Operation: Rigid Pt. 05

I'd arrived in Veracruz almost three hours ago, and now I was on a small, mud caked bus with the PerforMex logo--a bright green sunburst with an orange oil drop in the center--barely visible on its grime covered sides. The bus was well used and had no air conditioning, but it was four-wheel drive, and appeared to be unstoppable as it roared, bounced, and slid its way down the rutted, muddy road. The first hour or so of the bus ride hadn't been so bad, other than it being incredibly hot and humid, but the roads had gotten progressively worse the farther from Veracruz we'd gone. We'd already passed through Mata de Juárez, and judging by the state of this road, if you could call this goat path a road, we had to be close to the wells.

About seven hours ago, I'd met up with four other guys from ORSS at Hobby--the large corporate airport south of Houston--where'd we boarded a small, chartered jet, with seating for twelve, for the three-hour flight from Houston to Veracruz. There was no attendant, sexy or otherwise, but it had been a pleasant enough flight. Much better than the ride from Veracruz. At least the airplane had been smooth, quiet, and had air conditioning.

The guys rotating in had been curious about the new arrival and had quizzed me during the flight and discussed what Brennan might have done to get booted from their rotation. I suspected Brennan would like to know that as well, considering Mother had used her stolen credentials to reassign him to another detail in Brazil. A few of the guys knew some of the men working the Kichwa 126 field, having worked with that crew in the past, but Mother's briefing papers had been more than adequate to satisfy their idle curiosity about friends long unseen, and allay any suspicions they may have had.

I grunted as the bus slid sideways and caromed off the side of a rut hard enough to bounce my shoulder off the wall. "Nice road," I grumbled.

Ken, the team leader, grinned at me. "Yeah. Only the best from PerforMex."

"Then what are you doing here?" Terry teased before Ken gave him the finger.

The other men knew each other well after having done several rotations together, and though they didn't exclude me, I generally wasn't part of their conversation, and was still the odd man out.

I watched the thick jungle pass only feet beyond the window. I mentally shook my head. I hadn't done a damn thing except sit in this bus, but I was already soaked with sweat from the oppressive heat and humidity, the drenching rain beyond the window doing little to cool the air. I was a fucking doctor, so what the hell was I doing here, sitting in a puddle of my own sweat, when I could be sitting in an office somewhere with air conditioning? I continued to watch the trees pass. All this because I'd been the subject of that study.

After I'd agreed to be a guinea pig for Doctor Plinkin, for the next six months, he'd poked and prodded me, and it felt like he'd drawn enough blood to fill a railroad tank car, but it'd been worth it, even if he hadn't paid me.

He'd started me out masturbating to porn. I'd rub one out in the privacy of a small, screened area, and after I did, he, or one of his assistants, would draw blood. Comparing the blood samples after my orgasm to the control group, and my own sample taken before I stepped into the private area, what he very quickly realized was I didn't produce a spike of prolactin after orgasm, but I did have an unusually large increase in dopamine. Over the course of the next two weeks, we'd repeated the test five times, and each time he got the same result.

Despite some studies to the contrary, Doctor Plinkin believed that the prolactin and dopamine interaction was a feedback regulator that was responsible for the male refractory period. Because I didn't produce the prolactin spike after orgasm, but I did get a big hit of dopamine, I didn't soften, and for any practical purpose, I had no refractory period. Once he was sure his results were repeatable, he began expanding his experiment. First, he'd had me masturbate to release multiple times, taking a blood sample after each climax, to determine if the results changed. They hadn't. He'd then introduced partners, women who volunteered to fuck me, and again he'd taken a blood sample after every orgasm, to find out if fucking produced a different result from masturbation. It didn't. He'd then gathered dozens of men with different ages, ethnicity, and cock sizes, trying to discover if any of those were a determining factor for the amount of prolactin and dopamine produced, but quickly realized there was no correlation.

After that, it was multiple partners, and I'd fucked as many as five women, one after the other, pausing only long enough for him to bleed me before I began again. I was in fucking heaven! Some of the women I fucked were stunning, others not so much, but fucking was fucking. The study was very hush-hush, but had anyone else found out, I'd have been the envy of every guy on campus.

