The Omicron Legion (21 page)

He chose a table against the wall and sank into a chair. When a waitress finally came over, Blaine asked to borrow her pen and grabbed a napkin from her tray. He wrote quickly.

DA SA—

I’M DOWNSTAIRS. NEED TO SEE YOU.

              MCCRACKEN

“Give this to the manager, please,” he said in Portuguese, handing it to the waitress along with a generous tip.

Two minutes later, a curly-haired young man in his mid-twenties approached the table.

“He told me you might be coming,” he said in English. “I was to send you up as soon as you arrived.”

“I’ve arrived.”

The young man pointed to a set of stairs on the left. “His office is on the third floor. To reach it, go up to the second landing and cross the dance floor. The guards will be expecting you.”

“Dance floor?” Blaine asked. He couldn’t wait to ask Fernando Da Sa why he had chosen the Bali Bar as his base. Making it up the stairs was like fighting traffic on the L.A. freeway. The dance floor was packed with bodies twisting and churning beneath flashing multicolored lights. A large man stood guard near a door across the floor, and Blaine found himself dodging bodies as he made his way there.

“McCracken,” Blaine announced to the guard over the din.

The man gestured toward the stairway just behind him with his eyes, the outline of a pistol obvious beneath his sports jacket. Blaine slid by him and climbed the steps. At the top of the stairs, another man directed him to an open door on the right side of the corridor. McCracken headed toward it.

The anomaly actually struck him as he passed inside.

Male guards instead of female guards. Why?

But a half-dozen steps inside the office and the why was made clear.

“Mr. Da Sa?”

The crime lord was seated in a high-backed leather chair behind his desk, immobile because of the neat slice in his throat that had spilled blood down the center of his suit and splattered it over his desk blotter. In the same instant that Blaine put everything together, his ears registered steps pounding his way. A window directly before him was open to the Rio night, and he lunged toward it, a step ahead of the machine-gun fire suddenly struggling for a bead on him.

Rat-tat-tat…

The sound peppered his ears as he hit a narrow strip of the second-floor roof. He tried for balance, but the slippery metal tripped him and he fell, thumping hard to the cobblestone drive below. Wobbly he regained his feet just as machine-gun fire from down the hill came his way. Blaine swung and retreated up the cobblestone driveway. Swinging right at the top, at the Bali Bar’s rear, he crossed into an alleyway that ran between the bar and an athletic club. He was running, but his feet felt heavy. He felt dizzy from the fall and started to crumple, just as he realized the alley came to a dead end.

He was trapped, the guards starting down the alley after him. He fought to get back on his feet, but his strength was gone. The alley swam before him. He reached instinctively into his jacket for the gun he’d lost at the Jardim Botanico. He was too groggy to notice that just behind him the round cover of a telephone-line tunnel had popped open.

Blaine was clawing to hold on to his last bit of consciousness when a pair of hands pulled him down into a dank darkness his mind at last surrendered to.

Part Four
Children of the Black Rain

Washington:
Sunday, December 1, 1991; 6:00
A.M.

Chapter 21

THE NIGHTMARE BEGAN
for Patty Hunsecker when the phone jarred her from sleep at the first light of dawn.

“Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any,” she said, knowing full well it could only have been Sal Belamo.

“Wake up, lady,” came Belamo’s rapid voice. “Wake up quick.”

Patty was upright in the next instant. “What’s wrong, Sal?”

“We got as some problems, lady. Do what I say and you’ll be all right. You hearing this?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’m calling you from one of these goddamn car phones. The safe house isn’t safe.
You’re
not safe. Clear?”

“Crystal,” Patty said, not as bravely as she had hoped.

“I’m on my way there now. Chances are someone’s gonna beat me to the building, so here’s how we’re gonna play it. You gotta get out, and you gotta do it now. Back stairs. Rear exit…No, they could be watching that…”

“Who, Sal?”

“Good question, lady. Not a good answer. Give you the shitty details when I pick you up. Suffice it to say everything makes sense now, most of it anyway. Old Blaine’d be proud of me…and you.”

“What’s going on?”

