She let out the clutch—and the car stalled, the engine dying. She pounded the steering wheel, roaring in frustration and grief, then fumbled for the wires, her vision obscured by tears. The spark was bigger this time, with a loud pop, and she felt a sharp bite on her wrist where the bare copper grazed her.
She checked the phone—his phone—one last time. Seven minutes. She eased forward, out of the notch and into the road, her heart a stone in her chest.
III: WAVE GOODBYE
CHAPTER 16
O’Malley had waited almost twice as long as Dawtry had told her to, and still he did not come. What was it he’d said to her? “If they catch us both, there’s nobody to stop this.” He was right. “Goddammit,” she said, casting a final, bleak glance in the rearview mirror . . . and that’s when she saw it: one of the huge dogs emerging from the woods, dragging one of its hind legs behind it.
And then the dog reared and stood on its hind legs—a dog that was not a dog, but was Dawtry, hunched and bloody, half walking, half hopping, one of his legs trailing.
O’Malley yanked the hand brake and put the car in neutral, then leaped out and flung herself at him. She held him and wept, then finally managed, “Thank God. Oh, thank God.”
“Pray later,” he said weakly. “Right now we gotta go. And guess what—you get to drive this time.”
“Here, let me help you get in.” She took hold of his forearm, intending to drape it over her shoulder, but he gasped with pain. She leaned away from him, still holding the arm, and looked. His sleeve was shredded, and his forearm and hand were punctured and torn, dripping with blood. “My God, Chip, we need to stop that bleeding.”
“Later. Let’s go. As soon as they find the dogs, they’ll come gunning for us.”
She moved to his other side, and he draped his undamaged right arm around her shoulder, then limped to the passenger’s side and got in. O’Malley scurried to the driver’s seat, released the brake, and jammed the transmission into gear. Again, she glanced at the rearview, and what she saw made her shriek. “Shit—two men! With guns!” As if to confirm her words, the rear windshield shattered, showering them with shards of glass.
“Go go go!” Dawtry yelled.
The wheels spun, slinging gravel as she popped the clutch. Bullets thudded and tore into the car’s sheet metal, and three holes—surrounded by spiderweb fractures—appeared in the front windshield, directly below the rearview mirror.
“Bastards,” O’Malley said. She power-shifted into second, the small engine screaming as she floored the gas. “Come on, baby, give me all you got.”
“Keptain, I dinna think she can take much more,” said Dawtry in a passable Scottish brogue. “Try third.” They rounded a slight curve, and the shooting stopped. “We might have a sixty-second head start. We gotta figure out a way to slow them down.”
“Crap,” O’Malley said, “I forgot about the gate.” The massive structure loomed a hundred yards ahead, tightly closed. “Do we have to key in the code to get out?”
“There should be a motion sensor or metal detector on this side. They only care about keeping people out, not keeping them in.”
She slowed, then stopped, as they neared the gate. After what seemed an eternity, the gate clattered and began sliding open. She looked in the mirror again. “Shit shit shit—here they come!” Dawtry opened his door. “Wait! What are you doing? Chip? Don’t you dare get out of this car.”
“Gotta slow ’em down. Give me ten seconds after the gate closes. If I’m not out by then, haul ass.”
“Dammit, Chip, stop doing this to me.”
But he was already out, slamming the door and then slapping the car’s flank, as if it were a horse.
O’Malley spun the wheels again, fishtailing through the gate and then slamming on the brakes, watching in terror as a pickup truck hurtled toward them, two men standing in the cargo bed, rifles propped on the roof of the cab. “Hurry up, Chip,” she muttered. “Whatever you’re doing, do it fast.” With agonizing slowness, the gate began sliding shut. “Hurry, dammit,” she yelled, at both the gate and Dawtry. The opening narrowed: Fifteen feet. Ten feet. Five. She could no longer see the pickup truck, but now she could hear it—or, rather, could hear bullets clanging against the steel plates of the gate.
