Beep. Beep. Beep.
Allen pulled in heavy gulps of air. His eyes were open, but they were focused on something distant. Tears buckled on his lids, spilled over. He reached out blindly, felt Stephen’s face and shoulder, and slid his arms around his brother’s body, pushing his face into his chest.
Stephen hugged him in return and watched the EKG monitor. The rate was slow but steady. His vision blurred. He blinked away his own tears; they seeped into his beard and tickled his face.
“What happened?” Allen asked, the words scraping over his vocal cords like pebbles. “Where was I?”
Stephen squeezed him tighter. His hands and arms felt too much of Allen’s skeleton. He said, “Maybe heaven, little brother. But heaven can wait for you. I got you now.”
Allen pushed back to look into Stephen’s eyes. He touched Stephen’s face, as though ensuring himself it was real.
Stephen was stunned by the way Allen’s cheeks and eyes sank into his skull, accentuating his cheekbones and jaw. A large rip at the waist of his clothing showed pale skin and a shrunken stomach. He must have lost twenty pounds in the three days since his capture. Finally Stephen’s eyes broke away and settled on a bowl of water and a cloth beside the cot. He dipped the cloth into the water and dabbed at Allen’s face. The blood washed away, but the tears—constantly replenished— seemed more permanent.
Allen returned to the comfort of his brother’s chest. Stephen’s arms cocooned him, warming, comforting, protecting. Allen slumped as tension waned and fatigue took hold.
“I thought we’d lost you,” Stephen whispered.
An explosion rocked the room. The wire mesh over the light came loose on one side and swung down. Somewhere down the corridor, glass shattered.
Carefully he lowered Allen back onto the bed. His eyes were wide and darting. Stephen had heard that a side effect of adrenaline was short-term hyper-alertness, followed by a crash that comatosed some patients. The alertness could help get Allen out of the compound; they would worry about his crashing later.
He pulled another ampoule out of his shirt pocket, one he’d found earlier: atropine, which would keep Allen’s heart rate up and work with the adrenaline to energize him.
He scooped up another syringe, loaded it, and plunged the needle into Allen’s arm.
“This’ll help,” he said soothingly.
Walls shattered in another part of the complex. The sound reverberated through the corridors, which were becoming thick with smoke and dust. He realized that the explosions were infrequent now and sporadically placed—if his own judgment in such matters could be trusted—as if they were probing for something.
“You’re doing fine,” Stephen said, tossing aside the syringe. He hoisted Allen up, slung him over his shoulder, and stood.
He made only one wrong turn getting back to the exit. The door was locked. Beside it, a black pane was set in the wall. The man who had led him to Allen had put his face up to one like it. He held his own face in front of it, moved it around, tried the door again. Still locked.
This far … for nothing.
He had not seen anyone else on this level. The chances of people hiding out here—or of his finding them if they were—were about the same as surviving the bombs pounding overhead.
Then a memory struck him—so full of potential, he held his breath while his mind gnawed on it.
It could work.
He eased Allen down next to a wall. “I’ll be right back. I gave you a heavy dose of adrenaline. You all right?”
“Hmmm.” Allen raised his eyebrows to show he was. “Feeling … a little better.”
Stephen took off along the corridor, into air that had taken on the murkiness of pond water. When he returned, Allen rolled an eye at him and grimaced. Behind Stephen, dragged by one foot, came the corpse from Allen’s cell. It left an intermittent swath of crimson. Stephen scooped up the body and maneuvered its face into position in front of the glass panel. He turned the head this way and that, backed it away and drew it near. The noise of the explosions escalated. The tremors became quakes. The smoke thickened and stung their eyes.
He laid the body down in frustration, not sure what else to do.
Allen spoke. “Thermal.”
“What?”
He said it again.
