by Ted Dekker
She didn’t respond. She couldn’t.
“Remove it, Carlos.”
Carlos stepped forward, ripped the gray duct tape from her mouth.
“The problem is that I’ve committed myself to you,” Svensson said. “You can now finger me. Until the time comes when I no longer care if I’m identified by you, I have to keep you under lock and key. Then, depending on how you treat me now, I will either let you live or have you killed. Does this make any sense to you?”
She drilled his face with a stare and said nothing.
“A strong woman. I may be able to use you when this is over. Soon, very soon.” Svensson stroked his mustache and paced in front of her. “Do you know what happens to your Raison Vaccine when it’s heated to 179.47 degrees and held at that temperature for two hours?”
Her eyes narrowed for a brief moment. Carlos didn’t think she knew. In fact, they didn’t know for sure.
“No, of course you don’t,” Svensson said. “You’ve never tested the vaccine under such adverse conditions; there’d be no need to. So let me make a suggestion: When you apply this specific heat to your miraculous drug, it mutates. You do know it’s capable of mutating, because according to our internal sources, it also mutates at a lower heat, but the mutations never could sustain themselves for more than a generation or two.”
Monique’s eyes widened briefly. She’d just learned there was a spy in her own lab. Perhaps now she would take them seriously. Carlos was surprised that Svensson told her so much. Clearly he didn’t expect her to live to tell.
“Yes, that’s right, we are quite resourceful. We know about the mutations and we also know that other, much more dangerous mutations hold under more intense heat. Your Raison Vaccine becomes my Raison Strain, a highly infectious, airborne virus with a three-week incubation period.” He smiled. “The whole world could have the disease before the first person showed any symptoms. Imagine the possibilities for the man who controlled the antivirus.”
A tremble took Monique’s face. It was the kind of response that undoubtedly had Svensson’s heart pounding like a fist. He’d called her bluff, suggested an incredible possibility they’d only just pieced together themselves. And she was responding with terror.
Monique de Raison’s face was screaming her answer. And no other answer could have been better. She, too, knew all of this. Or at least suspected it with enough conviction to drain the blood from her face. She’d spent a few hours alone with Thomas Hunter, the dreamer, and she’d come away somehow convinced that her vaccine did indeed pose a real risk.
“Yes, the vaccine to the AIDS virus has 375,200 base pairs . . . isn’t that what this Hunter told you? And he was right. So much information for a simpleton from America. It’s too bad we don’t have him as well. Unfortunately, he’s dead.”
Svensson turned and started to walk toward the door.
“I hope Daddy loves his daughter, Monique. I really do. We’re going to do some wonderful things in the days to come, and we would like you to help us.”
He limped slowly, right foot clacking on the concrete. Svensson was in his game.
Carlos pulled out the transmitter. “Don’t forget the explosive in your belly,” he said. “I can detonate it by pressing this button, as I’ve told you. But it will detonate on its own if it loses a signal past fifty meters. Think of it as your ball and chain. Don’t think anyone will come for you. If they do, they will only kill you.”
She closed her eyes.
Perhaps he wouldn’t have to hurt her after all. Better that way.
The helicopter was a standby, an old bubble job that held four and ran on pistons. Thomas and the guide dropped into a rice paddy three miles south of the concrete plant and angled for the jungle to their right. The banger lifted and banked for home. They were now dependent on the radios, Muta’s nose, and Thomas’s tricks.
They slogged through the water to high ground, then followed the tree line at an easy jog. Both carried machetes, and Muta carried a 9-millimeter on his hip. The foliage slowed them down, forcing them to hack their way through vines and underbrush. Three miles took them a full hour.
“There!” Muta thrust his machete out at the clearing ahead. Half a dozen concrete buildings in various degrees of deterioration. An overgrown parking lot with large tufts of grass growing between the concrete slabs. A rusted conveyor nosing into thin air.
Only one building was large enough to conceal any underground work. If they had Monique there, underground, the first building on their left looked like the best bet. Although, at the moment, all bets looked pretty weak.
He’d made bold statements and fired off thundering salvos, but standing here on the edge of the jungle, with cicadas screeching all around and the hot afternoon sun beating on his shoulders, the notion that the genesis of a worldwide virus attack lay hidden in this abandoned concrete plant struck him as ludicrous.
What if he was wrong? The question had dogged him since the helicopter had abandoned them an hour earlier. But now it went from question to haunting certainty in one giant leap. He was wrong. This was nothing more than an abandoned concrete plant.
“It is abandoned?” Muta said.
He knows it too.
“You get behind the shed,” Thomas said, pointing to a small structure thirty feet from the entrance to the main building. “Cover me with your gun. You can shoot that thing straight, right?”
Muta tsked in offense. “You kick so good; I shoot better. In military I shoot many gun. Nobody shoot so good as me!”
“Keep it down!” Thomas whispered. “I believe you. Can you hit a man at the door from this distance?”
The man eyed the door a hundred yards off. “Too far.”
Good. He was honest, then.