When the gap was scarcely more than a foot wide, O’Malley saw a low form diving through it and then crumpling onto the gravel beside the car’s left taillight. She scrambled out, hauled Dawtry to his feet, and helped him limp to the door and get in. Then she sprinted to the driver’s side, got in, and took off down the highway, her gaze darting back and forth between the road ahead and the road behind.
“I jammed the mechanism,” he panted. “They’ll have to cut the chain to open it. That, or crash through with a bulldozer. Take a breath. Slow down, too—you’re scaring me.”
“I’m scaring you? Jesus, Chip, how are you even alive?”
“I’m not dead yet, but I’ve felt better.”
“Your arm’s a bloody mess.”
“Wait’ll you see my leg. My leg makes my arm look swell.” He pulled up the leg of his pants—what remained of it—to show her.
O’Malley gasped. Even in the dim light in the footwell, she could see chunks of torn meat hanging from his mangled calf muscle, and she caught a glint of exposed bone on his shin. “Good God. We’ve got to get you to a hospital.”
He shook his head. “Bad idea. The Spanish police will be watching. We’re fugitives, remember?”
“What if you bleed to death? Doesn’t that count as a bad idea?”
“I’ve got good clotting factors,” he said. “My blood’s practically Jell-O. I’m the world’s slowest blood donor—they practically have to siphon it out of me. Isn’t there a baby blanket or something in the back?”
“Yeah. Saturated in baby pee and poo and God knows what all, remember?”
“Pee’s sterile. Poo, not so much, but it’s good to challenge the immune system occasionally. Keeps those white blood cells on their toes.”
He reclined his seat and rummaged around in the back, grunting with the pain of reaching and twisting. “Eureka,” he said, extricating the blanket from the floorboard and frowning at it. “Man, do you reek-a.” He began tearing it into strips, using his teeth to get the rips started. “Mmm. Tastes like chicken. Want some?”
“Thanks, but I can’t. My nutritionist has me on an effluvia-free diet.” She drove in silence for several minutes, glancing over whenever she heard a gasp or a grunt as he bandaged his ravaged leg.
When he was finished, he took a deep breath and then puffed it out in a long, show exhale. “Golly, that felt good.”
“Do you need me to pull over and wrap your arm for you?”
“Nah, you just keep doing what you’re doing.” He began spiraling a long, stained strip around his left forearm. When he’d taken half a dozen turns around it, from elbow to wrist, he worked the free end deep beneath several layers of the wrap—“Rrhhh!” he growled as his fingers raked across the wounds—and then used his teeth to tug it tight. “Presto. Good as new.”
“I have to know. How the hell did you get away from those dogs?”
He looked at her, then shook his head and looked away “You don’t have to know. You don’t want to know. And I don’t want you to know.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
“I’m sorry. I won’t ask you again, but if you decide you want to tell me, you can.”
“I won’t, but thanks.” He was still staring out the window.
“What next?”
“Unfortunately, they know what we’re driving now,” he said. “We have a head start, but not much of one. We gotta keep moving. And we can’t go someplace obvious.”
“Speaking of that, I’ve been thinking, Chip.”
“Uh-oh. I can already tell I’m not gonna like this.”
“We got pictures of the drilling rig . . .”
“Oh, right. Give me the phone—I gotta send those.
”
“But we didn’t get to the blasting site.”
“I noticed that.”
“We need more intel,” she said. “Who are these guys? Where are they from?”
“That reminds me,” he said. “I found this on the ground by the gate.” He reached into a pocket and fished out a scrap of trash.
“What is it?”
“A wrapper,” he said, studying the picture and text on the plastic foil. “A cookie stuffed with dates. Called maamoul. The label’s in English and Arabic.”
“You think the guys shooting at us were Middle Eastern?”
He shrugged. “That’s my guess. I might’ve heard a few words of Arabic from one of the guys. But it’s just a guess.”
“If it was Arabic, does that mean it’s ISIS?”
He shook his head. “Doubt it. This seems too big and sophisticated for ISIS. They’re more about the small, simple attack—a single shooter, a guy with a machete, a truck plowing into a crowd.”
“Who else is there?”
