That was coldblooded, premeditated murder, Westfield thought. My first for tonight.
He turned the rifle on the SUV and looked through the scope. Maybe the driver was listening to the stereo and hadn’t heard the shot. The SUV was parked facing the motel, so Westfield was looking at it from above and behind. It had Texas plates. They must have flown into El Paso and rented it there. He aimed at the roof, guessing if he put a bullet five feet from the front, it would angle through the back of the driver’s-side headrest. He wondered if New Mexico was an electric chair state or a lethal injection state. Probably lethal injection, he decided. Most states were. He fired four shots into the SUV’s roof as fast as he could pull the trigger. The sound of the shots rolled out over the desert silence and came back in echoes. The SUV’s brake lights flickered and then went out. But the transmission was still in reverse and the SUV rolled backwards across the lot, tracing a curve. It came to a stop when it rammed the side of Westfield’s van, its high back bumper slamming into the driver’s door.
Westfield ejected the clip and inserted a new one. Then he put his laptop computer into a duffel bag, slipped the silenced .22 into the waistband of his pants, and started picking his way down the rock-strewn hill, trying to stay clear of the patches of cactus and lechuguilla that hid in the shadows of the boulders. When he reached the bottom of the hill, he crossed the sandy arroyo and then climbed the embankment to the highway. Now he was close enough he could hear the SUV’s still-idling engine. Other than the wind, that was the only sound. Between the road’s edge and the parking lot on the other side there was no cover at all. He crouched at the side of the road and just watched the scene for a minute. Nothing changed and there were no headlights on either horizon. He stood, clenched his teeth against the coming pain in his knee, and approached the SUV at a fast walk. He had the rifle in front of him, not at his hip, but shouldered and with the laser sight tracing its dot on the driver’s side door.
As he crossed the parking lot, the motel’s single streetlamp, which had been blinking on and off all night, finally went out for good. Westfield’s shadow disappeared from beneath him. The SUV had black-tinted windows, opaque as obsidian in the darkness. Westfield reached the SUV and tried the handle of the driver’s door, keeping the rifle’s muzzle leveled at the window glass. The door was locked. He moved three steps down and tried the handle on the rear passenger door, but it was locked too. There was just the low purr of the engine. Someone would drive past soon. Someone who would slow down, see trouble, and make a call. He had to get the SUV off of his van and clear out. There was evidence everywhere that would connect him to these killings. This had been stupid, nothing more than lashing out with rage and now he was stuck with it. He was only just realizing the consequences. He set the rifle stock on the pavement and leaned its barrel against the side of the SUV, then took the pistol from his waistband. It would do no good to shoot out the window glass with the rifle; he could only expect the night manager to sleep through so much. But the pistol was silenced.
He went back to the driver’s door and leaned close to the glass, cupping his hands around his eyes and pressing them to the glass. He tried to peer in and at first saw only darkness, perhaps the reflection of his own wide eyes.
And then, swimming up as his eyes focused, there was a dim white form on the far side of the SUV, blurry with speed as it came towards him.
He took three quick steps back from the window, raising the pistol as he did so. At the same time that he fired, his knee finally gave out. The shot went high, missing the SUV completely, but the window exploded outwards without any help from the bullet. The thing from inside came flying out in a star-spray of shattered glass. He had time only to see the outlines of the shape coming at him. Then it was on him, knocking him flat onto the ground. The rifle and the duffel bag went cartwheeling away. He slammed into the asphalt, head bouncing with a hollow thunk off the pavement and back into the howling, biting face of the thing on top of him. He saw its eyes, yellow as rotten teeth and glowing in the darkness like a wolf’s. There was no chance for the pistol. It had yanked it away from him and crushed all the bones in his right hand before he’d even hit the ground. It wore a glass-tattered black overcoat and was otherwise naked as an infant, wet with blood and screaming. It raised its pale face up at the night and screamed once more before it dove into Westfield’s chest with its teeth. Then its mouth was full of his flesh and it was silent.
But Westfield could still scream, and he did.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Julissa woke to the sound of a strong wind blowing across the thatched roof of her bungalow, and she lay listening to it, thinking of the nightmare. It was another variation of the nightmare she’d been having since Allison was killed. In the dream, she was incorporeal, trapped in Allison’s apartment, able to watch but unable to do anything as the door opened and a shadow came inside. She tried to see him, or it, but couldn’t. It was like a gap in the air, a burn mark on a photograph in the vague shape of a man. It ripped her sister apart and she watched, the same way every night, until she woke soaked with sweat, afraid she may have been screaming in her sleep. But who would hear if she did?
The lamp on the bedside table was already on, casting a warm circle of light on the exposed beams of the bungalow. A small gecko crossed overhead, paused on the beam and appeared to do pushups as it clicked out its mating call. She told herself the dream was false, an invention of her imagination; she could learn nothing from it. There were no hidden clues, no revelations waiting to be found if she let it interrupt her sleep every night for the rest of her life.
