"Veil?!"
"Dive!" Veil shouted, squeezing off a shot as he left his feet and hurtled through the air into the thick underbrush that lined the trail to his left.
Perry dove to the other side as the assault rifle chattered and sprayed bullets through the space where they had separated only an instant before.
Veil fell through the brush and landed on his side, his fall cushioned by the soft loam of the forest floor. He rolled, then twisted into position behind a tree trunk as more bullets shredded the underbrush. He waited until the firing stopped, then reached around the trunk and squeezed off a round. He was immediately answered by another burst of automatic rifle fire that shredded the bark of the trees on either side of him.
It was like pitting a peashooter against a cannon, Veil thought. And he only had four peas left.
When the shooting stopped again, Veil counted to five, then burst out from behind the tree and started to race up the mountain, darting between trees, running parallel to the trail, searching desperately for some spot where he could get a clear shot at the sapper. But he was slowed by the soft ground and underbrush, and he saw a flash of Kelly green on the trail. Outdistancing him.
Four bullets—four chances to stop the man. Veil stopped running, braced, and fired through the trees toward the trail. One bullet glanced off a tree, and the other three simply missed their unseen target.
The man was gone, Veil thought as, for the first time in his life, he understood the full depths of meaning in the word despair. All the commando had to do was run another few hundred yards, throw one satchel in the front and the other at the back, and his job was done; the force of the twin explosions would rip out the entire first floor, and the building would collapse in on itself. And there was no way that Veil could stop him.
But Perry Tompkins could.
The burly figure of the painter, sprinting at full speed, flashed by on the trail.
Veil tore through the clinging underbrush and out onto the path, then put his head down and raced after the two men. When he looked up, he found that he had not closed the distance between himself and Perry. However, Perry was now perhaps fifteen yards behind the weighted-down sapper, and gaining. Gasping for breath, Veil reached down to the deepest part of himself for more strength and speed—and he slowly began to gain on the artist.
Then the commando heard, or sensed, Perry behind him. He glanced back over his shoulder, saw Perry barely ten yards away.
Veil started to shout a warning, but it was too late. The commando had stopped and was already pressing the trigger on his Kalashnikov as he swung it around. The bullets caught Perry in midair, ripping through his midsection and killing him instantly as he fell onto the commando. The man collapsed under the weight of Perry's body. He struggled to free himself, but by then Veil, his long hair swirling about his head in the morning breeze, was standing over him, staring down into his eyes like a blond-haired, blue-eyed angel of death.
Veil crushed the man's skull with a single, tremendously powerful kick to the temple. Then he picked up the rifle, slipped in a fresh magazine, and sprinted back down the trail.
Tears glistened in Veil's eyes for a moment, then were gone—chased by the force of his passage and his will. He hoped there would be time later for proper homage, meditation, and free-flowing tears, to the men who had sacrificed their lives to save his and Sharon's; for now, the only proper meditation was to wreak destruction upon those men who would destroy the hospice and the people in it.
There was another explosion that shook the ground. A burst of gunfire somewhere across the compound.
Explosions were for buildings, Veil thought as his lungs and the muscles in his legs began to burn. Bullets were for people.
When he was twenty yards from the end of the trail that emptied into a clearing ringed by chalets, Veil cut into the woods to his right in order to reach the rear of the nearest chalet. He threw his rifle up on the roof, then followed it by scrambling up a tree and swinging over on an overhanging limb. He picked up the rifle, then crawled up the sloping roof and peered over the top.
From his vantage point he could see the entire clearing and all of the chalets that ringed it. There were two sappers at the opposite end of the clearing, standing perhaps thirty yards apart, spraying gunfire into the surrounding woods. Veil aimed and squeezed off a shot that caught the man on the left between the shoulder blades. The second man reacted and started to run to his right, but Veil calmly tracked the man with his rifle and sprayed the area in front of him with bullets.
The man ran into them, danced for a moment like a drunken puppet as the bullets ripped through him, then collapsed to the ground when Veil released the trigger.
Silence. The eye-watering smell of cordite.
Veil waited, watching and listening. There was no sound except for the sibilant whisper of the waterfall in the distance; no sign of any people.
There were only the chimes sounding in his head, behind his eyes, and they were growing increasingly louder.
Veil quickly looked behind him, but he could see no movement in the forest behind the chalet. When he looked back, the satchel charge—thrown from somewhere beneath the chalet's front eave—had already reached its apogee and was falling toward him.
The satchel would be dialed for short-fuse detonation, Veil thought as he rolled down the roof—perhaps as little as four or five seconds, just enough time to allow the commando who had thrown it to duck behind a neighboring chalet or into the woods.
He made it over the edge, but the concussion of the blast caught him in midair. It struck him like an iron fist, spinning him in the air and hurling him to the ground, breaking him. He did not lose consciousness, but his left arm was bent back under his body at an impossible angle, and he just had time to bring his right arm over his eyes to protect them from the debris, shards of glass and wood, that rained down on him.
When it was over, Veil was buried in the afterbirth of destruction. He was not in pain, but his entire body felt numb. He also felt remarkably detached and clearheaded as he waited. And waited.
