"Sharon! I love you!"
"By the time I let him in here again—"
"Sharon, I'm sorry we didn't have time!"
We're looking for heaven.
Venom spurts into the wound, into and around the atoms. There is more pain. His atoms sting, swell, and throb. He can feel the venom, as hot and corrosive as acid, searing his atoms as it moves, seeps through the spaces where his limbs used to be. It is soaking into his space-body, inexorably heading for his brain. His atoms suddenly begin to vibrate in unison, producing low, booming chime sounds that steadily rise in pitch and volume until at last they are beyond hearing.
Then the venom fills his skull, soaking his brain, and he explodes soundlessly in a cloud of electric blue.
Chapter 23
______________________________
He erupted through a veil of electric blue consciousness to find himself lying on the ground on his back staring up at the night sky through lines of steel that were the bars forming the roof of his cage. His entire body was clenched in a seizure that was virtually epileptic; his hands flopped back and forth in front of his face and occasionally shot out to bang against the bars on either side of him; his knees knocked together, and the back of his head beat a syncopated tattoo against the ground. However, even in the midst of the neurological storm that was raging through his body, Veil noticed that his vision and thoughts seemed remarkably clear. It was as though he had somehow been anesthetized against the physical and mental agony he had been experiencing. He was still thirsty beyond any degree he could have previously imagined, but this need for water no longer crowded everything else out of his mind; he felt like some flesh-and-blood tuning fork vibrating, aglow, with raw energy and ready to fly apart.
And his right shoulder still hurt.
The needle pain he had felt had been just that, Veil thought—a needle. Somebody had given him a hot shot of a drug powerful enough to make him feel as if he could literally burst out of his cage, even as he flayed his skin and broke his bones in the process.
Then the seizure passed. Veil lay still for a few moments, sucking the cool night air into his wracked, dry lungs and staring at the stars. Finally he let his right hand drop to his side, and his fingers touched something soft. He rolled over in the cramped space and got up on his knees. Beside him were a large canteen, a neatly folded jumpsuit dyed in a camouflage pattern, and a leather pouch fastened at the top with a drawstring that was a thin leather thong.
The door to his cage was propped open with a stick.
With shaking hands, Veil struggled frantically to unscrew the top of the canteen. He finally managed to get the cap off, then straightened up so fast that he banged his head on the bars above him. He rolled over on his left side, lifted the canteen, and let the cool water pour into his mouth and splash over his face. Although he knew better, he swallowed the water in great, heaving gulps, and could not stop until his belly was painfully bloated and he vomited. There was plenty of water left, though, and he forced himself to wait for a minute or two, then lifted the canteen to his lips and drank more sparingly. When he felt his belly beginning to swell, he took the canteen away from his mouth. He shook it to reassure himself that there was still water left, then—despite the conviction that he could drink water steadily for a week without being sated—screwed the cap back on. The drug— which Veil assumed was some kind of super-amphetamine and which had probably been developed at the Army complex— and the water had carried him past his most immediate physical crisis.
He considered the possibility that Parker's gut abhorrence of torture had finally gotten the best of the colonel, and the stimulant, clothes, and water were merely Parker's invitation to him to go out into the night to be shot by some Mamba with a Sniperscope. He decided that it was unlikely; if Parker hail wanted to back down from his challenge to Veil's life, there would then be no sense in killing him. There were other means of interrogation, principally chemical. In any case, Veil thought, the question of who was responsible for his sudden deliverance, and why it was being offered, was resoundingly irrelevant. He was definitely not going to hang around any longer to brood over it. He picked up the clothes, pouch, and canteen, and crawled through the narrow steel aperture to freedom.
Feeling as if he would take off and fly away if he did not concentrate on staying grounded, Veil ran low and hard through the moon-shadows cast by the surrounding mountains, streaking across the dirt practice field used by the Mambas to the riverbank. He set the articles he was carrying down in the tall, thick grass, then rolled down the steep incline of the bank into the river. This time he was prepared for the gelid punch of the water, and the agony of sudden, icy cold branding burned flesh was bittersweet; it hurt in every fiber of his being, but the torment was also a ringing affirmation that he was still alive, and free.
