One two, jump!
I was only half way across when the gap between the planks became wide enough that I had difficulty spanning the distance over the booby-trapped third planks. “Hang for a minute!” Ben called back to me. “Lift your legs and hang!” It took every ounce of strength I had, but I hoisted myself up and held on for dear life as the boards below me slowly slid back together. I was about to lower my legs when I realized that I now had no idea which board was which.
“Uh, Ben?” I felt myself slipping slightly. “What happens if I touch the wrong board?”
“The rope collapses.”
“The one I’m holding on to?”
“Uh huh.”
“Does anything happen to the bridge?”
“I don’t think so.”
It wasn’t the definitive answer I was hoping for, but I was almost to the point where my arm was going to give out anyway. My only option was a plan that was suicidal at best. The two-foot wide planks were easily wide enough to run across, but the lack of any railing and the twenty-foot drop gave it the illusion of being far narrower, which played havoc with my sense of balance. I unwound the rope from my hand and dropped. The bridge started shifting immediately, but I launched myself forward. “Out of the way!” I yelled as I jumped the last gap, which was nearly three feet wide, and rolled onto the platform on the other side.
“Tell me there’s another way out of here,” I panted as I sat up and got my bearings. With no rope, we weren’t getting back the way we came. For that matter even if there was a rope, we weren’t getting a group out of there.
“No, but the way back is pretty bad too,” Ben informed me with a flat, emotionless voice. “Come on.”
We continued on through the strange and convoluted walkway without incident until we came at last to the path out of the sludgy lake. Here there were trees that had been cut off to form uneven stepping-stones. “Follow me,” Ben said, skipping the first trunk by jumping to the second. When he jumped to the next, I followed. Some of the jumps were dicey and I was in awe of Ben’s ability to navigate them without hesitation. Of course, this was because he had lived his whole life in this swamp, and faced the danger of dying at the hands of either a predator or any one of these traps daily, which was disturbing enough to anger me further.
When we reached dry land, Ben took off running and I followed. As we picked our way through a dense patch, I suddenly heard voices shouting and the unmistakable sound of gunfire, but the acoustics of the jungle-like atmosphere made it impossible to know which direction it was coming from.
“Ben, get down!” I whispered harshly and checked my hemograph. What I saw sickened me. No more than fifty feet from us was a cluster of green and white dots. No doubt that was the group we were after and the military had gotten there first. “Can you climb?” I asked. Ben nodded. “Good, get up one of these trees, as high as you can go, and don’t let anyone see you. Don’t come down until I come back, you got that?”
I started to creep my way toward the group when Ben called me back. “Hey! Don’t step on any stones!”
“Stones?”
“Big flat white ones, don’t step on them.”
“Got it,” I said and took off. A minute later, someone came crashing through the grass and ran into me with a scream. I looked down and saw a girl, younger even than Ben, her face spattered with blood. “Are you injured?” I asked. She shook her head and started backing away in terror. Instinctively, I looked behind me, but I was alone. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you, I’m here to get you out. Are the others still alive?”
“S-some might be,” she said with a nervous glance over her shoulder. I glanced at the hemograph and saw a green signature moving toward us about ten feet away. “Can you climb?” She nodded. “Good, get up that tree and don’t let anyone see you,” I whispered and grabbed one of my weapons. I plowed my way through the foliage until I was just a foot from the soldier who held his gun in front of him. I ducked, swiping his legs with mine and tackled him as he fell, stomping on the hand that still grasped the gun until I heard a sickening crack.
“I’ll give you an option,” I hissed. “Hand over all of your weapons and I’ll only break your other wrist. Fight me and I’ll kill you right now.” For a split second, he seemed to consider my proposal. But before he could voice his decision, he jerked violently and to my horror, a small red hole appeared suddenly on his forehead, just above his now lifeless eyes.
“Only pussies take prisoners, Lucy.”
