Devil's Keep (35 page)

“We want to be there,” she said.

“Definitely,” Mendonza said. He walked a couple
of steps over to the rifle on the dock. He picked it up, quickly examined it, brought it over.

“Bet Ray left this,” he said.

“Close quarters, I’d rather have the pistol,” she said.

Mendonza said, “Yeah, I’ll want the shotgun inside a building.” He laid the rifle on the dock. Not exactly at Stickney’s feet, but close enough to reach.

“Let’s hustle,” he said.

Stickney knew that
Let’s hustle
meant them, not him. He wasn’t a part of this—not now, not with death all around them and the promise of more to come.

He didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong with them.

Definition of “useless”: A man at a battle with a pledge never to kill.

Ari seemed to sense what he was thinking. She said, “It’s okay, Stick. Someone has to stay with the boat.”

“That’s right,” Mendonza said. “We’ll need the boat. Anybody comes, you cast off and back the hell out of here.”

Stickney watched them start up toward the buildings.

He spotted movement up on the hill. A man—not Favor—came out of the largest building, running in a crouch. He was carrying an AK-47—even at this distance, Stickney recognized it. The man disappeared into the smaller structure nearby, the building lowest on the hill.

Stickney knew that Ari and Al had seen him too. They
were now double-timing. Mendonza was pointing as they ran. Stickney could imagine him saying,
You take that side, I’ll go in this door.

Stickney looked down at the rifle, a couple of paces away. He found himself walking over, picking it up, examining it. Finding the safety.

He couldn’t say why. The weapon drew him in. The moment drew him in.

He held the rifle and watched his two friends as they hurried up the hill.

The Russians moved into position for another spasm of violence.

In the main building, the huge orderly named Boris Godina decided that he couldn’t do anything for Andropov. There wasn’t much bleeding, but Godina knew that a bullet fragment must’ve gotten into the spinal nerves at the back of his neck, because Andropov was paralyzed on his left side. Godina stood and walked into the armory across the hall.

The orderly named Sasha Batkin left the main building and crouched low as he covered the few yards down to the blockhouse. He noticed the boat, and the men and the woman down at the dock, and thought that they had spotted him too. He knew that he had to move fast now, bring the girl up, and get back to the post he was supposed to secure.

He slipped into the blockhouse, turned on the lights, propped the AK against the wall.

He dug out his keys to the cell door and turned the key in the lock.

Viktor Karlamov was in the coconut grove, trying to stay hidden as he moved down to the dock, when he looked off to his left and saw a man and a woman through the trees. They were hurrying up the hill. Karlamov knew that they must be from the boat. He had to stop them.

He turned left and maneuvered through the trees. He moved quietly, picking his way past dried palm fronds. The man and the woman didn’t hear him. They continued up the hill, and as Karlamov came out of the trees, he thumbed off the safety and stepped in behind them with a clear shot at their backs.

Sasha Batkin pushed open the cell door, looked for the girl, and found the muzzle of an AK-47 inches away, pointed at his chest.

Batkin looked into the face of the man holding the AK. It was like staring down into a well, black and empty and infinite. Batkin felt himself falling into that well, falling forever. Gone gone gone.

Batkin saw the twitch of the trigger finger. He never heard the burst that ripped him apart.

The burst echoed down the hillside. Mendonza and Arielle looked up to where it had come from.

Stickney looked up the hillside too. He saw Viktor Karlamov step out of the coconut grove about twenty yards behind Mendonza and Arielle.

Karlamov brought his AK to his shoulder, into
firing position.

From the moment he saw Karlamov emerge from the trees, Stickney had about a second and a half to react.

He didn’t think about what he was going to do. He felt.

He felt Al and Ari, and Ray unseen somewhere up on the hill. He felt bonds and debt. He felt love—more love than he had ever known from anyone in his life. More love than he had ever felt.

He lifted the Dragunov to his shoulder.

Favor was leading Marivic Valencia out of the cell, putting his hand out to her as she stepped around the body that lay in the doorway, just a reassuring touch to let her know that she was okay. But she seemed to be fine. Her hand was light and steady.

“Sir,” she said as she left the cell, “now my brother, please.”

Then the shot.

It was a single rifle shot from the direction of the dock. Favor stepped out and looked down the hill and saw Mendonza and Arielle turning, and saw the body on the ground a few steps below them, and saw Winston Stickney still sighting down the Dragunov.

Stickney slowly lowered the rifle, then abruptly tossed it away, flinging it

Oh Stick,
Favor thought.

Favor motioned to Marivic Valencia, pointing down the hill to Mendonza and Arielle, and said: ”That way. Hurry.”

Then he started up the hill to the big, low building, the one he had been bound for since he first saw it.

In that building, the orderly Sergei Godina was rushing through the surgical prep room, outside the operating suite, when he literally ran into Favor coming through the door from outside. Both were carrying AK-47s but had no chance to raise them. They used the rifles as staffs, pushing and parrying. Godina knocked the rifle from Favor’s grasp, but Favor reacted quickly, launching himself hard into Godina’s midsection before Godina could raise his own weapon.

Favor clutched at him, slammed him into a wall, putting his weight and momentum behind it. They fell to the floor together, grappled, rolled…

… and Godina came up on top, with both hands at Favor’s throat, trying to clamp down, the pads of his thumbs looking for Favor’s larynx as Favor bucked and writhed beneath him.

And then the balisong was suddenly in Favor’s hand, the blade flashing and snapping into place.

Favor swung the blade and buried it to the hilt in Godina’s back. But Godina seemed to ignore it, and his grip tightened. Favor’s hand jerked back and forward, this time sinking the knife into Godina’s left arm.

Godina screamed and released his grip.

