Burn (Story of CI #3)

by Rachel Moschell

  Wara blinked at him. A bunch of grasshoppers started leaping around in front of the Land Cruiser and the windshield exploded in a mess of snowy white guts. Lázaro punched the wiper button and settled back into his seat, looking like the cat who’d caught a big, fat mouse.

  “I’ve thought of a solution,” Lázaro grinned. “Something much less bloody than killing little Christian kids or my ex. No one will get hurt. At least, they won’t have to.” Lázaro cocked his head to one side and squinted at the windshield. The glass was milky with swirled insect remains. There wasn’t exactly a lot of traffic out here, though. Just gentle dunes of smooth sand, like caramel whipped cream forming waves in the mixing bowl.

  “There’s something Tsarnev wants,” Lázaro said, “the reason he sent me to Timbuktu six weeks ago as Hannibal the security guard. The job was the perfect cover to pick up clues about the location of something valuable. Fixing the screw ups with you and the school were just to keep me busy. Prove my worth to Tsarnev, if you will. I didn’t take care of the kids until last week because I didn’t want to raise suspicion that would keep me from looking around for what Tsarnev wants.”

  Wara blinked away the horror of the memory of Lázaro’s part in what happened to the school kids. He was talking about finding something worth a lot of money to Tsarnev, and that would be good. Right? Maybe the money would fix his drug problem.

  And he could just disappear.

  And leave everyone else alone.

  “What is it?” Timbuktu was an ancient trade route. It could be anything. Ancient gold? One of the manuscripts.

  Hopefully not drugs. Or arms.

  “Not a what. A who, actually,” Lázaro grinned.

  Wara felt herself start in her seat. “What?”

  “Tsarnev suspected the target was in Timbuktu, but all the weeks I was there I couldn’t get any solid leads. Now you’ve confirmed that he is, indeed, there. And I know how to find him, thanks to you. If you want to come with me when I ‘start over’, maybe we can work something out. After all, you gave me the intel. And it seems we still have some chemistry.”

  The disturbing references to chemistry just slipped around in Wara’s consciousness like a fish flopping around in a really tight net. She was still stuck on the fact that Lázaro just said he was looking for a person. And that Tsarnev was paying big bucks for this person.

  And that she had helped Lázaro find him.

  “You said some ‘thing.’ At first,” Wara managed.

  Lázaro smiled. The vehicle hit an epic bump and Wara’s butt left the seat. She grabbed ahold of the dashboard and her tennis shoes clumped down to the floor.

  “That’s because everyone else out there thinks they are looking for an object. A system,” Lázaro said. “But I know differently. And that’s why I will find what Tsarnev wants, and he will pay me. Money, drugs, whatever I want. I’ve already contacted Tsarnev that I’ll have his prize ready for pick-up in Timbuktu tomorrow at noon, thanks to you, dear. I’ll negotiate the price a little, get some extra cash to put away. The thing is, Tsarnev will never suspect that I’ll take the money and never look back. He thinks he’s programmed me so well that I would never leave him. He knows he took my memory and he’ll never guess I’ve found a way to get it back, that I have you to help me. This is how I’ll start over.”

  Lázaro was grinning at the sand and he looked a little feverish. Wara felt a chill spread across her back like a pair of icy wings. “Who are you selling to Tsarnev?”

  “Oh you wouldn’t tell me his name.” Lázaro puckered his lips. “But I’m honestly shocked you gave me as much intel as you did in so little time. I expected to have to be holed up with you in that house for days. What you did tell me is that your friend Cail Lamontagne, that skinny blond who showed up with you a few days ago, is in love with a man who can find anyone. Anywhere. A psychic who can do remote viewing and has been keeping it secret for years because there are bad guys after him. She won’t admit she’s in love with him, but she was so happy she finally got to go to Timbuktu to be with her dearest love.” He was mimicking the voice of some lovesick girl. “He’s there with her, in Timbuktu right now. I saw some things when I was Hannibal, and I’ll keep checking my security feed from the mission house. It won’t be hard to figure out who the psychic is.”

  “Wh-what?” Wara was beyond horrified. She’d said that thing about her friends finding her out of fear. How was she supposed to know Lázaro would have any idea what she was talking about? And drug her to get more information?

