Lethal Cure

by S A Gardner

  “Stop it, Jake!” That was snarled. “I mean it.”

  His hands went up in mock defense. “Don’t kill the messenger, my love. If you have better explanations for what happened to your friends, how about the attack on your team in the paramilitary camp? Once you fathomed the agent, and discovered a counteraction, he ordered his men to attack. To kill the one who posed the biggest danger to the agent’s future.”

  Di.

  Jake didn’t give me a second to recover from this latest blow in his barrage of “revelations” as he went on, “Once he knew she had all her findings and proposed procedures on her laptop, he had to get rid of her before she shared them with you, or anyone else and confiscate it. He had no interest in killing anyone else, basically because if he did, and only you survived, you’d suspect it. Suspect him. So his marksmen gave the others some survivable injuries, so you wouldn’t know your anarchy science expert was the one being targeted in specific, and they gave him a scalp wound to make the attack more convincing. During that attack, and your subsequent so-called rescue, he only eliminated the guerrillas who work with his men. The ones due for elimination.”

  His impenetrable logic was jagged pieces hurtling into place, ripping right through my sanity.

  Was it any wonder? With this superhuman insight and persuasion, he’d wrapped armies of monsters around his finger.

  Well, he wasn’t wrapping me.

  No harm in hearing the rest of his convoluted masterpiece, though. Not more than the festering ugliness he’d already sowed. “You’re saying it’s all about me? Damian went to all that trouble for me?”

  He shrugged one elegant shoulder. “He’d go to far, far more. There’s no atrocity he wouldn’t commit for you, at whatever cost, to himself or to anything or anyone else. He’s totally obsessed with you. I sympathize absolutely, of course, even if it never ceases to astound me that a common, vicious mind like his can possess the acumen to appreciate a being of your caliber. Anyway, you weren’t his only objective. His plan was manifold. Getting you, stopping you from finding out the game he’s playing, and employing you and, through you, GCA, who would have never dealt with him again, in finding a counteraction for the agent—so he’d have the whole package, weapon and antidote, to better hold the world hostage with.”

  Incredible. The depth of pain even a lie could cause. And it had to be a lie.

  I rubbed both hands over my burning face. “So Damian never knew he was working for you. How come? A man whose whole life depends on digging up the unthinkable and connecting the implausible?”

  He made himself more comfortable on the cot, crossed his legs. “Before Russia, he was an avaricious fool. You did see one of his mansions, didn’t you? No doubt he told you it’s his mother’s. He keeps her there as a front, uses her to catch the men he eliminates. After Russia, when he found out I made pacts way above his head, it was thanks to your convincing him I was dead that he never suspected I continued to move the pieces. His bosses neglected to inform him of my resurrection, of course.”

  Okay. Next lie. “Didn’t you start to worry that he was pursuing his own ends? Finding ways to counteract your weapon?”

  He looked almost surprised. Silly question, huh? “Why should I? A method of counteraction was something I wanted, too, to perfect my weapon, to fix any shortcomings. That dead friend of yours had the kind of erratic genius it took to actually find out something I hadn’t been able to.”

  An image of Di, bullets ripping her, her incredulity and terror…I couldn’t even feel fury for her death now. Too confused, too battered to know where to direct it. I hated it. Hated Jake for doing it to me.

  What if he’s telling the truth?

  No. No way!

  My hands wiped over my face again, came off wet. Dammit. I sniffed, cocked my head at him. “Okay, Jake. Here’s another postulation, since we’re playing fill-the-plot-holes. It was all your doing. Being dead in everybody’s mind gave you all the edge you needed. You could have sneaked up on my friends. You’re clever enough to leave all the crumbs to lead me into your trap. And then, just how do you know everything that happened as if you were there, if you aren’t the one masterminding it all?”

  His smile broadened. “Your boldness just goes to my head, Cali. But there is a very simple answer, if you weren’t too distraught to see it. I got everything I know through Damian, your monitor. But don’t let me babble on, let me produce proof.”

