Brimstone

by Douglas Preston

  "What if they have dogs?" D'Agosta whispered.

  "Loose dogs are a thing of the past. They're unpredictable, noisy, and often end up attacking the wrong person. Dogs are now only used for tracking. What we have to watch out for will be far more subtle."

  They crossed the expanse of concrete. Nocturnal animals rustled in the foliage as they passed. At the far end of the courtyard was a grassy alley between two rows of ruined buildings, the heaps of masonry covered with ivy that, in the darkness, looked like spreading stains. Pendergast proceeded more cautiously now, using a small, hooded flashlight to illuminate their way. Halfway along the alley he paused, knelt, and examined the ground. Then he picked up a branch and gave a little poke to the grass ahead. He prodded harder, and the stick suddenly broke through into space.

  "A pit," he said. "Notice that, with these ruins flanking either side, this alley is the only way to proceed."

  "A booby trap?"

  "Undoubtedly. But disguised to look like some part of the old factory, so that when the intruder falls in and is killed, nobody would be blamed."

  "How did you spot it?"

  "Lack of boar tracks." Pendergast carefully withdrew the stick and turned. "We shall have to make our way through one of these ruined laboratories. Take care: there may still be the odd bottle of nitroglycerin around, strategically placed to snag the unwary. We should consider this the next ring of security, Vincent; we must be both quiet and vigilant."

  They entered a dark doorway and Pendergast flashed his hooded light around. The floor was covered with broken glass, rusty pieces of metal, broken tile, and bricks. Pendergast paused, then signaled to D'Agosta to back out.

  Two minutes later they were in the concrete courtyard.

  "What was wrong?" D'Agosta asked.

  "Too much broken glass, too evenly spread, and the glass was too modern to be from the original factory. A noise trap, with sensors ready to pick up the telltale crunch of human feet. Motion sensors, too, I expect."

  In the greenish glow of his lantern, Pendergast's face seemed troubled.

  "What now?"

  "Back to the pit."

  They circled back around to the alleyway and Pendergast crept forward alone, prodding with a stick until he'd located the pit. Then he lay on his stomach, carefully parted the thick grass and vegetation, and shone his light into the dark hole. A moment later he withdrew, snapping off his light.

  "Wait here."

  And then he was gone, melting into the night.

  D'Agosta waited. Pendergast hadn't told him to remain still and silent; he hadn't needed to. He crouched in the inky darkness, barely daring to breathe. Five minutes passed. Left alone, the tension began to take its toll. D'Agosta could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

  Relax.

  And then—as suddenly and silently as he had disappeared—Pendergast was back, a long plank in his hands. He laid it across the brushy opening, then turned to D'Agosta. "Beyond this, no talking unless absolutely necessary. Follow my lead."

  D'Agosta nodded.

  They crossed the wobbly plank, one after the other. On the far side, the brush was thicker, presenting a dark wall. Pendergast moved forward, probed with his sensor, sniffed. He briefly turned on the light, then turned it off again. They moved parallel to the brushy area, then veered into it on what appeared to be an animal trail.

  The boars are saving our ass, D'Agosta thought.

  They crept slowly through the thick brush. A brick wall loomed to their right: a blast wall, judging by its massiveness. In one place it had been knocked down by what D'Agosta guessed was an old explosion. They moved through this gap, still following the boar trail. D'Agosta could barely see Pendergast, and could hear even less: the man moved as silently as a leopard.

  The trail petered out in a large meadow less overgrown than the others they had passed. Pendergast paused to reconnoiter, motioning for D'Agosta to stay back. At the far end lay the dark silhouette of more wrecked buildings and, beyond that, the faint glow of light.

  Pendergast slipped a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Turning back toward D'Agosta, and very carefully shielding a cigarette with his hands, he lit up. D'Agosta watched, astonished. Pendergast inhaled lazily, turned, and blew out a stream of smoke.

  Not three feet in front of them, the drifting smoke revealed a brilliant beam of blue light: a laser. It was set just high enough to clear the back of a boar.