“Okay, you cover me. As soon as I clear the entry, you run up and follow me in.” He looked at the machete in his hand. Most of his fighting skills consisted of fist- and footwork, but what good would hand-to-hand combat do him in a place like this? True, he did have some tricks, but his main trick was falling asleep and coming back healthy. A very cool trick, to be sure, but not exactly a knockout blow in a fight.
“Ready?”
Muta released the clip from his pistol, checked it once, and slammed it home in a show of weapon-handling prowess. “You go; I follow.”
Not exactly a raid by U.S. Rangers.
“Go!”
He jumped over the berm and ran low to the ground, machete extended. Muta ran behind, feet thudding on the earth.
Thomas was halfway to the door when the doubts began to pile up in earnest. If the man he’d fought in the hotel room was inside this building, he’d be firing bullets. A machete might be less useful than a wet noodle. But hand-to-hand was out of the question; the man was much too skilled and powerful.
He slid to a halt, his back against the wall, the door to his left. Muta pulled up at the shed, gun extended.
Thomas tried the doorknob. Unlocked. He pulled it. Braved a quick look and withdrew. The interior was dark. Vacant.
Vacant, very, very vacant. He swallowed and waved Muta forward. The man ran across the open ground, gun waving.
Thomas stepped into the building.
“They’re in,” Carlos said, eying the monitor.
“Let them come,” Svensson said. “Send a message to her father as soon as you leave. In view of his disregard for the terms we set forward, we have reduced the time for his compliance to one hour. Give him new drop-off instructions. Use the airport.”
Svensson strode for the door. “Bring her to the mountain,” he said. “I trust this will be the last complication.”
They’d seen the pair as soon as the sensors picked them up at the perimeter. They’d even released the security bolts on the doors to let the men in. Like mice to a trap.
How Raison had found this place, Carlos couldn’t begin to guess. Why he’d sent only two men, even more mysterious. Either way, Carlos was prepared. What happened to these two was inconsequential. But the lab�
�s cover had been compromised. Svensson would be gone through the tunnels in a matter of minutes, even with his bad leg. Carlos would follow as soon as he had the vaccine.
Carlos stood. “I’ll bring her within twenty-four hours. Yes, this will be the last complication.”
Svensson was gone.
Carlos took a deep breath and faced the monitor. Perhaps this was better. The mountain complex in Switzerland had a far more extensive lab. The entire operation would be launched from yet another secured facility. The six leaders who’d already agreed to participate, should Svensson succeed, had established links with the base. The complication would change—
Carlos blinked at the monitor. The lead man’s face had come into full view for the first time. This was either Thomas Hunter or Thomas Hunter’s twin.
But he’d killed Hunter. Impossible! Even if the man had survived a bullet to the chest, he would be in no condition to run through the jungle.
Still, there he was.
Carlos stared at the image and considered his options. He would let the mouse into his trap, yes. But should he kill him this time?
It was a decision he wouldn’t rush. Time was now on his side. At least for the moment.
Vacant. Very vacant and very dark.
A flight of stairs to his right descended into blackness.
“There.” He pointed the machete at the stairwell.
He ran for the stairs and descended on the fly, using the light from the gaping door above to guide his steps. A steel door at the bottom. He tried the handle. Open. The door swung in. A dark hall. Doors on either side. At the end, another door.
A thin strip of light ran like a seam beneath the far door. Thomas’s heart pounded. He kept his machete leveled in both hands. Two careful steps forward before remembering his backup. Muta.
He eased back, glanced up the stairs. No Muta.
“Muta?” he whispered.
No Muta. Maybe Muta had gone back to cover the front door. Maybe he’d been taken out. Maybe . . .
Thomas began to panic. He breathed deliberately, shrouded in the darkness. It was a nightmare and he was the lone fugitive, panting down deserted dark hallways with the phantoms at his heels. Only his phantom had a gun, and Thomas had already felt a couple of its slugs.
No way he could go back up those stairs now. Not if there was someone up there waiting.
He ran toward the door at the hall’s end. Rubber soles muted his footfalls. He was passing other doors on either side. Whoosh, whoosh, like windows into gray oblivion. Doors into terror. He ran faster. Suddenly it was a race to get into the door with the light.
He crashed into it, desperate for it to be open. It was. He burst through, blinded by light. He slammed the door shut. Shoved a bolt home and gasped for breath.
“Thomas?”
Thomas spun. Monique was strapped to a chair in the corner beyond a row of white tables with bottles on them. This was the room Rachelle had wanted to be rescued from, almost exactly as he’d imagined it. But this wasn’t Rachelle; this was Monique.
Her eyes were wide and her face white. “You . . . you’re dead,” she said. “I saw him shoot you.”
Thomas walked to the middle of the floor, mind reeling. She was actually here. He wasn’t sure if it was an intense sense of relief or a general kind of madness that made him want to cry.
He was suddenly running again, straight for her. “You’re here!” He slid behind her and ripped at the duct tape that bound her hands to the chair legs. “Rachelle told me you’d be here, in the white cave with bottles, and you’re here.” An uncontrolled sob was in the mix, but he recovered quickly. “This is incredible; this is absolutely incredible.”
He pulled a trembling Monique to her feet, threw his arms around her, and hugged her dearly. “Thank God you’re safe.”
