Rising, rubbing his head, the physician pointed at a large envelope clipped to the cart.
Litt removed a thin sheaf of X-rays and held the first one up to the light. He dropped it and examined the next, then the next.
“There,” he said, pointing. It was a small, crisp oval of bright white among cloudy gray shapes. “In his upper intestines.” He dropped the X-rays. “Ten-to-one it’s a tracking device.” He bent and picked up a scalpel off the floor.
He grabbed a handful of Allen’s jumpsuit at the navel and slashed at it. He pushed his fingers into the tear and ripped open the material, exposing Allen’s stomach. He positioned the scalpel just below the belly button.
Hands gripped his shoulders and yanked him back. He spun to face Rankin.
“The man is almost dead. Be … civil, please!”
Litt’s wrath surged over the physician like ink. “Do not interrupt me! Ever!” He lashed out.
Rankin stood before him, vibrating like a struck piano chord, eyes wide behind prescription glasses that reflected back the alien orbs of Litt’s own black lenses. His mouth froze in the form of a perfect O.
Warmth over his skin caused Litt to peer down. The hand holding the scalpel was half hidden by a fold in the doctor’s surgical gown. Blood formed a scarlet glove up to his wrist and poured from the bottom of his hand to the tiled floor, the first great globule landing as he watched. He had plunged the scalpel under the man’s sternum, upward to his heart.
A squeal, nearly inaudible at first, issued from the little circle of mouth, rising in volume and pitch as Litt studied a magnified tear quivering on one of the doctor’s bottom lids. He pushed the scalpel deeper. The tear fell. The squeal stopped. Litt released his grip, and the body crumpled to the floor. He stepped back, holding his dripping hand away from his side. His eyes rose to the body on the cot. Taking Rankin’s life had drained much of the emotional frenzy out of him. What did it matter if the tracking device remained where it was? Parker’s brother and the woman had already followed it here. The damage was done.
He stepped into the hall. No one was in sight. He reentered the room and straddled the corpse, placing his feet wide to avoid the blood. He bent at the hips and knees; an observer would have thought Litt intended to kiss the dead man. Instead, he paused inches from the face. He cocked his sunglasses up to examine the now waxen visage.
The right side of Rankin’s glasses had skewed upward in the fall, leaving his right eye naked. It was dark brown and nearly lashless, and Litt marveled at its glazed quality, as if dulled by the dirty thumbprint of Death. Then he realized that the glazed eyes of the dead—endowed by poets with wisdom and otherworldly sorrow—were caused by dryness, nothing more. The sparkle they lacked was moisture, not the essence of life.
Disappointed, Litt let his glasses fall back in place. He dipped his fingers into the bloody pool. He rose and moved to Allen’s side. Locking his vision on the gaping face like a pickpocket watching his mark for the slightest sign of suspicion, he smeared the blood over Allen’s right hand. He covered the front and back and had to return to the pool twice to complete the task. He used the limp hand like a brush to smudge the khaki prison jumpsuit. He also ran the hand down the side of Allen’s face.
Allen’s one useful eye fluttered open. He sucked in a wheezing breath.
“Litt,” he said. “The cure.”
“Who sent you? Does Kendrick know?”
“Cure …”
“It’s here, my friend. Do you know what it is?”
Litt scanned Allen’s face: sweaty skin, ash gray; quivering lips; bloody gums. The eye, though—conscious and aware. He’d seen it before, as if the mind were the last to give in to the disease.
“Me,” he said. “My blood. Years ago, I was exposed to an early strain. I survived.” He raised his head. “My family did not, but I did and started producing antibodies. Isn’t that a cruel joke? My body created the cure for the disease that killed my wife and children. I’ve developed the antidote, but I’ve shared it with no one. And never will.”
He stood. Allen’s eyelid dropped.
At the door, Litt looked back. In a fit of anger or insanity, the prisoner had murdered his caregiver.
