No Immunity

by Susan Dunlap

  The only reason Louisa would have a specific drug would be because she knew what virus or viruses she was dealing with. And the only way Grady Hummacher could have gotten into the tropical park behind the guarded gate of the Naval Proving Grounds would have been if he’d had a pass …If the woman who’d told him about the park had also given him her pass.

  She turned and looked out the back window, squinting into the distance. The narrow line of road marked the rise and fall of hills going back and back till it became indistinguishable from the high desert on either side. There was no car, no person in sight.

  Of course Fox wasn’t following so close. He didn’t have to. He could count on Louisa.

  CHAPTER 50

  KIERNAN SAT WITH HER feet braced against the dash of Louisa’s BMW. Snow had begun falling, scarce at first, now thick. Louisa clasped the steering wheel tighter; even so, the car skidded in the sharp curves.

  “How much farther?” Louisa’s voice was raw, any sociability gone.

  “An hour maybe. Do you want me to drive?”

  “No!” It was a moment before she said more calmly, “The place the boys are, is it on this road? Or do we turn off?”

  “We turn. Soon, I think. But I’ve only done this route once, and that was at night. So I’m just going to have to be alert for landmarks.”

  Grudgingly, Louisa nodded, and Kiernan settled against the headrest, watched the road, and considered what she knew. Grady Hummacher had snatched the boys and driven through the night to the Doll’s House. His one phone call from there had not been to inquire about Irene’s health, as she had assumed. His goal had been to hide the boys. For that he called his sole contact, Jeff Tremaine, whom he knew from the Carson Club.

  She nodded to herself. At one time she had speculated it was Jeff who operated the safe house. Of course Jeff knew of his wife’s operation.

  Maybe Grady was worried about the boys; maybe he just didn’t want to be tied down as he auctioned his find in the oil world. If he was savvy, he intended to keep them out of the hands of his competitors and enemies.

  “There, Louisa! Right!”

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Take it.” As soon as the car swung right, Kiernan shut her eyes, willing a clear memory of the road. How long till she had left the pavement? Ten minutes, fifteen? “Speed up. We need to make time now.”

  “Because we’ll be off the pavement soon?”

  “Right,” Kiernan admitted.

  “This isn’t a truck, you know, are you sure—”

  “Louisa, what choice do we have?”

  “If you’d tell me where we’re going, maybe I could come up with another way. I’ve been around here before.”

  “No time for that.” Kiernan spotted a road to the right. It was closer to parallel ruts than a map-worthy route.

  She checked the road behind them, eyeing the horizon for a telltale plume of dust, seeing only emptiness and snow.

  If Fox was following them, there would be no telltale dust now, not in the snow.

  “There, turn left.”

  “On that! I’m going to have no transmission left. Can’t we—”

  “Turn, Louisa.”

  The car tilted and bounced as Louisa tried to find a path in the too-wide ruts from much bigger trucks. Kiernan braced her feet and thought of a whale-watching trip she had taken to the Farallon Islands years ago, twenty-six endless miles west of the Golden Gate, hours on an ancient no-stabilizer boat watching a dot in the ocean grow minusculely larger. All to discover that the whales had moved on.

  Now in the light she spotted lesser trails leading off the rutted road. Each she discounted, each time hoping she was right. She hadn’t recalled the road twisting so much. Last night the dark had blacked out the options. Now she could see the seductive choices that protected Connie. Louisa held the wheel tightly; she looked as if she were hanging on as much as steering. Not once had she checked the rearview mirror. Because of course she wasn’t worried about her compatriot Fox.

  She was leading him there. Kiernan knew that and it infuriated her. But what choice was there? She couldn’t lead Louisa away from the boys when Louisa had the drug that might save them. And maybe save herself and Tchernak. Here in the unforgiving desert she could neither escape with the drug nor overpower Louisa and abandon her beside the road to freeze.

