Burn (26 page)

Rico froze. That was the sting of things as he’d come to see them in the past few weeks, but the verbal slap nearly drew blood coming from Spook.

“He doesn’t deserve that from you, Father,” Scholz growled.

“You don’t know the first thing about it, Scholz,” Father Free said. “Those kids deserve having me to watch out for them; that’s who deserves what.”

“Where were you on Good Friday, when they needed you?”

“At the dam, with Yolanda,” he said. “One step behind our hero, here. Check this out.”

Colonel Toledo shifted his position as a wall peel came alight across from Spook’s desk. Rico’s body turned to fire when he moved, as the abrasions and stitches cracked their crusts and tore the pink new flesh underneath. He tried to slow down, relax. . . .

And saw Major Ezra Hodge on the peel, leaving the embassy with a well-stuffed dufflebag over his shoulder.

“What’s this?” Rico asked.

Hodge tossed the duffle into his jeep and drove through the gates in a big hurry.

“That’s what I was wondering, until I heard your story,” Father Free said. “As you know, I have a significant interest in the harbor.”

“He went to the harbor?” Scholz asked.

“Right. Pier Nine.”

“Isn’t that where the DEA keeps that sailboat?” Rico asked.

“Right again,” Father Free said. “It’s been in my interest to know what goes down on that boat. . . .”

He signaled one of the techs, and the image on the peel switched to the interior of the
Kamui
Hodge filled the screen as he followed his duffle through the hatch, then took out a small package.

“Motion- and voice-activated,” Father Free explained. “Utilizing their own alarm system. I thought maybe he was diabetic, or something—too old-fashioned to accept the pancreas repair.”

Hodge unwrapped the paper around a slapshot, read it, ate it, then hit himself in the thigh. Rico noted the panic on the man’s face when he blew the shot.

“He’s planning a trip,” Rico said. “That’s clear. And I’ve seen his records; Hodge doesn’t have diabetes, or anything else.”

“Junkie?” Spook asked.

“Intramuscular injection,” Scholz explained. “He didn’t need a vein. It’s like the old setups for nerve gas, remember?”

“And what was on that paper he ate?” Rico asked.

The three of them stared at each other for a moment.

“He has an antidote, doesn’t he?” Scholz asked.

“That would be my guess,” Spook said.

By then Hodge had left the frame of the camera. They heard him locking up topside, and then the camera switched off.

Rico pushed himself to his feet.

“We’ve got to get Hodge
now”
he said. “And if that’s an antidote . . .”

“Father!” one of the techs hollered, pointing to a blank screen in front of her. The woman was so shaken she couldn’t speak right away; she just continued pointing a shaking finger at a blank screen.

“What is it, Susanna?”

“Mexico City,” she said. “I . . . it’s gone!”

“Earthquake,” Rico explained. “We saw it on the bar screen.”

“No,” Susanna said, standing, still unable to turn from the blank screen. “Not the earthquake. This was a flash and fireball. The pulse wiped out our feed. My God, Father, twenty million people!”

Chapter 39

For even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees.

—Jesus

Harry Toledo watched the panic roar like a forest fire through the tiny compound at Casa Canada. Joe Clyde and the other SEALs had flown to Mexico City, leaving the house and outbuildings to the contract security forces. Now Mexico City, and any semblance of chain of command, was gone.

Fear pasted the faces of the hired guns. Their tightlipped, wide-eyed scramble for authority left one man dead and the kitchen shot up beyond repair. Once the shooting started, it didn’t stop until every Litespeed and console was converted to hot splinters.

Six of the dimwits herded Harry, Sonja and Marte like lepers into the front parlor and locked the doors. That prick, Major Hodge, called the shots, but he called them from a dozen kilometers away.

“Shoot me!” Harry challenged the burly, bald-headed security guard with the TransNational patch.

“Don’t be that way, kid,” the man said. His eyes were wide and his brow sweaty. “Just move into the parlor.”

