Burn (13 page)

Chapter 17

It is ridiculous for a man not to fly from his own wickedness,
which is indeed possible, but to fly from other
men’s wickedness, which is impossible.

—Marcus Aurelius

Colonel Rico Toledo admitted to himself that he looked like shit warmed over, and it wasn’t a trick of the hospital lighting. He barely had the strength to hold himself upright at the sink, so he could not spare a hand to shave himself, and shaving around dozens of stitches would be tricky anyway. In the mirror he saw his grandfather on his deathbed, but without the Quik-Stitch and tape.

Rico was only an hour out of isolation, and his day at Merced Hospital looked to be a long one. He had expected to feel better just for getting out of that cage at the airport, but now he hurt too bad to enjoy it. What he really wanted was a couple of uninterrupted hours in the Costa Bravan sun. What he really wanted was a drink.

‘Tough shit,” he told his image.

His image told him that it
was
tough shit, but he knew from experience that all tough shit will pass. He just had to hold on. For now he could barely hold on to the sink.

For the first time in a very long time, Rico Toledo was afraid. It showed in the way his arms and legs trembled, barely holding him up. It showed in his gaunt, unshaven cheeks crisscrossed with stitches and in the lusterless hollows of his eyes. He hadn’t even had the strength to tie the hospital gown, and it hung on him like a shroud.

His face had taken only sixty stitches after the flood, but he’d wound up with over a hundred in his butt. The medic, Joe Clyde, had lost count of the rest after three hundred. All of the field stitches put in by the SEAL team corpsman had infected, but those had closed the bad holes that opened up his belly and his back. Without some Quik-Stitch in the field, he wouldn’t have lived long enough to get infected. Still . . .

Something got in there,
he thought.
Something’s not right.

Fear. He saw it in his eyes and smelled it on his clothes and couldn’t do a damned thing about it. He threw his kill face at the mirror, and it tossed back a death mask.

“Cute butt, Colonel. Looks a lot like a road map of southern California, with that fault, and all.”

Colonel Toledo couldn’t let go of the sink without falling, so he shuffled himself behind his gown as best he could. He positioned himself so that he could see Rena Scholz in the mirror.

^“
You wouldn’t say that if you were still a major, Scholz,” he rasped.

“Yeah, but I’d still jot it in my diary. The promotion’s still a rumor, by the way. Nobody’s handed me any silver for my collar. Can I give you a hand?”

Rena Scholz pulled Colonel Toledo’s gown closed for him and tied it at the back. When she took his elbow to guide him back to the exam table, he pulled away.

“Thank you, Scholz. I got myself into this, I’ll get myself out of it.”

“You’ve used up most of your strength just hanging onto the sink,” she said, then shrugged. “But suit yourself.”

Twice he started to step to the table, and both times he knew he was too weak to make it.

What’s happening to me?
he thought.
I’m supposed to be getting better, not worse.

He breathed deep a couple of times, then he was grateful for the promotion rumor. The official word was to come out today or tomorrow, probably when they cemented in all the holes that led to ViraVax. It gave him something to stall with.

“So . . . ,” his voice came out a squeak, so he tried again.

“So, Scholz, it’s
Colonel
Scholz now. Congratulations. Solaris said last night that you were long overdue. How’s that maggot Hodge taking the news?”

Scholz flushed, and flashed him a paralyzing smile.

“He’s stayed completely out of my way since the whisper started around last night,” she said. “The most intelligent thing I’ve seen him do so far. Now, quit bullshitting me. Can you make it over here or not?”

Rico grunted. For virtually all of his fifty years he had honed his body to a fighting edge and had been accustomed to having it perform flawlessly on cue. He could tolerate these injuries; he’d lived through others. Weakness, however, had never been in his personal vocabulary.

Scholz kicked the brakes off the exam table and wheeled it behind his knees.

“An old nurse trick,” she said. “Going my way?”

“Scholz, goddammit, it was the principle of the thing.”

In spite of himself, he was grateful to let go and sit down, even with the stitches. But his body kept going, and if Scholz hadn’t caught him in time he’d have dropped flat on his back on the table. His reflex to save himself turned the rest of the lacerations on his body into a hundred fishhooks of fire.