He'd even hooked me up to an automated machine, so when I was approaching orgasm, I could punch a button to begin drawing blood continuously as I came. I'd then fucked my partner right through my rapture, hissing and snarling as I battled the pleasure, before slapping the button again as the orgasm passed, to prevent the machine from bleeding me dry.

During the tests, Dr. Plinkin often teasingly referred to me as 'the mutant.' He was incredibly excited that I was possibly subject number one of an evolutionary mutation, and for the first time in history, science would be able to track a human evolution from the original mutation. He was keenly curious if my mutation would pass to my offspring, and if it did, what would be the results in my daughters. For a while, there was a rumor around the lab that he'd advertised for volunteers to be impregnated by me, though he denied it. I knew he theorized that I, and my male offspring if they also had my ability, would be able to out compete other males for mates, and that the mutation would eventually spread through the entire human population. That would be long after my death of course, but science could track its spread from its origin... me.

As I was working on my Masters, Dr. Plinkin published his results in Nature where he laid out all his findings. In the study I was known only as 'Male Subject,' but someone involved in the test leaked that 'Male Subject' was actually Anders Kraten. I didn't mind. As word of the study spread through the campus, I suddenly found I had more pussy than one guy could possibly handle, even me. There were between twenty-five and thirty thousand female students attending the University of Texas when I was there, and over the next three years, I'd tried to fuck them all, along with several of the women professors.

I often wondered if it was Dr. Plinkin himself who leaked the news, because as the number of women available to me vastly increased, he made me promise that if any of them became pregnant, I'd tell him. Dr. Gerald Plinkin was a kind, grandfatherly man of about seventy, but if he'd been forty years younger, and spoke with a German accent, his interest in studying my children, and his request to be notified if a woman became pregnant by me, would have been downright creepy. It was still creepy enough that I made damn sure to take every precaution to prevent that from happening. Still, I'd promised him if I ever settled down, I'd let him know so he could monitor my family's progress in exchange for free healthcare.

I smiled to myself with my memories. Nothing as wild as the sex I had after Mother started setting me up, but I often fucked a different woman every night, sometimes more than one, and a couple of times, two or three at the same time. At one point, my grades began to drop because I was spending all my time balls deep in women, forcing me to have a serious discussion with myself about what was important.

Despite the unbelievable distraction of all the sexy women making themselves readily available, I'd completed not only my Masters, but my Doctor of Physical Therapy, or DPT, as well. I was putting the finishing touches on my Doctorate, and applying for residency positions, when TTS contacted me and made the proverbial offer I couldn't refuse.

Rather than spending another two or three years in residency, while making little to no money, I could go to work for them immediately, and make the same money I'd have been making once I finished my residency. It wasn't until recently that I understood why they'd come calling, but their offer had been simply too tempting to pass up.

I'd accepted their offer with the understanding I was going to complete my DPT, and they'd readily agreed. I had to make several trips from Houston to Austin for my dissertation, but TTS never said a word about me needing time off. It'd seemed like I was living a fantasy. I got to play with guns and other big boy toys all day, I had a career I could fall back on when I became tired of playing Rambo, and I was fucking more beautiful and sexy women than most men could dream of... and it had all been a lie. I'd been manipulated from the moment TTS contacted me, and now here I was, sitting in a bus in the middle of the fucking Mexican jungle, sweating my ass off. And why? To risk having my dick cut off, or worse, so I could find out the name of some Mexican drug lord?

For a guy everyone thought was so smart, I sure felt like a dumb ass. The idea of playing spy was appealing as hell, but was it worth the risk of being tortured and killed? Before I could decide, I was pulled from my introspection as the bus lumbered to a stop with a squeal of brakes. We were sitting before a gate set in a tall chain link fence, topped with rolls of razor wire, with the PerforMex logo on the fence. We were here. The gate opened and the bus growled its way through with a crash of gears.

