by Jon Land
He listened for a hint of sound that might betray the disciple’s position, but there was nothing. Even if there had been, he couldn’t take a chance until he was certain. Fire a Splat without a sure target and he would give away the true potency of his weapon. He had to out-think this adversary.
A predator, he thought, so comfortable in the role of the hunter….
Why not give it to him, then? McCracken was in motion before completing the plan. He darted from the clearing, down a narrow path enclosed by a massive steel planter covered with vines. He knew the disciple would give chase, so at the first opportunity McCracken would swing around and fire a Splat.
Blaine realized he was running toward the sound of the brook. He charged up a set of stone steps built alongside a thicker patch of woods that promised cover.
When the soft rustling reached his ears, he was not surprised. The disciple was coming fast, closing the gap. When the final stone step was past him, Blaine spun and fired in the same motion, the Heckler and Koch kicking a bit more than usual behind the powerful bullet’s exit.
Twenty yards in front of him a tree exploded with a thunderous jolt. McCracken gazed down and saw a rubber ball; the disciple had used it to create the rustling sound. It rolled to a halt at the foot of the stone steps.
Damn!
A fresh sound came from his right, and he aimed that way. The Splat found a stone bench this time and blew a portion of it apart. The pistol felt heavy in his hand. The wind howled and sounded like laughter.
Just to his left and up a little rise was an ivy-wrapped stone gazebo that overlooked much of the Botanical Garden. Blaine dashed inside and dived low, beneath the waist-high wall. He could see and hear anything from this vantage point, and the position was strongly defensible. The disciple could not possibly approach without him knowing.
Or could he? McCracken couldn’t help thinking he had played straight into this monster’s hands. Maybe he was out there laughing even now, waiting only to compose himself before he struck.
Blaine wasn’t waiting. He threw himself out of the gazebo and down a steep hill that led to another dirt path in the serpentine garden. He slipped and fell, sliding the last measure of the way. He regained his feet with pistol sweeping his perimeters. He backed off, then started to run, looking for the first exit he could find.
The path widened; it was formed of hard dirt and rock, which was why the anomalous soft depression struck him so quickly. He knew the sensation all too well from Nam, and experience sent him into a headlong dive for his life.
The spikes embedded themselves in a tree at just the spot his head would have been. The disciple had attached them to a thick, pliable branch and had bent the thing tautly backward, waiting to be triggered.
Did he know I would come this way?
No, but the disciple had certainly planned for a fight and a chase. In all probability, similar traps would be set all over the garden. That thought drew Blaine’s gaze downward, which was when he saw the wire suspended over the path, affixed to a tree on either side. McCracken hurdled himself over it, then reached back and yanked it with his foot while still lying prone on the ground.
Blaine pawed his way ahead as a net mired with sharp thorns and prickers dropped down from the trees, covering the spot he had occupied just seconds before. Then he did what he knew the disciple eagerly awaited.
He screamed, a bellow of terrible agony, backpedaling on the ground at the same time. Sure enough, a shape was slinking down the path, keeping to one side. Blaine propped himself slightly upward and fired at the disciple.
But the muzzle flash encompassed the entire pistol in the same instant the roar reached his ears. The hot flames singed McCracken’s wrist and palm and he cried out in agony. His dip in the fountain must have soaked through the clip’s plastic coating just enough. He let go of the pistol and struggled back to his feet. It was clear he would have to make a stand somewhere in this garden…Somewhere without a gun.
Fighting to remember the garden’s layout, Blaine regained his feet and charged on. The disciple was no longer in sight, and there was no sense in Blaine looking until he had some weapon to fight him. Their exchange back at the fountain taught McCracken he had no hope of winning a hand-to-hand struggle, though he felt certain that was what his adversary still wanted. It was something he had going for him, perhaps the last thing he had to make use of.