  He looked up, gestured to one of the massive men and I noticed the folding partition for the first time. The man folded it back and—and—he was there. Battered, bound—and from the way he was slumped, he-he looked lifeless…

  “Damian!”

  Thirty-Seven

  “You killed him!”

  Jake winced at my scream, stopped my explosive movement up. “Regretfully, no. I couldn’t eliminate him before I let you see the truth of my words in his eyes, and put your mind to rest.” I struggled with his detained hand, and he took it away, held both up placatingly. “They’ll bring him to you. Sit down, please, Cali.”

  And bring him they did. Four men hauled him up, thrust him forward, ramming him in the back with the butts of their rifles, every impact shattering my bones, squishing my heart.

  I screamed. “Stop them!”

  Jake gave me a considering sidelong glance, nodded, raised a hand. They stopped, but still hurled Damian at our feet. He slammed to the ground, the impact of his mass rattling the cot. He lay there unmoving, facedown. Seeing him this way…oh God…

  “His men sold him out, as you can see.” Jake’s ultra-cultured drawl hammered in my ears as something chafed against my cheeks. A handkerchief. Drying my tears. “Yes, these gentlemen are PACT’s finest. They insisted on accompanying me on this trip. They’re anxious to see the wipeout of this hotbed of headaches.”

  I snatched Jake’s hand off my face, crashed beside Damian. My hands flailed on his head and back, useless, ignorant, no longer capable of reading injuries or assessing damage.

  I struggled to turn him on his back, couldn’t, then other hands were helping me and I saw his face. One side of it pulped, his lower lip swollen, bleeding, his left eye almost swollen shut. The right one—the right one—was open. And it told me everything.

  He has been lying to me.

  For how long? How much? How far? All the time? All the way?

  It spread, the malignant decay, razing all, belief, reasons, reason. God, oh God. All a lie. All for nothing. All monsters…

  No. Damian was no monster. Not like that. He’d never hurt innocents, never hurt me….

  But he has hurt you, over and over, lying to you. What if the lies weren’t to protect you, but to subjugate you? What if he is no less a monster than Jake, just pettier, smaller?

  Stop it. No time for thinking, for feeling—for me. Time to stop the real danger. Any guesses who that was?

  My hand under Damian’s chin brought his face up. “Damian, one thing. Did you salvage Jake’s work back in Russia? Was that the whole objective behind our mission back then?”

  His silence answered. His eyes—or eye—did. I waited for a verbal confirmation, bass, almost inaudible. “Yes.”

  Then I hit him.

  The backhand blow to the un-bludgeoned side of his face knocked him sideways. He didn’t try to dodge it, to lessen the impact, and now lay motionless. My hand felt broken. I was.

  A nasal string of Spanish crackled from above us. The pilot.

  “I’m being paged, Cali. We’re over the Caucasus Mountains where it restarted and ended again, for us. Have I ever thanked you for rescuing me? Anyway, I have to excuse myself. Though I’d love to stay and watch you come to realizations and abuse Damian, I have to go take care of business.”

  I watched him leave. Going to begin his silent attack.

  Now. I had to act now. Before the plane began its decent, losing me the only edge I had.

  “You think you have a chance with him?” Damian. Every hair on my body erupted on end. Talking
to “his” men. “Can you be so stupid? You think anything he’s offering is worth a slow, agonizing death, the kind he rewards those who help him with?”

  “This plane has a rear door?” I stood up, turned to the men giving Damian grim faces and deaf ears. Not that they weren’t rattled. Betraying your superior officer didn’t come at no price.

  One of them nodded automatically at my question.

  I turned on Damian, kicked him in the back, hard. He took it in silence, his eyes squeezing.

  “Open your eyes, bastard.” I stressed the word. That got his eyes open. Good. “I should toss you out of the plane—hell, I think I will!” That got him shifting away, his back to the cot. Better. “Leading me on, endangering me and my friends to get your hands on Jake’s weapon. At least Jake is honest about his agenda.”

  My monologue ended on another blow.

  He spit out blood, raised a blank eye. I watched it turn lethal.

