Or Jamal.
“And what have you done?” he asked.
“I have ordered Manuel to pick them up.”
Abdullah whirled to the man, his eyes glaring. “Pick them up? And what if it's a sniper? How do you plan on picking up a trained sniper? You don't just pick up trained men; you take them out!”
Ramón stepped back. “If we kill them and they are in contact with some authority, then their absence will be a warning. I thought they should be taken alive.”
Abdullah considered that, turning from the man as he recognized the validity of the man's point. “But you don't just pick them up as if they were stray dogs. You saw how well Manuel did with the mission compound. How can you possiblyâ”
A rap suddenly sounded on the door and Ramón opened it.
Manual stood, winded and breathing hard. “We have spotted them, sir. Two men and a woman.”
“Good!” Ramón said. “Take them with the tranquilizers.”
Manuel turned to leave. “And Manuel,” Abdullah said. “If you let these three escape again, you will die. Do you understand?”
The guard stared wide-eyed for a moment and then dipped his head.
CASIUS LED them through the jungle at a punishing pace. To make a statement, Sherry thought. The statement that he wanted to leave her and her big mouth for the animals. They moved steadily through the trees, down one slope, over the next, up a cliff, through a creek, only to begin the cycle again.
The man dragging her through the brush was a killer many times over, that much was now painfully obvious. Like the men who had killed her parents. Killers for some abstract cause, ignoring the simple fact that for every one they killed, someone else was sentenced to live with that death. A brother, a sister, a wife, a child. No telling how many nightmares Casius had spawned in his years. She detested the man.
On the other hand, he had saved her life. And every time he spoke she found herself chasing away an absurd sentimentality. As if he were her guardian.
God forbid.
But true enough. It was why she had become so angry at him, she decided. It was as if her parents' killer had stepped out of her nightmares and come to save her with a flashing smile. One last twist of the knife.
The muscles in his calves balled and flexed with each stride. His bare feet moved effortlessly over the forest floor. Sweat glistened on his broad shoulders. At one point she found herself wondering what it would feel like to run a finger over such insanely massive muscle. She quickly dismissed the thought.
Father Petrus took up the rear, and Sherry thought about his suggestion that she was now on God's path, waiting for God to reveal truth as he saw fit. And if so, then this man was also a part of God's grand plan. Maybe somehow connected to the vision. Yes, the vision that came around each night like the falling of a pole-driver. That mushroom growing huge, night after night.
Casius had paused three times in the last fifteen minutes, surveying the land ahead carefully. Now he stopped a fourth time and raised his hand for silence.
A flock of parrots squawked into flight above them. Sherry held a hand to her chest, feeling her thumping heart beneath her fingers. “What is it?” she whispered.
He jerked a finger to his lips, listening.
CASIUS HAD felt it four times nowâthat hair-raising sense of prying eyes. They had progressed to within two miles of the compound, the last three hours under cover of darkness. He would leave Sherry and the father there under the shadow of several large boulders, scout the plantation quickly, and return for them within a few hours. He would then take them to the Caura River and return depending on what he found at the compound.
At least that had been in his mind. But now this tickle at the base of his brain unnerved him.
He had seen no sign of men. And yet that fourth senseâas if they'd been monitored by invisible eyes for the past fifteen minutes. In the dark, the man who used surprise wielded the biggest weapon. As an assassin he had relied heavily on sudden surprise in darkness. Losing it now with the woman and the priest would force him to abort his plan until he could get rid of them.
On the other hand he had been careful, staying under the heaviest canopy and avoiding ridges. Only a lucky observer could have picked them out and then only with powerful scopes. If there had been men stationed on the ground, he would have discovered them; he was confident of that.
Casius lowered his hand and stepped forward. Behind him, Sherry and Petrus followed. Although they hadn't talked, Sherry's disposition toward him had changed in the last few hours, he thought. Less animosity. Sharing the struggles of life and death united even enemies, it was said. Maybe that accounted for his own growing apprehension over leaving her alone while he scouted the plantation. In fact, it could have been her presence that brought that tickle to his neck.
Within ten minutes, they came to the edge of a clearing. Twenty yards out a small pond shone with the moon's reflection. Three large boulders jutted from the ground at one end. He turned to them and nodded. “All right. See those boulders? I want you to wait under them for a few hours while I scout ahead.”
Sherry stepped next to him, breathing steadily from exertion. He could smell her breath, like only a woman's breath could smell, although he could not imagine whyâshe hadn't worn lipstick or gloss for at least twenty-four hours. She peered ahead, her lips slightly parted, apprehension clear in her round eyes. Her shoulder touched his arm and it startled him.
She faced him and he shifted away as casually as possible. “A few hours? For what?” she asked.
Casius opened his mouth, not sure what he intended to say. It was then, with his mouth gaping and she looking like a puppy up at him that the faint coughs carried to him on the wind.
The instant before the darts reached them, he knew they were coming. And then they struck,
whap, whap
, the first in his arm, the second in his thigh. Thin and hairy and buried to their hilts.
Tranquilizer darts!
Whap, whap!
Sherry was hit!
His first thought was of Friberg's face, grinning back in Langley. His second was of the woman. He had to save Sherry.
He slung an arm around her waist and pulled her back, deeper into the jungle's cover. She was saying something. He could smell her breath, but he could not make out her words. He faced her and saw her wide eyes, inches from his face.
Casius staggered back as the drug swept through his veins. He fell, still holding the woman, breaking her fall with his own. Far away a shout rang out. Spanish, he thought. So he had been followed. But how? Something heavy rested on his chest.
Then his world went black.