I had plenty of time to decide. Nobody knew who I was, and if I decided to pull the plug, nobody would be the wiser. I could simply tell Mother nobody contacted me, and that would be that. As the bus swung toward the compound, I knew I wouldn't simply sit on my ass. I was here, and I had a job to do. This was the cumulation of three years of training, and I knew I'd see it through. I smiled to myself as the bus squealed to a halt in front of a large, ugly, prefab building. Besides, after Uri showed me how much fun playing Rambo could be, I wasn't sure I'd be happy sitting on a stool helping some old codger regain motion in his knee after surgery. Important work, sure, but not very exciting.

I yanked my bag off the overhead rack and began making my way down the aisle before stepping off the bus and hurrying into the building behind the other men. Out of the rain, I paused in the large room with scarred furniture and a giant television. There were five men clustered around to greet us, their bags piled by the door, and they all looked like they'd been in-country for six weeks. Their clothes, while clean, were slightly rumpled, they looked tired, and they all had beards in various states of growth.

"Who's the new guy?" one of the men asked.

"Anders. He replaced Brennan."

"Anders Kraten," I said while transferring my bag to my left hand.

"Connor," he said as he took my offered hand. "Connor Phelps. Welcome to FSH, Mexico."

I glanced at Ken. "Fucking Shit Hole," he supplied, causing me to chuckle.

"That bad, huh?" I asked.

"No, it's great... if you like bugs, snakes, mud, and bad food. A regular paradise."

"He'll find out for himself," Ken said. He jerked a thumb at a hall leading off the room. "Let's get squared away and then relieve them so they can go." He looked at me. "Come on. I'll show you your rack. After that, we have to watch the mandatory safety video, but then you'll be on your own until your shift starts."

During the flight, I'd learned that I was going to be working seven days a week for the six weeks I was in country. There were five men on each shift, with three shifts, and every two weeks, one-third of the men rotated home for their down-time. Being the junior man, I was stuck on the graveyard shift, working midnight to eight. The other two shifts were eight to four, and four to midnight. It sucked, but the wells and drilling rig ran twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, so I had plenty of company.

"Safety video, huh?" I asked as I followed the men down the hall. Along each side were doors, eight to a side. "They trust me with a firearm, but not to keep my fingers out of the machines?"

Ken snickered. "Yeah, but thems the rules. This is your rack."

He opened the door to the most depressing room I'd ever seen. It was an eight by eight-foot square box with a single tiny window and a window air conditioner cut into the wall. The walls were baby-shit green painted plywood, the floor was covered in cheap vinyl flooring that was peeling up along the edges, and the ceiling had a single naked bulb to light the entire disheartening scene. The room contained a full-size bed, a battered free-standing closet, and nothing else. I'd noticed when the bus stopped, the building was a series of trailers that connected together like Legos, so I wasn't surprised at the cheap and utilitarian space.

"Nice," I murmured as I stepped in and tossed my bag on the bed.

Ken chuckled. "Only the best from PerforMex. At least you're not hot bunking. The common room is a little better, but not much, and there's satellite television. I'll show you the chow hall when you're unpacked. Bathroom and showers are at the end of the hall," he said, indicating the direction with another jerk of his thumb.

"Got it."

"Meals are served every four hours... eight, noon, four, eight, and so on." He grinned at me. "You probably already know the drill. Drink only the bottled water or canned drinks, but you're still going to get the shits sometimes." He shook his head. "These spics, they have cast iron guts."

I didn't approve of his name calling, but I said nothing. There were assholes everywhere. "Thanks for the advice. I'm used to it."

Ken nodded. "Yeah. Shit holes are shit holes. Not much difference between Mexico and Ecuador, I guess." He became more serious. "We're all professionals, but there are three things I insist on. I'll get you a key, but I expect you to sign your weapon in and out, keep it clean and functional, and keep the armory locked at all times. I'm going to do random checks to make sure you do. You do those three things, you're not going to have any problems from me. You don't, and we're going to dance, understand? The last fucking thing I need is to have some asshole breaking in here, stealing one of our weapons, and shooting the fucking place up."

"Has that happened?"

"Not here, but yeah, once. The spic was on something nasty. Killed three and injured eight or nine."

"Jesus."

Ken nodded. "Yeah. I don't care if it's the Company-man himself, nobody touches our weapons but us... ever."

"Got it."

He smiled. "Great. Get settled in," he said before he stepped out and closed the door.

