Unacceptable Risk (46 page)

"No. No, Michael, are you joking?"

"Will you ever stop planning world history before it happens?"

"Okay. Okay. But there is one more thing that is important."

"Yes?"

"I was what some people call a stripper. I did it for a living."

"In Brazil there is lots of sex like that."

"Not sex. Basically you take off your clothes and get naked while men watch, and then you dance for them and you touch them. They have their clothes on, but you tease them."

"Why did you strip?"

"For money."

"Ah." His mind sought to focus. "You did not have sex with them for money?"

"No. No. Not what I think of as sex. I undressed while I danced. Sometimes I sat in their lap, but they couldn't touch me."

"So you just get naked and men pay you money?"

"I used to. Now I work for Sam and I've left that behind. But I wanted you to know, in case it matters."

"Did they pay you a lot of money?"

"You are very beautiful. It is worth it I suppose."

"No. No. You and me ... that's not about money."

"You want laundry soap instead?"

She punched him. "Now you're teasing me."

"Yes. I know about strippers. I don't care."

He put his hand in the small of her back, as if they were going to dance. The slight smile increased and they began kissing, and he put both his arms around her middle and pulled her to him. There was a rush in his mind and body, and they began pressing themselves together and he could feel the energy in her body and the strength of her supple back. They kissed deeply and hard, and their tongues explored without hesitation.

Michael closed the door with his foot. Grady began to unbutton his shirt. Taking her pullover sweater by the bottom, he pulled it up and she allowed it to slip over her head by extending her arms. Michael tossed it on the bed. Her blouse was a reddish orange, the color of a jungle vromillius. It was far from wilderness clothing, but he liked it.

Putting his fingers at the top of her neck, he began a massage and, at the same time, looked in her eyes.

"You are beautiful," he said.

Concentrating on her neck muscles at the base of her skull, he worked his fingers while he smiled at her.

"That feels so good."

"I have wanted to touch you."

And he tugged her to the bed, where she fell down, and he with her, and he continued on her neck and after a moment her shoulders.

She kissed him again and wrapped her leg around the outside of his thigh to draw him closer.

In order to facilitate the work of his fingers, he began with the buttons on her blouse while they each played with the ways of kissing. He succeeded with most of the buttons but popped one when pushing the blouse back over her shoulders and then down over her arms. Her skin was smooth and slightly browned and there were a few light freckles like cinnamon sprinkles above her white satin bra. Her cleavage was noticeable and inviting, but he moved his fingers back to her shoulders as they kissed.

It did not seem possible that he could ever tire of putting his hands on her. She moaned, as if reading his mind. Gently he ran his fingers over her shoulders, neck, and chin, as one might feel the texture of silk or touch an object of veneration. He kissed the freckles on her back and slid his fingers lower, feeling a tightness unwind in her. Soon he sensed that the small of her back had some connection of sensation to her thighs, and he pressed in as she pressed herself to him. He could feel her start to breathe heavily as if finding a subtle rhythm. Her thighs wrapped around the meat of his leg while his fingers pushed in smaller circles.

She wanted to kiss again and they played with their tongues. When he left her lower back, they unzipped the front of the pants so that he could work his hands over her buttocks. He sank his hands into the flesh of her bottom and pressed her close and she breathed deeply in his ear and he knew it was good for her. He kissed her above her breasts and waited until she moved the bra to expose her nipples. Her breasts were brown in the areola and slightly rounded in their shape, and for him they were perfect.

Kissing her breasts, he let his lips feel the texture of them and of her nipples. She didn't finish with his shirt before moving to his belt.

As she loosened it, he willed her to slow down, playing his tongue over her ears. She shivered and laughed and he stroked her scalp, kneading it with a gentle touch, then smoothing her hair.

"You make love like you know me," she whispered.

"I make love like a student," he said, and she drew him in.

"I want to talk to you," Grady said as she lay with Michael in the quiet after their lovemaking.

"Yes. I want to talk to you too, but when you are naked like this for the first time... well..."

