Chapter Seven
"There's another turn-off to the right up ahead," Sheriff Perkins noted.
"I think I smell wood burning," Chip noted, concentrating on the faint smell lightly scenting the breezy cool night.
Perkins nodded and reached for the radio mic. "Unit 3, proceed on the main road; we'll investigate this side road."
"Ten-four."
Perkins shipped the mic and then made the sharp turn onto a narrow dirt road.
"Looks like fresh tread marks," Chip noted, leaning forward to see the silty dirt and the deep tread marks still present in the breeze.
"Yeah, but it could be locals, or a vacationer," he reminded Chip.
Chip nodded, his attention divided between watching for signs of life and following the faint smell of wood burning in the distance.
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Lee wasn't unprepared for her attack; he had hoped that he had pushed her over the edge enough to push her into acting foolishly. He allowed her to close in completely as she committed herself to the attack, attempting to plunge the knife into his heart. Lee reached up with one hand to stop the downward motion of the knife and pulled her yet closer, grabbing her waist in the process. In one swift move, he pulled her down on him and rolled her over on her back, holding the hand bearing the knife down as he used his body weight to counter her struggles.
She bucked wildly under him, but he managed to hold her down, finding strength from deep within, despite his weakened state. It was then that her eyes tightened in determination and she found her target, kicking Lee's vulnerable broken leg. He yelled in pain and his hold faltered for only a second, but she seized upon the moment, kicking him off her. He rolled in pain and tumbled off the bed landing on his back.
Lee's vision blurred; his broken leg suffering again from the impact of the fall. The next thing he knew she was screaming wildly and diving from the bed with the knife poised in a strike position. He barely had time to thwart her attack, rolling with the last of his strength as she descended, pinning her under him once again. He expected to continue the struggle, when all the fight suddenly drained from her body. He looked down to see a splotch of blood on her blouse and realized that she had lost control of the knife and that it was now embedded in her stomach.
He rolled off her as best as his sluggish body would allow him; she had been right, paralysis was setting in, though he could still feel the agony of his injuries, his legs had become nearly useless. He ignored both his own suffering and his condition to assess the damage.
"Damn it, Lauren! Why did you make me do it?" he questioned angrily mixed with sorrow at her injury.
"Lee…" she cried in sheer pain, "hurts... help me."
She reached for the offending knife to pull it out when he stopped her hand.
"Leave it there; you'll bleed to death if you remove it."
"Help… me," she cried pitifully.
"Put pressure here," he instructed, "don't pull it out and I'll get help," he said, dipping his head and blinking away the pain. The struggle had spent what little reserves he had left.
"Lee... I really did love you," she said in a whimper.
He looked at her, but didn't answer; he seriously doubted that she was capable of loving anyone. Instead, he attempted to use the bed to pull himself up, but only got as far as his knees and fell back. It was simply too much; his legs had stopped working. He lay for a moment breathing hard and trying to gather his strength when her cries of pain refocused him.
"I'll be back," he breathed out and began scooting himself away from her.
"Don't leave me… Lee," she begged.
"Is there a phone here?" he asked, scooting his way back until he cleared her legs.
"Yes," she managed.
He heard her ragged breaths behind him, as he crawled through the open bedroom door, scooting along the hardwood floor and dragging himself arm over arm through the hall in a monumental effort to reach the phone. He was deathly ill, and he was well aware the energy he was expending was draining away his life; but the humanity in him couldn't let her die without trying. So, he continued to drag himself until he reached the cabin living room. He scanned the room, looking for the phone when he heard something behind him. Instinctively, he looked over his shoulder to see Lauren staggering out of the bedroom; her shirt full of blood and the knife in her hand, raised high and coming for him.
She took one step at a time, using one hand to steady herself on the wall, the other holding the knife as she breathed raggedly for the effort.
"I'm coming… for you… Lee," she promised, every step a massive effort, fueled by her maniacal, psychotic need to kill.
Lee scooted further away from her, not knowing how long either of them could keep going.
