The flame died, which was just as well, he thought. No use showing the mutants how the wheel worked. He spit on his palms, rubbed them together, and then gripped the wheel and pushed. There was a brief screeching of metal on metal before the inner column slid all the way back against the casing. Holding the wheel in that position, he used his fingers like a trumpet player and pushed the pins up. With little pressure, they snapped up into position. Neo rotated the wheel counterclockwise until there was a loud click. The door swung inward!
Without waiting for his companions, Neo shoved the door open just wide enough to allow his passage and quickly closed it. He turned the wheel inside clockwise until he heard another click. Darkness greeted him again, but at least he had put some space between the creatures and himself. No bone yard for him.
Heavy thuds rocked the door as the creatures attempted to break it down. A loud, piercing wail shattered the silence, and he clapped his hands over his ears, but he soon realized that the sound was in his mind. He stumbled forward in the darkness, holding the dead lighter in his trembling hand. The air was thick and heavy in the rocky passageway that led upward and away from the cavern. A dim, distant light danced on the wet walls as he continued forward, the wailing abrading his sanity and pitching him off balance. His shoulder scraped a rock, peeling off a wide strip of skin. He yelled, or thought he did. He couldn’t hear himself above the high-pitched shrieks.
Unable to stand, he fell to his hands and knees and crawled along the passage. It sloped steadily up, which made his efforts even more difficult. The passage seemed to go on forever, and the wailing wouldn’t quit. Whatever thoughts he managed to muster were barely fragments. Gibberish. His skull was about to burst.
He paused and slapped his hands to his head. There had to be a way out of here, away from the horrible wailing. The light ahead was brighter now. He had to continue. Tears flowed down his cheeks. He touched his damp cheeks in disbelief. He was falling apart. Madness was consuming his will to survive. He had to turn this thing around. He had to press on. Persevere.
He thought of Nick. His mind struggled to recall his image. He had to warn Nick. He had to. Nick’s image popped into his consciousness. His resolve strengthened. Move, dammit! Move!
He rose to his feet, and, leaning heavily against the wall, took one step and then another until he built an unsteady momentum. The incline grew steep, but he refused to slow. If he surrendered to the madness now, he was doomed to the bone yard.
The passageway narrowed and the distant light vanished. He stretched his arms and easily touched both sides of the passage. After lurching forward for another hundred feet, Neo collided with a dead end and collapsed like a limp rag doll.
Blood erupted from his nose, but the pain of the broken nose was nothing compared to the agony of the creatures’ wailing. Dazed but conscious, he gave the lighter another flick. What did he have to lose?
A flame danced in the blackness, and he quickly studied the dead end before the flame was extinguished again. There were two stainless steel doors, one to the left and one to the right of the passage, and both had regular latches that would be simple to maneuver. The million-dollar question was, of course, which should he open? Would one of them unleash a different mutant nightmare? He didn’t even want to contemplate that consequence.
Standing, he inspected both doors. The hinges of the left door were less rusted than the other. He unlatched the left door, stepped into more darkness, and pulled the door shut. The wailing ceased immediately. He fell to his knees, both numb and thankful.
The fading flame revealed an electric switch, and he clicked it. Horrified, Neo dropped to his hands and knees in shock.
“I’ve just entered hell,” he gasped and collapsed to the floor, unconscious.
Chapter 44
The Holiday Inn manager watched the distinguished, blonde man with a Siamese cat slung under his left arm approach the front desk. He frowned.
“I’m afraid we don’t allow cats,” the manager addressed the man.
“I have a reservation. Findlay’s the name,” Nick replied.
The manager immediately brightened. “I’m very sorry, sir, but in your case, we will make an exception.” He slid a card across the counter. “Now if you’ll please fill this out.”
Nick hurriedly filled the spaces with false information and handed it back to the manager.
“Your room is ready. Would you like some help with your . . .” He noticed that Nick didn’t have any bags.
