Immune (59 page)

His eyes swept the room. Definitely not the spot he wanted to take on the Ripper. Single exit, too enclosed. If the Ripper waited outside, Eduardo would be trapped here. Ignoring the laptop, his eyes moved to the walkie-talkie on the desk.

Picking it up, Eduardo paused in the doorway just long enough to ensure the path was clear. Then, backtracking along the way he’d entered the air base, he stuffed the woman’s unconscious body beneath the fence flap, then ducked through. Once again, he lifted her onto his shoulder, the feel of the unborn heartbeat in her belly elevating his pulse with anticipation.

A quarter-mile later he found what he’d been looking for: a draw that funneled into a perfect kill zone. Laying the woman down between two trees, he extracted his rape kit, pulling loose a pre-cut strip of duct tape and placing it across her mouth. He didn’t bother to bind her hands and feet. After all, he was a new god. Well beyond fear of any man, much less a woman.

Eduardo touched the woman’s pregnant belly, looked back toward the airbase, and smiled. In a few minutes he would press the button on the walkie-talkie to let Jack Gregory hear his girlfriend’s screams.

A grin of anticipation split Eduardo’s lips. The Ripper would come for him. And then El Chupacabra would show the Ripper the true meaning of fear.

Janet struggled toward wakefulness, her lips so dry that they felt like they’d been glued together. Then it came back to her.

Her eyes popped open, but her lips did not. A heavy strip of duct tape closed them as effectively as a padlock on a storage locker. She couldn’t move her arms either. They were pinned to the ground by a pair of knees that straddled her stomach.

A face swam into her blurred vision, a startlingly handsome face. In her memory, it had a name attached to it, although in her current state of confusion, that name eluded her.

The night breeze was cold on her naked body, squeezing her skin into tight little goose bumps, puckering her nipples. She was completely naked. The realization brought her out of the haze. She moved her gaze to the man who straddled her. Although fully clothed, he was plainly excited.

Weighing her options, Janet looked again into that face, her eyes locking with her attacker’s. Eduardo Montenegro.

She tried to scissor her legs, but they failed to respond. She was a cobra, locked in the snake charmer’s gaze, her body frozen so that she could only stare up into those strangely active eyes.

Eduardo smiled as his hands caressed her body.

“Hello, Janet. It is Janet, isn’t it?” The silky smooth Latin voice creeped her out more than her inability to respond. “With this round body, it took me a while to recognize you from your file photos.”

Eduardo leaned down and gently kissed her on the cheek, the feel of his lips sending a pulse of revulsion through her body. It felt like she’d just been kissed by her mortician.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “I like pregnant ladies, especially ones as pretty as you. It excites me.”

His breath on her cheek smelled faintly of cinnamon candy. Red Hots. Christ, she’d dated a boy in high school who had chugged down Red Hots. Janet had never liked him either.

“You know what makes me really hot?” Eduardo asked, opening the buttons on his shirt.

“Fuck you,” Janet mumbled behind the tape gag.

Eduardo smiled. “That too. But first, indulge me with a bit of fantasy. Tell me, young lady. What do you really fear?”

Suddenly, Janet found her gaze bound more tightly to his, unable to move, unable to blink.

The night sky melted away, leaving her seated in a green, grassy park with a large sand playground. The sound of children laughing as they swung from the monkey bars tickled her ears. It was a perfect day. She didn’t know why she should be uneasy, but she was.

Where was her Robby? He’d been right here just a minute ago, whirling round and round on the merry-go-round, but now he was gone.

“Robby?” she called, her voice barely rising above the children’s laughter.

“Robby!” Her voice held an edge of the terror only a mother can know. “Where are you, baby?”

As she rose to her feet and took a step forward, she felt the sand shift between her bare toes, small fingers closing around them.

Looking down, she saw the familiar little hand slip away beneath the sand.

“No! Robby!” Janet screamed, dropping to her knees, desperately scooping at the sand.

Her fingers touched a headful of soft, curly hair, then a bare cheek. Another scoop revealed her baby boy’s face.

“Mama! Help!” Robby’s terrified scream was cut short by the sand as he once again slipped beneath the surface.

Suddenly, she felt it. The tiny hand gripping her own. Janet redoubled her efforts, sending great double-handed scoops of sand arcing into the air behind her as she dug with her other hand.

Robby’s head and left shoulder were now clear of the sand. Another few scoops and she should be able to pull him free.

Something metallic glinted in the sand just beyond her baby’s shoulder, shimmering in a way that attracted his gaze. Mesmerized, Robby freed his other hand and reached for it, his small fingers closing around the shiny object with a surprising strength.

Janet felt the tug pull her child away from her as the object disappeared beneath the surface,

“Robby! Let go of that! Give me your other hand!”

But Robby didn’t hear her. His little face turned away as he struggled to free himself from her tenuous grip in his efforts to retrieve the thing. With a sound almost like a slurp, the sand sucked him down, his tiny hand sliding from her grasp.

“Somebody! Help me!” she screamed. “My baby’s under here.”

But the other parents just sat on the nearby benches, pointing and laughing as if she was playing some sort of game.

There it was again, the touch of small fingers beneath the sand. Janet grabbed for the little hand, but she could only get the fingers, and those were slipping away, pulled downward by a suction she could not overcome.

As the little hand slipped away for the last time, her scream warbled out past the tape that gagged her mouth, carried away on the brisk night breeze.

Eduardo’s face was back, his smile having widened since she last remembered seeing it. “Good girl. I think we’ve found it.”

