Unacceptable Risk (47 page)

Yodo nodded. "Take the rocket."

"No. I will make my point another way. This is partly a mental war."

Yodo nodded and took the artillery.

Sam turned and began scrambling, carrying only the M-4 and his backpack. As he went, he slowed a moment to feel for the satellite phone that created a reassuring bulge in a pocket at the bottom of the pack. As soon as he was several hundred yards up the hill, he took out the phone and called Jill.

"We're being chased up the mountain into the wilderness by thirty men, maybe more. I'm guessing they're rogue French SDECE or mercenaries trying to take Raval back to France. Gaudet may be leading the attack. They've created two large rock slides into the river, one above us and one below. I imagine that a huge lake is forming above, It's only a matter of time before the dam bursts. When the second one breaks, there'll be an amazing debris torrent for miles downriver."

"In that case, anyone near that river is dead."

"Call the authorities just to make sure they are evacuating people. I know it's obvious but it is the government... and don't worry, we won't be near the river."

"I'll call the authorities." She paused. "You're pretty much on your own, Sam. Be careful."

"Uh-huh. Look, I've got to move. Any word on Benoit?"

"No."

"Do everything you can to find her, Jill."

"We've got men combing the warehouses. We're trying to get permission to go inside. It's slow work."

"I know. How many atomizer-equipped helicopters have they found?"

"Only three so far. There must be many more. We're running out of time. I figure twenty-four hours max."

"What about Grogg?"

"Government is showing no signs of letting us release the Internet antivirus."

"That's nuts. If Grogg gets into the Quatram server and gets a read on Gaudet's virus, call me before anyone else."

"Even the government?"

"Especially the government."

* * *

Benoit Moreau stretched her body as far as she could. Lying in a fetal position, she could not straighten anything but her back. It was becoming excruciating. The space was perhaps a foot high, but much wider. There was a water bottle and she could obtain water by sucking on a plastic tube. Gaudet had put her there and was holding her as an asset. He didn't care if she suffered, but he wanted to keep her alive. There would be many questions to answer about why the French didn't get Chaperone, and she was still valuable with respect to Chaperone and the French laboratory, and Gaudet might need all the bargaining chips he could get. Surely, he'd gone after Raval and Bowden now. A couple of Gaudet's guards came every so often to give her a little food and to let her use the toilet. One man reminded her of Saddam Hussein in appearance. She had taken to calling him "Hussein," and the other guard she had dubbed "Napoleon" because he was a short strutter.

Last time Hussein had come to let her out, he had looked at her too long for a man with no interest but his job. Of course she immediately thought about how she might use it. Although Gaudet had dropped her into the box with her hands cuffed behind her back, she had since managed to pass her wrists under her feet by turning on her side. The flexibility for the maneuver was the result of her Pilates and stretching. Strangely, Hussein, the more attentive of the two, did nothing about rearranging the cuffs. He underestimated her, and that was her first break.

As she waited, she thought about what she would do if she could escape. Sam might be the only person, aside from Raval, that she trusted. She had a phone number of his committed to memory. That was step one. Another number she remembered was one that Trotsky had used to access the mainframe with the laptop. She needed to get that info to Sam, including a warning about the cement trucks, before it was too late.

It had been hours since the guard's last visit and her bladder was bursting. If she had even the slightest chance, she would risk everything.

No sooner had she thought it than Hussein came. He was alone, no doubt with ulterior motives. This was her second break. He pulled up the boards, allowing a pinpoint of light into the hole. Then shining a bright flashlight, he was obviously perusing her. This time she made sure that one of her breasts was nearly exposed. For a long time he just looked and she didn't move, feigning near unconsciousness. Finally he reached down and felt her forehead. Then his hand drifted to her shoulder, caressing it and tugging at her dress. Making no move and not acknowledging him, she waited. It was instinct. Every man required a slightly different seduction. Finally he grabbed her arm.

"Stand up."

