By Paths Coincident

Chapter 6

11 Years Ago

Port of Algeciras Bay, Strait of Gibralter, Spain

Doctor Mateo Villanueva Cortés, emergency physician, gripped the armrests of his seat as Jorge sent the Ambulancia de UVI móvil careening around the corner and into the Port gateway in a spray of gravel. Jorge always drove their mobile intensive care unit as if he thought it was a Formula One race car in the Grand Prix de Monaco, but he was outdoing himself today.

Mateo had been employed in the Servicios de Emergencias Médicas for sixteen years, and he had never ridden with such a Jehu of driver as this one. It was a matter of honour for Jorge to arrive on scene before the Vehículo de Intervención Rápida, and once again he had succeeded. Mateo could see the amber lights of the rapid response team's vehicle in the side mirror. Jorge would be insufferable for a week.

Glancing back at Nadia, Mateo rolled his eyes. His emergency nurse was grinning, clearly enjoying the jolting ride in the back of the ambulance far too much. She and Jorge were menaces.

Ahead of them several cars belonging to the policía were clearing the way, reminding Mateo that this call was not like all the others. This was not an illness or an accident. There was a killer loose at the Port, and his team would be running into a war zone.

Jorge slowed the vehicle as two police officers jogged up to them, weapons drawn. He rolled down the window and leaned out.

"Can you tell us where to go?" Jorge asked. "The VIR is right behind us."

"Right this way," one of the officers gestured. "There's one victim still alive over behind that second row of cargo containers. The rest, I'm afraid, are very dead." He had to shout the last sentence after them as Jorge left a layer of tyres on the asphalt. The VIR personnel would not be getting to the patient before Mateo and Nadia if Jorge could help it.

The ambulance screeched to a halt perilously close to a startled group of police clustered around one of four bodies Mateo could see. Vaulting from the vehicle, kit in hand, Mateo sprinted to the side of the victim. All of the officers moved away except for two, one trying to staunch the blood from a penetrating abdominal wound, the other kneeling beside the non-responsive young woman and breathing into what appeared to be a cobbled together trach tube made from a repurposed ballpoint pen. Behind him he heard Nadia and Jorge rushing in with the heavier equipment. Nadia had been an emergency nurse for longer than Mateo had been a doctor, so she set immediately to attaching cardiac and oxygen monitors to their patient.

"She's not breathing on her own?" Mateo asked the young officer who was continuing his primitive airway management.

In between breaths, he shook his head. "No, her throat is crushed. She was turning blue when we got here. I can't tell if she has a pulse, but since she's still bleeding, something's got to be moving, right?"

"I'm getting a pulse," Nadia informed him. "Extreme tachycardia and diminished blood pressure, so it's no wonder you're not feeling it."

"You saved her life, young man," Mateo said. "Excellent work with the cricothyroidotomy."

"The what?"

Mateo indicated the tube.

"Oh," the officer said, "I read about it on the Internet."

Dear God, Mateo thought, the fact that this woman is still alive is a miracle.

She had obviously been the victim of blunt force trauma resulting in a laryngeal fracture. He suspected unstable laryngeal cartilage and massive mucosal injuries at the least, if not disruption of the anterior commissure. The resultant severe edema and haematoma had completely blocked off her airway.