The statement sent a tremor up McCracken’s spine. He felt his emotions boiling over, tried to contain them in order to keep his focus on the matter at hand.
“You made your monsters in my image?”
“Partially, yes.”
Blaine thought of Sal Belamo’s exploding bullets. “Guess I’ll have to shed a tear when I blow each of the fucks away.”
Parker shook his head. “Not even you could.”
“I still have a few tricks I reserve for myself.”
“It’s not a question of tricks. The disciples are advanced as much beyond you as you are beyond a thirteen-year-old boy. And it won’t stop there. We learned from the original twelve. Abraham is the prototype now.” The sudden twist in Parker’s train of thought chilled Blaine. “Prototype for what?”
“Don’t be naive, McCracken. Our work in the Amazon was just beginning. The original disciples were ready to be dispatched, yes, but a second phase soon would have taken their place.”
“It’s a shame the installation’s been lost.”
“Only this one. My understanding is that there are a dozen more bases scattered about the world. Whoever Hardesty was fronting for was building an army.”
Chapter 20
His name was Matthew. What his name had been before he probably could have discovered if he dug down deep enough into his brain. But the person with that name was as much a stranger to him as someone he might pass on the street. The slate had been wiped clean. Nothing that mattered remained beneath the new person that he was.
He crouched in a thick nest of bushes in the western quadrant of the Jardim Botanico. He did not know exactly where his twelve targets were; he knew he would find them when the time was right.
Matthew slid in amid the bushes. He was not a large man. He had to look up to see six feet, and before his experiences in the jungle, had not been overly muscular. The training had changed all that. Matthew grew strong beyond his wildest expectations; that is, while he still had expectations. Somewhere along the line he had lost them, too. There were only tasks to perform. All other considerations were superfluous.
At times, Matthew wondered whether the person he had been before had existed at all. The only thing that preserved the memory was the echo of feelings churning in his head. He would see or hear things that would bring him back to another time, and for an instant, he would feel as he had felt before. A fleeting flutter. By the time he thought to grasp for it, it was gone.
Suddenly Matthew emerged from the bushes. He did not know what had told him the time was right. When he moved, the night did not give him up. His motions came like the cat who stalks its prey unseen in the open. There was always cover; the air was cover. The trick was to use it.
He found the first woman fifty yards ahead, behind a massive tree, her body concealed under its umbrella of branches. He smelled her before he saw her, as he moved carefully to avoid being caught in the moonlight that snuck through tree branches. Matthew felt his breathing slow, his heartbeat a mere flutter in his chest. He had his usual weapons, yes, but he would use his hands here. Hands were the best.
Matthew came right up behind the woman and clamped his hands on opposite sides of her head. A single twist was all it took. There was a crack and he kept on twisting. In his mind he could see the cartilage stretched and torn. Muscle and sinew shredded. Matthew had the woman’s face turned all the way around so he was staring at thin rivulets of blood running from her nostrils and lips. Her eyes were bulging. The sight made him smile; he just held her there away from him until her head flopped over between her shoulder blades and stayed kinked at a downward angle.
Matthew let her crumple at his feet and moved onto the next one.
“Where are these other bases?” McCracken asked Parker. “I don’t know. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you until I was safely in the States.”
“You better give me reason to believe you can help lead me to who’s behind the Omicron legion, if you expect me to get you there.”
“You know as much as I do on that subject.”
“All I know is that Omicron was abandoned three years ago by legitimate authorities before it got reborn down here in another form. That means resources sufficient to make possible technology that plenty of experts had already dismissed as impossible.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure exactly. But it was backed by an enormous supply of funds, and by someone who knew exactly what they wanted; that much is clear. What’s missing is the frame of reference from which it emerged.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m still putting the pieces together for myself, Parker. For one thing, they had a running start. There was nothing hit-or-miss about Omicron, was there?”
Parker considered the question briefly before responding. “Not in the jungle, anyway.”
“Nor anywhere else is my guess. Whoever’s out to kill you knew exactly what they were doing — which meant they or someone else had done it before.”
“How could I tell? I wasn’t a scientist.”
“Right, but the men and women who were scientists weren’t operating blind. Everything was precise. Someone was directing their every move. Someone who knew.”
“What’s it mean?”
“I don’t know. But I will, you can count on that.” Blaine paused. “I’ll need you to repeat this.”
“Just get me safely back to the States and I’ll repeat it to anyone you sit me down in front of.” He watched McCracken swing around suddenly. “What’s wrong?”
“Keep quiet!”
“You heard something!”
Blaine drew the Heckler and Koch from his ankle holster.
“Stay behind me. We’re getting out of here.”
“Da Sa’s women…”
“Just do what I tell you!” Matthew knew the final snap had been too loud, considering that this was the closest guard to his targets. He had dispatched the first eleven women without a bother: six with his bare hands and five with the knife now pressed back into the sheath wrapped around his ankle. What he wanted to do was break a spine, snap one like a twig, using enough force to double a body over upon itself. He had used the knife to give his hands a rest, but the knife gave him little satisfaction. The hard swish of blade parting flesh was too transitory. The victim spasmed, writhed, and the whole process was much too messy.
The final woman, lying prone in the brook, had looked up an instant before he was about take her. Before she could cry out, Matthew had slapped a hand across her mouth with such strength her front teeth broke from her gums. She struggled, and he jerked her head back. Her neck cracked, then her vertebrae crunched, one after another. At the end, she was bent almost perfectly in two. Matthew discarded her that way and moved on at a faster pace, the sound of the first crack still loud in his ears and, he feared, in someone else’s.
“I don’t think we should leave,” Parker protested. “We should stay until the women—”
“They’re dead,” McCracken interrupted.
“What?”
Blaine swung around to face him. “It’s just you and me.”
“How do you know? How could you know?”
A faint smile crossed McCracken’s lips. “I’m no different than your disciples, remember?”
“But if one of them—”
“Just do what I tell you,” Blaine said. “Just—”