Stephen looked down at the corpse, wondering where mere disrespect became sacrilege. He straddled the body and began rubbing the face. His hands engulfed it. He was able to stroke all of it simultaneously, from forehead to chin, ear to ear. His thumbs stayed on the bridge of the nose, moving from between the eyes to the tip. He rubbed as vigorously as he dared and tried not to think of the flesh beneath his hands: the chin scratchy with light beard stubble; the lips catching on his palms, the bottom pulling down, the top snarling up, each flipping back on the opposing stroke; the forehead sliding sickeningly over the skull.
He heaved the body up and held the face before the black pane. A bolt inside the door clicked. Gently, he lowered the corpse.
He bent Allen over his shoulder and stepped through. He wondered if another thermal face reader awaited them at the top of the stairs; he turned and held the door with his foot before it could close. He leaned through, got a grip on the dead man’s foot, and pulled the body into the stairwell. Then he headed for the surface.
ninety-five
At one time, the air base must have housed a good-sized army, Julia thought. Three rows of Quonset huts were arranged in a grid, with dirt roads running between the rows. A large field and the airstrip separated the Quonsets from a single row of five airplane hangars—now ripped apart and burning. Whatever function the Quonsets once served—barracks, infirmary, mess hall, armory, chapel, administrative offices, warehouses—today they were rusty scraps, like half-buried barrels.
Julia crouched low beside one of the Quonsets, trying to guess the current position of the three assassins who chased her. She assumed they had split up, as they had done in Pedro Juan Caballero. She crept to the edge of the building, peered around. One of the killers was three Quonsets away, boldly strolling her direction, his head cocked to look between each building as he passed. She sprang out, running for the next row. He spotted her, raised his pistol. She squeezed off a round, then another. He didn’t dodge away. As far as she could tell, he didn’t even flinch. Then she was out of his sight and running full-force to the end of the building. Her plan was simple: lead the Atroposes far away from the stairs, then double back, find Stephen, find Allen, and get out of Dodge before the killers caught up with them.
Or before the bombs pounded them all deep into the Paraguayan soil for archeologists to find a hundred years from now.
She hadn’t seen a plane or an explosion for a few minutes. The last one she spotted had been an FA-18 with U.S. insignias—her father had built model jets and she recognized the twin tail fins. It had swooped low without releasing its ordnance. She wondered if the air strike was over. Could its sole intention have been to disable any getaway aircraft? Would the commando team she had hoped Kendrick would send now arrive?
She had reached the opposite corner of the array of Quonsets from the stairs. It was time to circle back around. She had seen only one Atropos since running from them when they first converged on her. That made her more nervous than if they had stayed on her tail. It dawned on her that she had not seen anyone in the past five minutes. The people escaping the base had drained through the gate and were gone. What she wouldn’t give to be with them, Stephen and Allen at her side.
She clutched her pistol and ran back along the front of the first Quonset. She stopped at the corner to inspect the space between the buildings, then darted across. She tacked around a stack of wooden crates that leaned against the half-moon facade. Bulging burlap sacks squatted beside it like fat trolls. She crossed the next gap and then ran to the back of the building.
Her progress was slow, but finally she found herself at the rear of the Quonset with the stairs. She came around the corner in a strobe-like dance
of deadly efficiency, swinging her pistol toward the door … the arching roofs … the crates … the corners of the buildings … She reached the front, kicked through the door, and moved into the stifling darkness. Her pistol covered the near corners … the far corners … the overhead beams. She stopped, listening.
A plane approached, followed by explosions—dozens, maybe hundreds of them. They didn’t sound like the kind of bombs planes dropped, but smaller, like hand grenades. Still, she heard metal ripping and felt the ground tremble.
So the pause had been a mere respite after all. How could Kendrick Reynolds be so cold? She had told him they were heading here to rescue Allen. Was this his idea of taking care of business—eliminating a threat and cleaning up loose ends all at once? She understood that stopping Karl Litt was more important than three civilian lives, more important than a hundred … a thousand. She only wished he’d found another way—sending in a pre-strike ground team, for instance, to pull out the innocent. Or did he think there were no innocents in war? As it was, she felt a bit like Slim Pickens riding an H-bomb to Earth.