“They’re out in the car. I’ll bring ‘em in later. My cat, Susie here, really needed to get out of the sun. Skin rash, you know,” Nick explained, tongue-in-cheek.
“Oh, I understand. Me and the Missus have three cats, ourselves.” He handed Nick the room cardkey. “Would you like me to show you to your room?”
Nick grinned as he headed for the elevators. The Creeper must have tipped this guy well. “I’ll find it.”
“Have a nice day,” the manager called.
Nick stepped into the elevator and punched the third floor button. “I sure as hell hope so,” he muttered as the doors shut.
Phase one of his plan was to dump his newly acquired bodyguard. He tossed the cat lightly inside the room, opened the drapes, filled the ice bucket with water, and set it on the floor.
“Sorry, cat, but I don’t have any food. I’ll pick you up some later.”
He glanced around the room. The room was well decorated in a Spanish motif with wild reds, oranges, and greens. No doubt, hidden among all the festive décor were surveillance bugs and cameras.
“I’m going downstairs to grab a bite,” he told the cat for the sake of his surveillance monitor. “Then I’ll find a grocery store for you.”
He rushed out of the room and quickly retreated down the back stairs to the Jaguar and inspected his bags for electronic tracers. He found two and tossed them into heather ground cover in front of the Jag. Other than that, everything else in the bags appeared undisturbed. He was thankful.
There was a lot to do before evening fell.
Nick used his satellite phone to contact a retired FBI buddy, Jim Olmstead, who lived in nearby Coral Springs, and arranged for him to pick up the Jaguar from the Holiday Inn parking lot at eight that night and leave it parked down the street from Carlos Chavez’s place. Jim asked what was going down, but Nick preferred to keep him in the dark. Jim would enjoy a longer retirement that way.
Next, Nick took a cab to an Enterprise rent-a-car in Pompano Beach and drove away in a Jeep Liberty. Unlike the XKE, it was inexpensive and bug free.
After filling the rental with gasoline at the closest station, he bought a Rand McNally map of the Fort Lauderdale area and located the address that he’d memorized at Blue Lick Springs. So far so good. For phase three, he needed a really big favor from an old enemy. He dialed the satellite phone again.
Nick crossed the bridge to Fort Lauderdale Beach and cruised between the beach and the strip of hotels, restaurants, and pushy beach store clerks hawking their cheap goods on the sidewalk, hoping to draw the customers inside where the high-priced stuff was sold. Palms and live oaks bent in the stiff sea breeze as the sun beat relentlessly down on the red, white, and bronzed sunbathers and the meandering snowbirds in search of souvenirs and fast food.
Nick parked the Liberty behind a faded green, three-story stucco building. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. The humidity was oppressive, and he wished he had packed a pair of shorts and a lightweight cotton shirt instead of dark suits, dress shirts, and exercise clothing.
He ignored the urge to carry a gun into the building. He knew he’d be searched and the weapon confiscated, so what was the point. Nevertheless, he felt naked walking up to the heavy door and pushing the bell.
The door was opened by an oriental man the size of Mount Fuji. He wordlessly patted Nick down with hands the size of tennis racquets and grunted something that Nick interpreted as “follow me”. Despite his tremendous bulk, Mount Fuji wore stylish lightwe
ight, white linen slacks and a safari shirt.
They rode an archaic elevator to the third floor where Nick was patted down again.
“I’m feeling a lotta love here, guys,” he remarked sarcastically.
The three guards just scowled and motioned him forward with a curt shake of their heads.
“Still the same wise-ass,” a deep, familiar voice drifted around the corner.
“Better than being a dumb-ass, Pete,” Nick replied.
A colossal frame suddenly eclipsed the light between the front windows and Nick. Peter “Pyro Pete” Karas, a former Czech aristocrat who sold weapons and munitions on the side to supplement his family’s depleted wealth, was nearly seven feet tall. At forty-six, his thick hair had been reduced to long, gray-flecked locks falling from the sides; the pate was clean. His large brow and sunken eyes served to project an unpleasant image, but his wide, even smile diffused that.
