Those thoughts were for later; right now, he had to focus on one thing: saving his partner. Leaving the radio on the seat next to him, ready to call off any cops who tried to pull him over, he gunned the engine, spinning the wheels in the gravel as he rejoined the road. He picked up speed, accelerating steadily, the wind roaring in the open window. The map said an hour and fifteen to Carrabelle, but he had to do better. The only problem was that the Jeep, designed for off-road travel, wasn’t nearly as fast as he liked. He was able to push it up to about a hundred, but at least the traffic on Route 319 south was light and he could maintain that speed in the fast lane.
The land on either side of the road was flat and featureless. Lightning flickered on the distant northern horizon behind him. Within forty minutes, making good time, he bypassed Carrabelle, blew past a gigantic prison, and merged onto Highway 67. This was an even lonelier road, a straight-as-an-arrow two-lane highway running through a scrubby area of abandoned slash pine plantations, interspersed with cypress swamps. The sky was now covered with dark clouds and the wind was picking up, the trees on either side of the road thrashing and swaying.
He passed a weather-beaten sign indicating he was entering Tate’s Hell State Forest. And hell was exactly what it looked like—swampy, dense, and unsettlingly dark. In another ten miles he would have to start looking for a road going west into the forest, toward the old sugar plant. He slowed down, passing a couple of logging roads blocked with berms and dense brush. Finally, he came to what appeared to be a better-maintained road, heading off at right angles to Highway 67. It, too, was blocked—this time by a metal pipe gate, too heavy to ram through, with a barbed wire fence running on either side. He stopped and, shining his headlights down the old road, examined the ground. It was covered with weeds, but it nevertheless looked drivable. And it was headed in the direction he wanted.
He got out and walked along the barbed wire fence to a spot where the trees were spaced wide enough for him to drive through. He returned to the Jeep, put it in four-wheel drive, eased it down the highway shoulder, and then put the hammer down. The car hit the fence, which sprang apart with a satisfying twang. He maneuvered the Jeep through the trees until he reached the road. It ran in a broad curve into the dark forest.
He stopped to check his GPS. He only had one bar and felt pretty sure he was going to lose that, too, so he took screenshots of the Google Maps images showing the web of old logging roads leading in the direction of the sugar plant and stored them for future reference.
As he drove on, the road became a nightmare, gullied by rain, with loose rocks, potholes, and stretches of weeds taller than his Jeep’s hood. He drove as fast as he dared, hardly able to see where the road went, half-blinded by the glare of his own headlights reflecting off the wall of weeds in front of him. A few times he almost got caught in muddy spots, but thanks to the Jeep he bulled his way through even the worst muck holes. Growing up on the rez, Coldmoon had experienced his share of horrendous dirt roads, and he had an innate sense of how to handle them. It wasn’t that different from driving in fresh snow. The number one rule was to keep going, never stopping or easing up, powering through.
The abandoned slash pine plantations soon gave way to a swamp of cypress trees with knobby trunks and feathery branches. As expected, he lost his GPS, but he continued navigating using the screenshots, estimating his position with dead reckoning and keeping his cell phone’s compass always pointed west. Where logging roads crossed or divided, he tried to take the better one, but he sometimes found the roads completely washed out and was forced to backtrack. And then, quite unexpectedly, he came out on a freshly graded road—one with recent tire tracks. It was well hidden beneath tall, arching cypresses. This was it, he felt sure—the road to whatever had taken the place of the old sugar plant. He turned onto it, heart pounding; then stopped, killed his headlights, and stepped out to reconnoiter. Far off, where the road headed, he could see a faint glow in the night sky, reflecting off the gathering storm clouds. He estimated it was four miles ahead.
That was where they had taken his partner.
Getting back in the car, he proceeded slowly, keeping his headlights off, holding his flashlight out the window to illuminate his way. Gradually the glow brightened until a smattering of lights could be seen rising above the treetops. He stopped and took out his binoculars. It looked like a prison: a single concrete tower with roaming klieg lights, behind which sat a low industrial structure, maybe three stories high, punctuated with the yellow squares of windows. Next to the tower was a central cube of a building, brightly lit. That, he thought, must be the heart of the operation, situated as it was in the center of the complex. Coldmoon felt his guts constrict to think of his partner in there. The bastards.
