‘It fits if Tyler’s work in any way conflicts with SkinGen’s,’ Ethan said with a shrug. ‘Saffron hits labs working in similar fields to slow down their research. Right now, we don’t have much else to go on. Local police have searched Tyler Willis’s apartment and found nothing out of the ordinary. Enrico suspects that whatever he was working on, the details are being held elsewhere.’
Lopez nodded.
‘Which means that somebody else was looking for them, or at least Tyler suspected that they were, and hid his work.’ Ethan smiled at her, teasing her along. ‘I’m not Sherlock Holmes,’ she said, ‘but I guess it does tie Jeb Oppenheimer to both Saffron and Tyler Willis. Still, it’s a long shot.’
‘Not so long that we shouldn’t pursue it,’ Ethan said. ‘Time to go and join the natives.’
Lopez jabbed a thumb at Lewis Delaware.
‘We can drop this asshole off along the way.’
Ethan nodded as he walked around to the passenger door. Lopez waited until he was on the other side of the car before discreetly tossing the small wrap of marijuana into a nearby trash can.
18
JEMEZ CANYON RESERVOIR
NEW MEXICO
‘What the hell were you thinking?’
Colin Manx’s face was taut with rage, his frizzy hair trembling as he glared at Saffron Oppenheimer.
‘I was thinking,’ Saffron said without concern. ‘That’s the difference between you and me.’
Manx struggled for a response, glancing at the thirty or so people gathered round them and an aged NAPCO GMC Suburban. A mixture of hippies, college drop-outs and petty criminals with nowhere else to go, they represented a small army of individuals who didn’t possess the sense to realize that their actions against the state and science would get them nowhere except jail. They stared wide-eyed at Saffron Oppenheimer, and for a moment she thought that they might go down on their knees and prostrate themselves before her. She, alone, had led them to what they considered their greatest ever victory since casting themselves out from society into the Pecos Wilderness.
Saffron Oppenheimer, for her part, despised each and every one of them.
‘Is that what you call it?’ Manx raged. ‘Thinking? You fired a shotgun, put several scientists in hospital, stole all the animals and then you blew up the computers in the goddamned laboratory.’
‘Go, Saffron!’ Ruby Lily squealed from nearby. A ripple of delighted chuckles fluttered through the watching groupies as Ruby pointed at Saffron. ‘You should have seen her, she was awesome!’
Manx scowled.
‘Yeah, awesome enough that we’ll likely have the FBI hunting us down now!’
Saffron sighed, examining a small cut on her finger from her escape out of the laboratories.
‘If only you were that important, Colon,’ she murmured to another round of sniggers from behind them.
‘We were supposed to make a statement and free one of the chimps,’ Manx snapped, his bluster losing conviction in the face of her disinterest. ‘Not blow the place sky-high!’
Saffron shrugged.
‘If a job’s worth doing . . .’
Manx glared at her while occasionally peering sideways, seeking support from the crowd. Saffron could tell that none was forthcoming as Manx pulled himself up to his full height, building up to something.
‘You’ve gone too far,’ he snarled. ‘It’s time to cut you down to size.’
With a startling howl of what Saffron presumed was rage, Manx lunged toward her. His big, dirty hands shot out to her wrists in an attempt to force her to the ground. Saffron acted without thought or worry, stepping not away from Manx but toward him, turning sideways and ducking down as his hands shot past her face. With a heave of effort she drove her right elbow deep into his stomach just beneath his ribs. The howl was cut short as Manx gagged and a blast of foul air rushed from his mouth. He doubled over, just in time for Saffron’s knee to jerk up and smash across the bridge of his nose with a dull crunch like an eggshell crushed beneath her boots. Winded and blinded in less than a second, Manx flipped over and collapsed gasping onto the hot desert sand. Saffron looked down at him.
‘Good work, Colon,’ she murmured without pity.
The group around her laughed openly now. They were hers without a doubt. Manx struggled to his knees, coughing and spluttering, tears staining his dusty face as he squinted up at her.
‘You’re insane!’ he bleated.