His paw engulfed Nick’s hand and gave it a suspicious shake.
“Are you here on official business?” Pete asked, with almost no trace of an accent.
Nick removed his hand from the giant’s grip. “Personal business. Could be lucrative to you, Pete.”
“Sit, please.” Pyro Pete circled his desk and sat opposite his guest. “So, we go back a long way, Nick.”
“Yeah. Not a lot of good times, though.”
Pete’s eyes narrowed. “None that I recall.”
“Look, I sent you away to a federal play land for six years, but remember, without my testimony, your ass was on the line for fifteen to twenty. I got you off with six for cooperating with our investigations against the big arms buyers. So if you’re holding a grudge, I’m outa here. I don’t have the time,” Nick explained tersely.
Pete sat quietly, digesting Nick’s comments. The bodyguards slowly moved closer to the two men. Nick knew he was in for the fight of his life if Pete still held a grudge. His calm demeanor belied his growing concern with the potentially hostile situation, but like in poker, when faced with a dismal hand, bluff.
At last, Pete folded his hands and spoke. “What did you have in mind, Bellamy?”
Nick laid out most of his plan, withholding only those details that did not involve Pete. After he was finished, Pete repeated the details from memory. After his arrest and imprisonment, he no longer left paper trails.
“And of course, I’ll need you to supply the manpower to pull this off,” Nick added.
“Of course, but it’s going to cost you a pretty penny, I believe you Americans say.” He quoted a figure.
“Wire transfer?” Nick asked.
Pyro Pete shook his head. “Cash,” he said, “within two hours.”
“Done. Where?”
“At the back door where you came in. Chan will take it.”
Nick stood. “I can trust you on this, right?”
Pete nodded. “The man you are playing is a very important, very dangerous drug cartel leader. I must ask you to keep my name out of this. If he ever found out that I was part of your scheme, I wouldn’t be safe anywhere in the world.”
“I understand. You have my word.”
Pete stood. “I have more than that. If my name is leaked, I’ll kill your son.”
“And if you double-cross me, it’ll be the last thing you ever do,” he returned ominously.
“But it won’t come to that, will it?” Pete grinned and then nodded to his guards. “Show him the way out.”
Nick smiled. “A pleasure doing business with you, Pete.”
“Two hours, Bellamy.” He turned and disappeared around a corner.
Unlike Carlos Chavez’s seaside place, there were no Japanese candles strung around the pool area, no citronella candles flickering in the light Atlantic breeze, and no live Latin music wafting through the night at Hefe Bustillo’s oceanfront palace. Floodlights illuminated the front gate, which was manned by two men resembling Colombian rebel soldiers.
Situated atop a gently sloping hill, the stucco and brick mansion was crammed into an acre lot surrounded by a concrete block wall with a single electric strand running along the top outside edge and revolving surveillance cameras mounted every dozen feet on motorized posts. Trees, tall shrubs, and thick vines grew wild along the outside of the wall, adding another protective barrier to the man-made security devices.
The rear upstairs windows of the mansion were shuttered, and the downstairs windows had decorative steel bars defending them. The expansive roof was green tiled with pressure plates installed in rows beneath the tiles at two-foot intervals.
Guards, donned in dark camouflage clothing, constantly roamed the grounds inside the walls without a break in rotation. To the average onlooker, the defenses looked impenetrable.
But Nick had expected as much, and his cash payment to Pyro Pete would provide a brief diversion and allow him to penetrate the house and secure his witness, Hefe Bustillo. The Creeper’s overconfidence had provided Nick with the opportunity to jump one step ahead of the assassin.
Nick checked his watch from behind neatly manicured shrubs at the end of the short driveway. Five minutes till midnight. The show was about to start. He extracted the Blo-Jector from his backpack and loaded the twenty-inch aluminum cylinder with a dart. Once the dart hit home, it would inject its victim with a non-lethal, quick-acting dose of anesthesia before it could be pulled out.