He could also drink all of this water he wanted to— something he proceeded to do while he anchored himself against the swift-moving current by grabbing hold of naked roots that jutted from the dirt bank.
Still not completely sated but comfortable, Veil pulled himself out of the water and crawled up the bank. He dried himself off with clumps of grass, then dressed in the jumpsuit, which proved to be lightweight but warm. He felt lightheaded now but still bursting with energy which he knew was false, artificially induced by the powerful drug. Already he had begun to think ahead, trying to plan; he knew he must eventually "crash" as the price to be paid for this energy, and possibly crash very hard. He had to find a safe place to land.
Kneeling on the ground, he loosened the top of the leather pouch and spilled its contents out on the grass. There were at least two dozen sinewy strips of beef jerky coated with a flexible, transparent gel that Veil assumed was a high-concentrate protein and vitamin supplement. There was a tube of an antibiotic, anesthetic skin cream; several packets of coarse-textured brown tablets that were unlabeled and individually wrapped in cellophane; and his .38—loaded.
He stripped off the jumpsuit, smeared salve from the tube on his burned face and body. The sunburn pain began to go away almost immediately as the cream dissolved into his skin. He dressed again, put his revolver in a shoulder pocket of the jumpsuit, then replaced the other items in the bag and drew the drawstring tight. After refilling his canteen he began walking inland, keeping low in the tall grass along the riverbank. Although he knew he was leaving a trail that could be easily followed by almost anyone, his most immediate concern was the danger of being spotted through a Sniper-scope or infrared binoculars; it would certainly not be long before he was missed.
He had an ally in the camp, Veil thought—perhaps. He would take nothing for granted any longer in this strange place, these mountains and this valley, haunted by one man's bizarre obsession. Since, to Parker, it was evident that Veil would die before he told the "truth," it had occurred to Veil that the officer had decided to use him as fodder in a Mamba training exercise.
But a loaded .38 made him rather dangerous fodder. Mambas might be able to snatch many things out of the air, but they didn't catch bullets.
Whatever the reason for his freedom, Veil thought, the fact of the matter was that he was free. Now he had to decide what to do with that freedom. He had no idea of how far the compound extended inland, and his only purpose now was to put as much distance as possible between himself and the main installation while he waited to see what the side effects of the drug would be. Then he would have to avoid capture while he tried to figure out a way of getting back to the main Institute complex, assuming that was what he wanted to do, and he was not at all certain that it was. Somehow managing to get out of the Army compound and back to the hospice or Institute was an escape, but not a solution. He would be left back where he had started. After his thirsty conversations with Parker, Veil was convinced that the Army compound was where the answers to his questions lay. The trick was not to die from an overdose of action.
He assumed that the Mambas were more than deadly fighting machines; they would be trained to t
rack, and track very well. So far, he'd left behind him what amounted to an eight-lane highway; now it was time to mine that highway with a bit of consternation and confusion.
He stopped dead in his tracks, then stripped off his jumpsuit and rolled the pouch and canteen in it. Then he began walking backwards along his own trail. After he had retreated twenty yards he hopped sideways onto a rock, and from this perch dove down the incline of the riverbank. He rolled into the water and, holding his bundle above his head, let the current carry him another forty yards downstream before he grabbed a root and hauled himself ashore on an area that was an extended rock shelf. He dressed "wet" so as not to disturb the surrounding grass, smeared his face and hair with mud, then walked up the rock shelf, which extended up and over the bank.
Suddenly he began to tremble violently, and almost lost his balance. His vision blurred and the muscles in his stomach knotted, doubling him over with pain.
Drug reaction.
