“Go right,” Fando finally said.
“Downhill,” Rheese sighed with relief. “I’ll take it.”
Fando had hoped Rheese would move faster on a downslope, but his careful, limping steps ended up slowing their progress further still. Just push him, bro. Nah, that’ll kill him for sure. Fuck it. What if there’s no one in the house? You know what you gotta do. Push his fat, stank old high-and-mighty ass.
* * *
The terrain was too different. It wouldn’t work if it wasn’t at least roughly the same. With a groan, Matt paused the imprint. His throat and mouth felt as though he had guzzled a glass of sand. He needed water. The Norse guys had collected rainwater water from their sails. On beaches and in jungles, they had drunk the water that pooled in certain plants. Looking around, he spotted some broad, bowl-shaped leaves.
Pausing . . . doing good . . . keep it up . . .
The first one contained a surprisingly large reservoir of water, but he drank too fast and choked, spilling half of it. The next one he tilted more carefully, keeping the sides of the leaves bent up like a taco.
Slowly . . . take it easy. Still pausing . . .
Quenched for the time being, Matt surveyed the terrain again. He knew he couldn’t predict where Fando would be when the time came, but if he could practice this successfully and figure out what didn’t work, he would at least know when not to strike.
His visual overlay was mostly the dark silhouette of a tree and the fire-lit ground between Haeming and Atli, a volley of arrows frozen in the air above their heads. The gentle slope to the scene, the surrounding bushes and lack of obstacles, the nearby trees—they were probably the best analog to the terrain around him now: the quick approach, the tackle. And the subsequent fight, too, would be essential. Fando wasn’t just going to lie there after Matt took him down. Matt had to get him locked and pinned.
Or maybe all this was just crazy. From his experience of the past few hours, the idea seemed sound, at least conceptually. But put into practice, it could be an epic failure and simply another opportunity for Fando to laugh at him before blowing his brains out.
He wondered how quickly he could rewind or fast-forward to another scene while in the midst of a physical struggle, if need be. So many things would be happening at once, and he was nowhere near used to this condition. Maybe in a few years, he could have the whole thing perfected—if he was still able to maintain consciousness while reading, and more crucially, survive his planned encounter with Fando.
The thought repeated in his head, and he cringed. Would he be stuck with the opal for the rest of his life? Or would medical imaging systems be able to find every minuscule piece? And what about other objects? He couldn’t read two things at once. The opal was monopolizing his ability.
If he could pause dark space, that wouldn’t be so bad—the opal would then be a shield from the rest of the world. “All it takes is practice, boy . . .” His dad’s words interrupted his train of thought. Yeah, I got it, Dad. Can I get back to this?
Matt closed his eyes let the imprint resume to the point just before Haeming set off at Atli. He began to move. His body fell into rhythm with Haeming’s: hunched over low, taking soft, measured steps. The sickening sound of arrows piercing flesh. Shrieks and war cries.
Matt turned forward again, saw Atli’s towering figure before him. The wrong kinds of trees lay beyond him, unlike those on this mountain: curved trunks, wide crowns, gnarled branches. Matt paused and shook his head to see what didn’t move. A shrub remained static in his path, as did a small palmetto right behind Atli. Those were obstacles in Matt’s reality. If he should let the imprint play out, and leap at Atli, his face or shoulder might smash into that palmetto and get skewered by the spines. He needed that little tree to be Fando, lined up just right.
Play.
Matt continued creeping forward. They sped up . . . Haeming put the sword behind him, took in a deep breath to release on impact . . . full sprint . . . pause! Matt stopped it just before the leap. Haeming had Atli’s nice, cushy body waiting to stop him, but Matt had no such barrier to keep him from flying into whatever the jungle had in store. He slowed to a stop and peered past the spot where he would have slammed into an invisible Atli. Indeed, the rounded top of a jutting boulder rose waist high a few yards away. He would have rolled a few times before hitting it, but it still would have hurt. He had to keep his current world very much in mind before using Haeming’s for this purpose.