Feeling his anger rise, he reminded himself once again to focus. This was a large complex and there would be a lot of people in there, alert, armed, and well protected. The place had the definite smell of government about it. Once again, he was glad he had not followed his first impulse to call Pickett. Aside from the time it would take to organize an assault, even using a Critical Incident Response Group, there was no telling where the information might be transmitted—and the still unidentified mole had done enough harm already.
He continued on and turned off the flashlight: the glow from the facility provided enough light to see ahead. That, of course, meant they could probably see him. He felt certain that at some point there would be a manned checkpoint in the road, with a gate and a fence.
He’d better ditch the Jeep.
He eased the vehicle to the edge of the road. There was really no place to hide it, except by sinking it. He hesitated just a moment. Then he rolled down all the windows and left the driver’s side door open; then, shifting into four low, he drove it hard into the water and muck beyond the shoulder, gunning the engine to get as much inertia as possible. As it finally got stuck and began to sink, he hoisted his pack and stepped out into the warm, murky water. The Jeep bubbled and hissed, sinking into the muck with surprising rapidity. He realized he was sinking, too, and, in a sudden panic, he thrashed and wallowed his way back to the road. His last glimpse of the Jeep was of the air rushing from the open windows, with a gurgling sound and flurry of bubbles as the black waters closed over it.
He returned to the roadbed, shook off as much mud as he could, and stared at the complex. This was insane. It was going to be a bitch just getting in there. He’d better come up with a plan, because just barging in would be pointless and stupid—not to mention suicidal.
As he looked at the concrete tower, his thoughts turned unexpectedly to his grandfather Joe Coldmoon, who had fought in the Pacific with XXIV Corps, Seventy-Seventh Infantry Division, during World War II. “We’re a warrior people,” he’d once told Coldmoon, explaining that his grandfather Rain-in-the-Face had put the fatal arrow into George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Greasy Grass. It had seemed at the time like a crazy contradiction, his grandfather’s patriotism and love of country combined with pride in killing Custer, but there it was. Many houses on the rez had a wall of photographs devoted to family members serving in the military.
We’re a warrior people. During the invasion of Leyte, Joe and his company were hunkered down in trenches opposite the Japanese, not two hundred yards of no-man’s-land between the adversaries. On the darkest nights, with no moon, his grandfather would leave his gun behind, strip down to his skivvies, put a knife between his teeth, and crawl out across that no-man’s-land. When he returned an hour or so later, his buddies would ask him, “How many, Joe? How many?” He never spoke, just held up fingers—one, two, three. Once Coldmoon asked his grandfather how he did it. After the longest and most uncomfortable silence he’d ever endured, his grandfather finally said: “Your spirit goes outside your body, and you become a ghost that nobody can see.” He had refused to say anything more.
Those words came back to Coldmoon while he stared at the complex. He had never quite understood what they meant: to be outside
your own body, become a ghost that nobody could see. If only he could manage that now.
He shook his head. That old superstitious nonsense wasn’t going to help him get inside.
Or would it?
He started walking down the road.
54
AS THE BOAT with no name sped north, P. B. Perelman wondered just what the hell he’d gotten himself into.
The first two hours had been smooth motoring, the flat sea allowing him to go at the boat’s top speed of seventy-five knots. But as the light disappeared in the steady rain, he could feel in his bones the approaching storm, an electricity in the air. A slight swell was developing, the leading edge of worse to come, and the wind had kicked up, producing a little chop. Already the boat was starting to catch too much air, and at that speed, in the dark, it would be easy to flip over.
He throttled back.
“What the devil are you doing?” Constance asked sharply.
“I have to ease off in this sea,” said Perelman. He couldn’t believe her lack of fear. Any other passenger would be on the floor by now, begging him to slow down.
“Don’t lose your nerve.”
