[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."