A patch of disturbed leaves and branches beyond the outcropping caught Matt’s attention. It looked like the rest of the jungle floor, but somehow, he knew it had been upset. He glanced a few feet away from it and saw a subtle depression in the layer of rotting leaves. Walking over to it, he knelt down. It looked like a footprint, though there were no sharp outlines of a boot heel or sole. Another yard to the right, he found a partially exposed section of soil. Here he found an actual boot print—horizontal bars with interspersed star-shaped lugs. Even as he studied the prints, he wondered how he had managed to notice them at all.
He stood and traced an invisible line across the three prints. Following the line, he found a path that was suddenly very obvious to him: each footprint stood out on the ground as if glowing green, heading up the hill until they were too far to see.
“If you insist,” Matt said aloud.
He continued silently chanting, pause . . . as he followed the tracks back up the slope. Ten minutes later, a shot rang out, directly ahead. Then several more shots in quick succession.
* * *
“Well, that’s interesting,” Fando said as they both halted. The distant echo had come from far away, most likely from the flat hilltop. “Cubans musta broke down an’ started offin’ each other from the stress. Huh! No discipline.” He pushed Rheese toward the house, only another hundred yards ahead.
Fando could already see that the place had not been abandoned. Although the small patch of grass hadn’t been cut anytime recently, a well-worn path ran from the side of the house to a large shed. Another path led to a strip of concrete, chain-link fencing surrounding it on all sides, including the top.
“Slow down,” Fando said, tugging on the back of Rheese’s bloody shirt. “You live out in the boonies like this, you don’t appreciate a couple strangers comin’ outa nowhere into yer backyard—know what I’m sayin’?”
“Sounds logical.”
“An’ if they blast yer ass, that’s kinda like a travesty of justice, you know?”
Rheese turned around, the brow over his good eye cocked. “Is it, now? A travesty, you say?”
“Yeah, you know, someone else gettin’ to kill yer fat old—”
“Stinking, ugly, smug . . . yes, I got it. An injustice for certain.”
They continued forward into the overgrown backyard, which was littered with rusting car axles, an ancient refrigerator on its back, a wheelless shopping cart. Fando held Rheese in front of him as a shield, peeking over his shoulder toward the dark windows.
“Windows are covered,” Fando said. “Always a good sign. Keep movin’.”
A flight of splintery wooden steps led to a windowed side door. Fando pressed Rheese against the wall and went carefully up the steps. Peering into the window, he found it unobscured. It led into a small mudroom with a water heater and a deep-basined sink. He ducked back down and pressed his ear against the wood. There were no sounds within. Back down the steps.
They continued around to the front, where several old tires lay in the grass beside a rusted auto body quietly being eaten by the forest. A rocky road curved off out of sight. On the front porch, a surprisingly new wicker swing hung from eyebolts in a heavy beam.
“I doubt anyone’s home,” Fando said. “But this place ain’t abandoned. Someone’s been here recently. Go knock on the door.”
Rheese winced as he hobbled up the front steps. He knocked three times.
“Try the door.”
Rheese looked at him skeptically.
“Don’t look
at me like that, you son of a bitch! We ain’t friends! Try the goddamn door!”
Rheese turned the knob, and the door creaked open. Fando moved quickly up the stairs and pushed past him.
“What a shithole,” Fando said, searching through the rooms.
He checked the cupboards in the kitchen and found boxes of cereal, canned vegetables, and broths. He grabbed a box of Cheerios and set it on the dirty, dish-strewn counter. In the fridge, he found something that made him smile: a single bottle of Bucanero beer. He popped the top on the refrigerator door and chugged half the contents.
“You drink beer?” Fando asked Rheese.
“On occasion . . .”
“Tough shit, ha ha!” he replied. Gulping down the rest of the beer, he tossed the bottle into the sink. He looked around the rest of the kitchen. “Oh, shit yeah, the Cheerios, bro!” He tore into the box and scooped out a handful, crunching them in his mouth. “You eat cereal?”
Rheese regarded him stoically.
Fando frowned but quickly brightened. “Ah, I ain’t screwin’ with you this time, homes. Dig the hell in. A little stale, but totally edible.”