  Pendergast got down on his stomach and began to slither forward through the tall grass, motioning D'Agosta to do likewise.

  Slowly, painstakingly, they advanced across the field. Now and then Pendergast would take a drag on the concealed cigarette and blow a stream of smoke overhead, illuminating the laser beams that crisscrossed the field. Dark woods and ruins surrounded the verge of the meadow, and it was impossible to see where the beams were coming from. When the cigarette went out, he lit another.

  In five minutes they were across. Pendergast ground out the stub of cigarette, rose, and moved at a crouch to an empty door frame, withdrawing his light and directing it inside. The beam briefly illuminated a long passageway, rooms fronted with metal bars facing each other across the corridor. To D'Agosta it looked almost like a prison. The ceilings had caved in, along with some of the walls, leaving a maze of broken masonry, beams, and tile.

  Pendergast paused in the doorway to wave a handheld meter of some kind, then advanced cautiously. What was left of the edifice seemed about to collapse, and from time to time D'Agosta could hear the creaking and groaning of a beam or the rattle of falling plaster. As they moved through the vast crumbling space, the faint light ahead grew stronger, coming in through a row of shattered windows at the far end. Reaching the windows, they cautiously peered out.

  An astonishing sight greeted D'Agosta's eyes. Beyond the ruined building was a double-chain-link fence, topped with concertina wire, enclosing a sweeping lawn swathed in light. A new building stood there behind trimmed shrubbery and flowers, a postmodern structure in glass, titanium, and white paneling, glowing like a crystal in the night. To the far right, D'Agosta could see a guardhouse and a gate in the fence.

  They moved away from the window, and Pendergast sat against the wall. He seemed to be thinking. Several minutes passed before he roused himself and motioned D'Agosta to follow. Keeping low, they moved the length of the far wall and exited a side door. Thick brush and gooseberry bushes grew up to within about ten yards of the double fence, where the closely clipped lawn began.

  They wormed their way into the brush and began crawling forward. Then D'Agosta felt Pendergast freeze. The sound of voices was rapidly approaching, along with the probing of a bright spotlight. D'Agosta flattened himself in the bushes, hoping to God his black outfit and face paint would keep him invisible. But the voices were getting close, too close; and they were loud; and the light was drawing ever nearer.

  { 53 }

  D'Agosta lay motionless, hardly daring to breathe, while the beam of the spotlight lanced through the leaves and vines. The voices were even closer now, and he could make out what the men were saying. They were American. There were two of them, it seemed, and they were walking slowly along the inner perimeter of the fence. He felt a sudden, almost irresistible desire to look up. But then the brilliant beam landed square on his back, and he went still as death. The beam lingered, unmoving. The men had stopped. There was a scratching sound, the flaring of a match, followed by the faint smell of cigarette smoke.

  "…real bastard," came one of the voices. "If it weren't for the money, I'd go back to Brooklyn."

  "The way things are going, we might all be heading back," replied the other.

  "The fucker's gone crazy."

  A grunt of assent.

  "They say he lives in a villa once owned by Machiavelli."

  "Who?"

  "Machiavelli."

  "He's that new tight end for the Rams, right?"

  "Forget it." The light abruptly swiveled away, leaving sudden darkness in its wake. It
was a handheld torch, D'Agosta realized, carried by one of the men.

  The cigarette arced through the darkness, landing near D'Agosta's left thigh, and the men continued on.

  Several minutes passed. Then, abruptly, Pendergast was at his side.

  "Vincent," he whispered, "the security here is considerably more sophisticated than I had hoped. This is a system designed not just to thwart corporate espionage, but to keep out the CIA itself. We can't hope to get inside with the tools at hand. We must retreat and plan another avenue of attack."

  "Such as?"

  "I have developed a sudden interest in Machiavelli."

  "I hear you."

  They crept back the way they had come, through the groaning, ruined building. The trip seemed longer than before. When they were halfway through, Pendergast paused. "Nasty odor," he murmured.