Picking up the pace, she moved deeper into the shadows and made out a door at the back of the big room. As she approached, it opened. Her gun snapped up. Stephen stumbled out with Allen over his shoulder. She took her finger off the trigger. Stephen’s eyes acknowledged her with compassion, but there was no smile. He fell on his one knee and slid Allen off his shoulder. Allen sat like a rag doll for a moment, then slumped onto his side.
Julia gasped, seeing his battered face, the blood everywhere. “What happened?”
“He’s bad,” Stephen said dismally. He turned pleading eyes on her. “I think they infected him. They … Julia, I think he has Ebola.” Tears rimmed his eyes, spilled onto his cheeks.
“We’ll find help for him,” she said, trying to infuse her words with a faith she did not feel. “But we have to go. We have to leave right now.”
“I can walk,” Allen slurred, pushing himself up. “I can.”
Stephen hoisted him by the armpits. Allen struggled to keep his head balanced on his neck, but with an effort Julia took to be equal parts strength and will, he raised his chin, pushed out his chest, and said, “Let’s go.”
Julia popped her head out the door and looked around. She shuffled out, gun ready. Stephen and Allen sidestepped through the doorway. Allen’s foot came out from under him; he overcorrected and fell back into the front wall of the building. A flash of frustration wrinkled his brow. He shook off Stephen’s grip, opting to steady himself by keeping only one hand on Stephen’s shoulder.
“Same old Allen,” Stephen whispered. “Bullheaded as ever.”
They started moving south, toward the trash area and the mineshaft. The ground quaked as Navy thunder pealed over the base, reverberating against the buildings’ metal skin. Julia and Stephen realized at the same time that a noise at the end of this thunder was caused by something else—a slamming door behind them.
They turned to see a man darting across the road. He stopped and faced them. Julia’s mouth went dry. A fleshless skull was glaring at her. Then she realized the black orbs of the eyeholes were a pair of sunglasses, and the face she thought fleshless was merely gaunt—but extremely so, as though it had gone through the Mayan ritual of tlachaki, in which dried facial skin was stretched over the skull after everything else had been stripped off. Brittle hair, unnaturally silver in sunlight, exploded back from an overly large forehead, framing the head like the halos of saints in Florentine paintings; to Julia, it heightened the sense of sacrilege this figure radiated.
“Litt,” Allen said.
Pressed to his chest with both arms was a silver briefcase.
Julia raised the Sig Sauer, but Litt disappeared behind a building.
Julia reversed for the mine, but Stephen caught her arm.
“He had a case. We can’t let him go.”
“There’s no time.”
“We can’t let him go,” he repeated.
“We can’t,” Allen agreed. He wiped the back of a hand over his lips. “He won’t let this die. He’ll be back.”
“Allen,” Julia said, refusing to believe he would pass up the opportunity to get while the getting was good, “going after Litt may mean the difference between getting out alive … and not.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Stephen again: “We can’t let him go.”
They were right. Oh God, they were right. With bombs crashing down around his head, the only souvenir Litt could possibly want was whatever would allow him to continue his work in viral terrorism— money or formulae or specimens; probably all three.
Without a word, she took off after him.
ninety-six
They charged through the alley toward the large open area that split the base in half. On the other side, in front of one of the hangars, dozens of military vehicles squatted on rubberless rims, rusting. Despite the destruction, Litt had run in this direction.
When they emerged from the alley, Litt was waiting for them. He stood two buildings away, casting a chilling smile. His fingers were massaging the back of the hand that held the briefcase.
She leveled her pistol at him. “Freeze!” she yelled. “Drop the case!”
When he didn’t, she repeated the command. Again he ignored her. She wondered if he was concealing a weapon. Slowly, she advanced, Allen and Stephen close behind.
“Shoot him,” Allen whispered. His voice was raspy, and he was winded.