His flight took him around to the north and back to the Avenue of the Royal Palms. Making a dash for it seemed his best chance…until he reached the glass hothouse containing the carnivorous and poisonous plants. Most of them grew in simple pots, looking harmless and innocent in the night. One stood out. Standing upright in the center was a smaller version of a tree Blaine recalled all too well from Africa. It looked like a massive rosebush, its thorns the size of thin fingers. But McCracken knew the thorns were actually deadly spines loaded with a curarelike poison.
McCracken knew he had his weapon now. Making it work was another matter. The substance of the plan still forming in his mind, he kept kicking at the glass until a hole big enough to accommodate his bulk had been formed.
The sound of breaking glass drew Matthew to the hothouse. He had sensed from the beginning it would end here. Too bad, really. Unfortunate.
“I’m not holding my gun, McCracken,” Matthew said calmly, as he approached the hothouse. “I don’t have my knife out, either. I was supposed to kill you back there, but I didn’t. You’re more like us than them. Join us. Tell me you’ll join us, and I won’t kill you.”
Matthew reached the jagged hole in the glass and started through.
“We knew it was you in the jungle. You and that Indian. Only you could have eluded us in the manner you did…The Indian’s idea, no doubt.”
Glass crackled beneath him as Matthew drew further into the small hothouse. There were just a few places to hide.
“Norseman went easy. He was just a soldier, a killer. But you’re different. You understand what we are, what we’re capable of. Join us, McCracken. It’s your only hope. If I don’t kill you, you’ll die anyway—when all of the United States dies. We’re going to kill it, McCracken, and inherit what’s left. Join us and you can be spared.”
Matthew realized that all of the potential hiding places were vacant just as the rest of the glass in the section behind him shattered in the vague outline of the shape hurtling itself forward.
McCracken had the thick shard of glass squeezed into his right hand, held high where the moonlight might catch it.
And the disciple would be sure to notice.
He saw the disciple’s empty eyes sweep toward it and his arm come up instantly in defense. Blaine kept the force of the blow coming, true intention not betrayed as his arm was stopped and twisted over as the disciple went for the break.
Just as McCracken would have done.
Anticipating the move perfectly, Blaine bent his knees and dropped his free shoulder against the disciple’s side. The disciple responded by reaching back for more purchase. That one instant cost him his balance, and McCracken drove him forward. The disciple seemed to flow with the move briefly, then he realized its deadly intent, the truth reflected in his bulging eyes as Blaine rammed him into the bushy tree poised in the hothouse’s center.
The tree’s spines pierced the disciple’s flesh in four separate places. The pain from this alone would not have been enough to even make him waver, but a breath later the poison was flooding his veins, sabotaging his blood and short-circuiting his system. He pounded McCracken twice before the first spasm shook him. His body locked upright as Blaine backed off. His mouth gaped. He gasped just before his throat swelled from the poison and closed. His face turned purple. He tried to free himself from the tree, but succeeded only in flapping his arms before they dropped helplessly to his sides and he slumped.
The disciple was still twitching when he hit the floor, eyes locked open and no more dead, Blaine thought, than when he had been alive.
McCracken bac
ked away, pain racking his body, his eyes on the disciple. When he didn’t stir, Blaine at last backed out of the hothouse.
One battle won meant only another lay out there to be fought. Parker had said an army of them were being created. The process could be infinite, the number of perfect killing machines expanded. Someone had arranged for their escape—not only because of Hardesty’s death, but because their services were needed.
The disciple’s words rang in his ears. “If I don’t kill you, you’ll die anyway—when all of the United States dies. We’re going to kill it.” If the words were true, whoever was responsible for the Omicron legion was also planning something much worse. And what it was had to be somehow connected to the six killers who were systematically eliminating the people on Patty Hunsecker’s list.
McCracken retraced his steps out of the Jardim Botanico, staying in the shadows on the chance the Rio authorities had been alerted by the commotion. None appeared, but he reached the street still wary of every step. He knew his most pressing goal after escaping from the Jardim was to flee Rio before the power controlling the remaining disciples could marshall its forces again.