I felt as if the world had suddenly gone into slow motion. I turned my head and came face to face with the rifle that had just blown a hole in the head of the soldier. Agent Phillips, barely recognizable with his pulverized nose and blackened eyes, stared down at me with smug contempt. How I managed to overcome the paralyzing fear of having a gun shoved in my face, I’ll never know. But fate was on my side as I ducked and rolled to the side just a split second before he pulled the trigger. I felt a sharp sting in my shoulder and knew I had been hit, but I reached out and stabbed blindly with my CPA.
And missed.
My hand struck the ground and I swung around wildly as a spray of bullets went over my head in an erratic arc and a terrifying scream echoed through the air. I raised my head cautiously and watched in horror as one of the gray-skinned chimeras savagely mauled the agent. I fumbled for another weapon and stopped, remembering what happened the last time I attacked one at close range. As I slowly backed away, my foot bumped something hard and I looked down to see the gun that I had stomped out of the hand of the dead soldier. I recoiled out of reflex, but thought about my options.
I’d never shot a gun, but Hugh had insisted on making sure I was well versed in gun safety and handling. Gingerly, I picked up the rifle, surprised at its weight, and checked the safety. There wasn’t one, which shouldn’t have surprised me. Remembering what Hugh taught me about the recoil, and having only one good arm, I pushed away my revulsion and propped the rifle into position using the torso of the dead soldier. I put my weaker arm over the top of the barrel and realized that I would have to use my left hand to try and shoot, which was awkward.
With a deep breath, and a quick prayer, I pulled the trigger, and found out exactly why they are called automatic weapons. The spray of bullets was overkill and I was thrown back, but I had hit my target. The chimera exploded in a flash that left me temporarily blinded, which in itself was terrifying because my ears were still ringing from the gunfire. When I could see again, I checked my hemograph. The group I was supposed to be rescuing was still in the same place, but most of the green signatures had moved to the north, which I took as a bad sign.
When I came to the spot where they should have been, it was empty. I checked the hemograph again and saw that in the exact spot where I was standing there should have been another person. I scanned the tree limbs overhead and spotted a young girl clutching a tree branch. “You can come down,” I called out. “The coast is clear, but we need to get out of here before the soldiers come back.”
Three kids dropped from the trees and stared at me. I checked the hemograph and saw that there were two more signatures, one green and one white, that hadn’t come out with the others, so I went over to investigate the tall grass where they were hiding. As I parted the grass, my stomach clenched violently and I turned away. The hemograph had registered two dead bodies, a woman and a very small child. I was temporarily paralyzed with horror and guilt as I realized the slain woman was Persephone, the girl whose child Bluebeard had sold us.
I squeezed my eyes shut and steadied myself against the trunk of a tree, but no matter how tightly I squeezed, I could not stop seeing the awful image. At last, with a deep, steadying breath I turned back to the remaining kids.
“This is everyone?” I asked the oldest, a boy about Cynda’s age. He nodded. “Okay, follow me. There’s a boy named Ben not far from here and he’s going to lead us back. There’s…a really awful scene that we have to pass,” I said cautiously.
“Bodies?” he asked.
“Gore,” I confirmed with a grimace. The boy shrugged.
“All of us have seen their brothers or sisters die horrific deaths,” he said flatly. “Even Trina and she’s six.” He gestured toward a tiny girl with big blue eyes who nodded solemnly at me. The bile rose in my throat and I blinked away angry tears at the thought of what kind of lives these kids have led.
“Okay,” I said hoarsely. “Let’s go.”
As we passed the carnage that had once been Agent Phillips, the boy stopped to survey the damage and reached for the rifle that I had discarded. “Wait!” I warned. He regarded me curiously. “Unless you’ve had extensive training in automatic weapons, that’s more of a danger to us than a help,” I explained. He hesitated for a moment and finally moved away from the gun, but searched the body of the soldier and found a knife instead. I didn’t say anything, but prayed we wouldn’t come across a situation where he felt compelled to use it.
