The Judas Strain sf-4

by James Rollins

  Instinctively, Harriet fought back, but the man just dragged her arm farther, stretching her limb until her armpit was jammed against the table’s edge. She felt the cold muzzle of a pistol against her cheek, held by the third guardsman.

  Annishen sauntered over. “It seems we must teach your son a little lesson, Mrs. Pierce.”

  She picked up the blowtorch and pulled the trigger on the self-igniter. A blue flame spat out the torch’s muzzle with a sharp hiss. She settled it to the table near her hand. “For cauterizing the stump.”

  “What…what are you doing?”

  Ignoring her the woman picked up the bolt cutters, pulling the handles wide. “Now which finger shall we cut off first?”

  6:01 A.M.

  Gray rode in the backseat of a white van. Seichan sat pressed against his side, the pair of them pinned between two armed guards. Nasser faced them from the bench seat ahead, flanked by more guards.

  Kowalski and Vigor rode in the vehicle behind theirs. Another two vans followed front and rear, piled in with more khaki-dressed gunmen.

  Nasser was taking no chances.

  Through the windshield, Gray dully watched the spires of Angkor Wat rise out of the mists ahead, five massive corncob-shaped towers, lit by the first rays of the rising sun. Angkor Wat was the first of many temples spread across a hundred square miles of ruins. It was also the largest and best preserved, considered a Cambodian icon, with its immense jumble of chambers, walls, scalloped towers, carvings, and statues. This temple alone covered five hundred acres, encircled by a wide moat.

  But it was not their goal.

  They were headed to Angkor Thom, another mile north. And while not as large as Angkor Wat, the walled ruins of Thom housed the great Bayon temple, considered to be the heart of all of Angkor.

  A resounding bump shook the van.

  Gray caught his own reflection in the rearview mirror. His cheeks were sunken, shadowed, his lips cracked, the stubble over his jaw and chin looked like a black bruise. Only his eyes still shone flinty and hard, fueled by his anger and vengeance. But deeper in his chest, there remained only grief and guilt.

  Seichan, perhaps sensing him sinking into a numbing despair, gripped his hand in her own. It was not a tender gesture. She squeezed hard, nails biting, refusing to let him slip away, dragging him from the edge of that well.

  Nasser noted her gesture. A shadow of a sneer appeared, then vanished away again. “And I thought you were smarter than that, Commander,” he muttered. “Is she fucking you yet?”

  Gray focused back at him. “Shut the hell up.”

  Nasser laughed, once, sharp, amused. “No? Too bad. If you’re being screwed over, you should at least get something out of it.”

  Seichan slipped her hand from Gray’s. “Fuck you, Amen.”

  “Not anymore, Seichan. Not after I kicked you out of bed.” Nasser’s eyes turned to Gray. “Did you know? That we were once lovers?”

  Gray snapped a glance toward Seichan. Surely Nasser was lying. How could she…with the bastard who had just ordered his mother’s torture? Just the thought of his mother spilled more acid into his stomach.

  But Seichan refused to meet Gray’s eye, glaring instead at Nasser. Her fingers curled into a fist on her knee.

  “But all that ended,” Nasser said. “The ambitious bitch. We were both vying to rise to the next station in the Guild hierarchy. The last rung to the very top. But we came to a difference of opinion. About how to acquire you.”

  Gray swallowed. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Seichan wanted to use her wiles to lure you into cooperating of your own volition, to help the Guild follow Marco’s trail. I, on the other hand, believed in a more direct approach. Blood and coercion. A man’s way. But when the Guild decided against her plan, Seichan sought to take matters into her own hands. She murdered the Venetian curator, stole the obelisk, and fled to the United States.”

  Seichan crossed her arms, glowering back in disgust. “And you’re still piss-sore that I beat you to the prize. Again.”

  Gray studied Seichan.

  All her talk of saving the world…could it have all been a lie?

  “So I followed her to the States,” Nasser continued. “I knew where she’d be going. It was easy enough to lay a trap.”

  “Where you missed killing me,” she scoffed, “once again proving your incompetence.”