“Shit!”

“Sorry. Slow, deep breaths.”

Rico hurt too bad to argue, and after a few deep breaths the hundred little fires started dying out.

“You made a smart move, Scholz,” he gasped.

“Which one was that, Colonel?”

“Getting out of nursing and into intelligence.”

“Why, thank you, Colonel. Coming from you, that’s downright complimentary.”

Somehow, pillows appeared under his knees and shoulders, and Scholz had managed to make him relatively comfortable. His body was one throbbing web of pain. Rico’s mouth and throat were raw and dry from sucking a ton or two of mud, but he tried talking as a distraction from the rest.

“What about Harry?”

“Well,” she said, “Solaris came up with a new plane for Sonja—don’t ask me how—and she flew Harry out to Casa Canada. Of course, Hodge immediately seized the plane and hired a squad of Pan-American Security to keep them in the house. Solaris wants the place as a pull-back in case the shooting gets serious in the city. The
campesinos
have thrown the kids quite a party. They’re staying out there, under guard, of course, until this gets squared away. Harry’s spent every waking minute working for Chang on the webs. Your ex is working with Philip Rubia to set up the interim government. Most of the fighting is church-to-church, by the way, and nobody seems to care who’s president. Nancy Bartlett has taken a bad turn.”

“She remembers what happened to Red?”

“Afraid so,” Scholz said. “The bombing and the kidnapping were shock enough, but seeing Bartlett’s last message and security tapes of those Meltdowns . . .”

“Yeah,” he said. “I never believed in that memory adjustment shit, anyway. Especially with Hodge at the helm.”

“Well, then, why did you . . . ?”

“Don’t start, Scholz. Okay? I’ve hammered myself enough over that. I don’t need any help from you.”

Rena said nothing, and the silence between them lay too heavy for Rico’s comfort.

“The Chang woman?” he asked.

“Really, Colonel,” Scholz said, with a shake of her head. “Her name is Marte. And your son has quite a crush on her, by the way.”

“Well?”

“Well, she’s got a makeshift setup that Hodge threw together for her at the embassy compound. For security. No lab, though, just a Litespeed and access to the web. But between Bartlett’s files and what she’d already observed, she’s almost got an immunization worked out. Doesn’t do much good without a lab to produce it.”

Rico snorted in disbelief.

“ ‘Top security,’” he mocked. “You mean that the same guys who let that bomb into the embassy are now keeping the only virologist who might stop this thing locked up instead of flying her to a decent lab?”

“Our virologist might not be necessary,” Scholz said. “Spook . . . I mean, Father Free, put Solaris together with the Peace and Freedom people, like you recommended. Solaris contracted their assault team that happened to be on R&R in Mexico City. They captured the warehouse and secured the shipment of AVAs a half-hour ago. Yolanda herself made the deal. She thought it would add some clout if she blew her own cover to him.”

“She’s pretty sure that Garcia is through here,” Rico said. “And I think she’s right.”

“Well, she’s meeting Solaris in Mexico City after the cement job on ViraVax tomorrow to see that the shipment is all accounted for. They’ll pour concrete around the shipment while the suits worry about where to put it.”

Yolanda Rubia had saved Rico’s skin, what he had left of it. Then she had rallied her people to help save Harry and Sonja. This wasn’t out of generosity. She wanted the Gardener government out of Costa Brava, and ViraVax controlled the Gardener government. Her motives may have been different from his own, but the result was the same—an alliance that got the kids, and Marte Chang, out of ViraVax alive. He had to admit a certain weakness for Yolanda’s perfume and her dark brown eyes.

Scholz looked uneasy on the subject of Yolanda. Her flush showed through the roots of her blond crewcut.

“You have a question, Scholz?”

“I’m not sure whether it’s professional or personal.”

“Shoot, Scholz. We’re not going to live forever.”

“Why Yolanda?” she asked. “Why go to the Peace and Freedom party instead of an independent contractor?”

“I didn’t go to her,” Rico said. “She came to me. The bombing, remember? She drug me out of there. Things got so wild after that. . . . But I knew she had people in position already, and the move had to be a fast one, before the end of the Sabbath.”

Scholz shook her head.