“You’re leaving, and I’m picking you up. Go up to the roof. Do you hear me? Go up to the roof. You’ll find some heavy twenty-foot planks up there. There’s an apartment building next to the safe house that’s the same height.”

“I know it.”

“What you gotta do, you gotta slide those planks across and walk on over. Then head down through the unlocked door on the building roof to the alley on the western side. I’ll be there.”

Patty was fully awake now, and so was her fear. “What about security? Can’t we call—”

“Fuck security. If they’re not dead, they’re useless. Just do what I tell you.”

Patty dressed quickly in jeans and a sweater. She moved cautiously into the corridor, holding her breath in fear that a gun barrel would greet her. There was nothing, no sounds, no shapes. She slipped silently to the stairwell and started to open the door when she heard the echo of steps ascending. Hard to tell how many. A single man, perhaps two.

Patty felt panic swell within her. She had to reach the roof, but obviously this approach was out. Something had spooked Sal Belamo—and whatever it was was coming up the stairs for her. She bolted back toward her room, trying to frame the building’s structure in her mind.

The fire escape! That was her only chance! She reentered her room and locked the door behind her. Then she rushed to the window and lifted it open. The fire escape lay before her, rusty and providing no reason for confidence. Nonetheless, she pulled herself outside onto it. Her boots clanged noisily on the metal tubing. Rising to a crouch, she slid the window back down and began her climb up the ladder.

The cold Washington morning bit into her lightly clothed body, and her breath misted before her face. There were four flights to cover, the steps were cold and slippery, wet with morning dew. A few times she had to stop just to wipe her palms on her jeans. As she neared the top, her heart thundered with the fear of being caught, but she managed to swing her legs off the ladder’s top rung and onto the roof without anyone stopping her.

Scanning the rooftop, she spotted the planks Sal had mentioned and ran over to examine them. To her dismay, only one was usable, the other too rotten to be trusted to carry her. This meant she’d have to get to the neighboring building with only ten inches of cushion.

Patty hoisted the plank and slid it over to the adjacent roof with the utmost care, aware a mistake now could ruin her only viable escape route. No sooner was it in place on the opposite roof, its middle section sagging noticeably, then fresh sounds of pursuit reached her from the stairwell door. She was actually thankful for the sounds; they gave her the burst of adrenaline she needed to step out on the plank and begin her walk.

It was much easier than she had expected. She kept her eyes focused on her goal—the roof of the adjacent building—forcing herself not to look down. Even though her stomach was twisted in knots, the fear of the men in the stairwell proved greater than her fear of falling. She reached the other building with a final leap, remembering to pull the plank after her so whoever was following couldn’t use it to get to her.

The door to the roof of the building she had just escaped from crashed open just as she reached the one Sal Belamo had directed her to.

Please let it be open…

It was. Patty was through it in a flash, hoping her pursuers hadn’t caught a glimpse of her. She thundered down the steps and swung left when she reached the building’s lobby. She bolted through the door to the street just in time to hear a car screech down the alley at the end of the block.

“Hop in!” Sal Belamo ordered from behind the wheel of an ancient Pontiac GTO.

To reinforce his command, bullets pounded their way from the head of the street, shouts and screams behind them. Sal grabbed Patty and yanked her in from the driver’s side. Her feet pushed off the windshield to help her reach the passenger seat as Sal tore away, leaving a burned rubber smell behind him. Patty found the seat at last and felt some exposed springs dig into her buttocks.

“I ain’t exactly finished with her renovations,” Sal apologized as bullets peppered the rust.

The rear window was one of the few parts of the car that was whole—until a burst of fire shattered it and sprayed pieces of glass on both of them.

“Uh-oh,” Sal muttered. Patty caught a glimpse of a dark sedan sliding to a halt at the other end of the alley. The car’s doors whipped open.

“Hold on,” Sal said, and the GTO surged forward with a blitzing roar.

The gunmen managed to lunge out of the way as the GTO smashed their car broadside, shoving its collapsed frame into the center of the street, where a morning delivery truck finished the job. Belamo spun the wheel madly one way and then the other, righting the GTO, which, except for an extra crinkle across the rusted hood, seemed undamaged.

