The Devil's Elixir

by Raymond Khoury

  My left hand hit the metal tube and slipped right off again, but my right hand held firm. With the chopper banking away and air rushing against me, I swung my right leg up over the runner and hooked it around.

  My mind was leaping from I can ’t believe I fucking made it to What now? when a hail of bullets slammed into the helicopter. I spun around to see Munro, standing again, blood all over his face, MP4 in hand. He’d obviously decided that dead was better than not at all.

  Another volley strafed the chopper, punching a streak of ominous holes through its fuselage and sending the engine into a high-pitched wail. I hoisted myself up around the runner, hooked my left leg over my right, pulled my Glock, and emptied the entire clip at the rapidly diminishing figure who was intent on bringing us down.

  Somewhere before the clip ran out, Munro jerked backward, staggered, then toppled to the ground, saving whichever cartel he was working for the trouble of severing his limbs one by one with a machete.

  Navarro and his pilot were now well aware they had a stowaway, but they didn’t seem too keen to credit me with saving their asses. And in that brief instant of calm, Alex peered through the window, and his face lit up with surprise when he saw me. Our eyes met, and I saw them flare up with an elation that recharged me to no end.

  The pilot began to execute a series of side-to-side rolls in a concerted attempt to dislodge me—then after a handful of those, the engine gave a piercing squeal, cut out for a heart-stopping second, then coughed back to life.

  I knew we weren’t going to be aloft for long.

  I pulled myself up and peered into the cockpit, wondering why the pilot wasn’t attempting to land. Navarro had leaned right forward and was clearly shouting instructions at him, obviously telling him that landing was not an option. At least they’d stopped trying to shake me from the runner. Then Navarro spotted me, pulled his gun, swung it around to me, and fired through the chopper’s window.

  I ducked away from his sight line, squeezing myself as far under the fuselage as I could, hoping Navarro wasn’t suicidal enough to try to fire at me through the chopper’s floor.

  We sped across the jungle, low over the tree cover, gathering speed, the engine seemingly having decided that we were all going to live. Less than a minute later, the ocean came into view. Even from my precarious vantage point, it was stunningly beautiful, the kind of shot I always assumed was airbrushed to perfection, only it was right there in real, living color. If it was the last thing I saw, it would certainly be miles better than looking at the business end of a force-feeding tube.

  The ocean had heard me. As we sped toward it, the engine emitted a series of whining sputters, then cut out completely.

  We were going down.

  69

  I squeezed out from my cover and caught sight of Alex again, and I was thankful to have another moment with him. And with death getting closer by the yard as we plummeted toward the sea, I could see the appeal of reincarnation—although I wasn’t ready to give up on this life just yet.

  My thoughts were cut short as the water rose to meet us and we belly-flopped into the ocean. I hung on as, almost immediately, the big chopper started to sink. The mere fact that I could tell we were sinking also told me that I was still alive, and that meant Alex may be alive, too.

  He had to be.

  I kept my legs wrapped tightly around the runner as we went under, the chopper listing to its side from the momentum in its blades. After a few seconds, I glimpsed the ocean floor, white and sandy, through the swarm of air bubbles. It wasn’t deep. I let go of the runner with my legs, but held on with both hands as we hit the bottom.

  The chopper landed in a billowing cloud of sand and an eerie groan from the runner that took most of the impact.

  I pulled myself close to the window and looked in.

  The pilot was already dead, his side of the cockpit having taken the full brunt of the collision between machine and ocean. Dark ribbons of blood spiraled upward from his head and chest before thinning out into crimson clouds.

  I looked in the rear cabin, looking for Alex, and I saw him, his arms stretched out to beckon me, but he seemed trapped—then I understood why as Navarro’s face lurched into view from behind him. I flinched back, ready to pull away from any gunfire, only he didn’t seem to have his gun anymore. He was pinned in place by a piece of cabin frame that had bent in under the impact and seemed to have his right foot trapped against the frame of his seat, and he was holding firmly onto Alex while trying to wrest his leg loose.

  Alex was thrashing, desperately looking for a way to wriggle free, his little features imploring me to save him.

  I needed to reassure him quickly and gestured to him that I was on my way, then I slithered around the craft and made my way to the smashed cockpit window. I wedged my boot up against it and started pulling at it with everything I had. Pain lit up in the small of my back, but I kept going, and after what seemed like an eternity, it bent out and pulled free.

  I pulled myself inside and snaked through as fast as I could, past the empty co-pilot seat, until I was face to face with Alex. He thrust his hand out to me and I took it, pulling myself closer until I had my right hand clamped around his wrist and the big Omnitrix wristband he never seemed to take off.

  Navarro still had both arms wrapped around Alex’s legs, and I had only a few seconds left before I involuntarily gulped a lungful of sea water.

  I grabbed Navarro’s arm with one hand and stabbed him in his shoulder wound with the other. His grip instantly loosened, and he released Alex’s legs. Then I pulled Alex out of the cabin the way I’d come in and started kicking us upward.

  As we ascended to the surface, my eyes drifted back down to Navarro.

