Blue Labyrinth

by Douglas Preston

  “What? I thought she was with you!”

  “No, no. She went to get a rare plant from there—” She stopped as D’Agosta was already on his police radio, calling in a massive police response and paramedics to the botanic garden.

  He turned back to her. “Come on—we’ve got to hurry. Bring your bag. I hope to hell we’re not already too late.”

  Constance sprinted toward the far wall of the Palm House, two men in pursuit. Behind, she could hear Barbeaux shouting orders. It seemed he was sending other men out to encircle her and ensure she didn’t escape into the streets of Brooklyn.

  But Constance had no intention of escaping.

  She raced for the initial hole she had cut in the glass at the end of the hall and launched herself through it, the shrubbery outside checking her headlong fall. She rolled once and was immediately up and running. Behind her, she heard the slamming of a crash bar and glanced back to see two dark figures hurtle out the side entrance to the Palm House and split up, trying to outflank her, while a third figure struggled through the hole she had just come through.

  Ahead of her lay the Lily Pool, shimmering peacefully in the moonlight. She took a hard left just before the pool and ran alongside it, heading away from the garden exit—the direction opposite what her pursuers would anticipate. That caused them to pause, reconnoiter, and then veer back toward her—a gain of precious seconds.

  Circling around the domes of the Steinhardt Conservatory, Constance headed back toward the Aquatic House. She was making no attempt to hide her movements, speed being of the essence, and the three men could see her and were now swiftly closing in, trapping her against the Aquatic House.

  She ran alongside the wall of glass, then slipped back through the second hole she had made, emerging into the flower-choked orchid garden. She ran through the foliage, stepped over the three dead bodies, circled the main pool, and exited the double glass doors and into the lobby. There she paused just long enough to scoop up the duffel she had hidden under a bench before darting into the Tropical Pavilion. This was the largest greenhouse in the garden: a vast space with a soaring, six-story glass dome enclosing a dense, humid jungle.

  Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she ran to one of the giant tropical trees in the center of the pavilion, grasped at its lower branches, and then began to climb upward, limb over limb. Even as she climbed, she heard her pursuers enter.

  She flattened herself on an upper limb, pulled open the duffel, and removed a small chemical case that lay within. Silently, she unlatched it. Inside were four little flasks of triflic acid—acid she had appropriated earlier that evening from Enoch Leng’s cache in the sub-basement of the Riverside Drive mansion. Each flask was nestled within foam rubber protective packing that she had fashioned to size. Now she took out one flask and carefully removed its glass stopper. She was careful to hold the flask away from her—even the fumes were deadly.

  She could hear the men spreading out across the pavilion, their flashlight beams playing about, voices murmuring, radios crackling. The beams began to move into the trees. A voice called out: “We know you’re in here. Come out now.”

  Silence.

  “We’ll kill your pal Pendergast if you don’t show yourself.”

  Cautiously, Constance peered over the edge of the heavy limb she was on. It was perhaps thirty feet from the ground, and the tree rose at least another thirty feet above her.

  “If you don’t come out,” came the voice, “we’re going to start shooting.”

  “You know Barbeaux wants me alive,” she said.

  Locating her from her voice, the beams immediately flashed up into her tree, probing this way and that. The three men moved through the thick understory until they were under the tree, encircling it.

  Time to show her face. She stuck her head out and looked down at them, face expressionless.

  “There she is!”

  She ducked back.

  “Come down now!”

  Constance did not reply.

  “If we’ve got to come up and get you, that’ll piss us off. You really don’t want to piss us off.”

  “Go to hell,” she said.

  The men conferred in low, murmuring tones.

  “Okay, Goldilocks, here we come.”

  One grasped the lower branch and hoisted himself up, while another held a flashlight beam to illuminate the climb.

  Constance peered over the swell of the branch. The man was climbing quickly, his face upturned, scowling and angry. It was Tattoo.

