The Heaven Trilogy (134 page)

The man suddenly turned back. “I'm sure you can understand my need for your silence,” he said evenly. “At least for the next day or two. Drug merchants aren't well-bred men. They would think nothing of slitting your throats.”

He said it so casually, so evenly, that Sherry wondered again if he himself were a drug runner, lying to gain their confidence and planning to return later and do just that. Slit their throats. But that made no sense. He could have done it already.

Casius turned from them, stepped through the door, and was gone into the night. She let out a breath of relief.

“Do you believe him?” the father asked to her left.

“I don't know. He smells like death to me,” she replied, still staring at the closed door. Muddy water spotted the floor where the man had stood.

“Yes, he does,” Father Teuwen agreed quietly. “Yes indeed, he does.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CASIUS LEFT the mission house feeling a surge of blood lust pull at his pulse. He cut northeast through the jungle, his thoughts suddenly full of the woman. A nun possibly, but more likely a visitor by her wide eyes, posing as a nun for her own protection. If so, it had been the father's doing. Strong man, the father, worthy of his post. Hardship had visited the priest often, he guessed. The woman might not have the father's weathered soul, but her own soul wasn't as soft as Casius had initially guessed. Odd for such a feminine-looking woman. He pushed the thought from his mind and pressed forward.

A faint sound suddenly registered in his mind—a distant, abstract contradiction in the jungle. He caught himself midstride and stilled his breathing. A cough, perhaps? It didn't repeat itself, but now a rhythmic thumping drifted through the trees, from the direction of the mission.

Boots! Running for the compound!

Casius cursed under his breath. This deep in the jungle the heavy clodding of boots on the run was a sound rarely heard. Definitely military. He stood still and spun through his options. He was too close to his objective to ignore an attack.

He swore again and cut back through the jungle toward the mission station. The father and the nun had their own lives to live and defend—they weren't his concern. But those boots, they came from men who had no business in this part of the jungle—that made the priest and nun his concern.

Casius leapt over a log and sprinted down the jungle path, withdrawing the bowie as he ran. The mission clearing came abruptly, and he pulled up behind a wide tree on the compound's edge.

His pulse settled quickly and he slid around the tree, knowing the dark trunks at his back would keep him concealed.

A bright moon drifted between clouds, revealing two groups of men, clearly paramilitary by their khaki dungarees. A band of three or four ran doubled over for the utility shack at the airstrip's turnaround, possibly headed for the radio. Four others ran directly toward the mission house.

Without thinking through his options, his heart now pounding in his ears, Casius crouched low and ran for the mission house. They clutched rifles that jerked in cadence to their run. The sound of spare clips rattled with each footfall. They had come to kill.

Worse still, he was running after them. Racing right across this wide-open field in plain sight now, jeopardizing his whole mission for the sake of two missionaries he hardly knew. No, he was protecting
his
mission. Yes, protecting his mission.

Two of the soldiers veered toward the living quarters on the left; two ran for the far right. Keeping those on his right cleanly in his peripheral vision, Casius cut left, wielding his knife wide, underhanded. The lead soldier smashed his rifle butt against the door with a loud
crack!
that split the night air. The door snapped open.

Casius reached them then, just as the first man lifted his leg to step inside. He crashed full tilt into the second man's back, propelling him chin first into the doorjamb. The soldier's jaw snapped with a crunch. The other man disappeared inside, unaware of his partner's troubles.

Casius saw the others to his right spin toward him. He operated solely on instinct, from the gut, where killing was born.

With his left arm he caught the man who'd crashed into the doorjamb under his arm before the man slumped to the ground. With his right he slashed his blade across the soldier's neck. He swiveled him like a shield to face the other two now fumbling with their weapons. One had his rifle at his cheek, the other at his waist. Casius slung his knife at the first man and released the man in his arms. He snatched the rifle from the dead soldier's hands and threw himself to his right.

