Red Sky At Night (Thorn Series Book 6)

by James W. Hall

  Pepper was one of four nurses working in the clinic. The other three had regular duties at the naval hospital but were loaned out to the pain clinic on a weekly rotation. Pepper was a local girl Bean Wilson had selected himself. Because of that, Pepper considered herself the office manager and routinely ordered the other nurses around, Greta heard plenty of grumbling from them, but the doctor always seemed to side with Pepper. In her six weeks at the clinic, Greta tried several times to befriend Pepper, but the woman was alternately remote and rude. Greta was fairly sure it was territorial, another woman trespassing in her lair. Spreading her scent.

  "You got about an hour before your next bolus. You should be about as clearheaded right now as you're going to be all day."

  "I'm awake."

  "You think you can stay that way long enough to get up and pee and do your other bathroom business?"

  "I need help."

  "I know you do, honey. That's why I came by. To get you in there before you shit the sheets."

  "I can get you immunity. You testify against him, you won't serve any time. I can promise you that."

  "Immunity? What the hell would I want with that? I had every vaccination there is. You name it, I'm immune to it."

  She cocked a hip and grinned.

  "Pepper, I'm a federal agent. They're not going to stop looking for me. You're going to do some heavy time for this if you don't cooperate."

  "They can send in the army and navy and the Green Berets if they want. I'm not deserting Bean. He's getting close. He's almost there. Going to be the biggest damn scientific breakthrough of the twentieth century. Biggest thing since penicillin. If a couple of federal agents have to disappear in the meantime, well, I don't think that's much price to pay."

  "What breakthrough?"

  "The drug he's working on. Reason you're here."

  Pepper came over to the V-berth and scooped Greta up in her arms, grunting and complaining that Greta was a hell of a lot heavier than she looked, and she carried her into the tiny head just beyond the door to the forward stateroom. Greta got only a quick look at the sights beyond her door. The narrow hallway was paneled in dark mahogany and the carpets were burgundy. There appeared to be two other cabins beside Greta's narrow wedge of space in the bow of the boat. It was one of those old mahogany yachts from forty or fifty years earlier. Fitted out in the sumptuous and dreary style of mid-twentieth-century funeral parlors. Heavy brass fixtures, lamps with golden shades, meant to honey the light. The carpet smelled of terminal mildew and there were constant creaks and moans in the timbers of the ship—even tonight, when the sea outside was perfectly calm.

  Pepper positioned her on the toilet, helped rearrange her blue surgical scrub and pull down her panties.

  "You're not going to fall off now, are you?"

  "There's nowhere to fall."

  "Look," Pepper said. "I been meaning to ask you something. I noticed you around the clinic, how you did your face, your makeup I mean, and I was wondering if, you know, you could show me how you do a couple of things. Like girl to girl."

  Greta stared at her.

  "I mean, I know some of the basics, and I'm getting good advice from a girl at the cosmetics counter out at Searstown, but I thought, if you didn't mind, maybe you could go over one or two problem issues with me."

  Greta took a breath. She studied Pepper's face in the mirror. The girl seemed sincere, the first vulnerable note she'd heard in her voice.

  "What do you want to know?"

  "Like the way my eyes are now. Start there. Any suggestions you might have. Something's not right, but I can't figure out what."

  Greta took a breath.

  "A good craftsman leaves no traces."

  "What?"

  "You're being a little heavy-handed, Pepper. Scooping it on."

  "But you want them to see it, right? What's the use of putting it on, if they can't see it?"

  "You want them to notice you, not your eyeliner."

  After a moment's pout, Pepper turned to the lavatory mirror, stared at herself for a moment, then turned on the water and began to wash her face. When she'd dried herself, she set out her array of sponges, velour puffs, brushes.

  For the next hour Greta helped her define her eyes, feather her foundation, plump her lips. They experimented with different blends of colors, harder lines, softer ones, Pepper peering into the mirror while Greta talked her through it.

  At one stage, after an arduous ten minutes of work, Pepper swung around from the mirror to show Greta two completely different eyes, one tiny, one huge.