  Good.

  She waited until he was less than ten feet below her. Positioning the flask above the climbing man, she tipped it briefly, pouring out a precise stream of triflic acid. The stream struck Tattoo directly in the left eye. She saw, with interest, that the superacid cut into him like boiling water poured onto dry ice, issuing a great hissing cloud of vapor in the process. The man let out a single, gasping cough and then simply vanished from sight in the widening cloud. A moment later she heard his body crash through the branches and hit the ground, followed by the surprised expostulations of his compadres.

  Still peering over the edge, she saw him lying on his back in a thicket of crushed vegetation, his body going into a crazy horizontal dance, writhing and convulsing, jittery hands clutching and tearing at random leaves and flowers, until suddenly his entire frame tensed, arching upward like a drawn bow until only the back of his head and his heels were on the ground. He jittered for a moment in that frozen position. Constance fancied she even heard vertebrae snapping before the body collapsed into the bed of disordered vegetation, and his brains slid out of a steaming hole in the back of his head to settle in a greasy gray puddle.

  The effect on the two others was gratifying. These were men, Constance surmised, who had fought in war and seen much killing and death. They were, of course, stupid—like many men—but were nonetheless highly trained, dangerous, and good at their job. But they had never seen anything like this. This was not guerrilla warfare; this was not a special op; this was not “shock and awe”—this was something completely outside their training. They stood like statues, flashlights fixed on their dead companion, stunned into paralysis, uncomprehending and therefore unable to react.

  With great rapidity, Constance moved out on the limb until she was positioned above one of the two—Shaved Head—and this time she poured out the rest of the bottle’s contents, then let it fall, taking care that not a single drop of the acid touched her own skin.

  Again, the results were most satisfactory. This dousing was not as precisely aimed as the first, and the acid splattered in a swath across the man’s head and one shoulder, as well as the surrounding vegetation. Nevertheless, the consequences were instantaneous. It appeared as if his head melted in on itself, expelling a rush of cloudy, greasy gas. With a shriek of animal horror, Shaved Head sank to his knees, his hands clutching his skull even as it was dissolving, panicked fingers pushing through liquefying bone and brain matter before he keeled over, going into the same peculiar convulsions as Tattoo. As he did so, the vegetation that had been splashed with the acid began to smoke and curl up, bits of it flashing into fire, then quickly flaring out—no fire could sustain itself long in the damp vegetation.

  Like all superacids, Constance knew, triflic acid generated a strong exothermic reaction when encountering organic compounds.

  The third man was now collecting his wits. He backed away from his convulsing comrade, and then looked up, firing his weapon in a panic. But Constance was already hidden behind a limb and the man was shooting randomly. She used the opportunity to climb higher into the tree’s upper limbs. Here the branches knitted together with the surrounding trees, forming a dense canopy. Slowly and deliberately, keeping the duffel close, she moved from one limb to another, while the frantic man below fired ineffectually at the sounds of her movement. Managing to climb onto an adjacent tree, she descended a few feet and concealed herself in the crook of a thick limb covered in leaves.

  There was the
crackle of a radio. Now the shots stopped and the flashlight beam played about, searching this way and that. In that moment, two more men burst into the Tropical Pavilion.

  “What’s going on?” one of them cried, pointing to the smoking bodies. “What the hell happened?”

  “The crazy bitch poured something on them—acid, maybe. She’s up in the trees.”

  More flashlight beams joined in roaming about among the canopy.

  “Who the fuck was firing? The boss says don’t kill her.”

  As she listened to this exchange, Constance took stock of the small chemical case. Three more flasks remained within it, full and carefully stoppered. Then, of course, there were the other contents of her bag to consider. She mentally reviewed the situation. There were, as best she could guess, six or seven men remaining, including Barbeaux.