  This was horrible. He had actually been in Timbuktu all along, looking for Lalo. Searching for him, to sell so Al-Qaeda could use what Lalo could do.

  And Wara had told Lázaro all he wanted to know.

  “How did you…” Her voice was shaking. A lot. “How did anyone know that he was in Timbuktu?” she asked. Cail hadn’t told Wara a lot about Lalo, just what he could do and that it was a big secret because many people would want to take advantage of power like that. It had seemed pretty far out at first, but Wara found out on the internet that the US government actually spent millions on programs to develop remote viewing skills, hoping to use it in the military. There were even tons of websites and schools where the average person could supposedly train to remote view. That meant you could see things that were hidden from your view, often locations far away. Even other planets, remote viewers claimed.

  “I told you before that Tsarnev loves all this psychic stuff,” Lázaro said. “He has other people who work with him, other remote viewers. They’re probably only average, at best. Most remote viewers don’t see things with much detail at all, but of course Cail’s boyfriend is different. One of Tsarnev’s remote viewers picked up the trail of the powerful psychic Tsarnev wanted in the Timbuktu region of Mali. Like I said, they weren’t that good, and that’s as close as they got. So Tsarnev sent me to find the guy with more conventional means.”

  Wara felt herself blinking, fast. “And how did Tsarnev even know about this person?”

  “Ah. I’ll tell you a story. Tsarnev didn’t just pick up his nutty interest in anything psychic. His uncle was a man who ran the Russian military’s psychic program for years. Igor Markov. Back in 1995, this Markov paid thirty million bucks for a kid who was the best remote viewer the world has ever seen. They said he could find any target, any place, anyone.”

  Lalo. “He was a kid?”

  “He was thirteen. I know this because after old Markov kicked the bucket, nephew Tsarnev inherited his top-secret files. They weren’t very nice to the poor kid.” Lázaro stabbed Wara with his eyes over the top of his shades. “Of course, now a days I’m sure he’s going by a different name. Back then they called him Daniel. After three years, Daniel ran away. Surprisingly. They thought he would never run because, according to the files, the Russians had insurance, something that would guarantee Daniel would always help them out willingly.”

  Wara had seen a little of what Lalo’s skin looked like under his shirt. It made her want to puke thinking of Lalo as a kid, in the hands of the Russian military as an intelligence weapon.

  Of course they had “insurance.” She did not want to imagine what they had done to him.

  “You can’t do this to him,” Wara heard herself blabbing. “Please. He’s a good person. He’s suffered enough. If you sell him to Tsarnev, they’ll just torture him again to make him work for them. You know they will.” Her voice was really, really shrill.

  Lázaro scoffed. “They won’t torture him. Tsarnev can’t damage someone worth that much money. But Tsarnev does need to make sure Daniel will cooperate, and after reading the files, I know just how to make it happen. Just like the Russians did. I hand over Danny boy along with the insurance policy, he remote views targets for Tsarnev. I get paid, everyone’s happy.”

  It was getting hard to think straight. Lázaro said they wouldn’t torture him, and that made sense. So how were they gonna force Lalo to do what they wanted?

  Lalo was not a wimpy guy. He wo
uld probably rather take a bullet then help the bad guys. He wasn’t that thirteen-year-old kid from a long time ago.

  “How are you going to make Daniel cooperate?” she asked slowly.

  Lázaro heaved a dramatic sigh. “Love. True love,” he said. “Works every time. This part of the story is a little sad, but hey. Sometimes life just bites you in the ass. I’ve been bit, and now it’s my turn to get a little moolah.”

  “What are you talking about?” The connection was itching her deep inside, but she did not want to scratch it. This couldn’t be real.

  “When little Daniel was sold to the Russians,” Lázaro said, “someone from ‘home’ went with him. According to the Russian secret files, the only person Daniel cared about, a girl named Romina. If Daniel was naughty and didn’t find the target the Russians wanted, Romina got in trouble. And the files show that the Russians really weren’t very nice. The girl Daniel loved was the insurance policy.”

  Wara felt herself gasp, out loud.

  The girl Daniel loved was the insurance policy.

