Ultimate Weapon

by Shannon McKenna

  Tam was waiting in one of those places that was almost certainly archived in their files—unless she had already thumbed her nose at him and left. Altogether possible, knowing her. Probable enough even to hope for. He hoped she would be her usual difficult, independent self and get the hell out of there.

  There was the pebbly underground beach that he remembered. He felt the smoother surface, the little sliding rocks beneath his feet. Underwater, of course, but he remembered this spot because it had not been entirely lightless. A deep crack in La Roccia had created a narrow canyon that let in a gleam of indirect light from the outside. From some distance beyond, he could hear the waves crashing, and a dim glow filtered down. What had been three meters of pebbly wet beach at low tide was now a narrow, half-meter strip of jagged rock, the weird, stalactite-sprouting ceiling slanting down low to meet it. Too low to sit.

  He shook violently from the cold. His torn knees and hands stung from the salt water. His face and hip stung and throbbed from blows he hadn’t noticed during the fight, and his shoulder—

  His shoulder. He reached up to touch the scar from the bullet wound last year. He’d been examined and treated by doctors in PSS’s pay, after having infuriated Hegel and several others with his inconvenient scruples about child killing. Those doctors had been the ones to sew him up in that secret clinic in Bogotá.

  The shoulder had been slightly inflamed ever since. He felt nothing out of the ordinary palpating it, although his fingers were numb. He’d thought the chronic pain in the scar was normal enough. It wasn’t the only old wound or scar he had that ached and throbbed. He didn’t heal as fast as he had ten years before.

  So he’d assumed. Not anymore.

  He could not leave this cave and go to Tam with that thing inside him. He could lead them away from her, but eventually they would catch up with him and overcome him. His resources were almost tapped out, whereas Novak’s were limitless.

  And unfortunately for him, he had witnessed what András could do to a man to extract information. He had never forgotten the experience. Val could not hold out forever. Not against that.

  The shoulder was his best and only guess. He had to do it here and now. He could think of no place where he would have more light, other than La Grotta’s tourist chamber. What a show that would be for the English and German visitors on the pleasure boats.

  He would rather not be sitting nipple deep in ice cold saltwater for an operation like this, but there was no alternative. He freed his knife from the sheath Velcro’ed to his ankle. Not easy. His hands barely functioned. Getting off the waterlogged jacket and unbuttoning his shirt was the next challenge. His fingers felt thick, dead. He was lucky the wound was in front of his shoulder.

  Luck? Hah. He was the only miserable fool on earth who could call a detail like that luck. The knife point shook over the scarred meat of his shoulder as he breathed deep, gathering the courage. Wasn’t this just the story of his fucking life. Forever contemplating the knife he had to stab himself with.

  Self-pity would not help him. Nor would he warm up any more, waiting. He would only get colder until he was in shock.

  So do it, testa di cazzo. Cut. Now.

  His muscles jerked, driving the knife into what he desperately hoped was the right direction—the spot where the most pain was concentrated. He stifled the scream into a strangled moan. Tears streamed down his face. He locked his jaw into a grimace that threatened to loosen his teeth—and thought of Imre. That shard of glass, stabbing downward with such resolve. Imre’s courage. His gift.

  Again. He prodded. Blood welled up, slippery and hot as it trickled down his arm. Salt burned in the wound. He prodded deeper, making a low, desperate sound in his throat.

  Again. He dragged in a sobbing breath, changed the angle of the blade. Cut again.

  This time he could not stifle the shout of pain. Faintness threatened. He dug around with the knife tip, willing his blood pressure to stabilize—and felt it. Yes. A tickety-click, of something non-organic, something that was not muscle, tendon, cartilage or bone.

  He dug in with his fingers and felt the very tip of the thing. Hard and smooth. Then it slid away from his blunt fingertip. He needed tweezers, he needed light. He tried again, pressing down on the ragged, tormented flesh on either side of where it had been to force it out.

  It popped out and almost dropped into the inky black water. His shaking hand grabbed at the air. It bounced four times. Amazingly, he caught it.