  He pinched his fingers up between them. “By a fraction of an inch.” He lowered his arm. “Still, you kept to your original strategy, didn’t you, Seichan? You still sought Commander Pierce out. Only perhaps as more of an ally now. You knew he’d come to your rescue. You and Gray against the world!” He laughed coarsely. “Or are you still playing him, Seichan?”

  Seichan merely sniffed in derision.

  Nasser turned back to Gray. “She is nothing if not ambitious. Ruthless. She’d step over her own dying grandmother to rise up in the hierarchy.”

  Seichan leaned forward, glaring. “But at least I didn’t kneel quietly while my mother was murdered before my eyes.”

  Nasser’s face clenched hard.

  “Coward,” Seichan mumbled, falling back into the seat with a satisfied sneer. “You even murdered your father while his back was turned. Still couldn’t face him.”

  Nasser lunged at her, a hand going for her throat.

  Gray instinctively knocked Nasser’s arm away.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have.

  Still, Nasser pulled back on his own, his eyes sharpened by hate. “Best you know who you’re in bed with,” he said savagely to Gray. “Should be careful what you tell that bitch.”

  The combatants settled silently to their corners. Gray eyed Seichan, realizing that for all her bluster she had never denied Nasser’s statements. Gray reran the past days’ events over in his skull, but it was hard to concentrate with his head pounding and fear wormed deep into his belly.

  Still, there were some realities that were hard to dismiss. Seichan had murdered the Venetian curator to get the obelisk. In cold blood. And when they’d first met years ago, she had even tried to kill him.

  Nasser’s words echoed in his head.

  Best to know who you’re in bed with…

  Gray didn’t know.

  Ultimately, he didn’t know whom to believe, whom to trust.

  Gray knew only one thing for certain. There could be no missteps from here. Any failure threatened more than just his life.

  7:05 P.M.

  Harriet struggled, sobbing in terror. “Please, no…”

  Her wrist was clamped in the vise of the guard’s grip, pinned to the table, her hand flattened under the same guard’s fist. The blowtorch hissed a few inches away.

  Annishen held the open jaws of the bolt cutter over Harriet’s splayed fingers. “Eenie, meenie, minie, mo…”

  She lowered the jaws toward Harriet’s ring finger. The diamond on her wedding band glinted under the bare bulb.

  “No…”

  A loud crack echoed, startling them all.

  Harriet turned her head as Annishen straightened. Two yards away, the guard who had been cradling Jack’s chin, forcing her husband to watch the impending mutilation, cried out and stumbled back. Blood poured from the guard’s nose.

  Jack lunged out of the chair, twisting away from where he had just head-butted the guard. As he turned, he yanked the guard’s pistol out of its holster and swung it around in his cuffed hands.

  “Get down, Harriet!” he said, firing at the same time.

  The guard who had been holding the pistol against Harriet’s cheek took a round to his chest. He flew backward. His gun skittered into the darkness.

  The second guard released Harriet’s arm and went for his weapon.

  — BANG—

  From the corner of her eye, Harriet saw the man’s cheek and ear vanish in a mist of blood and gore. But her full attention was on Annishen. The woman had already dropped the bolt cutters with a clatter and snatched her pistol from the tabletop.
She was whip-fast, turning on Jack.

  Harriet, her arm still on the table, lunged and grabbed the blowtorch. She flashed the flame over the woman’s hand and wrist. Annishen screamed. Her gun fired. A wild shot struck the cement floor and ricocheted away. The woman’s sleeve caught fire as she fell back, dropping her pistol.

  Jack fired again, but pain only made Annishen faster.

  The woman danced to the side, kicked the table over, and dove with a trail of flame out a back doorway.

  Jack fired another two shots, chasing the woman off — then was at Harriet’s side. He hauled her up, hugged her tight, then hurried with her toward the stairs. “Must get out of here. The shots—”

  Already shouts rang above their heads. The blasts had been heard.

  “The freight elevator,” Jack said.

  Together they rushed toward the open cage, Jack hopping a bit with his prosthesis. Once inside, Jack hauled the gate closed and punched the button for the sixth floor. The second from the top.

