The Miracle Strain (27 page)

At that moment, even as he watched the woman pull a gun out of her bag, his fear left him. And in its place came a rage he had never known before.

Keeping his eyes locked on hers, Tom edged his right hand along the workbench, trying to locate the keyboard behind him.

Maria Benariac walked toward Carter and weighed the Glock in her hand. It was lighter now that she'd used eight of the slugs in the magazine, but there were still nine left.

The guards in the atrium had been too easy to kill. And sealing the door to the Hospital Suite so the night nurse couldn't come snooping around meant she had Carter all to herself.

Up close his eyes were arctic blue. When she looked into them she was annoyed to find them unrepentant and devoid of fear. But that would change when she used the nails. And when he was dead she would leave her message in his blood: "He thatincreaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." Ecclesiastes 1:18.

She leveled the silenced gun at his head and smiled. This was truly a righteous moment. "Dr. Carter," she said, "the wages of sin is death."

"What is my sin?" came the immediate response, his voice betraying only one emotion--anger.

With her left hand she put her bag on the large table next to her, while her right kept the pistol pointed at him. "What is your sin? I have been watching you, Dr. Carter. Very closely. Your sin is wanting to become God. Not only have you meddled with God's creation, you have meddled with God's own son."

"My meddling saves lives. How many lives has the Preacher taken?"

She smiled, recognizing the foolish sobriquet the papers had given her. She liked the fact that he knew she was responsible for killing the others. "Only those that needed cleansing."

"Cleansing? You mean murdering? Who decided they should die?"

She swept all the other debris off the table. Bottles, flasks, and beakers smashed to the floor. A strange white instrument with a round rubber pad sticking out the top, and Omnigene written down one side, almost fell on her foot. She sized up the scientist and thought the table would be just about big enough if his arms weren't extended full length. One by one she took the nails out of the bag, laying them in a neat row. "God decided they should die, of course."

"What God?" scoffed the scientist. "You can't pass the responsibility on to him. He doesn't exist. We only created him to explain what we couldn't understand, and now that science has given us knowledge we don't need him anymore. Is that why you need to kill me? Or do you enjoy killing--using God as an excuse?"

She laid the rope and mallet next to the nails and tried to keep her anger in check. She knew how important control was, but this angry, arrogant man in front of her wasn't like the others. He had no sense of his guilt, or any fear of his executioner. He clung to the stubborn, twisted belief that he was right. If she still maintained some vestige of righteous detachment toward him, then it vanished at that moment. No longer could she see him coldly as a threat that needed to be removed; he was someone she hated, the very personification of everything she feared and despised.

"I will give you a choice," she said. "Which hand?"

His angry eyes looked puzzled for a second. "What do you mean?" He was looking at the nails now, wondering what they were for. Or trying hard not to.

"As I said, I have been watching you. I know what you are doing. Since you want to possess the power of Jesus, then you will die like him." She trained the gun on his left hand, hanging by his side. "I am going to tie you to this table and drive a nail through each hand and foot." She couldn't help a smile. "I need to make a hole for the first nail. A bullet will make it easier for both of us. Which hand?"

Fear at last. Genuine fear flickered in those fierce eyes. Good. Not so arrogant now, are we, Dr. Carter? Then, before he could react further, she fired.

"Shit!" he screamed in agony.

It was comical the way he jerked and spun around, nursing his injured left hand with his right.

She felt a rush of satisfaction when she saw the neat hole in his palm and the blood dripping to the floor. The scientist looked pale as he examined his wound. She thought he was going to be sick. But when he raised his head she saw no trace of fear in his eyes--only an icy glare. "You sick bitch."

He was incredible. "Do you still not repent?" she de manded. She wanted him to yield before she executed him--to acknowledge her righteous truth.

He laughed then. "Repent? For what? For wanting to save lives?"

She stepped forward to push the gun into his temple. They stood now between his workbench and the table. "Those lives aren't yours to save. You don't change what God ordained just because you can. People have to earn salvation. The Lord decides who should be saved by his miracles--not men like you."

Dr. Carter's jaw muscles tensed as he tried to control the pain in his hand. And when he spoke his words were spat out through clenched teeth. "But they're not his goddamned miracles, you witch," he hissed, "they're ours. Like fire and being able to fly. Anyway, what gives you the right to decide what he wants done... To know his will?"

"He has chosen me."

Carter laughed at that, a loud manic laugh. "How do you know? Have you asked him face to face?"

She was tiring of this conversation. The insufferable scientist wouldn't concede on any point. It was time to make him see reason. She ground the gun into his temple. "Place your left hand on the table." She was prepared for a struggle but to her surprise he grimaced and laid his damaged hand palm upward on the table beside the nails. All the time his blue eyes stared defiantly into hers.

He had courage. She had to give him that. She shifted the gun to her left hand and reached for the first nail.

"Have you ever met Christ?" he asked, his tone now surprisingly calm. He sounded genuinely interested in her response.

She ignored him and concentrated on the nail. She only had one free hand. So she had to plunge the nail hard through his bullet hole to get some purchase on the wood, then use the mallet to drive it in deeper and anchor his hand to the table. But if she missed the hole, the nail would not pierce the wood sufficiently to stop him from pulling his hand away.