“I’m worried about losing my life. Our lives. We can’t help Pendergast if we’re dead.”
She said nothing, but let him throttle down to fifty without further complaint. Even at that speed, the boat was starting to take a pounding, the props coming out of the water from time to time with a terrifying roar. They were making for the mouth of Crooked River, a course that took them far offshore. Christ, if they didn’t get there before the storm hit, they’d be screwed no matter what speed they were going. This was no craft to weather a storm in.
He glanced over at Constance, who was standing on his left, her face barely illuminated by the dim red light of the helm. She was looking straight ahead, her short hair whipped by the wind: a crazy girl, he thought, with such peculiar mannerisms and old-fashioned speech. Although the look in her violet eyes wasn’t crazy—not exactly. They were more the eyes of a stone killer than of a young woman—eyes that had seen everything and, as a result, were surprised by nothing.
This whole business had taken a bizarre turn, and done so very suddenly. Looking back, he could see in retrospect the signs that the task force had been compromised. Whoever these people were, kidnapping a fed like that was the height of insanity—unless they were an arm of the government themselves. An arm of the government. Incredible as that might seem, it was really the only thing that made sense. That meant the only way to keep Pendergast alive was to make them think they’d gotten away with it; that nobody knew their location, that the cavalry hadn’t been called in. Of course, the chances that Pendergast was still alive were vanishingly low.
The bow hit a particularly steep swell and the boat lurched upward, the props screaming, then came back down at a tilt that scared the shit out of him. He eased a little more off the throttle, only to receive another sharp rebuke from Constance.
She was clueless of how go-fast boats handled, but there was no point arguing with her now.
“You’d better hold on tighter than ever,” he warned her instead. “Because it’s only going to get rougher.”
55
AFTER THE CHOPPER had landed in what appeared to be the inner courtyard of an industrial plant, they had been carried out, still bound, and placed in wheelchairs, to which they were additionally strapped. Escorted by half a dozen men carrying rifles and automatic weapons, they’d been pushed through seemingly endless cinder-block hallways and up an elevator, to arrive at a strikingly elegant room—Persian rugs, a massive desk flanked by flags, with paintings on the walls and gilded furniture.
Behind the desk sat an old man wearing military fatigues. Their escort halted them twenty feet from the desk. The old man rose slowly, painfully. Gladstone could see that where his name, rank, and service would have been on his fatigues; the labels had been removed, leaving darker patches. His collar sported three torn holes on each side. The man’s square, granite face was careworn, and tiny veins sprinkled his cheeks. He looked eighty, maybe older. What little hair he had left, fringing a liver-spotted pate, had been cut so short he seemed almost bald. Outside, the storm had intensified tremendously, but the thick concrete walls shielded them to the point where only a faint, muffled moaning came through.
“Welcome,” the man said, his voice anything but welcoming. “I am General Smith.”
Gladstone said nothing and neither did Pendergast. She glanced at the FBI agent. His face was pale, unreadable.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your lab associate, Dr. Gladstone.”
“What ‘happened’ is that you murdered him.”
He sighed and gave a small shrug. “Our work here is of the utmost importance. Regrettable things sometimes happen.”
Gladstone started to speak again but the general overrode her. “We have so little time, and much important work that needs doing. I shall escort you both to the laboratory. That will be much more convenient.” He turned and walked slowly to the far door of the room. Soldiers pushed their wheelchairs, following the old man out of the elegant room and down a hallway, through a set of double doors and into a dazzling laboratory, brightly lit, with gleaming medical equipment such as one would find in an intensive care unit. Two orderlies and a male nurse were in the lab and they glanced up, apparently surprised to see them. Another man stepped through a metal door in the back of the lab. He cradled a small plastic case in his arms. The place smelled strongly of methyl alcohol and iodopovidone.
The general turned. “It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Smith.”
“Lot of Smiths around here,” Gladstone said sarcastically.
“Names are immaterial.”