  Then he smiled, his distorted face turning the chilling grimace macabre. “Well, bitch, you want honest? It’s all been an act, to stop you from joining Jake when I had uses for you. All of it.” He made a vulgar sound, his explicit expression more offensive. “Yeah, I knew he was alive. You think all the time and resources I expended keeping an eye on you was for you? No woman is worth the trouble. You, ‘amor,’ are worth nothing.”

  My facial muscles shuddered, my nostrils flared, an acrid scent burning through them, shriveling my lungs.

  I thought I was ready. I wasn’t. God, hearing it hurt.

  Damian wasn’t finished, his tone slashing, his golden eye defiling. “I just played one card wrong. I didn’t realize that PACT was that far gone down his pocket, or that the guy actually cares for you, and would want to kill me for fucking you. But no problem, I always play the winning side, and that’s Jake now. After he realizes you were just business, he’ll recognize my potential, and accept my offer to work for him for real.”

  I kicked him in the head this time. He jerked away at the last second before I connected fully. Hands behind his back, he still made that elastic rebound movement, was on his feet snarling at me in a second.

  “I’m done being nice to you, St. James. You don’t get pulled punches anymore. I want to work out some of the disgust being with you caused me. Don’t worry, I won’t kill you. My new boss wouldn’t like that. I’ll just show him that—how can I put it?—I’m really not interested.”

  “Well, I’m interested, bastard. In crippling you.”

  I struck out with a yoko geri, raising my knee, pivoting sideways, hips twisting out, ramming my heel into his knee. He jumped back, my ram just missing fracturing his knee backward, retaliated by a mawashi geri. His roundhouse kick connected, full on, the power of his formidable leg impacting my shoulder sideways, sending me flying. Two inches up and he would have snapped my neck.

  Blocking out pain, I completed the fall on a somersault, landed in a crouch on hands and heels, snapped my leg out, reaping his legs. He just twisted on his axis midfall, catching me full in the face with an ushiro geri back kick before landing on both feet again.

  I spit blood this time.

  Enough. “Trying to show me you can beat me with your hands tied behind your back? Well, surprise, bastard. You can’t.” I charged him, ramming my head into his ribs. He fell backward in an ushiro ukemi break-fall technique. I latched on to him, didn’t let him complete it, rammed his head into the floor. A hard haul brought me straddling his chest.

  Then I pummeled him.

  A hand on my shoulder jerked through me. “Hey, the guy’s out. The boss didn’t say you could kill him. He may have a use for…” The man didn’t complete his thought. My elbow plowed into his hard gut with an empi uchi, emptying his lungs.

  His instinctive defense gave me the excuse to jump off Damian and assault him. Abandoning all finesse, I was all over him, until he managed to restrain me back to front. I struggled until I felt the time was right, then suddenly rammed my head backward into his face. He fell like a butchered tree.

  The others jumped me now. Suddenly one of those who wasn’t all over me shouted, “Guys, these two are dying!”

  Yes!

  I shoved at my restrainers. “Get off me, you louts. Let me go see them. I’m a doctor, or haven’t you heard?”

  The guy I’d almost bitten a chunk out of grimaced. “Better sit this one out, Doc. You’re not exactly in healing mode.”

  I glared at him. Then shrugged. “Whatever. Good riddance.”

  After five more minutes of resuscitation efforts, they changed their minds. The same guy turned to me. “Uh, I’m not getting a pulse on Caleb, and I hear no heartbeats, just—noise.”

  I shrugged again. “It’s ventricular fibrillation, moron. Heart flapping ineffectively, blood going nowhere, quick death.”

  Moron went on. “Damian’s different. I’m barely getting fifteen beats a minute from him. What did you give him, brain damage?”

  “Does it look like I care?” They stared at me. I snorted. “What the hell. Get me the external defibrillator.” They stared again. “This type of aircraft is also used to transfer people in disasters. There must be one on board. And get my bag.”

  And what do you know? Jake had taken it with us. Things were looking up.

  In a couple of minutes I had my weapons ready, and the defibrillator charged. And I attacked.

