It was why he'd searched the floor frantically, she realized. It was why he insisted on taking her shirt when he'd found nothing else. Because his back was sliding against steel. She didn't know how long this ride would last or where it would take them, but she imagined that her thin cotton shirt was already giving way. His skin would be next.
Like breakaway tobogganers, they gained speed. Sherry pried her eyes open and lifted her head. Far away now, the dwindling entrance glowed between her jerking feet. Below her, the man suddenly tensed and squeezed her like a vise. His arms were wrapped around her midsection, coiled like a boa constrictor.
He grunted and she knew the T-shirt had given way. His forearms wound tight, forcing the air from her lungs. She grabbed at them in panicâbut to no avail. And then he was screaming and white-hot terror streaked up her spine. She opened her mouth, wanting to join him. But she had no wind for a scream.
He went suddenly limp; his scream fell to a soft groan and she knew he'd lost consciousness. She sucked a lungful of air and then another. Casius's arms bounced limp. She imagined a long smear of blood trailing them. Oh, God, please!
And then the mountain spit them out, like discarded sewage. Sherry heard the rushing water below them and it occurred to her that they were headed for a river. And under her, Casius was unconscious. She instinctively reached for the sky with both arms. Her scream echoed off the towering canyon walls above.
Cold water engulfed her and sucked the breath from her lungs as if it were a vacuum. Sound fell to murmuring gurgles and she clenched her eyes tight.
Oh, God, help me. I'm going to die!
She instinctively clutched the assassin's arm.
He came to life then, shocked by the water, disoriented and flailing like a drowning man. Sherry opened her eyes and struck for the lighter shade of brown, hoping she would find the surface there. She tugged at his arm once and then released him, hoping he would find his own way. Her lungs were caving in.
She nearly inhaled water before her head cleared the surface. But she held on and gasped desperately before her bottom teeth broke water. Casius shot through the surface next to her and she felt a rush of relief wash over her.
Sherry looked about, still pulling hard at the air. They were in a fast-flowing river, deep and smooth where they were, and crashing over rocks on the far side. She felt a hand grip her shoulder and propel her toward the nearest bank. They landed on a sand bar two hundred meters downriver, like two grounded porpoises, belly down, heaving on the shore. Sherry flopped her head to one side, and she saw Casius with his face in the mud. His shoulder blades oozed red through her T-shirt and her heart rose to her throat.
She tried to go to him, but a black cloud settled over her eyes.
God please,
she thought.
Please
. Then the black cloud swallowed her.
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 consideringâ”
“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 yourselfâno 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”âhe stabbed with the pointer againâ“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 wardânot 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 toâeven 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 stupidâsomething 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.”