Thief (42 page)

Arsenault nodded.

Saunders seemed to struggle, but then said, “I am authorized to offer you another ten million dollars for some additional work.”

“So sixteen million altogether?” Dokken said, sounding surprised before falling into silence. “What do I need to do for that kind of money?”

“Kill everyone in that tribe, and the scientists,” Saunders said. “Dump the bodies where they'll never be found. Shouldn't be too hard in a restricted zone.”

After another long silence, Dokken said, “Make it an even twenty million total, and I'll make sure the only living things left in this canyon are birds, spiders, and snakes. And it'll take archaeologists a thousand years to find the bones.”

Arsenault nodded. His security chief said, “Deal. But again we need proof.”

“I'll send pictures when it's done. That work?”

“It does,” Saunders said.

The tycoon nodded once more, and thinking that he needed to call Barbosa, get a formal agreement going.

“It will probably be tomorrow by the time I'm done,” Dokken said.

Saunders signed off, looked at his boss, and said, “I need a raise. A big one.”

“I'm doubling your salary,” Arsenault said without hesitation.

His security chief thought about that, nodded, said, “What about Sister Rachel? She's the last thread.”

Arsenault had his phone in his hand and punched in Barbosa's number, saying, “Once we have proof that Monarch is indeed dead, cut it.”

*   *   *

Monarch had heard enough to put it together. Whoever was behind all of this had gone to a whole other level. It was one thing to kidnap a missionary, and squeeze a thief to commit robbery. But wanting a picture of the thief dead? That was personal. And ordering genocide? And wanting pictures of that? What kind of twisted fucker was he dealing with?

For a moment, Monarch looked to the sky, begging God for the strength to stop Dokken. First job? Get off the rim of the canyon. But how?

As far as he knew the cliffs were sheer on both sides of the rim. But the howler monkeys were likely the same troop that the expedition encountered shortly before it reached the riverbank. If it was the same troop, they had a way to get up here.

Remembering that all of the monkeys had gone north once they'd dropped from the trees and vines, the thief hurried in that direction, his eyes scanning the leaves and soil, and soon found tracks and spoor of several dozen primates moving north along a beaten trail that soon led him to that V notch in the canyon wall.

Monarch peered over the lip, and saw the jagged walls of the notch. He focused on the source of the waterfalls, which plumed up under pressure from that jagged slit he'd seen from the air. He thought of something else he'd seen from the air, and belly crawled to where he could better examine the crest of the exterior cataract, right where it left the notch and fell away four hundred feet to the outer stream.

There, under the sparkling clear water, the bottom of the notch was a jumble of rock slabs about ten feet long by five feet wide and maybe six or seven inches thick. From the scars on the notch wall above them, it looked like they'd sheared off eons ago. Two of the slabs stuck out of the jumble and off the side of the notch perhaps four feet. It was from there that the waterfall began.

Monarch moved again, and the new vantage gave him what he was looking for. A dark gap in the rubble, an opening perhaps thirty inches wide.

*   *   *

On the canyon floor, Santos crouched by Fal-até, who was moaning. She'd been shot through her right thigh. The round had broken the femur, but spared the artery. The scientist had torn off her shirt and wrapped it around the wound, but she needed modern help. Without a medical doctor, the wound was a death sentence.

I did this,
the scientist thought.
I brought guns and death and—

Dokken came out of the jungle. He glanced at her the way a man might a trifling thing, and went to Pearl and Correa. He drew them aside and began talking.

Santos felt like she was in a trance as she got up, and started walking toward the three men, seeing the pilot of the smaller chopper getting back into his seat. Pearl, the other pilot, retreated two steps at something Dokken said. She heard the one they called Correa say, “The savages will hinder us, of course.”

“Call your boss, then. Tell him my fee to fix the situation and—?”

Dokken saw the scientist approaching, said, “What the fuck do you want?”

She'd meant to ask for first-aid supplies, but now, sensing a deeper threat, said, “What are you going to do?”