"Once I've loved you… you have to die," she declared, as she seemed to find strength with each new step. "Don't you know… that's how it works? A black widow… always kills… her mate," she said airily with eerily disturbing eyes.
"Lauren, stop," he urged, attempting to reach some sane part of her. "You need help, let me help you." He stopped to breathe and discovered that he couldn't move any further. The paralysis had moved up his legs to his hips, and now his arms were refusing to obey him; no doubt helped along by the increased blood flow in his exertion. In his final act of self-preservation, he rolled on his back hoping to fight her off as she moved closer to him.
Lauren Crane pushed herself away from the wall, swaying only slightly before righting herself and smiling wickedly; one hand holding her bloody middle, the other with the knife raised high.
"You can't move anymore… can you, Lee?" she breathed out, clearly weakened by enormous blood loss as evidenced by the large red stain on her blouse.
"Listen to me, Lauren, you don't have to do this," he reasoned with a painful swallow. "I'm half-dead already," he reasoned, and realizing that if she struck now he'd be unable to protect himself.
She looked him in the eyes, and something changed in her countenance. In that moment, he thought he saw the caring wife she had pretended to be for three months. He thought, perhaps, he had reached her, but then she looked down at the red splotch of blood on her blouse and chuckled; seeing, at least in her mind, the red hour glass marking of a black widow.
The wild eyes of a psychotic homicidal maniac returned as she raised the knife intending to plunge it deep into his torso when an unexpected voice cut through the air and stopped her in mid-motion.
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"Lauren! No!" Chip Morton yelled, taking a step into the cabin through the door. "Put it down, Lauren," he coaxed as Lee lay helpless under her, breathing hard with the coral snake venom stealing all his strength in the devastating symptoms of its venom.
She remained with her hand poised ready to strike, her eyes moving back and forth between from the gravely ill man under her to Morton standing in the doorway.
"It's over, Lauren," Lee said airily.
"No Darling," she whispered, too low for Chip to hear across the room. "Not until you're DEAD!" she said, screaming on the last word and plunging the knife in a downward movement.
Instantly, the sound of a gun report stopped her motion, the momentum of Sheriff Perkin's bullet throwing her to one side as she lay curled in a fetal position, the knife still clutched in her hand.
Chip crossed the floor quickly, coming to Lee's side as Perkins took a knee beside Lauren.
Lee's head rolled toward Lauren, his view obscured by the sheriff. "Is… she…?" He swallowed hard, unable to continue.
Chip glanced over at Perkins, his negative nod indicating the answer.
"She's dead, Lee," Chip answered.
"Damn," he groaned, partly out of regret, mostly because the deadly snake's venom was stealing his life away.
"Let's get you out of here, Lee," Chip said, knowing they didn't have any time to spare.
"Can't… move," he replied his speech slurred and too ill for many more words.
"You grab his shoulders, I'll get his feet," Perkins suggested, adding a short tilt of his head toward Lauren's dead body. "There's nothing else that can be done for her, my men will secure the scene after we get Commander Crane help."
"Watch his leg, it may be broken," Chip reminded, as Perkins nodded and reached for his knees instead, invoking a painful groan at his legs being moved at all, with the paralysis only working one-way as Lee was still acutely aware of his pain even though he couldn't move his limbs.
"He's bad off, he's going to need that Medevac," Chip noted, as the two men picked Lee up and carried him across the cabin to the front door.
"I have an idea about that," the Sheriff answered, indicating he had it covered.
Lee's eyes were closed, his forehead furled, apparently just enduring the man-handling ride to the car.
"Almost there," Chip encouraged as Lee's breathing seemed even more labored than before.
They laid him in the back of the SUV, with Chip climbing in to tend to Lee and Perkins heading for the driver's side. Perkins put the vehicle in gear and wasted no time backing out.
"It's going to be bumpy," he said over his shoulder.
"We'll be all right, just get us someplace where we can get a chopper down," Chip urged, pulling out the SAT phone and dialing.
"Nelson."
