The hunter was in the ditch, closing on Luke’s position. A second hunter would be nearby, probably on ground level, moving in a parallel path.
Luke detached the bayonet from the M-16 and ran his finger along both edges of the six-inch blade.
Another footfall. Images of the takedown played in his mind, the kind of mental rehearsal he’d used in another life.
When the moment came, it felt as if he were in another place, watching it unfold on a video screen.
Luke flicked a pebble with his middle finger, sending it straight up, toward the shadowed outline of a branch.
When the pebble hit its mark, he heard the sudden movement a few feet away.
He leapt from his earthen pouch. The killer was still looking up to the sound when Luke plunged the bayonet into the side of the man’s neck. The blade disappeared under the corner of his jaw, severing his vocal cords.
A burst of gunfire left the hunter’s rifle before the dying man reached for the knife handle protruding from his neck.
When the dark outline of a second man appeared at the lip of the gulch, Luke was already crouched in a shooting position. He caught the killer with a three-round burst. The orange muzzle flashes created a strobe-light effect, catching the hunter’s stunned expression as the bullets punched through his chest.
When Luke released the trigger, his skin tingled with the presence of a ghost that had come back and reclaimed his soul.
44
Luke grabbed one of the dead assailants’ rifles, swung it over the rim of the gully and peered through the bulbous nightscope.
On the other side of the road, two black-clad figures retreated into the wooded darkness, alternating their movements, one man withdrawing while the other covered their egress. The smaller one moved more expertly than his partner. Luke considered taking a shot at the man who was making a bigger target of himself, but the receding figures were already at the outer envelope of what, on a good day in another life, was his effective range.
So instead he followed the two men. Fifteen minutes later, when he was satisfied that they were not circling back, he returned to the compound.
The bullet-riddled truck was pinned against a tree. It was green and had no markings on the doors. The engine was still running, its rear tires churning the soil and digging grooves so deep that the axle had come to rest on the ground. It looked like a dying animal.
A lifeless man in a khaki work uniform hung out of the cab’s open door, his body strewn with bullet holes. Luke reached across him and turned off the engine, then went around to the back of the truck where he found a second body curled in a fetal position.
Next, he checked the guards. Both men were dead. The one he had shot in the shoulder lay in a crimson pool. Blood was still seeping from two chest wounds that were too large to have been made by Luke’s 9mm handgun.
A soft footstep interrupted his thoughts. He turned toward the sound.
“He dead, boss?”
Frankie had stopped several feet short of Luke and was staring at the soldier’s body. The boy’s eyes looked as though they were well acquainted with death.
“Yeah, he’s dead.”
Ten minutes later Luke had completed a quick search of the compound, flushed three men and a woman from their hiding places, and confirmed what he already suspected. Megan wasn’t there.
The killers’ tactics weren’t those of men guarding a hostage. They weren’t defending this site. Rather, they had gunned down two of its guards and abandoned the area as soon as he had reduced their numerical advantage.
So what was this place? Paco had been certain he’d seen a truck identical to the one used by Megan’s abductors. What was the connection between this site and her kidnapping?
Another question, a darker question, swirled within the contradictions and puzzles.
Was Megan still alive?
He pushed the thought away and focused on his immediate problem — he now had four captives to deal with. After herding them outside at gunpoint, Luke had them carry the six dead men into the main building. The bodies were laid side by side on the floor of what he discovered was a large laboratory.
Workbenches crowded with titration columns and Erlenmeyer flasks ran the length of the room. Along the walls, glass-enclosed units outfitted with rubber sleeves held machines with robotic arms that moved columns of pipettes over rows of test tubes, extracting and injecting amber-colored fluids.
Floor-to-ceiling cages lined the far wall, and each cage held a monkey. The small dark primates had yowled loudly when Luke walked through the door with his entourage. It was a menacing, raspy howl that sounded like a lion’s roar, and their first wail had sent Frankie scurrying out the door.
Luke seated his captives around a lab bench in the middle of the room. Three of the four faces staring back at him displayed a convincing mask of terror. He did nothing to reassure them.
His fourth captive, a woman about his age, carried herself with an air of command despite a withered leg and noticeable limp that Luke guessed might be the residual of polio. She had ghostly white skin that picked up every hollow in her face, and jet-black hair that glimmered blue under the fluorescent lights. An ornate silver chain hung from the temple stems of her black-rimmed eyeglasses. Sitting sideways in her chair, she looked at him obliquely with her shoulders held back as if to prop up a flagging bravado.
When Luke stooped next to the body of one of his attackers to inspect it, the woman said, “Are you going to tell us what you want?”
He was surprised at the evenness of her voice. “So you speak English,” he said with his back turned to her. “How about the others?”
“Only I speak English,” the woman replied. Her stiff English phrasing gave her Spanish accent an aristocratic tone.
Luke searched the pockets of the second assailant, who, like his dead partner, was dressed in black fatigues and military jump boots. “Where are the video recordings from your security cameras?”
“You will not find any because our cameras are not connected to a recorder. I am sure you will confirm that for yourself.”
“You’re right. I will,” he said. “What about telephones?”
“We have two satellite phones, but you will find that they do not work well at this hour. Something about the position of the satellites. I have already tried.”
Whether she was telling the truth was unimportant. He’d be gone long before anyone could respond to a distress call.
But it reminded him — he had missed his call from Sammy.
He gestured toward the cages with his gun. “What is this place, and who are you people?”
“So, you kill people and you do not even know who they are?”
Luke ripped open one of the dead men’s Velcro thigh pockets, fished out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. While looking at it, he said, “This is how it’s going to be. I’m going to ask questions and you’re going to answer them—fully. Do you understand?”
The woman sighed. “This is a research laboratory. We’re developing a human vaccine for malaria.” Her voice turned to acid when she added, “We’re here because we want to save lives. You probably would not understand that.”
“Perhaps not.”
The paper in his hand was a digital photograph of himself, walking out the front door of Kolter’s Deli. It was a close-up of his head and chest, but he recognized his father’s jacketed shoulder in the foreground. Someone had snapped a picture of them leaving the restaurant after their breakfast meeting last Sunday. He folded it and put it into his pocket.
“Why so much security?” he asked.
“It’s not so much, really, if you consider the amount of money we spend on our research. Our company wants to protect its investment.”