She got up. She was wearing cheap cotton panties she’d bought on their trip to the department store. Other than the panties, she wore nothing else. She crossed the bedroom and stepped into the bathroom. She put on a white T-shirt that came just past the curve of her hips, then went to the door of the bungalow. It was three in the morning. The garden was dark, windy, and empty. She stepped onto the porch, went down the steps, and crossed to Chris’s porch by following the path of stepping stones, rain wet and smooth under her bare feet. Drops of rainwater slid from the curved leaves of the banana trees and wet her hair and her shirt. Chris’s lights were off. She crossed his small porch and tried the handle of his door. She did this very quickly, because she knew if she paused she would just go back to her room and get into her own bed to wait out another sleepless night.
His door was unlocked. The handle turned and the door opened. She thought about that. Chris secured his house like a bank vault, and he’d told her on their sail to Molokai that sometimes he slept aboard Sailfish when even the house didn’t feel safe enough. But now his door was unlocked and she knew it was for her. He wouldn’t come to her but he’d known she might come to him, and he’d left his door unlocked in the hope of it. So she stepped inside and shut the door behind her. Despite the darkness, she could see him. He lay asleep on his side, atop his sheets, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and let it drop onto the floor. Then she stepped around the bed and got in beside him, putting her palm onto his chest and her lips against the back of his neck. He stirred, waking.
“Julissa,” he said, and she was glad there was no question in his voice. He put his hand over hers and then turned to face her.
“Is this okay?” she asked.
He kissed her, his hands running up her back and into her hair. Then his hands found her breasts, cupping them from underneath. She wanted him as badly as she had ever wanted anything in her life, and when at last she slipped out of her panties, pulled his boxers off, moved on top of him, and guided him inside of her, that first thrust made her gasp as though she’d just come to the surface after too long under the water.
“I need you,” she whispered.
He didn’t need to answer. She understood his response, in the way he held her and moved with her and the way he kissed her throat and breasts. The geckos in his room made their mating calls, and the walls of the bunga
low shuddered in the wind. She cried out in her first orgasm and then held her face to his chest as they moved more slowly. She knew he could feel her tears falling onto his skin and was glad he just held her, and rocked with her slowly, and said nothing. What could he say? He made love to her, gently, and after a while she stopped crying and rolled with him so he was on top of her.
The second time she woke, it was daylight. Chris was still next to her, awake. He kissed her when he saw her eyes were open. Somehow he’d disentangled himself from her without waking her, had brushed his teeth and shaved, and had then come back to bed. She let her hand linger on the back of his neck after their kiss.
“Is this going to screw anything up?” she asked.
“No.”
“We can hunt him and kill him, but still be like this?”
“Yes.”
Later, she went back to her room wearing a towel from his bathroom. In her own room, she dressed in shorts and a tank top, then grabbed her laptop and stepped back out to meet Chris by the pool. They walked to the beach and then down it, heading north towards the cliffs that came from the water. Chris walked beside her, carrying the yellow dry bag that had been their only baggage coming to the Philippines. It looked empty except for the rectangular bulge of the computer he’d bought the day before. Shore birds ran along the sand in front of them, finally taking flight and escaping over the breaking waves. She let herself imagine buying a house here, atop the cliffs, loving Chris and having nothing to do each day except snorkel over the reef looking for lobsters, or sail with him to other islands. After a few moments, Chris took her hand and she leaned against him. For someone whose entire life was dedicated to revenge and murder, he was one of the least complicated people she’d ever known.
They cut across the beach and went into one of the restaurants on the sand path and asked the girl sweeping the floor if they could order breakfast. The girl showed them to a table and came back with menus. Julissa took out her computer and Chris moved his chair so they could both see the screen.
“I finished this last night,” she said. “It’s a geo-location program that should work with Google maps.”
“We’ll use it to find his address?”
“I wish. We’ve got the unique ID number of the guy who’s been hacking the FBI. That’s how we’ll ultimately get him. First we find out where he’s been getting onto the Internet. If he’s smart—and we have every reason to believe he is—his computer’s a laptop and he’s logging on to the net from free hotspots.”
“How do we find those?”
“The FBI stored the router address every time he logged on. So we start by tracking down the routers. That’ll give us his point of entry to the net. After we know that, we’ll have at least a general idea of where he is.”
“You done this before?”
“No.”
She opened the program she’d downloaded and modified, then took a piece of hotel stationery from her purse. She’d used a pencil to write the last five router addresses their quarry used to log into VICAP. She typed all five 128-bit numbers into her program’s input prompt and started the search algorithm with a keystroke.
“It’ll take a little while,” she said. “It’s searching every major hub on the net for a listing with these router addresses. It’s not like a Google search. Private wireless routers are just entry points to the net, not pages with content that people search for, so they’re not indexed in directories.”
“You want breakfast?”
“Please.”
Chris waved to the girl, who came from the other side of the restaurant and took their orders. The morning was still cool, the clouds over the sea laden with rain that would come in the afternoon. They waited for their breakfasts and waited for the search program to do its job and watched the sea and the sky. She thought about the afternoon, when they would have to go inside to keep out of the storm. That gave her a good feeling, knowing where they would go and what they would do. She took his hand and brought his fingers to her lips.