  He was still in the deep end of the cabin, pushing against the seat, desperately trying to work himself free. And right then, before I turned away, I was treated to a glimpse of a sudden, large cloud of air bubbles that blew out of his mouth. He couldn’t hold his breath anymore, and I knew he was gone.

  I kept kicking my way to the surface, pulling Alex up with me, heading for the sunlight with my lungs shrunken inside my chest and every molecule of oxygen squeezed out and devoured—but as I opened my mouth and braced myself for the breath that would mean death, not life, I finally broke through with Alex right beside me.

  He shook the water from his eyes as we both gulped down big, grateful lungfuls of air.

  I looked toward the shore. We were only a couple of hundred yards away from land, and I knew we’d make it. Even better, I knew it was over, what with Navarro literally sleeping with the fishes underneath us.

  Alex and I bobbed up and down in the deceptively peaceful turquoise water, looking at each other, his arms clasped tight around my neck. His eyes were calmer now, and seemed to me to be back to those of a four-year-old boy. Not only that, but they were holding my gaze without any trace of fear in them. And that was a first.

  “How did you do that?” he asked, his face all alight with wonder.

  I broke out in a big, deeply contented smile.

  “I’m your dad, Alex. That’s all. And it’s what any dad would do.”

  He thought about this for a moment, and for the first time since I’d met him, he smiled back. Not a huge, big toothy grin. But a smile. And right now, that was plenty.

  But I couldn’t enjoy it fully.

  A rush of malignant thoughts was poisoning the moment and swooping in and out of my head, echoes of things I’d heard or felt that were now falling into place, and I knew I didn’t yet have all the answers.

  70

  Tess, Alex, and I hadn’t been back in San Diego more than a few hours, but this couldn’t wait.

  Tess was fine. She’d done like I told her and ducked into a safe corner and waited until the firefight had died down. The Special Ops guys had then escorted her out of there and cleaned her wound. Once Alex and I had broken the surface, I’d been worried sick about her, and the smile she gave me when I finally got her back is definit
ely up there in the top five memories of my life.

  After the dust had settled in Merida, I’d been relieved to hear that Jules and the new guy were also okay. I’d been extremely saddened, though, by the news that Villaverde had been found dead at the rented beach house Navarro had used. It was a terrible loss, and I felt gutted. He was a decent, down-to-earth, capable guy who’d really proved himself to be a solid ally when I needed him. I guessed that he and Navarro had had some face time together, which was probably how Navarro’s men got to us at the safe house. And the bastard wasn’t in the business of leaving behind any witnesses.

  The hacienda itself had kicked in some decent news. The scientists who’d been kidnapped from Santa Barbara were found in the basement lab complex, along with two others who’d been grabbed previously. They were in as good shape as could be expected for people who’d been held captive like that for months.

  Closer to home, Stephenson had offered to work with me and Tess on helping Alex work through everything that had happened.

  But I didn’t think the book was yet closed on that front.

  A few things were bothering me, starting with the drone.

  I knew drones. We’d had one circling over us the night we hit McKinnon’s lab, but more relevantly, I’d made use of a Predator much more recently, in Turkey, in broad daylight, while chasing the sadistic Iranian agent Zahed. I knew what they looked like. And in that perfect azure dome that towered over us down in Merida that morning, I didn’t see a thing. Not a glint, not a spot, nothing. Admittedly, I hadn’t had all the time in the world to sit and stargaze to look for it. But I knew I should have seen it and it really bugged me. It bugged me enough to look into it with the guys over at the 9th Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base in California, from where the drones were controlled. I knew it wasn’t easy for the DEA to run a drone over Mexico. They’d done so a couple of times over the last year or so, and it had caused a big stink with the federales. But the guys at Beale confirmed to me that they didn’t have any drones over California or Mexico that day.

  Which meant Munro was lying.

  Which meant that if Munro didn’t track us that way, he had to have used something else. And the only other way to track us would have been to track something we had on us—specifically, something either Navarro or Alex had on them, given that the tracker on Munro’s screen was showing their live position. It didn’t seem possible he had a tracker on Navarro. If Munro had managed that, he’d have hauled El Brujo’s ass in and sold him out to the narcos before pocketing the cash and retiring into a mojito-fueled, perma-tanned sunset.

  Which meant the tracker had to be on Alex.

  Which meant Munro somehow knew that Navarro would come after Alex.

  Which is where my pesky little rule about coincidences starts doing its thing and turns into a real nag.

  Which is why I was now getting out of my car and walking up to a mountain cabin at the edge of the Sequoia National Forest.

  Hank Corliss’s cabin.

  71

  The cabin was a steeply raked oak A-frame that was dwarfed by trees that were more than a hundred feet tall. I found Corliss sitting on the back deck of the split-level cabin, looking out over a fast-flowing creek and mile after mile of dense forest. The loud calls of warblers and swallows filled the air.

  Corliss had clearly heard me drive in and pull up to the house, but he hadn’t made any effort to get up and see who it was. I suspected he knew it was me, just as I suspected he’d been expecting me to show up at some point.

  He didn’t even look over as I stepped out to join him.