Litt shook his head and closed the door.
eighty-nine
The trek through Paraguay’s northeastern jungle
was as excruciating as Tate had warned. Branches ripped at their clothes, snagged their hair. Thorns jabbed at them and elephant grass whipped at their faces. The flickering shafts and dapples of sunlight piercing the foliage only added to the confusing array of leaves and darkness, solids and space. Tate led them in one direction, then another, sometimes hacking through layers of vegetation, sometimes following the serpentine meanders of small-game trails. They waded through narrow streams—Julia constantly anticipating the first sharp pinch of a piranha.
“Don’t fret over one or two bites,” Tate had said. “It’s when you feel a quick half dozen that you have to get out fast.”
At the next crossing, a nibble on her calf scared an audible gasp out of her, and she scrambled onto the bank a dozen feet ahead of the others. When she discovered that she had been attacked by a piece of duct tape that had come loose, she rubbed it and said nothing.
Tate dropped down beside her, taking the healthy deep breaths of an athlete in training. He checked his watch and said, “Three-minute break.” He removed the knapsack from his back and withdrew a canteen, which he handed to Julia. She took a long pull of tepid water. quenching a thirst she had only vaguely acknowledged. Tate rummaged in the knapsack, then offered leathery strips of beef jerky, brightly wrapped energy bars, and the requisite oranges.
Julia squinted up at an impossibly yellow sun dancing on the treetops. For a moment, it was possible to believe she was back in Georgia, out in the Chattahoochee wilderness, her feet caressed by the waters of Holcomb Creek. Jodi would be getting on Goody for talking business, while he waved her off good-naturedly and slapped her behind. The boys would be laughing, splashing in the creek, asking, “When are we gonna eat?” The sun warmed her face, splashing red flowers against her closed eyelids. A thousand fragrances mixed on the breeze and—
“Time’s up!” Tate bellowed like a football coach.
Julia gazed up at him, dazed and disappointed. He unsheathed the machete, exhaled loudly, and marched forward, leaving a smoldering cigar in the cup of a peeled orange.
After an hour, the treacheries of jungle travel became tedious, and her mind reached out to their destination: What will we find there? What opposition? What breaks? She wondered what Kendrick Reynolds was doing. Had he sent in a commando team? Was he, even now, negotiating for Litt’s surrender? Two days had passed since she left the hard drive for him. He should have begun the operation to stop Litt immediately.
She slid down a muddy bank into yet another stream, following Tate and dimly aware of Stephen’s presence behind her. She was moving mechanically now, using some primal surface consciousness to travel efficiently, grabbing a root to stabilize herself for a trick descent or mimicking Tate’s jog around a nasty thicket.
She didn’t realize Tate had stopped until she walked into him. He had his forefinger pressed to his lips. She held up her palm to Stephen. Around them, trees rose like scaffoldings, holding their heavy leaves sixty feet above the ground. Smaller trees and bushes, their spindly branches and dappled leaves exploding wildly from unseen stalks. crowded like children around their parents’ legs. The three humans stood in shadowy darkness, but for a single shaft of intense light that defied the canopy’s protection to splash the ground at their feet.
“We’re here,” Tate whispered.
Julia rotated her head, saw nothing that would distinguish this spot from any other place in the jungle. As it was, she felt disoriented by the jungle’s lack of a horizon or of landmarks that remained visible for longer than a few minutes. It didn’t help that she had lost track of time, sensing the distance they had hiked only through her fatigued muscles.
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“We will be going under much of the compound’s perimeter security,” Tate reminded them, waving his hand vaguely in the air behind him, “but I cannot be sure how much sound carries from the mine into the compound. I am always quiet.”
He looked intently at Julia, then Stephen. They nodded. He turned, seized a tall bush, and began shaking it. He wrestled with it until it tucked in on itself, revealing a gaping black hole. Julia realized with a start that they were standing at the base of a cliff, so dark and protected she had not seen it at all. The mine opening began about four feet above the ground and rose like a screaming mouth for six feet. Irregularly elliptic, with rounded edges, it looked more like a cave than something man-made.