Saffron turned her back to him, walking away toward the camper van. ‘And you’re pathetic. Get lost.’
Another round of laughs followed. Saffron saw in the windows of the GMC the reflection of Manx staggering to his feet, clutching his face and stomach as he made his unsteady way toward the main road, a quarter of a mile to the south. She waited until he was out of earshot, busying herself with cleaning her shotgun. From behind, she heard the groupies tentatively approaching, and the gentle noises made by the chimpanzees in the back of the GMC as they guzzled from recently refilled water bottles.
Ruby Lily’s voice squeaked again.
‘Let’s free the monkeys!’
A chorus of delighted cheers burst out as Ruby Lily dashed to the rear of the vehicle to open the main doors, where the cages were stacked. She had almost reached them when Saffron took two paces toward her, gripping her wrist in one hand and twisting it sideways. Ruby Lily cried out in alarm as she dropped onto one knee, trying to get away from the pain. Saffron glared down at her.
‘Are you a complete idiot?’ she demanded.
Ruby Lily looked up at her in confusion as Saffron released her and looked at the rest of the crowd.
‘These are Bonobo Chimpanzees from West Africa. They were raised in captivity and have learned to trust humans.’ She paused. ‘To a point. They have also been experimented on, kept in cages, and watched members of their troop go into operating theaters and never return. Chimpanzees have a muscle density far greater than ours, and are easily capable of tearing a human being to pieces with their bare hands.’ She let the point sink in. ‘What do you think they’ll do if they get out and can run free?’
Saffron waited until they realized that an answer was expected.
‘They’ll hurt people,’ someone said in a voice that sounded thin, as though they’d been up all night smoking dope.
‘Well done, Einstein,’ Saffron mocked. ‘They can also carry diseases that can kill, Ebola Zaire being the most lethal. We have no idea what was being done to them in the laboratories, therefore we don’t know what dangers they pose to us. We’ll take them to the nearest zoo in the morning and leave them there.’
Dismay soured the faces of everyone in the group, and Saffron slammed the GMC’s door shut.
‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘What do you think we should do with them?’
Silence enveloped the group and the desert around them. Saffron waited, feeling like a teacher in front of a kindergarten class. She doubted that the thirty of them could muster an IQ of a hundred between them, doped, drugged and mindless as they were.
‘Maybe I should put all of you in the van and let the chimps decide?’ Saffron snapped. ‘Get their water bottles refilled, and then get the van covered with brush and whatever else you can find. It’s going to get hotter and they need shade, understood? I’m going to scout the area, make sure it’s secure. We don’t want the FBI searching for Colon out here, do we?’
With a mixture of chuckles as well as some discontented mumbling, the group dispersed. Saffron turned and aimed for the nearest hill, hiking up through thick brush along a ridge that lined one of a series of gullys descending down into the valley floor behind her, where the Jemez Reservoir glittered. The blue water was formed by the Jemez Canyon Dam, built in 1953 and owned by the US Army Corps of Engineers. It took almost twenty minutes to reach the high point she sought, where the hot desert winds rumbled. She surveyed the surrounding terrain and fished in her pocket for a cell phone, then dialed a number from memory, waiting for the line to connect and wat
ching the windows of distant vehicles flashing silently in the sunlight on the distant I-25.
‘Go ahead.’
The rattling, croaking voice filled her with a loathing that she struggled to conceal.
‘It’s done.’
‘Good. Where is Tyler Willis?’
‘Your men took him when we hit the labs,’ Saffron said. ‘You’ll have to ask them.’
‘Excellent work, Saffron. I’m very proud.’
‘I want your word,’ Saffron demanded. ‘Not a mark on him, understood?’
A moment later, the line went dead.
Saffron shut the phone off and slipped it back into her pocket before gazing out over the cruel beauty of the New Mexico wilderness. She sighed and wondered again if she was doing the right thing. Colin Manx was a weak man, and weak men did the bidding of the strong. All that she could hope for was that she had hit Manx hard enough, both mentally and physically, for him to fulfill his role.
And that she had the strength to do what she had planned for so long.