They stepped in front of a Quonset door. It burst open, spewing out the Atroposes in a frenzy of gauntleted fists, kicking legs, overwhelming bodies. A black arm lashed out and sent her pistol flying. Julia yelled out in surprise and pain as two of her fingers broke and split open. A hand ensnarled her hair and forced her head back. She swung her arm and hit nothing. She kicked back, felt her captor move
away, and struck nothing. She reached behind her head, found the flexing material of the gauntlet, and realized her efforts there would be pointless.
Let a missile hit us now, she prayed. Just take us all out, whatever good with all this evil.
She heaved forward, realizing in midfall that someone had planted a foot at the small of her back and kicked her away. She hit the ground hard and tumbled. A body fell on top of her—instinctively, she jabbed a fist into it. The man let out a painful breath of air, too labored to be one of the Atroposes. She pushed him off and found his face: Allen. Snapping her head up, she witnessed Stephen in the impossible task of taking on all three Atroposes. He had one pinned under his massive foot against the building’s facade, and another in a stranglehold, gripping the killer’s neck despite his captive’s pounding fists. He had kicked or punched or shoved the third Atropos—this one was reeling back and falling.
Stephen’s eyes found Julia’s.
“Go!” he grunted. “Stop him!”
She looked quickly and saw Litt running across the field, toward the smoldering hangars. She scanned the ground for her pistol. It was there, among the scuffling feet of Atropos and Stephen.
The killer who’d fallen was up, moving in on Stephen. She leaped up and kicked him. He spun and planted a heel into her sternum. She flew back. Eyes watering from pain, she rolled toward the battle, reaching, feeling for her gun. A booted foot came down on her arm. She screamed and pulled her arm back. She rolled away, rose, cradling her arm.
The Atropos pinned by Stephen’s foot writhed in frustration, not quite understanding yet that the weight of his brothers was anchoring Stephen in place. A spiked fist rose from the headlocked Atropos and came down on Stephen’s spine.
His eyes slammed shut against the assault. Tears streamed out. He opened his eyes again, found Julia. “Go! Please!”
Litt was nearly at the hangars.
Beside her, Allen struggled to stand. She sensed the tension coiled in his legs and arms, ready to spring at Stephen’s attackers. She reached out and touched him. “No, Allen. They’ll kill you with one blow.”
“
I … have … to!”
Stephen turned a bloody face toward Allen and shook his head. “No, brother. Go. Stop Litt. Don’t let this happen again …”
The free Atropos took a step for Allen and Julia. Stephen released the neck he had been gripping and seized the collar of the assassin now interested in Allen and Julia, yanking him back. When the man spun to break the grip, Stephen yelled, “You wimp! Just like your punk dead brother!”
Atropos rammed a fist into Stephen’s face. The struggling escalated: the movements came faster, the blows harder.
Backing away, Julia saw the Atroposes as something other than individual killers. Though encased in their own skins, they moved in unison, as one creature: one pulling back as another stepped in … gripping and releasing like the tentacles of a violently malicious monster. And she realized another thing: they all wanted a piece of Stephen; they all wanted to be part of the kill. In the destruction of their enemies, they were of one mind, one body. They would descend on each of them with a unified, incomprehensible wrath.
She pulled at Allen, aware that she was leaving Stephen to die. They would all perish if they tried to rescue him. And he would die for nothing.
No, she thought. She couldn’t leave so easily. She dived for her gun, dodging the kicks, the stomps. Her uninjured hand reached out, grabbed the barrel. She rolled back, back, then up, turning the gun in her hand. She pointed, focused. All three Atroposes stood behind Stephen—a gauntleted arm circling his neck, gloved hands pulling his arms back at horrendous angles, another hand coming from between his legs to grip a thigh. Julia recalled Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, and Stephen was caught in its many arms. Its necklace of skulls were the faces of the Atroposes, peering wickedly over Stephen’s shoulders and around his body. They jostled, shielding themselves.
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