The Colombian grabbed her swollen belly in both hands, not exactly squeezing, but feeling very deeply. Janet coughed into her gag, her eyes watering so badly she could barely see. The vision of her unborn child filled her mind with more clarity than any sonogram could provide. And although it should have been a hallucination, she
knew
this was real.

Somehow, El Chupacabra had formed a three-way loop, piping the feelings of her unborn child through his mind and into hers. Her stomach writhed, the child curling into a tight ball, kicking out with both feet.

A terror worse than any she could have imagined formed in her baby’s mind, its small mouth working as if it was trying to form a scream. It rolled in the womb, twisting the umbilical cable around its throat, then again, tightening the fleshy noose.

“I’m gonna kill you, you sick bastard!” Janet screamed into the muffling duct tape, the white heat of hatred overriding her fear. “I swear to God!”

The baby rolled in her stomach again, twisting the umbilical so tightly that all blood supply was blocked off. Worse, its terror had risen to the point that its movements had become suicidal. But still, Eduardo increased his focus, steadily turning up the volume on her unborn child’s fear.

As Janet screamed her terror and frustration, Eduardo thumbed the microphone on the walkie-talkie.

“Ripper. Do you hear your lover’s muffled screams? If you hurry, she and your baby might still be alive when you get here. Come to me.”

“What’s happening?”

The edge in Mark’s voice relayed the stress produced by having to watch the two girls work. Jennifer’s fingers danced across the keyboard as Heather talked her through the satellite downlink algorithms.

“I don’t know,” Heather said. “Jack finished the splice for the downlink, but we don’t have our uplink connection.”

“Which means?”

“It means we can spoof the control center to make them think they’re still talking to the satellite, but we can’t send any commands. We can’t uplink the code.”

“Maybe Jack is still working on that connection.”

Heather turned toward him, her eyes just clearing from one of her trances. “I don’t think Jack’s going to finish the connection. I think something’s gone terribly wrong.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

Jennifer lifted her face to stare at them. “I started the fake downlink, but without that last connection we’re dead in the water. And the control station will only be fooled for so long.”

“Shit!” Mark began pacing back and forth across the room. “There has to be something we can do. Can we hack another system?”

Jennifer shook her head. “That’s just it. Jack cut the cable on the uplink side. Even if I could hack the control center to override their uplink, the commands wouldn’t get to the satellite.”

Heather leaned over the laptop and pressed the speakerphone button on the QT chat program. “Janet. Something’s wrong with Jack. Are you there?”

After several seconds of silence, she tried again. “Janet. We have an emergency. Please respond.”

Silence.

“Shit!” Mark repeated, his level of anxiety rising with each passing moment.

“How much time do we have before they detect our spoof?” Jennifer asked.

“Twelve minutes, fourteen seconds or so,” Heather responded.

“Or so?”

“It’s just an approximation.”

Mark stopped pacing. “What about a subspace hack?”

Jennifer shrugged. “I already told you, that won’t do any good.”

“Not on the control center. Can we get the coordinate on the uplink line at the antenna?”

Heather jumped up. “That’s it. Mark, you’re a genius. I should have thought of that.”

The unexpected compliment brought a smile to Mark’s lips. But before he could respond, Heather and Jennifer had turned their focus back to the laptop.

“There,” Heather pointed at some numbers scrolling across Jennifer’s display. “That’s the coordinate of Janet’s laptop, and that other is the triangulation to the wireless signal Jack set up at the antenna.”

“Got it.” Jennifer’s fingers increased their staccato pace. “Now I just have to search for nearby signals that match the downlink data signature.”

“Nine minutes, twenty-three seconds.”

Heather’s countdown didn’t help Mark’s mood. He glanced at Don Espeñosa, sitting in the wicker chair to which they had tied him. The man’s eyes showed no trace of the panic in which Jack’s instructions should have left him.

Looking into that face, Mark felt a sickness creep into his soul. He had no doubt that before this night was over he would kill the drug lord, if only because Jack had tasked him. What was it Jack had said?

“Before you leave the estate, you need to kill Don Espeñosa. If you don’t, you’ll have no chance of getting out of Colombia alive. Mark, do you understand me?”

As he stared into that impassive face, Mark felt his resolve harden. He had once done a report on a quote from the Israeli military leader, Yerucham Amitai.

“In the end, we may have to choose between actions that might pull down the Temple of Humanity itself rather than surrender even a single member of the family to the executioners."

He’d always thought the statement was over-the-top. But now, he understood.

“I’m in,” Jennifer said.

“What’s the link status?” Heather asked.

“Good packets on the line. I’m receiving satellite downlink, which closely matches our spoofer signal.”

“Try uplinking a test signal to the satellite.”

“Already done. We have positive acknowledgement.”

“Okay. Start the program uplink.”

Mark leaned in close. “Then what.”

“Then we wait. We’ve got to stay online long enough to ensure the commands get relayed through the military communications satellites to the entire fleet of GPS satellites. It’s all or nothing.”

“How long will that take?”

“It’ll be close.”

“How close?”

The tightness in Heather’s face told him all he wanted to know.

As the minutes ticked away, the tightness increased, adding age to her face until it reminded him of their Las Vegas disguises. Something in that look told Mark that if they failed now, they weren’t likely to get another chance.

A sudden sense of being watched nudged him, the intensity of the feeling making his scalp tingle. Moving away from the girls, he circled the room, his enhanced vision searching for the source of his discomfort.

There it was, suspended in the air. A tiny pinpoint of nothingness, ever so slightly twisting the light that passed through it. The same thing he had seen in his room, all those many weeks ago.