The Cure (12 page)

Now all that was left to do was learn why this mysterious company had taken such an interest in her, and take a ride in a luxury helicopter.

The heliport used by Advanced Science Applications was in one of the most isolated spots in all of San Diego County. San Diego was a tropical paradise with a perfect climate, at least along the coast. But venture even ten miles inland and it could warm up quickly, with temperatures often climbing from ten to thirty degrees over this distance, and with brown, rather than green becoming the dominant color of the landscape. Home prices and population tended to fall the farther inland one traveled going east, and the closer to the Mexican border one traveled going south. The heliport was located a full fifteen miles east of the coast and only a few miles north of Mexico, so it was very rocky and very sparsely populated.

Erin had used Google Maps to do a virtual recon of the area. She wasn’t about to get inside a helicopter with this strange caller when neither he, nor his company, had left much of an Internet footprint, and when he was far more interested in her than he had any right to be. Beyond that she wasn’t sure why this situation had rattled her so much, but she wasn’t going to enter the helicopter until she had satisfied herself that she wasn’t walking into an ambush, although why her instincts were screaming to her this might be the case wasn’t entirely clear. But she had learned to trust her instincts.

She laughed out loud as she thought about this further. She had trusted her instincts when it had come to Hugh Raborn, now a mystery man named Drake, and how had
that
worked out for her? The recent track record of her intuition was pretty miserable, she had to admit. Even so, she wasn’t quite ready to abandon her gut feelings just yet.

Erin pulled into the lot of a small Episcopal church, which probably attracted a significant fraction of the sparse citizenry of the area on Sundays and other occasions but which was now deserted. It was surrounded by a few palm trees that looked more dead than alive. If not for the sign, the white, eight-foot-tall wooden cross sticking up from the roof, and a concrete parking lot, the structure could easily have been mistaken for a very large, very boring house.

She parked her car so that only the front of it peeked out from behind the building, lowered her window, and pulled out a pair of high-powered binoculars she had bought along with a GPS tracking device—and one additional item. One even pricier than the binoculars. Thank God for credit cards. At her pathetic income, it would take her a year to pay off these spy gadgets.

She got her bearings and searched for the heliport with her binoculars. She found it, as expected, about two hundred and forty yards distant. There was only one helicopter sitting there, and even through binoculars as powerful as a small telescope, it looked like a radio-controlled toy, parked in the center of a light gray concrete slab the size of a basketball court, surrounded by a gate and fence. Inside the fence, along with the copter, was what looked like a maintenance shed and a small, self-serve gas pump, dispensing whatever kind of fuel helicopters used. Several cars were parked inside as well, in an area clearly designated for such use.

Based on its relative size compared to the cars, the helicopter was on the large side, probably able to seat eight or more passengers, and was an absolute beauty, exuding corporate opulence. But it didn’t have the company’s name painted on it, which Erin considered yet another red flag.

She made out a man sitting in the cockpit, the size of a figurine, who was almost certainly the pilot making preparations for imminent liftoff—they were expecting her at any minute. Two men were standing next to each other near the helicopter, dressed casually, who gave the clear impression, despite their diminutive appearance through the binoculars, that they could easily get jobs protecting the president, and both appeared to be scouring the road leading to the heliport for signs of her.

Erin removed the parabolic listening device from its leather case and assembled it by snapping together six separate panels. Fully assembled it was about the size and shape of an oversized umbrella without the spokes, with a thick black microphone in the center and a short, grooved, gun-grip handle. The parabolic dish was fairly light, about the weight of three equivalently sized umbrellas, but it came with a tripod, which she hurriedly set up. She adjusted the dish/tripod assembly until it was pointed directly at the heliport.

Fortunately, the chopper blades were still. Had they not been, they would have drowned out all conversation in the area. It took Erin three or four minutes to adjust the three-band equalizer on the listening device to bring up the frequencies and tones she wanted, but sure enough, just as advertised, she suddenly could hear the conversation over two hundred yards distant in her headphones as though it were taking place next to her. She felt a twinge of guilt listening in like this, but if this operation was legitimate and their intentions pure, no harm would be done. And if their intentions were
not
pure …

The two men made small talk for another few minutes. She watched through the binoculars as the taller man—four inches high instead of three—checked his watch. “She’s late,” he said.

The other man didn’t respond.

“Well, it’s not like there’s any danger of her being delayed by traffic around here,” explained the taller man.

“Maybe she’s in the john,” said the other. “And we’re not in that much of a hurry anyway. Although I am curious to see if she’s as hot as advertised.”

“This is a helicopter, Adam, not a singles bar,” said the taller man, more in amusement than reprimand. “I brought it up because I’m wondering if she got cold feet. Fuller said he was surprised she agreed to fly out on such short notice without doing more checking. Or asking him more questions.”

“And he used the Advanced Science Applications routine?” said the shorter of the two.

“Right,” said the other man.

“Did he actually use his real name with her?”

“He did. Which surprised the hell out of me. That’s getting rare for him.”

The other man said nothing. Perhaps he shrugged, but Erin couldn’t make it out at this distance.

Just great,
she thought miserably. Fuller rarely used his real name. And the corporate identity must be fake, since one of the men had said it was just part of a
routine
.

Why was truth suddenly such a precious commodity? Was she wearing a sign around her neck that said
Lie to Me
? She had begun to feel paranoid and ridiculous pointing a fricking satellite dish at these men, but not anymore.

Erin saw movement out of the corner of her eye and jumped so high she nearly hit her head on the ceiling of the car. Two men, both athletic looking and clean-cut, were standing by the door with grim expressions on their faces.

