Stone looked down at Willie, reached over and made sure the connections were solid. The young man was already turning blue. They only had seconds left.

Stone had done this once in Nam with a fellow soldier who’d gone into cardiac arrest when a massive round had sheared a chunk of his torso off. Stone had gotten his heart going again, but the man had bled to death on the way to the field hospital.

The truck started.

“Rev the engine,” Stone screamed out.

Bob smashed the gas to the floor and the engine roared.

Even though he wasn’t touching Willie, Stone could feel the surge of current. The effect on the young man was far more intense.

His legs and arms came off the ground and Willie sucked in an enormous breath. He sat up and then fell back, choking and coughing.

“Cut the engine,” Stone yelled and Bob instantly did so. The only sound now was a miraculous one. A dead man was breathing.

Stone ripped the cables off and checked the pulse. Pretty strong and steady.

Bob and he lifted Willie into the truck. Stone put the spark plug wire minus the nail back in place, threw the battery cables in the back, and drove off. They made it to the doctor’s home office five minutes later and carried him inside. Warner worked on Willie after Stone told him what he’d done. Warner was not Stone’s image of a rustic country doctor. He was barely forty, trim, with a clean-shaven face and wide, intelligent-looking eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. He gave Willie an injection and made a phone call.

He said, “That injection should stabilize him for now. But can you get him to the hospital quick as you can? I called ahead and I’ll follow in my car.”

Stone nodded. “But if his heart stops again on the way? I don’t want to rely on the truck’s juice again.”

Warner opened a cabinet and pulled out a portable defibrillator. “If it happens again, pull off the road and we’ll use this.”

As they were loading Willie back in the truck the doctor said, “You saved his life, you know.”

Bob placed a hand on Stone’s shoulder. “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. . . . ?”

“Just call me Ben. And he’s not out of the woods yet. Let’s go.”

They arrived at the hospital less than an hour later. Stone went in with them, but after Willie was checked in, he came back outside and leaned against the truck, sucking in the crisp, cool mountain air.

The hospital was big. It probably had to be since it was probably the only one for a few hundred square miles.

He walked around the parking lot trying to push back the adrenaline rush. He spotted the squat one-story cinderblock building next to the hospital and walked in that direction.