It was just after six when I'd finished being issued my compound pass, safety helmet and high-viz vest for when I was around the drill rig, and watched the safety video. The video was simple to understand. The area was dangerous, the machinery was dangerous, and in some cases, the people were dangerous. I didn't worry about it too much. ORSS didn't spend much time around the rig. Four men were spread out around the parameter of the field, with the fifth man covering the drilling rig and the gate.

It had been raining almost continuously since I arrived in country, and I was sick of the rain and mud already. I stepped back into our very humble abode and unlocked the armory, a steel rack securely mounted to the wall with a heavy bar across the ARs so they couldn't be removed without unlocking it. I removed one of the weapons, safed it, and inspected it before I checked its operation. It had been well maintained and worked smoothly.

"Meet your approval?" a man asked as he entered the common room.

"Jeremy, right? Yeah. Just seeing what I had to work with," I said as I placed the weapon back in the rack and locked it down. "Seen much action?"

Jeremy shook his head. "That's right. Nothing out of the ordinary. Thefts, mostly. The occasional drunk that wants to fight. That's about it. The runners avoid us. You?"

"The same." I glanced around the room. "What's there to do here, other than television?"

"We go into Mata occasionally. They've got a few bars where the food isn't bad and you can get a drink."

"We're allowed to drink?" I asked, my surprise clear in my tone.

"Not officially, but so long as you don't get shit faced, and you're sober when you're up, Ken doesn't say anything. He's pretty cool about it."

"How do you get there?"

"Sign out one of the trucks."

"Where...?"

"Operations office."

"They don't mind?"

"Not so long as you bring back food or beer."

I chuckled. "Do you think they'd mind if the new guy ran into town and had a look around? Want to go? If you'll give me the nickel tour, I'll buy you a beer."

He shrugged. "We don't go on for another six hours, so sure, why not? Want to see if Mike wants to ride along?"

"Mike is...?" I asked, still trying to put names with faces.

"Tall dude with the mustache?"

"Oh! I thought that was Landon."

"Landon has the beard." Jeremy snickered. "By the time we rotate back to reality, you'll have us all memorized, and be ready to slit our throats."

I chuckled. "You guys seem okay. Reality?"

"Just wait until after six weeks. Reality. Home. The US."

"Ah. Got it." I paused. "So, I just go to the operations office and tell them I want to sign out a truck?"

"Yep, and ask if anyone wants anything. Get the Tahoe. More room in case Mike wants to go."

"Got it." I paused as I stared out the window. "Does it ever stop raining?"

Jeremy grinned. "No, not this time of year."

"Here?" I asked as I pulled the muddy Tahoe to a stop in front of Árbol.

Spanish for tree, it was easy to see where Árbol got its name, as the bar was nestled under one of the largest trees I'd ever seen outside of a picture. It had to be the largest tree in Mata de Juárez, its trunk easily wider than the width of the Chevy, with its branches soaring high into the air. I wasn't a tree expert, but this behemoth had to be ancient.

"Yeah," Mike said from beside me. "The beer is cold, and the pork picaditas are pretty damned good too."

"Sounds good to me," I said as I switched off the Chevy and opened my door. At least the rain had stopped for the moment, and the parking lot was paved. A lot of the roads in town weren't.

Mata de Juárez was clearly a town that lived off the PerforMex wells in the area. As Mother had said, the town was full of bars, restaurants, three small, seedy looking hotels, and all manner of businesses that provided services to the wells, from heavy equipment repair, to heavy-haul firms. Mata reminded me of Runge, Texas, where I grew up, a depressing little burg that was hanging on by its fingernails. Mata was larger, but it had the same feeling of quiet desperation that Runge had, as if one bad break would be enough to destroy the town. Like Mata, Runge depended on oil. Runge's fortunes followed the boom-and-bust cycle of the oil industry, and Mata's probably did as well.

I followed Jeremy and Mike into the blessed coolness of the bar. Inside Árbol appeared much like it was outside, as if the owners didn't have the time, cash, or desire to renovate, so they'd spot repaired what they had to. The place wasn't a dump, but a fresh coat of paint would've gone a long way to sprucing it up, both inside and out. The bar was busy, and we took a table by the door.