The Heaven Trilogy (138 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY

ABDULLAH BOLTED from his chair, sending it clattering to the wall. Heat rose through his chest in one suffocating wave, and he felt his face flush red.

“Both? Impossible!” How could they escape? Even if the agent had found another way out of his cell, the lower level was sealed!

Ramón shook his head. A dark ring of sweat soaked into his black patch. His voice quivered when he spoke. “They’re gone. The priest is still in his cell.”

Abdullah’s head spun. “I thought I told you to kill them!”

“Yes. I was going to. But considering—”

“This changes everything. The Americans will try to destroy us now.”

“But what about our agreement with them? How can they destroy us with the agreement?”

“The
agreement
, as you call it, is worthless now. They’ve never known the extent of our operation, you idiot. Now they will.” He hesitated and turned his back. “They will turn on us. It’s their nature.”

Abdullah suddenly slammed his fist on his desk and clenched his teeth against the pain that shot up his arm. Ramón stood still and stared past him. Abdullah closed his eyes and bowed his head into his other hand, gripping his temples. A haze seemed to be drifting over his mind.
There now, there now, my friend. Think
.

For a moment Abdullah thought he might actually burst out in tears, right there in front of the Hispanic fool. He took a deep breath and cocked his head to the ceiling, keeping his eyes closed.

There, there
. He wagged his head, as if to crack it.
It is nothing more than a chess match. I’ve made a move and now they have made a move.
He ground his teeth.

A CIA agent has penetrated my operation and escaped to tell. The same agent who killed my brother.

Heat flared up his neck again and he shook his head against it, pursing his lips and breathing hard through his nostrils.

It had been a mistake not to kill the man immediately. Maybe the fall had killed them.

“Sir?” He heard the voice, knew it was Ramón’s, but chose to ignore it. He was thinking.
There, there. Think
.

An image of a thousand marching boys, all under the age of thirteen, suddenly popped to mind. Good Muslim boys on the Iraqi border, chanting a song of worship, dressed in colors. Going to meet Allah. He’d watched the scene through field glasses fifteen years earlier with a lump the size of a boulder lodged in his throat. The mines began erupting like fireworks,
pop! pop!
and the children’s frail brown bodies began flipping like sprung mousetraps. And the rest walked on, marching into the arms of death. He remembered thinking then that this was the sole fault of the West. The West had armed the Iraqis. The West had spawned infidelity, so that when he saw an example of purity, such as these young boys marching to Allah, he cringed instead of leaping for joy.

So then, think
. Ramón was calling him again. “Sir.”

Shut up, Ramón. Can’t you see that I am thinking?
He thought it, maybe said it. He wasn’t sure. Ramón was saying something about the agent not knowing about the bombs.
Yes? Says who? Says you, Ramón? You’re a blind fool.

A buzz droned above him and he opened his eyes. The black bugs in the corner were crawling over each other in a writhing mass. One small firecracker in that ball would decorate the wall nicely. He dropped his head to Ramón. The fool
was
actually saying something.

Abdullah cut him off midsentence. “Ship the bombs immediately.” Ramón’s mouth hung open slightly, but he didn’t respond. His good eye was round like a saucer.

Abdullah stepped forward, a quiver in his bones. The agent’s escape could well be the hand of Allah forcing him forward. If Jamal was coming, the bombs would be gone when he got here. It would be he, not Jamal, who ended this game.

“Tonight, Ramón. Do you understand? I want both bombs sent tonight. Pack them in the logs as if they were drugs. And do it yourself—no one else can know of their existence. Are you hearing me?”

Ramón nodded. A trail of sweat now split his eye patch and hung off the corner of his lip.

Abdullah continued, noting that he would have to watch the man. He snatched a pointer and stepped up to a dirtied map of the country and the surrounding seas. His voice came ragged.