Two sounds registered then: The first came from his bowie, drilling that first man in the neck. He knew that because he glimpsed it as he rolled not once but twice, chambering a round as he tumbled. The second sound came from within the building. It was a single gunshot. He knew immediately that someone had died inside.

Another boom crashed on his ears—that second man across the yard, next to the one with a knife in his neck, was firing at him. Casius came to his knee with the rifle at his shoulder, pumped two slugs into the soldier's chest, and spun to the first door again. To his right, both soldiers crumbled to the earth.

The night fell eerily silent and Casius knelt frozen, the rifle against his shoulder, trained on the dark doorway through which the first solider had disappeared. On the lawn, three of the man's compadres lay in heaps. Casius felt his heart thump against the wooden stock and he breathed deep, keeping that black doorway in focus.

Across the compound shouting came now. The other men had secured their objective and were coming. Casius watched the steel barrel sway with each breath, a throbbing cannon begging for a target.

But the target was taking its time, in there feeling for a pulse, gloating over spilt blood, no doubt. Heat flashed up his spine at the thought. Saving lives never seemed to come easy to him. Killing, on the other hand, was second nature. He was a killer. Slayer. Not savior. He should just waste them all and get on with it!

The door to his right suddenly burst open. At the same moment the dark doorway in his barrel sights filled with a beaming Hispanic male. He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, slamming the man back in a silent scream.

The yelling rushed closer now.

Casius spun to his right and saw the woman standing there wide-eyed and gaping. Which meant the father had probably been shot.

“Wait there!”

He bounded across the lawn and into the living quarters. A figure ran out of the back room—Father Petrus, white-faced and haggard, but somehow alive.

“What . . . ?” the father began.

“Not now! Run!” Casius snapped.

The priest ran past him and Casius followed.

The woman hadn't moved. A glance told him that she'd been coherent enough to pull on work boots. She wore the same white T-shirt and shorts she'd worn earlier.

Casius crossed the lawn in four long strides and snatched the woman's hand. “Follow me if you want to live! Quickly,” he said and tugged at her arm.

She refused to budge for a moment, her eyes scanning the dead bodies. A small guttural sound came from her throat. A moan
.
Her cold hand trembled badly in his own.

“Move!” Casius snapped.

“Sherry!” Petrus had spun back.

She sprang over the bodies, staggered once, nearly planting herself face-down, and then regained her balance.

They ran like that, Casius leading, pulling Sherry by an outstretched arm toward the looming jungle ahead and Father Petrus to their side. Voices began shouting behind, but at each other. Casius remembered the woman's white shirt. It would be an easy target. He ran faster, now literally dragging her behind. But honestly, he wasn't thinking of her. He wasn't thinking of himself either. He was thinking of that dark jungle just ahead. Once he reached that dark mass of brush he could resume his mission.

They plunged past the first trees, pell-mell. No shots rang out behind and he glanced back. No pursuit. Casius slowed to a quick walk.

A soft sob filtered into his ears. He blinked. For the first time a strange notion took shape in his mind. He had a woman in tow, didn't he? A woman and a priest. A small buzz droned between his ears.

He realized he still held the woman's hand. He dropped it and instinctively wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts.

He couldn't take them with him. The sob came again, just behind, through clenched teeth, as if she fought a losing battle to keep her emotions in check. A haunting from America, trailing him into the jungle like his own personal ghost, he thought.

Casius swallowed hard, refusing to look back. He could set them in the direction of a nearby village and send them packing with a slap on the back. But he might as well be sending them to their deaths.

And there's a problem with that?

No, of course not.

Yes
.

Heat flushed his face at the thought and he veered from the path into the jungle. The men behind weren't pursuing, but there was no telling what else might show up on a marked path.

He mounted a large log bordering the trail and dropped beyond it. The woman's boots scuffed the log's bark. They were following without protesting. Fingers of panic raked his mind.