Now Favor was loose. He threw Godina off and leaped forward, ripping with the knife, sweeping and stabbing, a fury of motion, slashing at the arms that
Godina raised to fend him off, then thrusting downward as Godina faltered. Favor bellowed, the blade rising and falling, sinking into Godina’s chest, again and again and again.

Godina stopped struggling. Favor drew the blade up once more…

… then held back.

He stood.

He was a feral creature now, grim and fierce, panting, snarling, slathered in blood. Murderous.

He picked up one of the rifles.

On the floor, Godina pawed at one of Favor’s ankles. He held the fabric of Favor’s pants and looked up at him with an expression of shock.
How could you do this to me?

Favor kicked the arm away without looking back, strode forward toward the swinging doors of the operating room, and threw them open.

In the hallway at the other side of the surgical suite, Anatoly Markov pushed a desk out of the ops room, into the hallway. He turned it over, crouched behind it, and pointed the AK at the door. The safety was off. His finger was on the trigger. He was ready to fire at the first movement.

Ilya Andropov was on the floor behind him. Andropov had been quiet, but he now began to grunt and thump the wall with his free hand. Markov ignored him at first, then finally looked over his right shoulder at him and said, “Ilya, please.” Andropov’s eyes went wide—pleading, Markov thought. He
wondered what that was about.

Markov felt a pressure at the back of his head.

It was the muzzle of a shotgun.

From behind Markov’s head, a voice said in English: “I don’t know if you understand me, but you can save your life right now.”

Markov understood. He laid the rifle down, very slowly.

A green curtain divided the operating room, drawn nearly three-quarters of the way across. When Favor burst through the swinging doors, every head on the near side of the curtain turned to look at him. Every head that was conscious and could move.

Lazovic and his assistant, two nurses, the technician who sat at a heart-lung machine—they all stopped what they were doing and turned toward Favor, the fearsome apparition that he was. Favor, too, paused as he entered the room. He looked around. He saw the patient unconscious on the table, mostly covered in surgical sheets. Two clear tubes ran from his chest to the heart-lung machine, blood flowing out and in through the tubes.

“Where’s the boy?” Favor said.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The only sounds were the electronic beeping of medical monitors and the soft swish of blood as it moved through the heart-lung machine.

“Where’s the boy?” Favor said. Louder now, heated.

Still nobody answered. But something in their silence, the way they stood, made him approach
the table. He saw that the patient’s chest was open, framed by the jaws of a stainless steel retractor that held it open wide. Lazovic’s hands were in the opening, and when Favor looked closer he saw that the hands were cradling a flaccid, fist-sized lump of meat, partly enclosed in a membrane. Off to one side was a rolling cart, and on the cart was a stainless steel dish, and in the dish was a nearly identical fist-sized lump.

Favor realized that they were both human hearts. The one in the steel dish was pushed off to one side. An afterthought.

A discard.

So the one in the surgeon’s hands, the one already in the patient’s chest…

Favor circled around the head of the table and pulled back the green curtain.

Ronnie Valencia’s body lay on the other side, on an identical table, his chest held open by an identical steel retractor, with a cavity in his chest where the heart should have been.

Favor raised the AK and leveled it at Lazovic’s midsection. He intended to kill Lazovic … kill all of them.

From across the room, Winston Stickney said, “Ray, don’t.”

He had followed Favor up the hill, into the building.

Favor shouted, “Do you see this, Stick?” He pointed at Ronnie’s body with the muzzle of the rifle, then swung it back on Lazovic.

“I see. More dying won’t bring him back.”

“They’re killers … they’re evil.”

Stickney’s shoulders formed a sad shrug of agreement.

Lazovic spoke: “Whatever we are, the patient doesn’t deserve to die. If you kill us, you’ll kill him.”

Lazovic’s hands were still buried in the chest, but he inclined his head, nodding toward the head of the unconscious patient.

“You can see, his life is in our hands,” Lazovic continued. “Not just at this moment or for the next hour. He’ll need our care for at least the next couple of weeks before he can leave the island.”

“I don’t give a shit about him,” Favor said. “He’s as evil as any of you.”

“Is he?” Lazovic said. “He wanted to live. That’s his great sin. He used what he had, just to buy a few years. Can you really say you wouldn’t do the same?”

Favor didn’t answer. He was looking at Stickney. Favor thought of him picking up the rifle, raising it to protect his friends. What that must have required. He thought of Stickney throwing away the rifle.

Stickney looked inexpressibly sad.

Favor looked down at the patient, distantly noting the sunken cheek, the eye askew. He was unconscious, suspended between life and death, fragile. Completely vulnerable.

“We did what we came here for,” Stickney said. “This place is done.”

“Of course it is,” Lazovic said. “We can’t possibly continue.”

“Shut up,” Favor said. He pointed to Ronnie’s body, the retractor in his chest. “Take that thing out. Clean him up. Wrap him in a sheet. I’m bringing him back to his mother.”

He walked out, through a door and into the hallway where Mendonza was holding the shotgun on two Russians, one badly wounded, the other badly scared. Favor felt suddenly detached, drained. He looked curiously at the wounded man. He leaned in closer to examine the man’s wound, and from the way he reached up to fend Favor off—one arm and leg moving while the other lay still—Favor saw that he was paralyzed.

Favor said, “Who did this?”

Mendonza said, “Not me. I guess it was you.”

Favor stared at the injured man on the floor, his eyes darting, wild. He was finished, Favor thought, no future but a lingering death. Favor took out the balisong and opened it. It would be easy: slit the jugular and the carotid, finish what he had done. It would almost be a kindness.

Favor folded the knife and put it away.

Stickney came through the doors at the head of the corridor. He was holding the body, wrapped in a surgical sheet.

Favor said, “You got him, Stick?”