Correa turned away, punching in a number on his cell phone. Pearl followed him, saying, “I never signed up for anything like this.”

“You want to tell the boss that?”

Dokken ignored them both, said to Santos in a reasonable voice, “We're gonna take care of things, then leave you, this place, and these people be. That work for you?”

The scientist eyed him in disbelief. He'd killed four people already. But she grasped at hope. “You'll leave them be?”

“Once we've taken samples of our own,” Dokken said. “Yes.”

“What kind of samples?” the scientist asked.

“Same as yours,” he said. “DNA from every man, woman, and child in this canyon, and I'll be on my way. You speak the lingo, right? Call them all in, get them all here, we'll take samples, and we'll fly out of your life forever and a day.”

Santos didn't know his exact angle, but she felt in her gut that it was a brutal one.

“You can take my samples,” she offered. “I got every one of them.”

“C'mon, Doc,” Dokken said, showing his palms. “You know we've got to have independent verification in our own labs to make this all work.”

Santos knew nothing of the sort. She said, “I can't help you then.”

Dokken cocked his head at her. “That right?”

“Yes,” she said, standing her ground.

“You know,” he said, coming at her. “I've found that life's all about competing interests and trade-offs. There's always an interest more compelling than another and there you have the root of a tradeoff.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Santos said, fighting against the tremor in her voice brought on by how close he was to her now.

“Panic,” Dokken said to his other comrade. “If this bitch doesn't get her head on straight, and start cooperating I want you to put a round between that French kid's eyes.”

“With pleasure,” Panic said, and shifted his gun at Edouard Les Cailles.

Correa had finished his second call, and turned as Rousseau's research assistant cowered in fear. Graciella stepped in front of Les Cailles, shouted at Correa and Pearl, “You two stop this! We had a deal with Senor Barbosa! Stop this right now!”

Dokken frowned, looked at Correa, who shrugged, said, “Where do you think we got the palladium samples in the first place?”

The news penetrated Santos's brain like a railroad spike. She, Carson, and Rousseau looked at their assistants in shock. Les Cailles and Graciella had brought out metal samples during the first expedition. They'd gone to Barbosa, and—

“We have a deal?” Dokken said.

Correa nodded.

“These two critical?” Dokken asked, gesturing at the assistants.

“Well, when it comes down to it, no,” Correa said.

“What the fuck!” Les Cailles screamed at the miner. “We fucking took care of Lourdes for you, man, and this is how you treat us?”

Took care of Lourdes? Santos felt ill.

The scientist didn't know the particulars, but she could guess the gist of the story. Her late research assistant Lourdes Martinez must have figured out that her comrades had negotiated a rich reward should they lead miners to the mother lode. The other research assistants had killed Lourdes, made it look like the aftermath of a crazed sex act.

It was all so depressing, Santos wanted to cry.

“So what's it going to be, Dr. Santos?” Dokken asked.

“I'm not helping you,” she said. “And certainly not for them.”

“You heard her, Panic,” Dokken said.

His man flipped off the safety on his rifle.

“Dr. Santos, please!” Graciella shouted in terror. “My God, we were just trying to put some security in our lives. You can understand that, can't you? Think of the research we could have done! Think of what we can still do!”

“Think of the blood on your hands!” Santos shouted. “Think of what you've done to the Ayafal! To Kiki! To Lourdes!”

“Help us, for God's sake!” Les Cailles bellowed.

“Panic,” Dokken said.

Panic reacted like a dog unleashed. He flipped the butt of the rifle underhand, and used the stock to slap Graciella aside before reshouldering the weapon.

“
Mais non!”
Les Cailles whimpered, holding up his hands. “Please, no!”

“Nothing personal, man,” Panic said, and shot Rousseau's assistant on the bridge of his nose, shattering his glasses, and sprawling him in a halo of his own blood.

 

56

MONARCH HEARD A THUD
,
but could not decide whether it had been a rock falling or a distant clap of thunder or yet another gunshot.
Would I even hear something like that in here
?