“If bin Laden were still alive, I’d lay this at his doorstep. Conventional wisdom says al-Qaeda’s a walking corpse since he was killed. But I’m not so sure. His right-hand guy, who helped mastermind the 9/11 attacks, is still on the loose.”
“Really? After all this time?”
“Really. Ayman al-Zawahiri. He’s survived at least four assassination attempts. We haven’t even come close in ten years. The CIA says he’s irrelevant. A has-been. But British intelligence—MI6—thinks he’s making a comeback. Word is he’s tight with bin Laden’s favorite son, so he might have serious connections and real money behind him. If any of the jihadists could pull this off, he seems like the only one. And what better way to prove that al-Qaeda’s back, and badder than ever?”
“But you really think he could do it? This seems bigger and more complex—a lot more complex—than hijacking a few planes.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s what I keep butting up against. I don’t see how you hack the Global Seismographic Network, day in and day out, from the caves of Tora Bora, or wherever al-Zawahiri’s hiding. You need connectivity, you need expert hackers, you probably need supercomputers.”
She nodded. “Which brings me back to what I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh,” he repeated.
“So, besides the guys shooting at us, who do we know, for sure, is linked to this? Or was, in the case of Iñigo, until you herded him off that cliff?”
“I wasn’t actually trying to kill him,” he said, looking distressed. “I was just trying to get between him and you.”
“I’m not finger-pointing,” she hurried to assure him. “I’m just saying Iñigo is still our only lead. Our best chance to find out who’s behind this.”
“How do we do that? We’re running for our lives. Hiding from people trying their best to kill us.”
“We hide in plain sight.”
“Where do we do that?”
“I’m an astronomer,” she said. “I hide at the observatory.”
CHAPTER 17
She took the right-hand fork in the highway. It was the same fork she’d taken the day she had placed the seismometers, the day Iñigo had tried to kill her. My God, she thought. Was that really only yesterday? Slowly they corkscrewed up the northwest flank of the volcano, toward the observatory complex and the deep, dizzying caldera.
Dawtry leaned forward for a better look as the first of the massive telescope domes loomed into view on a rocky outcrop. “Cool,” he said. “Very sci-fi—I feel like I’m on Mars. Is there a way to get in and out without being seen?”
She frowned. “Depends on whether anybody’s watching. This is the only road up the mountain, but it’s multiuse. It winds through the observatory complex, but it also leads up to a trailhead and overlook at the rim of the caldera. So there’s lots of traffic during the day.” She pointed to a motorized steel gate a hundred yards ahead. “At night, the road’s closed, because headlights drown out the stars.”
Dawtry studied the gate as they passed. “There’s a video camera.”
“Right,” she said. “The receptionist at the Residencia opens the gate if somebody with the observatory needs to get in or out unexpectedly. The camera lets him see who’s there. Keeps out the tourist riffraff.”
“Are there guards patrolling the grounds?”
“Guards? Ppfftt. None that I ever saw, anyhow. In the States, there’d be barbed-wire fences and surveillance cameras everywhere. But here? College campus meets ghost town. It’s really sleepy, especially in the daytime.”
He nodded. “So we could pass as tourists, heading up to see the crater, then take a detour and see if we can find out any more about Iñigo?”
“Makes sense,” she agreed.
“He had an office?”
“A desk, at least, at the telescope. But he had an apartment, too. He invited me to pay him a visit.” Dawtry raised his eyebrows, but she quickly shook her head, though a telltale flush crept into her cheeks. “He wanted me to come have a glass of wine, but I didn’t take him up on it. Iñigo seemed like trouble.”
“Iñigo? Trouble?” Dawtry chuckled. “I do love your gift for understatement, Professor.”
A hundred yards beyond the gate, O’Malley turned onto a driveway marked by a small sign that read RESIDENCIA and, underneath, SOLO PARA EL USO DEL OBSERVATORIO: OBSERVATORY USE ONLY. Dawtry glanced around and nodded. “I see what you mean,” he said. “Not what I’d call a high-security operation.” He studied the Residencia, long and low, as they passed. “Looks like a Days Inn,” he said.
