Fighting to remember the garden’s layout, Blaine regained his feet and charged on. The disciple was no longer in sight, and there was no sense in Blaine looking until he had some weapon to fight him. Their exchange back at the fountain taught McCracken he had no hope of winning a hand-to-hand struggle, though he felt certain that was what his adversary still wanted. It was something he had going for him, perhaps the last thing he had to make use of.
His flight took him around to the north and back to the Avenue of the Royal Palms. Making a dash for it seemed his best chance…until he reached the glass hothouse containing the carnivorous and poisonous plants. Most of them grew in simple pots, looking harmless and innocent in the night. One stood out. Standing upright in the center was a smaller version of a tree Blaine recalled all too well from Africa. It looked like a massive rosebush, its thorns the size of thin fingers. But McCracken knew the thorns were actually deadly spines loaded with a curarelike poison.
McCracken knew he had his weapon now. Making it work was another matter. The substance of the plan still forming in his mind, he kept kicking at the glass until a hole big enough to accommodate his bulk had been formed.
The sound of breaking glass drew Matthew to the hothouse. He had sensed from the beginning it would end here. Too bad, really. Unfortunate.
“I’m not holding my gun, McCracken,” Matthew said calmly, as he approached the hothouse. “I don’t have my knife out, either. I was supposed to kill you back there, but I didn’t. You’re more like us than them. Join us. Tell me you’ll join us, and I won’t kill you.”
Matthew reached the jagged hole in the glass and started through.
“We knew it was you in the jungle. You and that Indian. Only you could have eluded us in the manner you did…The Indian’s idea, no doubt.”
Glass crackled beneath him as Matthew drew further into the small hothouse. There were just a few places to hide.
“Norseman went easy. He was just a soldier, a killer. But you’re different. You understand what we are, what we’re capable of. Join us, McCracken. It’s your only hope. If I don’t kill you, you’ll die anyway — when all of the United States dies. We’re going to kill it, McCracken, and inherit what’s left. Join us and you can be spared.”
Matthew realized that all of the potential hiding places were vacant just as the rest of the glass in the section behind him shattered in the vague outline of the shape hurtling itself forward.
McCracken had the thick shard of glass squeezed into his right hand, held high where the moonlight might catch it.
And the disciple would be sure to notice.
He saw the disciple’s empty eyes sweep toward it and his arm come up instantly in defense. Blaine kept the force of the blow coming, true intention not betrayed as his arm was stopped and twisted over as the disciple went for the break.
Just as McCracken would have done.
Anticipating the move perfectly, Blaine bent his knees and dropped his free shoulder against the disciple’s side. The disciple responded by reaching back for more purchase. That one instant cost him his balance, and McCracken drove him forward. The disciple seemed to flow with the move briefly, then he realized its deadly intent, the truth reflected in his bulging eyes as Blaine rammed him into the bushy tree poised in the hothouse’s center.
The tree’s spines pierced the disciple’s flesh in four separate places. The pain from this alone would not have been enough to even make him waver, but a breath later the poison was flooding his veins, sabotaging his blood and short-circuiting his system. He pounded McCracken twice before the first spasm shook him. His body locked upright as Blaine backed off. His mouth gaped. He gasped just before his throat swelled from the poison and closed. His face turned purple. He tried to free himself from the tree, but succeeded only in flapping his arms before they dropped helplessly to his sides and he slumped.
The disciple was still twitching when he hit the floor, eyes locked open and no more dead, Blaine thought, than when he had been alive.
McCracken backed away, pain racking his body, his eyes on the disciple. When he didn’t stir, Blaine at last backed out of the hothouse.
One battle won meant only another lay out there to be fought. Parker had said an army of them were being created. The process could be infinite, the number of perfect killing machines expanded. Someone had arranged for their escape — not only because of Hardesty’s death, but because their services were needed.
The disciple’s words rang in his ears. “If I don’t kill you, you’ll die anyway — when all of the United States dies. We’re going to kill it.” If the words were true, whoever was responsible for the Omicron legion was also planning something much worse. And what it was had to be somehow connected to the six killers who were systematically eliminating the people on Patty Hunsecker’s list.
McCracken retraced his steps out of the Jardim Botanico, staying in the shadows on the chance the Rio authorities had been alerted by the commotion. None appeared, but he reached the street still wary of every step. He knew his most pressing goal after escaping from the Jardim was to flee Rio before the power controlling the remaining disciples could marshall its forces again.
Fernando Da Sa seemed his best bet for assistance. The crime lord would certainly have his own reasons for joining the fight now; a dozen of his best women guards had been killed in the garden tonight.
It took a few minutes, but Blaine finally managed to hail a cab. He told the driver to take him to the Bali Bar in São Conrado, Da Sa’s current headquarters and the place he had directed McCracken to come to in the event of trouble. Tonight’s adventures certainly qualified….
He considered his plight in the cab’s cramped quarters. Whoever was behind the Omicron legion had known he was coming back to Rio. The disciple he had killed must have been following him all along, waiting for his rendezvous with Parker before making his move. Blaine had played right into the enemy’s hands. They had used him to hunt down the only living person who formed a direct link to the legion, played him for a fool, but he had fooled them in the end by staying alive.
The Bali Bar, as it turned out, was located in the fashionable Itanhanea shopping park. Blaine saw it set off by itself to the far left. Saturday night made for a jam-packed parking lot, and the cab deposited him on the edge of the clutter of would-be patrons milling about trying to determine if and when to enter. The building itself was decorated in a South Pacific island motif. It had the look of a massive bamboo hut wrapped freely with enormous vines. A palm tree grew out of an inner courtyard complete with outdoor bar to handle the overspill of patrons from within. The letters announcing the bar’s name were cleverly slanted and painted in bold, vibrant colors that glowed in the night. As Blaine headed for the entrance, he noticed that the patrons were exceedingly young, some no more than fifteen. Except for a large bouncer posted near the turnstile permitting entry, there wasn’t a single adult to be seen. McCracken felt the young people staring at him — more for his age, he gathered, than his look of disarray. His clothes were still not dry from his plunge into the fountain, and his crash through the hothouse glass had made neat tears through his jacket. His face was bruised, and he was favoring his right side. His wrist was singed and blackened, but not swollen.