  D'Agosta smelled it, too. The wind had shifted, and the scent of decay reached them from a far room. Pendergast opened a shutter on the flashlight, allowing a faint illumination. The greenish light disclosed what had once been a small laboratory, its roof caved in. Below, several heavy beams lay crisscrossed on the ground, and—protruding from them—a rotting, partly skeletonized head of a boar, its tusks broken off into stubs.

  "Booby trap?" whispered D'Agosta.

  Pendergast nodded. "Designed as an unstable, rotting building." He let the shaft of green light fall here and there, finally pausing on a doorsill. "There's the trigger. Step on that and you bring down the works."

  D'Agosta shivered, thinking how he'd blithely crossed this very threshold not ten minutes before.

  They passed carefully through the rest of the building, warning creaks of wood sounding occasionally over their heads. Beyond lay the broad field. It looked to D'Agosta like a lake of blackness. Pendergast lit another cigarette, then knelt and moved forward cautiously, blowing smoke before him once again, until the first laser beam became visible, pencil-thin and glowing dully. Pendergast nodded over his shoulder, and they returned to the laborious work of crawling through the field, keeping under the beams.

  This time the process seemed interminable. When D'Agosta finally allowed himself a glance ahead, he was shocked to find they had only reached the middle of the field.

  Just then there was a sudden commotion in the grass ahead of them. A family of hares burst into view, startled, leaping in several directions at once and bounding off into the blackness.

  Pendergast paused, took in another lungful of smoke, and blew it at the spot where the rabbits had been. A crisscrossing of laser beams became visible.

  "Nasty bit of luck," he said.

  "Triggered the beam?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "What do we do now?"

  "We run."

  Pendergast leaped up and flew like a bat across the field. D'Agosta rose and began to follow, doing his best to keep up with the agent.

  Instead of heading back the way they had come, Pendergast was making for the woods to their left. As they approached the trees, D'Agosta heard distant shouts and the starting of car engines. A moment later, several pairs of headlights came sawing across the meadow, trailed by the much more brilliant beam of a mounted spotlight, as a pair of military-style jeeps came tearing around the ruined buildings.

  Pendergast and D'Agosta crashed into the dense undergrowth of the woods, clawing through brambles and heavy brush. After a hundred yards, Pendergast took a sharp turn and continued at a right angle to their previous course, the haversack bouncing wildly on his shoulder. D'Agosta followed, heart hammering in his ears.

  Pendergast took another sharp turn and they plunged on. Suddenly they emerged onto an old road filled with waist-high grass. They pushed through it, D'Agosta struggling to keep Pendergast in sight. Already he was growing winded, but fear and adrenaline spurred him on.

  A powerful beam lanced down the length of the road and they dived to the ground. Once it swept past, Pendergast was up and running again, this time into another copse at the far end of the abandoned road. More beams flickered through the trees, farther away, and voices floated toward them over the sullen air.

  Inside the copse, Pendergast stopped to pull out his map and scan it with the green flashlight while D'Agosta caught up. Then they continued on, this time along a gentle rise. The woods grew thicker, and it seemed they had managed to put space between themselves and their pursuers. For the first time, D'Agosta allowed himself to hope they might escape, after all.

  The trees thinned and D'Agosta saw a scattering of starlight. And then suddenly rising before them was an immensity of black—a wall, twenty feet high, all rotten bricks, dangling vegetation, and vines.

  "This isn't on the map," said Pendergast. "Another blast wall—a late addition, it seems."

  He glanced in either direction. Through the trees below, D'Agosta could see the flicker of flashlights. Pendergast turned and ran along the base of the wall. It curved along the top of a gentle ridge, its overgrown rim outlined against the night sky.

  Ahead, where the wall descended, D'Agosta could see dancing lights through the vegetation.

  "We climb," said Pendergast.

  He turned, seized a root, pulled himself up. D'Agosta did likewise. He grabbed a stem, another, found a foothold. In his haste, one of the plants tore out of the wall, sending down a shower of rotting brick. D'Agosta dangled, recovered. He could see Pendergast already far above him, climbing like a cat. The lights below were coming up the hill, while another group to their right was also closing in.

