After the Dark (16 page)

Max cut in. “This isn't about revenge, remember. It's about kidnapping.”

Obviously not sure he was following her, Alec asked, “Logan's kidnapping, you mean?”

“No. This time
we're
the kidnappers.”

Alec raised an eyebrow. “Well, I guess that's a step up from your last assignment—body-snatching.”

Max ignored that. “Our target is Lyman Cale's majordomo, Franklin Bostock. He's the key. Nothing happens within that compound without his approval. Stands to reason, he's either a Familiar or in their pocket—he very likely sent those two snake-cult goons to kill that child.”

“And his mother,” Alec said.

Max shook her head. “The mother was just collateral damage.”

Mole said, “What you're sayin' is, don't ice the Bostock dude.”

“Bingo,” Max said. “His sleazy self, we need alive.”

“You think?” Alec asked. “We're hauling two stiffs around, already—what's one more?”

Max didn't know whether to be irritated by Alec or amused—Alec, the guy who always cut corners, who always looked for the angle, was suddenly the conservative of the group. A squeaky-clean Alec was somehow a frightening thought. She was about to give him some good-natured hell about it when her cell phone chirped in her pocket.

She pulled it out and punched a button. “Go for Max.”

“Do you have my son yet?”

Ames White.

As always, that voice sent a chill through her.

“Working on it,” she said. “We know where he is.”

“Clock's ticking, 452. Only two days to go. You're going to do the right thing, aren't you?
”

“Doing my best.”

“
Not playing games? Why do I think you already have my son?
”

“I'm not playing games. But I promise you, we will deliver him.”

Somehow, even though this was Ames White, it sickened her to lie to the boy's parent—
not lie, really, like Original Cindy said . . . a sin of omission, not commission
—when the child lay bundled in a white-sheet shroud in the trunk of a nearby car.

“I want Ray to wake up Christmas morning in a brand new world,
” White's processed voice said confidently into her ear. “
Make it happen, 452, and your friend Logan might live to see the new year, that brand new world . . . and we can put our differences behind us.
”

What the hell did that mean, a “brand new world”?

“I'm cooperating, White. Working to make it happen.”

“
I hope you are. Now, don't screw this up, 452—your friend is counting on you.
”

“Let me talk to him.”

White laughed mirthlessly. “
I will, when you let me talk to Ray.
”

“Can't right now.”

“
Puts us in the same boat, doesn't it? Well, then . . .
”

Were they in the “same boat”? Was Logan dead—as dead as Ray White?

“If I don't talk to Logan,” she said, “no deal.”

“Do you really think you're in a position to negotiate, 452? I have to say, for all our differences, I do admire your confidence. You have a certain . . . presence.
”

“Yeah, well. Girl's gotta try.”

“
Try this, 452—like it or not, we're both going to have to show a little faith here.
”

“Faith?”

“
Not an attribute either of us would ever likely be accused of having in abundance . . . but in this situation, it would seem required. Comes down to this: you hold up your end, and I'll hold up mine.
”

“Why is it I have trouble believing you'll hold up your end?”

“
Ah. That's where the faith comes in.
”

The phone clicked dead in her ear. She looked at it for a long moment, and resisted the urge to fling it against a tree.

“What was that about?” Alec asked.

“Just Ames White, busting my chops,” she said. “What else is new?”

“Does he know about Ray?”

“I don't think so. I suppose it's possible . . . evil bastard like White. But my reading of this is, he really does want his son back . . . may even ‘love' him, in his sicko Ames White way.”

“I wouldn't know much about parental love,” Alec said. “Hard to bond with a test tube.”

“I hear you,” she said. “But my gut says, White is a victim here, too—his son was murdered. And, dark as it may sound, that may be to our advantage.”

Mole chomped on the cigar, frowning. “How the hell . . . ?”

“If we can convince White that the Familiars killed his boy, and sold him out, then it maybe takes the heat off us, gets us Logan back, and turns White against the cult.”

Alec snorted a laugh. “Oh, yeah—that would be a nice bonus. Get Logan back,
and
take down the snake cult.”