Finally there came a kicking sound, accompanied by beats of pressure on the left side of his head. The kicking became scraping, and in a few moments he felt a rifle butt bump against his arm as dirt and scraps of wood were scraped away from his face and chest.
Chimes tolled behind his eyes.
Veil slowly removed his arm from his face and found himself squinting up into the cold, vaguely curious, and surprised face of a man in a green uniform. The man grunted, then casually lifted his rifle and pointed it at Veil's head. Then a hole suddenly appeared in the commando's forehead, and from it spewed bone chips, blood, and brain tissue that sprayed over Veil's face.
Thwop-thwop-thwop.
With its blood-gorged, unseeing eyes still open, the body of the sapper crumpled onto Veil's chest. Veil turned his head away and spat out the man's gore. And he waited.
Thwop-thwop-thwop.
Perhaps he was unconscious—or dead?—and dreaming, Veil thought. He seemed to be back in a jungle clearing in Laos, surrounded by Hmong tribesmen, waiting as a helicopter came in low over the treetops.
Thwop-thwop-thwop.
If he wasn't dead, Veil thought, he soon would be. The helicopter was coming to spirit him away to Valhalla.
Endomorphins.
Thwop-thwop-chiiiir.
There was a gust of wind that ruffled Veil's hair and the sapper's shirt. Then the motor died and there was silence surrounding him once again.
Or did he hear footsteps? It was hard for Veil to tell, for the sound of the explosion was still ringing in his ears.
A shoe sole appeared in his field of vision, coming from over his right shoulder. The sole moved on to reveal a dusty, wingtip shoe and brown wool slacks that clashed with blue argyle socks. The man who owned the shoe, slacks, and sock pushed the sapper's body off Veil.
"For chrissake, Kendry," Orville Madison said brusquely. "What a mess. I never thought I'd see the
day when I had to play fucking nursemaid to you."
Chapter 27
______________________________
Veil stared through the glass partition built into the wall of the Army hospital room at the still figure of Sharon, who was dressed in a lacy, blue nightgown Veil had bought for her. On a table next to her bed, bellows attached to an oxygen tent rose and fell in perfect, mindless rhythm. Needles slipped into her veins carried nourishment—and the Lazarus Gate drug mixture—into her system and carried away waste. Electrodes attached to her body recorded her heartbeat, as well as a brain-wave pattern that indicated to Veil that Sharon was still somewhere beyond the Lazarus Gate, wandering alone in the gray mist where he had lost her. On her face was the same expression of rapture and longing that Veil had seen in the hospital clinic.
"I haven't had a chance to thank you for bailing me out of the Army compound," Veil said in a flat voice. "I'm thanking you now."
Orville Madison grunted as he lit a cigar, ignoring the NO SMOKING sign posted in the small observers' gallery outside Sharon's room. "You know better than to thank me, Kendry. You're mine to kill, if and when I choose to, not the Army's. I was just protecting my prerogatives."
"Yeah? Well, I'm here to tell you that you shaved this particular prerogative pretty close. How the hell did you think I was going to get out of the compound itself?"
"Funny thing about that; there was never any doubt in my mind that you'd find a way. What's the matter? Age catching up with you?"
"As a matter of fact, yes. You don't look so hot yourself. You're even fatter than when I last saw you, and that stupid toupee you're wearing looks like shit."
"How did this Pilgrim fellow get my name?"
"It's a mystery."
Madison turned his head and squinted at Veil. "Is it?"
"Very much so."
"Pilgrim gave me some background on the phone, but I still need the answers to a lot of questions. Now that you're up and about, will you talk to me?"
Veil shifted his left arm to a more comfortable position in its sling. "What do you want to know?"
"What the hell was Ibber doing trying to blow up a hospice and blow away a bunch of ex-stiffs and future stiffs?"
"He didn't want anyone else to know what Jonathan and Sharon had discovered, and he couldn't be certain how many others did know. His solution was to kill everyone."
Madison puffed slowly on his cigar, feigning boredom and indifference, but the sudden tightness in his voice betrayed him. "What was it they discovered?"
"That there's a state of consciousness, a fleeting moment, some men and women experience as they approach death when minds merge."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"You want me to say it again?"
"I heard what you said; I want to know what you mean. It sounds like you're saying that dying people, if they're dead enough, can communicate with each other." "You've got it. Except that the people doing the communicating have to be dying together, and they have to reach this precise state of consciousness at precisely the same time— or close to it."
"You're bullshitting me, Kendry."
With the aid of his cane Veil shuffled around until he was squarely facing the other men. "No. It's the truth, Madison. Now you know more than Ibber actually knew. He only suspected it, and that was enough to make him do what he did."
"There must be more."
"Ibber also suspected that you could stretch out, or freeze, that moment. He was right." Veil nodded toward the figure on the other side of the glass. "That's what happens."
Madison's eyes had narrowed to slits. "You're trying to tell me that a KGB agent who'd penetrated a top command post of the United States Army then proceeded to throw it all away because he wanted to start a vegetable patch?"
Veil winced inwardly; the other man hadn't changed. "He didn't know that would happen; nobody knew at the time Sharon attempted it. He just wanted to make certain that we couldn't use any of this information militarily."