  “They’ll have the main floor guarded. We’ll head up. Seek a fire escape…a telephone…or just find a place to hole up.”

  He pulled Harriet to the elevator’s back corner as the cage climbed past the main floor. Shouts reached them. Flashlights bobbled through the darkness. At least twenty men. Jack was right. They’d have to find another way out or some way to call for help. Failing that, they would have to hide.

  The elevator continued to climb.

  Jack held her.

  She clung to him. “Jack…how…you were so—?”

  “Gorked?” Jack shook his head. “Jesus, Harriet, do you think I’m really that bad off yet? I know I had an episode at the hotel. I’m sorry I hit you.”

  His voice cracked a bit at the last.

  She clutched to him, accepting his apology. “When they zapped you with the Taser, I thought something had gone worse neurologically.” She squeezed him again. “Thank God.”

  “Stung like a son of a bitch. But later, when I realized you were only pretending to give me those damn pills, I figured you were trying to tell me to act up, to fake being worse off than I was, so they’d let their guard down.”

  She glanced up. “So you were faking all along?”

  “Well, I really did piss myself,” he said angrily. “But they wouldn’t take me to the goddamn can.”

  The elevator stopped.

  Jack opened the gates, waved her out, then closed them again. He reached through the slats of the wooden gate and pressed the basement button, sending the cage back down.

  “Don’t want them to know which floor we got off on,” he explained.

  Together they headed off into the gloom of the warehouse. It was full of old equipment. “An old canning plant, from the looks of it,” Jack said. “There should be plenty of places to hide.”

  Somewhere far below, a new noise rose up.

  Barking…agitated, excited.

  “They have dogs,” Harriet whispered.

  15

  Demons in the Deep

  JULY 7, 4:45 A.M.

  Island of Pusat

  IT HAD TAKEN too long to cross the island’s net.

  While Monk and his army crept over the roof of the world, the storm’s eye had passed over the island and was headed back out to sea. To the east, the typhoon rose like a mighty wave, ready to crash again onto the island.

  The winds were already kicking up.

  Monk clung to the bridge’s slats as the net rattled. Thunder boomed like cannon fire, and lightning crackled in shattering displays across the black skies. As the clouds opened up, rain slashed down with whipping snaps.

  Clinging white-knuckled, Monk stared below.

  The Mistress of the Seas floated in the lagoon, bright and inviting.

  Ropes slithered from the net’s underside and snaked down to the helipad atop the sun deck. Monk wished the helicopters were still here, but the birds had flown the coop before the ship had entered the island’s lagoon.

  That left only Ryder’s boat.

  More ropes dropped, making an even dozen, swaying in the wind.

  Ahead, Jessie yelled out orders in Malay. The young nurse was only thirty yards away, but the winds tore most of his words away. Jessie sat on the net, his legs wrapped tight. He motioned and waved down.

  The closest tribesmen ducked headfirst through the net, dropping away, like diving pelicans into the sea. Monk spied under the net. The trio reappeared, clinging to ropes. They slid with practiced skill as more ropes were mounted.

  Slowly the army began to crawl again, flowing toward the rigged lines and down. Monk followed along the bridge. He reached Jessie as Ryder grabbed a rope and leaped through the net. The billionaire did not hesitate.

  Monk understood his hurry.

  Lightning slammed into the net’s far side. Thunder clapped, deafening. Blue energies shot outward along the canopy’s skeleton, but it faded before it reached them. The smell of ozone hung in the air.

  “Keep off anything metal!” Monk screamed.

  Jessie nodded, repeating his warning in Malay.

  In another minute, Monk had joined Jessie. “Get below!” he ordered, and pointed down.

  Jessie nodded. As he rolled off the bridge, the storm crested the island and blew with a sudden and sharp gale, roaring like a freight train. Jessie, caught in midreach, unanchored, was shoved bodily off the slatted bridge. He rolled out onto the looser camouflaged netting. His weight tore through it.

  Monk lunged and grabbed his ankle. His prosthetic hand clamped hard as Jessie fell away. Monk’s shoulder wrenched with fire as he caught Jessie’s weight. The young nurse hung upside down below him, screaming a string of Hindu curses…or maybe it was prayers.