“I'm just sayin'—he's been betrayed, and I don't think he knows it. White thinks we haven't gotten to Ray yet, and has no idea that his son's dead. On the other hand, if White finds out the boy's dead before we can convince him it wasn't our fault . . .”

Grim nods from both Alec and Mole completed the thought.

They got moving.

Mole stuffed the pistol back in his belt, Alec and Max helped a slightly groggy Joshua back into the car, and they made for Seattle, Max trying not to dwell on the bodies in the trunk.

At Three Tree Point, where security was lax, to say the least, they helped themselves to a motorboat—Max thought it might be the same one from her previous trip to Sunrise Island. The car with its trunkful of corpses was lying low in a dim corner of the parking lot. They would have the cover of darkness for their approach, but—true to the island's name—they would arrive just as the sun peeked over the horizon. That didn't make Max feel any better, but there was nothing to be done about it.

As they droned across Puget Sound, Max laid out a plan of action for taking the island. None of her crew questioned any of her strategy; no jokes, no doubts—a commando squad ready to serve their leader.

Again using a rubber raft, Max and her transgenic trio hit the beach just as the sky lightened in the east. Max was mildly surprised that no one was waiting for them at the shore. Using hand signals, she communicated that they should spread out and approach the house in pairs.

As usual, Joshua went with her to the left, while Mole accompanied Alec to the right. She knew the security force numbered at least twenty, and she hoped her assumption that only a handful of them were Familiars was correct. Twenty ordinaries would barely raise a sweat for either pair of transgenics; the Familiars, though, they might be another story . . .

Again, that brutal battle against White's SWAT team on the second floor of Jam Pony popped into her mind, and she shook her head a little.

Twenty Familiars might be more than the four of them could handle.

She turned to glance at Joshua for reassurance as they made their way through the woods. The Big Fella held his nose in the air, sniffing. He pointed slightly ahead of them and to their left, then held up three fingers.

No sooner had Joshua made this gesture than a trio of Cale guards in their black TAC fatigues stepped into their path, automatic weapons leveled at the pair. No dogs tonight—except Joshua, of course. She noted that the three were paunchy, probable ordinaries.

Immediately, instinctively, she saw Bostock's plan.

The first wave would be ordinaries, the Familiars staying close, protecting their leader and his treasure, that valuable vegetable, Lyman Cale.

As per plan, Max and Joshua raised their hands, giving off an aura of surrender. Almost imperceptibly, their captors relaxed . . .

. . . and in the next instant Max moved forward, in a blur, disarming all three before they could start squeezing a trigger, much less fire a shot; and she tossed their weapons into the woods with twig-breaking thuds.

Simultaneously, Joshua had blurred forward himself, moving right behind her, cracking two side-by-side skulls together, knocking the guards out, while Max dispatched the third with a kick to the head that didn't quite kill the man, though when he awoke from this sleep, he'd likely have the worst hangover a man who hadn't been drinking ever had.

And the two transgenics pressed on.

On the other side of the island, Mole and Alec faced a similar challenge.

Mole had spotted the three guards early on, and signaled to Alec that they should get around the trio and come up behind them. His plan worked beautifully and the three guards were dispatched almost before they knew they were attacked.

The best part, Mole thought, was the fact that he and Alec now each carried an HK53 submachine gun. They would stay silent as long as possible, but at some point Mole expected there would be more serious trouble.

Still, he kept up his cigar-chewing bravado. Careful to keep his voice low, Mole growled, “And Max was worried about these punks?”

Alec shrugged. “She's a girl. She's a worrier.”

They edged forward through the woods and had managed another two hundred yards when five more guards surrounded them.

“Thought you had our back,” Mole said.

“Thought I did,” Alec replied.

Stepping forward, one of the guards said, “Put the weapons down . . . softly . . . carefully.”

So much for having machine guns.

They both set their HK53s down, bending at the knees to do so; then the transgenics exploded into action . . .