“They don’t make ’em like they used to,” Sal said, with a grin.

“I’ll say.”

“Titanium steel bumper,” he explained. “Part of my own option package when I decided to rebuild this baby.”

Belamo gave the big engine some gas and screeched around a corner. Patty unhunched herself in the seat and brushed off the glass stuck to her clothes.

“Stay down!” Sal barked. “Don’t know if we lost them yet.”

“Doesn’t this come with a rear oil spray?”

“Nope. And no bulletproof shields or machine guns, either. I was workin’ on the ejector seat, though.”

“I can tell,” Patty groaned, shifting to avoid the exposed springs still scraping at her buttocks.

“There’s gonna be hell to pay for this,” Sal said, heading toward the first of the morning traffic.

“You mean what they did to your car?”

“The fuck-up that brought it on, first class all the way, let me tell ya. You ask me, the world’s gone to hell, and a few of us just don’t know it yet.”

“What happened, Sal?”

“Shit hit the fan, lady. And guess who was standing in front of the blades. Here,” he said, and flipped her a wrinkled envelope.

“What’s this?”

“Some cash, an airline ticket, and a passport. You’re on your way to Rio.”

“I’m what?”

“We gotta get a message to old Blaine, lady, and I’m too hot to play delivery boy. All you gotta know now is that it’s you, me, McCrackenballs, and the Indian. Nobody else. Dig?”

“The Gap? Virginia Maxwell?…”

Belamo took a corner hard, and Patty slammed against the right-hand side of the car.

“Listen to me, lady, we had it all wrong. Only reason I know now is ’cause of you.”

“
Me?
What are you talking about?”

“Better fasten your seat belt to hear this, ’cause it’s gonna jolt you more than my driving….”

Patty reached Rio early Monday morning, nearly a day after Sal’s desperate phone call had awakened her. She started looking for McCracken at the Sheraton Hotel, as Sal had advised. Her call from the airport told her that he had never checked in. Nonetheless, he would have left information about his actual whereabouts at the Sheraton, available to anyone who knew how to ask.

At the hotel, her cab driver had to squeeze by a procession of tour buses lined up around the Sheraton’s circular drive. Patty squeezed through the arriving hordes and entered the hotel through one of the twin revolving doors. The Sheraton lobby was a sprawling affair. A comfortable seating area and escalators dominated the right, while the lobby-level jewelry shop took up most of the left. She headed for the reception desk directly across the way.

“Excuse me,” she greeted the clerk.

“Checking in, miss?”

“I think one of your guests left a package for me.”

“Your name?”

Patty provided the one Sal had given her. “Smithers.”

The clerk punched some keys on his computer terminal, waited for the response to show up on the screen.

“I’m sorry, miss. I have nothing here under that name.” He looked up at her. “What was the man’s name who was supposed to leave it?”

I didn’t say it was a man.

That realization struck her before she had a chance to respond to the clerk’s question. She backed away from the counter as he scrutinized her. “Miss?” he called softly. “Miss?”

Patty didn’t stop. She had learned everything she was going to at the hotel. She wasn’t the only one looking for McCracken. And whoever else there was would now be looking for her.

She swung away from the clerk, finally, and found herself face-to-face with a pair of Japanese men who were standing on either side of a large plant in the center of the lobby. Their eyes locked unblinkingly on her. They remained motionless.

All the victims showed prominent connections with the Japanese….

That bit of her own research echoed in her mind as she swung to her left, toward the elevator bank, only to find another pair of Japanese there. Trying to act as naturally as possible, she moved past the Japanese in the center of the lobby. Their eyes followed her every step. She moved toward the escalators; two more Japanese were standing in front of them, their expensive suits almost a perfect match. She looked over at the entrance; three more men were hovering amid the wave of arriving guests. She was surrounded, boxed in. What could she do? What would
McCracken
do?

A baggage cart overflowing with suitcases squeaked toward her. Making an instant decision, she closed her eyes and stepped out into its path. The collision rocked her, and Patty made sure to use her shoulders to jostle the bags. The results were perfect. The cart wobbled, and suitcases spilled everywhere. Patty went down harder than she had meant to, then lay still as a crowd began to gather.