Rheese crossed the room cautiously, picked up the demolished cereal box, and reached in for a handful. “So what now?”
Fando nodded, gazing thoughtfully at Rheese. Finally, he said, “Let’s see what’s on TV!”
THIRTY-NINE
Oliver heard a woman shout, “¡Suelta el arma! ¡Rápido!” He gestured for the five Cubans to sit down and be silent, and they complied without hesitation. Oliver crept quietly around the back of the electrical tower, trying to distinguish Abel’s dialogue with the Americans from the incessant din of the jungle. He craned his neck ever so slowly around a tree trunk to find both Americans focused entirely on Abel. Only the tip of his nose and one eye would be visible to the American man and soldier woman, but their focus seemed to hold on Abel.
The man was tall, and fit for his age—probably worked out daily and avoided America’s more tempting foods. He was clearly flustered and, therefore, unable to make any effective response in the moment. But his weapon was pointed at Abel, finger on the trigger, hand trembling slightly, and that was a problem. He would need to be taken out—a shot through the ear to the brainstem, if he remained in profile.
The woman’s posture was firm, semiauto pistol at the ready, but with the trigger finger held straight along the slide, outside the guard. She, apparently, perceived no immediate threat. Her baggy cargo pants and loose-fitting shirt revealed nothing of her physique, so he looked at her neck. It was thin, and the clavicle sharply defined. He needed to see her move, though, to make any proper assessment.
Oliver slid back and peered around the other side of the tree trunk to see Abel and the third American. That was when Abel shouted, “Je, si kuwaua!” Oliver sighed. Back to the drawing board, as the English said—he hadn’t come equipped for nonlethal conflict.
Crouching down, he picked up a plum-size rock and peeked around for another look at the woman. She had taken a step or two forward, but her position was the same. Oliver lobbed the rock over their heads, to the trees beyond, and refocused on the woman. The rock whooshed through leaves before striking a thick branch. She flinched, but her head snapped straight toward Oliver instead of toward the rock. He didn’t move. She scanned the area as her superior started shouting at Abel.
Oliver backed away, below the horizon of the Americans’ view. He cupped his mouth and whistled toward a dense stand of trees behind them. Stopping in a new position, he could now see all three of his targets. He would shoot the woman first—wound her to use the males’ instincts to draw their focus to her instead of to the attack’s source, while eliminating the most formidable opponent. Then the leader, whose unstable state required him to be dropped as soon as possible. The third may fire blindly in response, but his proximity to Abel meant that he would likely be handled without need for Oliver’s help.
A light breeze moved the broad leaves hiding Oliver, so that every few seconds a three-inch-tall window gave him a full view of the scene.
The tall American shouted to Abel again. His regional English was difficult to follow, but Oliver caught the last part loud and clear: “. . . shooting you in the back of the head.” Say no more, Oliver thought as he used the tree trunk to steady his aim. Above the glowing white tip of his front sight, the woman’s right hand, middle knuckle. Her steady aiming position only helped him. He squeezed the trigger, then immediately shifted his aim to the leader’s foot, which was already rising and pivoting into a nice, wide profile. He fired again, striking the bulging base of the fibula, and the man crumpled to the ground.
Oliver swung back to the woman. Ignoring her devastated right hand, she was squatting to pick up the dropped gun with her left. Beyond the two wounded subjects, the third American was rushing to the female. Abel stuck out a foot, tripping the younger man, then grabbed him and twisted him to the ground. This distracted the woman enough that she failed to follow through with her previous intent: to spin around toward the source of the gunfire. That was Oliver’s cue.
He holstered the pistol and sprang from the bush, sprinting to the woman’s back. His eyes flashed around the scene, inventorying weapons. The leader’s pistol lay on the ground beside him as he clutched his ankle and watched Abel toss away the other man’s gun. That was a good thing for all three Americans to see—it brought their estimation of their own strength down, confused their instincts, made them think.