As we were making our way back through the thick grass, I heard a rustle in the trees overhead and looked up in time to see the little girl I had encountered earlier shimmying down the trunk. For a brief moment my relief to see her alive was overshadowed by the horrible fact that I had nearly forgotten she was there. Wordlessly, she slipped into our group and took the hand of Trina, who I realized must have been her little sister from their similarities. Sadly, I also realized from their similarities that these two, along with Ben, looked an awful lot like the dead woman we had to leave behind.
When we reached Ben, I at least had the forethought to check the hemograph so that he didn’t give me a heart attack when he jumped down from the tree. “Where’s the others?” he asked.
“Dead,” the older boy replied with no emotions. The exchange was heartbreaking. Ben resumed his role as guide and soon we were close to the lake. My stomach gave a lurch at the thought of crossing yet another obstacle course from hell with five kids in tow. As we approached, Ben held his hand up to halt us and pointed across the lake to where a group of soldiers was attempting to cross. When they spotted us they began shooting.
“Get down!” I hissed, pushing the two little ones to the ground. “Is there another way around?”
“No,” Ben replied, “but they’ll all be dead in a minute.”
He was correct. As the soldiers who were still on the banks rushed the bridge in their attempt to get to us, it collapsed and fell into the swamp. Almost immediately, the water began to churn and began bubbling reddish brown with blood. I didn’t want to know what was in that water and I was extremely glad I didn’t know when I had tried to cross earlier. After the water had calmed, Ben led us over to another bridge of wooden planks. As he began to cross, I called out. “Wait, what’s the trick with this one?”
“Nothing, it goes all the way across from this side.”
“I thought you said it was going to be just as difficult.”
“That’s when I thought we would have to carry my mother across. She was afraid of the gators.”
Again, there was no emotion in his voice, despite knowing that his mother was dead. We crossed safely and to my relief, the hemograph showed no one, friend or foe, blocking our path to the barrier. The older boy, whose name I learned was Jonah, picked up Trina and we ran the rest of the way back.
Chapter 22
“I don’t give a good goddamn what your reasoning was, you endangered the lives of my employees, killed two of your own agents, who knows how many of your black ops goons, and you allowed the murderous monster we went in to stop to escape! Yes, Jack, I am angry! Angry enough to pull every fucking contract, disband my team, dissolve EJC, and move the hell out of a country that doesn’t give two shits about its citizens!”
Though I could only hear one side of Evan’s phone conversation through the closed door of his office, it was pretty informative. With the size of the military operation that had been assembled on such a short notice, I hadn’t labored under the delusion that Agent Phillips had been acting rogue, but I hadn’t realized the orders came all the way from the top of the agency either.
Of the nine women and thirty-eight children that we were supposed to rescue, only four women and nineteen children made it off the plantation alive. Thanks to the atrocities committed by our government, the mission was not simply a failure, but an unforgivable tragedy that would haunt me for the rest of my life. And I was sure I wasn't the only one. Andre had barely said two words to anyone since he returned, but he didn't need to. The fact that he returned from the lab alone, carrying two of the six babies he was to rescue, spoke volumes.
I didn’t know that Powell and Jorgenson had died. It was upsetting, but even more upsetting was the fact that it didn’t surprise me, considering my own run in with Agent Phillips. That our own team of five had survived was nothing short of a miracle, though not all of us survived unscathed. Both Johnny and Hugh had been shot, Hugh multiple times, and I was worried about him.
“Listen Jack, if you don’t pull all of your surviving soldiers out of there right now, I will blow this whole thing wide open and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it and that includes killing me. I’m more than enough a bastard to have so many redundancies in place that the entire world will know what you did before you can think about a cover up.”
Although I thoroughly understood and shared Evan’s anger, I couldn’t help but wonder if picking a fight with the head of a government organization was a good idea. Especially an organization so invisible that I was sure even the president didn’t know of its existence. A glance around the room showed that I wasn’t the only one who was nervous about this. Saba and Lance exchanged nervous glances and Andre hadn’t stopped pacing since we got there.