She felt stiff, but that was to be expected. The poor soul had been taken at gunpoint and—
“Thomas?” She gently pushed him away. Glanced at the door.
Thomas fell back a step and followed her glance. The door was locked from this side. Monique wasn’t doing backflips at his rescue, and he wondered why.
“I came to rescue you,” he said. The reality of what he was doing, where he was, suddenly crashed in around him. He blinked.
“Thomas, we have a problem.”
“We have to get out of here!” He grabbed her hand and pulled. Then doubled back for the machete he’d set on the ground. “Come on!”
“I can’t!” She jerked her hand free.
“Of course you can! It’s true, Monique, all of it. I knew about the AIDS pairs, I knew about the Raison Strain, and I knew how to find you. And I know that if we don’t get out of here, we’re going to have more problems than either of us can imagine.”
She spoke quickly in a half whisper, hands on her belly. “He forced me to swallow an explosive device. If I go more than fifty meters from him, it will kill me. I can’t leave!”
Thomas looked at her stricken face, her hands trembling over her stomach. His mind went blank.
“You have to get out, Thomas. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for not listening. You were right.”
“No, it’s not your fault. I kidnapped you.” He stepped up to her and for a moment she was Rachelle, begging to be rescued. He almost reached out and swept her hair from her forehead.
“You have to get out now, and tell them it’s all true,” she said, glancing at the corner.
Thomas saw the small camera and froze. Of course, they were being watched. Muta had been taken out because Monique’s kidnapper had seen them coming all the way. They had let Thomas walk into this trap. There would be no way out!
Monique stepped up to him and pulled him tight. Her mouth pressed by his ear. “They are listening; they are watching. Kiss my face, my ears, my hair, like we’ve known each other for a long time.”
She didn’t wait for him but immediately pressed her lips against his cheek. She was giving whoever was watching something to think about.
“They have the wrong numbers,” she said, louder, but not too loudly. “Only you.”
“Only . . .”
“Shh, shh,” she hushed him. And then very softly. “His name is Valborg Svensson. Tell my father. They intend to use the Raison Vaccine. Tell him it mutates at 179.47 degrees after two hours. Don’t forget. Take the ring carefully off my finger and get out while you can.”
Thomas had stopped kissing her hair. He felt the ring, pulling it off.
“Keep kissing me.”
He kept kissing.
“I can’t leave you here,” he said.
“They will need me alive. And if they think you have more information that they need, they won’t kill you.”
“I’m right about the virus, then.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry for doubting.”
He felt a strange panic grip his throat. He couldn’t just leave her here! He was meant to rescue her. Somehow, in some way beyond his understanding, she was the key to this madness. She was at the heart of the Great Romance; he was sure of it.
“I’m staying. I can fight this guy. I’ve learned—”
“No, Thomas! You have to get out. You have to tell my father before it’s too late! Go.”
She gave him one last kiss, on the lips this time. “The world needs you, Thomas! They are powerless without you. Run!”
Thomas stared at her, knowing that she was right, but he couldn’t leave her like this.
“Run!” she yelled.
“Monique, I can’t leave—”
“Run! Run, run, run!”
Thomas ran.
It happened so fast, so unexpectedly, that Carlos found himself off guard. One second he had them both trapped in the laboratory at the end of the long hall. The next Monique was suggesting that Hunter still knew something they did not. That perhaps she and Hunter had planned this together, an interesting thought.
And then Hunter was running.
The American made the hall before Carlos re
acted.
He leaped over the body of the guard who’d come with Hunter, threw open the door, and sprang into the hall. Hunter hit him broadside before he had time to bring his weapon around. Then the man was past and sprinting for the stairs.
Carlos let the force of the impact spin his body toward the fleeing figure. He extended his gun, aimed at the man’s back. Two choices.
Kill him now with an easy shot through the spine.
Wound him and take him alive.
The latter.
Carlos pulled the trigger. But Hunter had anticipated the shot and dodged to his left. Fast, very fast.
Carlos shifted left and fired again.
But the slug sparked against the steel door. The man was through the door and on the stairs. Carlos felt momentarily stunned. He recovered. Took after the man in a full sprint.
“Run!” the woman screamed from behind.
She stood in the doorframe of her prison.
Carlos ignored her and raced up the stairs, three at a time. Hunter was gone already? Carlos reached the door and flew through it.
The American was at the shed. Cutting behind. Carlos squeezed off a quick shot that took a chunk of concrete from the corner just above Hunter’s head. He veered into the open and sprinted for the tree line.
Carlos started his pursuit, knowing the shed would offer a perfect brace for a fully exposed shot at the man. He’d taken only one step before pulling up.
If he and the woman were separated by more than fifty meters, the explosive in her belly would end her life. They needed her alive. She knew and wasn’t following.
The man was stretching the distance.
Carlos could leave the transmitter, but the woman might decide to follow, find the transmitter, and escape with it. She was his ball and chain.
Carlos swore under his breath, leaned against the doorframe, and steadied his outstretched gun. The man was only twenty yards from the jungle, a bobbing blotch in the gun sight.
He squeezed off a shot. Another. Then two more in rapid succession.