The thief was behind the exterior waterfall, ninety feet down inside a chimneylike recess in the cliff face, his feet and hands splayed and pressed to the slick, ragged walls of the chimney, which was no wider than a yard in any place so far. And there was enough monkey hair and sign on the rocks to suggest that it wouldn't get any wider the rest of the way down.

His shoulder ached from the punishment, but he forced his mind away from the pain, and kept up his descent, finding handholds, and cramming his jungle boot soles against outcroppings in the wet wall. Fifteen minutes later, he reached the limits of his abilities: narrow ledge that formed the bottom of the chimney a solid thirty feet above the base of the waterfall.

Below him there was water on his side of the cataract and what looked like crushed, glimmering stone. He had no idea how deep the water was directly below him, but he sensed it wasn't deep enough to absorb a thirty-foot jump.

So how did the monkeys get down from here?

He gazed down between his feet and saw where the chimney became a crack in the face of the cliff, no more than one or two inches wide as it splintered into other cracks in the rock surface. He supposed a monkey, or a skilled rock climber with the right equipment could make child's play of the last thirty feet of the cliff. But the thief was not a monkey, his shoulder was hurt, and he didn't have the necessary equipment.

Monarch quickly realized he had one chance of getting off the cliff intact. An instructor in Ranger School had taught him never to leap into an unknown body of water if he could avoid it. You just never knew how deep the water was, or what might be floating below the surface. If the interior waterfall was a mirror image of the exterior cataract, the water might be four, maybe five feet deep. But maybe not even that.

Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith, Robin.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he coiled, and sprang off the ledge.

The thief closed his eyes, burst through the two-foot-thick waterfall, and kicked his feet forward. He fell as if positioned in a reclining chair. He tucked his chin, snapped his eyes open. He caught flashes of the jungle outside the ridge, tried to see what was below him, and then splashed into a pool of water six feet deep.

Monarch quickly surfaced, gasping for air, and gauged what to do next. His soldiering years had taught him to always seek the most firepower possible. That part of him wanted to head back to their encampment, and try to find the assault rifle.

But a much bigger part of the thief said Santos, her expedition, and the Ayafal did not have the luxury of time. So he turned to the waterfall and dove under it. He came up thirty feet below the ledge he'd jumped from, facing a cave passage.

Monarch had suspected that such a passage existed given how quickly the Ayafal had been able to get him in and out of the canyon while under the short-term effects of that paralytic drug. The cave passage was only five feet high. The thief had to crouch and duckwalk, feeling his way into the dark tunnel that he believed connected the canyon to the outer world.

Three hundred yards in he was proved right when he started seeing dim light far ahead of him. Another hundred yards and he could hear the rumble of the interior waterfall and see pale daylight shining through it.

*   *   *

“My God, no more!” Rousseau cried at Dokken after his research assistant collapsed dead; and Graciella threw herself hysterical on her fiancé's corpse, choking out incomprehensible screams of grief and pain.

“Tell her,” Dokken said, gesturing at Santos.

Santos felt like she was having a nervous breakdown. Her research had started with such good intent. But now it was all wrong, so terribly wrong.

“Estella?” Carson said. “Just do what he says or he'll kill us all.”

“Yes?” Rousseau said.

Santos started laughing bitterly. “For such smart men, you're sure stupid sometimes. He's going to kill us whether I help or not.”

“No,” Rousseau said. “He said—”

“They're going to kill off the tribe, and us, no matter what we do.”

“Now what makes you say that?” Dokken said, eyeing her warily.

She pointed at Correa. “He said the savages would hinder him. And you said you could fix the situation.”

She gestured at Pearl, who was walking back toward the construction helicopter. “And the pilot said he wouldn't be a part of it.”

Dokken looked at his hand as if it were a recent transplant. “Can't get a damn thing by you, can I, Doc? Timbo? Panic? Why don't you see that Dr. Santos's deepest fears are confirmed?”