She made as if to stir and struggled to her feet while she remained hunched over. She hoped he wouldn't think about her hands. In the near darkness she fell against him, making sure that her arm and even her hands rubbed his crotch. He took her by the shoulders to try to draw her to him.

Violently snapping her head up, she hit him hard under his chin and knew instantly she had hurt him badly. Blood spurted from his mouth and he half screamed, half moaned. Then she found his face and drove her thumbs into his eyes, trying to squish them like vintners' grapes. When he grabbed her wrists, she kneed him in the testicles as hard as she could. He wore a shoulder holster and she grabbed the gun. Then she ran.

She was terribly stiff and she stumbled as she went, nearly falling. It was a huge warehouse full of drums in the area of her captivity. Two more men came running; they were shooting, and almost unconsciously she shot back. Then she ran down an aisle, turned, and was out of sight. She found an alcove and went in it, trying to get her wits about her, to stretch cramped muscles, to clear her head.

Looking around, she could see that she could easily reach another aisle by crawling over some barrels. She moved quickly across barrel tops on her hands and knees. In the next aisle she ran and took the first turn. Then she stopped. Running footsteps approached the next intersection. She leveled the gun. The steps slowed. She leaned into a small space between the barrels so that she would not present an obvious target. As she watched, she saw the barrel of a handgun; then a hand came slowly around the edge. The man was no more than twenty feet away. Weakness paralyzed her arm and it shook. The sights wobbled. Part of a man's head came into view—too small to hit. She waited. In the dim light he hadn't seen her. He kept coming. His face was full on. It was a wide face, with a big nose. The snarl in his soul was captured in the lips. He was squinting over his gun. She fired. Flesh blew out the back of his head in the instant before he dropped.

Benoit shuddered and nearly collapsed, but she forced herself to run past the body, around the turn, and perhaps a hundred feet more to the next four-way intersection. As she approached, she slowed. There was another alcove, where barrels had been removed.

Her chest heaved, her legs still cramping from confinement. A headache behind her eyes made her nauseated and she knew she had to get away. She had no more fight in her. A man burst into the aisle, right into her sights. She started shooting at the same time he did. He dropped. She felt a stinging in her shoulder. She reached and felt blood. Her head spun. Footsteps, running. She tried to raise the gun, but her arm was crazy. The ceiling spun and she fell. For some reason the floor felt soft.

* * *

Sam scrambled up the mountain through the oaks and then into the timber, careful to watch the lay of the land for the formations he had studied through the binoculars. Some ravines ended in vertical faces high on the mountain, where water tumbled down over bare, smooth rock. In these areas the rock was harder and the water's etchings were displaced to areas where the stone was softer and more easily worn away. It was one such ravine that Sam had in mind and it was the watercourse that he now followed. About two thousand feet up it ended in a waterfall on a stone face that only a rock climber could scale. To either side of the face there were ridges that could be scaled, but they were widely separated. It would be very difficult for climbers to take an alternate ridge, get above him, and then come back down. At night he would use the terrain. When his grandfather had taught him, it was to stalk deer, but it would serve equally well for hunting men.

Sam turned after forty minutes of rapid climbing and looked down the mountain. The snow had abated briefly. He saw many following him—maybe twenty or so. No doubt most of Gaudet's force.

It was growing dark and Sam resumed his climb. A few minutes later, he veered out of the ravine onto the ridge, broke a few branches, and made the trail ridiculously obvious. After he had gone high on the razor-sharp ridge near the head of the rock wall, he found the deep chasm that would stop the climb of Gaudet's men, even assuming they could reach it before nightfall. He dropped off the ridge and went down its shoulder, leaving no trace. If he were being followed by Tiloks, they would laugh, go down the mountain, and take a different route, but these men were from the city and they would not laugh, nor would they double back in darkness. They would be trapped for the night with Sam below and impassable terrain above.