“There will be three ships. They will pick up the logs tonight, just outside the delta.” Abdullah followed the map with the pointer as he talked, but it only ran in jagged circles from his taut nerves and he dropped it to his side. “The fastest of the three ships will carry the larger device to our drop point at Annapolis near Washington, D.C. The second will take the inoperable device to the lumberyards in Miami, just like any other shipment of cocaine.” He paused, still breathing heavy. “The freightliner will carry the smaller device to a new drop point there”—he stabbed with the pointer again—“near Savannah, Georgia.” He turned to face Ramón.

“Tell the captains of these vessels that it is an experimental shipment and that they will be paid double the normal rates. No, tell them they will be paid ten times the normal rate. The shipments must arrive at the destinations as planned, before the Americans have a chance to react to the news they will receive from this agent.”

“Yes, sir. And the priest?”

“Keep him alive. A hostage could be useful now.” He grinned. “As for the agent, we will use him as our demand instead of the release of prisoners as Jamal planned. Either way the bombs will go off, but perhaps they will deliver this animal to us.” Abdullah felt a calm settle over him.

“I want the logs in the river by nightfall,” he said. He suddenly felt strangely euphoric. And if Jamal appeared before then? Then he would kill Jamal.

Ramón still stood, watching him. Abdullah sat and looked at him. “You have something to say, Ramón? Do you think we have lived in this hellhole for nothing?” Abdullah smiled.

For a brief moment he pitied the man standing before him as if he were a part of something important. In the end he, too, would die.

“Do not disappoint me. You are dismissed.”

“Yes, sir,” Ramón said. He spun on his heels and strode from the room.

SHERRY AWOKE on the riverbank with the vision once again stinging her mind. Casius glanced up at her from a rock where he worked over a palm leaf, twisting a root. He motioned beside her. “Your shirt’s right there.” Two holes had been worn through to his shoulder blades. She pulled it on and walked over to him.

“That stuff on your face doesn’t come off very easily,” she said, noting the camo paint had survived the river.

“Waterproof.”

She looked at a small puddle of salve he’d forced from the root onto the palm leaf.

“And what is that?”

“It’s a natural antibiotic,” Casius said.

She winced, remembering the slide. “For your back?”

He nodded.

“Can I see?”

He twisted his back to her. His shoulder blades were worn to glistening red flesh.

“Here.” He handed the palm leaf back to her. “This will help. I’ve seen this stuff work miracles.”

She took the palm. “Just wipe it on?”

“You’re the doctor. It has a mild antiseptic in it as well. It’ll help with the pain.”

He flinched when she touched the seared flesh. Sherry smeared it on, tentative at first, but then using the whole palm leaf as a brush. He groaned once, and she let up with an apology. A sense of déjà vu hit her like a sledge when he winced, and for a moment she felt as though she were in a hospital working with a patient in the emergency ward—not here in the jungle bent over the assassin.

But then she was seeing things strangely these days.
Everything
was one big déjà vu. Casius just fell into the pot with the rest.

They left the river with Casius insisting they get to a town as soon as possible. He had to get her to safety and return for the priest, he told her. He took to the jungle as if he knew exactly where they were. A hundred questions burned through her mind then.

They had just escaped some terrorist who planned to do something with a bomb, if she understood the vision now. She was supposed to
die
for this? No, that was only Father Petrus’s talk.

An image of a nuclear weapon detonating filled her mind and suddenly she wanted to tell Casius everything. She had to—even if there was only the smallest chance of it all being true.

She swallowed at her dry mouth and held her tongue. What if he was part of this? But of course, he
was
part of this. So then, which side was he on?

They walked for a long time, in a dumb silence. When they did talk, it was her doing. She asked small questions, mostly, pulling short but polite answers out of him. Answers that seemed pointless.

“So you work for the CIA, right?” she finally asked.

“Yes.”

“And you said that they were after you? Or are you after Abdullah?”

He glanced at her. “Abdullah?”

“Back at the compound. I could be wrong, but I think he’s a terrorist. He’s got a bomb, I think.”

Casius walked on, mumbling something about everyone having a bomb.

He led her to a small village while the sun still stood overhead. Despite the availability of phones in the town, he insisted that she not contact anyone yet. He would call and alert the right people to Abdullah’s operation, he said.