“Okay, before that,” she said. “When Red Bartlett melted down, you just
buried
it, and he was your best friend. I just don’t understand. . . .”

Rico began to shift position, then thought better of it.

“Okay, Scholz, I’ll ask you the same thing. You were there, you saw Bartlett melt down in person and got it on tape. You maintained security and came to me instead of going public. Why?”

Rena pursed her lips, but didn’t let her gaze slide from his. Rico suspected that if she did, she would cry, and Rena Scholz never let anyone see her cry.

“The only other person I could have gone to was Spook,” she said. “Some in the Agency consider him a traitor. He’d want me to resign before working with him. Even if he didn’t, the Agency would force my resignation, or worse, if they found out I’d gone to him. I’m surprised Solaris let him see you.”

“Well, there you have it,” Rico said. “I was too close to retirement pay to write that off. But I didn’t want Spook to see me . . . you know, as I was. As something less than he remembers me.”

“As a drunk, you mean?”

“Shit, Scholz. You sure have a way with words.”

“Takes one to know one, Colonel. That’s why I’m the only one around you who knows what you’re going through right now. I’m the only friend you’ve got who can really appreciate the fact that you haven’t asked for a drink since you woke up. In fact, Colonel, I’d have to say I’m pretty goddamned proud of you. And I’ll be there for you anytime you want to talk about it.”

Rico coughed nervously, then croaked, “Too waterlogged to think about drinking.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Colonel, and nobody else will, either—not me, not your son and not even Spook.”

The worst of the pain had subsided, and Rico felt his mind clearing. Besides, the personal chatter was getting too close to the bone for his tastes.

“Scholz, as a former nurse you’re probably familiar with medical charts and such.”

“If you’re going to ask me what I think you’re going to ask me, you’d better start calling me Rena,” she said. “Scholz is for the boys, and I’m no boy.”

“No,” Rico said, exaggerating an appraising glance, “that you’re obviously not.” And he managed to snap his hand in that way that the Costa Bravans used to say, “Hot, very hot!”

“Well, I see there’s nothing wrong with your testosterone production.”

“You saw the ViraVax files; they messed with that, too. So, my records are in that rack in the hallway beside the door,” he said. “Would you tell me what they know about what’s going on with me?”

“How long before the doc gets here?”

“They’re bringing in a guy from the Catholic clinic up in Santa Ana. I didn’t trust anybody here. The Flicker left to pick him up a half hour ago.”

“Plenty of time,” she said. “I’ll speak to your nurse and see that we’re not disturbed.”

“Don’t get my hopes up, Scholz. I’m a sick man.”

“Dream on, Colonel.”

Scholz stepped out, and Rico tried a few more deep breaths before reaching for his canes. He popped a sweat getting his fingers on one, and with it he hooked the other. He wanted them beside him on the bed, as though they were his legs that seemed to be giving out. He had refused the walker, even though he felt more secure with it. Crutches were out of the question because of the lacerations under his armpits.

His left armpit, upper arm and shoulder were covered with a matrix of shark cartilage and his own skin cells. Rico had refused the Second Skin that the Children of Eden developed, as he had refused their doctors, equipment and medications. The Gardeners and their medical meddling had got him into this mess with their secret potions inside their legitimate treatments; he wasn’t about to let them get their hands on him again.

Scholz came back in, and the quick smile that she arranged for his benefit wasn’t quick enough to fool him.

“More bad news?” he asked.

Scholz hefted the reader that contained his chart, as though more data increased its weight.

“Fifty thousand words already,” she said. “Your chart is already longer than the average movie.”

“More interesting, too, I’ll bet.”

He patted the covers beside him and she sat, gently, reviewing the files.

“Very interesting,” she agreed. “We know from ViraVax records that they infected you with at least three AVAs—that hitchhiker in your sperm that made Harry your clone instead of your son, the little tracker assembly that you found in your neck and some kind of aggression package like the one that killed Red Bartlett. None respond to the contagion-factor test, so you’re not catching. We can assume other changes in your biology that these facilities can’t find. Other than your obvious injuries, your clotting factor is much higher than normal, which saved you at the scene. It was probably a function of that aggression package. And your glucose metabolism rises and falls for no apparent reason, which is why you’re so shaky right now.”