Kill Decision (36 page)

She was both horrified and riveted by its appearance this close. It was a simple four-rotor helicopter with blade enclosures, but the frame seemed to be made of thick wire, ending in spiky legs. In the center pod, held in the metal frame, was a series of tightly packed circuit boards and a row of four lenses—its “eyes.” Next to that, in racks, were what looked to be silver compressed-air canisters—the type of thing whipped cream was dispensed with. But these seemed to be spraying the air with some type of chemical that had a faint peppery smell—a pseudopheromone, marking her. And then stacked to either side of the core body were what turned out to be gun barrels.

This is what was
crack
ing at her as she struggled to kick it away. Bullets pinged off her trauma plates, but then she felt a piercing pain in her upper leg, just as Odin smashed the drone into the floor, and Mooch bashed its core in with his rifle butt.

“Dammit!” She’d never experienced such pain. McKinney writhed on the cabin floor now in a rapidly expanding pool of blood. She raised her gloved hand to see arterial blood spurting out of a hole on her inner thigh.

“Oh, my God . . .”

Mooch came up alongside her. “Professor’s hit!”

Odin knelt down next to her as well.

Scenery raced by outside, and then McKinney felt gravity press her into the floor, and the trees at the edge of her vision disappeared. “Did we make it?”

Odin got close to her face. “You’re going to be all right.”

The pain was incredible. “Oh, God. Let me see it!”

“No, lay back.”

She could feel someone cutting through her pant leg.

Odin turned. “Mooch, how’s it look?”

“Femoral artery—close to the pelvis. Tourniquet’s out. Keep the pressure on. Here.”

She felt another pain as something was jabbed into her leg. And then a soothing feeling came over her. A warm sensation. Calm.

Odin’s face was right next to hers. He seemed calm too. Normal. She was fading. Her consciousness was ebbing.

“Pass me that Hespan.” The tearing of plastic.

Foxy’s voice. “How is she?”

A serious look crossed Odin’s face.

McKinney felt her vision narrow. Darkness ebbing in like rising water over her face. Hands on her side. Then on her back.

“I need to contain this bleeding. Or she isn’t going to make it.”

McKinney’s focus faded. She tried to speak, but she was so tired now. She sank below the waves. Into the blackness. Into silence.

CHAPTER 22

Sanctuary

L
inda McKinney awoke
to a warm breeze wafting over her face. As her eyes came into focus, she could see gauzy white curtains trailing away from a row of tall windows, undulating with the flowing air. The sun shone in, blinding white. She lay beneath a crisp linen sheet in a proper bed with a sturdy headboard made of rough-hewn pine. Clean down pillows cradled her head. Thick wooden beams traversed the ceiling above her. The walls were of mortared stone. This was an old place. A cross hung from the wall above the bed, and along the wall nearby were framed icons of saints and sepia-toned photos of brown-skinned, black-haired ancestors in starched collars and black dresses.

McKinney felt a sting in her hand and noticed an IV drip running from a needle taped in place in the top of her right hand. It led to an IV bag on a stand nearby. Her right leg felt tight near her pelvis, as though wrapped in bandages—and a biting pain came to her from somewhere deep in her upper thigh. She felt the tautness of stitches.

There was a gentle
keek-keek
sound.

McKinney looked to the footboard. A large raven regarded her and extended its wings. It then ruffled its throat and head feathers.
Caw.

McKinney’s voice came out hoarsely. “Muninn.” She wasn’t sure why she knew the bird was female. Perhaps it was something in the bird’s manner. She just felt like she knew.

The raven
caw
ed loudly several times, then flew off between the gauzy curtains and out the window.

There were footsteps, and the heavy bedroom door opened to reveal an elderly woman with a deeply tanned, timeworn face. Her long gray hair was wrapped tightly, and she wore a dress of rough brown cloth with a richly embroidered white apron and collar.

McKinney nodded to her.

The old woman spoke soothingly.
“Kehaca ti ictok.”
She held up one hand.