His watch read eleven–fifty-nine. He placed the rubber tip to his mouth and waited. The second dart sat ready in the palm of his left hand.
Fireworks exploded south of the estate. Cannons boomed their deafening thunder, followed by colorful explosions overhead. Whistlers, rockets, and buzz bombs lit the night sky like it was the Fourth of July.
Both guards flew out of the guardhouse to catch a glimpse of the unexpected fireworks. Nick sighted along the tube and blew. The short guard swatted at his neck and pulled the dart out. The other watchdog never noticed as his short partner fell stiffly back onto the concrete drive. Nick quickly reloaded and downed the second guard.
He slipped a black ski mask over his head, charged the guardhouse, and slammed his hand down on the large blue button that opened the gates. In a flash, he was inside and running around the north side of the mansion with his Heckler & Koch MP5K submachine gun poised and ready for action. He had added the sound suppressor earlier.
He nearly collided with an armed security guard beneath another brilliant overhead explosion. Both were momentarily stunned, but Nick responded first with a short burst from the MP5K. It silently riddled his body with bullets, and the stunned guard jitterbugged back into the bushes. Nick caught sight of another guard rounding the house from the beachfront, and Nick greeted him the same way.
The pool area was swarming with well-armed security people chatting excitedly into their two-way radios. Their attention was focused on the south wall, so Nick easily slid behind the shrubs bordering the back of the house and made his way silently to the open sliding glass doors without being noticed. Inside stood Hefe Bustillo. Nick identified him instantly from several pictures that Geronimo had provided back in Blue Lick Springs.
Alarm showed in Bustillo’s deeply wrinkled, pallid face. The gray hair hung limply to his shoulders and was matted with perspiration. His trim frame leaned against a table corner as he anxiously awaited an explanation for the mystifying fireworks display. Nick was pleased that, for the moment, Bustillo was alone.
Nick boldly stepped out onto the brick pool deck, pushed the door open, and rushed inside. Bustillo’s mouth fell open.
“Who are you?” he asked in a terrified tone.
“A friend,” Nick replied and quickly grabbed his arm. “Move!”
Before Bustillo could shout for help, Nick pulled him through expensively decorated rooms toward the front of the house. A woman’s scream startled Nick as they ran past a winding mahogany staircase, but he didn’t stop. He only hoped that the explosions outside veiled the sound until he and Bustillo were in the car and heading for the airport.
&nbs
p; Footfalls sounded behind him. Careless amateurs, he thought, and fired the submachine gun as they came into view. The four bodies surrendered life without a struggle.
As they reached the back door, automatic gunfire joined the fireworks’ explosions. Had Pete’s men been discovered?
The tinkling of broken glass was followed by a hair-raising growl, then, silence as Bustillo and Nick rushed past the guardhouse to Nick’s Jeep Liberty parked in front of the neighboring estate. There was a parking ticket under the windshield wiper. Nick looked around, crumpled the citation, and tossed it in the grass.
There was never a cop around when he really needed one, Nick mused, as he turned the ignition, threw the SUV into gear, and squealed away from the estate.
“Who are you, and what do you want with me?” Bustillo demanded between heaving breaths.
“I’ve just saved your life,” Nick answered, removing the ski mask.
“You’re a crazy man! You kidnap me from my home and say that you have saved my life,” Bustillo shouted angrily.
“Did you hear the gunfire and growls back there?”
He folded his arms. “Maybe. So?”
“That was your goddamn super soldier! He showed up to rip your throat out,” Nick shouted back. “He demolished your security force instead.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Does the project Mortal Eclipse ring a bell?”
Bustillo turned toward Nick. “That was . . . Thomas back there?”
“We call him the Creeper these days.”
“But why would he want to murder me? I helped fund the damn project!”
“Seems obvious to me. Someone wants all traces of Mortal Eclipse erased. Permanently.”
“But who?”
“I don’t know, but until I do, you’re going underground in the Bellamy Witness Protection Program.”
“The what?”
Mortal Eclipse Page 24
