Islands in the Net (25 page)

“This one is defused—it is plastic explosive. A mine. It can blow the tire off a truck. Or the leg off a woman or child.” His voice was cold. “The small planes scattered many, many hundreds of them. You will not be traveling by the road anymore. And we will not set foot around the complex.”

“What kind of crazy bastard—” David said.

“They mean to deny us our own country,” Andrei said. “These devices will shed our blood for months to come.”

Land slid below them; suddenly they were over the Caribbean. The chopper wheeled. “Do not fly into the smoke,” Andrei told the pilot. “It is toxic.”

Smoke still billowed from two of the offshore rigs. They resembled giant tabletops piled high with burning cars. A pair of fire barges spewed long, feathered plumes of chemical foam over them.

The jackleg rigs had cranked themselves down to the surface; their ornate hydraulics were awash with saltwater. The water was full of blackened flotsam—blobs of fabric, writhing plastic snakes of cable. And stiff-armed floating things that looked like dummies. Laura looked away with a gasp of pain.

“No, look very well,” Andrei told her. “They never even showed us a face.… Let these people have faces, at least.”

“I can't look,” she said tightly.

“Then close your eyes behind the glasses.”

“All right.” She pressed her blind face to the window. “Andrei. What are you going to do?”

“You are leaving this afternoon,” he said. “As you see, we can no longer guarantee your safety. You will leave as soon as the airport is swept for mines.” He paused. “These will be the last flights out. We want no more foreigners. No prying journalists. And none of the vermin from the Vienna Convention. We are sealing our borders.”

She opened her eyes. They were hovering over the shoreline. Half-naked Rastas were pulling corpses up onto the docks. A dead little girl, limp clothes sheeting water. Laura bit back a shriek, grabbing David's arm. Her gorge rose. She slumped back into the seat, fighting her stomach.

“Can't you see my wife is sick?” David said sharply. “This is enough.”

“No,” Laura said shakily. “Andrei's right.… Andrei, listen. There's no way that Singapore could have done this. That's not gang war. This is atrocity.”

“They tell us the same,” Andrei admitted. “I think they are afraid. This morning, we captured their agents in Trinidad. It seems they have been playing with toy planes and matches.”

“You can't attack Singapore!” Laura said. “More killing can't help you!”

“We are not Christs or Gandhis,” Andrei said. He spoke slowly, carefully. “This is terrorism. But there is a deeper kind of terror than this … a fear far older and darker. You could tell Singapore about that terror. You know something about it, Laura, I think.”

“You want me to go to Singapore?” Laura said. “Yes. I'll go there. If it'll stop this.”

“They need not fear little toy planes,” Andrei said. “But you can tell them to be afraid of the dark. To be afraid of food—and air—and water—and their own shadows.”

David looked at Andrei, his jaw dropping.

Andrei sighed. “If they are innocent of this, then they must prove it and join us immediately.”

“Yes, of course,” Laura said quickly. “You have to make common cause. Together. Rizome can help.”

“Otherwise I pity Singapore,” Andrei said. He had a look in his eyes that she had never seen in a human face. It was the farthest thing from pity.

Andrei left them at the little military airstrip at Pearls. But the evacuation flight he'd promised never showed—some kind of foulup. Eventually, after dark, a cargo chopper ferried Laura and David to the civilian airport at Point Salines.

The night was pierced with headlights and the airport road was snarled with traffic. A company of mechanized infantry had seized the airport gates. A blasted truck on the roadside smoldered gently—it had wandered through a scattering of paper-clip mines.

Their chopper carried them smoothly over the fence. Inside, the airport was a jumble of luxury saloons and limos.

Militia in flak jackets and riot helmets were beating the airport bounds with long bamboo poles. Minesweepers. As the chopper settled to the weedy tarmac, Laura heard a sharp crack and flash as a pole connected.

“Watch you step,” the pilot said cheerily, flinging open the hatch. A militia kid in camo, about nineteen—he looked excited by the night's action. Any kind of destruction was thrilling—it didn't seem to matter that it was his own people. Laura and David decamped onto the tarmac, carrying the sleeping baby in her tote.