“Similar architecture, better technology. Boatloads of bandwidth. Satellite teleconferencing uplink. It’s like Mission Control on top of a volcano.” Beyond the Residencia, the road curved down and around another low building. This one resembled a small condominium development, plucked from a Florida beach and transported to a barren mountainside seven thousand feet up. She drove to the last unit and parked the vehicle out of sight, just beyond the end of the building, then killed the engine. “So,” she said, “What’s the plan, Stan?”
“Improvise. And pray.” After casting a quick look up the drive and seeing no one, he got out and headed for the front door. She hurried after him, catching up just as he turned the doorknob and pushed. “Prayers answered,” he said. “I guess he left in a hurry that day.”
“Yesterday,” she corrected. “Twenty-four hours ago.”
They stepped inside and closed the door. The blinds were open, and the interior, whose walls were white, was awash with late-afternoon light. The place was simple and sparely furnished. The ground floor had a combination living room and dining area, separated from a small kitchen by a waist-high counter. The furniture consisted of a four-chair dinette set, a love seat, an armchair, and a pedestal desk with metal drawers and a laminated wood-grain top.
Dawtry went first to the desk, which was positioned directly beneath the large front window. Outside, the mountainside sloped away steeply; a mile and a half below, the ocean glinted like pewter. “The place ain’t plush,” Dawtry said, “but the view rocks.” A few books and a handful of memos—printed on the observatory’s letterhead—covered most of the desktop. Dawtry flipped through the papers, assessing and quickly dismissing each one. He opened the desk’s shallow center drawer; it held a midden of pens, pencils, and rubber erasers; a ruler, a small tape measure, a magnifying glass, and a jumble of paper clips. The side drawers were empty and dusty. “Not a hoarder, I’ll give him that,” Dawtry muttered, turning from the desk and heading for the kitchen.
The kitchen cabinets contained three chipped plates, two cans of soup, and a box of dried pasta. The refrigerator held a carton of orange juice, a bottle of white wine, and a can of beer, which had been opened. The freezer contained only a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff. “Man,” said Dawtry, “the Donner Party had more provisions than this. He might’ve wined you, but he sure couldn’t’ve dined you.” He closed the freezer. “Let’s look upstairs.” He h
eaded up the narrow staircase, O’Malley close on his heels.
A quick search of the small bathroom turned up nothing out of the ordinary: toothbrush, toothpaste, razor, shaving cream, Band-Aids, a comb and hairbrush, an assortment of over-the-counter medications. The towel hanging on the hook behind the door was thin and dingy. The mirror over the sink was flecked with droplets of toothpaste, and the shower was rimmed with mildew.
The bedroom, like the living room, featured a large front window with a panoramic view of the mountainside and the ocean. The bed was a low platform with a black headboard. Beside it was a nightstand with a single drawer that contained two pornographic magazines, a box of condoms, and two empty condom wrappers. “Eww,” said O’Malley. Her eyes automatically swiveled down to the wastebasket, where she saw the two used condoms, crinkled and knotted, their contents gleaming dully in the light. “Double eww,” she said.
Dawtry followed her gaze. “Nice,” he said, then turned and surveyed the sparsely furnished room again. “Dammit, where is it?” he muttered.
“Where’s what?”
“His computer. Wouldn’t you think we’d have seen a laptop, either on the desk or up here?”
“Hmm. Maybe it was in the jeep?”
He shook his head. “I checked the cab and the glove box. Nothing there but some tools and a first-aid kit. Oh, and a box of condoms.”
“Ugh,” she said. “So many condoms, so little love. I might have to start calling him Rubber Man.” She pondered. “Maybe his laptop’s up at the telescope dome.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But he came after you in the daytime, not at night. So I’m guessing this, not that, is the place he would’ve had his laptop. If he had a laptop.” He walked to the closet, whose door was ajar, and inspected the clothes, the shelf, the floor. “But it’s weird.” He went to the dresser, quickly rummaged through the top drawer. “Have you noticed? There’s not one single thing here that’s personal, unless you count the books and the toiletries.”
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