19
PAN AMERICAN CENTRAL HIGHWAY
NEW MEXICO
‘We’re chasing rainbows here, you know that, don’t you?’
Ethan drove with one arm trailing out of the Mercury’s open window, letting the desert wind blow in. He preferred it to the cold caress of air con, and while the car was moving it was cool enough to let him get away with it.
‘We don’t have much else to go on,’ he said to Lopez, who was sitting with her long hair rippling in the breeze and her sneakers resting against the dashboard on which a printed image of Saffron Oppenheimer and Colin Manx was taped. ‘Without Willis, we don’t really know who or what we’re after.’
‘I doubt we’ll find enlightenment out here,’ Lopez said. ‘Chances of a bunch of drop-outs knowing anything about experiments at Los Alamos is pretty unlikely, doesn’t matter who their grandpa is.’
‘You got any better ideas?’ he asked Lopez. ‘The troopers reckoned this was the likely escape route for Saffron Oppenheimer and Colin Manx after they ditched their original vehicle outside Los Alamos, but they don’t have the resources to scour the entire desert.’
Lopez laughed, shaking her head.
‘What?’ Ethan asked, smiling in bemusement.
‘The whole of New Mexico’s state police don’t have the resources to search a million square miles of desert,’ she said, ‘but you’re driving the two of us out here because you think we somehow do. I can’t wait to see how you pull this off. Divining rods? Sifting tea leaves?’
Ethan grinned and shrugged.
‘You’ve got to be in the draw to win it. For all you know, one of them will come walking right to us out of this town.’
‘Ten bucks says no way,’ Lopez said, extending her hand, her eyes dancing with the unfettered joy of a sure bet.
Ethan chuckled and shook her hand as they cruised through the small town of Algodones. They crossed the railway line and passed a small diner, an elementary school and scattered houses that gave way to open scrubland, the railway line now to their left.
‘Looks like you’re ten bucks down,’ Lopez said as they left the town behind. She settled down deeper into her reclined seat and closed her eyes. ‘Win some, lose some.’
Ethan didn’t reply as he eased off the accelerator, indicated and pulled into the side of the road. He leaned out of his window as the man he’d seen flagging them down staggered over, his face and shaggy hair a dusty mess and blood trickling from a badly broken nose.
‘Need a lift, stranger?’ Ethan asked with a smile.
‘You goin’ Santa Fe way soon?’ the man asked, his voice thick with pain.
‘Sure,’ Ethan said.
Lopez opened her eyes, curious now. Ethan said nothing as the back door opened and Colin Manx slumped into the rear seat in a cloud of dust, slamming his door and looking at them.
‘Thanks, I really appreciate this.’
Lopez’s jaw dropped as Ethan, his face aching from trying not to smile, reached out and pressed a button on the dash, instantly locking all the doors.
‘So do we,’ he said, turning in his seat to face Manx and showing him his bail bondsman badge. ‘We’ve been looking for you.’
Manx stared in confusion at the badge, then at the image of himself taped to the dashboard.
‘I’m not on bail.’
‘Nope,’ Ethan said, ‘but you’re wanted by the sheriffs office so we’ll be taking you in.’
‘Fine by me,’ Manx said sulkily, folding his arms. ‘What I was coming here for.’
Now, it was Ethan’s turn to be surprised.
‘You’re turning yourself in?’ Lopez asked, finally overcoming her disbelief enough to speak.
‘Damn right I am!’ Manx snapped. ‘They’re insane, all of them, especially that bitch Saffron. She’ll kill somebody before she’s done, and I don’t want any part of it.’
Ethan eyed Manx. ‘You know where she is?’
Manx nodded, jabbing a thumb out the window up in the direction of the nearby hills.
‘Up there, a couple of miles north of the reservoir with about thirty others. They’ve got the animals with them in an old GMC. God knows what she’s going to do next.’
Ethan looked at Lopez.
‘They can’t go off-road in their truck, it won’t take it, and there’s only one way up or down.’
‘One on the high ground, the other on the road,’ Lopez agreed, sweeping her long hair back behind one tiny ear with her hand. ‘They’ll be forced out on foot.’