The chopper lifted silently. A little baggage cart scurried past them in the darkness. Someone had crudely wired a pair of push brooms to the cart's front. Laura and David shuffled carefully toward the lights of the terminal. It was only thirty yards away. Surely somebody had swept it for mines already.… They eased their way around a mauve sports car. Two fat men, wearing elaborate video makeup, were asleep or drunk in the car's plush bucket seats.

Soldiers yelled at them, beckoning. “‘Ey! Get away! You people! No robbin', no lootin'!”

They stepped into the long floodlit portico of the terminal. Some of the glass frontage had been smashed or blown out; inside, the place was crammed. Excited crowd noise, waft of body heat, popping, scuffling. A Cuban airliner lifted off, its graceful hiss of takeoff drowned by the crowd.

A soldier in shoulder bars grabbed David's arm. “Papers. Passport card.”

“Don't have 'em,” David said. “We were burned out.”

“No reservation, no tickets?” the colonel said. “Can nah come in without tickets.” He examined their cadre's uniforms, puzzled. “Where you get those telly-glasses?”

“Gould and Castleman sent us,” Laura lied smoothly. She touched her glasses. “Havana's just a stopover for us. We're witnesses. Outside contacts. You understand.”

“Yah,” the colonel said, flinching. He waved them inside.

They filtered quickly into the crowd. “That was brilliant!” David told her. “But we still got no tickets.”

[“We can handle that,”] Emerson said. [“We have the Cuban airline online now. They're running the evacuation—we can get you the next flight.”]

“Great.”

[“You're almost back—try not to worry.”]

“Thanks, Atlanta. Solidarity.” David scanned the crowd. At least three hundred of them. “Man, it's a mad doctor's convention.…”

Like kicking over a rotten log, Laura thought. The airport was crawling with tight-faced Anglos and Europeans—they seemed split pretty evenly between well-dressed gangster exiles and vice-dazzled techies gone native. Dozens of refugees sprawled on the floor, nervously clutching their loot. Laura stepped over the feet of a slim black woman passed out on a heap of designer luggage, a dope sticker glued to her neck. Half a dozen hustlers in Trinidadian shirts were shooting craps on the floor, shouting excitedly in some East European language. Two screaming ten-year-olds chased each other through a group of men methodically smashing tape cassettes.

“Look,” David said, pointing. A group of white-clad women stood at the edge of the crowd. Faint looks of disdain on their faces. Nurses, Laura thought. Or nuns.

“Church hookers!” David said. “Look, that's Carlotta!”

They shouldered their way through, skidding on trash. Suddenly a scream erupted to their left. “What do you mean, you can't change it?” The shouter was waving a Grenadian credit card in the face of a militia captain. “There's fucking millions on this card, asshole!” A portly Anglo in a suit and jogging shoes—the shoes flickered with readouts. “You'd better call your fucking boss, Jack!”

“Sit down,” the captain ordered. He gave the man a shove.

“Okay,” the man said, not sitting. He stuffed the card inside his lapel. “Okay. I changed my mind. I'm choosing the tunnels instead. Take me back to the tunnels, pal.” No response. “Don't you know who you're fucking talking to?” He grabbed the captain's sleeve.

The captain knocked the grasping hand loose with a quick chop to the arm. Then he kicked the man's feet out from under him. The complainer fell heavily on his ass. He lurched back to his feet, his fists clenching.

The captain shrugged his tangle-gun free and shot the man point-blank. A high-speed splattering punch of wet plastic. A serpent's nest of stinking ribbon flew over the Anglo's chest, trapping his arms, his neck, his face, and a nearby piece of luggage. He hit the floor squalling.

A roar of alarm from the crowd. Three militia privates rushed to their captain's aid, guns drawn. “Sit down!” the captain shouted, pumping another round into the chamber. “Everyone! Down, now!” The tangle-victim started to choke.

People sat. Laura and David, too. People sat in a spreading wave, like a sporting event. Some laced their hands behind their heads, as if by reflex. The captain grinned and brandished his gun over them. “Better.” He kicked the man, casually.

Suddenly the nuns approached in a body. Their leader was a black woman; she pulled back her wimple, revealing gray hair, a lined face. “Captain,” she said calmly. “This man is choking.”

