He had an unobstructed view of the structure. A little over two hundred yards. Not a particularly difficult shot.
He placed his black nylon bag on the ground and unzipped it without a sound. Before touching anything inside the bag, he donned latex gloves. His customized bolt-action Barrett 98 rifle was a prototype that had “disappeared” from a gun show in Atlanta. It was one of only five in the world, and the only Barrett model that used.338 Lapua Magnum rounds. The Lapua rounds could pierce through half-inch glass or a standard wooden door with virtually no displacement of the bullet’s trajectory.
When Calderon had left the U.S. and moved to Guatemala, it was the only weapon he put into storage. He wouldn’t have risked shipping an experimental, unregistered weapon that Customs agents might discover, and he couldn’t bear to part with it, so he’d stored the rifle together with other specialized equipment unique to his profession. He knew this weapon better than most men know their wives. Blindfolded, he could assemble or knock it down in less than forty-five seconds, and he could put one of its bullets through a buttonhole at three hundred meters. What he liked most, though, was the penetrating power of its.338 rounds.
The stock and barrel were a bit heavy, but sturdy. The longest piece of the rifle assembly was its 27.7-inch barrel. Disassembled, the rifle and scope fit easily into a large backpack.
Calderon’s cell phone vibrated. After the second pulsed vibration, he put the phone against his ear. “Talk to me.”
“McKenna just pulled out of the hospital parking lot and turned north,” Mr. Kong said. “Should I follow him?”
“No.” Calderon punched a button and ended the call.
He crawled fifteen feet through an opening in the brush, then edged over several feet to his right, taking the position he had chosen earlier that day. Now he was invisible to anyone who might stumble onto the dirt trail behind him.
In almost complete darkness, he silently and expertly assembled the rifle, taking his time as a mental video of the shot played over and over in his mind. Calderon closed his eyes and allowed the image of a perfect shot to penetrate the rifle barrel as he screwed it into the stock. The mechanics would flow naturally if his weapon understood the job it had to do.
Next, he took the Leupold Mark 4 scope from his bag, placed it over the top of the rifle, listened again, then turned it ninety degrees and heard the satisfying snap as it locked in place.
Calderon dropped into the prone position and unfolded the bipod. He held the rifle in a firing posture and peered through the scope, pivoting from left to right, sighting targets at random: a man walking his dog on the street below; an acorn-shaped finial atop a wooden fence; an oval address plate on the front wall of a home across the street. He quartered each target in turn and waited for his finger to squeeze the trigger.
He stopped and listened before pushing the ten-cartridge magazine into the gunstock. When he was satisfied that the area was clear, he popped it into place. It gave back a metallic click.
Finally, he turned to where he hoped his prey would appear. Light streamed from three second-story windows and a French door that opened onto the upper deck. He wouldn’t get an open-air shot tonight. His target would remain inside. As long as the gutless coward passed in front of a window, he was dead.
Doing it this way grated on Calderon. He wanted to see the shock and pain in his quarry’s eyes. He wanted to watch the man squirm when he gutted him like a fish. He wanted to talk to the sonofabitch as he bled to death.
But his client had insisted. It had to be done this way. His client had said that there were “considerations outside of Calderon’s purview”—What the hell did that mean? — things he simply had to accept for the good of the project.
Calderon pulled a clear plastic Baggie from his rucksack, used tweezers to remove a paper wrapper from it, then placed the wrapper in a sprig of weeds about six feet from his position.
He then pulled a small roll from his bag, untied the ends, and unfurled a long, thin rubber pad on the ground. It wasn’t for comfort. The insulated padding would protect him from the air-ground temperature gradient that tightened muscles and caused the body to flinch at the worst possible moment.
Once everything was ready, he scanned the target area again with his spotting scope, stopping occasionally to check the wind direction and velocity.
Nothing moved in the target area. No human forms, no telltale shadows.
Calderon checked his watch. If his quarry didn’t show within the next ten minutes, he would have to abort the mission.
He exhaled heavily and stretched his muscles.
At that instant headlights appeared in his quarry’s driveway.
* * *
Luke ignored the sudden and narrow break in Walter’s curtains as he started up the steps to his duplex. His landlord’s prying nature didn’t concern him.
What did unsettle him was the ether-like miasma that was engulfing his world.
He had spent the past two hours sitting in Kolter’s with his father and Ben, speculating about potential connections between Kate and the dead children. They had come up empty-handed. While Zenavax’s work on a malaria vaccine provided a conceivable link — it was possible that the company might conduct clinical tests in that region of the world — his father had pointed out that it was an exceedingly thin thread. Guatemala was an unlikely choice for such testing given the relatively low incidence of malaria in that country.
Luke had gotten lost in the esoteric exchange between his father and Ben about alphaviruses, but ultimately that theory led to a similar dead end. The selective tissue destruction evident in both children looked nothing like the indiscriminate and generalized toxicity that Elmer had encountered with his initial flu vaccine prototype.
Just as Luke reached the top of his steps, a rattling sound interrupted his thoughts.