  "I look like one of those goddamn Dick Tracy freaks."

  Pepper stood there for a few seconds, the look on her face impossible to decipher.

  "Yes," Greta said. "You do."

  Pepper's lips quivered as though she were about to bawl, then at the last second she settled on a smile, and before Greta could stop herself she laughed. Pepper hesitated, staring at her sternly, then her mouth relaxed and she chuckled back. Greta and this woman who was holding her hostage, who'd helped implant a spinal pump in her belly, giggling like schoolgirls.

  Finally, with Greta doing a good deal of the detail work, Pepper got her face on. And to Greta's amazement, she looked better. No one was going to mistake her for a runway beauty, but the sluttish air had vanished and a more innocent, appealing young woman was showing through. Pepper smiled.

  "Hell, that's pretty good. Only problem is, I'll never be able to do it again."

  "It takes practice, that's all."

  Pepper moved to the bathroom door.

  "Well, your suppositories are there on the sink," she said. "Everything else you need's right there. When you get done, you just crawl on back into the bedroom."

  "What?"

  "I have to go," Pepper said, smiling mischievously. "Got a hot date. Hot and hung."

  "Don't, Pepper. Don't do this."

  "You sleep tight now, Agent Masterson. And thanks for the help."

  "Don't go. Please, we need to talk."

  "Now what do you think, just because you helped me with my makeup, I'm supposed to let you go free? That what you had in mind, is it? Well, I hate to disappoint. But night-night. I'll see you in the morning, 'cause right now I gotta go see about smudging this lipstick."

  She shut the door and a minute or two later Greta heard the outboard crank to life. It idled for a moment, then roared away into the distance.

  "Shit, shit, shit."

  Greta rocked back against the toilet tank. She took a long breath, blew it out. So much for female bonding. The woman wasn't as malleable as she seemed. And not nearly as dumb.

  As near as Greta could figure, it was Friday night. Nine-thirty according to the green glow of the digital clock sitting on a bare white shelf across from her. Less than an hour till she heard again that noise she'd come to dread, the quiet hum of the pump embedded in her body delivering its powerful spurt of morphine.

  She knew a good deal about these pumps. During her first weeks in the clinic she'd considered having the surgery. She'd examined a couple of the units she'd found on Wilson's shelves, silver devices as small as a baby's fist. The pump had a collapsible drug reservoir, microprocessor circuitry, a lithium battery, a tiny antenna. It could run for a couple of years on that battery, and with the antenna the doctor could reprogram the pump to deliver more or less drug at variable intervals. He simply held a black plastic transmitter wand over the patient's belly and typed a few coded instructions into a laptop computer wired to the wand, and, lo and behold, the pump received a new set of commands, invisibly and magically through the flesh. Noninvasively programmable, the literature said. Acoustic transducer, peristaltic pump, bacterial retentive filter, and fill port with self-sealing septum and needle stop. All of which meant that the spinal pump could be refilled with a long thin needle, a delicate injection through the belly of the patient.

  Also on his shelves Greta had seen the complicated catheter arrangement, the same unit that now curled beneath the flesh
at the edge of her rib cage and looped up to the top of her spinal column, where the drug seeped out of a six-hole spout. All that was inside her now. A pound of hardware, maybe slightly more. And though she could feel a vague dulling of the pain in her arthritic elbow, the drug had almost no effect on her phantom pain, the searing burn in her legs and feet. The fire continued to boil her flesh every waking second without relief. Even in her sleep she could feel the nerve fibers smolder.

  A few weeks back Greta had gotten to know Harry Crowell, a Desert Storm vet, a young black man who for years had been suffering from the effects of a brutal tank collision on the sands of Iraq. In the course of two years Harry had four back operations but was still in constant, racking pain. His condition was known as sympathetic dystrophy. His legs were bright crimson, viciously inflamed, the flesh peeling away in flakes as big as potato chips. The skin so agonizing to the touch that Harry spent all his waking hours propped on his bed, naked. Even the air moving against his flesh was a torment.