Tate hoisted himself into that blackness and for a moment disappeared. He reemerged, as if from a pool of ink, to offer Julia his hand. She clicked on her flashlight and saw that the mine opened up as it moved into the mountain. Rotted timbers lay on the floor, among stones, dirt, filaments of abandoned spiderwebs, and animal droppings. Stephen fell in beside her, tugging at his own flashlight, which didn’t want to leave his belt.
“This is as far as I go,” Tate whispered.
ninety
“The men need me,” Tate said. “More important, I have
something with Rosa I’m not ready to give up yet.”
He was silhouetted in the mine’s opening, hunched slightly but seeming agile and strong, ready to embark on an adventure he had already declined. Smoke swirled around his head, giving Julia the impression that it was he, not his cigar, that was burning.
“You do what you have to do,” she said. “We appreciate what you’ve already done for us.”
He squatted and motioned for them to take positions near him. He flipped up the face of his watch, revealing a compass. He tore the Velcro strap away and handed the device to Stephen. Then he shrugged off the knapsack and gave that to him as well. Retreating back through the mine was their best bet, he explained, if they could get there undetected. He would mark the way back to the truck, where he’d wait as long as possible. If they were under heavy fire, he suggested stealing one of the compound’s vehicles and plowing through the front gates.
“If worse comes to worst,” he continued, turning away to blow out a stream of smoke, “run like madmen into the jungle. Head south-by-southwest. When you hit water, go downstream. Before then, though, you’ll encounter an electric chain-link fence. Find a tree with an overhanging branch to get past it.” He thought for a moment. “Oh, and if they do chase you into the jungle, do not use your gun.”
“Explain,” Julia said.
“Emilio’s men used to snipe into the compound from the jungle. They’d take someone out, then fade into the jungle. Back again to kill again, then gone again. It makes the target area virtually useless and frazzles the enemy’s nerves.”
“What happened?”
Tate took an angry draw on his stogie, then flicked the glowing stub into the sunlight. “They installed these anti-sniper contraptions. One shot and these things shoot back—with lots of firepower. I called a friend of mine, still in SAS. He said they’re probably Deadeyes. They monitor the perimeter of the compound, just waiting for some fool to fire a rifle or a pistol, any small arms.”
“And when someone does?”
“It’s the last thing they ever do. These Deadeyes track the trajectory of the projectile, calculate it back to the point of origin, then make anything at that point of origin disappear—by way of heavy aircraft artillery—all within three seconds of the shot.”
Stephen exhaled heavily.
Julia shifted her weight, thinking. “Does that mean anyone chasing us can’t shoot either?”
“Not necessarily.” His words came laced with the ashy odor of tobacco. “According to my mate, the Deadeyes can be programmed to monitor specific regions, so troops behind them can shoot toward an enemy without triggering the Deadeyes. Handheld remotes control them. They can be turned on and off and redirected instantly. Acoustic and electro-optical sensors identify muzzle-flash signatures, so grenades or firecrackers won’t distract them. They’re very sophisticated and very dangerous.”
Stephen asked, “Didn’t your friend wonder what this place was doing with these things?”
Tate shook his head. “I know of an oil sheik with his own fully armed Harrier jet. A Colombian drug lord has a German Leopard tank, top of the line. None of this stuff is as regulated as civilians would like to think.”
Julia stood, feeling the weight of the Sig Sauer at the small of her back. “Let’s do it, then.”
Still crouching, Tate pointed with a chiseled arm. “Go straight back. When you think you must have gone too far, keep going. You’ll see the metal door I told you about first. Little farther, you’ll find rungs on the left wall. They lead to a hatch inside the compound.” He described the surface topography radiating from the hatch: jungle behind, Quonsets before. He told what he knew of the surface guards, their number, stations, and routines. He gave directions to the stairs.
“Beyond that, you’re on your own,” he finished.
“Uncharted territory,” Stephen said.
“Good lu—” He stopped, then gripped Stephen’s shoulder firmly, shook his head. “To hell with luck. God be with you.” He turned his eyes to her. “Both of you.”
At that moment, Julia realized how intensely he wanted to join them, to go all the way and damn the torpedoes. He’d witnessed the mournful aftermath of countless abductions, attended the funerals of people who’d gone to the air base for revenge. He’d been waiting for justice a long time. Now someone was going to try. But he knew it wasn’t his time, not yet.
