Burn (Story of CI #3) (26 page)

“You can’t do this to him,” Wara heard herself blabbing. “Please. He’s a good person. He’s suffered enough. If you sell him to Tsarnev, they’ll just torture him again to make him work for them. You know they will.” Her voice was really, really shrill.

Lázaro scoffed. “They won’t torture him. Tsarnev can’t damage someone worth that much money. But Tsarnev does need to make sure Daniel will cooperate, and after reading the files, I know just how to make it happen. Just like the Russians did. I hand over Danny boy along with the insurance policy, he remote views targets for Tsarnev. I get paid, everyone’s happy.”

It was getting hard to think straight. Lázaro said they wouldn’t torture him, and that made sense. So how were they gonna force Lalo to do what they wanted?

Lalo was not a wimpy guy. He would probably rather take a bullet then help the bad guys. He wasn’t that thirteen-year-old kid from a long time ago.

“How are you going to make Daniel cooperate?” she asked slowly.

Lázaro heaved a dramatic sigh. “Love. True love,” he said. “Works every time. This part of the story is a little sad, but hey. Sometimes life just bites you in the ass. I’ve been bit, and now it’s my turn to get a little moolah.”

“What are you talking about?” The connection was itching her deep inside, but she did not want to scratch it. This couldn’t be real.

“When little Daniel was sold to the Russians,” Lázaro said, “someone from ‘home’ went with him. According to the Russian secret files, the only person Daniel cared about, a girl named Romina. If Daniel was naughty and didn’t find the target the Russians wanted, Romina got in trouble. And the files show that the Russians really weren’t very nice. The girl Daniel loved was the insurance policy.”

Wara felt herself gasp, out loud.

The girl Daniel loved was the insurance policy.

Last night, possibly while throwing herself into Lázaro’s arms, she had told him who the girl was that the planet’s most-wanted psychic loved.

Cail.

THE HORIZON WAS GLOWING PINK BY the time the Land Cruiser rolled to a park near the river. There were a lot of people, carrying baskets on their heads or carting wood boxes of fish or squatting in the reddened mud, just watching the world go by. The Niger flowed quickly past its earthen banks, dull, foaming chocolate milk.

Wara stomach was roiling like the waters. It was just too much.

Lalo Navarro saved Wara’s life in Iran.

Cail was her friend.

Wara felt her hands shaking on her lap. She couldn’t do it again.

She had to believe Alejo was alive, just like Lázaro said. But she was the one who betrayed him. And she could not just sit by while Lázaro went after Lalo and Cail.

“We can buy some food here,” Lázaro said next to her. He seemed almost relaxed now, after getting the entire evil plan off his chest. “Fruit, dried fish, tasty bread. Whatever you’re hungry for.”

“Couscous,” Wara’s voice creaked.

“What?”

“I’m hungry for couscous.” She remembered the long table at Rupert’s house, all the steaming plates of couscous and coffee and people who loved her grinning at her from across the table. Alejo wrapping his arm around her out in the tree house in the backyard. Even the old refrigerator that rattled and moaned in the kitchen.

Lázaro narrowed his eyes at her. “We’re in Mali,” he said. “They make couscous in Morocco. Get out.”

Wara pushed open the door and dropped down into the slush. The mud was hot and sucked around her tennis shoes, swallowing the dazzling red sparkles. Lázaro’s heavy black boots came into view from around the corner of the vehicle.

“C’mon,” he said. “Whatever you see you like, I’m buying.”

He locked the car with a peppy beep and she waded ahead of him through the field of mud, dodging carts loaded with papaya and tiny breaded sardines sizzling in ancient oil. The entire river was lined with people buying and selling and waiting for a ride on the Venetian-style pinasse boats that would take them down the river. Scattered houses sat a ways from the river, the color of a coffee with milk, squatty and square.

She stopped beside Lázaro, who started haggling with a guy over the price of bananas. He was totally into it. Some people just had to win, always get the best price. Lázaro was making nice and sure that Wara wasn’t getting into a position behind him. He was in a good mood, but had to know that she was not happy about his plans for Lalo.

“Can I have some chocolate?” she asked Lázaro, pointing at some dusty candy bars in a cart next to the bananas. After being in the sun all day, the chocolate bars must be liquid pools of cacao.

Lázaro glanced over at her, looking kind of pleased that she was interested in something to eat. He flashed the white grin. “Sure!”

He bought the chocolate, while Wara worked her feet down into the mud. A few inches down, it was nice and solid. The mud kind of worked like glue, a stabilizer for her stance. Lázaro turned his back to the guys selling bananas and chocolate and passed her the candy in a little plastic bag, which she slid into the pocket of her yoga pants.

“Thanks,” she told him, pressing her lips together and doing her best to look sad yet grateful.

