Lalo blinked and leaned back into the wall. “So Tsarnev could know about me?”
“About the tracking,” Rupert said. “You’ve changed your name, and it’s been twenty years. He wouldn’t know it was you, specifically. But it sounds very likely that Tsarnev is one of the people who’s looking.” Rupert’s voice was tight. “I’ve confirmed the link you made between Tsarnev and Lázaro. It’s probable that Tsarnev is who’s giving Lázaro his orders.”
“Oh my God,” Cail frowned. There was the connection. If Alexei Tsarnev did have his uncle’s files, then he knew everything about Lalo. And the rumors of someone looking for a multi-million dollar tracking device were more than just rumors.
Tsarnev worked in this area.
And he was Marquez’s boss.
And Marquez had Wara.
She was connecting the dots in her head even as Rupert was saying it all out loud. The horror punched her in the gut and she felt absolutely nauseous.
“Tsarnev could be looking for you,” Rupert was saying, “so that he can use you to help them with their goal of taking over the region. And more. These people would love nothing more than to control the whole world with their brand of Islam. But they don’t really have any way to figure out that you are the one they’re looking for.”
Lalo was still backed against the wall, shaking his head. “You need to get Cail out of here, Rupert,” he said brusquely. “Now. Do whatever it takes.”
Of course, he was worried about her. But Cail was worrying about bigger things than herself right now.
“I’m more worried about getting you out of there,” Rupert said gravely. “Lalo, they shouldn’t be able to figure out you’re the boy from Tsarnev’s files. But we can’t let them take you. I’ll call you back soon with arrangements to get the hell out of Dodge. Cail should come with you. She’s the only other one in Timbuktu who knows who you are.”
“Wara knows.” Cail felt her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. “When we worked together in Rabat…I told her. I shouldn’t have…but we talked about a lot. She doesn’t know any details…just…that Lalo can track things.”
Silence dropped over the line. Finally Rupert said, “And now Marquez has access to whatever Wara knows.” His voice sounded sad.
Lalo had a death grip on the phone. His eyes were wild. “Please, you have to get Cail out of here!” he told Rupert.
Cail was touched by how much Lalo seemed to be worried about her. She was. But he was the one in danger here. “We have to assume that Wara is cooperating with Lázaro,” she told Rupert bitterly. “Tsarnev has been looking for Lalo. And now that they have Wara, they’ll have no trouble figuring out his exact identity.”
“And thinking they can use him to take over anything,” Rupert grated. “Lalo, you need to bring in Caspian and Alejo. We’re gonna need them involved in this now. They have to know.”
Robotically, Lalo spoke into the radio, telling the other team to come around front. Cail’s heart was slamming around inside her ribcage. Yeah, she’d told Wara something secret about Lalo. But who would have thought Wara would ever use anything she knew to betray others at CI?
Who could have imagined that?
Alejo and Caspian showed up quickly, pulling up in a cloud of dust. “We’re on the phone with Rupert,” Cail explained, because Lalo seemed to be losing it. The guy was actually rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “There’s a security situation.” Involving her best friend. Cail felt her eyes turn into fire. She would never let these monsters anywhere near Lalo.
Let them try to take him.
Rupert was bringing the two guys up to speed. “There’s a part of Lalo’s past that he has kept to himself, because it’s painful and never seemed to be relevant to the current situation. Only Cail and myself are aware of this. You’ve heard rumors of the bounty hunter searching Timbuktu for a stolen tracking device?”
“Yep,” Alejo clipped. His eyebrows dipped dangerously low and his gaze flitted across Lalo.
“It’s more than rumor,” Rupert said. “We’ve now connected Alexei Tsarnev to a Russian scientist notorious in his time for experimenting with psychic abilities with military applications. His name was Igor Markov, and he was ruthless, using drug therapy and reprogramming techniques even on children. Tsarnev is this man’s nephew, and we now believe Tsarnev is probably interested in continuing his uncle’s work. He could have access to all his uncle’s files. These files would include the fact that Markov paid thirty million dollars to acquire a very powerful tracking device back in 1995, something that they say can find any target on the planet. A few years later Markov lost the device. It seems his nephew has taken up the crusade of finding it after all these years.”