Veil sat down hard on the stone. Grimacing against the pain of the cramps in his stomach, he fumbled with the drawstring on the leather pouch. He opened the pouch, reached in, and withdrew one of the packets of brown pills. Without hesitation, he put one in his mouth and washed it down with a swallow of water from his canteen. Within moments he was better, and in less than five minutes the muscle spasms had completely vanished and his vision cleared.
Although he was not hungry, he forced himself to eat one of the strips of beef jerky—and found it so good that he promptly ate two more. Then he rose and, keeping to stone and hard-packed gravel whenever possible, started across the width of the valley.
Dawn found him on the opposite side of the valley, resting in a thick copse of trees. And thinking.
Veil was in superb condition. He continued to rest throughout the morning, sipping water and eating the fortified beef jerky. He still had attacks of cramps and blurred vision, but the spells became steadily less severe, less frequent, and were of shorter duration. He knew that it would take days, perhaps weeks, for his body to fully recover from his two-day ordeal, but by mid-afternoon he felt strong enough to put the plan he had formulated into action. He would have preferred to stay in hiding for at least another day to free himself even more from dependency on the drug and its debilitating side effects, but he had begun to experience a strong sense of urgency. The fact that he had escaped with the aid of a secret ally in the compound had to be making his enemy extremely nervous, and Veil wanted to give the man as little time to plan and act— or escape—as possible.
Veil emptied the leather pouch. He put a few of the pills in the pocket with his gun, then proceeded, with the aid of a sharp rock, to separate the patches of leather that made up the pouch along their seams. These he knotted together into a single strap that was almost a yard long. At one end of the strap he tied the drawstring. Then, moving very slowly and carefully, he again started inland.
A half hour later he found the precise terrain he had been looking for. He took a few sips of water and threw the canteen away; he would not be needing it any longer. Then he began moving toward the center of the valley, purposely leaving a subtle but nonetheless visible trail that he knew could be followed by a skilled tracker. He went ten yards past a tree with thick foliage and low-hanging branches, then stopped and carefully back-tracked to the tree. He took one of the pills as a precautionary measure, then swung up into the branches of the tree, squatted down in the V between a limb and the trunk, and waited.
* * *
He had anticipated advanced tracking skills, cunning, and stealth in the Mambas, had, in fact, been counting on these skills and was on constant alert; still, he almost missed the Mamba who had picked up his trail. The man, expertly camouflaged, was only fifteen yards away when Veil spotted slight movement in the tall grass and a flash of metallic gray that would be a machine pistol.
Then the man froze; from the angle of the Mamba's camouflaged cap, Veil could tell that he was studying the tree. Veil remained perfectly still in his position on the opposite side of the trunk. After a minute or two, the Mamba began moving again.
Veil dropped soundlessly to the ground, then stood with his back to the trunk and his .38 held up next to his right ear. He counted slowly to twenty, then spun out into the center of the trail he had made and aimed his pistol at the spot where he judged the Mamba's forehead should be.
His timing was virtually flawless. He found himself standing directly in front of the green-eyed, pock-faced Mamba who had studied him so intently in the commons area; the barrel of Veil's gun was no more than three inches from the Mamba's forehead. The man instantly froze and gave a little grunt that was half fear, half disgust.
"That's good," Veil said in a flat voice. "Stay that way."
"Fuck you," the Mamba replied evenly. But he did not move.
"We're on the same side, pal."
"You say."
"I don't want to even hear you fart, much less move the wrong way. I don't want to kill an American serviceman, but I will if I have to."
"You've already killed one. Dan Gurran was a friend of mine."
"Well, dear old Dan was trying his damndest to kill me, and I assure you that he wasn't a friend of yours. No matter. I'd like to point out that I haven't killed you—yet. That seems a strong argument for my good intentions."
"Don't try to bullshit me, Kendry. Whether you kill me or not, you still won't be able to get out of here. You probably think I'm more valuable to you alive than dead. You're wrong. You can't use me as a hostage. You think this is a Boy Scout camp?"