“You’re gonna have to drag me in there or shoot me,” Harry said, and spat at the man’s feet.

Everybody moved back a couple of steps at that, and Harry grinned.

“Booga booga,” he said, wiggling his fingers at them. “You can’t shoot me, I’m a goddamn national treasure.”

The TransNational response was to pull back from the entryway and seal it off. The entryway, parlor and screened front porch became home for the three refugees from ViraVax. Sonja pressed her blotchy face against Marte’s shoulder, and Marte quietly stroked the shaggy blonde head. That’s what showed up most clearly in the dark—Sonja’s cropped blonde hair.

Marte, being small and dark, was nearly invisible except where her dark hand stroked Sonja’s hair. Marte had said little since Nancy Bartlett’s death. When the crazy guard shot up her Litespeed, Marte let out one long shriek of frustration and despair. Her face looked haggard, beyond exhaustion, and she’d shown no reaction to the news about Mexico City.

Harry heard Sergeant Trethewey arguing with one of the guards.

“What about me?” the sergeant yelled. “I’ve been exposed; shouldn’t I stay with them?”

The door opened just a crack, and the sergeant slipped through. Since Trethewey had handled Nancy Bartlett there at the end, nobody in the security cadre wanted to be near him anyway. Sonja greeted him with a hug. She wasn’t crying now, and Harry saw the flash of fight coming back to those sky-blue eyes.

Harry stepped to Marte’s side and took her hand. It was warm, but otherwise as limp and unresponsive as her expression. He put an arm around her shoulder and hugged her, and still she only stared past the screen at the tongues of flame rising from the darkness along the road.

The rest of the techs and staff remained locked up in the back of the house. Several had tried to get away after Nancy Bartlett died, but the TransNational boys brought them back. Harry had the feeling that a couple of the security guards had slipped away, themselves. Harry hadn’t seen his mother for hours, and didn’t know where she was, or whether she was still alive. None of the security guards thought this a priority, so it went unanswered.

“Well,” Harry asked Sonja, “can we get four people off the ground in that biplane of yours?”

Trethewey cleared his throat.

“Not likely,” he said. “Hodge took the prop and wheels as a precaution.”

Faint screams came to them on the wind, from out by the highway, where the coffee workers had been moved. Everyone listened in a strained silence, and Harry double-checked their guard. Three of them stood watch in front of the porch, weapons at the ready, their nervous fingers flicking safeties off and on.

Trethewey saw where Harry was looking.

“I really wish they wouldn’t do that,” he whispered. “Somebody could get hurt.”

Sonja giggled nervously.

Marte came alive with a deep breath and slipped her arm around Harry’s waist. They said nothing as little blossoms of fire opened up in the surrounding hills. Harry was calculating speed, and odds, and firepower.

“I have something for you,” Marte whispered, and she slipped a data cube into his palm.

“What’s this?”

“Everything,” she said. “The original data that you recovered from ViraVax, plus everything we’ve accomplished so far. I yanked it when that asshole started shooting.”

“Why give it to me?” Harry asked. “You’ll need it when . . . ”

“When what?” she interrupted. “When we get out of here? You have a better chance than I do, Harry.”

“Don’t talk like that,” he said. “We’ll all get out of here. It’s dark, we’ll shake these rent-a-guns, get to the airport and Sonja will fly us out. Right, Sonja?”

Sonja’s voice was muffled because her face was pressed into Trethewey’s chest.

“We’ll do
something”
she said. “You’re goddamn right about that.”

Cries of shock and pain and the sounds of furniture falling came from inside the house. Harry tried the door, but it was still locked. The thumping and thrashing settled down, and now Harry could smell the unmistakable stench that they’d come to know all too well.

“Shit!”

