The Ninth Day (24 page)

“Listen to me. It’s not my day to die, and it’s not yours either. I
will
find the answer in time.”

He shook his head. “No, you won’t. But I told you I won’t do what they say in D.C., and they’ll kill me there. Assuming, of course, that the disease doesn’t get me first.”

He looked out the window of the car. “There’s something you should know. I put a good-bye letter to my family in the lockbox on the back of the Triumph. Sounds like you’ll be traveling in the ambulance to the airstrip. Maybe you could get it out and take it with you. Here are the keys.” He fished the keys out of his pants pocket and placed them on the seat between them. “Either mail it or deliver it personally when this thing is all over. The bike is yours to keep.” He gave her a wan smile.

Emma pocketed the keys without a word. There was nothing to say.

Mono emerged from the building, heading back. Raoul waved her out of the car. Oz looked at her, and she could see unshed tears in his eyes.

“Next time I see you I’ll bring a cure.”

“Good-bye,” he said.

She refused to say good-bye. She got out of the car without a word.

Emma let Mono march her to the ambulance. He shoved her in, but this time he didn’t tie her up. She sat on the side with her back to the wall. The Triumph was opposite her, in the same place it had been.

Mono slammed the doors shut, and the back of the ambulance darkened. The ambulance rumbled into movement. Emma scrambled across and applied a key Oz had given her to the lockbox. When she opened it, she felt for the white envelope. She couldn’t read the address in the dark. Folding it into thirds, she put it in her pocket along with the keys and settled back to wait.

About an hour later she felt the ambulance slow, and then stop. After another ten minutes she heard the lock on the doors disengage and they swung open. Mono stood in the entrance.

“Move to that side, we need to load the shipment onto the plane.”

Emma transferred to the opposite side and sat next to the Triumph. Several men, all Hispanic-looking, began to take apart the ambulance’s false walls. She watched them remove the bricks. They were done within twenty minutes.

“You’re next. Into the plane.” Mono gestured with his pistol.

Emma scooted across the ambulance floor and stepped onto the tarmac. The back of the vehicle faced the end of the runway. She walked around to see where the airplane was parked. It was an ancient Fokker. Next to it stood a tall, lean man with brown shoulder-length hair tied in a ponytail and a cigarette in his mouth. His face lit up when he saw her.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s Emma Caldridge.”

Chapter 30

E
mma stayed still and stared at Wilson Vanderlock, struggling to keep the rush of hope that she felt at seeing him from showing on her face. The last time they’d met had been in Somalia. He looked the same as he did then; about thirty-five, with a rugged, masculine appearance and in perpetual need of a shave. He was dressed in army green cotton chino pants and a loose-fitting black tee shirt, and on his feet were python cowboy boots in a dark green color.

“How do you know her?” Mono’s voice was full of suspicion. He kept his gun pointed at Emma’s midsection.

Vanderlock removed the ever-present cigarette from his lips and blew out a stream of smoke. He stared a challenge at Mono.

“Who the hell are you?”

“I work for La Valle. How do you know her?”

Don’t tell him you know me. Emma thought the words, but wished she could say them out loud. Vanderlock flicked a glance at Emma. She stared back and twitched her head no with a tiny movement. Vanderlock watched her a moment before returning his gaze to Mono.

“Her face is splashed all over the news,” he said. Emma let her breath out slowly, quietly. Vanderlock was quick on his feet; she remembered that about him now. He pointed at Mono with the fingers holding the cigarette. “Yours, too, and some white guy. Real good work, getting caught on camera like that.” Vanderlock’s voice was filled with sarcasm. Mono’s face flushed red.

“We needed to get to the lab. She needs another one. It’s your job to fly her, and this time you get to break in with her. We’ll see how well
you
do.”

Vanderlock raised his eyebrows in surprise. “I was only told to deliver the shipment to Chicago. Then I’m out. That was my deal with La Valle.”

Mono snickered. “Looks like La Valle changed his mind. Now you have to get her into a lab within the next few hours.”

“And if I don’t?” Vanderlock said.

“Then he kills you and I get her,” Mono said.

“And if I do, do
I
get her?”

Mono shook his head. “She stays with La Valle. For ransom.”

“How much?”

“You can’t afford me,” Emma said.

Mono waved his pistol in her direction. “Quiet!” He looked back at Vanderlock. “You take that up with La Valle. For now you’d better figure out how you’re going to get into the lab.” Mono walked to the ambulance and began a conversation with the workers as they reassembled the inside of the vehicle.

“What the hell do you need a lab for?” Vanderlock said to Emma. “And, I
can
afford you. Hell, I can afford ten of you.”

Emma shook her head. “Still bragging, I see.”

Vanderlock snorted. “Still stubborn as hell, I see.” He glanced up and took another pull off his cigarette as Mono returned.

“The loading’s finished,” Mono said. “Get it, and her, out of here.” He shoved a piece of paper at Vanderlock.

“What’s this?” Vanderlock said.

“Lab sites. Pick one and get going,” Mono said.

Vanderlock looked back at Emma with amusement in his eyes. “He wants to be rid of you. Imagine that.”

Emma was more than happy to leave Mono behind. She was giddy, almost. Vanderlock had a slippery sense of right and wrong, and she wouldn’t have thought he’d associate with killers on the level of La Valle and his crew, but she trusted him not to harm her. She started toward the Fokker.

“Did you fly this thing all the way from Africa?”

Vanderlock turned his attention to the plane. “That’s another one. I picked this one up used, in Paraguay.”

“Oh great. Does it fly?”

“It’ll get you to your lab and then Chicago.”

