Trinity

[note: this work conjoins earlier versions of three works: Copper Canyon, The Soul of Perception, and Trilogy.]

Trinity

Part I: Copper Canyon

He checked his rearview mirror again, no longer sure what he might find back there.

Nothing? Could it be? Was this really going to work?

He saw nothing. And then he realized he felt nothing at all. The adrenaline fueled sense of exhilaration had been ebbing fast, even though he was sure he was being followed. He had to be. He could still feel that much in his gut, and that was all he needed to know. Weaving through late afternoon traffic, he made it to his house on East Summit Street and pulled into the garage, hitting the button on the sun visor and closing the overhead door even before he turned off the truck's motor. He darted inside and showered, and after he dried off he made a reservation at the Marriott in the French Quarter for tomorrow night, staying four nights. With that last detail out of the way he called Quintana on one of his burner phones.

"I'm blown."

"I thought as much. So, the truck goes to New Orleans as planned?"

"Yes. It's loaded now and the other stuff you requested is already there, under the seat."

"When will it go active?"

"Thirty miles."

"Bueno. The boy will be there in an hour."

Quintana hung up and he powered-off the phone, then he placed it in a baggie full of isopropyl alcohol, which fried the circuits and completely erased all residual oils and fingerprints. Next he went to the bathroom and shaved his head, and then his face, even trimming his eyebrows until they were reshaped and unrecognizably short enough to confuse facial recognition software. He grabbed his 'go bag' and waited for the courier to show up. Tonight's driver, really just a kid the DEA had forced to make the New Orleans run, was already late and he was getting nervous. It took all his remaining patience to not beat the kid to a pulp when he eventually showed up, but death would come soon enough.

The kid was instructed to drive straight through to New Orleans, and he'd been given a route map and money for gas before being sent on his way. Tonight's payload was supposed to be coke and crystal meth, reportedly several hundred kilos of each, and once the truck was gone and headed to New Orleans he called an über to pick him up at Barbaro's. He changed clothes again, taking care to strap a huge prosthetic stage belly around his waist and a sloppy wig on his head before he slipped out the rear door. He sucked in a deep breath of warm air and slipped his ragged old go bag over his shoulder and, adding just one more last minute detail, he started walking through the alley with a cane, now hunched over and limping like an old man. He passed a black Ford Explorer parked down the block from his house, and he even waved at the two DEA agents inside as he passed, noting that they were still looking at his house through binoculars and clicking away with a Nikon. He smiled as he limped past the Ford and, taking care not to break his limping stride, made it to the pick up just in time.

The über took him to a large self storage complex just west of his office at Lackland Air Force Base and he went to his unit and unlocked 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 discarded the latex belly and the wig before he changed into a one piece riding suit. With that last chore done, he locked the unit before he drove slowly out onto Highway 90, headed westbound for Del Rio, Texas and the Mexican border.

The sun was setting on another hot Texas day, and he set the cruise control on 65 and flexed the fingers on first his right hand, then the left. He took a deep breath after he checked his rear view mirrors again, and leaned back against the duffel bag he'd strapped across the rear seat, trying to relax. Something caught his eye and he looked up, saw a v-shaped formation of ducks headed south and he had to smile at that. "Great minds think alike," he said to the roaring slipstream of air outside his helmet, but as it always did, the sudden dark memory came for him once again...

...his stepfather, always his step father. Beating his mother. Again. He'd been too little to help her, of course, but that had never stopped him from trying. He'd run and slammed into his stepfather's legs, knocking the old drunk off balance for a moment, but that had only pissed the old fart off even more. The last time that happened his stepfather had a knife out and the bastard had gutted his mother before he turned on him, but they'd both heard sirens in the distance and the old man had trundled out to his Harley and taken off—heading for Mexico.

And now? Like his stepfather he was making a run for it...to Old Mexico.

His mother Mary didn't survive that last beating, either. Police officers found him hiding under a bed and he'd been taken in and processed by CPS, the State of Texas' Child Protective Services bureau, before entering the foster home system. But Eugene Diggs had been lucky. He was placed with a couple that lived at the Chase Field Naval Air Station in Beeville, Texas, a US Navy attack pilot training facility. This new 'family' adopted him before moving to Whidbey Island, Washington, to the naval air station located there. His new father, the only real father he'd ever have, was a flight surgeon, his new mother a school teacher, and they had doted on their new son.