“He a t'ief, Sister,” the captain said.

“That may be, Captain, but he still needs to breathe.” Three of the Church women knelt by the victim, tugging at the strands around his throat. The old woman—an Abbess, Laura thought unwillingly—turned to the crowd and spread her hands in the crook-fingered Church blessing. “Violence serves no one,” she said. “Please be silent.”

She walked away, her sisters following without a word. They left the tangle-victim where he lay, wheezing quietly. The captain shrugged, and slung his gun again, and turned away, gesturing to his men. After a moment people began to stand up.

[“That was well done,”] Emerson said.

David helped Laura to her feet and picked up the baby's tote. “Hey! Carlotta!” They followed her.

Carlotta spoke briefly to the Abbess, pulled her wimple back, and stepped away from her sisters.

“Hello,” she said. Her frizzy mane of hair was pulled back. Her sharp-cheeked face looked naked and bleak. It was the first time they'd ever seen Carlotta without makeup.

“I'm surprised to see you leaving,” Laura told her.

Carlotta shook her head. “They hit our temple. A temporary setback.”

“Sorry,” David said. “We were burned out, too.”

“We'll be back,” Carlotta shrugged. “Where there's war, there's whores.”

The speakers crackled into life—a Cuban stewardess speaking Spanish. “Hey, that's us,” David said suddenly. “They want us at the desk.” He paused. “You hold Loretta, I'll go.” He hurried off.

Laura and Carlotta stared at each other.

“He told me what you did,” Laura said. “In case you were wondering.”

Carlotta half smirked. “Orders, Laura.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“Friends maybe. But not Sisters,” Carlotta said. “I know where my loyalties lie. Just as well as you do.”

Laura hefted Loretta's tote and slipped its strap onto her shoulder. “Loyalty doesn't give you the right to trash my family life.”

Carlotta blinked. “Family, huh? If family meant so much to you, you'd be taking care of your man and baby in Texas, not dragging them here into the line of fire.”

“How dare you,” Laura said. “David believes in this as much as I do.”

“No, he doesn't. You hustled him into this so you could crawl up your company hierarchy.” She raised a hand. “Laura, he's just a man. You need to get him away from the guns. The old evil's loose again. Men are full of war poison.”

“That's
craziness
!”

Carlotta shook her head. “You're out of your league, Laura. Are you willing to put your body between a gun and a victim? I am. But you're not, are you? You don't have faith.”

“I'm faithful to David,” Laura said tightly. “I'm faithful to my company. What about you? What about faithful old Sticky?”

“Sticky's a buffalo soldier,” Carlotta said. “Cannon fodder, full of war evil.”

“So that's it?” Laura said, amazed. “You just drop him? Write him off, just like that?”

“I'm off Romance now,” Carlotta said, as if that explained everything. She reached into her robes and handed Laura a vial of red pills. “Look, take these, I don't need 'em now—and stop being so stupid. All that crap you think is so important—two of these'll put it all out of your mind. Go back to Galveston, Laura, check into a hotel somewhere, and fuck David's brains out. Snuggle up under the covers and stay out of the way where you won't get hurt.”

Carlotta folded her arms and refused to take the vial back. Laura stuffed it angrily into her jeans pocket. “So it really was completely artificial,” she said. “You never felt anything genuine for Sticky at all.”

“I was watching him for the Church,” she said. “He kills people.”

“I can't believe this,” Laura said, staring at her. “I don't much like Sticky, but I accept him. As a person. Not a monster.”

“He's a professional hit man,” Carlotta said. “He's killed over a dozen people.”

“I don't believe you.”

“What did you expect—that he'd carry an axe and drool? Captain Thompson doesn't follow your rules. The
houngans
have been workin' on him for years. He's not an ‘acceptable person'—he's like an armed warhead! You wondered about drug factories—Sticky Thompson
is
a drug factory.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Laura said.

“I mean his guts are full of bacteria. Special ones—little drug factories. Where do you think he got that nickname—Sticky? He can eat a carton of yogurt and it turns him into a killing machine.”

“A killing machine?” Laura said. “A
carton
of
yogurt?
”