Chapter Thirty
The container ship M/V Tantallon steamed through the rising waves two hundred and fifty miles northeast of Miami, en route to Amsterdam, with no crew on deck and only one man on the bridge. The crew had been removed by helicopter a hundred and eighty miles from port, the order coming from headquarters via single-side band radio just minutes before the helicopter’s red and green running lights appeared on the horizon. Now Captain Bryce Douglas was alone on the Tantallon’s wide bridge, standing behind the main wheel and looking ahead at the spray that whipped across the bow four hundred and ten feet in front of him whenever the ship broke through the bigger waves. The waves weren’t a problem. The problem was what the helicopter dropped off before it picked up the six crewmen and swept back towards land, leaving him alone on the ship.
Well, not exactly alone. There was the VIP.
The girl’s screams came again, as loud as before, shrieks of terror and pain that pierced through the steel bulkheads and made him shudder. It was a wet sound, as though she was forcing it through her own clotted blood. He’d thought her ordeal was over two hours ago. It had been quiet for a while and he had hoped it was finished, chanting it under his breath as he stood at the helm, It’s over please god let it be over it’s over please god no more please god let her be dead and let it be finished. But it wasn’t. It was starting again, as horrible as when it had first begun half a day earlier.
Captain Douglas checked the doors for the tenth time. There were two ways onto the bridge: a gangway ladder from the quarters below, and a steel door that led into a hallway cluttered with fire control equipment. The other end of the hallway opened outside, at the stern of the ship’s superstructure near the top of the track that launched the main freefall lifeboat. He’d locked the trapdoor to the gangway and had sealed off the steel door to the hallway, and for the last thirteen hours he’d been standing without relief at the helm, gripping the bridge fire axe in his right hand and pressing the flat side of its red blade to his chest.
Of course he’d taken the VIP on board before.
The call would come by scrambled satellite phone once or twice a year, always the same procedure. The crewmen would drop whatever they were doing, go to their quarters, and sit on their bunks. Steering from the bridge, he was the only one who’d see the helicopter settle atop the high stack of cargo containers on the deck; the only one to see the VIP scurry from the helicopter’s unlit cabin, a shadow that would quickly disappear down the side of the stacked containers and into the hull of the ship. Then the pilot would switch on the helicopter’s interior lights, a signal to the captain, who would use the ship’s intercom to order the crew to walk in single file across the stack, carrying their sea bags. Two hundred miles from the coast, headquarters would tell him when the next helicopter would meet him, the crew having flown across the Atlantic in a charter plane.
Either the VIP would slip back into the dark helicopter once the crew was back aboard, or he would stay hidden in the ship. It was impossible to be sure.
In the first three hours after the girl started screaming, he had thought about unlocking the doors and running down the stairs into the dark underbelly of the ship, ready with the fire axe and a D-cell flashlight. But his terror had stopped him and he had done nothing. He thought about steering the ship off course and smashing the controls, sending out a distress signal and making a run for the lifeboat on its launching track at the stern. But he had been too scared to take even that cowardly step. Not scared of being alone in the lifeboat on the ocean, but terrified of the fifty-foot hallway from the bridge to the lifeboat. He couldn’t face the forty seconds it would take to get to the lifeboat, climb into it, and trigger its release. And although the fiberglass lifeboat hatch would latch closed, there were no locks. He’d thought about the shadow scurrying head first down the vertical wall of cargo containers as the ship pitched in the dark.
The VIP.
What had he been carrying back and forth across
the Atlantic?
This trip had been different from the moment the helicopter touched down on the stack. By moonlight, he saw the VIP emerge from the cabin, like the darkness that grows across the ground at dusk. No man could move like that. It slithered to the edge of the stack, arms and legs a black blur, so fast he wouldn’t have credited it had he not seen it before. But when it was gone, the helicopter’s cabin lights did not come on. Instead, the pilot hailed him on VHF channel 16, a breach of the normal procedure. There were three quick breaks on the microphone key to get his attention, and then the pilot spoke one sentence only.
“Stand by for additional offloading.”
There’d been no need to respond. The captain stood in the shadows and watched out the bridge windows.
The helicopter’s sliding passenger door opened farther and two men stepped out. Men who walked upright on two legs, whose faces were visible by moonlight. They wore black combat fatigues like members of a SWAT team, and they took their bearings on the deck before turning back into the helicopter to pull out a bag, a black bundle six feet long that they carried between the two of them, one at each end. They crossed the stack towards the bridge and disappeared with the bag. He heard them inside the ship a moment later, speaking in low voices and not in English. He’d made enough deliveries in the Baltic to know Russian when he heard it, even at a whisper coming up through the open spaces in the ship.
Then they were out again, back onto the deck and pulling a second bag from the helicopter. They brought it into the ship, but only one of them trotted back to the helicopter. When he was inside, the cabin lights switched on. The captain keyed the intercom and ordered the crew to the deck, single file as always. He watched them duckwalk across the stack and move into the helicopter at a crouch beneath its spinning rotors. He watched the door shut and the rotors pick up speed, the helicopter lifting off and hovering over the deck a moment before it tilted forward and moved off into the night, its red taillight blinking into the growing distance.
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