  Even with the heater on, the car was cold. Her cotton turtleneck, inadequate before, now felt like paper against her taut skin. Outside, the snow was beginning to stick, throwing the landscape into an eerie black and white. Kiernan leaned her head against the seat. Exhaustion blanketed her. How long had it been since she’d slept? She had been trained on thirty-six-hour shifts in med-school rotations. This stint was still shy of thirty. No excuse for drooping. She straightened up. “Do you have any food, Louisa?” Before Louisa could offer a sarcastic “Help yourself,” she had the glove compartment open and a chocolate bar out. She didn’t want to accept hospitality; she wanted to grab the food as she would from an enemy. She crumpled the wrapper, dropped it to the floor, noted Louisa biting back a complaint, and sat nibbling the chocolate as the windshield wipers cleared away arcs of snow.

  “Keep left!” The mine hole came into sight as suddenly as it had the previous night. Almost as suddenly. Louisa had time to gasp, cut left, and skirt it with a yard to spare.

  Now in the light the cavernous pit seemed even more horrifying. Nausea sloshed in her stomach. The skid marks from Jesse’s truck were outlined in white now, two deep ruts running into the hole.

  “Is that a mine?” Louisa slowed almost to a stop. “I’ve heard about abandoned mines collapsing, but I never figured them to be this size. They could put a cathedral in there.”

  Kiernan stared into the crater as long as she could see it, to remind herself of the vastness of the danger she had overcome.

  The road wound, corkscrewed downward, narrowed, but the ruts remained too wide for the BMW. Kiernan’s legs ached from bracing herself. In the daylight it was easy to see how well hidden the mine was. No one would go far on this road without a reason. What brush there was was short and provided neither cover nor silencing, and the reverberations of the engine and brakes echoed through the canyon. From the base a person could watch the car slowly descend like a pinball bouncing from turn to turn.

  But Connie’s mine hadn’t been at the base, that much she was sure of. They passed the entry road before Kiernan realized it. “Stop. Back up.” The narrow road angled back so sharply, Louisa had to make three cuts before she got the BMW around. Piñons grew so close, they scraped the car on both sides.

  A quarter mile onto the drive, they spotted a derelict building in the distance. “You mean, that’s it?”

  “It’s habitable inside.”

  Louisa stopped the car and pulled her gun-heavy purse onto her lap. “We’ll get out here.”

  “All we’d get for that would be exposed. We’re not surprising anyone. She’ll be expecting something.”

  When the BMW rounded the last curve, Connie was standing, rifle poised. Kiernan hoisted her head and chest out the window. “Connie, it’s me. The boys, are they still alive?”

  Connie pointed to a half-collapsed outbuilding. “Get the car into the car barn. Quick!”

  Louisa started to protest, but Kiernan held up a hand. In the silence she could hear the echo of an engine in the canyon.

  CHAPTER 51

  “I’M A DOCTOR,” LOUISA called as she drove the car past Connie into the mine’s outbuilding. “I’ve got treatment for the boys.”

  Connie waved the car in, just as the guard outside the tropical park must have waved in Grady Hummacher’s car.

  Louisa was out of the BMW before the engine was silent. “Where are they?” she demanded.

  “Shhh.” Connie pointed to the road. “Hear that?”

  “I don’t hear anything. Look, time is vital to these boys. You do have them here, don’t you?”

  Wind rustled through b
ranches, snapping them against one another and scraping leaves into leaves. It whipped Connie Tremaine’s short gray hair like wheat in a storm. Everything was gray, the dilapidated buildings, the sky, the scree from the abandoned mine that covered the ground. The snow was falling heavily now. Connie, deadly pale and sweaty, looked as if she could fade into the landscape with a thought. She eyed Louisa warily.

  “Your answer is yes, then,” Louisa insisted. “Look, obviously you’ve gone to a lot of trouble, danger even, for these boys.” She grabbed Connie’s arm. “Don’t let them die now. Every minute counts.”

  Connie stood granite-still, arms across chest, face revealing nothing except the effort it cost her to remain standing. Watching her, Kiernan wondered how many times she had stood just so, assessing a husband or boyfriend, creditor or gunman who had tracked a runaway to her.

  Snow speckled Louisa’s blond hair, her soft, even features knit in concern. It was a look Kiernan had seen often in med-school rotation in the ER and on the faces of the staff in Africa. Louisa was shaking Connie’s arm. “There’s no time—”

  Connie jerked free. “Listen! That vehicle’ll be in our faces in a minute. Who’s in it?”

