That kid, Hannigan, wouldn't be so lucky. He'd be out on his ass.
A muffled shout behind him!
Weitz ducked low and whirled with his rifle ready.
Silence.
He retraced his steps, trying his best to move silently in the tall brush.
He stopped just before he reached the clearing that he'd left only seconds before.
Hannigan was lying on his back, beside the cab, eyes open, staring blindly at the sky.
Dead.
Pain.
The gun dropped from Weitz's hands, and an icy shiver shuddered through him.
More pain.
He looked down and saw the kid's black-handled bowie knife sticking out of his own chest.
John Tavak stood beside him, water dripping from his clothes.
Tavak gripped the handle and shoved the knife deeper.
* * *
Tavak jumped onto the cab of the truck and waved an all-clear sign to Rachel, Allie, and Demanski. Satisfied that they had seen him and were swimming back, he leaped into the cab and fished through the canvas bag in which Kilcher had thrown their belongings.
He found his phone and frantically punched Ben's number.
Maybe Dawson was bluffing. He had no reason to go after Ben.
But the tightness in Tavak's stomach told him that the son of a bitch wasn't bluffing. It wasn't his style.
No answer.
Five minutes.
Dawson had said that he'd call to give the order to kill Ben in fifteen minutes. Tavak still had five minutes left.
Demanski was wading out of the water and Tavak called, "Grab your phone out of the cab. This must be a private lake. It's totally deserted. But we don't want to stick around here and wait for Kilcher to come back. Get that security team you mentioned out here double quick and tell them to pick us up at the highway."
Demanski nodded and moved toward the cab.
Three minutes.
He hung up and dialed again.
"Come on, Ben," he muttered. "Pick up. Answer your damned phone."
CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND
9:16 P.M.
Ben felt the vibrating phone in his pocket, but he decided to let it go to voice mail. He and Nuri were standing in the shadows of a large oak tree, watching a pair of headlights coming toward them on a campus auxiliary road.
"Is that it?" Ben asked.
"The timing is right." Nuri checked his notes. "Dr. Collier left a drive-on pass for a large delivery truck at approximately 10 P.M."
"How did you find that out?"
"I saw the list. I went to the security office and pretended to be an instructor who needed to arrange my own after-hours delivery. They pulled out the list, and they made no attempt to hide it from me."
"And why would they?"
The truck drew closer.
Ben handed Nuri a ballcap and a blue Windbreaker. "Here. These are a pretty good match for the campus security getups. And remember, we're still just fact-finding. Once we determine that the mastaba wall is here on campus, then we'll figure out how to take it."
"As you wish. But there's no way of knowing how long it will be here."
The phone vibrated again. The truck was almost upon them. Ben reached into his pocket and turned off the phone. "Okay, let's move."
Ben and Nuri stepped into the middle of the roadway and waved down the truck. It stopped.
Ben walked around to the driver's side window.
"Open up the back, will you?" Ben spoke in an accent he learned from watching Alec Guinness movies.
The driver glanced at the man in the seat beside him, then turned back. "We've already been cleared up front, mate."
"Sorry. We can't let any trucks through without inspecting them first. Give us a peek inside, and you'll be on your way."
"No problem."
Both men climbed out of the cab and moved around to the back. The driver pulled up the large garage-style cargo door.
Ben turned on his flashlight. "Okay, if there's a crate or packaging, I may have to ask you to… "
Ben shined his flashlight into the truck's storage bed.
It was empty.
Empty, except for the two men with guns aimed at him.
Ben felt the hot, searing pain in his chest and head.
He felt the numbing coldness in his legs and arms.
Then he felt nothing.
* * *
The sun was setting when Demanski's security team dropped them off at the hotel. Allie, Tavak, and Rachel went inside while Demanski stayed behind to settle with the team leader.
Only one day, Rachel thought. Only a matter of hours, and yet it seemed as if a century had passed.
She glanced at Tavak as they got in the elevator. He'd been on the phone frantically trying to reach Ben Leonard or Nuri all the way back from the lake. "You'll let us know as soon as you hear?"
He nodded jerkily. "As soon as I know something." The door opened on his floor, and he got off and headed down the hall.
"What a hell of a day," Allie murmured.
Rachel nodded numbly. "I shouldn't have let you come with me to Russia. I should have made you stay at home. You almost died in that car."
"Knock it off, Rachel. This isn't about me. We all came close to dying." Allie wearily pushed her damp hair back from her face. "If anyone should run the risk, it should be me. I'm the one who has the most to gain."
The hand Allie had used to push back her hair was shaking, Rachel noticed, agonized. The tremors again, more violent than she had recently seen them. "You're not well. I'm coming to your room with you."
"You are not," Allie said. "I don't want you hovering over me. I'll rest, then I'll be okay."
"And what if you're not?"
"I'll be okay," she repeated. "I'll call you when I get over this little bout. You know I'm used to handling it, Rachel."
It wasn't a little bout, and Allie shouldn't have been forced to handle this damn disease. "Let me come."
"No way. You try, and I'll lock you out."
"I'm sending you home."
"No, you aren't. I'm going on until the end. Make up your mind to it. It doesn't matter that I'm sick and sometimes have to take a few minutes' time out to be able to keep going. I helped keep us alive today. I had value." She got off the elevator as the doors opened. "But if you want to stop all this madness, I'll understand."
Rachel shook her head.
"I didn't think so." Allie started down the corridor. "Then we'll just have to work through this."
Work through keeping Allie alive until they found the cure.
Work through death and malice and Dawson, who seemed to be everywhere.
Dear God, she hoped that malice and death hadn't spread to touch Ben Leonard.
* * *
Allie called Rachel a little over an hour later. "The tremors have stopped. I'm much better. I'm going to take a hot shower, then order dinner."
"Do you want company?"
"No, I'm going to give you time to forget about my attack. I'll be much more relaxed eating alone tonight."
"You're sure there aren't any—"
"See? I'm fine, Rachel. Any news from Tavak?"