“Tsarnev has probably pulled back to Mopti along with everyone else,” Alejo said. He was frowning, probably thinking all this sounded really weird.
“Probably,” Rupert said, “but we can’t take that risk. If the tracking device falls into the hands of these people, God only knows what havoc they would cause.”
“And Lalo knows something about this?” Alejo was still frowning. He knew Lalo had lived in Russia, and was probably making the connection in his head that way.
“I knew, too.” Cail bit her lip. “And I told Wara. Now we have to assume she’s giving information to Lázaro.”
Alejo paled and blinked. Cail watched as Alejo’s fist made a ball at his side. “What’s going on, Lalo?” he asked. “Where is it?”
Rupert cleared his throat roughly on the phone.
“Lalo is the tracking device,” he said.
Cail watched as Alejo and Caspian both dropped their jaws and gaped at the phone. “What?” Alejo scrunched up his face.
“It’s Lalo,” Rupert repeated. “Lalo can find anybody, anything, anywhere. It’s a psychic ability called remote viewing, and not only Russia used it with military applications. The US military experimented with it for years, spent millions through programs like Stargate. Most of their psychics were limited in what they could see, and after a while the programs were abandoned. But Lalo was trained to do this from the time he was a child. He was born on a cult compound with a father whose whole life was connecting with supernatural forces. When Lalo’s dad realized what Lalo could do, he trained him night and day. Lalo’s father sold him to Russia when he was thirteen. Thirty million dollars.”
Caspian was staring at Lalo in awe. Alejo was still shocked.
“I couldn’t tell you,” Lalo said, “because I always knew they’d be looking for me. They made me find targets for them for three years. Then I ran away. But they paid a lot of money for me.”
“What you can do is priceless,” Caspian gaped.
“It’s priceless,” Rupert confirmed. “And if Tsarnev finds out the exact identity of the man from his uncle’s files, he and AQIM will stop at nothing to take Lalo and use him to conquer as much as they can.”
“And Wara knows.” Alejo folded his arms across his chest. He looked in pain.
“She knows,” Rupert sighed. “And as soon as Tsarnev finds out from Lázaro, they’ll come here and take Lalo. Whether or not Lalo is as valuable to them as they think, AQIM will feel invincible. They’ll take over the region.” Rupert paused. “Maybe we should get Wara back. Before it’s too late and Marquez gets information out of her.”
“What you need to do, Rupert,” Lalo said with painstaking emphasis on each word, “is to get Cail out of here, before it’s too late. If Marquez wanted information from Wara, he already has it. Get Cail out of here! Do you understand me?” Lalo’s eyes were starting to shade red. A thick vein stood out along his jawline, throbbing under feverish skin. “None of you understand. How do you think they made me acquire targets for them after my father sold me to the Russians? Through torture?”
Cail sucked in a gasp as Lalo unbuckled the body armor and dropped it to the dust, then pulled off his long-sleeve tee-shirt, exposing his chest to the sun. She’d never seen all his scars at once and stood ther
e stupefied at the ridges of scarring that engulfed Lalo’s lean belly, chest, and back.
It sure looked like torture. She knew he’d had the satanic tattoos burned off after escaping from Russia. But many of the marks had to be from abuse he suffered growing up on that compound.
Lalo’s chest was heaving. “They couldn’t torture me into finding things for them, because they knew I was used to torture. My father trained me in it from the time I could walk. So they use someone else,” Lalo shouted. “They find someone I actually care about in this freaking, messed up evil world, and then they take that one good person, and they torture them. So that I will view targets for them, and give them coordinates, and they can send their missiles and bombs.”
This was new. And horrifying. Cail had never seen Lalo like this. He was always so calm, taking his past with that lazy attitude that said he’d mostly gotten over it and moved on.
They had tortured someone he loved to make thirteen-year-old Lalo work for them.