Casius spun around. The black canopy masked the moon high above. Sherry froze ten feet behind as if she were his shadow, staring at him with white eyes in the dark. Petrus stopped beside her. For a few long moments neither moved.

His options spun through his mind, calculated for the first time. On one hand he was tempted to leave them. Just bolt now while they stood like mummies, leaving them to crawl back to the path and survive on their own. Back to the mission perhaps. The men might have left.

On the other hand, she was a woman. And he was a priest.

Then again, that was why he
should
leave them. He could hardly make the plantation, much less penetrate it with them stumbling behind.

They still hadn't moved, a fact that now dawned on him with a glimmer of hope. Maybe the woman wasn't some soft-souled talker, but one of those athletic types. She'd kept up with him easily enough, it seemed. And she had just witnessed him shoot a man in the throat while the blood from two others flowed under her boots. Yes, she'd cried, but she hadn't screamed or wailed as some would.

In reality, leaving her would be killing her. His shoulders settled and he closed his eyes briefly.

When he opened them, he saw that the woman had taken a step toward him. The priest followed.

“Sherry and Petrus, right?” His voice sounded as though he'd just swallowed a handful of tacks.

“Yes,” the priest said, voice steady.

He exhaled and squeezed his hands into fists. “Okay. Sherry and Petrus. Here's the way it is. You want to live? You do exactly as I say. No talking, no questions. Out here it could mean life or death. You take all those feelings in your chest and you stuff them. When we get to safety, you can do what you want. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but we're just trying to survive here. Not save souls.”

“I'm not a nun,” she said.

“Fine. Follow me as close as possible. Watch where I place my feet; it'll help. Father, you follow her. If you become too tired, tell me quietly.” He turned from them and waded into the brush. Sherry followed immediately.

He slid over another waist-high log, thinking she might need help over. But from his sideways glance he saw that she mounted the log quickly and followed in step with Petrus right behind.

He would take them to the plantation's perimeter, stash them safely, and return after a quick penetration.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

ABDULLAH AMIR leaned over his desk, picking a scab that had formed over an infected mosquito bite on his upper lip. White miniblinds covered the window that overlooked the processing plant. Behind him a dilapidated bookcase housed a dozen books, haphazardly inserted.

Abdullah sucked blood from his lip and returned his attention to the Polaroids spread on the desk. He had taken them of the bombs in the lab below, their panels opened like two spacecraft waiting to be boarded while the Russian scientist slept. Beside the photographs, a hardcover book titled
Nuclear
Proliferation: The Challenge of the Twenty-first Century
lay open.

It had been nearly a week since Jamal had made contact. He'd simply said that it was time and then vanished. The thought that the man might be on his way here to the compound had not escaped Abdullah. The thought both terrified and delighted him. He'd decided that if Jamal came, he would kill him.

A knock startled him. Abdullah shoved the photographs into the book and dropped the evidence into his top drawer. “Come.”

Ramón opened the door and guided the captain of the guards, Manuel Bonilla, into the room.

The captain's eyes skirted him and beads of sweat covered Manuel's forehead.

“Yes?” Abdullah said.

“We successfully took the compound, sir.”

But there was more. Abdullah could see it in the man's tight lip. “And?”

“We suffered four casualties, sir.”

It took a moment for Abdullah to understand the words clearly. When he did, heat surged up his spine and washed through his head. “What do you mean, you suffered casualties?” Abdullah felt his voice tremble.

The man stared directly ahead now, not making eye contact. “It was highly unusual,” Manuel replied awkwardly. “There was a woman . . . She escaped with the priest.”

Abdullah stood slowly. A wave of dizziness washed through his head. The infection on his lip stung. Not so long ago he would have lashed out in a moment like this, but now he only felt sick. What he was about to do loomed like a giant in his mind.

“I am sorry—”

“Shut up!” Abdullah screamed. “Shut up!”

He sat, aware that he was trembling. Where was Jamal?