  Suddenly the wind slackened and the approaching engine thundered.

  Louisa shot a glance down the drive. “There was no one behind us.”

  “No one visible,” Kiernan said. “That’s someone making up time.”

  “All the more reason to get the boys while we can.”

  Connie held up a hand to quiet the woman she didn’t know and turned questioningly to Kiernan. “Your call.”

  There were a dozen questions she needed answered. Was the drug going to save the boys, or save the navy’s experiment? Would the boys be cured or would it kill them—and the evidence of Louisa’s connection be buried? Already the roar of the engine was louder, closer. There was no time …“The boys have had this fever for days. Ten more minutes won’t matter. We wait till it’s safe.”

  Louisa wheeled toward her. “That’s crazy. This drug’s their best shot.”

  “We need to deal with the guy on our tail.”

  “But I could be—”

  “A spy? A pawn? What’s the right word, Louisa?” She was standing inches from the woman, shouting. “You’ve got a designer drug. The navy’s researchers are the only ones who know what to design against.”

  “I couldn’t—”

  “You’re still tight enough with them to have a pass into the park. You knew what they were doing there. Did you send Grady and the boys there just to spite Grady?”

  Louisa jerked back as if she’d been slapped. “No! The experiments were different when I was up there. I never suspected … till it was too late.” She swallowed hard. “But no one will ever believe me.”

  “Yeah, right,” Kiernan snapped. “That’s real hard to believe when you’re leading Fox here. Why didn’t you just offer him the backseat of your car and save him the trouble of driving?”

  Brakes squealed; the engine snored like a winter bear, paused, then grumbled forward. It made the turn in the driveway.

  Louisa turned toward the driveway, her face taut with panic.

  “What are you worried about? Your buddies will be here in a minute to back you up,” Kiernan said. “Unless even you are frightened of them.”

  Louisa didn’t answer.

  “Maybe it’s worth more than two dispensable kids to test their ‘best shot’ drug. Is that it, Louisa?”

  “Hurry.” Connie raced across the gravelly ground and disappeared into what looked like a pile of rotten timbers.

  The truck was already in the driveway. No time to get to Connie. Kiernan raced back into the car barn, Louisa on her heels.

  The driveway was ten feet away, visible between the boards. The wind hummed through the decaying wood, pricking at Kiernan’s skin, its deep tone contrasting with Louisa’s nervous huffs of breath. She was shivering so violently that even clasping her arms to her chest had no effect. She peered through the boards, through the falling snow, for the first sighting of Fox.

  But it was Reston Adcock’s pickup truck that screeched to a halt. He leaped to the ground, gun in hand. “Get out here, both of you!”

  Louisa gasped. Her fingers went to the wound on her face; she started to move. Kiernan grabbed her arm. “He’s looking around. He doesn’t know where we are. He’ll head for the house first.”

  “He’s desperate. His hired thug has already attacked me. He’s already killed Grady, what do you think he’ll do to the boys after he’s used them up?”

  Or before, Kiernan thought. When Adcock realized the boys couldn’t tell him where the oil was, he’d leave them here in the snow without a thought. But kill Grady? That was the last thing Adcock would have done, not when Grady was the only lead to the oil and the boys. Grady knew Adcock better than any of them. He would have let him in, offered him a seat, and waited to hear if he could top Nihonco’s offer. If he’d been too feverish? Adcock would have scooped him up and raced to a hospital. What’s a little biological danger compared with millions of dollars? Through the cracks she could see Adcock edging his way toward the house, gun poised, eyes wild. In the silence she heard a rumble in the sky like thunder. “Wait till he’s inside. We’ll have a little time to make our move.”

  “Move to what? From one pile of timber to another?”

  “Shhh.”

  “No! Are the boys in the house? Is he going to find them?”

  Kiernan shook her shoulder hard. “Quiet! Of course they’re not in the house. Do you think Connie’s an idiot?”