She had been so intent on listening to the conversation hundreds of yards away, and the headphones had been so effective at blocking out local sound, she hadn’t even heard their car pull up and park on the other side of the church. They had left the doors open so as not to risk the slightest sound alerting her to their presence.

She took off her headphones as one of the men reached in through the fully open window, removed the keys from the ignition, and slipped them into his pocket. Sitting in a cramped position inside a car was as poor a defensive position as one could get—or offensive position, for that matter. Before she did anything else her instincts—which had now redeemed themselves after their failure with Raborn—told her she needed to change this. She threw open the door, slid out of the car, and rose to a standing position in one smooth motion.

The two men backed a few steps away as she did. They both ran their eyes up and down her body, no doubt looking for signs of a weapon.

“Well this is unfortunate,” said one of the men, gesturing to the tripod and parabolic dish. “And unexpected. You need to come with us.”

“Who are you?”

“We’re with the people you’re going to meet.”

“Give me back my keys!” she demanded.

“You do realize that actively intercepting private conversations is illegal,” pointed out the man who had done all of the talking, while his partner continued to stand quietly beside him.

Erin didn’t reply. She had no idea if this was true or not. It might well be, but she guessed that even if it was a crime, it was almost surely just a misdemeanor.

“Come with us, and we’ll, ah …
escort
you … to your helicopter.”

Who were these men, and how had they found her? Erin didn’t believe in coincidence—not for something like this. Which meant they had been tracking her somehow. When they realized she had stopped for an extended period, they must have decided to break cover and check things out. If they had been physically following her, she would have seen them on the largely deserted roads she had taken to get here, and they would have arrived sooner. They had probably tracked her cell phone.

Erin shook her head in disgust. “Tracking people via their cell phones,” she said, “
without their permission,
is against the law too.”

The look of surprise in both men’s eyes told her that her hunch had been right, although their expressions returned to impassive almost immediately. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said their spokesman pleasantly. “But we should go. We don’t want to be too late.”

“Thanks,” she said with an insincere smile, “but I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll pass on this meeting, after all. Please send my apologies to, ah … Steve Fuller.”

“I’m afraid we’ve gone beyond that now. The problem is that we have no idea just what it is you managed to overhear. So now you don’t have a choice. You
are
coming with us.”

“No,” she said calmly but defiantly. “I’m afraid I’m not. I’ll take my keys now,” she added.

The years she had spent learning multiple martial arts, the many hundreds of hours she had spent training and competing and winning tournaments when she was a teen, had been in preparation for exactly this moment. She had never been forced to use her training in an actual physical confrontation, but she had been physically and mentally prepared to do so for countless years. She had vowed never to be helpless, or freeze up, or even hesitate.
Never again
.

As a soft, helpless child she had looked into the eyes of pure evil, of utter ruthlessness and utter lack of mercy, and these two men could not intimidate her now. They clearly had no idea just who it was they were dealing with. In the looks-can-be-deceiving department, she would take grand prize.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to keep your keys for now,” said the man, all traces of friendliness having left his voice. “You need to come with us. I don’t want to have to use force,” he said pointedly.

“Yeah. Me neither,” replied Erin, an intense, hard gleam in her eye.

There was something about the calm, confident, matter-of-fact way she said this that unsettled both men. They glanced at each other and then both began to reach for their guns at the same time.

They never made it. Erin executed a devastating roundhouse kick that connected with the silent partner’s head, and he dropped like an anvil to the cement of the parking lot, unconscious before he hit the ground. Erin landed lightly in a crouched position well before he completed his fall, and in a continuation of her original move, swept the other man’s legs out from under him before he could react, and he, too, catapulted to the ground.

To his credit, the man who had been their spokesman recovered immediately, and showed considerable athleticism jumping back to his feet to face her. For fifteen seconds he showed impressive skills of his own, blocking the flurry of blows she threw at him and even attempting a few of his own, without any of them landing. For a moment, Erin had a flashback to her many tournaments, when she had faced opponents who were very good, but not as good as she was. Her current opponent was firmly in this category.

She sensed that he was coming to the same realization. As well trained as he was, she expected him to switch tactics and try to change this from a martial arts contest into a wrestling match, where his superior strength would win the day. He rushed at her to do just this, attempting to tackle her and bring her to the ground, but she had been prepared and sidestepped his rush, landing a sideways kick to his knee as he passed, causing it to buckle and him to crash to the ground. She could have taken out his entire knee, but had purposely modulated the blow so as not to do permanent damage to such a vital part of his anatomy. He whirled and drew his gun, but she kicked it from his hand and scrambled for it, grabbing it while he was still on the pavement.

She didn’t recognize the make of the weapon, and its weighting was unusual, but she didn’t have time to dwell on this as she extended it toward her adversary. He brought himself to a sitting position, nursing his knee.

“Hands up!” she ordered.

He raised his hands slowly above his head.

“Now,” she said icily, “I’ll ask again. Who are you?”

“I’d like to ask you the same thing,” he replied.

He tilted his head and gazed at her with an expression reflecting both respect and admiration. “What did you do to the frail, geeky graduate student we were told to keep tabs on?”

“What in the hell is going on here?” she demanded. “What is this all about?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” he said. “I’m just hired muscle. Although apparently not as good as I thought I was,” he mumbled. “But the man you need to speak with is the man who wants to speak with you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Alan.”

“Okay, Alan. Is keeping me in the dark really worth your life?”

“Look … Erin,” he said. “I’ll happily tell you everything I know. I was told you were a science grad student named Erin, shown your picture, and told to keep tabs on you.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. I wasn’t even told you had … skills.” He glanced down at his injured knee. “And that might have been a useful piece of information to have.”