Immune (52 page)

Raising it from its cradle, Freddy cursed. No dial tone. He jiggled the toggle within its cradle. When the familiar tone warbled in his ear, Freddy gasped with relief. He didn’t know how far it was to the next phone, but he didn’t think he could make it.

He dialed zero and the operator’s voice responded, bright and clear.

“Operator. How may I help you?”

“I want to make a collect call to Benny Marucci.” Freddy recited Benny’s number from memory.

“Who may I say is calling?”

Freddy hesitated. Based upon his experience with the cell phone call, the NSA, CIA, FBI, and every other three-letter agency in the government probably had banks of computers listening to the country’s phone lines for any mention of his name.

Then it came to him. With the popularity of several recent mob-family television series, Italian American slang had gained wide popularity. Old-school Benny Marucci hated that crap with a passion. Of course, that had only made Freddy go out of his way to use the words and phrases in his greetings. It was their game.

“Tell him it’s from his
goomba
.”

After several seconds, he could hear Benny’s sleep-filled voice answer.

“Hello?”

“This is the operator. I have a collect call from a Mr. Goomba.”

Another pause. “I’ll accept the charges.”

The operator spoke again. “Go ahead, sir.”

“Benny, it’s me.”

“You don’t sound too good.”

“Been better. Hate to call, but you’re the only one I could think of.”

“You sure know how to stir the pot. Where you at?”

“Remember where your cousin Vito got whacked?”

Vito Calini had been a low-level mob enforcer who had gotten the cement shoes treatment back in eighty-eight, right here on these loading docks.

“Uh-huh. Do you see any cranes from where you are?”

“One right in front of me, two more off to the left.”

“Okay. When you hang up, I want you to crawl back into the shadows and wait right where you are. Someone will come for you.”

“How will I know them?”

“You’ll know. Don’t go anywhere,
cugine
.” Benny hung up without giving Freddy a chance to respond to being called a young tough-guy wannabe.

“Couldn’t if I wanted to,” Freddy said into the dead handset before setting it back in its cradle. Then he staggered back to the side of the building.

By the time the black Lincoln Town Car pulled up beside the telephone, the gray light of dawn was fast approaching. Freddy had already started hobbling forward when two big, mean-looking hunks of mob muscle stepped out and, none too gently, thrust him into the backseat, sliding in on either side of him.

The car was rolling before the doors slammed shut.

Freddy automatically glanced back as the car made its way along the docks, but saw no sign of anyone following them. The driver swung the car around a truck and into a side alley. Immediately, the truck backed across the alley entrance, blocking any access from that direction.

The black sedan turned again, this time down a much tighter alley before swinging into an open-bay door. The driver pressed the switch on a garage-door remote, sending the large, metal door rumbling closed on its track.

“Hey, watch it!” Freddy exclaimed as he was dragged from the car, sending pain shooting through his leg.

Instead of taking it easier, the other tough-guy grabbed his right arm, and together they dragged him down a set of cement steps. Freddy had never been big on ethnic slurs, but these two Guidos were starting to piss him off. They opened a thick door and pulled him into a concrete cellar, closing and bolting the door behind them.

Freddy didn’t like the look of the place, not one little bit. He’d done stories on places like this, places where the mob manufactured fish food. A pair of fluorescent light bulbs burned in a fixture on the ceiling, minus the softening filter of a plastic cover.

He expected to be strapped onto a metal chair in the center of the room. Instead, the bigger of the two enforcers half-carried him to a chair beside a shop-bench on the far wall. Dropping to a knee, the big man ripped open Freddy’s bloody pants leg

“Shit!” Freddy gasped as the pain forced beads of sweat out of his forehead like a squeezed sponge.

“Shit’s right,” the big man said. “Franky, get a look at this leg.”

Franky ambled over, glanced down, then grinned at Freddy, revealing a mouth badly in need of an orthodontist. “You like that leg?”

“Used to,” Freddy managed, between clenched teeth.

“Well it won’t bother you much longer, will it, Jimmy?”

Freddy knew he must be missing something. Probably the fever making him delirious, but this conversation wasn’t sounding good at all.

“Listen, guys. Maybe I should just be on my way. Don’t want to trouble you.”

“No trouble at all,” Franky said, moving so that he was behind the chair.

As the one called Jimmy picked up a power tool from the workbench, Franky pinned Freddy to his seat in a grip that threatened to crack ribs.

“What’re you doing? God damn it! I’m a friend of Benny Marucci’s!”

As Jimmy retrieved a bucket and walked toward the chair, his grin returned. “Oh, we know. Benny said to help you disappear, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Jimmy pulled a handheld recorder from his pocket, pressed the small red record button, and set it on the workbench. In a swift motion that belied his size, Jimmy looped a plastic tie around Freddy’s good ankle, binding it tightly to the steel chair leg. Then, lifting the damaged leg so that it rested on the bucket, he switched on the jigsaw.

As the saw bit into the skin and bone just above Freddy’s left knee, he began to scream, the sound echoing in the concrete room until it drowned out the high-pitched squeal of the saw. And despite the blood that splattered the case, the small gears on the cassette tape recorder continued to spin.

President Gordon sat at his desk in the Treaty Room of the White House; the voice on the secure phone was the one he’d been expecting.

“So, Bill, what have you got for me?”

“Good news, Mr. President. Freddy Hagerman is dead.”

“You have confirmation.”

“DNA and lots of it. It seems that our boys weren’t the only ones after Mr. Hagerman.”

“How so?”