  Barbeaux. She was reminded of Diogenes Pendergast. Brilliant. Formidable. With the kind of sadistic streak reserved only for psychopaths. But Barbeaux was cruder, militaristic, less refined. Her hatred for Barbeaux was now so incandescent she could feel the heat of it warming her vitals.

  John Barbeaux waited in the darkened space of the Palm House. The two men who stayed with him had stretched Pendergast out on the floor. The handcuffed agent remained unconscious despite being slapped and even shocked with the cattle prod. Barbeaux leaned over and placed two fingers on Pendergast’s neck, searching for the carotid pulse. Nothing. He pressed a little harder. There it was: very weak.

  He was at death’s door.

  At this, Barbeaux felt a vague disquiet. The moment of his triumph had come; the moment he had been thinking about for so long, fantasizing over, savoring—the moment when Pendergast would be confronted with the truth. The moment Alban Pendergast had promised. But it hadn’t quite played out as he’d imagined. Pendergast had been too weak to appreciate the full flavor of his defeat. And then—to Barbeaux’s vast surprise—the man had apologized. He had, essentially, taken responsibility for the sins of the fathers. That shock had taken much of the enjoyment out of his achievement; deprived him of the chance to gloat. At least, he felt fairly certain this was what lay at the heart of his disquietude.

  And then, there was the girl…

  It was taking his men far longer to retrieve her than he’d anticipated, and he began pacing once again. His movements caused the lone candle on the table to flicker and gutter. He blew it out, leaving the Palm House to the light of the moon.

  He heard another fusillade of shots. This time, he pulled out his radio. “Steiner. Report.”

  “Sir,” came the voice of his Ops Crew leader.

  “Steiner, what’s going on?”

  “That bitch took out two of our men. Poured acid on them, or something.”

  “Stop shooting at her,” said Barbeaux. “I want her alive.”

  “Yes, sir. But—”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Up in the treetops of the Tropical Pavilion. She’s got a bottle of acid, and she’s freaking crazy—”

  “Three of you with automatic weapons, against one woman, treed, dressed only in a slip, armed with, what, a bottle of acid? Do I have that right?”

  A hesitation. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry—what the fuck is the problem, exactly?”

  Another hesitation. “There is no problem, sir.”

  “Good. There will be if she’s killed. Whoever kills her, dies.”

  “Sir… forgive me, sir, but the target—well, he’s either dead or dying. Right?”

  “Your point being?”

  “So what do we need the girl for? Her retrieval of that plant—it doesn’t matter now. It would be much easier to just throw up a screen of bullets, drop her with—”

  “Aren’t you hearing a word I’ve said? Steiner, I want her alive.”

  A pause. “What… do we do?”

  And this from a professional. Barbeaux couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He took a deep breath. “Bring your squad into position. Approach diagonally. Liquid falls vertically.”

  A silence. “Yes, sir.”

  He replaced the radio. A lone girl, up against professional mercenaries, some of them ex-special-forces. And yet she had them spooked. Unbelievable. Only now were his men’s limitations becoming obvious. Crazy? Yeah—crazy like a fox. He had underestimated her. That would not happen again.

  He leaned down and touched Pendergast’s neck. Now he could feel no pulse at all, no matter how he probed or pressed. “Goddamn it,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He felt cheated, betrayed, robbed of the victory he had worked so long and hard to achieve. He gave the body a savage kick.

  He turned toward the two men who had taken up positions on either side of Pendergast. There was no longer any need to keep vigil over the body; there was something more important to accomplish.

  Barbeaux looked at them in turn, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Join the others,” he snapped. “Get the girl.”

  The lone survivor of her first attack had been joined by two others. Based on the radio chatter, Constance knew that at least two more were on their way. The men below were rallying, developing a plan. She watched as the three began spreading out in the foliage below. Then they began to climb the trees surrounding her own. Their intention was to come at her from three sides.