"I know. I know. You are ready for more. This will just take a minute. Do you think that you would be open to actually getting married?"

"I thought we just discussed that. I'm getting a job at a university and you're going to make babies."

"You're supposed to ask me."

"Okay. How many babies do you want?"

"Are you teasing me again?"

"Yes. But I'm not going to ask you until we go to the restaurant."

"You don't care about my dancing?"

"Is there some disease associated with dancing naked?"

"Will you be serious?"

"Okay. I will be very serious." And he rolled on top of her and began kissing her again.

"I want to show you something the shaman taught me."

"If you do that other thing again with the panties, I may need a shaman."

The great mountain roars before the rocks tumble.

—Tilok proverb

Sam looked at the hard rock of the mountains, the jagged, knife-edged ridges that plunged near vertically and the dull gray and black of the clouds that swathed their peaks, the dormant plants vying for life, the barren trees whose sap had receded into the roots, withering the leaves, the rust on the needles of tired conifers. It was a cold day. The animals would be gaunt with the miseries of winter, the songbirds gone to a better place. Most of the mountain seemed dead or struggling. It all brought to mind Russian peasants on the frozen steppe and the precious vodka that helped them to flee the pain. It was enough to make him weep.

Jill had called on the satellite phone and told him that the doctors had evaluated Anna and she was no better. That was a blow, but he insisted to himself that she was also no worse and prayed that she would recover. The miscarriage still haunted him. They still had no word from Benoit Moreau, but Jill was coordinating a massive private search, this in addition to an earnest government effort.

Sam had arrived one day behind Grady.

It felt like a path that Sam had walked before—dead or dying people that could not be mourned because live people could still be saved. Every time it took something from him, and every time he knew he got a little worse for the wear.

He was waiting for the right moment to tell Grady about Anna.

Standing by the cabin, he tried to let anger displace his sadness.

He watched Michael and Grady through the window holding each other on the couch. Grady had always seemed alive, but now her smiles were deeper, and he had also observed the angelic patience of new love. He had seen it in others with marriage and pregnancy and engagements, and it was always followed by realism—a necessary but unfortunate end to infatuation. Living alone allowed for a certain frivolity, a good scotch, a wink and a nod at the Devil. It also allowed one not to worry about making someone else miserable. It avoided any analysis over whether Indian blood would ultimately be a turnoff for a celebrity like Anna, or whether someone like her could live with someone without celebrity status. If he lived out his days alone, it would be okay, but he had to quit thinking about it because thinking about life and meaning and that stuff would send him into despair. Right now he had to focus on keeping these people alive, finding Benoit, and eliminating Gaudet.

For some reason thoughts of death on a mountain brought on this kind of thinking. He wished Grandfather were here. Something was about to happen.

He imagined Anna again as he had left her, lying in a coma, and tried to shake the thought off. Shouldn't he be at her side while she struggled for her life? The thought was interrupted by a second premonition of the sort he had now come to accept. At that moment Sam felt sure he could feel Gaudet. He looked up at just the visible edges of the vast expanse of the surrounding terrain. He saw countless places to hide, then dismissed the feeling as superstition.

Sam had asked the government to come in with an infrared-sensing helicopter and look for people on the nearby mountains. It was how they would catch Gaudet and then use drugs to pump him for information about Cordyceps. What the government would not dare try, Sam would do without hesitation. The helicopter was coming, he was told, but to date it hadn't arrived and now it was too late. The growing snow flurries would prevent them. Sam had tried to impress on Ernie the logic of waiting in the mountains, but the FBI was convinced that Gaudet was orchestrating Cordyceps from a Manhattan warehouse. They agreed to come to the California outback only if anybody showed up.

Mother Nature had other ideas about that.

Grady and Michael appeared at the cabin door with Georges Raval. They had donned stocking caps, obviously preparing for a walk around the compound.

"It's not a good idea to go far," Sam said.

Michael nodded.

"There's nothing but wilderness up that mountain and it goes for miles. The artillery is down here."