McKinney tried to remember what Spanish she’d mastered on previous expeditions to South America. But then, she’d spent more time in the Amazon basin. Portuguese wasn’t going to help. Even so, this didn’t sound like Spanish. She cleared her throat and spoke in slow English. “Where is this place?”

The old woman smiled kindly, holding her arm and patting it gently.
“Ni we-wen ci.”
She turned to the heavy oak door bound by black iron hinges. “Lalenia! Lalenia!” The old woman’s powerful voice startled McKinney. Dogs barked from somewhere outside. McKinney tried to sit up a bit in bed.

More footsteps, and in a moment the heavy door opened again, revealing a much younger Latina in jeans and a white shirt. Her long black hair was tied back to reveal a beautiful almond-shaped face with mocha brown skin. She approached the bed and smiled, motioning to the old woman as she spoke in that same language.
“Wala seh yanok Ratón
.
”

Then the younger woman turned to McKinney and spoke in Spanish-accented English. “How do you feel, Professor McKinney?”

McKinney looked around the room. “Weak. Where am I?”

“You’re in Tamaulipas near Kalitlen.” At McKinney’s blank stare she added, “Rural Mexico.”

“How long have I been unconscious?”

The young woman leaned over to say something quietly to the elderly woman, who nodded and left. The young woman then approached the side of the bed, producing a penlight from her shirt pocket. “You’ve been unconscious for several days. You lost a great deal of blood, and we’ve been rebuilding your platelet count.”

McKinney kept her eyes open as the woman checked her pupil dilation with the light. “I got shot.”

“Yes, I know. The bullet nicked your femoral artery.” The doctor lowered the penlight. “You were very lucky the damage wasn’t worse.”

McKinney remembered wrestling with a hellish toy—one whose brain she’d helped design. “Yes.” She felt suddenly very tired.

“Mooch is a talented surgeon. He was able to stop the bleeding, but it was close. And having O-positive blood probably saved your life.”

“Who are you?”

The woman placed a hand on her own chest. “I am Doctor Garza. You can call me Lalenia. We are in a very remote part of Mexico here. We don’t engage in formalities.”

“Your English is excellent.”

“I went to medical school in the States.”

“What was that other language?”

“That was Huastec, a Mayan dialect. My family has owned land here for generations. Rosario taught it to me when I was very young.”

“Medical school. Your parents must be proud.”

The young doctor became subdued. “My parents are no longer with me.” She took McKinney’s pulse, listening for several moments.

The door opened again, and this time a well-toned and muscular African-American man with a smooth bald head entered. He wore a Nike tank top shirt and cargo shorts. He was a striking male specimen in perfect physical shape. But what surprised McKinney was that he was missing both his legs beneath the knees. In their place were metal alloy prosthetic legs that he employed with such grace, she would never have known it if he weren’t wearing shorts. The prosthetic limbs ended in brightly colored running shoes that he apparently tied on just like anyone else.

Lalenia brightened considerably when he entered. “Ratón, look who’s up.”

The muscular man smiled a tight, distorted smile as he walked to the end of McKinney’s bed. She could see now that the right side of his face was disfigured from a grievous wound whose scar tissue pulled at the side of his mouth. A horrendous scar ran along the side of his head to a stunted ear. He also appeared to be missing his right eye and had in place a false eye as black as onyx. He placed his hands on the footboard and she could see he was missing several fingers from his left hand as well. He had once been a handsome man, but he seemed not to notice.

He met her gaze and nodded. Then he spoke in a deep, mellow voice. “So, you’re the one who broke out of Odin’s isolation facility.” He started laughing midsentence. “That shows dash, Professor.”

McKinney stared at him. “Ratón . . . Mouse. You’re Mouse.”

“You’ve heard of me.”

“A man named Ritter mentioned you. He made it sound as though you were—”

“Dead?” He nodded. “On paper, I guess I am.”

Lalenia walked over and kissed him on the cheek. “Not even close, baby.”