Fernando Da Sa seemed his best bet for assistance. The crime lord would certainly have his own reasons for joining the fight now; a dozen of his best women guards had been killed in the garden tonight.
It took a few minutes, but Blaine finally managed to hail a cab. He told the driver to take him to the Bali Bar in São Conrado, Da Sa’s current headquarters and the place he had directed McCracken to come to in the event of trouble. Tonight’s adventures certainly qualified….
He considered his plight in the cab’s cramped quarters. Whoever was behind the Omicron legion had known he was coming back to Rio. The disciple he had killed must have been following him all along, waiting for his rendezvous with Parker before making his move. Blaine had played right into the enemy’s hands. They had used him to hunt down the only living person who formed a direct link to the legion, played him for a fool, but he had fooled them in the end by staying alive.
The Bali Bar, as it turned out, was located in the fashionable Itanhanea shopping park. Blaine saw it set off by itself to the far left. Saturday night made for a jam-packed parking lot, and the cab deposited him on the edge of the clutter of would-be patrons milling about trying to determine if and when to enter. The building itself was decorated in a South Pacific island motif. It had the look of a massive bamboo hut wrapped freely with enormous vines. A palm tree grew out of an inner courtyard complete with outdoor bar to handle the overspill of patrons from within. The letters announcing the bar’s name were cleverly slanted and painted in bold, vibrant colors that glowed in the night. As Blaine headed for the entrance, he noticed that the patrons were exceedingly young, some no more than fifteen. Except for a large bouncer posted near the turnstile permitting entry, there wasn’t a single adult to be seen. McCracken felt the young people staring at him—more for his age, he gathered, than his look of disarray. His clothes were still not dry from his plunge into the fountain, and his crash through the hothouse glass had made neat tears through his jacket. His face was bruised, and he was favoring his right side. His wrist was singed and blackened, but not swollen.
McCracken moved through the turnstile and up into the crowded bar area. Blisteringly loud music smacked his ears. Most of the room’s light sprang from four television screens playing the same music video. Everything was dark and brown, the lamps attached to the wooden support beams shedding only candlelight illumination. More young teenagers were milling about, nursing drinks, and Blaine walked over to a set of empty tables in the back of the room.
He chose a table against the wall and sank into a chair. When a waitress finally came over, Blaine asked to borrow her pen and grabbed a napkin from her tray. He wrote quickly.
DA SA—
I’M DOWNSTAIRS. NEED TO SEE YOU.
MCCRACKEN
“Give this to the manager, please,” he said in Portuguese, handing it to the waitress along with a generous tip.
Two minutes later, a curly-haired young man in his mid-twenties approached the table.
“He told me you might be coming,” he said in English. “I was to send you up as soon as you arrived.”
“I’ve arrived.”
The young man pointed to a set of stairs on the left. “His office is on the third floor. To reach it, go up to the second landing and cross the dance floor. The guards will be expecting you.”
“Dance floor?” Blaine asked. He couldn’t wait to ask Fernando Da Sa why he had chosen the Bali Bar as his base. Making it up the stairs was like fighting traffic on the L.A. freeway. The dance floor was packed with bodies twisting and churning beneath flashing multicolored lights. A large man stood guard near a door across the floor, and Blaine found himself dodging bodies as he made his way there.
“McCracken,” Blaine announced to the guard over the din.
The man gestured toward the stairway just behind him with his eyes, the outline of a pistol obvious beneath his sports jacket. Blaine slid by him and climbed the steps. At the top of the stairs, another man directed him to an open door on the right side of the corridor. McCracken headed toward it.
The anomaly actually struck him as he passed inside.
Male guards instead of female guards. Why?
But a half-dozen steps inside the office and the why was made clear.
“Mr. Da Sa?”
The crime lord was seated in a high-backed leather chair behind his desk, immobile because of the neat slice in his throat that had spilled blood down the center of his suit and splattered it over his desk blotter. In the same instant that Blaine put everything together, his ears registered steps pounding his way. A window directly before him was open to the Rio night, and he lunged toward it, a step ahead of the machine-gun fire suddenly struggling for a bead on him.