  He rocked back and forth, gasping desperately for several minutes before he could bear to open his eyes and examine the thing.

  A bloody little capsule, no larger than a pill. So small, made of plastic or ceramic. He puzzled for a split second about the power source. His own body’s electromagnetic field, perhaps.

  He didn’t have the mental energy to wonder, wavering a breath away from vomiting or fainting. If he fainted, he would drown.

  More decisions. He could drop the thing into the water here and be done with it. That would stall the search but not divert it. He needed to play for time, and the transmitter was the only card he had to play.

  He stuck it into his pocket.

  He had nothing to bandage the wound with, and he had to swim through the caves anyway, so he dragged his sodden shirt and jacket back on over his shuddering torso, almost screaming at the rasp of soggy, salty fabric against the wound. He could only hope that the salt would help disinfect it. He lurched forward into the cave.

  What felt like hours of blundering and suffering followed. Finally, by pure chance, he saw the flickering glow of the light from the larger caves filtering in from the other side of the huge rock formation. He swam out into the lake, and found himself looking up at one of the boats that brought groups of tourists in to tour the scenic part of the Grotta. The boat slid by. A row of astonished faces stared down as the tour guide droned on in English. “. . . butterfly chamber, so called for the shape of the mineral formation in the center . . .”

  “Would you look at that, Rhonda?” a fat, middle-aged man called out in English. “In January! Must be a German or a Swede.”

  The tour guide looked over and gaped. “Ehi! Tu!” she shouted out. “Swimming is not allowed in La Grotta!”

  It took several attempts to get the words out of his throat, he was shivering so hard. “Va benissimo,” he spluttered. “Believe me, signorina. I was just leaving.”

  He was grateful when he finally crawled up onto the rocks at the entrance. He could barely move, but he couldn’t crouch there and just shiver and quake while passersby watched wide-eyed, and the transmitter betrayed him with RF bursts. He forced himself to trail behind a departing group, following them into the crowded port. Trying not to stagger and lurch like a zombie. Failing, for the most part.

  San Vito was a tourist trap even in winter for the English and Germans and Scandinavians, for whom this nippy air was balmy and this watery sunshine practically tropical. He picked up his pace as he moved through the surging crowd, but did not allow himself to run. He was dead if he acted like prey. Nor could he look over his shoulder, up at La Roccia, although the effort not to was killing him. András or one of his men was almost certainly peering down with binoculars.

  A ferry heading to a cluster of nearby islands was docked and loading, with a long file of vehicles in the chute to drive on. Val ducked through the line of cars and staggered alongside it, shoulders hunched, head down. Trying to look as unobtrusive as a dripping, bleeding, beaten up, hypothermic man at the point of going into shock could be.

  Finally, he spotted a diversion. A small, three-wheeled agricultural utility vehicle driven by a grizzled old man. From the stink, it had held fish that morning. The fisherman had come to the mainland to sell his catch and was heading back to his island home.

  Val dug the bloody capsule out of his pocket, tossed it into the back of the rickety contraption, and began to walk faster and faster. Soon he was heading up the steep hill, taking every short cut through the meandering cobb
lestoned switchbacks. If he could get down to the car without being seen, he had half a chance.

  He finally gave in to the nervous urge to lope, despite jolting agony in his shoulder at every step. Everyone was staring at him anyway.

  Chapter 24

  András was murderously angry, and the long, hard, breathless climb up to the top of La Roccia did not help his temper. That sneaky bastard had disappeared into the sea, and now he was holed up and out of range in the caves. Janos couldn’t stay inside for long, of course. He was soaking wet. He had to come out before he died of cold. But he was a tough son of a bitch and that process could be a slow one.

  Meanwhile, András’s reputation for speed had just been put at risk. And old man Novak waited, chewing his yellowed nails.

  None of his worthless local team had been willing to follow Janos into the smugglers’ caves, though most of them had been inside them at one time or another. Two had been dispatched to watch other exits from the caves on the north side of La Roccia, one was a lump of gut-shot meat on the beach, and the other was not far behind, bleeding onto the rocks from a thigh wound and attracting unwelcome attention. With luck, he was comatose or at least unconscious.

