No Immunity (32 page)

“Shhh.” Connie pointed to the road. “Hear that?”

“I don’t hear anything. Look, time is vital to these boys. You do have them here, don’t you?”

Wind rustled through branches, snapping them against one another and scraping leaves into leaves. It whipped Connie Tremaine’s short gray hair like wheat in a storm. Everything was gray, the dilapidated buildings, the sky, the scree from the abandoned mine that covered the ground. The snow was falling heavily now. Connie, deadly pale and sweaty, looked as if she could fade into the landscape with a thought. She eyed Louisa warily.

“Your answer is yes, then,” Louisa insisted. “Look, obviously you’ve gone to a lot of trouble, danger even, for these boys.” She grabbed Connie’s arm. “Don’t let them die now. Every minute counts.”

Connie stood granite-still, arms across chest, face revealing nothing except the effort it cost her to remain standing. Watching her, Kiernan wondered how many times she had stood just so, assessing a husband or boyfriend, creditor or gunman who had tracked a runaway to her.

Snow speckled Louisa’s blond hair, her soft, even features knit in concern. It was a look Kiernan had seen often in med-school rotation in the ER and on the faces of the staff in Africa. Louisa was shaking Connie’s arm. “There’s no time—”

Connie jerked free. “
Listen!
That vehicle’ll be in our faces in a minute. Who’s in it?”

Suddenly the wind slackened and the approaching engine thundered.

Louisa shot a glance down the drive. “There was no one behind us.”

“No one visible,” Kiernan said. “That’s someone making up time.”

“All the more reason to get the boys while we can.”

Connie held up a hand to quiet the woman she didn’t know and turned questioningly to Kiernan. “Your call.”

There were a dozen questions she needed answered. Was the drug going to save the boys, or save the navy’s experiment? Would the boys be cured or would it kill them—and the evidence of Louisa’s connection be buried? Already the roar of the engine was louder, closer. There was no time …“The boys have had this fever for days. Ten more minutes won’t matter. We wait till it’s safe.”

Louisa wheeled toward her. “That’s crazy. This drug’s their best shot.”

“We need to deal with the guy on our tail.”

“But I could be—”

“A spy? A pawn? What’s the right word, Louisa?” She was standing inches from the woman, shouting. “You’ve got a designer drug. The navy’s researchers are the only ones who know what to design against.”

“I couldn’t—”

“You’re still tight enough with them to have a pass into the park. You knew what they were doing there. Did you send Grady and the boys there just to spite Grady?”

Louisa jerked back as if she’d been slapped. “No! The experiments were different when I was up there. I never suspected … till it was too late.” She swallowed hard. “But no one will ever believe me.”

“Yeah, right,” Kiernan snapped. “That’s real hard to believe when you’re leading Fox here. Why didn’t you just offer him the backseat of your car and save him the trouble of driving?”

Brakes squealed; the engine snored like a winter bear, paused, then grumbled forward. It made the turn in the driveway.

Louisa turned toward the driveway, her face taut with panic.

“What are you worried about? Your buddies will be here in a minute to back you up,” Kiernan said. “Unless even you are frightened of them.”

Louisa didn’t answer.

“Maybe it’s worth more than two dispensable kids to test their ‘best shot’ drug. Is that it, Louisa?”

“Hurry.” Connie raced across the gravelly ground and disappeared into what looked like a pile of rotten timbers.

The truck was already in the driveway. No time to get to Connie. Kiernan raced back into the car barn, Louisa on her heels.

The driveway was ten feet away, visible between the boards. The wind hummed through the decaying wood, pricking at Kiernan’s skin, its deep tone contrasting with Louisa’s nervous huffs of breath. She was shivering so violently that even clasping her arms to her chest had no effect. She peered through the boards, through the falling snow, for the first sighting of Fox.

But it was Reston Adcock’s pickup truck that screeched to a halt. He leaped to the ground, gun in hand. “Get out here, both of you!”

Louisa gasped. Her fingers went to the wound on her face; she started to move. Kiernan grabbed her arm. “He’s looking around. He doesn’t know where we are. He’ll head for the house first.”

“He’s desperate. His hired thug has already attacked me. He’s already killed Grady, what do you think he’ll do to the boys after he’s used them up?”