  I electrocuted two and, thanks to their road-accident-curious-mob huddling, three more through body contact.

  Jumping behind the closest one, holding him up, not waiting for the others to drop, I shot two others with curare darts. Then gunfire blasted. Theirs. Boss’s orders to keep me alive only went so far.

  Bullets meant for me riddled their teammate, my shield. Too heavy. Heavier in death. Dammit. Couldn’t hold him up much longer….

  More bullets burst, from another direction.

  Damian!

  He got three, four, exploded up, ropes undone, the man I’d pumped full of arrhythmia-inducing digitoxin in the beginning held as shield.

  I’d readied the drug beforehand, injected the man with it during our struggle. Damian had slowed his naturally slow heartbeats at will. I’d expected any heart arrhythmia from my victim. He’d obliged with the worst-case scenario. Now his teammates’ retaliatory high-caliber rifle fire finished him. And breached the plane’s hull.

  A banshee scream battered me—depressurizing in progress!

  The plane shuddered, dipped. We’d gotten thirteen, ten remained, five would recover. Had only a few seconds before they overwhelmed us—killed us.

  Implement the real plan.

  My legs were giving out under my shield’s weight. I screamed to Damian, “Oxygen! Bag!”

  He snatched out my oxygen mini-tank out of the bag, tossed me the latter, hurled the oxygen tank at our adversaries. Depressurizing got it before his bullet. It exploded among them.

  It didn’t get them all. Still bought me the seconds needed to don the bag, use it for partial shield as I ran to the rear.

  “Damian! Now!” Couldn’t wait to see if he’d hung on, yanked the lever down, dropping the back door open.

  Massive depressurizing was like a giant monster’s inhalation at the opening of the plane, sucking out all who hadn’t grabbed a hold. Everyone but me and Damian.

  Make that Damian. I got sucked out, too, dangled by both clawing hands upward from the lever, flapping like a wet flag outside the plane. The falling plane.

  Terror choked me—uncontrollable, paralyzing. Far below-freezing temperature, hurricane-force wind, pummeling me, inside and out, ripping lips, stripping lids, awareness, survival instinct. Mass and momentum hurtled downward, my body sheared upward, the wind skinning me, drawing bones from flesh—flimsy grip slipping…

  Damian—I hadn’t said sorry for the ugliness—didn’t matter that it wasn’t real….

  The door. Closing. My hand frozen on the lever. I screamed now—voiceless—consumed—want to die in one piece…

  Not af
ter you go splat from twelve miles up…

  Something desperate yanked at the bag battering my back, me with it, against the overpowering pull. I spilt, came apart—then came down, slammed on something solid, solid, solid… Then roaring silence, heaving motionlessness. Over. Over.

  I choked, quaked, giggled, kissed the floor. I never want to do that again.

  I rammed a flailing, frozen body into my savior’s. Damian. His hug crushed me back together, his face meeting mine, his heat thawing me, his gasps and shudders echoing mine.

  Then he withdrew, spastic, spitting one word, “Jake.”

  He exploded to the cockpit. I staggered in tow.

  His kick would have sent the door flying off its hinges if it had been locked. But cockpit doors were unlocked in cargo planes anyway. It opened a fraction, rammed shut again.

  Jake must be having it barred. Damian gave another explosive shove, and the man barring it went flying back, ramming into the copilot’s seat occupant. Jake.

  Jake only grabbed the man, hid behind him, his eyes a cool, deliberate sweep from Damian to me.

  Then he shot the pilot. And the controls.

  Thirty-Eight

  “So, who has who in a corner now?”

  I stared at the blown-out head that came in and out of view beyond Damian’s heaving body, heard Jake’s calm shout over the din as the plane nose dived.

  “My biomatrix is heat resistant. An explosion will serve to disperse the agent just as well. Not as extensively, but with the air currents in the region, I have every hope.”

  Damian growled and pointed his rifle at Jake, and the man in Jake’s grip—the copilot, no doubt—cried out a plea. I could barely stand, unable to stop shaking, my heart just starting to pump blood through my frozen system.