He spun around and saw his neighbor positioning a trash bin alongside the curb.
Luke turned back, unlocked the front door, and shoved it open with his shoulder.
* * *
Calderon dropped onto the rubber mat and lifted the buttstock of his rifle. He set the magnification to give him a full view of the target area, and aligned his eye with the optical axis of the scope so that his pupil was exactly two and one-quarter inches from the eyepiece.
A figure flashed across the southernmost window.
He placed the stock of the rifle back down on the mat and grabbed the infrared range finder, focusing on the window frame where the figure had appeared a second ago: 211.2 meters.
The room looked as if it had a depth of about three meters. He set the range on his Leupold to 212 meters. He wouldn’t take the shot if the target was standing more than one meter from the window.
Calderon drew the stock of the rifle into his shoulder again, cinched the sling tighter, and reacquired the window with the crosshairs. He worked the windage and elevation knobs on his scope. When everything was set just as he wanted it, he ran the bolt, waggled the fingers of his right hand in a piano-playing motion, then placed his right thumb through the hole in the butt stock.
He sighted the window again, fighting to restrain the exhilaration that raced through him like an electrical current.
His breathing slowed. Rolling waves of relaxation slackened the muscles in his torso and arms. When he was calmed, he looped his index finger inside the trigger guard.
* * *
Once inside, Luke quickly checked the carpeting under all three windows along the rear of his apartment, the naps of which he had brushed smooth before leaving that afternoon. Then he went into the kitchen and inspected the mat under the door that led onto the upper deck.
There were no shoeprint outlines.
The disquiet in his world was turning into a low rumble, but he knew that part of the turmoil was of his own making. In one brief moment, he had done more to help Erickson’s legal case than anything the football player’s minions could have plotted. Now they had a witness who could testify to his aggres
sive nature.
He had played right into their hands.
But what troubled him even more was the realization that he had wanted to hurt Erickson’s investigator. Old instincts — violent instincts — had overtaken him without a struggle. He had allowed it to happen, and that truth didn’t sit well.
Luke walked into the living room, clicked the TV remote as he dropped onto the couch, and started flipping through the channels in search of a distraction.
* * *
The back of his quarry’s head appeared in the lower right corner of the window.
Calderon took slow, shallow breaths as he edged his crosshairs to the left and quartered the target. His heartbeat slowed to a crawl.
Conditioned responses took over — his finger tightened around the trigger. The neural circuit between his right eye and trigger finger had long ago fused into a reflex. He simply allowed it to happen.
It didn’t happen fast enough. The head disappeared from his scope.
He blew out a chestful of air. “Shit.”
* * *
Luke edged forward on the couch when the close-up shot of a female gymnast replaced the newscaster’s image. The camera panned back just in time to catch a perfectly executed dismount from a balance beam.
He thought of Megan, and his mind’s eye played remembered images of her smile during their better times together.
Then he thought of her in Guatemala, and a vague chill passed through him.
He stood and started walking the room.
* * *
Calderon blinked away the dryness in his eyes.
What happened next seemed surreal. The sonofabitch got up from his couch, paced the room a few times, then stood at the window looking directly at him, as if to say, Okay, take your shot.
This he did exactly 0.8 seconds later, right after he placed the crosshairs squarely on the bridge of his target’s nose.
The bullet left the end of the barrel traveling at 915 meters per second and reached its destination just three thousandths of a second after the target turned his head to the left.
Calderon felt the kick of the rifle at the same moment he realized his shot was off target.
But only by an inch. A hole appeared just above his quarry’s right eye. An instant later the body slumped out of view.
He watched, spellbound. A wave of satisfaction washed over him as a thousand shards of glittering glass hung in the air for a long second. They quickly gave way to a large spatter of dark red tissue on the far wall.
25
Megan stood along the haggard bucket brigade, passing and receiving water-filled vessels to persons on either side of her. No one was in a hurry. The battle to save the clinic had ended hours ago; the fire had won. Extinguishing scattered embers was all that was left to do.
The acrid stench of smoldering wood filled her nostrils. The memory of her father — his musty scent when he walked through the front door after battling a blaze — flitted in her mind.
She took in the town for the first time as a bloom of orange sunlight rose in the eastern sky. A sea of corrugated tin roofs reflected the first light of day, revealing the mostly squalid wooden shacks that collectively formed the pueblo of Santa Lucina. The town was an island of human deprivation floating in an ocean of lush tropical vegetation. The surrounding hillsides were thick with vines and plants that wrapped around one another in some sort of botanical mating ritual. The sounds of jungle life poured over her in cascading waves.
Villagers who had come to the clinic site were either helping to smother the last remnants of the blaze or busy clearing debris. Children hardly old enough to hold a bucket worked alongside their parents. Everyone seemed to approach their work with a quiet fortitude, as if this type of thing was simply a part of their everyday lives.
A short, stout man wearing an Atlanta Braves baseball cap walked toward Megan through the charred rubble, his shoes making wet crunching sounds with each step. It was Paul Delgado, the clinic manager.