  "Faster!" Pendergast hissed.

  D'Agosta seized a vine, another, slipping, scrambling, one leg scrabbling in space.

  He now heard a cacophony of voices behind him. Pendergast was just reaching the top of the wall. There was a shot and the thud of the bullet on the wall to his right. One more hoist up, one more foothold.

  Two more shots. Pendergast was reaching down, grabbing him by the arms, hauling him to the top. The lights had now reached the open area just before the wall, bobbing frantically, flashing up on the wall and hitting them.

  "Down!"

  D'Agosta was already throwing himself down on the crumbling, overgrown top of the massive wall. It was at least ten feet from side to side.

  "Crawl."

  Digging in his elbows and knees, he began to crawl across the top of the wall, keeping cover in the vegetation. There was a burst of automatic-weapons fire, the rounds snicking through the bush above, showering him with twigs and leaves.

  They reached the other side—only to see more men there, arriving with dogs: silent dogs held on leashes. D'Agosta ducked back and rolled from the edge as more shots raked the bushes to one side of him.

  "Jesus!" He lay on his back for a moment, staring at the unmoving stars.

  The sudden baying of dogs reached his ears. The dogs had been released.

  Now there were voices on either side, a babel of Italian and English. Powerful lights passed overhead, shone from below. D'Agosta could hear the rustle and scramble of climbing.

  Pendergast was suddenly at his ear. "We stand up and run. Stay in the middle of the wall and run at a crouch."

  "They'll shoot us."

  "They're going to kill us, anyway."

  D'Agosta stood, began to run—not exactly run, but push and crash through the heavy vegetation growing out of what must have once been a walkway at the top.

  Lights raked the top of the wall, and a burst of gunfire sounded. And a voice: "Non sparate!"

  "Keep running!" Pendergast cried.

  But it was too late. There, in front of them on the wall, dark figures were mounting, blocking the way. Lights shone in their direction. D'Agosta and Pendergast dove to the rubble, flattening themselves.

  "Non sparate!" someone shouted again. "Do not shoot!"

  From behind, D'Agosta saw that a second group had surmounted the wall. They were surrounded. D'Agosta lay huddled in a pool of brilliant light, feeling exposed, naked.

  "Eccoli! There they are!"

  "
Hold your fire!"

  And then a voice—quiet and reasonable—said:

  "You may both stand up now and surrender. Or we will kill you. Your choice."

  { 54 }

  Locke Bullard stared across the table at the two men shackled to the wall. Two sons of bitches dressed in black special-ops outfits. They were Americans, that much was clear; probably CIA.

  He turned to his security chief. "Wipe the paint off their faces. Let's see who they are."

  The man pulled out a handkerchief and brusquely wiped off the paint.

  Bullard could hardly believe his eyes. They were the two people he least expected: the police sergeant from Long Island and Pendergast, the FBI special agent. Immediately, he realized Vasquez had failed. Or more likely, run off with the money. Unbelievable. Yet even without Vasquez, it stunned Bullard to think these two had somehow followed him to Italy and managed to break through several layers of security at the lab. He kept underestimating them, again and again. He had to get out of that habit. These two were formidable. And that's exactly what he didn't need. He had something a lot more important to do than mess around with these two.

  He turned to the security director. "What happened?"

  "They penetrated outer security at the old railroad grade, made it as far as the second ring. They tripped the laser grid at the inner field."

  "You found out what they're after? What they heard?"

  "They heard nothing, sir. They got nothing."

  "You sure they never made it past the second ring?"

  "Absolutely, sir."

  "Any comm devices on them?"

  "No, sir. And none dropped. They came in deaf and dumb."

  Bullard nodded, his shock slowly giving way to rage. These two had insulted him. They’d damaged him.

  He cast his eye toward the fat one, who—as it happened—didn't look quite so fat anymore. "Hey, D'Agosta, you shed a few pounds? How's the hard-on problem?"