The elevator chimed quietly, announcing the arrival of Dara and Isaac, the latter of whom immediately came over and wrapped me in a protective hug. “You’re alive, thank god. Are you hurt?” He looked nervously at the large red stain on the shoulder of my shirt.
“I was shot, but no,” I said quietly. “How are the others?” Aside from Hugh and Johnny, several of the kids and one of the women had been injured.
“As far as I know, no one is in critical condition except Hugh and he's still in surgery. I’m sorry I don’t have any better news.” The news about Hugh worried me more than before. He had tried to play off the fact that he was shot several times as if it wasn’t a big deal, but halfway back to base he began shivering and losing consciousness. We had to stop and transfer him to one of our vans because the transport vehicle, that I guess now we technically stole, had a top speed of about fifty miles per hour.
At last, the door to Evan’s office opened and he wheeled himself out, looking much older and more haggard that I had seen him since Andre’s near death experience the year before. As we stood to go into his office, he waved us back. “Let’s just stay out here, I’m sick and tired of being in there right now.” We sat back down and waited for him to speak.
“The manor house was burned to the ground,” he appeared to address Isaac directly. “Our surveillance of the area hasn’t picked up on anyone or anything leaving the area. What’s the likelihood that he’s dead?”
Isaac considered this for a moment. “I thought I killed the bastard forty-five years ago. Until I see a body, I’d presume he’s alive.” Evan nodded slowly and mulled the statement over.
“As I’m sure you all heard, the agency condoned the attack that put you all in danger. Saba, I want to apologize to you directly. Had I any indication that the government would do something so callous I never would have agreed to send Anil into that situation.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Evan,” Saba answered quietly. “I didn’t like it, but I understood where he, and you, felt his presence would have been comforting to the children. What I don’t understand is how an attack of that scale was planned in less than four hours. We were there when you made the call for assistance.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily call charging into a hostile situati
on with absolutely no idea what to expect planning, but you’re right, it wasn’t a last minute decision.” Evan paused and sighed heavily. “The soldiers that showed up today are part of a team we were never told about. The agency apparently has their own arm of the military involved in the Eclipse project and this was not their first mission. I’ve suspected corruption, yes even before what happened in Paris, but what happened in Paris was expected. This…well this is not as black and white.”
“I was under the impression that we were the ground forces for the operation,” Saba observed. “I particularly remember jumping through hoops because of my immigration status.”
“As was I,” Evan said with a dark look. “While we proved that we were by far a more effective army, even when it was just the four of us, it seems the agency wasn’t content to put all of their eggs into one subcontracted basket. Technically, they’re just like us, hunters whose main objective is to find genetically modified vampires that have been determined to be a threat and put a stop to them. But while we’ve been on the ground patrolling the city, they have been targeting larger sources that we missed. Sources that we weren’t even aware existed, namely the genetics traders.”
“But I thought we did know about them?” Andre interjected. “How many labs have we shut down just since I’ve joined the team? That’s not including the large outfits you hit nearly twenty years ago.”
“Yes, but our scope has been limited, hasn’t it?” Evan countered. “Never once have we considered that we should be searching the entire state, not just within the city limits. Blackthorn plantation wasn't anywhere near as unique as we thought. Large-scale genetics farms aren't even limited to Louisiana. Apparently, most of the rural south plays host to these operations. From what I've just been told, the government has been targeting these facilities for nearly as long as our operation has been in existence. They may not have known about Blackthorn specifically, but they were prepared in any event.”
“I don't get it,” I said with a frown. “Targeting a genetics lab, sure, you're going to want to make sure nothing survives. But these were kids. Assuming the agency was callus enough to consider them a threat, what about the human women? I saw your report, Evan. I know you told them about the women. Just… just tell me Agent Phillips went crazy, that the government didn't condone this.” Through my own tears, I caught a brief and confusing look of pain as Andre watched me speak.
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 52