"Admiral, we found him. He's in bad shape, he'll need treatment soon."
"We're on our way; we just need to know where."
"Tell him Prospector's Meadow, it's on the topographic maps," Perkins said over his shoulder. "We'll set up a perimeter with flares to land," he added, answering the question of how the helicopter would land in the middle of the forest at night.
Chip nodded and relayed the message. "Sheriff Perkins says Prospector's Meadow; he's going to mark out a landing site with flares."
"Very well, ETA is roughly an hour."
"Aye Sir, hurry," he added just as Perkins slowed down at the sight of the second sheriff vehicle approaching them on the dirt road. He reached for his radio, "Ramirez; Perkins here. We've got a dead body at the cabin at the end of the road about a half-mile back. Drop Hawkins off to secure the scene and meet us at Prospector's Meadow to meet the Medevac."
"Ten-four," Ramirez answered, as the two vehicles each crowded the edge of the small road to allow one another to pass.
Chip was busy wrapping an emergency blanket around Lee and immobilizing his leg when he heard a faint voice.
"Chip…"
"I'm here, Lee."
"Not sure… gonna make it," he said airily; his eyes open, but strangely drooping.
"Lee…" Chip said before being interrupted by his best friend's weak voice.
"She was crazy, Chip. Not three dead husbands… seven… I was supposed to be eight…" he said, stopping to swallow.
"Hold on, Lee," Chip said, grabbing a bottle of water from the emergency supplies and holding his head to take a drink.
Lee swallowed and nodded he couldn't take anymore.
"Save your strength," Chip urged but Lee ignored his request, continuing in an overwhelming need to report.
"Wasn't stealing secrets… she didn't even know Rod… was ONI… just a homicidal maniac…" he added, and then groaned.
"Lee…"
"She played me, Chip… fooled me… for a long time," he breathed out, his weakened physical state making his emotions all too raw.
Chip nodded, remembering how conflicted Lee's emotions were until she finally started engaging in active mind games with his feigned PTSD.
"A black widow…" he said before his head dropped to one side unconscious.
Chip swallowed in concern. "How soon till we reach the landing site?" he called to Perkins, making eye contact through the rearview mirror.
"Ten to fifteen," Perkins answered, just as the dust stirred from Ramirez' SUV became visible behind them, having dropped off Hawkins at the cabin and then speeding to catch up with them.
Chip nodded and blew a breath out, placing a worried hand on Lee's shoulder. "Hold on, buddy… just hold on," he whispered, wondering if the Black Widow would yet add one final victim to her list of dead husbands.
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"There!" Admiral Nelson said, pointing down at a circle of red flares.
"How big is the meadow?" the pilot asked, wanting to know how tight a fit he was going to have setting the helicopter down in a forest when all he could see was about five feet out from the flares.
"Chip, we've got the landing zone in sight. The pilot wants to know how much clearance the zone has from the surrounding trees."
"It's a good-sized meadow, Sir. The size of a football field, at least."
The pilot nodded his approval.
"Very well, clear the landing zone, we're coming in."
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Jamie sat with his doctor's bag in his lap. He heard the conversation in the cockpit through his headphones and knew they were about to land. He sighed, looking down to his feet where the rest of his medical supplies sat, and thought back to all the blood tests he had drawn from Lee since this nightmare began over three months ago. His forehead tightened in regret, remembering how much faith Lee had placed in him to look for any anomaly in his blood that would signal that Lauren Crane was making her move.
It was all so ludicrous; it seemed like he was stuck in a bad dream, playing out the bizarre part that the mind doles out in wild roles and circumstances. The thought of a woman killing three prior husbands was bad enough, but the idea that a man would willingly put himself in harm's way by marrying her was nearly absurd. Of course, it made perfect sense when that man was Lee Crane.
He felt the helicopter's forward movement stop as the large aircraft hovered for a moment and looked ahead to see a crude red circle lit up for the landing zone. He focused himself, knowing that Lee needed him to be on his game, but his moment of self-recrimination wouldn't let go quite so easily.