  András had described exactly what would happen to anyone who had the misfortune to be wounded and then talked to the police. He hoped those cretins knew just how sincere he had been.

  Which left only himself and that brain-dead ape Angelo to slog their way up and over La Roccia to monitor the other Grotta exit, the tourist one. If he hadn’t been down by two men, he would have killed the fuckhead himself, for shooting at Janos after he had been briefed on the necessity of keeping the man alive. Of course, the idiot was the brother of Massimo, the gut-shot man, but even so. That was no fucking excuse for unprofessional behavior. Orders were orders.

  Angelo huffed and puffed over the crest of La Roccia, and flung himself down onto a flat rock to wheeze and gasp, silently protesting the pace that András had set. He clutched the handheld monitor that András had gleaned from Hegel’s room.

  “On your feet,” András growled. “He could already be outside the cave. Let’s go.”

  Angelo heaved his muscle-bound bulk up and followed him down the stonework switchback path at a heavy, shambling run. András stopped at a scenic overlook with benches not far from the bottom, and booted up the laptop to scan for the signal. His heart thumped when he saw the icon finally appear, blinking. He clicked, enlarging the map until it was a detailed street map of the San Vito port area.

  And there he was, the crafty son of a bitch. Lurking down on the edge of the water, no more than three hundred yards from András’s own current position. He should be visible. Saliva rushed into his mouth as he peered down at the busy port swarming with tourists. Then another slight movement on the screen caught his eye.

  He glanced down, alarmed, and watched the icon detach itself from the shore, move out over the water. What the fuck . . . ?

  András shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted. The ferry whistle shrilled. Oh, shit. No. The prick had climbed onto a boat and was sailing away to some godforsaken rock in the Mediterranean.

  “On your feet,” he snarled at the ape, who had once again dropped down onto his lazy ass, wheezing. “We need to find someone with a boat immediately to get us to wherever that ferry is going.”

  To András’s surprise, Angelo made himself useful by promptly locating a man with a powerful motorboat, fast enough to get to the island before the ferry did. A smuggler, no doubt. Negotiations were swiftly concluded. András peeled several hundred-euro notes off his money roll, put them onto the man’s grimy palm and was climbing on board, one leg on the side of the boat, when suddenly he stopped.

  Motionless, he sniffed the air as a shiver ran down his back, half in and half out of the boat. Angelo and his avaricious smuggler friend waited, their peasant faces blank and stupid.

  He, after all, had been the one in the goddamn hurry. But the ferry retreating before him did not make saliva pump into his mouth. He was beset with doubts.

  A trick?

  But the tracer was inside the man’s body. How was it possible?

  He stepped back onto the dock. “You go on,” he said. “Get to the island before that ferry does and watch for him. Follow him with the handheld. Call me immediately if you locate him.”

  “Sì, sì, certo,” Angelo muttered sullenly.

  “And if you kill him, I will rip out your liver with my hands and feed it to a stray dog while you watch. Is that clear?”

  The smuggler blinked. His eyes darted between András and Angelo. Angelo nodded. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To make sure he hasn’t fucked me by going in the opposite direction,” András snapped. “Now go.”

  A taxi was just letting out a clump of Dutch tourists in front of the nearest beachside hotel. András slid inside it gratefully. “Take me to the beach on the north side of La Roccia,” he said. “One hundred more euro if you get there in less than ten minutes.”

  The man’s eyes lit up. The taxi dashed out onto the road and jounced up the cobblestoned streets.

  It took the man eleven minutes to get to the other side, but András was not inclined to quibble. They jerked to a stop right next to the ice-cream stand near where Janos’s rented Opel Tigra had been parked. The car was gone. So his instinct had been correct—unless, of course, someone had stolen the car, always a possibility in southern Italy. He shoved the hundred euros into the hand of the taxista, and got out.

