generator near the big tent.”

“Is that everything? No vehicles?”

The point man stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “There is no road, sir.”

“None on this side that we know about. Answer the question.”

Sulking, the soldier said, “No, sir. No vehicles.”

Team Panther’s leader did the calculations swiftly. Six or seven armed and able-bodied men against his twenty-five. The wounded would present no difficulty. They were enemies, presumed guilty of crimes against the state, condemned by their own treasonous behavior. He would leave them where he found them, after making sure they didn’t live to fight another day.

And he would have the one who’d managed to elude him for so long, making a mockery of each attempt to capture him.

This time, the leader told himself, I will succeed.

He’d be a hero back at headquarters, or at the very least erase the black marks placed beside his name the last two times he’d led teams through the jungle, searching for the man his enemies referred to simply as O Médico.

The Doctor.

One who gave them hope when they should have none, who restored the broken bones and ravaged flesh of terrorists, enabling them to spread more carnage and imperil everything Team Panther’s men were dedicated to defend.

This day it would end.

They would eliminate O Médico once and for all. If he surrendered, they would take him back for trial and the inevitable prison cell. If he resisted…well, Team Panther would be forced to remedy the state’s misguided abolition of capital punishment.

Either way, the doctor was finished. He’d already seen his last patient.

He simply didn’t know it yet.

Team Panther’s leader fired a rifle shot into the air above the smoking tent and shouted to his hidden troops, “Attack! Attack!”

THE SPOOK SAT at his desk, chain-smoking while he studied maps and photographs, sitreps and transcripts of interrogations. He was looking for a bright spot, but it stubbornly eluded him.

The telephone beside his elbow was an enemy, a traitor. For the past six months it had refused to transmit anything except bad news from sources in the field and criticism from his boss. Each time it rang, these days—as it was ringing now—the spook experienced the urge to rip its cord out of the wall and drop the damned thing in his wastebasket.

Instead he lifted the receiver to his ear.

“Downey.”

“It’s me.”

He recognized the caller’s voice. It was a gift that served him well, despite accents. The caller was a valued asset, though he hadn’t been performing well of late. In fact, he’d left a fair amount to be desired.

“I need good news,” the spook advised. And from the silence on the far end of the line, he knew there would be none forthcoming. “All right, then. How bad?”

“We missed again.”

“When you say missed…”

“My people found the place, all right. Just where you promised it would be. A scout saw people in the camp, guerrillas, some of them on stretchers.”

“So?”

“We still aren’t sure what happened. By the time he came back with the main force and they had the camp surrounded, there was no one there.”

The spook reached for another cancer stick. “You tipped them off somehow,” he said accusingly.

“We’re looking into it.”

“Fat lot of good that does.” He smoked and fumed.

“It’s worse,” the caller said.

“Worse than another empty bag? All right, tell me.”

“The team took casualties. One man dead, another six or seven injured.”

“How the hell? You said there was nobody there.”

“Some kind of booby trap, or maybe just an accident. We’re—”

“Looking into it, I know. This isn’t what we talked about at all. You understand that, right? This doesn’t just reflect on you.”

“Of course, you’ll blame me all the same,” the caller answered back, showing some attitude.

“I call ’em like I see ’em,” the spook said. “You said yourself, the intel I provided led your hunters to the target. They saw people in the camp, for Christ’s sake! Now you see ’em, now you don’t. What kind of crazy shit is that? You want to say it’s my fault that your people can’t throw down on targets standing right in front of them?”

“I will find out what happened.”

“Beautiful. And what about the mark?”

“We’ll have to try again.”

“Just like that, is it? Let my fingers do the walking through the goddamned business pages, maybe. See what they’ve got listed under traitor comma dirty fucking.”

“You have contacts,” the caller replied. “We have contacts.”

“And they’ve told us where to look for him three times. How many strikes are you entitled to, I wonder?”

“Strikes?” The caller was confused now.

“Never mind. Forget about it. I’ll put on my thinking cap again and see if I can find another angle. In the meantime, it’s your job to make sure that the latest screwup does not go public under any circumstances. Are we clear?”

“I hear you.”

“Right. But are you listening?”

“I’ll handle it.”

“I hope so, for your own sake.”

And for mine, the spook thought as he dropped the telephone receiver back into its cradle. Once again he felt the urge to rip, discard, destroy.

Instead he lit a fresh smoke from the one he’d had clenched between his teeth and waited for the nicotine to work its magic on his jangling nerves.

Spilled milk, he thought. No use crying about it.

What he needed now, and goddamned soon, was some spilled blood to solve his problem. One more chance, if he was very lucky, and he didn’t dare waste it.

But what was left?

He needed specialists.

And with that thought in mind, he reached for the hated telephone.