“A few years back he did a series of stories on New York crime families. Apparently, one of them held a grudge. Some of their boys ran him through a crane pulley down on the docks. Most of the body went in the river, but police found a mangled leg and lots of blood on the big cable spool.”

The president hesitated. “All they found was a leg?”

“No. If that was it, we wouldn’t be certain he’s dead. The mob left a bloody cassette tape at the scene. Must’ve wanted to send a message.”

“They recorded the kill.”

“Just the audio. Pretty nasty stuff. You can hear them working on Hagerman with a power tool. Must’ve run him through the crane after that. Reminds me of what the mob did to one of the FBI boys a few years back.”

“You’re sure it’s Hagerman on the tape?”

“Voiceprints match. One more thing, Mr. President.”

“Yes?”

“When someone screams hard enough, the vocal cords start ripping. Permanent damage. The boys in the lab ran an analysis on Hagerman’s screams. At the end, his throat must have been a bloody mess.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

The president hung up the phone, leaned back in his high-backed leather chair, feeling the weight lift from his shoulders for the first time in over a week. He hadn’t admitted to himself just how much the pressure had gotten to him. If Hagerman had been able to leak the information on what was happening in the tunnels beneath Henderson House, the government would have had a serious shit-storm on its hands.

One major threat put to bed. And with the information his source in the CIA was providing, he felt confident that the remaining threat would be dealt with soon. Even though they still didn’t know Jack Gregory’s location, it was only a matter of time.

The CIA had some talented contractors, but Gregory made him nervous. After what happened in Los Alamos, the president was in no mood to take any chances this time. That’s why he’d recalled the Colombian.

The president looked out his window and smiled. Freddy Hagerman dead!

Tonight he’d break out a glass of that Chivas he’d been saving for just this occasion. When the Colombian nailed Gregory, he’d finish the rest of the bottle.

Sitting in the beautiful terrace dining area of the Hotel El Poblado Plaza in the heart of Medellín’s business district, Mark couldn’t begin to allow himself to relax. So intense had been his concentration on the drive from Bogotá to Medellín that he had heard the movement of the soldiers’ hands on their weapons at each checkpoint, had monitored their heart rates and breathing for any sign of increased stress.

But the trip had gone remarkably smooth. They had flown into Bogotá to avoid taking a direct path to their target, staying just long enough to purchase an old car, the transaction made in cash. Thanks to Heather’s gambling talent, there was no shortage of that. Their papers had aroused no suspicion, and after listening briefly to the intonations of local people, Mark had adjusted his Spanish so that he now sounded like a native.

In years past, traveling the road between Bogotá and Medellín would have been tantamount to carrying a “Please kidnap me!” sign. Among the left-wing guerillas, the right-wing paramilitary groups, the bandits, and corrupt soldiers, any attempt to travel the Colombian countryside carried with it the near certainty of disaster. But that had changed in recent years, and while dangers still existed, the risk was acceptable.

Besides, Heather had given the travel plan her savant blessing.

Mark glanced across the table, watching her sip cappuccino, her eyes hidden behind her dark sunglasses. Heather’s powers were getting stronger—much stronger. All this practice peering into the future had been exercising her brain in ways he couldn’t even begin to imagine. And although, at times, she still needed to go into a deep trance, she was now able to pick up changes that might affect their plan while carrying on normal conversation. She called them eddies, small events that produced large impacts later on. If anything was out of place, he could count on Heather to spot it. His job was to be ready when she did.

They knew where Jennifer was being held: the estate of Jorge Espeñosa, the most feared drug lord in South America. Triangulation of the missing headbands had confirmed it. Bad news. Jen couldn’t have gotten herself into a worse spot if she’d been thrown into a Colombian prison.

Now they were sitting on the terrace of one of the nicer hotels in Medellín, having spent the last two days dreaming up a plan that gave them a chance to get Jen out alive. Today was to have been the day of reckoning. But this morning, everything had gone to hell.

Overnight, the headbands had been moved, this time to Washington, D.C.

Although Mark had been stunned by the discovery, at first he had believed it was a piece of good luck. After all, it would be far easier to rescue Jennifer in the United States than from the drug lord’s compound. Heather had just quashed that idea.

Mark looked at his plate. The half-eaten scrambled eggs and bacon had grown as cold as his formerly hot coffee, his appetite having dissipated along with the heat.

“So you don’t think Jennifer’s in D.C.?”

“No,” Heather said. “I can feel her in my head. She’s close.”

“Then how the hell did the headbands get to Washington?”

Seeing Heather’s eyebrow rise, Mark backpedaled. “Sorry. I’m just not liking what I’m thinking right now.”

“I know. It’s not good.”

“So what’re we going to do about it?”

“Nothing. Stay focused on getting to Jen.”

“And our plan?”

“Unchanged.”

Mark smiled, attempting to show a confidence he didn’t feel. After all, what good was perfect muscle control if you couldn’t use it to lie to your best friend? He reached across the table and touched Heather’s face, gently removing her sunglasses. Just because she said this was their best chance didn’t mean their odds of surviving the day were good. And before he got up and led her out of this hotel to whatever destiny awaited, he wanted to look into her beautiful brown eyes one more time.

Heather seemed to sense his thoughts. Shit, for all he knew, she was probably hearing them. Her own brave smile parted her lips. He wanted to lean across and kiss them so bad he actually started to lean forward. Instead, Mark swallowed hard and returned her sunglasses to their accustomed spot on her nose.

“Ready?” Heather asked, standing up.

“Ready.”

Mark flexed his muscles as he rose to his full height. One thing he swore to himself as he turned toward the door: he wasn’t going to fucking die before he got to deliver that kiss.