The wind was whipping and a chime near the porch dropped to the ground with a final metallic tinkle that was choked off on impact. Black clouds hung everywhere; it appeared as if the forecasted blizzard were about to cut loose. Chandler jogged up, looking like a man with something on his mind.

Just then, Sam cocked his head as he heard a cracking sound reverberate through the mountains, followed by a rumble and a vibration that he could feel in his feet. It grew in intensity until the sound was deep and rolling, perhaps a volcano or a massive landslide with the vibration filling the air and literally shaking their bodies. Suddenly it stopped.

"What was that?" Michael asked.

"Shit," Chandler said as he reached the group.

"What in the world was that?" Grady murmured. "An atomic bomb?"

"Look." As Yodo pointed toward the river, Chandler's head exploded in a burst of blood. Sam shoved Grady and Michael to the ground, urging them to crawl to a small rock wall. Yodo ran for a rock fortification and the machine gun it housed, apparently more concerned with fighting back than with getting shot.

Bullets smacked into rock and occasionally ricocheted with a whine. Sam's men were returning fire and the opposite hillside was pocked with puffs of snow, dust, and rock. Someone on Sam's team fired a rocket and a small patch of trees on the opposite mountain was upended and a body came tumbling over the lip of a cliff. It slapped its way from one rock protrusion to the next, the body bending and breaking in a gruesome display.

After depositing Grady and Michael in the rocks, Sam belly-crawled through the brush to the bluff edge, where he could see whatever might have excited Yodo. He looked down at the river and saw its flow had ceased and that it was shriveling to a series of tiny pools, the green rocks exposed, the car-size boulders surrounding what had once been a vibrant river now standing like monuments over ancient graves. Cascades of heavy rapids became trickles even as he watched. And there was something else. Men in white camouflage were coming across the river bottom, spread out, one at a time. Yodo was firing virtually nonstop, pinning down one member and then another of the enemy team. It was an assault— too many to fight off. Looking at the force, Sam wondered whether Gaudet had actually managed to enlist the French. Raval was still a French citizen and they would do everything possible to take him back to France. It was crazy, but maybe they saw it as their only hope of getting what they thought they had purchased.

"Count on the government to be someplace else when you need them," Sam muttered. The snipers were not going for Michael or Raval. That explained why Chandler had his head blown off, with Michael and Raval standing close by, but it didn't explain why Sam still breathed. Probably the first bullet was a premature shot by an overanxious sniper; probably Gaudet would be boiling that shooter's balls before daybreak next.

Sam kept low and ran back to Grady and Michael. "Get to the base of the mountain," Sam said. "We're gonna climb."

"Supplies?" Michael said. "I have to get the '98 journal anyway." Sam looked at the spacious log house thirty yards distant across mostly open space. If they tried to make it into the house and back out, at least one of them would probably die.

"Over there, through the trees, there's a rock house. Inside, there are two guns and a little ammo. Run like hell. I'll be right behind."

"First the journals." Michael sprinted off through a hail of bullets without awaiting an answer.

Sam took out his radio. "Everybody up the mountain now. High ground."

Sam looked again at the main house. By some miracle Michael had made it inside. Sam waited to see if he would emerge. Between the front door and his current hiding place were several oaks, trimmed up and offering little cover. There were some benches cut from logs, a chain saw sculpture that formed the likeness of a walking bear, and an old hammock strung between two of the oaks. Unfortunately, his M-4 was on the porch. He set out in a run, his boots sinking in the soft earth and throwing up black soil as he zigzagged to make himself a tough target. Shots cracked in the cold air and bullets spat mud around him. Just as he reached the porch, he heard a rushing sound—something like the sound following a jet fighter's low pass at an air show. Michael passed him at a dead run. Grabbing his rifle, Sam fled as the rocket vaporized the back of the cabin and the concussion sent him flying. Hitting the dirt, he was moving instantly with hands and feet flying, and his gun slung over his back in an unconscious motion guided by reflex.

Food would have been good, but they would have to make do without.