Or before
, Kiernan thought. When Adcock realized the boys couldn’t tell him where the oil was, he’d leave them here in the snow without a thought. But kill Grady? That was the last thing Adcock would have done, not when Grady was the only lead to the oil and the boys. Grady knew Adcock better than any of them. He would have let him in, offered him a seat, and waited to hear if he could top Nihonco’s offer. If he’d been too feverish? Adcock would have scooped him up and raced to a hospital. What’s a little biological danger compared with millions of dollars? Through the cracks she could see Adcock edging his way toward the house, gun poised, eyes wild. In the silence she heard a rumble in the sky like thunder. “Wait till he’s inside. We’ll have a little time to make our move.”

“Move to what? From one pile of timber to another?”

“Shhh.”

“No! Are the boys in the house? Is he going to find them?”

Kiernan shook her shoulder hard. “Quiet! Of course they’re not in the house. Do you think Connie’s an idiot?”

“Well, then where? If something happens to you and I can’t find them—”

Adcock yelled, “I’m not after you girls, I just need those kids. Give me the boys and I’m gone.”

He stopped halfway to the house. The whitening ground of the courtyard was in front of him, the pile Connie had disappeared into ten feet behind him.

Snow coated Adcock’s shoulder as he looked from the house to the shed to the mine building and the car barn. Frustration and fury creased his tanned brow, and Kiernan could almost read his thoughts as he realized the impossibility of controlling all the buildings at once. Above him the sky was rumbling. It wasn’t thunder.

Kiernan whispered, “As soon as he goes inside—”

“Get those kids out here! I’m giving you five seconds! I’ve got torches here. Five seconds! Then I start torching the place. You can all fry.”

“He’s not going to—”

In a burst Louisa was out the door. “No you won’t, you bastard!” She aimed her gun and fired.

Adcock screamed, spun toward her, and shot.

She fired again and he slumped slowly to the ground, clutching his pistol as if it could heal him. He shot at her one more time as he fell.

Louisa grabbed her chest and sank. A gust fingered her blond hair, and Kiernan couldn’t tell whether the weak cry was from her or the wind. Her gun had fallen inches away; she reached for it but her arm was rubbery and her hand fell ineffectually to the ground. “Help me! Help!”

Adcock didn’t move.

“Help!”

Kiernan started toward her, then stopped. The porch door of the house creaked. Connie raced out.
Get back!
But it was too late for Kiernan to warn her. Running, Connie circled left, making a wide U on her way to Louisa. She almost reached the moaning woman when the shot struck her.

Kiernan looked to her right. Adcock was still lying on the ground. Standing over him, gun in hand, was the Weasel.

Above them was a helicopter.

A
S THE HELICOPTER BLADES
drummed above, Louisa lay on the ground, moaning ever more softly. A few feet away Connie neither moved nor made a sound. She had just been trying to do the decent thing. Near the truck, Adcock, too, had crumbled to the ground. There was no way of telling whether they were alive. Snow was beginning to collect in the creases of their clothes. Kiernan had to keep herself from running to them. But there was no help she could give them, not now. She peered out through the car barn cracks.

McGuire was still out there, armed with his weapon and Adcock’s. The wind whipped his thin brown hair, snapped his flimsy jacket against his ribs. His eyes were wild.

“Hey, O’Shaughnessy, it’s the boys I need. Gimme them and I’m gone.” He hadn’t even looked up at the helicopter a hundred yards overhead. “Hey, I got no beef with you. This is a money deal. Gimme the kids. I sell ’em to Nihonco, I take my millions, and I’m gone. Gimme the kids and you got nothing to fear.” He was shouting, but she could barely hear him over the beat of the blades.

Grady, Louisa, Adcock, and Connie, dead or dying, all for the knowledge of the oil deposit the boys had no way of transmitting. McGuire didn’t know the boys had no language. By the time they could learn to communicate—if they could do so at all—Grady Hummacher’s oil would be in gas tanks nationwide, via some other lucky geologist. But the Weasel didn’t know that. If he had, he wouldn’t have taken the chance of bursting through the chain on the motel door and shooting Grady Hummacher.

“Hey, I don’t have forever. This is my one big chance, nothing’s going to keep me from it. You got no choice, O’Shaughnessy.” For the first time, he looked up. The helicopter was moving closer, shifting side to side. “Don’t think they’re going to save you. Adcock was going to burn you out. The torch is still here. The wind from that copter will turn this place into an inferno. You’ll be embers by the time that thing lands. You and those kids if you don’t get ’em to me. Now!”

