“What have you done to her?” Sonia exclaimed.
“She wouldn’t stop crying so I had her sedated,” Draco said. “But if you’ve done what you said, she will soon be on the road to recovery.”
“And the rest of the world?”
“Different road,” he said. “Different destination.”
“There’s no need for this,” Sonia pleaded. “We can test it on the animals. We can test it on rats, not people.”
“I have no argument with the rats,” he said. “It’s humans I want to fear me.”
“It wouldn’t take long. I would—”
“You would stall and procrastinate!” he shouted. “You would keep me waiting hoping that some rescue would come.”
“No,” she said, realizing she would have tried exactly that. “But this might not work as we—”
“You’d better hope it works,” he said. “Or Nadia will die and then we’ll start dragging people off the street and you can accidentally kill them one by one until you get it right. Do you understand me?”
Before she could answer, an alarm on some hastily rigged piece of equipment began chirping.
“Motion sensors,” Cruor said. “We have visitors.”
Draco looked surprised, and for the first time, uncomfortable. “They’re early. They’re more resourceful than I thought.”
“They’ll kill you,” Sonia said, trying anything to put some fear and doubt into the man. “Even if you kill me, Hawker will find you and he’ll kill you. I promise you that.”
The backhand she’d expected the day before finally came, catching her across the face and sending her to the floor. Her eye began to swell.
“You think I didn’t expect this?” he said. “It’s just a timing problem. Fortunately our two viruses are ready.”
“What do we do?” Cruor said.
“We get to see their end in person, and then leave,” Draco said.
Cruor seemed nervous to her. Strange, since he was huge and menacing, but apparently he was the follower.
“They’re eminently predictable,” Draco insisted. “The woman will go for the missiles, because that’s her job and she does what she’s supposed to do. The man will come for this one, because that’s what he does. Orders don’t matter to him. But a damsel or two in distress …”
“I will wait with you,” Cruor said.
“I have a place for you,” Draco said. “Are the others dead?”
Cruor nodded.
“Good,” Draco said. “They were not worthy. We will do better next time.”
A second alarm began to chirp.
“They’re splitting up,” Cruor said. “One on the deck, one inside.”
Draco began to laugh. “As I said: predictable.”
Hawker had made it to the bottom deck. He broke into a larger bay and stopped. Crates lay on the floor. Long, rectangular crates. They were empty, but he knew what they were. He’d seen them before, in La Bruzca’s warehouse.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
These were the very crates La Bruzca had insisted were for another buyer. In some ways it didn’t surprise him that La Bruzca had sold the missiles to the cult, but like everything else it was just too convenient.
He thought back to the meeting with La Bruzca. He could hear La Bruzca’s sinister tone as he intimated that he knew more about Hawker than the rest of the world did. Could it have some connection? He found it hard to believe events could really have come full circle.
There are no coincidences, he reminded himself, but what the hell did it all mean?
He glanced at his watch. In seven minutes it wouldn’t matter.
As Hawker continued the search below, Danielle crossed the main deck. A hint of moonlight had appeared on the horizon, though the moon had yet to show its face.
Getting her bearings she moved toward the bow. She remembered Moore saying the missiles appeared to be located forward, placed on rather obviously built launch rails.
Getting away from the accommodations block, she darted forward in spurts, passing various cargo hatches and covers. Every step out into the open felt like she was inviting a sniper to put a round through her heart.
It was still coal black in the shadows but that didn’t stop someone from having a night-vision scope. And in a minute the moon would be up and she would be painted with each step.
She hurried and quickly reached the forward section. There, between the two crane booms that might have once hoisted cargo out of the holds, she saw the launch ramps Moore had mentioned and a gray metallic structure the size of a small bus. It seemed nothing more than a crude covering, probably erected just to keep the missiles out of sight.
Even the launch rails seemed crude. She didn’t know what missiles these people had, but she couldn’t actually remember a missile old enough to need a launch ramp. She hoped they were so old that they wouldn’t operate.
She moved toward the housing, staying under cover, looking around for any signs of danger. If anyone from the cult remained alive and present they would be here, protecting these weapons, waiting to fire them.
No one shot at her and Danielle stole a glance through an open doorway that had been cut in the metallic housing. Inside, two missiles the size of truncated telephone poles sat on the launch rails. She pressed her back against the outside wall of the shelter and checked her rifle.
She would dash through the cutout door, swinging her rifle to the right, firing blind, because she didn’t have the chance to wait. And then once she’d cleared the area, she’d find a way to sabotage the missiles and prevent them from launching.
She took a deep breath, tensed her body, and looked toward the doorway.
The first sliver of the moon had risen over the water. Its pale light spilled across the deck. In that light Danielle saw something she hadn’t expected, hadn’t even considered: a tripwire, strung across the doorway, like the thinnest strand of spider silk.
CHAPTER 52
As Arnold Moore sat listening to Walter Yang, he hoped the young man was about to tell him it was all a hoax, that they could call off the dogs and let it all be, but the look on Yang’s face suggested something else.
“Be quick,” Moore said.
“I’ve been studying the virus like you suggested,” Yang said, “not the data Ms. Laidlaw recovered but the original Magician virus from the UN.”
“What did you find? Anything that will change our response.”
“Not really, but something interesting.”
“It’s a little late for interesting, Walter.”
Yang nodded. “I know what you mean but—”
“You don’t know what I mean,” Moore said curtly. “Two of our best are moving on the site right now. It’s probably heavily defended. Even if they’ve survived the insertion and the recon, the island will probably be blown out from under them before they can find what they’re looking for and get off of it alive. So trust me, you have no idea what I mean, when I tell you: it’s a little late.”
Moore knew his pain had gotten the best of him. Yang’s face said he regretted coming in, but he didn’t flinch.
“You don’t understand,” Yang said. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve been studying the inert section that you asked me to look at.”
Moore exhaled and shook his head. “I thought you said it was just blank space reserved in the DNA, a space that would be replaced by the payload?”
“It is,” Yang said. “But I think it’s something else as well. I think it’s a message.”
Moore felt as if ice water had just been poured down his spine.
“A message?”
Yang nodded.
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what the DNA molecule looks like?” Yang said.