Oliver closed the distance between himself and the woman in only a couple of seconds, coming at a dead run. He launched at her middle but saw her shoulders flinch. She knew he was coming, and now had an instant to respond. She pivoted out of his path, the pistol in her left hand. It tracked his flight as he soared helplessly past, tucking for a soft landing. But he was dead before he landed, the bullet passing through his right eye, temporal lobe, and occipital lobe before peeling apart against the inside back of his skull. The lead bullet continued out the back of his head while most of its copper jacket remained inside, bouncing around and turning brain tissue to slurry.
* * *
Núñez readied another shot as the body slid to a stop. Jess, too, had retrieved his weapon, and was trying to reassess the situation despite the agonizing ankle wound.
“Shit—other dude’s gone,” Paul said.
Jess and Núñez looked up and around, and indeed, there was no sign of their detainee.
“How’s your hand, Núñez?” Jess asked as he turned back to his ankle.
Núñez held her right hand close to her face, grimacing with pain as she took in the extent of the damage. It looked as though the middle knuckle of the second finger was gone, the rest of the finger hanging uselessly by a strand of sinew. Bright arterial blood pumped rhythmically from the stub.
“It’s screwed, sir. Artery looks completely severed in there. I can slow the bleeding, but I’m going to lose my other fingers, too, if this isn’t fixed quick. Can you walk on that?”
Paul opened up a first-aid kit and tore into some gauze wrap packages.
“I don’t know,” Jess said. “That son of a bitch either had horrible aim or perfect aim. Gimme one of those.”
Paul tossed him a wrap and began trying to help Núñez slow the bleeding from her hand.
“He hit was he was aiming for, sir. I didn’t have valid cause to kill him.”
“Bullshit” Jess snorted. You had valid goddamn cause the second he shot you. What would’ve happened if you didn’t? What was these guys’ plan, huh? You don’t know, and I don’t know. Paul, you know?”
“I’m just happy not to be bleeding.”
“Núñez, you think that guy’s gonna come back here? He could be watching us right now, eh? We’re sittin’ goddamn ducks.”
“I think his purpose was to escape from us, sir. I don’t believe he’d hang around. Looks like he did recover his gun, though.”
Jess’s eyes drifted to Roger’s and Chuck’s dead bodies. He tried w
eighting his ankle and gasped in pain. “Nope.”
“We need to make you a crutch, sir,” Núñez said.
He looked at her hand, which Paul had bound as tightly as he could, but she was still bleeding badly. She started toward the edge of the clearing, her steps weaving drunkenly.
“Hang on, Núñez,” Jess said. “Better sit down. Paul, can you find something that’ll pass for a crutch?”
As Paul jogged to the treeline to find a suitably thick branch, Núñez sat down next to Jess and checked his wound. She called out after Paul, “Not there—beneath the pines to your right.” To Jess she said, “You need a medevac, sir. Paul and I can carry on to find Matthew.”
“No, you cannot. I may not be able to walk, but you’re losing blood a hell of a lot faster than me. If we’re callin’ time-out, we’re sticking together and coming back with more people—trained people. Not like those jokers that got slaughtered on the road, God rest their souls.”
Paul returned, slicing the twigs from a thick branch with a right angle at one end. He handed the crutch to Jess.
Núñez said, “If Roger’s son is still alive, he’s on a countdown, sir. We can’t leave him if we have a chance to save him. Roger—”
“You don’t need to tell me what my best friend would’ve wanted, if that’s where you’re going.”
Núñez narrowed her eyes at him. “I was just going to say that Roger died for his son. I’m willing to take the risk to honor that act. Sir.”
“Well, you won’t. I appreciate it, but no. We’re going across that ridge, back toward the road where the pilot said we might get cell signal, and we’re calling in to U.S. Interests. Americans have been killed, so they’re not gonna drag their asses on this. Paul, gather up any . . .” He looked around for Paul, and Núñez did the same. He was nowhere to be found. Jess shouted his name, waited a breath, and repeated, louder.
“He went off on his own, sir,” she said.
“God damn it! You just watched him leave? Paul!”
“No, I didn’t. I think it’s obvious, though, given the situation. He knows he’s the only one physically capable.”
The Opal (Book 2 of the Matt Turner Series) Page 26