Pull yourself together, Will, he admonished silently. He knew that he and his team had spotted the trace amount of drug, just as he promised Lee he'd do; and that it had only taken he and Dr. Erickson four hours to discover the synthetic drug simulating elapid venom. They had done their job, but it would all be for nothing if they didn't get to Lee in time.
He had no idea what to expect, but after witnessing how Lauren Crane tried to derail Lee's "recovery", he knew that she was capable of the murders she was suspected of. He was convinced of that when she staged Lee's bathroom with blood in his coffee cup and a swim fin to remind him of Patterson's "severed foot." The diseased mind that could push a man suffering from PTSD that far, was capable of worse he had decided. He would never understand the depravity of man to cruelly inflict pain on another human being. But to realize that Lee's injuries this time came from a woman he actually married was so foreign he couldn't fathom it. Evil knows no boundaries; he knew that, he only hoped he'd be able to help Lee fight for his life now; because he was convinced that that's what he was doing at this very moment.
The helicopter descended and Jamie held onto his medical bag tightly, ready to pull off his headset and jump into action as soon as the marine corporal opened the bay door.
Keep fighting, Lee, he urged his friend and captain silently. He felt the soft thud of the landing and readied himself. A few seconds later the door was open and he was running into action, not even waiting for Admiral Nelson to exit the chopper.
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Sheriff Perkins met Jamie across the landing zone and guided him to the SUV where Lee lay. The wind generated from the helicopter blades left a biting chill in Jamie's bones which he ignored, his focus completely on his patient. Chip saw his approach and jumped out to give Jamieson more room.
"How long has he been like this?" Jamie asked, noting right away Lee's fitful state, his head tossing and turning with unchecked groans escaping through airy labored breaths.
"Since he fell unconscious, about a half-hour ago," Chip replied, clearly worried as well.
"What about his speech? Any slurring?"
"Yes, and his eyes were strange."
Jamie nodded, recognizing the droopy eye symptom even though his patient was unconscious, as all previous self-recrimination took a back seat to the medical emergency. Dr. Jamieson was in professional mode; no time to coddle his personal concerns or regrets for not finding the drug's secrets sooner. Right now, all that mattered was taking care of his critically ill patient. He raised the hypo up and adjusted the plunger, removing air bubbles before he injected his patient with his first dose of antivenin. As is often the case, multiple doses were expected, but at least his body would have a fighting chance with this first dose.
Jamie climbed out, giving the marines room to transfer Lee onto a stretcher; he'd stabilize him in the helicopter. The marines were efficient, moving Lee and strapping him down before pulling him out of the back of the SUV. They paused as Jamie felt Lee's pulse and then nodded for them to continue to the chopper. He followed behind, ignoring everything else going on around him and completely focused on Lee Crane's care.
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Harry sidled up next to Chip watching Jamie's medical ministrations.
"What about Lauren?" he asked, hoping that she had not slipped away somehow.
"When we got there, she was hovering over Lee with a knife. He couldn't move anymore, she intended on ending his life right then and there." He paused a moment then continued. "She's dead. We gave her an opportunity to surrender, but she went for Lee again. Sheriff Perkins had no choice."
Harry nodded, just as Perkins stepped in closer, addressing the admiral and speaking loudly over the helicopter blades.
"My men and I will secure the scene."
"Thank you, Sheriff Perkins. ONI will be in contact with you regarding whatever evidence you find," Harry instructed, as Lee's stretcher was pulled from the SUV.
"Got it," Perkins said, even as all their eyes were drawn to the critically ill man being hustled to the helicopter.
Harry offered a hand out to the Sheriff. "Thanks for everything, Sheriff," he offered sincerely. "Come as soon as you can, Chip."
"Aye Sir," he acknowledged, wishing he could climb in the chopper with them, but realizing that FS-1 would afford him a fast ride home, nonetheless.