Thursday
RICK PARLIER stood over Tim Graham, who fiddled with the tuning dials on the satellite transmitter. They had been in the jungle one night, and already the insects were taking their toll. The satellite dish had been set up in the canopy within minutes of their securing a base on the mountain's crest. Contact had been established with Uncle, Rick's designation for their U.S. link, and Graham had confidently settled down next to his toys. The receiver was left on at all times, and the frequency altered every thirty minutes to a schedule followed by all three parties.
It had been an hour since the receiver had first started sputtering, refusing either transmission or reception.
“There it is.” Graham withdrew what looked like a giant winged ant from the opened receiver. “Bugger chewed right through the variable volume resistor. Made a mess. Should be all right now.”
Five minutes later, Tim Graham hit the power switch and handed the mike to Parlier. “Should work now.”
Parlier took the mike and depressed the transmission lever. “Uncle, this is Alpha, Uncle, this is Alpha. Do you copy? Over.”
Static sounded over the speaker for a moment before the response came: “Alpha, this is Uncle. Read you loud and clear. Where the heck you been?”
“Sorry. We had a little problem with our radio. Over.”
There was a pause and the voice came back on. “Copy, Alpha. What is the status of the target? Over.”
Parlier looked out into the jungle. Uncle had reported a disturbance at some mission station twenty-five miles south and had speculated that it might be connected with their target. Then nothing. No action, no word, no nothing.
He pressed the toggle. “No activity on this side. Beta and Gamma report no movement. Will advise, over.”
“Roger, Alpha. Keep to the schedule. Over and out.”
Give me equipment that works in the jungle and I will,
Parlier thought as he handed the mike back to Graham. “Good work, Graham. Keep this radio clean. We can't afford another break like that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Parlier stood, walked to the boulders cropping from the crest, and glanced over his men. Phil and Nelson were on glass duty, peering diligently through the high-powered field glasses to the cliff lip below. Next to them, Giblet rested on his back, shooing away various flying insects with his hands. His sniper rifle sat propped on a tripod beside him, readied for a shot. Of course, even if they did spot the man, it was highly unlikely that Giblet would have the time to get a shot off. And even if he did, it would be a quick oneâhe could miss.
Graham's recommendation that they descend to the cliffs had gnawed in his gut all night. Beta and Gamma had established similar observation posts from which they studied the forests in the valley below. In addition to the cliff, they watched the canopy, looking for anything unusual that might indicate the passage of humans below them. So far they had observed nothing.
Except for insects, of course. They had observed plenty of those.
Parlier walked back to his radioman. “All right, Graham. Tell Beta and Gamma to hold tight. I'm taking this team to the cliff.”
Tim Graham grinned and snatched the mike from its cradle. “Immediately, sir.”
“Make sure you explain that we're not going
to
the cliffs. We're just going
near
the cliffs. You got that? And tell them I want them on the horn if they hear so much as a monkey fart.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?” The radioman grinned.
“Pack up. We're headed down.”
DAVID LUNOW knocked once and walked into Ingersol's office without waiting for a response. The man looked up, staring past bushy black eyebrows. His hair slicked back nicely, David thought, the kind of hairdo he could wear without washing it for a week.
David walked up and eased into a wing-backed chair facing Ingersol's desk. He stroked his mustache and crossed his legs.
“If you don't mind, I have to express my concerns. In the fifteen years I've been at the agency, I don't remember a single occasion when we've gone after anyone like we're going after Casius. Except in situations where we had full knowledge of a specific intent to damage. Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but Casius isn't exactly on a course to inflict any real damage. He may take out some rogue drug operation, but so what? Explain to me what I'm missing.”
“He broke ranks. A killer who breaks ranks is a dangerous man.”
“Yes. But there's more, isn't there?”
“You're his handler, David. Someone suggests taking out your man and you have a problem. I can understand that. Haven't we covered this?”
“It's more than that. Casius can take care of himself. Actually, that's its own problem. We're gonna end up with blood on our hands whether we like it or not. But it's this dogmatic insistence that we take him out instead of considering other alternatives, alternatives that seem much more reasonable to me, that has me baffled.”
Ingersol stared at him judiciously. “Not all issues of national security are put out in broad distribution memos.”
David flashed a smile at the man. “Look, all I'm saying is that nobody knows Casius like I do. Going after him this way is liable to create precisely the kind of problem we're trying to avoid by killing him. And the director must know that.”
He studied Ingersol's face at the first mention of the director. Nothing. He continued, “Evidently someone figures that risk is warranted, given what Casius might uncover down there. I think they're trying to protect something.”
“Pretty strong words for a man in your position,” Ingersol said. “You wanna rethink that?”
“I have. A hundred times. I think Casius is headed for a deep-cover operation, and I think someone wants him dead before he discovers whatever's being hidden down there in that jungle.”
“The world's full of deep-cover operations, Lunow. And if they weren't worth protecting, they wouldn't be deep cover, would they? It's not your position to question whether there is or isn't something to hide. It's your job to follow orders. We've been over this.”
“You're trying to take him out. I just wanted to make my position clear for when this thing hits the fan. And you know it will, don't you?”
“Actually, no, I don't.”
“If I'm right, it will. Because whatever is down there, it's about to be exposed.”
“All right. You've made your point. Finished. And, for the record, I think you're overreacting because it's
your
man down there breaking ranks. Go have a drink on me, but don't come waltzing into my office accusing the agency of negligence.”
David felt his cheeks flush. A trickle of sweat broke from his hairline.
“Are we clear?” Ingersol asked.
SHERRY'S EYELIDS felt heavy, as if they had been coated with lead while she slept. She applied pressure to them, wanting light to fill her eyes, but they weren't cooperating because the darkness did not roll back.
An image of Casius running barebacked through the brush filled her mind. Muscle rippled across his shoulder blades with each footfall.
She should open her eyes. And then another thought struck her: What if her eyes were already open?