He smiled when he thought of that brief period of normalcy. Of course he'd killed that, too.

Riding along while the sun slipped lower into one last lost horizon, he realized his life had become the very same perfect storm his mother had given him as his birthrite. If he represented the sum total of the discussion between nature versus nurture, genetics had carried the day where he was concerned. In the end he had been raised in a caring household by very well educated people, he had excelled in math and science but from the time he arrived in Washington until the day he left for Yale, all the way across the country in Connecticut, he had been fascinated by the fringes of his new culture. He played the guitar, and decently, too, but even in middle school he'd dabbled in hallucinogens, mainly peyote and acid, so by the time he arrived in New Haven he'd been around the block a few times.

He was a natural student, perhaps because of his new parents constant encouragement and attention, yet the fear of landing in a house with someone like his stepfather was never far from his mind. His new parent's doting love and the lingering image of his mother's emaciated body lying in a bloody heap on the kitchen floor would compete for Gene Harwell's attention for the rest of his life.

His father had convinced him to let the Navy pay for his schooling, including medical school, so after graduating from the med school at Johns Hopkins he soon found his way to Afghanistan, and it was there that the whole nature versus nurture conversation took on a peculiar urgency. Afghanistan was, when he arrived, still ground zero in the global heroin supply chain, and Gene Harwell had been quietly, and almost eagerly sucked into the trade, helping pack dead bodies being returned to Dover Air Force Base full of product. He had no way of knowing that even then he was being drawn into working for the Sinaloa Cartel, but the bargain had been made a long time ago, maybe even before he'd come into the world. Fate, he had come to believe, had dealt him the cards he was destined to play.

And his work for the cartel continued when, after his return from Afghanistan, he was posted to SAUSHEC, the combined services medical training facility in San Antonio, Texas, and here his relationship with the cartel only deepened. He became an integral part of a massive operation moving cocaine and heroin all around the country, and as the cartel's efforts generated so much cash there was always more than enough on hand to pay-off anyone's silence, or even buy their complicity. There was even enough to siphon a little off every now and then.

He slowed down as he approached Uvalde, Texas, because deer were moving in the twilight and hitting one with a motorcycle at high speed would be the end of his line. Hungry now too, he stopped at the Whataburger on the east side of town, then he topped off the bike's little fuel tank, paying cash now for everything before continuing on to Del Rio. He filled up the tank once again before crossing, uneventfully, into Mexico, telling the ICE agents there that he was bound for the Copper Canyon region to join a motorcycle tour along the famed highway that crossed the mountains west of Chihuahua. He found a quiet looking inn on the south side of Ciudad Acuña and put the cover over his bike before settling in for the night, and once in the little room he didn't even bother to get out of his riding gear; he just flopped down on the bed and promptly fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

He spent three days making his way to Chihuahua, and once there he found a mechanic to change the oil and the BMW's filters, and then, after another night in a sleepy little inn, he turned west into the mountains, not quite sure where he was going but reasonably sure he'd know the right place when he found it.

+++++

He stumbled into the village of Batopilas on his seventh night in Mexico, and felt by then beyond exhausted. He ached everywhere and for some reason his groin burned, but he put that off to all the long hours spent in the saddle. He pulled into an upscale looking lodge and inquired about a long term stay, but by then all he wanted to do was lay down...

"How long did you have in mind?" the proprietor asked.

"I'm a writer," Harwell 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. So, how 'bout 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.

"And you are a physician?"

"I am, yes. General surgery."

"And you are writing about surgery?"

"No, I'm writing a novel about the Gulf War. I served 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 two nice restaurants in town. And of course breakfast is included with your room."

"Internet?"

"Just here in the main building, I'm afraid. We have a computer for your use, but it is a dial up modem. 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, pointing to a room full of potted palms, complete with squawking parakeet.

"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 the room, then he showered and changed into 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 groin burned ever worse now, and he felt a deep muscle spasm taking root inside his left thigh as he walked around the bike.

After dinner he fired off an email to Quintana from the lodge's computer, then returned to his room to wait for the reply.