  She jammed the small chemical case back into the duffel, slung the duffel around her neck to free up both hands, and climbed higher. As she did, the trunk grew thinner and began to sway, the branches feathering out in all directions. Higher and higher she climbed until ultimately the trunk spread out into a mass of slender branches that sagged and swayed with her movements. The glass dome was only about six feet above her head.

  As she climbed upward, trying to reach the glass of the ceiling, the entire treetop began swaying. The men had now reached the canopy as well, and were creeping out on lateral branches, boxing her in.

  A branch she was grasping broke with a crack and she slipped, stopping her fall only by wrapping her arms around an adjoining group of small branches, leaving her swaying and dangling in space.

  “There she is!”

  The flashlight beams shone on her as she pulled herself up the slender branches until she found another purchase for her feet. Every move sent the branches into a fresh paroxysm of swaying and cracking.

  Trying not to agitate the canopy, she maneuvered with care, working her way still higher. The tiniest twigs and branches came within a foot or two of the glass ceiling, but they were too slender to support any weight. She was now triangulated in the flashlight beams.

  A low laugh. “Hey, little girl. You’re surrounded. Climb down.”

  If any of them came any closer, Constance knew, their combined weight on the network of branches would send them all crashing to the ground. They were stymied.

  Through the heavy canopy of branches, she could see that two more men had entered the Tropical Pavilion. One of them removed a pistol and aimed it at her. “Start down or I’ll put a bullet in you.”

  She ignored this, working her way higher with exquisite care and balance.

  “Get your ass down!”

  She was now just below the glass roof. The branches were shaking and swaying, her bare feet slipping. She had nothing to break the glass above her except the bag, and she didn’t dare use it for fear of breaking certain of its contents. Steadying herself in the topmost branches as best she could, she removed a cloth from the bag, wrapped it around her fist, and punched out the pane of glass above her with one blow.

  This caused violent agitation in the network of branches she was clinging to, and she slipped down a few feet as broken glass rained down around her.

  “She’s going out the top!” one of the men called.

  With a desperate, reckless move she lunged upward, grasping and clawing at the metal frame above her and securing a purchase with one hand, cutting her fingers in the process. Pushing out first the small case, then the bag, she followed these onto the roof, swinging herself u
p and then climbing out and on top.

  Placing her feet on the bronze frames that held the sections of glass in place, not treading on the glass itself, Constance knelt, opened the small chemical case, and took out a second bottle. Two of the men who’d climbed the adjoining trees were directly below her, working their way up toward the hole. The other man was descending fast, no doubt to join up with the two on the ground and prepare to intercept her outside when she climbed down to the ground.

  She leaned over the hole she had made in the roof and glanced down at the closer of the two climbers. He was yelling at her and waving his gun. Taking the glass stopper from the bottle, she upended its contents onto the man, then skipped back. The gun went off, blowing out the pane next to her, and then there was a scream; a dull cloud of acrid gas blossomed in the moonlight, followed by a popping of leaves and twigs, to a constellation of flares and gouts of flame. She heard a falling body crash through branch after branch, hitting the ground with a sickening thump.

  A fusillade of shots came from the other climber, bursting panes around her, but he was high in the swaying canopy and unable to aim properly. Or perhaps he was not trying to hit her, but rather trying to intimidate her. It made no difference. She plucked the third bottle from the case, skipped along the roof into a fresh position, removed its stopper, and—leaning over one of the skylights blown out by the bullets—doused the remaining climber with it. A horrible gush of steam rose up through the broken glass, gray, shot through with ropy strands of crimson, and Constance reared backward to avoid it. An ululating, throat-shredding cry tore through the broken panes, followed by the sounds of yet another body crashing downward. Taking the final small bottle from the case, she tossed it through one of the other ruined skylights. Perhaps it would act as a grenade, taking out one or more of the men down at the floor level of the pavilion. She heard an odd puffing noise, like the lighting of a gas range, and then a flare of flame shot up from far below, flickering angrily for several seconds before going out.