Sam found Grady, Michael, and Raval huddled, Grady with red eyes.

"God, I thought you were both dead." Her voice cracked, but she held back any tears.

"Let's go," Sam said, grateful at least for his gun.

They ran through the densest clumps of trees toward a corner of the property, where there was a pump house and a cache of M-4 ammunition. Sam's body sung with adrenaline, his mind working out how he could get his charges up the mountain.

They ran at a full sprint, except where rough ground or tree branches slowed them. They bulled their way through a heavy stand of fir saplings and into a small opening. For a second Sam had difficulty locating the small doghouse-size structure that he had seen only once. Then he located an old madrona tree that had been partially burned at the base, and he knew right where to look. Upon finding the rickety, grayed pump house, he yanked the door off its hinges and grabbed ten clips, stuffing them in his pockets. In a war it wasn't much. Michael, Grady, and Raval grabbed handfuls, he didn't know how many each.

Grady, Michael, and Raval were running behind Sam, while Yodo was running through the trees about thirty feet to their right, as were Martin, Gunther, Kenneth, and the rest. Yodo had a rocket launcher; Martin was lugging the BAR. They were taking one heavy piece of armament each and he hoped it wouldn't slow them down. They were all headed across a forested stretch of the plateau that was dotted with sixtysomething-foot conifers. As they neared the corner of the plateau and the mountain, they tightened into a single-file formation.

The snow began falling in windblown sheets. Almost immediately it became difficult to discern angles and slopes; "down" became the white ground and "up" the white sky. Beyond that, there was little visible of anything. It even made it hard to balance. They began running through what seemed a white tunnel with snow-laden branches whipping them and the
whoosh
of snow underfoot. The cold air poured into their lungs in odd juxtaposition to their sweating bodies. Soon they were laboring in the heavy branches.

Sam had on shooting mitts. The thin leather of the trigger
finger was cold against the metal of the M-4. As he ran, he
peered into the blinding snow and the dense white and green
of a tree-choked forest in winter. Then from the murky landscape a form suddenly took shape—off to his left—then
shots were pounding in his ears. ,

A man had burst through the trees, firing. Gunther hit the ground as Sam and the others fired back, turning the attacker's white camo into red-splotched laundry.

They ran on for a few seconds until more deafening muzzle blasts tore through flesh and forest. This time Martin and Kenneth were down, writhing in the snow, their wounds hopeless, their bullet-riddled bodies nearly empty of life.

Sam ran the thirty feet to Grady, Michael, and Raval.

"Run as fast as you can. Stay in the main branch of the creek at the end of this trail. We'll catch you when we can."

Grady grabbed his neck and kissed him on the cheek, then quickly gave him a peck on the mouth.

"You gotta live" was all she said.

Yodo remained while the three others ran after Michael, Grady, and Raval. Sam had killed the shooter, but he waited for more. Yodo squatted with his M-4 ready to fire and the rocket launcher cast beside him on the ground. They heard the cracking branches of men in a hurry to kill and Sam decided on a strategy.

"Yodo," Sam whispered. He pointed up the trail and began to move with Yodo following. When they left the plateau, it was on a steep, snow-covered sliver of a trail, which soon became a faint tracing on the ground. Under the snow-coated oak lay loose rock and acorns rotting from winter. Douglas fir and slightly smaller white fir canopied over the oaks, diminishing the light greatly. Sam and Yodo followed the route of the others until they came to a spot fifty yards up the white-foamed creek. It was steeper than any city street but did not require traveling on all fours, although just ahead the smaller branch of the Y moved up steeply in a couple of near-vertical drops. Quickly they lay track in the earth and the old snow, and they broke branches, making it appear that the larger number of the group had taken the small fork. Next they used tree branches to obliterate as best they could the prints going up the main fork.

"Yodo, you need to go after the others and be the rear guard."

"But the larger force, if not all of them, will follow after you."

"Yes. But I know these mountains. I'll be going fast. Very fast."

Yodo's frustration showed, but Sam knew that he would not disagree.