Suarez smiled. “I guess you deserve to know the name of the man who shot you, Mr Henry Scott Gibbs of the Antarctic. The man who is probably going to kill you before not many more minutes have passed.
“My name is Rudolfo Suarez.”
Suarez looked disappointed when Henry showed no signs of recognizing the name.
“That’s a beautiful dog you have there, Mr Gibbs. A survivor from your sled team?”
Still Henry didn’t answer. He wasn’t about to start a pleasant chat with Suarez. He pressed the napkin to his bleeding thigh. The wound wasn’t all that deep, he was glad to see. Hurt like fuck, though. Apparently the bullet had only grazed his leg. Still, there had been a violent impact. He was sure the leg was broken. “What kind of bullets are you using?”
“Teflon-coated, uranium core,” said Remo, who sat across from Henry pointing a pistol at him.
“I’ll do the questioning here,” said Suarez.
“Interesting to meet you outside of Antarctica, Mr Gibbs. We all look much different without our snow gear, yes?”
Henry just stared at him without responding.
“How did you manage to survive our encounter, and the nuke that destroyed the site?”
“With a little help from my friends,” said Henry, patting Shep’s side.
Rudy looked at Remo. “Ah yes, the dogs that ran away. And were you wearing a bulletproof vest in the middle of the Antarctic?”
“Your bullet hit the radio in my pocket. It just knocked me out.”
Listening, Remo began to wonder if Suarez realized the significance of Henry’s survival. Obviously everyone must now know the identity of the Deep Ice terrorist.
“This is the one who made you, Rudy. Because he survived, the military has everything.”
Suarez drew a deep breath and glanced at Remo, smiling broadly. “I’d appreciate it if you’d shut up.” His voice was ice cold.
“So, Henry Scott Gibbs of the Antarctic,” he continued more warmly, “it looks as though you’ve laid waste to ten years of planning.”
“So sorry,” said Henry with a grin.
The man’s eyes went dead as they stared at him.
Suarez lifted his automatic weapon and sat motionless for what seemed an eternity.
All his life Henry had faced death, but never before had he looked Death himself right in the eye. It’s not so bad. It’ll be quick, he thought. Sarah’s face swam into his mind’s eye, and suddenly he felt good as he realized how much he must love her to be thinking about her at a time like this.
Not so long ago he’d been an empty shell with little concern for any man or woman. Everyone who’d ever meant anything at all to him was gone, cruel y drowned in the Atlantic. He’d believed he’d never feel love again. Now everything was different. He’d found out that life, no matter how unfair it may seem, always goes on, and that the basic human feeling called love can survive almost anything.
Except, of course, that his life wasn’t about to go on.
He smiled at Rudolfo as the muzzle of the weapon pointed at his face. “Quite a dance we did together. Isn’t that so?”
Suarez lowered the gun. “Perhaps you are a bit too eager to be dead, my friend.”
He rose from the chair and ambled to the window, folded his arms and stared at the far-off peaks of the Andes.
A new surge of pain shot through Henry’s leg as he shifted on the chair. He groaned involuntarily.
“Get him off my furniture,” said Suarez abstractedly.
“I don’t want blood on it.”
The giant goon, Remo, responded instantly, lifting Henry off the seat.
Shep watched his master being manhandled, and growled.
Fearing Remo would shoot the dog, Henry called, “That’s okay, Shep. Come on. Be good.”
Miraculously, Shep did as he was told. He followed Remo, who was hardly staggering under Henry’s weight, sniffing the drops of blood that landed on the carpet. He kept up a long, low, rumbling growl, but he was obediently holding himself in check.
Remo dumped Henry into a corner of the far wall and stood next to him, waiting for more orders. But Suarez stood mute, statue-like, as if meditating.
Henry watched the man who’d shot him on the ice. It galled him to think that Suarez was still holding his life in his hands. But even if Henry and Shep went down — even the whole SEAL team — at least the terrorist had been beaten. Suarez was surrounded, and the world was safe.
Suarez turned to gaze at Henry. The terrorist stood silhouetted against the golden light of the afternoon sun so that Henry couldn’t see his eyes.
“You are thinking I am ruined,” said Suarez. “That all my plans have come to nothing. Yes?”
“That’s a smile,” said Henry.
“What?”
“A happy thought.” Henry ran his fingers through Shep’s ruff.
“Can you tell me anything about Trevor Hodges?” asked Suarez after a moment’s thought.
“Haven’t met the man,” said Henry. “Friend of yours?”
TransAm Optical had become ground zero. Surrounding the Hacienda was a five-hundred-man army, ready to annihilate the place within a few seconds of a go-ahead. But they waited while the techies determined who had survived the incursion that had failed so horribly.
General Hayes talked to President Kerry, and to the Joint Chiefs and the UN Secretary General. Everyone agreed: the world had no choice but to wait for Suarez to make the next move. The general had thought they would capture Suarez easily, and possibly learn from him where to find and how to disarm the nuclear weapons buried in the ice. But Hayes was afraid the only practical resolution was to order an air strike — to cut off the bomb’s trigger signal at source. Henry, the surviving SEALs, any innocent bystanders in the Hacienda — their lives would all be forfeit, but that would be a small price to pay if millions of other lives could be saved.
The President had left the call squarely on Hayes’s shoulders.
A tech specialist had marked the probable locations of the dead and wounded on a computer map of the Hacienda. It showed Grimes lying near the bodies of three of his men. The heart monitor for Grimes was ambiguous: it was possible he was still alive — barely so, and unconscious, but alive. On the other hand, Gibbs was most assuredly alive; he was in the room they assumed was Suarez’s inner sanctum.
Hayes found himself working out the issues with Lieutenant O’Boyle. It seemed strange after all the recent hectic events to be confiding in a virtual stranger on the mission, not Grimes. But O’Boyle had many anti- terrorist credits to his name. He had worked with Israeli, British and French special anti-terrorist forces all over the world. He was the Marine Corps’s unquestioned expert on the subject.
“The bombs are Suarez’s trump cards,” said O’Boyle. “He won’t play ’em.”
“But he knows his game’s up,” argued the general.
“So what’s to stop him? He must know he’s a dead man either way.”
“Maybe not,” said the lieutenant. “You can’t predict a man like Suarez. And we have his squeeze.”
“Squeeze?”
“The woman the SEALs seized. Her name’s Gwen –
Gwen Murchison Ruiz. From a wealthy family in La Paz. She says she’s Suarez’s girlfriend. High-priced tart is more like it, you ask me, but let the lady keep her pride.”
“Good intelligence work, O’Boyle,” said the general.
O’Boyle raised his visible eyebrow. “Thanks, sir, but most of it was there in her purse with her car keys. She came to a short while ago, wondering what the hell was going on. Either the best actress in the world, or she really doesn’t have a clue that Suarez is the Deep Ice terrorist. She thought he was a legitimate businessman with generous habits — which was why she stuck around — and a highly developed case of paranoia.”