Meandering down into a forested hillside, he stayed away from loose rock to avoid slides and broke no branches. Stepping on the balls of his feet, as Grandfather had taught him, he avoided making deep heel imprints that would be easy to spot. Where he could, he walked on hard rock. After twenty minutes of rapid downhill progress he moved back near the ridge and waited. It was only minutes until he heard the heavy, labored breathing of men who were not in shape to climb mountains. They were noisier than a herd of elk. Rocks bounced down the mountain; branches were fractured; they tried to whisper, but their voices were nearly shouts when they found his sign. They would stop for the night, spread out along the shoulders of the ridge.

When Benoit awoke, her mouth felt dry as dust. The first thing she saw were plastic tubes hanging all around her. As she turned her head to the left, she noticed her arm and shoulder in a giant cast and her hand above her, off the bed. The terrible ache came from her shoulder. By her bed stood a woman she did not recognize. The room was unsteady. She still had the awful headache. At once she remembered the box in the floor; then she was running and they were shooting. She felt so tired—exhausted, really. She closed her eyes.

When she next opened her eyes, she tried to put things together. There had been a hamper and a large crate in a store. She had been with Gaudet and in the river. Somehow it didn't seem to fit. The woman next to the bed was still there, although now she was asleep. It must have been a long time. As she lay there, things began to become less elusive in her mind, and suddenly she remembered coming from France and prison, the government job, Baptiste and the admiral, the meeting with Sam and Spring. Georges.

"Cordyceps," she whispered.

The woman by the bed jerked and her eyes flashed open.

"It's okay," she said. "I'm Jill. I'm with Sam, but officially I'm your sister. Outside are the French SDECE and the FBI. Sam's people found you in the warehouse. During the shoot-out."

"Jean-Baptiste Sourriaux. Is he here?"

"No, a Rene Denard seems to be in charge."

"Don't let him in!"

"Yes. I understand."

"We have to get out of here."

"That will be tough."

"Cement trucks. Tell Sam that Cordyceps is cement trucks and helicopters."

"Got it."

"Did you get the laptop?"

"Yes."

"There is a code. Let me see. The year of the French revolution, 1789. Then the telephone city code for my sister in Bordeaux, fourteen. Next one year after I was born, but one decade off. So 1977. Next it is ... let me see... oh yes... it is BMW backward so WMB ... then it is Gaudet's age transposed, so it is fifty-four instead of forty-five. Next it is the number of my driver's license. Gaudet did that because he used to be fond of me. I don't remember the number on my driver's license, but you should be able to look it up. Last it is Trotsky's birthday. He was born in 1959 on the day before Christmas. Put those numbers together, and if I have remembered correctly, you can enter a folder on the laptop where you will find another much more complicated code. Use that to get into Gaudet's computer, if he hasn't shut it off. I doubt he has because it's about to release a major computer virus."

The woman called Jill pulled out a cell phone.

"Grogg, take this down. There is a password to a folder in the laptop." Benoit helped Jill repeat what she had told her. "Call me back when you've cracked it.... Tell us your assessment of what we can do and we'll call Sam." Then there was a pause. "I don't care what you have to do to hide it. Tell them you have to take a shit and smuggle it into the rest-room." Another pause. "Okay, well, if that won't work, then take advantage of their boredom. But just do it." Another pause. "Yes, you can bring in gourmet food. Anything. Wine, whatever. Get it downloaded to Big Brain, give them the wrong code, and get back to our offices."

Jill hung up and dialed again.

"Ernie, it's cement trucks and helicopters." A pause. "Yeah, good. That's a hell of a lot of helicopters, but she says definitely also cement trucks." Then after a moment. "I have another call. Yes?" A pause. "That's all the French know? Shit, Figgy, you'd think they'd know more than
that.
What the hell good does it do to know Gaudet is going to do something in the next sixty hours?" A pause. "No. Benoit's still unconscious." She gave Benoit a wink. "We'll call you the minute she wakes up." A pause. "Figgy, of course we'll let the SDECE interview her, but only when the doctors say she's ready." Another pause. "I can't promise that. Hell, I probably won't even be here." A pause. "I gotta go, Figgy. Can't talk now. Sam's calling." A pause. "He's in New York looking for Gaudet. Where else would he be?" Jill disconnected. "Lying bastard."