The unexpected compliment brought a smile to Mark’s lips. But before he could respond, Heather and Jennifer had turned their focus back to the laptop.
“There,” Heather pointed at some numbers scrolling across Jennifer’s display. “That’s the coordinate of Janet’s laptop, and that other is the triangulation to the wireless signal Jack set up at the antenna.”
“Got it.” Jennifer’s fingers increased their staccato pace. “Now I just have to search for nearby signals that match the downlink data signature.”
“Nine minutes, twenty-three seconds.”
Heather’s countdown didn’t help Mark’s mood. He glanced at Don Espeñosa, sitting in the wicker chair to which they had tied him. The man’s eyes showed no trace of the panic in which Jack’s instructions should have left him.
Looking into that face, Mark felt a sickness creep into his soul. He had no doubt that before this night was over he would kill the drug lord, if only because Jack had tasked him. What was it Jack had said?
“Before you leave the estate, you need to kill Don Espeñosa. If you don’t, you’ll have no chance of getting out of Colombia alive. Mark, do you understand me?”
As he stared into that impassive face, Mark felt his resolve harden. He had once done a report on a quote from the Israeli military leader, Yerucham Amitai.
“In the end, we may have to choose between actions that might pull down the Temple of Humanity itself rather than surrender even a single member of the family to the executioners."
He’d always thought the statement was over-the-top. But now, he understood.
“I’m in,” Jennifer said.
“What’s the link status?” Heather asked.
“Good packets on the line. I’m receiving satellite downlink, which closely matches our spoofer signal.”
“Try uplinking a test signal to the satellite.”
“Already done. We have positive acknowledgement.”
“Okay. Start the program uplink.”
Mark leaned in close. “Then what.”
“Then we wait. We’ve got to stay online long enough to ensure the commands get relayed through the military communications satellites to the entire fleet of GPS satellites. It’s all or nothing.”
“How long will that take?”
“It’ll be close.”
“How close?”
The tightness in Heather’s face told him all he wanted to know.
As the minutes ticked away, the tightness increased, adding age to her face until it reminded him of their Las Vegas disguises. Something in that look told Mark that if they failed now, they weren’t likely to get another chance.
A sudden sense of being watched nudged him, the intensity of the feeling making his scalp tingle. Moving away from the girls, he circled the room, his enhanced vision searching for the source of his discomfort.
There it was, suspended in the air. A tiny pinpoint of nothingness, ever so slightly twisting the light that passed through it. The same thing he had seen in his room, all those many weeks ago.
“Got it!” Jennifer breathed.
Heather reached down and hugged her friend. “You did it, Jen. Amazing!”
So intense was his concentration that Jennifer’s exclamation and Heather’s excited response barely registered on Mark’s consciousness.
There it was again. That tiny pinprick in space. And on the other side, someone was watching. Who could have betrayed them?
Mark’s eyes locked with those of Jorge Espeñosa.
“You son of a bitch!”
Mark moved so fast that the girls’ heads had barely started to turn when he reached the drug lord. Grabbing Espeñosa’s head between two palms, he twisted violently. A sharp crack echoed in the room, then the drug lord’s lifeless body slumped forward in the chair, his head dangling at an odd angle.
At the corner of Mark’s eye, the shock that registered in Heather’s face matched Jennifer’s. But, as he felt his vision pulled back toward the anomaly, Mark thought he glimpsed something else in Heather’s face—disgust.
147
Eduardo finished tying Janet’s hands and ankles behind her back, leaving her lying naked on her side. He reached over to rub his hand gently across her belly. The fire of hatred still reflected in those moonlit eyes. Good. He wouldn’t be done with her until he’d erased all remnants of that strong spirit. And if that took a while, so much the better.
“I’m sorry I can’t let you watch what I do to your lover, but I have to backtrack some. You might make a sound that would warn him. Can’t have that, now can we?”
Picking up the sniper rifle, carrying it in the crook of his arm, Eduardo began moving back toward the hide location he had selected for the kill.