Just when they were all about to take their chances on a breakout through the screens, three pairs of headlights wound down the drive from the highway. Harry was suspicious from the start when the three black cars pulled up in front of the porch. Three Pan-Pacific suits, a black, an Asian and a Caucasian, dismissed the TransNational trio with a simple flash of ID. The TransNationals glanced at the house, then turned as one and jogged to their track down by the hangar.

The black guy, Mills, did all the talking.

“You,” he said to Trethewey, “step back. Harry, Sonja, Dr. Chang, you’ll come with us, please.”

“We’re not going anyplace with you,” Harry said.

“Why, we’re taking you home, son.”

His exuberance indicated that he thought Harry was a ten-year-old who would jump at the chance to fly in a real airplane.

“I’m not your son,” Harry said. “Check your ID if you don’t believe me. But I
am
home. I thought we were staying here, that everything was being taken care of from here.”

“You’ve been misinformed,” Mills said. “Whoever told you that had no authorization. Everything will be fine; we’ll be flying with you.”

Harry didn’t move or speak, and Mills looked perplexed.

“Well, I mean, you get to go back to the States,” Mills said. He turned to Sonja and bowed slightly. “And your grandfather is the new Vice-President of the United States. You can’t disappoint the White House.”

“Oh, but I can,” Sonja said, also standing firm.

Mills’s expression slid from perplexed to pissed.

“Plane’s waiting at the airport,” Mills said. “We couldn’t bring it into this rinky-dink strip. After you.”

Mills gestured toward the car.

Harry still didn’t move.

“What about my parents?” he asked.

“They’re not on my dance card,” Mills said.

“Don’t I get to pack?”

“I’ll buy you a toothbrush,” Mills said. “I’m a big fan. I didn’t get to tell you yet how proud I am to meet you.”

Mills extended his hand, and Harry shook it out of reflex. Mills did not let go, but put his other arm around Harry’s shoulders and started to guide him out the door. Harry went limp for a blink, and when Mills was off-balance, he swept the man’s foot and dropped him to the pavement. Instantly, Mills had a pistol out and pointed at Trethewey.

“Let me put it this way, son. You come quietly, or the sergeant here is history. I can’t shoot you, but I sure as hell can shoot everybody else.”

Sonja and Marte had remained silent throughout the exchange. Each of their guards also held pistols on Trethewey.

“Never felt so popular in my life,” Trethewey said, and forced a casual-looking grin. “You kids go on without me. I’ll catch up.”

Sonja groaned, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Get on the networks as soon as you can,” she said. “We’ll find you. Trust me.”

“Always,” he said, and kissed her back.

Harry blushed, and felt himself squirm just a little. He still cared for Sonja more than he wanted to admit, particularly in front of Marte. He turned to Mills.

“What about my dad? He knows more about this than we do.”

“He’ll be following in a couple of days,” Mills said. “He’s still in no condition to travel.”

Casa Canada was uncharacteristically deserted, and the humidity made the air nearly too thick to breathe.

Sonja, with the Asian guard holding onto her arm, glanced up at Harry. Her face paled and her lips thinned to grim. She shook her head “no” at him, and he knew that she was ready and waiting his move. No matter what, they would not get into that plane with Mills.

Harry had practiced this scenario a hundred times with his father in the gym: the kidnapping. He and Sonja had both attended dozens of classes over the years aimed at getting them out of just this situation. Children of embassy personnel in Costa Brava were well versed in the psychology and tactics of kidnapping and hostage-taking.

“Let’s go,” Mills said, propelling Harry forward with a shove between the shoulders. “We have a plane to catch.”

The expression on Mills’s face was neutral, but the look in his eyes was that combination of anger and fear that Harry remembered so well from the bad days with his dad. And from what the Agency referred to as “the ViraVax incident.”

Why should he be worried about taking us to the airport?
he wondered.
He doesn’t care whether we’re lab rats for life.

Harry glimpsed Sonja’s pale face looking back at him from the car ahead, and her expression was one he had not seen from her yet: absolute fear, and panic. She could not survive a lockup, that was clear. Harry doubted that he would, either.