He made his call and then convinced a fisherman to lend them a small pontoon boat. They were soon rushing downriver, accompanied by a whining twenty-horse outboard and a backdrop of birds squawking in the treetops.

“Thank you for what you did back there,” Sherry said, breaking a long stretch of silence. “I guess I owe my life to you.”

Casius glanced at her and shrugged. He stared off to the jungle. “So what makes you think this Abdullah character has a bomb?”

She considered the question for a moment and decided she should tell him. “Do you believe in visions?” she asked.

He looked at her without responding.

“I mean supernatural visions. From God,” she said.

“We’ve been over this. Man is God. How can I believe in visions from man?”

“On the contrary, God is Creator of man. He also is known to give visions.” It sounded stupid—something she was just really believing for the first time herself. She could almost hear him mocking now.
Sure, honey. God speaks to me too. All the time. He told me just this morning that I really need to floss more regularly.

She plunged ahead anyway. “That’s how I know Abdullah has a bomb.”

“You saw that in a vision?” He spoke in a voice that might as well have said,
Yeah right, lady.

“How else?” she said.

He shrugged. “You saw something at their compound and pieced it together.”

“Maybe brilliance isn’t something that comes with seven years of higher education. But then neither is stupidity. If I say I had a vision, I had a vision.”

He blinked and turned his head downriver.

“I had a vision about a man planting something in the sand that killed thousands of people. That’s the reason I’m here in this jungle instead of back in Denver. The only reason.” She swallowed and pressed on, hot in the neck now. “Did you know that building is built on an old mission site? Missionaries used to live there.”

She waited for a response. She didn’t get one.

“If there is a bomb . . . I mean like a nuclear bomb, it would make sense that he’s planning on using it against the United States, right? You think that’s possible?”

Casius turned and studied her for a long moment. “No,” he said. “The facility is a cocaine processing plant. He’s a drug runner. I think nuclear weapons are a bit beyond his scope.”

“You may be a pretty resourceful killer, but you’re not listening to me, are you? I saw this man in my dreams and now I’ve met him personally. That means nothing to you?”

“You can’t actually expect me to believe you were drawn to the jungle to save mankind from some diabolical plot to detonate a nuclear weapon on U.S. soil.” He looked back at her and forced a smile. “You don’t find that just a bit fantastic?”

“Yes,” Sherry said. “I do. But it doesn’t change the fact that every time I close these eyes this Arab keeps popping back onto the stage and planting his bomb.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what. As it turns out, I’m going back into that jungle to kill that Arab of yours. Maybe that will stop him from popping into your mind.”

“That’s insane. You’ll never make it.”

“Isn’t that what you want? To stop him?”

How could he go back in there knowing they would be waiting for him? Could God use an assassin? No, she didn’t think so. Then she knew what she had to do and she said it without thinking.

“You have to get Father Petrus out. I have to go with you.”

“That’s out of the question.”

“Father Petrus—”

“I’ll get the priest. But you’re not coming.”

“It’s me, not you who—” Sherry pulled up short, realizing how stupid it was all sounding.

“Who has been guided by visions?” he finished for her. “Trust me, I’m guided by my own reasons. They would make your head spin.”

“Killing never solved anything,” she said. “My parents were killed by men like you.”

The revelation took the wind out of him. It was fifteen minutes of silence before they spoke again.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” he said.

“It’s okay.”

It was the way that he said, “I’m sorry,” that made her think a good man might be hiding under that brutal skin. A lump came to her throat and she wasn’t sure why.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CIA DIRECTOR Torrey Friberg stood in the east wing of the White House, staring out the window at the black D.C. sky. It was a dark day and he knew, without a question, that it would only get darker. Twenty-two years in the service of this country, and now it all threatened to blow up in his face. All on the account of one agent.

He turned away from the window and glanced at his watch. In less than five minutes they would brief the president. It was insane. Less than a week ago it had been business as usual. Now, because of one man, his career teetered on the edge of disaster.