Manny must have sensed a shift in Evan’s emotions, because he firmed the shotgun to his right shoulder. He was closest to Evan, the barrel no more than four feet away. After the fate of his predecessor, he’d earned the right to be jittery. In the back, Dex remained alertly forward on the balls of his feet, his massive body idling, a Mustang waiting for the light to change. He lifted a pawlike hand to scratch his face, and again Evan caught a glimpse of something on the skin. Red and black Magic Marker? A tattoo? A stitched wound?
Evan looked at René. “What next?”
“Your money in the account is denominated in various currencies, some fairly exotic. Our cooperative bank manager has instigated the necessary transactions to convert your holdings into Swiss francs, my preferred brand. Three full business days are required for the trades to settle. First thing Friday morning, you will type your codes, send the wire transfer, and go on your merry way.”
Friday would still give Evan nine days to intercept Alison Siegler. Nine days was plenty of time. If he had any faith that René was in fact planning to let him go on his merry way.
René couldn’t release Evan. Not after he knew what Evan was capable of. Not after he’d taken $27 mil from him. Not after Evan had seen René’s face.
“Until then,” René continued, “your life can be as pleasant as you choose to make it.”
“And if I opt for unpleasant?” Evan asked.
“I’ve never sparked to torture,” René said. “Not like these fellows.” He rested a hand on the shoulder of the narco to his left and gave an affectionate squeeze.
Evan let his posture deflate, a show of defeat.
“Then we have an agreement?” René asked.
Evan extended a hand as if to shake.
The cartel men shouted in Spanish. Manny reared up, readying to fire. Feigning puzzlement, his arm still extended, Evan took a half step forward.
Then he whipped his hand up, knocking the shotgun back over Manny’s shoulder. It discharged at point-blank range into the face of the narco behind him, putting a hockey-puck-size dent in his forehead. The recoil kicked the shotgun from Manny’s grip. The third narco fired recklessly in front of Manny’s face. The round skimmed across Evan’s back, trailing friction heat.
Disoriented, Manny swung at Evan. His punch glanced off Evan’s chin and struck him square in the shoulder, and Evan spun with the impact, letting himself drop to the floor. He threw a leg sweep that caught the other narco behind the Achilles, launching his feet out from under him. The guy hit the floor flat on his back, his breath leaving him in a seal-like bark an instant before Evan hammered the heel of his foot into the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe.
Two dogs, six guards, and Dex.
Through Manny’s legs Evan could see the first narco seizing on the floorboards, saliva webbing from the corner of his mouth. Dex’s pillar legs were visible, too, rotating powerfully to the doorway, René clamped beneath his arm in a rag-doll dangle, his high-ticket loafers skimming the floor.
Manny kicked Evan in the stomach, knocking a clump of air from his lungs. Evan fought through the pain and clenched around the boot. Somehow he held on, Manny toppling over, his mouth stretched wide in a grimace, gold teeth flashing. Before Evan could get to him, the room seemed to darken.
Dex, blocking out the light, one massive arm drawn back. As he swung the pipe down, Evan rolled to the side. The metal end splintered the plank next to his cheek. Flipping over, he grabbed the pipe.
Too late he realized it was a cattle prod.
Everything turned a brilliant shade of white. He felt a vague sensation of sliding several feet, the uneven floor sandpapering his ass, his shoulders, the back of his head. The inside of his mouth prickled. His face stuck with a thousand pins. His body was immobilized save for the scorching pain still twitching the nerves of his arm. Somewhere he registered sounds of retreat, the bedroom door slamming shut.
Lying there on his back gave him an excellent view of the gas hissing through the ceiling vent above, wavering the air like a heat mirage.
13
Last Glance Back
For Evan’s seventeenth birthday, a former Army Ranger exposes him to a brutal week of sleep deprivation and caloric reduction, then drives him to a desolate stretch of the snowy Allegheny Mountains, gives him a set of coordinates, and leaves him shivering in a T-shirt and jeans. As the four-wheeler pulls away with a cheery toot of the horn, Evan recalls Jack’s Third Commandment: Master your surroundings. Looking around, he wonders how this is possible.
He has weathered SERE training, which focuses on the four basics of operational up-the-creek-ness — survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. He’s been taught woodcraft and wilderness skills, counterinterrogation and camouflage techniques. He can make a fire, build a shelter, and distinguish mushrooms he can eat from mushrooms that will Cuisinart his kidneys or send him on a psychedelic trip on the magic bus, but now, as he faces the reality of the damp earth and empty pockets, it seems like all that knowledge is for shit.
Forty-eight hours later, near hypothermic and bedraggled beneath a paste of mud and leaves, he stumbles upon a long-deserted cabin. The roof is partially torn off, the walls rotted, critters nesting in the walls. In a fallen cabinet, he finds an ancient energy bar still in the wrapper and devours it.
Mistake.
Too late he notes the bitter aftertaste at the back of his tongue. A gentle poison or emetic, probably hydrogen peroxide or syrup of ipecac. Curled up on the dusty floorboards, he vomits the scant contents of his stomach. It seems that the heaving will never end. In hour two he hears an engine approach over the rugged terrain. The door opens, and a shadow falls over him.
“Why the hell would there be an energy bar in a deserted cabin?” Jack asks.
“The First Commandment,” Evan croaks.
“That’s right.” Jack crouches, sets down a bottle of water by Evan’s face. “See you at home.”
Four days later, having staggered out of the woods, cleaned up in a gas-station bathroom, stolen clothes from a church coatroom, and hitchhiked dogleggedly back to northern Virginia, Evan passes through the twin stone pillars and begins the painful climb up the dirt slope to the two-story farmhouse. Strider meets him at the porch, nuzzling his palm, wagging his tail so hard his rear end swivels.
Jack is sitting at a dinner table set for two, a steaming turkey in a basting pan set on a trivet before him. He sips a vodka martini, still ice-crystal cloudy from the shaker.
Evan crosses his arms, winces from the pain. He thinks back to Van Sciver, how when they were kids he always seemed to loom overhead, backlit by the sun, the edges of his red hair turned golden, the bearing of a god. He would’ve done better. He would have faced the wild fearlessly. He would have known to avoid the energy bar. He would have made it out a day quicker. Or two.
Evan feels emotion in the back of his throat, in his nostrils. The words come like broken glass. “I didn’t do so hot.”
Jack is all rough edges and rugged exterior, but his eyes and the etched skin around them convey something much, much softer. “Next time,” he says. “Next time.” He rubs his hands, appraises the turkey. “It still needs to rest before carving. There’s a hot bath waiting for you.”