Harry’s stomach churned. The drills that he practiced with his father emphasized never getting into the car in the first place.

“Make them do whatever they’re going to do in public,” his father had said. “Don’t let them get you into a vehicle. If you get inside, you’re dead for sure.”

But this vehicle was taking them to the airport, and Harry thought it worth the risk to get the free ride. The cars jolted down the chuckhole driveway and rattled Harry’s teeth. When he looked out the back window at Casa Canada, he saw Sergeant Trethewey fall facedown into the dirt. He couldn’t tell from that distance whether he’d been shot, or whether the Deathbug got him. He caught the driver’s gaze in the rearview mirror, saw the unmistakable flicker of fear.

“You’ve seen what it does, haven’t you?” Harry asked.

Mills and the driver stared straight ahead. The driver swerved around two charred lumps to get out onto the highway and then swerved again to avoid a group of
deficientes
shuffling towards town, many of them crying. The little band of retarded kids had stepped in front of the car from a trail in the bush, and there was no caretaker with them. One of them tried to wave down the car, and Harry’s mind tricked him into seeing them all aflame, like those poor bastards at ViraVax.

They passed dozens of burned vehicles along the roadside, and other blackened lumps of humanity, some of them still steaming. No one stood by any of the bodies. Wild-eyed drivers careened hundreds of vehicles along the highway, most of them headed away from the city.

At the frontage road to the airport, Harry decided it was time to make his move. There would be more security at the airport, and even though they’d have their hands full with panicked mobs desperate to get out, Harry thought the odds were best right here.

“You guys fucked it up, didn’t you?” Harry said. “You dropped the ball and let that virus loose in Mexico City, didn’t you? They nuked a whole city because you guys
fucked up!”

“You’ve got quite a mouth on you, kid,” Mills said. “Why don’t you just shut it up?”

“Why don’t you just try to make me, Mills?” Harry challenged, and spat at the back of the man’s head.

Make them come to you,
his dad had taught him.
The madder the hornet, the worse his vision.

“I’m not taking that shit from you, kid; you need to get that straight right now.”

Mills reached back to give Harry a slap, and Harry grabbed his hand, turned it around, folded it back against the wrist and drove his fist into the man’s elbow. He felt the wrist snap and heard the satisfying
pop
of the elbow separating. Mills screamed in pain and curled up on the seat, too stunned to grab for his gun.

Harry popped the driver’s ears with both hands, then fisted both carotids just above the man’s shoulders.

Their car swerved across the road and nosed into the ditch. While Mills lay vomiting from the pain, Harry reached over the seat back, grabbed his Colt and his Sidekick, then rolled out the back door, waiting.

Taillights blazed in the car ahead, and it backed up with tires smoking. The Asian who jumped out spoke into his Sidekick and the third car, with Marte Chang, accelerated down the road. Harry watched the Asian approach the car and pull Mills’s door open.

Mills hollered, “The kid, goddammit! The fucking kid’s got my gun!”

“Right here,” Harry said, and leveled it at the very surprised guard. “Take your pistol out with your fingers and put it on the ground, and put your Sidekick beside it. If you’ve been briefed at the right level, you know I’ll blow your brains out before you can say, ‘Adios, motherfucker.’”

The guard did as he was told, and Mills alternated spitting and cursing in the front seat.

“Now kick them over here, and walk around to the driver’s side.”

Harry glanced up to see that Sonja was struggling with her driver. She was in the seat behind him with a crude stranglehold around his neck. The security guard kicked the gun and the Sidekick over to Harry and walked around to the driver’s side. Harry picked up the Sidekick and the gun, then shot out both tires on his side before he rescued the other Pan-Pacific from Sonja’s death-grip.

“Out!” he ordered, and the gasping driver crumpled to the pavement.

Harry took his weapon and Sidekick, too, then started to get in on the driver’s side. Sonja scrambled over the seat back and grabbed the wheel.