  “The rope!” Monk yelled down to him.

  One of the rigged lines hung ten feet away.

  Monk began swinging the man. Jessie understood, his arms out, hand clawing for the rope. It was still too far. But only by a foot.

  “I’m going to throw you!”

  “What? No!”

  He had no choice.

  Monk’s shoulder burned as he swung Jessie one last time. “Here we go!” Monk tossed the nurse underhanded toward the line.

  Jessie tangled into the rope, scrabbling for the wet line. His body began falling, sliding, kicking. Then he hooked a leg and found a grip. He braked and halted his plunge. He clung to the rope, his cheek against it. His lips moved in a silent prayer of thanks — or maybe a curse aimed at Monk.

  With the boy safe, Monk rolled back atop the bridge and crawled with caution. The winds pounded him, but he reached the nest of rigged ropes.

  Another lightning strike blasted behind him.

  Monk flattened as thunder deafened. He stared back over a shoulder as the net jolted like a trampoline. The rear of the bridge shattered upward from the strike, the wooden slats on fire. One of the tribesmen flew high in the air, arms pinwheeling, while electric-blue current crackled through the netting to either side — but the acrobat landed safely among his brethren.

  Lucky man, but there was no going back now.

  Only one way to go.

  Monk grabbed the nearest rope and dropped through the net.

  He slid down toward the rain-swept helipad and landed cleanly.

  The rest of the army followed.

  Ducked low, Monk hurried to where the others had gathered near the staircase that led down from the helipad. Jessie was already directing the tribesmen, pointing toward Monk, toward Ryder. They would split up from here. Monk would go after Lisa. Ryder and Jessie would head down, clearing a path and readying the boat.

  Behind Monk bare feet slapped the decking as the last of the army drained down from the sodden net.

  Monk turned to Ryder and Jessie. “Ready?” he asked.

  “As we’ll ever be,” Ryder answered.

  Monk glanced over at the raiding party, armed with bone axes and AK-47s. Lightning flashed, limning the army with fire. Eyes glinted from ash-painted faces.

 
In that momentary flash Monk felt a twinge of misgiving, a moment of unease. He shook it away. It was just the storm feeding his fears.

  “Let’s go find my partner, and get the hell out of here.”

  5:02 A.M.

  Lisa lay strapped to a steel surgical table, tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. She hung from her arms, wrists snugged in plastic ties over her head. Her legs were loose, unable to touch the floor. She wore only her hospital gown. Cold sweat plastered the thin cotton to her skin, while the steel of the table chilled her back.

  She had been tied here for over an hour.

  Alone.

  Hopefully, forgotten.

  To one side a stainless-steel tray held a line of tools used for forensic autopsies: cartilage saws, dissecting hooks, snipping scissors, postmortem needles, spinal cord chisels.

  Dr. Devesh Patanjali had removed the tools from a black leather satchel, held open by Surina. He had precisely lined each instrument atop a stretch of green surgical drape. A steel bucket hung from the foot of the inclined table, ready to catch the flow of blood.

  While he laid out his tools Lisa had attempted everything to dissuade him from the torture to come. She had tried appealing to his reason, explaining that she could still be useful. That once Susan was recaptured, Lisa would lend her full support to derive a cure from the woman’s blood and lymph. Hadn’t Lisa already proven her ingenuity?

  Despite her best arguments, Devesh had ignored her. He simply lined up each tool, one after the other, on the tray.

  Eventually, her arguments turned to tears. “Please…” she had begged.

  With Devesh’s back turned, Lisa’s attention had turned to Surina. But there was no hope to be found there, only a deadened disinterest, her face carved in cold marble. The only bit of color was the ruby bindi dot on her forehead, reminding Lisa of a drop of blood.

  Then Devesh had received a call. He answered it and grew plainly excited, pleased with what he was hearing. He spoke rapidly in Arabic. All Lisa understood was the word Angkor. Devesh left, stalking out of the room, shadowed by Surina. Devesh hadn’t even looked back.