He stepped back and watched as Harry boarded, followed by the chopper winding up for a vertical take-off. Perkins held his hat in place as a rush of wind from the chopper threatened to dislodge it from his head. Once the chopper reached an altitude to clear the trees it turned, picking up speed, before heading off into the night. They secured the flares to guard against a forest fire and then headed back to the cabin.
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Lee drifted off to a pained sleep; a flash of light took him to the familiar dream of standing on the edge of an open grave watching a coffin lowering into the pit below. The "widow" dressed in a black dress stood on the opposite side of the grave, dabbing her eyes under her black lace veil, playing out a scene he had dreamed earlier in the day. As the coffin reached its destination six feet below, the grave diggers paused for her to toss in the first handful of dirt. She reached down, picking up the loose soil at her feet and held it out over the coffin, allowing it to sprinkle slowly onto the box below. Lee watched as the dark soil suddenly turned into a white powder, dropping onto the coffin and heaping into a large peak before she stepped away, allowing the grave diggers to finish their job. He turned to watch the widow walk away dabbing at her eyes and furled his forehead in question of who was being buried. Behind him, the sound of earth being shoveled onto the coffin below caught his attention and he turned back, compelled to watch. Another shovel of dirt was heaved below, but the coffin was now absent as the dirt covered the corpse completely, all except for the face. Panic overtook him, though he was frozen in place at the recognition that the corpse was him. His eyes and mouth were open, as if in a silent scream, then suddenly the eyes moved back and forth, begging someone without words to free him before the grave was filled. He struggled to cry out, but no one heard; no one saw that he was being buried alive…
Lee's head tossed from side to side, his mind warring with his illness in a desperate need to wake from the horrific nightmare.
"Lee?" he heard faintly, but the call was enough to bring him closer to wakefulness. Another call finally broke him free as his eyes fluttered open with an accompanying groan.
"You're safe now," Jamie assured his patient and friend. "We're on the way to the hospital. Do you understand?"
Lee searched Jamie's eyes, anchoring himself and nodding slightly. His breathing was still ragged, though the pain dulled now. His eyes trailed up to the IV hanging over him and realized it was true. He managed a small smile and closed his eyes, soaking in the hum of the engines and the loud blast of the rotors taking him home.
He drifted off again, this time far from the nightmares of Lauren Crane.
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Jamie watched Lee's labored breaths carefully, ready to intubate him should his breathing muscles succumb to the paralysis. He had treated the fang wound on his calf with a compression bandage, a new treatment the Australians had developed; surprised to see puncture marks since Lauren had used a drug to deliver the venom. He was well aware that the coral snake's envenomation system was less effective than pit vipers, though the venom was just as toxic; and with the development of antivenin the death rate had significantly fallen for coral snakes. However, Lee had received his dose in drug form, and in no doubt, significant levels. At this point, Lee Crane was fighting for his life in a full-blown medical emergency.
He was also watching Lee carefully for cardiac failure, knowing that the complications of the untreated envenomation were significant. He was keeping careful watch on his patient and had made the decision to take Lee to Med Bay in Santa Barbara instead of the nearest local hospital. The decision would cost them another hour of flight time, but his vital signs supported his decision at the time. He still believed it was the right course of action, even if he had to intubate his patient in the air. Unfortunately, his foresight had been correct, as Lee's labored breaths took a turn for the worse.
Jamie enlisted the aid of the marine medic, seeking to relieve his patient's labored breathing before he suffered a complete respiratory failure. He nodded to the medic, who raised Lee's shoulders, stretching his neck back and inserted the breathing tube. The topical anesthetic made the process easier, but the body's reflex was still to reject the intrusion until it was in place. A moment later, his patient was breathing through an air tube, the potential medical emergency averted. He continued to monitor his patient, and was very concerned that Lee hadn't woken during the intubation process as he had been known to do in the past. He would need another blood sample to know for sure, but he was already making plans for a second dose of antivenin, given Lee's current condition.
He sat back and checked his watch; another half-hour. Hold on Skipper, he urged silently and continued his skilled vigil as Operation Captain's Watch had resolutely passed from the Search and Rescue Teams to him.