She nodded and turned into the black coolness of the mine. Stephen brushed past her, taking point. Ten paces in, she looked back. Tate was squatted like a guardian troll in front of the radiant mouth of the mine, his forearms resting across his knees. She stifled the urge to call out to him, to plead for him to come. She wanted to say, How can we possibly do this without your help? Instead, she followed Stephen deeper into darkness, wondering if this mine would prove to be their River Styx.
When she turned again, Tate was gone.
ninety-one
Stephen braced his feet and hands against the rusty
metal rungs set in the concrete tube that ascended from the mine like a chimney and pushed his shoulder into the manhole cover above him. It rose slowly, sounding like a mason jar when you unscrew the lid. Blinding light sliced into the pitch darkness of the shaft. And something else. The stench of rot—it pierced his nostrils and stung his eyes, perhaps not as effectively as the gaseous irritants cops use to incapacitate suspects, but enough to force shallow breaths and teary vision. Squinting, he made out the source—and also the reason Tate thought this was a safe entrance into the compound: he was behind a trash container roughly the size of an eighteen-wheeler. Sludge oozed down its side and through unseen holes in its bottom, forming pools that collected tissue paper and cans and other refuse the way tar pits entrap animals.
Metal wheels held the container ten inches off the ground, giving him a view of the base beyond. Straight ahead and down a grassy incline were the Quonsets Tate had described. That’s where they’d find the stairs into the underground complex—and Allen, Stephen prayed. He looked off to the right, and his heart jumped. There, a hundred yards away, was the entrance gate and a guard shack. They were the first things he recognized from the home movie Despesorio Vero had smuggled out—the second video, which showed the air base. The sense of being here, of having made the journey in search of his brother, made the hair on his arms stand up.
Two guards were talking, submachine guns at their sides. A collection of battered metal trash cans next to the Dumpster nearly shielded Stephen’s position. He and Julia would have to be careful when they emerged.
He eased the cover down, pinching off the light. He snapped on his flashlight. Below him, also clinging to the rungs, Julia peered up.
“Can we get to the
stairs?” she asked. Her whispers sounded loud in the concrete shaft so near the enemy.
“I think I spotted the building they’re in. There are guards at the front gate, within view. I don’t see any way to just slip in. We’re near a Dumpster. Maybe we can—”
The entire shaft rumbled around them. Flakes of rust rained down from the bottom of the manhole cover. Under Stephen, one end of a rung popped loose, and his foot sailed into Julia’s forehead. She lost her grip. For a moment she remained suspended over the fifty-foot drop to the mine floor, her body wedged diagonally in the shaft; her cheek was pushed into the side; her feet fought for traction on the opposite side.
Stephen’s flashlight struck the top of her head and tumbled down, strobing until it hit the earth and blacked out. Julia fell and jerked to a stop as Stephen grabbed the shoulder strap of her knapsack. She flailed her arms in the dark until she found the rungs and pulled herself to them.
Above them, sirens sounded.
ninety-two
Karl Litt had just finished scouring Dr. Rankin’s blood off his hands and arms and was watching the last pink swirl slip down the drain when the blast quavered through the bathroom. He gripped the edge of the countertop. It felt like the bumper of a very powerful car, ready to roll. The light flickered. He caught his sunglasses as they slipped off the counter. Someone screamed in the hall— impossibly loud. Then he realized it was the base’s air raid siren, which Gregor had made functional shortly after they’d leased the base. He yanked his handheld out of his pocket.
“Was ist los!” he yelled. What’s happening?
“Air strike!” Gregor answered. “I saw it. One of the hangars went up. A jet. Here comes—”
Another explosion. This time the thunderous sound echoed through the handheld’s speaker, breaking up into squeals and static.
Gregor cursed. “They’re after the planes,” he said. “I just saw Atropos—the Atroposes—heading for the Quonsets. One of the Cessnas got hit. Karl, get out of there. Get—”
The room shook. Static.
“Gregor? Gregor?”
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