  A slim, dark-eyed girl no more than seventeen presided behind the counter of the ice-cream stand. Pretty breasts, shown off by a low-cut pink leotard under her artfully opened sweater. Taut, dark nipples shadowed the pale fabric. She would have seen who took the car. He gave her his nicest smile, but she shrank back.

  “Did you see someone get into that Opel that was parked over there a little while ago?” he asked.

  She opened and closed her rosy mouth. “Sì. A man.”

  “And what did he look like?” he asked.

  Her big, limpid eyes went blink, blink. “I don’t remember, really.”

  “Ah.” András reached into his pocket, and pulled out a twenty-euro note. He slid it across the counter.

  “Tall,” she said helpfully. “Dark.”

  He waited for more. She shrugged. He pulled out another twenty.

  She fluttered her lashes, made it disappear. “Wet,” she said. “He looked wet and cold. Like he was bleeding, too. His shoulder. And arm.”

  So. Confirmed. Janos had gouged out the RF trace and gotten the better of him. But not for long. He had a fix on their nighttime position. Where else could a cold, wet, wounded man go but to ground? And to Steele? On track again. All was well.

  He gave the girl a murderous smile. Her face went white. He’d gotten what he needed from her, but the sulky, grasping little bitch hadn’t made it easy. He didn’t like that. He reached over the counter and gave her nipple a vicious pinch that she would feel for the next ten days.

  She shrieked and clutched her chest, staring at him wildly.

  “Thank you for your help, signorina,” he said pleasantly.

  He headed for his car, reflecting that the ice-cream whore was lucky he was so pressed for time. Or else he would have made her earn every last cent of that money, ten times over.

  On her hands and knees.

  “Is this the only thing you have?” Tam asked for the third time.

  Pantaleo, Signora Concetta’s youngest son, gave her a grunt that she could only interpret as a yes, since it was followed by no other options.

  She stared at the rusted 1965 Fiat 500. Inside, the upholstery was rotted to stinking gray dust. Shreds of ceiling fabric hung like cobwebs. The original color was impossible to determine. The exposed foam padding of the seats had discolored to deep orange, degenerating into grainy chunks; the dash coated with greasy dust. The backseat had been ripped out to make room for farm tools. Three windows were taped shut and the windshie
ld was cracked and cloudy. A rearview mirror swung forlornly on a piece of duct tape. There were no side mirrors. She could see the ground through the holes in the floor.

  The Vespino would have been better. At least it had a certain breezy, kitschy charm, whereas this thing looked postapocalpytic, a vehicle of absolute last resort. She was tempted for the umpteenth time to just offer a fifty-euro note and ask someone in the signora’s family to drive her to the nearest car rental place, but for the fact that she was reluctant to let them know where she went. It was not healthy for anyone to know her business. In fact, her and Val’s presence here was not healthy for these people. It was high time they moved on and found another hiding place.

  “Don’t worry,” Pantaleo said. “Cammina, cammina. It runs, it runs. There’s even a liter or so of benzina in it. Six hundred euro. For seven, I’ll even throw in all the farm tools.”

  Uh-huh. Right. Like she was going to be harvesting any olive orchards in the near future. She gave him an eloquent look. He responded with a gap-toothed, can’t-blame-a-guy-for-trying grin.

  She reached for her purse. “Three hundred,” she said sternly. “And you are robbing me. Please get all the junk out of it. Now.”

  Pantaleo’s grin widened. He threw open the back door and began hauling out armfuls of junk and dumping it onto the ground. He took the money she held out and dug into his pocket for the key. “We have to go to the notary public, to do the passaggio di proprietà,” he said.

  For this piece of shit? She gave him a coaxing smile. “Could we take care of that another day? Pretend I borrowed it until then, all right?” God knew she was going to abandon the wretched little turd of a car at the first opportunity. The very minute she rented one.

  Pantaleo looked doubtful, but made no protest as she plucked the key from his dirty fingers and slipped it into her pocket.

  The whole situation made her very twitchy. Renting a car was an unwanted level of exposure. Georg had to have surmised that she and Val needed one, and there were not so many places to obtain them in this immediate area. All undoubtedly being watched.