Lázaro was about two inches taller than her, and not that solid. He was distracted, thinking he made her happy.

Wara seized Lázaro by the shoulder, hooked her arm around his neck and heaved him over her shoulder, slammed him into the warm mud.

There was no time to listen to her shoulder muscles scream. Wara whirled around in panic, found Lázaro flat on his back in the mud, smeared in wet earth. He was obviously stunned, probably shocked with pain from those sore ribs Alejo had left him with. She slid to the ground, pushed Lázaro a few inches out of the dirt with one knee, ripped up his shirt and pulled the Skorpion he’d shown her out of the holster.

She threw herself off Lázaro and took up position far enough away that he couldn’t reach her without her shooting him. She aimed the weapon at his chest, glad that her hands weren’t even shaking. The metal was hot against her fingers, ripe with Lázaro’s body heat.

There was a switch on the left side by her fingers, numbers 0 through 2. 0 had to be “safe”. She slid the switch to 1. This was a submachine gun. Setting number 2 would probably be “continuous fire”, a bit of overkill.

“Sit up,” she ordered him. Lázaro grunted and tried to pull himself to sitting. He was dripping with thick mud. “Slowly,” she reminded him. “Now get out your phone. Do it!” She hadn’t been able to rip Lázaro’s cell off him now, because she didn’t know where he kept it. “If you touch anything on the phone, I’ll shoot you,” she promised him. “Toss it right at my feet.” She couldn’t try to make Lázaro turn off the bomb, because for all she knew he could be blowing the hospital up instead.

Lázaro had definitely gotten the wind knocked out of him when she slammed him into the ground. He was still grimacing. Lázaro wheezed and gently threw the phone into the soft mud by Wara’s sandals. She picked it up, the Skorpion still trained on his ribs.

She had to scrub the thing all over a clean swatch of her shirt to get off the mud. Wara was afraid to bump any keys, because Lázaro was totally the kind of guy who would have Bomb Denotation on speed dial number one.

“What’s the code so I can make a call?” Of course the screen was locked. Lázaro winced and then rolled his eyes. “Now!” she shouted at him.

“Fine. Maria Rosa,” he mumbled.

Wara blinked. “Your mother?”

“I change the code every day,” he shrugged. “Yesterday I made it Maria Rosa.”

Just like a Latino mommy’s boy. In his former life, Wara could totally see Lázaro as a mommy’s boy. She tapped in the code and the phone seemed ready to make calls. She dialed CI’s number that let her call from anywhere in the world, then Cail's cell.

She could not call Alejo.

Wara felt her heart breaking.

“This is Cail.” Hearing her friend’s voice was like picking up some alien transmission from another dimension. Wara locked her jaw, took in the scene around her: the white eyes shining in dark faces, gaping at her holding the Skorpion. The rushing chocolate river, a pinasse overloaded with people dipping dangerously low into the ripples. Lázaro Marquez sitting there slimy with mud, annoyed as hell.

She was pointing a weapon at him, and if he tried to get up she was gonna have to shoot him.

“Cail,” Wara croaked. She cleared her throat fast and knew she had to start talking. “It’s Wara.” There wasn’t time for anything but the essentials. Yet. “I’ve got Lázaro’s weapon and his phone. He’s the one who blew up the school.”

The silence on the line was way too long. “We know. Where are you?”

“Halfway to Timbuktu. Get the kids out of the hospital. Lázaro works for Alexei Tsarnev. Tsarnev wants Lázaro to finish the kids, and explosives are already set up. Tsarnev also wants the psychic who can remote view, and Lázaro knows who it is. Get out of there.” A shiver ran down Wara’s back as Lázaro moved. He was rolling to the balls of his feet, trying to rise.

“Stop!” she shrieked. She took a few steps back and re-aimed, unable to hear if Cail was speaking on the phone. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

Oh God, he was not going to stop. The shock made her drop the cell and it was all she could do to refocus her aim on Lázaro’s thigh.

He was gonna bleed to death out here. That was the most likely option. Wara pulled the trigger, fully expecting to hear a crack and see blood bloom out of Lázaro’s striped pants.

But nothing happened.

Because the Skorpion was out of rounds.

Crap! Wara whirled and started to run, skidding across the mud, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. Near one of the sunbaked houses was a vendor cart full of shining silverware, probably cheap and Chinese and plated in toxic metals. There had to be knives in there somewhere, and that would do.

She had no plan except to stop Lázaro from doing whatever he was about to do to her.

Before she could make the silverware cart, Lázaro tackled her from behind. She splatted into the mud and tasted copper, blood and minerals from the earth. Warm metal seared the back of her neck as Lázaro’s weight held her prostrate. He ripped the Skorpion from her hand and tossed it away.