"Is there any way we can use it militarily?"
"Ibber thought so."
"Do you think so?"
"No."
"Where can I get a second opinion?"
"Try the Russians."
"Come on, Kendry. You owe me."
Again, Veil nodded toward Sharon. "If she ever comes out of the coma, she'd be a good person to ask. Or you can talk to other scientists doing near-death research. Hell, have the CIA start its own hospice and see what you can find out."
"Why do I have the strong feeling that you're hiding something?"
"I don't know. Do I sound or act as if I'm hiding something?"
"No," Madison finally said after a long pause. "What were you doing over in the Army compound in the first place? Pilgrim never got around to explaining that to me."
Veil smiled, then grimaced as the wires in his jaw cut into his gums. "You think I'm working for somebody?"
"Unless you've got a double, I know you're not. That doesn't answer my question."
"Ibber was afraid I might be working for you people—and that's no joke. He sent an assassin after me the morning after I arrived. I was over there trying to find out why."
Madison dropped his cigar on the floor and ground it out with the toe of his shoe. "Shit," he said dispassionately. "What a waste of time."
"Yeah."
"If I'd known this was all there was to it, I might have decided to let Ibber kill you."
"You were always a prince, Madison."
"Can you believe that I'm still pissed at you after all these years? I've got pins in both my collarbones, and they hurt like hell when it rains or snows. Also, I'd probably be top man in Operations if I hadn't lost four years making up the ground you'd shoveled out from under me."
"Madison," Veil said evenly, "I have a personal favor to ask of you."
"Do you, now. What is it?"
"I want you to take this woman out of here and put her in one of your facilities at Langley—under your absolute control and personal supervision. I'm sure she must have family, but I don't know who, or where, they are. Your people will take care of notification and make up some kind of story about why she has to be where she is. I want the absolute best for her— twice-daily massage, the works. I want her to keep looking beautiful."
"Is that all?" Madison asked, making no effort to mask his sarcasm.
"No, it isn't. You keep her in exactly the state she's in now, unless I say differently."
"Unless you say differently?"
"If I give the word, you see to it that somebody pulls the plug; you let her die—but only if I give the word."
Madison studied Veil for some time. "You still have a taste for playing God, don't you?" he said at last.
"I love her," Veil replied simply. "Also, I need time to think. In the meantime I have to know that her body, at least, is safe."
"What you're asking could end up costing the taxpayers of this nation a lot of bucks. Hell, we could keep her alive for years."
"You don't give a damn about the change in your pocket, what's more anything you do at taxpayers' expense."
"So what? Why should I do anything for you?"
"I want you to do it for the woman."
"Why should I do it for the woman?"
"Because Veil Kendry is humbling himself to ask you—and that has to give you one hell of a lot of personal satisfaction."
"It does, but that's not enough. The answer is no."
"I took care of Ibber for you. If it weren't for me, that bastard would still be sending our secrets back to Mother Russia."
"What do you want to do, close down the spy industry? Your kind of thinking could cost me my job."
"I answered your questions freely, told you what you wanted to know. I could have held out and I didn't."
"Big deal."
"Madison, for chrissake, you want me to beg? I'm begging. If I weren't stuck in all this plaster. I'd get down on my knees."
"That would be an am
using sight, but I have a better idea," Madison said casually as he lit a fresh cigar. He studied the flame at the end of the match as if there were some secret message in it. "Work for me."
"No."
"Take care of yourself, Kendry," Madison said, and blew out the match. Then he turned and headed down the corridor.
"Madison!" Veil waited as the man stopped, slowly turned. Then Veil nodded his head. It felt as if the back of his neck were being seared with a blowtorch, but he knew that the pain was only in his mind. "All right." "What if you call me up tomorrow and tell me to kill her?"
"Our deal still stands; you own me. You have my word."
"I'll accept that any day."
"Special assignments only."
"Sure. Did you think I was going to send Veil Kendry out to make nasty faces at Castro?"
"I mean that I have approval over any assignment. If I don't like it, I don't do it."
"Jesus Christ, you still believe that there are good guys and bad guys, don't you?"
"Give it to me, Madison."
After a long pause Madison finally nodded and smiled. The smile didn't touch his eyes. "Why not? Far be it from me to ask you to do something you didn't approve of. Good grief."
"In the meantime I keep doing what I'm doing now. Except for when you want me."
"Oh, I insist; it's a great cover. Anything else?"
"No."
Madison laughed loudly. "Damn, Kendry, you are one hell of a negotiator. Thank God the State Department didn't get to you first." He casually waved his cigar in the direction of the room beyond the glass. "Don't worry about Sleeping Beauty. I'll have her safely tucked away in her new bedroom by dinnertime."
And all he had given away was his soul, Veil thought as he watched Madison, trailing blue smoke, disappear around a bend in the corridor. Finally Madison had what he had always wanted.
It had been quite a barter.
But then, Veil thought as he leaned his head against the glass, he had what he wanted. Already his entire attention was drifting to Sharon—now, quite literally, the woman of his dreams.
He was tired, ready to sleep.
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