Ari slumped to the ground.
Scar Face showed his rotted teeth to Luke, then swung the Glock down and took aim at Ari’s head.
Luke lunged at the man, grabbed the gun barrel and twisted it free while sweeping the assailant’s feet and upending him.
The knife in the accomplice’s hand was already swinging toward Luke’s neck when he put two 9mm Glock rounds into the man’s chest.
Scar Face was coming off the ground when Luke dropped onto him with a cocked elbow and connected with the would-be killer’s temple.
The man’s skull gave way. His eyes rolled back and he went limp.
Luke reached for a stinging pain in his left shoulder and felt a sticky wet fluid running down his arm — blood. A moment later he saw the knife in Scar Face’s limp hand, and the empty belt sheath that the man’s jacket had concealed.
Luke checked the bodies and quickly retrieved more cash than the assailants had taken from them. He took the Glock and shoved it under his belt, then picked up Ari in a dead man’s carry and followed the alley back into a labyrinth of twisting passageways.
“Where are we?” Megan asked, trying to shake off what she recognized as the remnants of a drug stupor.
A steady vibration came up through the floor, accompanied by the reverberating hum of heavy machinery.
“It’s a storage shed of some sort,” Father Joe said. “We’re in some sort of walled compound with, maybe, a half-dozen small buildings. They brought us here in the back of a truck. Don’t you remember?”
She shook her head.
They were sitting next to each other, leaning against the only wall space not taken up by wooden crates. Megan looked around the small wood-frame structure. The only light came in through two small portholes at either end of the ten-by-ten-foot room. The place smelled of mold.
She tried to raise herself. A wave of nausea overtook her and she fell back.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s a pretty big lump on your head. Try to take it easy.”
She palpated a knot on her left temple.
“You must be Irish,” he said. “I think you gave them more of a fight than they expected.”
“How long have we been here? The last thing I remember is…the village, the flood. Then someone grabbing me from behind.”
“That was two days ago. When we first got here, they drugged you. I heard them say the name of the drug — something like Bersed.”
“Versed,” she clarified. Now she understood why her connections to time and place were severed, her memory a blank. She had drug-induced amnesia.
“They seem to think you know something. They were asking a lot of questions, trying to get information from you.”
“About what?”
She had no memory of the interrogation. They had used the drug to reduce her inhibitions, to get her to talk.
“I couldn’t hear all of it. We were in one of the other buildings, and they had you in a separate room. But I heard them ask over and over why you’d come to Guatemala.”
“They must have questioned you.”
“They did, but they seemed a lot more interested in you. They already know who I am, anyway. I guess they didn’t think I had much to tell ’em.” The priest’s breathing was rapid and labored.
“Are you okay?”
He patted his chest. “It’ll pass.”
“Where’s your medicine — your inhaler?”
“They took it.” Father Joe leaned back to take a breath.
The light caught his scalp. There was a deep gash on his forehead.
“Did they beat you?”
He lifted his shoulders. “I have a big mouth.”
Megan startled at the sound of the door swinging open with a loud creak. Two men entered. One was Asian, the other a tall and powerfully built Latino who was missing part of his ear. Neither man was carrying a weapon, but it hardly mattered. She could barely stand, let alone put up a fight.
The Asian hoisted her by the collar and lifted her to her feet with one arm.
Megan tried to kick him but missed.
The Latino grabbed her jaw in one hand and squeezed.
The pain shot through her like a bolt. Her vision went dark.
“I don’t have time for this, puta.”
Puta—whore.
She spat in his face, a reflex that surprised her.
The Latino let go of her and slowly wiped the spittle from his cheek. A thin smile played on his lips.
Then a sharp blow to her face sent her sprawling against a pine-board crate.
Father Joe threw himself over her and yelled, “For the love of God, stop!”
Megan felt another wave of nausea.
The Asian lifted both of them by their arms and pushed them through the door.
The Latino man led the way through a compound that was the size of a city block. It was enclosed on three sides by walls made of stone and white mortar; the entire length of wall was capped with barbed wire. The fourth side needed no wall. It was a shear cliff of blackened limestone, pockmarked with caves, and there was a large tunnel entrance in the middle of a stony talus at the base of the mountain.
They passed between two metal-sided buildings that glistened in the sunlight. Parked alongside one of them was a tan-colored transport truck with a red caduceus on its cab door. Two workers dressed in white coveralls stepped out from one of the buildings and glanced furtively in their direction before walking quickly into the other structure.
Beyond the perimeter wall, forested slopes rose on two sides. About halfway up one of the inclines, a canvas-tarp truck passed in and out of view as it threaded its way along a mountain pass obscured by green timber.
Their destination turned out to be a long two-story wooden structure at the far end of the compound. Megan peered through the open doorways of several dormitory-style rooms as they walked down the first-floor hallway.
When they passed the last room on the left, she saw a young girl lying on a steel-legged table. The child had dysmorphic facial features that marked her as suffering from a genetic disorder. An ultrasound machine was sitting next to her, and a female technician in a white lab coat was moving a sonographic sensor over the girl’s lower abdomen.
Other than a ruptured appendix, tumor, or diseased ovaries, Megan couldn’t think of many reasons to do an ultrasound of the lower abdomen.
And she couldn’t think of any reason that someone would be doing such a high-tech medical procedure in the middle of a Guatemalan jungle.
What is this place?
They climbed a flight of stairs and walked down a corridor to the third room on the right. In its only bed lay an elderly man, his head writhing as if in a delirium. Two IV bags hung from poles. A woman was injecting something into one of the bags as they entered the room. Even from the door, Megan could see that the patient was flushed with fever.
The man had a large head with graying red hair that was matted with sweat. His face looked as if he had just come in from the rain.
The Latino man motioned to the woman standing at the bedside. She immediately left the room. As soon as the door was closed, he said, “This man’s life is now your responsibility.”
“What do you mean?”
“What don’t you understand? It’s your job to make sure this man recovers from his illness.”
“I’m trained to take care of children.” She stared at the old man while calling back the image of the ultrasound machine. “There must be other doctors here.”
“Only one,” he said, “and you’re looking at him.”
She moved closer and studied the old man’s face. After a moment she brought a hand to her mouth.
“I thought he was dead,” she whispered.
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