Once his recovery took hold, the value of her life to her captors would evaporate.
As she had hoped, word of her mosquito scare had spread among the guards, and a screen door had replaced the open doorway to their room. Their guard was sitting in a chair on the other side of the screen, his head propped against the opposite wall of the corridor.
She had rehearsed the movements in her mind a hundred times: climbing onto the window ledge that was outside of the guard’s field of vision; leaping to the tree branch that was as far away as any vault she’d ever done; swinging up and onto the huge limb and crossing to the other side of the compound wall; and finally, climbing the steep mountainside to a road she’d seen only once while walking across the compound two days earlier.
The screened window was on the wall to the left of the entry door. Both she and Father Joe had feigned catnaps near that window to condition the guard to their disappearing from view for long periods. At random intervals the guard would put his face against the screen door and survey the room. She and Father Joe had worked out a system of signals and taken turns working on the window’s wire mesh when the guard was in his seat. They had separated the edge of the screen from its frame an inch at a time, then put it back in place. Working all night, they had freed most of three sides.
She needed the cover of darkness. They had taken her watch, and she didn’t know the exact time, but based on the flow rate of the IVs and the lab technician’s habit of changing the IV bag at midnight, Megan guessed it was about 4:00 A.M. The sun would be rising in a few hours.
They had come up with the plan together, communicating in gestures and coded whispers when standing together over the patient. The priest had worked excitedly, at times causing him to lose his breath. She could see the fervor in his eyes. He wanted her to escape, probably more than she wanted it.
Even though it was his idea that she should attempt an escape, her sense of guilt swelled as the moment approached. Both of them knew what their fate would be once Dr. Kaczynski emerged from his stupor and took over his own care. And both knew that Father Joe did not have the physical agility or stamina to accompany her.
The priest would pay for her escape with his life unless she could quickly get to the police and return with help.
Megan was standing over Kaczynski when the guard rose from his seat. He walked up to the screen door, studied the room, then sat down again.
Father Joe came up from behind and whispered, “It’s time.”
Megan nodded without turning. She was fighting back tears.
The priest stepped beside her, took a damp cloth from her hand and patted Kaczynski’s forehead.
“I’m coming back for you,” she said.
He smiled while dabbing a rivulet of sweat from the patient’s neck. “Godspeed, Megan Callahan.”
She stepped away from the table, opened her mouth while spreading her arms in a yawn, and shuffled over to the window. She listened for any telltale sounds from the guard as she eased back the screen.
Once she had the screen peeled back, she looked in both directions at the dimly lit compound below, grabbed the window frame and lifted herself onto the sill.
Her throat tightened. She bounced lightly a few times, shaking away the fear.
Then she sprang at the tree limb.
Father Joe coughed to cover the sound.
Megan caught the thick branch with one hand, missed with the other. She hung there, swinging by one arm, her body suddenly announcing its fatigue.
Her free arm caught hold of the bough, then slipped away.
She had almost no strength left. She knew her body; her reserves were gone. Soon, her single handhold would give way.
Panic swiped at her like a tiger’s claw.
She looked back into the room.
Father Joe was watching her. There was a smile in his eyes. They were strangely calm, like those of a parent watching his child learn a new skill.
Without a word, he turned both thumbs skyward.
Megan hadn’t seen that gesture since she was a young girl. At gymnastics meets, before each event, she’d turn to her father and he’d lift his thumbs.
It was their private little ritual, an unspoken message to her. You can do it, Megan.
And do it, she did, speaking to her father in silent thoughts as she curled up and onto the tree limb.
She raced over the top of the stone wall.
47
“This woman, Megan, I sense that she is more than just a friend,” the microbiologist said.
Luke downshifted without replying to the woman’s comment. The truck’s gears ground loudly.
He had just told her about Megan’s abduction by men whose description matched the killers at Zenavax’s lab. He had described the tan truck with a red caduceus that her kidnappers used, and the explosive charges that destroyed Mayakital.
They had left the Zenavax lab two hours ago and were winding through a narrow mountain road. The transmission groaned every time the speedometer needle passed the fifteen-kilometer bar, and the bullet-riddled truck creaked loudly whenever they hit a pothole, which was often. It wouldn’t be long before the mechanical beast died.
He was breaking every rule of evasion and countersurveillance he had ever learned. Their truck was as conspicuous as a zebra with pink stripes, and his passengers included a woman about whom he knew little, three men about whom he knew nothing, and a nine-year-old boy over whom he seemed to have no control.
The only precaution he’d taken was to bar any communications. Earlier, the woman had asked to call Zenavax’s U.S. headquarters, to tell her company about the melee at the lab, but Luke had not allowed her to make the call. There were still too many unknown risks — his enemy had already demonstrated that they could tap a phone line — and he didn’t want to risk giving his adversaries any more information than they already had.
His only concession to the woman had been delaying their departure from the lab for the few minutes it took to release her monkeys from their cages.
“Our guards, Miguel and Eduardo, you did not kill them, did you?” she said. It sounded more like a statement than a question.
“Does it matter?”
“To me, it does.”
“I shot one of them in the shoulder.”
“That would not have killed him.”
“I was aiming for his chest.”
The edge of the dirt road floated in and out of Luke’s view. One of the truck’s headlights was broken and the other lolled to the side like an eye hanging from its socket. His only view was through a gaping hole in the shattered windshield. Insects streamed in through the opening and ricocheted off his face.
“My name is Rosalinda,” she said.
“Luke.” He offered his hand.
She took it. “Luke, I know the executives who run our company. They are aggressive business people, and sometimes unpleasant, but they are not killers.”
It had already occurred to him that Zenavax might be a pawn in this drama. The men guarding the forest facility had displayed total surprise, and the killers had shown no regard for anyone at the laboratory, gunning down two of Rosalinda’s workers in cold blood. If the company was trying to conceal something, why bring attention to itself by staging an attack on its own site?
But if Zenavax wasn’t at the center of this maelstrom, the CHEGAN FOUNDATION seemed even more implausible. A healthcare organization doing relief work in remote Indian villages was hardly the profile of a violent cabal.
“What are you going to do when we get to Río Dulce?” she asked.