Emma reached the plane’s entrance. The plane had two propeller-driven engines and was painted a dirty white. She looked around the landing strip, if that was what it could be called. It was a simple band of asphalt running the length of a field. Dandelions sprouted out of cracks in the pavement, and tall, grasslike weeds swayed on the sides. The setting sun threw shadows that danced in the wake of a breeze, the wind blowing around the branches of the few trees dotting the field. Emma saw no signs of a town or village nearby, but the tall, wheat-type weeds gave her the impression they were somewhere in the prairie part of the middle of America.

“How long to Chicago?” Emma said.

Vanderlock walked up behind her. He bent into her ear. “This guy of La Valle’s hurt you?” He kept his voice low. Emma craned her head back and up to look Vanderlock in the eyes. His expression was grave.

“He tried. I punched him in the groin.”

”Remind me not to piss you off,” Vanderlock said.

“We’d better get into that lab, because I do not want to be left with the guy. He’s psychotic.”

Vanderlock sobered. “I wasn’t joking when I said that your face is all over the news. Every cop from Phoenix to D.C. is looking for you. What the hell is going on?”

Emma started up the stairs. “I’ll tell you in the plane, but do me a favor. Do not, under any circumstances, touch the shipment. It’s diseased.”

Vanderlock put a hand on her elbow to steady her as she climbed into the plane. He followed, and once inside closed the door and the attached stairs behind him. He locked the door and moved to sit in the pilot’s seat.

“Do you have a cell phone? Internet access?” Emma said.

“Nothing,” Vanderlock replied. Emma wasn’t surprised. It appeared as though La Valle’s men confiscated cell phones from all their drug runners.

The rear of the plane had been gutted, with only open spaces where the majority of the rows of seats had been removed. This plane did, however, retain the first three rows of seating, which was unlike the plane that Emma remembered from Somalia. She saw the shipment bricks in the back.

“You saved some room for passengers.” Emma indicated the three rows of seats.

Vanderlock nodded. “I wanted to use it as a modified cargo plane, but keep the ability to fly some paying passengers if I wanted.” He kept his attention on the controls, and Emma saw the propellers begin to turn. “Come on and strap in. We’re taking off.”

Emma sat down in the copilot seat and snapped on the harness. She knew nothing about flying planes, but in her only other experience with Vanderlock he’d flown her hundreds of miles, and she knew him to be a competent pilot.

After a few minutes the propellers reached a speed that seemed to satisfy him and he turned the aircraft in a slow circle on the ground until it lined up with the runway. He engaged the throttle and the plane started to taxi. Right when Emma thought they’d fall off the end of the tarmac, the plane lifted, almost magically, into the air. They pulsed higher, and Emma was once again struck by the power and beauty of flying when experienced from the perspective of a pilot seat. Her breath caught at the sheer beauty and breadth of the sky, and the image of the ground below growing farther away. Once they reached altitude, Vanderlock turned to her.

“So tell me what kind of mess you’re in now.”

“I was collecting plants for Pure Chemistry in the desert in Arizona near the border of Mexico and I came upon one of La Valle’s coyotes running some illegals into the U.S.”

Vanderlock shook his head. “How the hell do you get into these situations?”

Emma rubbed at her eyes. “I was also asked to record any observable trails that the cartels were using to transport their cargo. Just three weeks before, there was a shootout between two rival factions when they crossed each other’s paths in the desert. Over twenty people died. The information that I was asked to collect would be useful in the effort to secure the border.”

Vanderlock frowned. “Asked by whom?”

“Edward Banner of Darkview.”

Vanderlock groaned. “I should have known that he’d be involved in this somehow. If there’s a buck to be made in any hot spot in the world, Banner’s making it.”

Emma bristled. “Darkview pays its personnel well, and not one mission that Darkview has undertaken in Mexico has resulted in civilian deaths. That’s saying a lot. Besides, you’re here doing something a heck of a lot less reputable. When did you become a drug runner for La Valle? At least in Somalia the drug you ran was legal.”

Vanderlock put up a hand in a placating manner. “Calm down. And to answer your question, I got blackmailed into making this run. I was seeing a certain woman in Paraguay . . .” Vanderlock slid his eyes sideways to gauge her reaction.

“So now you’re blaming a woman?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. She was great. I just didn’t realize that she was related to La Valle. A cousin or so, I never got the exact information on the family tree. Anyway, next thing I know he’s up in my grill claiming that she was engaged to someone else and I had convinced her not to marry him.”

Emma couldn’t help herself. She laughed. “How did you convince her? Or does that fall under ‘too much information’?”

Vanderlock smiled. “Wasn’t me. She broke off the engagement herself. I had nothing to do with it. But La Valle was furious and she warned me that he was arranging a hit.” Vanderlock’s expression turned grim. “I don’t have to tell you that La Valle is no one to mess around with. Rather than wait for the day that my car blew up, or my plane exploded on takeoff, I went to him. Offered to fly one shipment into the States, and in return he would leave me alone. He agreed, and here I am.”

The story was so close to Oz’s that Emma thought it was possibly true. What she did not believe was that Vanderlock had actually fallen for any assurances of La Valle’s. Vanderlock was light-years more savvy than Oz.

“Do you believe he’ll let you go after you deliver the shipment?”

Vanderlock shook his head. “La Valle always lies. He’ll let me live only as long as he wants me to, and not a minute more. That’s why I’m going to help him keep his promise and be back in the air and gone the second the plane is unloaded.”

“Back to Africa?” Emma said. Vanderlock was a South African.

He shrugged. “Maybe. But you haven’t told me why you need a lab.”

Emma ran down the facts. Vanderlock stayed quiet, but when she was finished, he blew out a long, low whistle.

“Any idea at all how this disease is being transmitted?”

Emma leaned back in the seat. “Clearly smoking the leaves causes the most catastrophic result. From what I can tell, Oz, Serena, and Raoul have the slow-moving version.”