  Greta had been in the treatment room when Bean Wilson met Harry the morning after his morphine pump had been installed and asked him if he was feeling any pain.

  "Shit yeah, Doc, my legs still hurt like hell," Harry said. "Only now I don't care."

  But Greta still cared. The morphine had not changed that. In fact, she cared more than ever. They could flood her veins with any drug they wanted, it wouldn't matter. The fire was still raging in her legs, but she had converted it now. Turned the pain to fuel, powering her anger.

  When her bowels were clear and she was cleaned up again, she took a deep breath, spent a moment analyzing the physics of her situation, then grabbed the lip of the sink and hauled herself forward until she toppled from the toilet seat. For a moment or two she sprawled on the cramped floor, her chin on the carpet just beyond the doorway. She gathered her breath again, pried herself up on her elbows, and started the slow, impossible crawl down the twenty-foot passageway toward the breezy darkness and the stars.

  It took ten minutes, maybe fifteen, to make those six or seven steps. And ten more to scratch and scuff her way up the four stairs to the outer deck. By the time she was out in the night air, her right wrist was bleeding from a carpet nail and two of her fingernails were broken to the quick. But she was outside now and none of her pain mattered. The sparkling sky, the clank of distant halyards.

  She scooted across the teak deck, stopped, looked around the cockpit, saw the white box against the transom wall. She crawled over to it, lifted the lid, pulled out one of the orange life jackets and wrestled into it.

  Speeding up her pace, she crawled over to the starboard side, then, balancing on her senseless knees, she used a cleat to pull herself up to the gunwale.

  A mile or two to the north was the ivory phosphorescence of Key West, and another half mile to the west was a scattering of lights out across the dark sea. Other boats at anchor, live-aboards, winter people waiting for the last possible second to head north.

  Greta had been a better than average swimmer once. She'd done laps at the university pool one entire year when she was under the impression that boys found swimmers sexy. Her only hesitation in going overboard was the tide.

  Many afternoons in the last six weeks she'd wheeled herself down to Mallory Square for the sunset carnival and she'd seen the big rollers the current sometimes produced at the mouth of the harbor. She was certain a changing tide could sweep even the strongest swimmer miles off course before it went slack again.

  But there was no time to debate it, no time to gauge the lunar cycles. She had maybe half an hour before her pump drenched her spine again with morphine, and if she was in the water at the time, there was little chance she'd keep herself afloat. The hum would begin and in seconds Greta would sink into the chemical haze. Even the life jacket would not keep her face out of the water.

  She dragged her body up to the wide teak gunwale and ducked beneath the chrome rail, took a look at the long drop, then looked out across the harbor, measuring her strength against that watery distance. Then she rolled herself overboard.

  Only after she was floundering in the air did she realize she could no longer control her body well enough to dive. She dropped fast and clumsily, the water rushing up, and she landed with a vicious smack on her right side.

  She must have sunk a dozen feet, and without the use of her legs she had to churn her arms furiously through the cool, black water, her lungs flaming as she dragged herself upward until finally she broke through to the delicious air.

  Treading water, she gasped and splashed, felt the panic clench her gut.

  Even with the life jacket, it was all she could do to keep her chin above the slapping sea. She rolled onto her back and it was a mild improvement. Greta hung there for a moment, then tried to swim. Never much of a backstroker, she windmilled vainly for a minute or two, then rolled back on her belly to check her progress. The big white cabin cruiser was still the same few feet behind her.

  She took a long, deep drink of air, then on her stomach she began to swim. An Australian crawl, head high out of the water, her eyes locked on the shore.

  Picking out a spit of land, a green lamp burning there, a place she'd decided was the closest spot, Greta focused, not letting herself think or feel, not letting herself count the minutes or try to add up how much time she had left before the pump switched on, just reaching out with her left hand, grabbing water, pulling it past her, reaching out with her right.