Rat-tat-tat…
The sound peppered his ears as he hit a narrow strip of the second-floor roof. He tried for balance, but the slippery metal tripped him and he fell, thumping hard to the cobblestone drive below. Wobbly he regained his feet just as machine-gun fire from down the hill came his way. Blaine swung and retreated up the cobblestone driveway. Swinging right at the top, at the Bali Bar’s rear, he crossed into an alleyway that ran between the bar and an athletic club. He was running, but his feet felt heavy. He felt dizzy from the fall and started to crumple, just as he realized the alley came to a dead end.
He was trapped, the guards starting down the alley after him. He fought to get back on his feet, but his strength was gone. The alley swam before him. He reached instinctively into his jacket for the gun he’d lost at the Jardim Botanico. He was too groggy to notice that just behind him the round cover of a telephone-line tunnel had popped open.
Blaine was clawing to hold on to his last bit of consciousness when a pair of hands pulled him down into a dank darkness his mind at last surrendered to.
Part Four
Children of the Black Rain
Washington:
Sunday, December 1, 1991; 6:00 A.M.
Chapter 21
THE NIGHTMARE BEGAN for Patty Hunsecker when the phone jarred her from sleep at the first light of dawn.
“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any,” she said, knowing full well it could only have been Sal Belamo.
“Wake up, lady,” came Belamo’s rapid voice. “Wake up quick.”
Patty was upright in the next instant. “What’s wrong, Sal?”
“We got as some problems, lady. Do what I say and you’ll be all right. You hearing this?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’m calling you from one of these goddamn car phones. The safe house isn’t safe. You’re not safe. Clear?”
“Crystal,” Patty said, not as bravely as she had hoped.
“I’m on my way there now. Chances are someone’s gonna beat me to the building, so here’s how we’re gonna play it. You gotta get out, and you gotta do it now. Back stairs. Rear exit�
��No, they could be watching that…”
“Who, Sal?”
“Good question, lady. Not a good answer. Give you the shitty details when I pick you up. Suffice it to say everything makes sense now, most of it anyway. Old Blaine’d be proud of me…and you.”
“What’s going on?”
“You’re leaving, and I’m picking you up. Go up to the roof. Do you hear me? Go up to the roof. You’ll find some heavy twenty-foot planks up there. There’s an apartment building next to the safe house that’s the same height.”
“I know it.”
“What you gotta do, you gotta slide those planks across and walk on over. Then head down through the unlocked door on the building roof to the alley on the western side. I’ll be there.”
Patty was fully awake now, and so was her fear. “What about security? Can’t we call—”
“Fuck security. If they’re not dead, they’re useless. Just do what I tell you.”
Patty dressed quickly in jeans and a sweater. She moved cautiously into the corridor, holding her breath in fear that a gun barrel would greet her. There was nothing, no sounds, no shapes. She slipped silently to the stairwell and started to open the door when she heard the echo of steps ascending. Hard to tell how many. A single man, perhaps two.
Patty felt panic swell within her. She had to reach the roof, but obviously this approach was out. Something had spooked Sal Belamo—and whatever it was was coming up the stairs for her. She bolted back toward her room, trying to frame the building’s structure in her mind.
The fire escape! That was her only chance! She reentered her room and locked the door behind her. Then she rushed to the window and lifted it open. The fire escape lay before her, rusty and providing no reason for confidence. Nonetheless, she pulled herself outside onto it. Her boots clanged noisily on the metal tubing. Rising to a crouch, she slid the window back down and began her climb up the ladder.
The cold Washington morning bit into her lightly clothed body, and her breath misted before her face. There were four flights to cover, the steps were cold and slippery, wet with morning dew. A few times she had to stop just to wipe her palms on her jeans. As she neared the top, her heart thundered with the fear of being caught, but she managed to swing her legs off the ladder’s top rung and onto the roof without anyone stopping her.