“Those are blood test results for volunteers in my malaria project, all of whom work in my lab.” Elmer sighed heavily. “After they’re exposed to the vaccine-producing mosquitoes, we do weekly blood tests. We measure their malaria titers, but we also do a direct measurement of their antigen level to see how much vaccine the mosquitoes are injecting into the volunteers’ blood.” He rubbed his forehead. “Look at the fourth line.”
“It says Elmer McKenna.”
“Notice the antigen level.”
“You’re positive. You have antigen in your blood. So what?”
“Years ago I had malaria. I can’t participate in the study,” Elmer said. “That’s not my blood.”
“You’re losing me.”
“You told me to use an alias for Josue Chaca’s blood specimen, the one we got from the state lab,” Elmer said. “So I used my name. I labeled the tube myself, then stored it with a collection of blood samples we’d drawn from the volunteers. One of my techs ran a titer and antigen level on that tube, thinking it was just another one of the volunteers’ blood samples.”
“There must be a mix-up.”
Elmer shook his head. “I had my tech repeat the tests while I stood there and watched. There’s no mistake. Sometime before he died, Josue Chaca was bitten by my mosquitoes.”
50
When Luke awoke, his eyelids opened as heavily as a bank vault door. A red shaft of light streamed through a gap in his window drapes, and the wall opposite his bed glowed with the deep hues of sunset.
He rubbed the sleep out his eyes and looked at his watch: 6:03 P.M. He’d slept for almost five hours.
Damn. He jumped out of bed and stumbled over to the corner of the room where he’d thrown his clothes. They were gone.
A silhouette bled through the window’s thin curtain weave. Someone was on the veranda.
He eased the curtain back and saw Frankie sitting in a small chair with his feet up on the railing. He was blowing smoke rings at the sunset.
Luke threw open the door. “You’re gonna stunt your growth.”
“Huh? What you mean?”
“Never mind. Where’re my clothes?”
Frankie threw a thumb over his shoulder.
Luke looked back inside. Sitting on the dresser were all of his clothes — two shirts, a pair of pants, underwear and socks — laundered, folded, and stacked.
“Monjas—the sisters,” Frankie said. “At the hospital, they make me clean clothes, like a girl.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “It no right.”
Luke swiped the butt from him and tossed it over the balustrade.
A drop of rain struck his wrist. Above them a churning swarm of dark clouds reached over to the western horizon where a reddish-orange sun was dipping into the earth.
The fever was coming back and his left shoulder throbbed. He went inside, grabbed the bottle of antibiotics from the dresser top and swallowed two more pills.
When he returned to the balcony, he was holding one of the rifle scopes he’d taken from the assailants at the lab. He clicked a knob, set the scope to ambient light, and surveyed the park across the street. A stone pathway bisected broad swaths of manicured Bermuda grass. At the end of the path was a wrought-iron gate, and behind it stood a drawbridge that spanned the narrow moat around Castillo San Felipe.
The castle’s entry gate was closed. Except for a man sitting on a decorative iron bench outside the entrance, the grounds were empty.
About fifty feet to the left of the castle, a small dinghy was tied to a dock.
This will work, he thought. He grabbed Sammy’s phone from his rucksack and placed a call to Wilkes.
“Where you been?” Sammy barked. “I been calling you for the past hour.”
Luke realized he had slept through the phone’s ringing.
Sammy launched into a hurried description of some rendezvous site outside of town.
Luke interrupted him in mid-sentence. “I’m changing the plans. We’ll meet at Castillo San Felipe. If he knows this area, he’ll know where the castle is.”
“You’re gonna scare the guy off, Flash. I told Calderon I’m working for University Children’s, remember? And this informant thinks you’re some yokel that works at the clinic in Santa Lucina. How’m I supposed to explain you changing the meeting like this? It won’t smell right.”
Luke ignored him. “The castle, eight o’clock. If the guy’s one minute late, I won’t be there.” He wasn’t going to give Calderon enough time to set up an ambush.
“It’s your play,” Sammy conceded. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. There’s a bench near the castle’s front gate. Have the guy sit on that bench, then light a match. If I don’t see the flame, he won’t see me.” Luke pressed the END CALL button.
He had Frankie call the front desk for messages. There was a message for Rosalinda from someone named Julia, who left the name of the hotel where she was staying and a room number.
“That was Rosalinda,” Luke explained, “letting us know where she is.” He went back out onto the veranda and studied the entrance to the castle. The man who had been sitting on the bench was gone.
“Frankie, I need you to do something for me.”
51
Luke lay across his hotel room’s veranda in a shooter’s prone position, his legs spread behind him. His rifle rested on the lower railing of the balustrade, its barrel protruding between two posts. It was 7:48 P.M.
Privacy walls jutting from either end of the balcony shielded him from the neighboring rooms. Behind him, his room was dark. Above him, only an occasional streak of moonlight penetrated the thick cloud layer. And below him, a roadway without street lamps completed the void of darkness.
He had an elevated perch on the second floor, and more importantly, he was nowhere near where a trained reconnaissance team would look for him. Someone with a trained eye would expect him to take a position along the top of the castle’s wall, behind the battlement. From that position, he not only would have had the advantage of elevation, but also an unimpeded view of the entire plaza, the protection of water on three sides, and the concealment of stone walls.
Which was exactly why he wasn’t there. From his current position, men approaching the castle by land would have their backs to him. He’d have them flanked from the outset.
Earlier, he had watched Frankie tape Sammy’s phone to the underside of the wrought-iron bench, then shuffle away with slouched shoulders and an occasional glance in Luke’s direction. The boy had trudged off in the direction of Rosalinda’s hotel with the enthusiasm of someone walking the plank.
When Calderon or his surrogate sat down on the bench, Luke would call him using Rosalinda’s satellite phone. He’d direct the would-be killer to the far side of the plaza, watching the area around the man as he moved across the park. From Luke’s position, he could easily spot any accomplice within a quarter mile of his mark.
Suddenly, an explosion of light seared his eyes.
A lightning flash had blinded him. A moment later a peal of thunder rolled over him. The gallium arsenide amplifier in his nightscope had magnified the light ten-thousand-fold, creating a burst of radiance so bright that it temporarily stole his eyesight. He blinked away the pain.
Slowly, his vision returned.
His task was already difficult enough without having to deal with lightning bursts. At this range — he was about two hundred yards from the castle — slow moving objects would be difficult to detect.
Even more troublesome were the variations in lighting across the search area, which degraded his scope’s optics. A light post near the dock cast a distorting glare on the eastern approach to the castle, while the western side of the fortress was in total darkness.