"Very carefully, now: Flip that weapon in the air, grab it by the barrel and hold it out to me. If I don't like the way you do it, I'll splatter your brains and soothe my conscience by reminding myself that you're not a Boy Scout."
The Mamba, eyes fixed on Veil's gun, did as he was told. Veil took the machine pistol in his left hand and broke open the magazine against his left thigh. He flung the pistol in one direction, the magazine in another.
"Now your knife," Veil said curtly.
The man shook his head. "I don't have one."
Veil made the man remove his boots and pull up his pant legs; there was no ankle scabbard. When the man pulled up his jacket and shirt, nothing showed but bare midriff.
"Lie down on your belly," Veil commanded. "Arms and legs spread-eagled."
Again the Mamba obeyed. Veil knelt down on one knee between the man's outstretched legs and pressed the barrel of his revolver against the base of the man's spine. He knew that for a man like this Mamba, the thought of ending up paralyzed and in a wheelchair for the rest of his life would be more frightening than death.
"You and I are going to have a little chat, my friend," Veil continued easily.
"If the price of my life or legs is information, you may as well start shooting right now," the Mamba said in a voice that was thin but steady. "I'm not going to tell you anything."
"Wait until you hear what I have to say. We—and I'm talking about two Americans, as well as two human beings— have a problem here. I think you're really going to want to help me solve it."
"You're the one with the problem, Kendry. No matter what you do to me, you're not getting out of this valley alive."
"Listen to me," Veil said in a low voice as he increased the pressure of his gun against the man's spine. "You've got an enemy agent here—and a top-ranking one. He's probably working for the Russians, but I can't be sure."
"You're full of shit, Kendry. You're the enemy agent. And it makes me sick to my stomach to hear you call yourself an American. You're a traitor."
"Who's really in charge of this place?"
The Mamba moved his head slightly. Veil pressed gun against bone sharply, and the man stiffened. "Easy," the Mamba whispered. "I haven't tried anything."
"Don't. Answer my question. It's harmless enough; as you say, I'm not going anywhere."
"It's a stupid question, because you know the answer."
"I've got a flash for you, pal. I think Par
ker's number two around here. Think about it. Have you ever had any indication that Parker takes orders from someone else? I mean, someone here, someone who may not be in uniform."
"Fuck you, traitor. You're either out of your mind or fishing for something else; either way, I'm not going to answer any more questions."
"Get up," Veil said, rising to his feet and backing away slightly. "Put your hands in the air and turn around slowly."
"Are you going to kill me?" the Mamba asked in a neutral tone as he rose and turned.
"I don't think so; not as long as you continue to behave yourself."
The man's eyes narrowed. "I can't believe that you took out Dan in a fair fight, Kendry. I really wish I could get a shot at you myself."
"Not today, pal," Veil replied laconically. "I doubt that I'd be much of a match for a big, young bull like you. My guest accommodations here left a little to be desired, as you may have noticed. I'm still a little shaky. Besides, I'm pushing forty. Why would you want to beat up on an old man?" Veil paused, smiled thinly, then tossed his revolver to the Mamba. "Merry Christmas."
The startled Mamba snatched the .38 out of the air, immediately stepped forward, and pressed the bore squarely against Veil's forehead. His green eyes gleamed. "Want to test my reflexes, Kendry?"
"No."
"What the hell do you think you're doing? You just signed your own death warrant."
"I sincerely hope not. I'm feeling generous, and I gave you my gun as a gesture of goodwill. Now I'm your prisoner. Take me to your leader."
"Are you trying to be funny?"
Veil sighed. "I want you to take me to Parker, pal—with as little fuss and as quickly as you can, if you don't mind. I'd just as soon nobody saw us."
"Parker's dead."
Veil felt a sudden, sharp pain in his stomach that had nothing to do with the drug he had been taking. His enemy was in an even bigger hurry than he'd thought, and his own plan was rapidly falling apart. "Shit," he said quietly. "When?"
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