He said, “Not much of a welcome, I’m sorry to say.”
Megan shrugged while reaching out to take a plastic water jug from the man standing next to her. Their wrists collided and water splashed out, drenching her shoes. It wasn’t the only part of her that was wet. Even at sunrise, the air was thick and pasty.
Paul glanced at her shoes with the impassive expression of someone accustomed to physical discomforts.
“Listen,” he said, “I’ve already arranged transportation back to Guatemala City for everyone.”
“We’re leaving?”
“Not me — you.” He took off his cap, ran an arm along his forehead, and looked back at the rubble. “Nancy, my wife, and I have gotta stay here and rebuild this place.”
“That’s it? Just the two of you?”
“Joe Whalen and Steve Dalton are making a trip out to the aldeas—the villages. But except for that—”
“I’ll go with them.” She knew both men. Joe Whalen was a second-year pediatric resident at University Children’s, and Steve Dalton was one of the Attendings at her hospital.
“Listen, normally we don’t even go to these villages. They’re too far away, in the middle of nowhere. Conditions are tough out there, what you might call primitive. The only reason Steve Dalton’s going is that he knows the area, and well”—he looked around at the charred timbers—“there’s not much for him to do around here.”
“Seems I’m in the same boat.”
Paul appeared to study her. “Steve’s a pretty rugged guy. He knows what he’s getting into.”
“And Joe Whalen?”
Megan knew Joe well. His physique bore a striking resemblance to pudding.
“Look, I appreciate your enthusiasm, I really do,” Paul said. “But I don’t know if we even need two doctors on this trip, let alone three.”
She grabbed another pail of water from the man standing on her right and passed it to a small boy. “They going anywhere near Josue Chaca’s village?”
“How do you know about him?”
“I was working in the E.R. the night he arrived at the hospital.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “Well, Steve and Joe are going to some aldeas not far from there, but not his. The people who live in Josue’s village — Mayakital — they tend to keep to themselves. We’ve never been invited, and now I suppose it’s not likely that’ll happen anytime soon.”
Paul picked up a scorched metal emesis basin from the ground and slapped it against his pant leg. “Tell you what. You can stay with Nancy and me for a few days. After that, if you still wanna go out to the aldeas, there’ll be other trips.”
He started to walk away.
“I’m not going to change my mind.”
He turned back to her. “Well, if your mind’s made up, then grab your things and come with me. Steve and Joe are heading out in about thirty minutes.”
* * *
Ben came off the elevator and plowed through foot traffic on the fifth floor hallway like a tractor in heat. He didn’t want Elmer to hear the news from some cop showing up at his office door.
Sweat was running down his neck by the time he found the elder McKenna standing with a group of interns and residents outside one of the patient rooms. They were in the middle of morning rounds, the daily procession around the ward during which the house staff discussed each patient with the Attending physician.
When Ben reached the periphery of the group, he waved his arms at Elmer.
The elder McKenna held up a finger and mimed the words, Give me a minute.
One of the interns — his badge read CHEWY NELSON, MD — wiped the last remnants of a jelly doughnut from his lips and began his case presentation. “The next patient is a five-year-old girl, ce-e-e-eute as a button but a real crankmeister. Her illness began five days ago with the onset of a fever and cough…”
Ben cleared his throat loudly.
Elmer held up a finger and nodded.
“…the patient’s X-ray showed a right lower lobe pneumon
ia, and we started her on IV Cefuroxime. She’s been stable off of oxygen, no fever in the past twenty-four hours, and we’re thinking of sending her home today.”
Elmer said to the assembled group, “Let’s go in and see her.”
Ben reached for the back of his neck and shook his head.
The room was dark. The nearest bed, a cage-like structure, held a young toddler who was sleeping, his diapered bottom protruding into the air. In the far bed, a young girl was sitting up, working the knobs on a handheld gadget that adjusted the tilt of the bed and controlled the TV hanging from the ceiling. She scrupulously ignored the white coats and stethoscopes encircling her.
Ben tried a whispered shout. “Elmer, I need to talk with—”
“Good morning,” a woman moaned from the dormitory-style day bed located just under a window. The vinyl covering groaned as she brought herself upright and showed the group her wingspan with a slow stretch.
The young girl was now using the controller to sample TV channels, taking in a two-second glimpse of each station, then moving on to the next.
“Sorry to wake you,” Elmer said. “Are you Lisa’s mother?”
Nodding, she asked, “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. In fact, we’re thinking of sending your daughter home today.”
“Mommy, the hop-sital,” the girl announced.
“Yeah, honey, we’re at the hospital,” said the mother.
“No, Mommy. Look. The hop-sital,” the girl insisted, pointing at the TV.
Heads turned casually to the TV, which showed a reporter standing on the grassy lawn in front of University Children’s. The girl feverishly worked the volume control.
“…and when paramedics arrived at Lloyd Erickson’s home last night, they pronounced him dead at the scene from a gunshot wound to the head.”
The in-studio announcer asked, “Any word on suspects at this time? Have the police said anything about a possible motive?”
Stigma Page 16