“I had a pistol in an ankle holster,” he breathed into her ear. “The Skorpion I showed you was just for show. I knew eventually you’d go for it.” The pressure eased a little and Wara lifted her chin out of the mud, almost screamed as Lázaro’s knee dug into the small of her back and he yanked her arms behind her, tight. She felt the bite of plastic zip ties.

Her eyes stung. She was beyond scared.

Lázaro hauled her to her feet roughly, plastered her against his chest with a muddy arm around her neck, jammed the pistol into her spinal cord. She could feel his chest heaving against the arms she couldn’t move.

Wara looked around wildly, wondering if anyone was gonna do anything about this. Weren’t there any police? She and Lázaro were aiming weapons at each other in broad daylight and nobody seemed to give a crap.

“No one cares,” Lázaro hissed into her ear. “People are used to seeing women dominated by controlling men around here. It’s just part of the culture, dear. No one is going to care if I’m getting you back in line. Now walk!”

He pushed her forward, and Wara couldn’t see the people gawking from the river anymore because the tears were taking over. Lázaro marched her over to a squatty building and passed coins to the kid in a Justin Bieber tee who sat at the entrance. It was blurry, but Wara could make out the French word for public showers on a tattered sign next to the doorway. The kid dropped a fat plastic pearl of shampoo into Lázaro’s hand and Lázaro held the pistol out towards the kid. And the cell phone, smeared with drying mud. Lázaro must have grabbed it from the ground on his way to tackle Wara.

Wara could feel the anger steaming off the man holding her. Lázaro’s muscles were taut.

“Watch these things for me,” Lázaro ordered the kid in French. “You’ll get a tip. You don’t want to imagine what will happen to you if it’s not here when I come out.”

The kid grinned and made the pistol and phone disappear somewhere under the table. “Yes sir,” he saluted.

Lázaro made her walk through the door. Inside it was dark and cool, the only light a small orange rectangle of dying sunlight near the ceiling. He pushed her into the section that said “Men.”

“Lázaro, please,” Wara gasped. She could not get enough air with his arm cinched around her neck. But the lack of air could have been from the fear.

“Shut up!” Lázaro screamed at her. He dragged her into a shower stall, chipped blue tiles and a concrete floor. Lázaro cranked the water on, closed the opaque plastic curtain behind them and pushed Wara face first against the tiles.

The water was hot. Steam misted around them as Lázaro let go of her neck and held her against the tiles, letting the water pound over her head, stream down into her eyes. Mud poured off her body and swirled around the drain at their feet. Her clothes stuck to her skin, bubbling with pockets of air.

Lázaro yanked her around and locked his arms around her back, trapping her with her cheek plastered against his muddy chest. The air around her pounded and writhed and she didn’t know if it was Lázaro’s heart slamming with fury against her cheek or the torrent of water. A steamy river washed the mud off her back, ran down Lázaro’s face and trickled down into her hair. He had her backed far enough into the edge of the stall that she couldn’t get any leverage to kick him. Her arms were useless.

Wara felt herself sob against his chest, one time, raw and loud. Lázaro pushed her back against the wall and forced her chin up towards his face.

“P-please,” she babbled. The water tasted like salt tea, dripping down her temples, across her eyelashes like tears. “My sh-shoulders hurt. Last year I was in prison in Iran, and they tortured me. It hurts too much to be tied up like this.”

The faucet squeaked loudly as Lázaro shut off the water. He was breathing raggedly in the absolute silence. “Turn around,” he said hoarsely. He flipped her around face first against the tiles and Wara didn’t even protest. “I’m cutting your ties off. Hold still or I might decide to do your wrists instead.”

Wara felt herself shivering violently. She was totally not holding still. Somehow Lázaro managed to cut through the thick plastic without nicking her. When Wara could move her arms around to the front of her body she started to cry for real.

It hurt. A lot. All the muscles and tendons were screaming. She slowly lifted up the edge of her shirt to try to dry her eyes so she could see. Her shirt was still dripping and she was shaking like a druggie from cold and the pain. Yeah, and from the fear.

She wanted to say thanks but just could not.

Lázaro ripped open the plastic curtain and waited for her to exit the shower. He would not look at her. “Outside,” he grated at her. “The air’s so hot you’ll be dry before you stop feeling the marks I left on your arms.”

The boy was waiting with the scarred white man’s possessions when they left the darkness of the showers. Lázaro kept the pistol trained at her back as they walked back to the Land Cruiser.

“If you’re thinking about trying to get the weapon from me again on the way to Timbuktu,” Lázaro told her as they slammed the car doors, “I would think again. Even if you’re up to driving overland, I wouldn’t advise it without my protection. You don’t want AQIM to find you in here alone.”