The clear night was unusually warm for this time of year, especially in Colorado. The moon was perfect, giving off just enough light for the Ripper to follow Eduardo’s trail, but not enough for Jack to spot him in the brush. Sliding into position, Eduardo nestled the stock of the rifle against his cheek, adjusting the focus on the sniper-scope as his view swept the small draw leading up to his position. This was where the Ripper would come.
The slope was gentle, and there was no avoiding the clearing below without leaving the trail. He didn’t think the Ripper would leave the trail and circle around to reacquire it. That would take time he didn’t have.
In the distance, a movement attracted his attention. He centered the scope on it. There it was again, just a flash of movement within the concealment of the brush. Eduardo let the crosshairs slide along with the disturbance. It wouldn’t be long now until the Ripper entered the clearing. Not long at all.
The man was being careless. It was almost as if he wanted to be seen. Eduardo would have expected him to suddenly appear, sprinting across the open space in some sort of zigzag fashion that would make the shot more difficult. If he entered at this pace, it was going to be like shooting a deer at the feeder.
The Ripper’s next action was even stranger. He stepped into the clearing and stopped, his head in the air like a hunting animal sniffing the breeze.
The crosshairs moved across the Ripper’s face, steadying on the spot where the bridge of his nose met his forehead. Right between the eyes.
A glint of red caught Eduardo’s attention. Weird. It was almost as if the Ripper was staring directly at him. And both eyes flickered with that same crimson glow. It looked a little like animal eye shine. Eduardo had seen it in the black leopards of the Amazon. But it reminded him of something else too, something he hadn’t thought of in years.
Back in those horrible childhood days in the slums of Lima, his witch of a mother had locked him in a small, dark root cellar whenever she’d gone out. To keep him from crying out, she’d filled his head with tales of a demon that hunted such dark places, a demon with eye sockets filled with flame, a thing attracted by loud sounds. The being had a name.
Rangon. The Harvester of Souls.
Eduardo shifted his focus back to the crosshairs.
“What the hell?”
The Ripper was no longer in his sight. Eduardo’s eyes swept the clearing. Nothing. How the fuck had that happened? How long had he been distracted? Surely not more than a few seconds.
Rising to his feet, Eduardo shifted positions. Although it was unlikely that the Ripper had really seen him, there was no use taking any chances. He couldn’t believe he’d hesitated on a shot. That had never happened to him before. Never.
Not that it mattered. He’d rather take the Ripper up close anyway. That desire to carve the Ripper up hand to hand must have caused his reluctance to shoot. That would be the only path to true satisfaction.
The brush to his left parted and once again the Ripper stepped out, this time with a long knife in his right hand. Eduardo turned toward the other assassin, a smile spreading across his face. The Ripper was betting on what Eduardo wanted.
Perfect. Dropping the rifle, Eduardo slid his own blade from his pocket, the click of the stiletto loud in the
semidarkness.
Then Eduardo moved, his newfound speed and strength eliminating the six feet that separated the two, driving the blade deep into the Ripper’s throat.
But somehow, the thrust failed to find its target. Precisely anticipating the move, his wrist was met with a twisting block, the pressure adding to his own forward momentum, sending him tumbling away.
Feeling the Ripper’s blade graze his side, Eduardo twisted violently in the air, barely avoiding being impaled on the counterthrust. As he rolled back to his feet, a new thought dawned in his head. If he hadn’t been remade by the artifact, he would now be very, very dead.
But he had been remade. And one lucky counterstrike was about to be repaid. Eduardo moved more cautiously now, circling his opponent as he watched for an opening. He thrust out in a lightning-quick motion that was met by a slight shift of the Ripper’s knife hand, the blade slicing into the back of Eduardo’s forearm.
It wasn’t a deep wound, but it surprised him. Eduardo played back the sequence in his head. He was moving much faster than the Ripper, but somehow his opponent was anticipating his moves. Was it possible that Eduardo was subtly telegraphing his intentions?