  It had just fit too perfectly. Alex happens to be the reincarnation of McKinnon. Munro happens to get wind of that somehow. He then decides to use that to bait Navarro out of hiding—the one thing he knew Navarro couldn’t possibly resist going after.

  Like I said, it was a coincidence too far, and although my horizons had broadened about the so-called nonphysical world in the last few days, that was one coincidence I wasn’t prepared to believe. Not when it fit that perfectly.

  I’m not into perfect fits.

  Life doesn’t work that way.

  And if it wasn’t a rare alignment of stars, if it wasn’t serendipity spreading its wings and giving Jesse Munro the gift of a lifetime, then it had to be something else. Something more human. Which then got me wondering about how much Munro could pull off by himself. And that got me wondering about Corliss.

  Whoever did this had to know Navarro was obsessed with reincarnation. He also had to know what McKinnon’s drug was all about. And he needed to be, in my eyes anyway, insanely desperate to get Navarro.

  Which brought me back to Corliss and to something Munro had said, out in Merida, by the chopper. You think I went through all this bullshit just so some cranky old man could get his revenge?

  His words had been rattling inside me ever since he said them.

  I thought I knew what they’d done. What I didn’t know was, how long had it been going on?

  That, and the how, was what I was here for.

  There was no point in getting into any pleasantries.

  “Did you know Munro was running his own game?” I asked him.

  That got his attention.

  He turned to face me, and he looked even more tired than I remembered. The lines across his forehead were like furrows, and he had dark pouches under eyes that already looked like they’d had all life drained out of them.

  “He wasn’t going to bring him back to you, you know,” I added. “He was going to sell him on to the cartel for fifteen million dollars. And you know what the worst part is? You probably never would have known. He’d have come up with some story about Navarro being killed out there, and you’d be sitting here thinking you pulled off your plan perfectly.”

  He shrugged, impassive. “I doubt they would have kept him alive too long,” he replied.

  If I still had a smidgen of doubt about Corliss’s involvement, his reaction killed it there and then. “True, but that’s not what this was about, was it? This was about revenge. You, getting your revenge. And I can’t imagine it would have been anywhere near as satisfying for you not to have him right there in front of you and be able to stare into his eyes when you did whatever you were planning to do with him.”

  He didn’t reply. He just kept his tenebrous gaze on me while he breathed out slowly through a half-open mouth.

  “It would have all worked out, too. If Michelle hadn’t fought them off at the house. That was the plan, right? He’d grab them. And Alex would lead you right back to him.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out Alex’s Omnitrix wristband and chucked it onto the side table by his side.

  I’d had it checked.

  It’s where the tracker was.

  “You knew Navarro believed in reincarnation,” I told him. “You had the journal. You knew Eusebio’s story. And you knew Navarro didn’t just believe in it. He was obsessed with it, and he was obsessed with getting McKinnon’s formula back. So you decided to use that to flush him out. And what better way to flush him out than to have him think McKinnon had been reincarnated.”

  I saw a reaction flicker in his eyes.

  “Then you decided to load the dice,” I continued. “You decided it couldn’t be just any kid. You wanted to be sure he’d believe it, you wanted him so motivated that he’d definitely come after this kid. And who better for the job than the son of the guy who shot McKinnon? Which you knew, because Munro knew that Michelle was pregnant with my son.”

  The reaction calmed, and I saw that he was already wondering about the consequences.

  “Are you here to kill me?” he asked

  “I should. And maybe I will. I mean, you got Michelle killed. And Villaverde. And Fugate. And Michelle’s boyfriend. And all the rest of them.” I couldn’t control my temper and my tone blew. “And you put my son at risk. You screwed with his mind and you dangled him out as bait for one of the biggest psychos on this planet.”

/>   “None of this should have happened,” Corliss said. “The plan wasn’t for anyone to get hurt. But then . . . the best laid plans, right?”

  “That’s horseshit,” I replied. “You were dealing with Navarro here. What did you think would happen?”

  Corliss sucked in a deep breath through thin, tight lips, and his eyes narrowed defiantly. “You, of all people, should understand why I did this. You know what happened. What he did to my family.” He paused, as if looking to see if any of his words were striking home.

  For a second, I put myself in his shoes, and I wondered about that. I wondered about what I would have done had I seen my daughter butchered in front of my eyes and had my wife end her life because of it. But I also felt like strangling him for what he did.

  “And he was going to keep looking,” he added. “He was going to keep looking until he found that drug. Where would we be then, huh? How many parents would be standing there saying, ‘Why didn’t you do everything you could to stop him?’ ”

  I’d wrestled with the same arguments after shooting McKinnon, so his words weren’t falling on deaf ears. But I still had a few burning questions for him.

  “How’d you do it?” I asked, thinking about Alex and trying to keep the rage out of my voice. “How’d you get Alex to say the things he did, to do those drawings . . . how’s you get him to be so convincing that he’d fool someone like Stephenson?”

  Corliss looked away, and for a moment, I thought I saw some regret there, some pain, something human that told me maybe this hadn’t been as cold and heartless for him as I thought.

  “We brought in a spook. A guy who’d been in on MK-ULTRA back in the day.” He was referring to the CIA’s now widely known mind-control experiments, back in the sixties.