  Last night, possibly while throwing herself into Lázaro’s arms, she had told him who the girl was that the planet’s most-wanted psychic loved.

  Cail.

  Mud

  THE HORIZON WAS GLOWING PINK BY the time the Land Cruiser rolled to a park near the river. There were a lot of people, carrying baskets on their heads or carting wood boxes of fish or squatting in the reddened mud, just watching the world go by. The Niger flowed quickly past its earthen banks, dull, foaming chocolate milk.

  Wara stomach was roiling like the waters. It was just too much.

  Lalo Navarro saved Wara’s life in Iran.

  Cail was her friend.

  Wara felt her hands shaking on her lap. She couldn’t do it again.

  She had to believe Alejo was alive, just like Lázaro said. But she was the one who betrayed him. And she could not just sit by while Lázaro went after Lalo and Cail.

  “We can buy some food here,” Lázaro said next to her. He seemed almost relaxed now, after getting the entire evil plan off his chest. “Fruit, dried fish, tasty bread. Whatever you’re hungry for.”

  “Couscous,” Wara’s voice creaked.

  “What?”

  “I’m hungry for couscous.” She remembered the long table at Rupert’s house, all the steaming plates of couscous and coffee and people who loved her grinning at her from across the table. Alejo wrapping his arm around her out in the tree house in the backyard. Even the old refrigerator that rattled and moaned in the kitchen.

  Lázaro narrowed his eyes at her. “We’re in Mali,” he said. “They make couscous in Morocco. Get out.”

  Wara pushed open the door and dropped down into the slush. The mud was hot and sucked around her tennis shoes, swallowing the dazzling red sparkles. Lázaro’s heavy black boots came into view from around the corner of the vehicle.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Whatever you see you like, I’m buying.”

  He locked the car with a peppy beep and she waded ahead of him through the field of mud, dodging carts loaded with papaya and tiny breaded sardines sizzling in ancient oil. The entire river was lined with people buying and selling and waiting for a ride on the Venetian-style pinasse boats that would take them down the river. Scattered houses sat a ways from the river, the color of a coffee with milk, squatty and square.

  She stopped beside Lázaro, who started haggling with a guy over the price of bananas. He was totally into it. Some people just had to win, always get the best price. Lázaro was making nice and sure that Wara wasn’t getting into a position behind him. He was in a good mood, but had to know that she was not happy about his plans for Lalo.

  “Can I have some chocolate?” she asked Lázaro, pointing at some dusty candy bars in a cart next to the bananas. After being in the sun all day, the chocolate bars must be liquid pools of cacao.

  Lázaro glanced over at her, looking kind of pleased that she was interested in something to eat. He flashed the white grin. “Sure!”

  He bought the chocolate, while Wara worked her feet down into the mud. A few inches down, it was nice and solid. The mud kind of worked like glue, a stabilizer for her stance. Lázaro turned his back to the guys selling bananas and chocolate and passed her the candy in a little plastic bag, which she slid into the pocket of her yoga pants.

  “Thanks,” she told him, pressing her lips together and doing her best to look sad yet grateful.

  Lázaro was about two inches taller than her, and not that solid. He was distracted, thinking he made her happy.

  Wara seized Lázaro by the shoulder, hooked her arm around his neck and heaved him over her shoulder, slammed him into the warm mud.

  There was no time to listen to her shoulder muscles scream. Wara whirled around in panic, found Lázaro flat on his back in the mud, smeared in wet earth. He was obviously stunned, probably shocked with pain from those sore ribs Alejo had left him with. She slid to the ground, pushed Lázaro a few inches out of the dirt with one knee, ripped up his shirt and pulled the Skorpion he’d shown her out of the holster.

  She threw herself off Lázaro and took up position far enough away that he couldn’t reach her without her shooting him. She aimed the weapon at his chest, glad that her hands weren’t even shaking. The metal was hot against her fingers, ripe with Lázaro’s body heat.

  There was a switch on the left side by her fingers, numbers 0 through 2. 0 had to be “safe”. She slid the switch to 1. This was a submachine gun. Setting number 2 would probably be “continuous fire”, a bit of overkill.