El Chupacabra feinted left, then swooped in for an underhand strike at the midsection. Again, the cutting blade of his enemy awaited him, slashing across his thumb, deflecting his knife strike harmlessly to the side. Blood dripped from his hand, the red wetness making the knife handle slick in his palm.
Changing his grip to the left hand, Eduardo tried again, then again. The last stroke managed to partially penetrate the Rippers defenses, inflicting a cut high up on his shoulder but missing the throat. Emboldened, Eduardo reversed the blade and came in hard toward the same area, but this time it backfired, the force of his blow impaling his left hand on the Ripper’s blade, the assassin twisting it as Eduardo withdrew, breaking at least two bones and sending the stiletto spinning to the ground beneath the Ripper’s feet.
The red eye shine in the Ripper’s eyes had grown brighter, adding another distraction to Eduardo’s whirling consciousness. As impossible as it seemed, he was being beaten. If he could just get his hands wrapped around the Ripper, he could squeeze until the killer’s head popped like a squashed melon. But that was looking increasingly unlikely.
Fine, he had some new tricks of his own.
Staring into the other’s face, he felt the Ripper’s flaming eyes lock with his own. Eduardo smiled.
“Now, Ripper, let’s see what you truly fear?”
Eduardo pushed his mind through those red eyes and into the darkness beyond. The blackness closed in around him so thickly it muffled all sounds. He thought he heard a soft whimpering, but couldn’t place it. Something pressed against the back of his calves, the rough edge of broken cement steps. His hand reached out before him, but in this blackness he couldn’t see anything. Where was he?
The damp smell of mildew seemed vaguely familiar, as did the whimpering, which had grown louder. His hand touched the wall to his left. Damp mud.
Lima! He was back in the cellar! But this time he wasn’t alone. There in the darkness, two flaming eyes stared back at him with a demonic hunger that leached the strength from his legs, turning them to rubber. And those eyes were coming closer.
Eduardo suddenly identified the source of the whimpering. It was coming from his own throat.
He stepped backward, his hands thrust out before him, but his foot caught the edge of the step, sending him tumbling to the muddy floor. Rolling back to his feet, Eduardo’s terrified eyes searched the darkness. Something touched his shoulder.
“Rangon!”
The scream escaped his lips as he stumbled away from that touch.
As Eduardo’s head swiveled, something long and pointed glittered in the moonlight, the force of the blow driving Janet’s hairpin through his left eyeball and into his brain. A great flash of light filled his mind. Then the demon was back, replacing the light with a new, all-consuming darkness.
Eduardo’s body pitched forward, but Janet hugged him close, twisting and turning the spike with all her might as she gently lowered him to the ground.
As Eduardo’s body convulsed one final time, her mouth brushed his ear. “Like I told you…You’re mine.”
Janet pulled the hairpin from the bloody eye-socket, wiping it on Eduardo’s shirt before returning it to her hair. Then Jack’s strong arms encircled her naked body, lifting her into an embrace that threatened to crush the wind from her lungs. When finally he released her, Jack bent down to examine El Chupacabra’s corpse.
“Damned fine work, young lady.”
“He should have spent more time practicing his knot tying.”
Jack frisked the body, extracting a Beretta from the holster strapped to the small of Eduardo’s back, and two shiny, horseshoe-shaped, metallic bands that reminded Janet of Alice hair bands. Something about the way they glinted in the moonlight gave her a déjà vu moment, but the memory slipped away before she could place it.
“What have you got there?” Janet asked.
“Don’t know. But you can bet he wasn’t carrying them for a bad hair day. We’ll have to take a closer look later. Much as I like your current outfit, we’d better get you dressed and get the hell out of here.”
“What about the satellites?”
Jack shrugged, “I cut the link, but didn’t get to finish the connections. I don’t know if it was enough to let those kids hack their way through a workaround or not. Too late to worry about that now.”