Sidestepping the one who had given the order, Mole went for the guard to his left, launching himself and hitting the guard in the stomach with his shoulder. The guard let out a
whoomp
, as all the air in his lungs abandoned ship. Both guards toppled to the grass, Mole rolling away and jumping up just as the leader's gun barked twice. Mole dodged right and felt a bullet graze his left side, the other bullet striking the guard he'd knocked down in the forehead, as the man tried to rise.

That would leave a mark.

Spinning back the other way, Mole unleashed a vicious side kick that knocked the machine gun out of the leader's hand. From the corner of his eye, Mole saw Alec leap, kicking out in opposite directions, each foot connecting with the face of a guard.

Three down, two to go.

The leader stepped in and delivered a quick left jab, followed by an overhand right, rocking Mole. As the lizard man staggered back, the leader kicked him in the solar plexus, driving the air out of him, knocking him off a tree, and leaving him dazed in a pile on the ground at the base of the trunk.

Struggling to stay conscious, Mole got to his knees, expecting the leader to be on him at any second . . .

. . . but no attack came.

His vision cleared and he looked up to see that Alec—who had dispatched the fourth guard—now had the leader in a full nelson. Before Mole could get to his feet, though, the leader dropped to his knees, pulling Alec over the top and rolling toward Mole, who grunted as Alec struck him and knocked them both to the ground.

The transgenics rose as one and saw the leader scrambling for the machine gun Mole had knocked away. Both of them took off as if fired from cannons, coming up behind the leader, each grabbing an arm and using the man's own momentum against him as they sprinted toward a huge oak.

They passed on either side of the tree, the leader meeting the trunk face first with a sickening crunch, his arms slipping from their hands as his momentum abruptly stopped.

The leader stood facing the tree for a moment, as if it were a door that had been slammed in his face; then, with no more consciousness than the tree, he flopped back on the ground, his face a mask of blood, his mouth hanging open, several of his teeth broken. Guy probably wasn't dead, Mole thought, but definitely out of the game.

Alec asked, “You all right?”

Mole looked down at his left side, stained dark in the half-light of dawn. “Never better,” he said, not wanting to tell his friend that it hurt like hell.

“Like Max says,” Alec said, “let's blaze.”

And they were running.

A pang of worry shook Max when she heard the shots from the other side of the island.

She hoped the others were safe, but—soldier that she was—she couldn't afford to fret about it long. Off to their right she saw a five-man patrol just as they saw her. The guards were only about thirty yards away and their guns came up instantly.

“Guns!” she shouted. “Run!”

She'd already taken off.

Zigzagging, she could hear Joshua crashing through the woods behind her as bullets whizzed past, snapping branches,
thunk
ing into trees, the five automatic weapons sounding more like a hundred.

Max and Joshua sprinted on, running for all they were worth, ducking, weaving, dodging, the guards giving chase now but keeping up the barrage. Only the transgenics' special gifts kept them from being gunned down, and Max wondered how long their luck and skill would hold.

Then, suddenly, Joshua went down!

Max heard it and sensed it and turned to see, but she'd lost sight of him as she skirted the bullets still flying at her. Rolling to her right, she popped up to see Joshua throw one of the guards like a football, the man splatting into a tree and sagging to the earth.

Springing to her feet, Max rushed one who was so stunned he didn't even fire as she ran toward him, leaped and kicked, her boot connecting solidly with his face. Blood spewed from his broken nose as he went down, unconscious.

She got a glimpse of Joshua throwing another one into a tree, and that made three down . . .

Another one shot at her, but the bullets went wide right, as she instinctively dodged left. Jumping high, she somersaulted and came down at the feet of guard number four, who flinched just before she decked him with a right cross that knocked him cold.

She looked around for Joshua, found him, then her heart lurched as she realized the last guard had avoided hand-to-hand combat as he tracked his shot and the man now had Joshua zeroed in . . .

Max yelled a warning, but it came too late: the guard squeezed the trigger and fired a single round. Joshua's eyes met hers for the briefest fraction of an instant, still long enough to share love, surprise, forgiveness, thankfulness, everything in that one bit of a second . . .