Where were the boys? Had Connie hidden them so well they would die before anyone else could find them?

“Hey, don’t worry. Those kids are valuable property. They’ll get the best. Hey, I’ll cut you in.”

The helicopter was fifty feet up. She expected to hear Fox’s voice blaring from the sky, but he wasted no time on words. The navy copter kept moving down, the vibration from the blades growing progressively stronger. If Fox took the boys to B-CADS, they’d be studied to death; if the Weasel got them, they’d just end up dead.

The Weasel was eyeing the aluminum shed directly across the courtyard from him. It was the one sturdy building in the complex, the logically safe place. To his right was the house, to his left the car barn from which Kiernan watched him. “The boys, O’Shaughnessy! Get me those lads.”

The copter was moving down fast. Fox was half way out the door.

The helicopter was twenty feet above them. Fox was bracing himself, ready to leap the moment it hit ground.

The boards of the car barn shimmied. At any moment the whole building could collapse on top of her. She forced herself to wait, to gauge the right moment.

On the ground in front, Connie and Louisa shifted in unison. It wasn’t them moving, she realized. The ground was shimmying.

“This way, McGuire!” She ran out under the copter. The maelstrom from the blades threw dirt and snow into her face. She ran, but the wind was so strong, it blew her back. She leaned almost horizontal, pushing off hard with each step. The Weasel was yelling, but she couldn’t make out words over the frantic beating of the blades. “The shed, Weasel. They’re in the shed. Come on, we’ve just got time.” She bent lower, using all her strength to keep going. She was under the copter when she shot a glance back at the Weasel. The man wasn’t moving. “Weasel, you want the boys or not? How many million dollars?”

She didn’t wait for his reaction. The ground was snapping up and down like a trampoline. Like a tent roof. Like a skylight ready to crack. Beneath the thunderous clap of the blades she could hear the groan as the earth gave way. The mine roof was caving in. The helicopter blades skimmed her head, knocking her forward. She flung her shoulders back, desperate to keep from falling, being sucked down into the growing hole. She was almost across the cavern. The gray soil was rushing down all around. She grabbed for the edge of the hole, her legs pedaling like mad as the ground beneath her collapsed. She flung herself onto the rim and rolled.

Only then did she turn and look back. She could see Fox’s horror-widened eyes. He yelled at the pilot. The copter jerked, head up. The engine screamed. Then it stalled and the copter smashed down on its side into the collapsed mine. The hole was fifty feet deep at the center, and soil was rushing in from all sides. Under the blade she spotted the Weasel, legs flailing against the rushing dirt. He wouldn’t be coming out without help.

She needed time to catch her breath, but there wasn’t time. Once the dirt settled, Fox and his pilot would get themselves out. “The boys!” Skirting the growing hole, she ran back to Connie. Connie lay two yards from the growing hole; she had pulled her arm under her head. Her face was gray. But she was breathing. Kiernan pulled her back near the grass. “The boys, Connie, where are they?”

“Hoist house.” She pointed to the looming structure on the low hill. “Upstairs, trapdoor.”

Ignoring the men’s angry screams in the hole, Kiernan ran for the decaying mine building, clambered up the wooden stairs onto the tracks leading to the ore shoots. One side was blank wall, the other empty windows through which ore must have been poured. At the end of the open hall the ore bin stood empty, rusting. She slowed, looked down, kicking away the dirt till she spotted a metal loop handle.

The trapdoor lifted with surprising ease.

The room below was lit by a camping lantern. Wooden walls, wood floor, table, chairs, and in the shadows a cot with two forms, huddled together on it. Heat from the tiny space flowed up through the hole.

She lowered herself onto the rung ladder and climbed down. She was holding her breath. At the bottom she turned toward the boys. They looked so small, so wasted. But their fevers had broken and they were alive.

B
RAD
T
CHERNAK LEANED BACK
in the seat of the fine gold Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo. “So, Kiernan, ‘after you got out of the burning pit,’ as my father used to say—”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, he said it about those old Saturday-morning serials in the movie theaters, the ones that ended with the hero trapped in the burning pit and a promise of great excitement next week. Dad spent the whole week trying to figure out how the hero could possibly extricate himself. The next Saturday he would rush to the theater, ready to see the great escape. What he’d get instead would be the next episode starting with the hero saying, ‘After I got out of the burning pit, I went on to …’ So?”