Acts of Nature - By Jonathon King Page 0,48
wound was puckered and white and I guessed that it was from the constant moisture. Keeping anything dry out here was a struggle. Under these conditions, impossible. I laid the knife next to her and then poured the alcohol onto the wound and used the sterile gauze to clean it. Sherry watched but didn’t make a sound even when I picked up the flap of skin and poured more into the gash. I slathered on the antibacterial cream and then used the other sterile pads to cover and then wrap the thigh with another gauze roll, not as tight as before. She needed antibiotics, probably a straight IV drip, probably a drip with all kinds of fluid to hydrate, fight the sure infection, stop the possibility of gangrene.
“OK,” I said. “Let’s get your shoes off, make you comfortable.”
She was already looking around the room.
“Anything in the back room? Radio? Keys to the helicopter?”
I pulled off her mud-covered shoes, those funky red Keds with the yellow laces.
“Haven’t gained entry yet to check it,” I said and used the alcohol-soaked gauze to clean her toes and get a take on their color. I was looking for pinkness, hoping for circulation.
“Yeah, gained entry,” she said in a mocking tone. “I see the digital lock, Max. What’s up with that?”
I was concentrating, very carefully poking the pads of her toes with the sharp tip of a corner of the aluminum medicine tube, hoping for reaction, but getting none.
“You saw the digital lock, right, Max?”
She couldn’t feel her toes. I needed to get her out of here to a hospital.
“Yeah,” I said, standing up. “I gotta check that out. Who the hell does that out here, right?”
FIFTEEN
Harmon was in his bedroom, going through the closet, his closet, the one he didn’t share with his wife, the one in fact that he forbade her to use. He knew she probably had gone through it in years past, just looking. You don’t keep secrets from your wife for thirty years. She would have looked at his gun collection, the electronics that the company had him keep there for emergency use, maybe even the multiple passports he tucked away in a drawer. But if she had questions about those things, she didn’t bring them up. She knew that he had been in the military and left unsaid any doubts she had now of the legality of his work. It was yet another reason he was always trying to find leverage against the men who employed him. He’d seen colleagues killed and wives left behind without a clue or a safety net. He knew the company would disavow any knowledge of him and see no obligation to take care of his family if something befell him. Harmon was not the kind of man to say, “That just comes with the business.” If that were the case, he wouldn’t still be in this dangerous business, no matter how well it paid. If he went down, his instructions for his wife and all the money he had hidden over the years and the evidence against the oil company would be at her disposal. He took care of his own.
“Arlene,” he called out to his wife, who was in the kitchen and still pissed at the news that the boss had called. “Where’s that other jacket I had?”
He checked off his travel list in his head as he touched each item and stuffed it into his bag: the satellite phone, fully charged. The helicopter pilot would have the same model and they would be able to stay in touch regardless of the lack of power or cell towers in the area. His Nikon digital camera, which he’d been instructed to carry in and take detailed photos of any damage and the general disposition of the property, including any lack of foliage coverage, from the air. A couple of two-liter bottles of water because even if this was an easy hour-long drop-in, document, and get back out, he knew the danger of the humidity and the heat of the Everglades from experience. A radio frequency transmitter, routinely used to electronically unlock abandoned or sealed oil rigs and restart their power systems. His Colt revolver with the snub nose, the last one in his collection and an item he never went to work without.
“I’ve no idea. I thought you wore one on that last trip you guys took,” his wife answered, her voice growing as she approached down the hall.
“I lost that one,” Harmon