  “Well, then where? If something happens to you and I can’t find them—”

  Adcock yelled, “I’m not after you girls, I just need those kids. Give me the boys and I’m gone.”

  He stopped halfway to the house. The whitening ground of the courtyard was in front of him, the pile Connie had disappeared into ten feet behind him.

  Snow coated Adcock’s shoulder as he looked from the house to the shed to the mine building and the car barn. Frustration and fury creased his tanned brow, and Kiernan could almost read his thoughts as he realized the impossibility of controlling all the buildings at once. Above him the sky was rumbling. It wasn’t thunder.

  Kiernan whispered, “As soon as he goes inside—”

  “Get those kids out here! I’m giving you five seconds! I’ve got torches here. Five seconds! Then I start torching the place. You can all fry.”

  “He’s not going to—”

  In a burst Louisa was out the door. “No you won’t, you bastard!” She aimed her gun and fired.

  Adcock screamed, spun toward her, and shot.

  She fired again and he slumped slowly to the ground, clutching his pistol as if it could heal him. He shot at her one more time as he fell.

  Louisa grabbed her chest and sank. A gust fingered her blond hair, and Kiernan couldn’t tell whether the weak cry was from her or the wind. Her gun had fallen inches away; she reached for it but her arm was rubbery and her hand fell ineffectually to the ground. “Help me! Help!”

  Adcock didn’t move.

  “Help!”

  Kiernan started toward her, then stopped. The porch door of the house creaked. Connie raced out. Get back! But it was too late for Kiernan to warn her. Running, Connie circled left, making a wide U on her way to Louisa. She almost reached the moaning woman when the shot struck her.

  Kiernan looked to her right. Adcock was still lying on the ground. Standing over him, gun in hand, was the Weasel.

  Above them was a helicopter.

  CHAPTER 52

  AS THE HELICOPTER BLADES drummed above, Louisa lay on the ground, moaning ever more softly. A few feet away Connie neither moved nor made a sound. She had just been trying to do the decent thing. Near the truck, Adcock, too, had crumbled to the ground. There was no way of telling whether they were alive. Snow was beginning to collect in the creases of their clothes. Kiernan had to keep herself from running to them. But there was no hel
p she could give them, not now. She peered out through the car barn cracks.

  McGuire was still out there, armed with his weapon and Adcock’s. The wind whipped his thin brown hair, snapped his flimsy jacket against his ribs. His eyes were wild.

  “Hey, O’Shaughnessy, it’s the boys I need. Gimme them and I’m gone.” He hadn’t even looked up at the helicopter a hundred yards overhead. “Hey, I got no beef with you. This is a money deal. Gimme the kids. I sell ’em to Nihonco, I take my millions, and I’m gone. Gimme the kids and you got nothing to fear.” He was shouting, but she could barely hear him over the beat of the blades.

  Grady, Louisa, Adcock, and Connie, dead or dying, all for the knowledge of the oil deposit the boys had no way of transmitting. McGuire didn’t know the boys had no language. By the time they could learn to communicate—if they could do so at all—Grady Hummacher’s oil would be in gas tanks nationwide, via some other lucky geologist. But the Weasel didn’t know that. If he had, he wouldn’t have taken the chance of bursting through the chain on the motel door and shooting Grady Hummacher.

  “Hey, I don’t have forever. This is my one big chance, nothing’s going to keep me from it. You got no choice, O’Shaughnessy.” For the first time, he looked up. The helicopter was moving closer, shifting side to side. “Don’t think they’re going to save you. Adcock was going to burn you out. The torch is still here. The wind from that copter will turn this place into an inferno. You’ll be embers by the time that thing lands. You and those kids if you don’t get ’em to me. Now!”

  Where were the boys? Had Connie hidden them so well they would die before anyone else could find them?

  “Hey, don’t worry. Those kids are valuable property. They’ll get the best. Hey, I’ll cut you in.”

  The helicopter was fifty feet up. She expected to hear Fox’s voice blaring from the sky, but he wasted no time on words. The navy copter kept moving down, the vibration from the blades growing progressively stronger. If Fox took the boys to B-CADS, they’d be studied to death; if the Weasel got them, they’d just end up dead.