Cail realized her eyes had slid shut, and she was shaking with sadness for her friend. She couldn’t let these people take him!
She opened her eyes to find everyone staring at her, including Lalo, still standing there shirtless.
“What?” she asked. Alejo’s eyes were wide and Caspian looked like he’d just seen a ghost.
“It’s you,” Alejo said. “Wara knows who it is that Lalo cares about now. And it’s you.”
Cail felt her heart spiral all the way down to her toes and she swayed to one side.
“Get Cail out of here! Right now!” Lalo had ordered Rupert. Frantic.
Lalo knew they were going to take her, too.
“It’s time to get out of here,” Caspian announced crisply. “Like, right now. Rupert, we need to move the kids. Make it happen, please?”
Alejo had moved over to Lalo and thrown and arm around his shoulder. Lalo let himself be lowered into the folding chair like a weak baby. Lalo’s eyes lifted to meet Cail’s, and they burned at her red and amber, every bit as tortured as the rest of his body.
“I’m on it,” Rupert said. “The kids have asylum in Italy. The paperwork will be ready to send this afternoon and I’m working on getting a plane that will fly in there. We need to get Lalo and Cail out as soon as possible. Alejo? Think about what I said about Wara. She’s a security risk in enemy hands. But she was also a friend to all of you. A friend who’s made a big mistake. But does that mean we forget her?”
Cail watched as Alejo snapped his jaw shut and turned towards the sun-burned street. The sound of sandals pounding the dust reached their ears and everyone tensed. Lalo scrambled for his shirt, covered up his skin. Amadou came flying around the corner, untucked tail of a black and gold African tunic flying in the dry wind.
“They’ve come back!” he yelled. Amadou skidded to a stop in front of the group outside the hospital, panting heavily. Sweat streamed past his golden glasses and ran down his neck. “The troops! AQIM. They’ve moved back into position. There are more than ever, maybe three times as many! And they’ve surrounded the city!”
This was not good news at all.
“Damn it!” Alejo smashed a fist into the side of the mud building.
She so wanted to remain calm for Lalo, but Cail felt fear flash across her gut, bubbling and acid. Lalo was staring right through Amadou, out across the city to the desert where the AQIM troops were setting up camp three times stronger than when they had left.
Amadou had said the city was surrounded.
If Alejo wanted to go save Wara, it was too late.
Rupert couldn’t move Lalo out of the city.
“They know their weapon’s here,” Lalo said hollowly, eyes far, far away. “They’re coming for me.”
Worst Road Trip Ever
LÁZARO MADE HER GET INTO THE CAR way too early. The sun had barely come up when he banged on the door of the bedroom and told Wara to get dressed. He was way too bright and cheerful for this time of the morning.
Wara literally rolled out of bed onto the rug and pulled on the red Converse tennis shoes. She was still wearing the yoga pants and jade green shirt from last night. She yanked the hood over her hair and grabbed onto the bedpost to make it to standing.
When Wara creaked open the door and faced Lázaro, she felt that her eyes must be bloodshot and about a thousand years old.
He marched her out to an olive-green Land Cruiser in the garden that said Sunny Sahara Tours and featured a big orange sand dune that shone in the sun like a wedge of cheddar. A plump tan camel was cresting the dune, grinning with bug eyes like the Cheshire cat.
“Nice cover,” she croaked. “A tour agency.” She didn’t even bother clearing her throat. Lázaro raised an eyebrow at her and set a big wicker picnic basket in between the two front seats of the vehicle that supposedly belonged to a tour agency.
“Lots of tour agencies driving around the desert,” he said. “But I don’t really need a cover. AQIM knows who I am. But just in case…if we are attacked out there, I have a weapon for you, locked in a safe in the back. If I have to give it to you, you’d better use it to help me. You’re a smart girl, so you know you’re a thousand times better off with me than with them.”
He was right. For all the things Lázaro was, being captured by Al-Qaeda was a far worse option. And that was saying a lot.