  She swam and her legs trailed behind her. They did not hurt. Nothing hurt. She felt fine, swimming; Greta Masterson swimming to shore on a gorgeous subtropical night. No tide to contend with either, a mile or two, maybe slightly more. Difficult but not impossible, especially with her adrenal gland in hyperdrive. Swimming through the dark water without fear of sharks or barracuda or jellyfish, confident now, just feeling the good rhythm of her arms. Those arms and shoulders that were far stronger than they'd been before her fall. All the rehab work she'd done, the miles she'd put on her wheelchair, those strong arms picking up the slack of her legs. Strong, strong arms. Greta with one thought. Holding to that green light burning on the spit of land, finding a nice cadence in her stroke and her breath, keeping her head high. The water smooth. Thinking of Suzy. Her daughter. Suzy and the green light.

  Then she heard the noise approaching from behind her, an outboard engine. And she stopped, swiveled to peer back into the dark at the rubber raft, a person standing up behind the console, swinging a flashlight back and forth before them. The yellow light washed over the water. One of those flashlights boaters used with half a million candlepower. A little patch of noon.

  Panting hard, Greta turned back to the green light. She held her head up and resumed her stroke. Quieter now, careful to slice her arms neatly into the water, careful to dig as much water as possible past her with each pull. Fast but without splashing. She swam and saw the spotlight lay a path to her right, begin a sweep in her direction. Then it halted and swung the other way. She heard the outboard motor muttering closer.

  One stroke after another, Greta swam as fast and noiselessly as she could. Figuring a backup plan. The closer she was to shore, the more likely someone was to hear her scream. She was cold inside, quiet, secure. The panic had burned itself out and now she was strong and fast, her arms powerful and warm and efficient.

  She swam closer to shore, closer and closer as the inflatable zigzagged behind her, the spotlight straying close to her once or twice but missing her. She was maybe two hundred yards from the green light when she felt the quiet whir in her belly. The pulse of morphine had begun to move beneath her flesh, snaking back to her spinal canal. A minute, two minutes, no more than that until the dense cloud descended.

  Greta focused on the shape of her stroke, made each one count. She could see the shadowy forms of people walking along the seawall. She would get a few yards closer, then use her last seconds to scream for help. A perfect stroke, another one, gliding across the surface of the black water, the dense aroma of se
aweed all around her and the harsh rumble of a motorcycle accelerating up Duval. Greta's mind flooding with ethereal light.

  But it was no motorcycle. And it was not the light of ecstasy.

  It was the raft, the spotlight. She felt the vibration of the prop churning through the sea, was blinded by the half-million candles. She halted, treaded water, ducked her eyes away from the painful glare. Too breathless to scream, too drugged to lift her arms for another stroke.

  The light switched off and a moment later a round life buoy splashed a yard in front of her. She hesitated a moment, but the morphine had begun to saturate her spine, and the muscles in her shoulders were melting. She nudged forward and hooked her arm through the buoy and a second later felt her body tugged back toward the raft.

  "Nice night for a swim."

  It wasn't Pepper. It was a man's voice. A voice she couldn't place. Not Bean Wilson's, she knew that much. Some stranger hearing her thrash across the bay, noticing her dire condition, had done what any good sailor would do. She was saved. Drawn back into the civilized world where laws ruled, where people of good will rescued others in danger. The world where good doctors could undo what bad doctors had done. She was alive. Drenched and weak, but safe.

  The man hauled her close to the raft, then knelt at the edge, took hold of her armpits, and dragged her up over the rubber sides.

  Greta flopped onto the floor of the raft and stared up at the stars. A million of them tonight, as if all the dirty layers of the atmosphere had been peeled away to reveal the heavens in splendid clarity.

  "You need to see a doctor," the man said. "You look terrible."

  The outboard roared to life and the raft swung in a wide arc and the wind was cold over Greta's wet surgical scrub. She lifted her head and scooted backward, propping her shoulders against the rubber sides. In the glow of the console lights she could barely make out the man's face. For a moment she couldn't put a name to him. Sure she knew the guy, but not certain which time, which place. The morphine swirling it all together.