  “Sit up,” she ordered him. Lázaro grunted and tried to pull himself to sitting. He was dripping with thick mud. “Slowly,” she reminded him. “Now get out your phone. Do it!” She hadn’t been able to rip Lázaro’s cell off him now, because she didn’t know where he kept it. “If you touch anything on the phone, I’ll shoot you,” she promised him. “Toss it right at my feet.” She couldn’t try to make Lázaro turn off the bomb, because for all she knew he could be blowing the hospital up instead.

  Lázaro had definitely gotten the wind knocked out of him when she slammed him into the ground. He was still grimacing. Lázaro wheezed and gently threw the phone into the soft mud by Wara’s sandals. She picked it up, the Skorpion still trained on his ribs.

  She had to scrub the thing all over a clean swatch of her shirt to get off the mud. Wara was afraid to bump any keys, because Lázaro was totally the kind of guy who would have Bomb Denotation on speed dial number one.

  “What’s the code so I can make a call?” Of course the screen was locked. Lázaro winced and then rolled his eyes. “Now!” she shouted at him.

  “Fine. Maria Rosa,” he mumbled.

  Wara blinked. “Your mother?”

  “I change the code every day,” he shrugged. “Yesterday I made it Maria Rosa.”

  Just like a Latino mommy’s boy. In his former life, Wara could totally see Lázaro as a mommy’s boy. She tapped in the code and the phone seemed ready to make calls. She dialed CI’s number that let her call from anywhere in the world, then Cail's cell.

  She could not call Alejo.

  Wara felt her heart breaking.

  “This is Cail.” Hearing her friend’s voice was like picking up some alien transmission from another dimension. Wara locked her jaw, took in the scene around her: the white eyes shining in dark faces, gaping at her holding the Skorpion. The rushing chocolate river, a pinasse overloaded with people dipping dangerously low into the ripples. Lázaro Marquez sitting there slimy with mud, annoyed as hell.

  She was pointing a weapon at him, and if he tried to get up she was gonna have to shoot him.

  “Cail,” Wara croaked. She cleared her throat fast and knew she had to start talking. “It’s Wara.” There wasn’t time for anything but the essentials. Yet. “I’ve got Lázaro’s weapon and his phone. He’s the one who blew up the school.”

  The silence on the line was way too long. “We know. Where are you?”

  “Ha
lfway to Timbuktu. Get the kids out of the hospital. Lázaro works for Alexei Tsarnev. Tsarnev wants Lázaro to finish the kids, and explosives are already set up. Tsarnev also wants the psychic who can remote view, and Lázaro knows who it is. Get out of there.” A shiver ran down Wara’s back as Lázaro moved. He was rolling to the balls of his feet, trying to rise.

  “Stop!” she shrieked. She took a few steps back and re-aimed, unable to hear if Cail was speaking on the phone. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

  Oh God, he was not going to stop. The shock made her drop the cell and it was all she could do to refocus her aim on Lázaro’s thigh.

  He was gonna bleed to death out here. That was the most likely option. Wara pulled the trigger, fully expecting to hear a crack and see blood bloom out of Lázaro’s striped pants.

  But nothing happened.

  Because the Skorpion was out of rounds.

  Crap! Wara whirled and started to run, skidding across the mud, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. Near one of the sunbaked houses was a vendor cart full of shining silverware, probably cheap and Chinese and plated in toxic metals. There had to be knives in there somewhere, and that would do.

  She had no plan except to stop Lázaro from doing whatever he was about to do to her.

  Before she could make the silverware cart, Lázaro tackled her from behind. She splatted into the mud and tasted copper, blood and minerals from the earth. Warm metal seared the back of her neck as Lázaro’s weight held her prostrate. He ripped the Skorpion from her hand and tossed it away.

  “I had a pistol in an ankle holster,” he breathed into her ear. “The Skorpion I showed you was just for show. I knew eventually you’d go for it.” The pressure eased a little and Wara lifted her chin out of the mud, almost screamed as Lázaro’s knee dug into the small of her back and he yanked her arms behind her, tight. She felt the bite of plastic zip ties.

  Her eyes stung. She was beyond scared.

  Lázaro hauled her to her feet roughly, plastered her against his chest with a muddy arm around her neck, jammed the pistol into her spinal cord. She could feel his chest heaving against the arms she couldn’t move.