Dr. Smith stepped forward. He was small and brisk, with round tortoiseshell glasses slightly smoked, dressed in dazzling white. With a shock of brilliantined black hair and an upturned nose, he made Gladstone think of a malignant, mincing leprechaun. An eager smile creased his small face. He gave a short bow, eyes blinking like an owl’s behind the thick lenses. “Pleased.”
“Dr. Smith, could you prepare the patient?”
“Yes, sir.” The doctor turned to one of the orderlies. “Bring the IV.”
The orderly took some items from a cabinet and placed them on the tray of a rolling IV pole, then pushed it toward Gladstone.
A strange, detached sense of curiosity and outrage was suddenly replaced by a spike of fear. “Get the fuck away from me.”
The doctor continued to work as if nothing had been said. He slid a pair of scissors beneath her sleeve and started cutting.
“Stop! No!” She struggled in the chair, but everything was strapped down fast.
The doctor swabbed her exposed forearm.
“No!” she cried. As the doctor bent over her arm, she could smell his hair tonic. “No!”
“Dr. Gladstone,” said the general, standing behind her, “if you continue to make a disturbance I will have you gagged. I can’t tolerate noise.”
She felt the sting as the IV needle went into her vein, and she struggled uselessly again. The doctor secured the catheter, got blood, flushed it, depressed the sterile spike of the drip chamber, then taped the setup in place and stood back. She looked once more at Pendergast, but his face remained shut down, only his eyes glittering, like pale diamonds.
“Now for step two,” said the general.
Gladstone watched as the doctor opened the small plastic case, removed a syringe and glass vial, stuck the syringe into the vial, and filled it with a colorless liquid.
“What is that?” she heard herself ask.
“Dr. Gladstone, one more word from you and I will carry out my threat.”
Gladstone, filled with terror, shut her mouth, her heart beating wildly. She realized she was hyperventilating.
The doctor inserted the needle into the IV’s injection port.
“Hold it there.” The general now looked up at Pendergast. “As you can see, Dr. Smith is po
ised to inject your associate. Now I will ask you some questions and I will receive answers. If not, he will inject her. Do you understand?”
Gladstone made a huge effort not to speak or make noise. Pendergast, for his part, remained silent.
The general turned his eyes to her, then back to Pendergast. “I’m sorry it’s come to this,” he said. “We’re all on the same side, you see.” He sighed, as if used to dealing with people who didn’t understand. “It would be so much better if we could communicate like reasonable people. Unlike, I fear, your man in China. He wasn’t reasonable. Not reasonable at all.”
Finally, Pendergast spoke. “Is it reasonable to murder an innocent scientist and kidnap another at gunpoint? Torture a man in the most awful way imaginable? Dismember over a hundred people? And now, to proceed with this brutality?”
“It is all in service of a vital cause.”
“Stalin said much the same thing.”
The old general waved his hand. “Enough banter. My questions are few, but I need complete answers. Who else knows the location of this facility?”
Pendergast didn’t answer.
The man turned. “Dr. Gladstone? I give you permission to speak in order to answer the question.”
She said nothing.
“You’ve got nerves of steel,” said the general, not without a touch of admiration. “Would you remain so brave if I told you the drug Dr. Smith will inject produces a most terrifying result?” A pause. “Now, Agent Pendergast: in order to prevent this tragedy, I need to know if anyone else has discovered the location of this facility—or has traced the source of the, ah, feet. We were keeping them for later analysis, and could never have anticipated that a freak deluge would cause the river to flood, destroying our dock and outbuildings—including the frozen storage locker—and sending the feet out into the gulf. We hoped they would decay, or be eaten, or sink for one reason or another; clearly, that did not come to pass. Even so, we never imagined they could be traced back here…” Another pause. “Obviously, we can’t have others coming to the same conclusion that you did. We’ve made a huge investment in this facility; worked very hard to make sure the cost was buried in dark military budgets and appropriations bills; and the research we’re doing here is now at too advanced a stage to be moved. You will give me the answers to these questions eventually—so why not now rather than later, when your associate will have already crossed into a land of horror? Are you truly so eager for a Pyrrhic victory?”
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