Colin Manx looked at them both in alarm.
‘What the hell are you two talking about? I want to go to a police station, turn myself in.’
‘We need to find Saffron,’ Ethan said. ‘It’s important.’
‘I need to make a statement first,’ Manx complained. ‘I want the police to know I turned evidence for all of this. I don’t want to go to jail.’
‘You’ll be going to jail anyway,’ Lopez snapped. ‘It’s too late for that, but we can tell the police everything.’
‘Then tell them now!’ Manx shouted and began yanking desperately on the door handle beside him.
‘Sorry,’ Ethan said, pulling onto the main road and accelerating the Mercury south. ‘We need to get to Saffron before the police do.’
Colin Manx quivered with futile rage and thumped the seat beside him.
‘You can’t do this! This is abduction!’
Lopez reached back and grabbed Manx’s throat with an iron grip.
‘It’ll be goddamned assault if you don’t quit whining.’
Lopez shoved Manx back into his seat. He massaged his throat, tears in his eyes as he shook his head in despair and looked at Ethan’s reflection in the rear-view mirror.
‘Jesus Christ, has every woman on earth gone insane?’
‘No,’ Ethan murmured, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘This is fairly standard behavior.’
‘She’ll likely resist arrest,’ Lopez said as she pinned her hair back into a ponytail, clearly anticipating a fight, ‘and she’s tooled up with at least a shotgun. We’ve got nothing and we don’t know the terrain.’
Ethan glanced in the rear-view mirror at Colin Manx’s sulking face.
‘We’ve got a guide.’
‘Like hell,’ Manx spat. ‘I’m not going anywhere near that bitch again.’
‘Didn’t say you had a choice,’ Ethan shot back. ‘Besides, the more you do to help us the more likely you are to get leniency from a judge and jury. Course, if you go against us . . .’
Ethan let the words hang in the air between them. Manx huffed and puffed, but as they approached a junction where a road led off to the right round the edge of the huge reservoir, Manx pointed gloomily for Ethan to follow it. Tamaya Boulevard wound its way for almost two miles out of the town of Bernalillo before ending at a small campsite on the edge of a large dam. Scrub and thorn bushes peppered the slopes of hills stark against the hard blue sky, the canyon scored b
y deep and ancient gullys.
‘They’ll stay close to the reservoir,’ Manx muttered. ‘The animals need a lot of water in this heat.’
Ethan nodded.
‘So will Saffron and anybody with her. It must be at least an hour’s walk into Bernalillo.’
Ethan climbed out of the car, peering back down to look at Lopez.
‘You hold the road in case they make a break for it in their truck,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can’t get hold of her or flush them all out.’
‘How come you get all the fun jobs?’ Lopez complained.
‘Because I want to bring her in alive.’
He was about to leave when Manx grabbed his arm.
‘Be careful,’ Manx urged. ‘She knows some kind of kung fu or something.’
Ethan nodded, eager to get Manx’s grubby hand off his arm, and set off up the track that led around the edge of the reservoir.
The heat was already intense with only the merest wisps of white cloud drifting above the distant peaks of the mountains. He knew the temperature here could easily break ninety degrees on most days, and summer still had a few more weeks to go. It crossed his mind that he had no water on him, but he consoled himself with the fact that he would find some soon enough, given the obvious tracks left in the desiccated soil beneath his feet.
Ethan had never been an expert tracker, and as an officer in the United States Marines he had left point duties on patrol to those more naturally gifted. However, following a pair of eight-inch-wide tires was a sight easier than tracking footprints through a mangrove swamp, and after only twenty or so minutes an unnatural shape ahead caught his attention. A mound of thick brush loosely concealed the sharp angles of a man-made object, almost certainly the vehicle used by Saffron Oppenheimer. Ethan slowed as he crossed a ridge, crouching down to avoid exposing himself against the horizon to anyone out on his flanks. Old habits die hard, he reflected, as he found himself tapping his waist with his right hand, searching for the long vanished webbing pouch containing his ammunition. Right now he would have felt a great deal better with an M16 cradled in his grip and a rifle platoon behind him.
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