Numbly, Wara climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the door, crossed her arms in front of her chest. No seat belts out here in the Sahara.
It would totally be ok if they crashed and rolled down one of those big orange sand dunes and put her out of her misery.
Her heart was aching so much she could hardly stand it.
Lázaro had already secured all the doors in his high-tech mansion and he locked the heavy garage door behind them with a remote as they pulled out onto the street. Wara thought about making a break for it here, because it seemed like there were shops nearby on this quiet side street, somewhere she could try to call and warn the CI team about the kids and the bomb already in the hospital. But what was to stop Lázaro from blowing the place up before she got to the phone?
It had been a long night, and she was feeling really, really tired.
Again, she deserved to be here.
There had to be some way to fix this. Didn’t there?
She just had to keep letting things play out.
Everything was going so well already.
She didn’t say anything to Lázaro for the first two hours. He put on some kind of forties jazz music and munched on stuff from his picnic basket. When he told her to go ahead and eat, she reluctantly dug through the food stash and ate a handful of prunes, mostly out of boredom.
Lázaro said it was a twenty-four hour drive to Timbuktu.
Worst road trip ever.
“I did ask Tsarnev to give us a plane,” Lázaro said at about hour three. “It would have been a bit more convenient, you know, to fly instead of do this overland.” Wara shifted her eyes over to him. Around them, a lady was crooning “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”
“I would have voted for that,” she finally said. “Wouldn’t we just get shot down, though?”
Lázaro waved a hand in the air and scoffed. The sun had gotten bright and he’d slid on coppery aviator sunglasses. Today Lázaro was wearing a long sleeve black dress shirt and coffee-colored pin stripe pants. Black, military-looking hiking boots. The shirt was untucked and roomy, surely hiding that nasty-looking Skorpion.
“We wouldn’t get shot down,” Lázaro said. “Again, I have special protection. From Tsarnev. He thinks that I need to get back to Timbuktu to work for him…and to find you.” Lázaro smirked. He must be very proud of himself to be sticking it to the boss like this.
If he did decide to play Tsarnev.
Maybe he would end up just killing the kids and Wara, “finishing the jobs” exactly like the boss wanted.
“Yet here we are,” Wara sighed. “Listening to crappy music and driving through the desert instead of flying. You must
not be on Tsarnev’s favorite employee list.”
That put a little bit of a damper on Lázaro’s mood. “No planes were available,” he said sulkily. “They were just all in use. That’s all.”
Wara propped her Converse tennis up on the dashboard. This vehicle seemed to have air-conditioning, because the temperature was actually pretty nice in here. “I get it,” she told him, “why you want to do what you want, not have to take orders from someone else all the time. It makes sense. It must be…horrible, to not remember your past.” She stopped and swallowed hard. Well, maybe there were some memories that were better to lose. “I think you should do it. Just don’t take orders from Tsarnev anymore. Why are you even going back to Timbuktu? You could just disappear. Live anywhere you want! Start over.”
Lázaro had an arm stretched out onto the steering wheel and he was staring at the desert through the shades. For a while she thought he was annoyed and was just ignoring her.
“Well,” he finally said. “Isn’t that a lovely idea. The problem is, dear, that I am in pain. Like I told you before, the only thing that helps the pain is what I get from Tsarnev, and that’s not exactly available in your local pharmacy. Even if it was, I couldn’t exactly afford it if I ‘start over’ as a cashier at Walmart. Al-Qaeda doesn’t look good on the resume.”
Wara felt very stupid.
Yeah, Lázaro, just start over. Be the good person I know you really want to be.
She was afraid to ask but had to. “So what’s the plan, then? You have no choice? Off me and the kids and show your boss the proof so you can keep getting the drugs?”
Shivers actually ran down Wara’s spine when Lázaro tilted his head towards her and peered at her with serious brown eyes over the top of his sunglasses. “No,” he said. He pushed the sunglasses up his nose and flashed her a white grin. “Something better, my dear. What we’re going back to Timbuktu for is freedom.”
Burn (Story of CI #3) Page 24