As she focused on this problem she didn't see his other hand move to the keyboard on the workstation behind him. She registered only a sudden movement to her left. A figure in her peripheral vision. Instinctively she turned and fired at it, but the shadowy person didn't even flinch. Mesmerized, she watched the ghostly form take shape, until a "man" stood not two feet away.

"Go on," she heard Carter say from some distant place. "Now you've met Christ, ask him what he really wants us to do with his genes!"

She froze, transfixed by the apparition beside her. The naked man was clean-shaven with long brown hair, and for a long moment she just stared at him.

Then, even as she took in the lights coming from the circular black pad beneath the figure, and realized it must be some kind of projection, she felt the glass flask smash over her head, and a strong hand push her, dazed, to the ground. Before she fell she lunged out and fired off three rounds.

It took her a second or two to sit up and wipe the blood from her cut forehead. Furious, she turned back to her prey. She would finish this now--crucifixion or no crucifixion.

But he was gone.

She turned to the main door just in time to see him limping out. She stood and lurched after him. At the doorway she looked left, through the wide expanse of the main laboratory, to the elevators beyond. And there he was, his tall frame standing out above the low workbenches and humming apparatus. The knee she had damaged in Stockholm slowed him down, and there was something comical about his awkward run. Through her anger she smiled at the spectacle, and the justice of it all. Then she raised her gun and aimed at the back of his head. Now this foolishness would cease.

Move, damn you! Move! hissed Tom, willing himself to reach the bank of elevators and ignore the volts of agony pulsing from his hand. If he could get to Jack's office at the top of the pyramid, he might stand a chance. It had a cellular phone and Jack kept a gun in the lower-right drawer of the desk.

It didn't matter what he told himself, because in the dark glass wall ahead he could see her reflection. She wasn't coming after him anymore, just raising her arm--pointing the gun at him. Shit, the flask he'd smashed over her skull hadn't even slowed the bitch down, let alone knocked her out.

He considered ducking behind one of the benches to his left, but that would only delay the inevitable. If he was going to be shot at, then he'd rather be moving, not cowering behind some piece of furniture. At least this way there was a chance--however small--that she might miss. He bent his head, trying to make himself as small a target as possible, and forced his stiff knee to propel him the last ten yards to the nearest elevator.

At that moment he saw the flash reflected in the glass, and heard the gunshot.

And he fell.

It was a lucky shot. And when Jasmine opened her eyes, she realized how lucky.

Coming up the stairs, she'd felt okay. Scared out of her skin, but in control. However, when she'd squeezed open the door to the main lab and seen the figure chasing Tom she'd frozen, suddenly realizing the stark reality of what she had to overcome: the Preacher.

If she'd ever experienced such terror before, she couldn't remember it. It rushed through her in great gusts that seemed to petrify every muscle in her body.

Then the figure chasing Tom had stopped, standing with her back to Jasmine, calmly aiming the gun.

Not allowing herself time to think, Jazz snapped out of her paralysis, eased open the door to the stairwell, and crept out behind the killer, her mouth so dry she couldn't have shouted "Freeze!" if she'd wanted to. She took the gun in both her shaking hands and aimed at the middle of the Preacher's broad back. Then, as her brother had told her to, she'd slowly squeezed the trigger, and as he'd told her never to do, she'd squeezed both her eyes shut.

The shot had deafened her. The recoil wrenched her shoulder, almost pushing her hands back into her face. And the sharp smell of cordite had caught in her throat, making her retch.

Way to go, Razor Buzz.

When she opened her eyes and looked through the smoke the Preacher was down, lying motionless on the ground. But where was Tom? Then she saw her friend get up from the floor by the elevators and brush himself off. He must have fallen, but seemed unhurt.

"Get her gun, Jazz!" he shouted, limping toward his would-be killer.

Still surfing her wave of adrenaline, Jasmine rushed over to the still figure and kicked the dropped gun toward Tom, who picked it up in his right hand. When Jasmine looked down at the killer she saw a red gash on the back of her head where the bullet must have creased her skull, knocking her unconscious. Another millimeter higher and Jasmine would have missed entirely. A few millimeters lower and the Preacher's brains would now be decorating the floor below her feet. Both possibilities made Jasmine feel sick.

The woman's dark hairline looked odd as she stared down at her--sort of crooked and crinkly, like a hurriedly donned cheap shower cap. It took a second to realize that the close-cropped, utterly natural hair was actually a wig. Jazz's bullet must have dislodged it, and where the hair-piece had slipped Jasmine could see that the killer's scalp was completely shaved. She felt a shiver travel up the back of her neck. Creepy.

"Good shot, Jazz!" said Tom, leveling the gun at the killer with enviably steady hands.

"Not really," she said, trying to control her own jelly-legs. "Considering I was aiming between her shoulder blades."

Tom smiled and hugged her, his eyes bright. "Well, in my book you're a marksman, a real Annie Oakley. If you hadn't hit her, she would have hit me exactly where she was aiming."

Jasmine's left leg began to twitch as she relaxed in his arms, coming down from the adrenaline rush. As he let go of her she noticed the bloody hole in his left palm. "What happened to your hand?"