McKinney could see how much they cared for each other. Whatever scars he bore, Lalenia clearly did not see them.

Mouse focused on McKinney. “You ran into some difficulties back in the States.”

“Are we safe here?”

“Safe is relative. From them, perhaps, but only because you’re in the middle of a war zone. The cartels killed thirteen thousand people here last year. There’s more killing going on here than in Afghanistan.”

McKinney was at a loss for words. “Are you serious?”

“Most Americans have no idea how bad the fighting is down here. This will be JSOC’s next battlefield, Professor. Mark my words. Mexico’s constitution might prohibit U.S. boots on the ground, but there are workarounds.”

Odin walked in suddenly from the open doorway. He was wearing a faded gray T-shirt and jeans. He nodded to McKinney and let a slight grin escape. “I was worried about you for a while there.”

McKinney suddenly felt the reality of the situation. “I’m still worried about me. I can’t go home. And how long until they send machines here to kill us?”

He met her gaze and nodded grimly back. “Get some rest, Professor.”

*   *   *

E
xhaustion came quickly
to McKinney for quite some time, and she slept often. A week later she was sitting in the courtyard of a substantial-looking stone hacienda with a terra-cotta tile roof, enjoying the sunshine. The Christmas holiday and New Year’s had already come and gone, and she was morose with worry for her father. And for her brothers as well.

McKinney watched local children playing soccer in a dusty road nearby. She could see them through a wrought iron gate in a stone wall that enclosed one side of the courtyard. Their shouts brought back memories of Adwele playing with schoolmates in Tanzania. She wondered how he was coping with her sudden disappearance. Reaching out to him now would only put him in danger. She was helpless to do anything.

Instead, she stared into the distance. Beyond the houses were steep forested mountains, with clouds towering overhead. It was beautiful, but all she could think about was how to get back to her old life—and how impossible that now seemed.

Odin’s voice broke her reverie. “They said you were up and about.”

She looked up to see him standing in a nearby doorway.

“How are you feeling?”

McKinney shrugged. “Physically better. Psychologically, not so much.”

Odin came up clutching something wrapped in a burlap sack. He laid it on the table between them and sat in one of the rattan chairs next to her. Then he poured a cup of coffee from a steel pot nearby.

“How do you know about this place?”

“Years ago. We came down on an operation for the GWOT.” Seeing her confused expression he added, “The Global War on Terror. After 9/11 there were concerns about terrorists crossing the border, arms smuggling, that sort of thing. Turns out, the weapons were being smuggled the other way—from the U.S. to Mexico. We got caught up in a drug war.”

McKinney studied him. “You perplex me.”

“Why?”

“I just . . . why do you seek out war?”

He shrugged. “It’s what I’m good at. And there’s a bond you develop in war that’s hard to find in civilian life. People you can trust your life to.”

“But why get involved in Mexico’s drug war?”

“’Cause we were here. There’s a small number of vicious people destroying Mexican society to smuggle drugs into the U.S. Killing judges, reporters, men, women, children. We helped the locals who were trying to stop it. Those weren’t our orders, but we weren’t about to stand around and do nothing.”

“And Mouse?”

Odin nodded. “He met Lalenia. She refused to leave after the cartels killed her parents and her brothers and uncles. After they met, Mouse was always looking for an excuse to return here.”

“Is that how he . . . ?” She gestured to her legs.

“IED. Central Asia. A few years back. Lalenia came up to Virginia to help him through physical therapy.” He pondered the memory. “Mouse was my commander, Professor. Team leader before me. He taught me everything I know. I needed his advice, and a safe place to regroup.”

“Apparently they think he’s dead.”

Odin nodded. “He’s a legend down here.
El Ratón
—the Mouse. The cartels respect him. They found out the hard way that he’s an expert at insurgent warfare. He trained the locals to defend their land. To push the cartels out. Before that they were finding a dozen bodies in the street every morning. That’s over now.”