By the time Janet retrieved her clothes and dressed, alarm sirens had begun to warble across the airbase. Going back for her laptop was out of the question.
With one final glance back toward the sirens, Janet took a deep breath, then turned and followed Jack into the darkness.
148
In his dark suit, surrounded by the rich, dark mahogany of his private office, the light from the laptop screen made Dr. Stephenson’s face seem to float, disembodied, in the darkness. His normally impassive expression had tightened into a death’s mask of anger.
The news could not have been worse. The story had broken less than an hour ago, in a special Thanksgiving-night edition of the New York Post, and had swept across the broadcast media like a Montezuma Shit-Storm.
If it hadn’t been Thanksgiving night, with minimal staffing throughout the government, Dr. Stephenson would, no doubt, have already been escorted from the laboratory, his security clearance revoked pending investigation.
There it was on his computer screen, a reprint of the Post story with the hated byline—Freddy Hagerman…apparently not nearly as dead as they’d thought. An image of Dr. Stephenson stepping out of a helicopter onto the grounds at Henderson House filled the front page. The detail in the story proved to be some of the most impressive investigative reporting Stephenson had ever seen. He didn’t have much time.
Dr. Stephenson pressed the key combinations that activated a special secure video link. Raul’s strange face appeared on the screen, a look of annoyance scrunching his forehead beneath his Plexiglas-like brain cap.
Without waiting for a question, Dr. Stephenson spoke across the link.
“I have a coordinate for your girlfriend. I just sent it. If you want her, go get her. Now.”
The transformation of Raul’s face was remarkable, the harsh look melting into mad glee. Stephenson killed the link, letting the screen fade to black.
Ready or not, the fallback plan had been activated.
149
For a moment, Raul thought he must be dreaming. By the time he had completely accepted Dr. Stephenson’s statement as real, the deputy director of Los Alamos National Laboratory had broken the audio-video link. But there it was in his neural network, a coordinate accurate to within ten meters.
Medellín, Colombia?
What in hell had taken Heather there?
Not that it mattered. In a few seconds, he would know whether she was really there or not. And if she was…Well, he couldn’t allow him
self to think about that until he had confirmation.
Creating a worm fiber viewer had become almost trivial to Raul. For the last several weeks, he had worked around the clock to repair as many of the Rho Ship’s power cells as possible. And the more he fixed, the faster his repairs had gone. Even though he had only scratched the surface, according to his calculations, he had achieved enough power to open a small gateway to any spot on the planet. Big enough for a person to walk through.
But Stephenson had insisted that he needed more power, enough to allow for redundant failure protection, to avoid any possibility of the gate closing prematurely. So, despite Raul’s desperation to get to Heather, he had agreed to keep working, bringing online many times the power required for his purpose.
Apparently, his efforts to satisfy the deputy director had finally paid off. Tonight was the night.
As he watched, the worm fiber opening stabilized, providing a clear view of a Spanish-style patio area, lit only by landscape lighting and light from inside the huge house.
Except for two guards lounging near an arched opening, no other people appeared.
Raul manipulated the viewer, sending the worm fiber from room to room in the main house, starting with the first floor, then moving it upward to the second. With each empty room, his frustration grew. The occasional cleaning woman did nothing to alleviate this feeling.
Moving the fiber down a broad hallway, he passed through a wall and into another expansive bedroom.
Raul tensed! There was Heather, looking even more beautiful than he remembered, talking excitedly to Jennifer Smythe. Across the room, a man sat tied to a wicker chair, his lips locked in a sneer. What was going on here?
Just as Raul was about to turn his attention back to Heather, he saw the other occupant of the bedroom. Mark Smythe. And just like the last time he had looked in on that jerk, Smythe somehow detected the worm fiber’s presence, moving forward until he was mere inches away from it.
“You son of a bitch!”
As soon as the words tumbled from his lips, Smythe moved toward the seated man. Fast. So fast, Raul had never seen anything like it.
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