He woke in the middle of the night with gut ripping cramps accompanied with 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 leaving Texas. He shrugged, knowing there wasn't a whole lot he could do about it right now, so he concentrated on drinking bottled water between bouts on the toilet. By 0530 there was blood in his stool and he groaned at the implications: he was going to need antibiotics and this tiny village couldn't possibly have a doctor -- or even a pharmacy.

"The closest clinic is in Guachochi," the proprietress now working the front desk 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 of the pink sludge right there at the desk.

"How far is it?" Harwell groaned as his gut twisted into another barrel roll.

"Are you on the motorcycle?"

He nodded. "Yup. Lucky me."

"It will take all day, I'm afraid, but if you leave soon you might avoid the rains."

"The rains?" he moaned.

"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 in Texas anymore, and that now 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 still a free man. "Alright," he sighed. "Do you have a hotel safe? I want to leave a few things if I may."

"Of course," the woman said, "and 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...it was too soon, he realized as he turned and sprinted for the restroom off the lobby. He made it just in time.

+++++

He pulled into the clinic parking lot a little before eight that evening, but 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 last 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 completely dehydrated now, he was near the end of his rope.

He had just got the bike up on the side-stand and was making his way through blowing sleet to the clinic entrance when he collapsed just outside the door.

+++++

He felt the stinging pinch of an IV, heard the calm, reassuring voices 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? Was he in a prison hospital?

He grimaced at the thought and opened his eyes, but he saw a very cute American girl drawing blood from a stick in his right arm and another, even cuter girl looking at his EKG, then this girl turned and looked at him.

"Oh, you're awake now!"

"Where am I?" Harwell sighed, mesmerized by her red hair and green eyes.

"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, and I'm doing my public service commitment here," she shrugged.

"UTMB Galveston," he smiled, telling yet another little white lie.

"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 or so," she said, knocking his knee with her clipboard. "And look at it this way...you do me a favor and maybe 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 a few hours -- but he really was feeling a lot better. He shivered once and a nurse draped a hot blanket over him and he fell into a deep sleep...again. When the dreams came his stepfather was running out the back door and headed for Mexico...

+++++

The overhead lights weren't the best but the instruments were clean and the OR was spotless, now he stood over an 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 had just made it back to his bed before he passed out. Again.

He woke early in the morning and saw two bags of antibiotics and a bag of platelets running, and he didn't know what to make of that. "What the hell?" he wondered out loud.

McKinnon came in an hour later and when she saw he was awake she pulled up a chair. "Your white count is in the basement, Doctor -- uh -- Smith. And your right nut is as hard as a golf ball. Some of the cord, too."

"Fuck."

"My surgeon will be here this afternoon, and we should do an orchiectomy first thing."

"All my stuff is over in Batopilas..."

"At the Lodge?"

"Yeah."

"I know Martin. I'll have 'em put your stuff in storage 'til we can run over and pick it up."

"We?"

"You won't be riding that bike for a while, if you know what I mean."

"We?"

"Yeah. We'll treat you here, and you can work off your bill with the rest of the indentured servants working here."

"I've got to be in Creel tomorrow morning."

"That isn't going to happen."

"You have internet here?"

"If you don't mind me asking, which cartel got to you? Sinaloa?"

He nodded.

"Quintana?" she sighed knowingly.

"That's right. How'd you know?"

She chuckled. "Half the docs working in Mexico these days got sucked into their fentanyl operations. There used to be a shortage of doctors down here. No more. You can find better surgeons in Puerto Vallarta than you can in Dallas these days."

He nodded, if only because he'd already figured as much.

"I can get in touch with him if you like, but I'll need to know your name."

"Gene. Just tell him Gene, okay? He'll know who you're talking about."

She looked away and shook her head. "Sooner or later you're gonna have to trust someone."

"I'm not there yet."

"How long you been on the run?"

"A week."

"Shit. No wonder..."

"Did you run an AFP?"

"No. Our tech would have to get supplies from Creel to run that one."

"Sorry...it's just a lot to wrap my head around." He took a deep breath and shook his head. "I thought I felt something down there, like a burn, a pulled muscle kind of thing."

"Probably the cord. We can decide on chemo after we look at the histology, but retroperitoneal radiation will probably be worth looking into."