FaceOff (40 page)

PIERCE KEPT HIS PISTOL FIRMLY
aimed and recognized the southern drawl. “Cotton Malone. How about that? A blast from the past.”

He took stock of the former agent in the dim light. Mid-forties. Still fit. Light-brown hair with not all that much gray. He knew Malone was retired, living in Copenhagen, owning a rare bookshop. He’d even visited him there once a couple of years ago. There were stories that Malone occasionally moonlighted for his former boss Stephanie Nelle. Malone had been one of her original twelve agents at the Magellan Billet, until he opted out early. Pierce knew the unit. Highly specialized. Worked out of the Justice Department. Reported only to the attorney general and the president.

He lowered his gun. “Just what we need, a damn lawyer.”

“About as bad as having Mr. Wizard on the job,” Malone said, lowering his gun, too.

Pierce got the connection. Sigma Force, his employer, was part of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Sigma comprised a clandestine group of former Special Forces soldiers, retrained in scientific disciplines, who served as field operatives. Where Sigma dealt with lots of science and a little history, the Magellan Billet handled global threats that delved more into history and little science.

“Let me guess,” he said to Malone. “You know about Trask’s neurotoxin?”

“That’s what I’m here to get.”

“Seems we have an interagency failure to communicate. The coaches sent two quarterbacks onto the field.”

“Nothing new. How about I go back to Buenos Aires and you handle this?”

Pierce caught the real meaning. “Got a girl there?”

“That I do.”

An explosion rocked the boat—from the stern, heaving the hull high, tossing them both against the wall. He tangled with Malone, hitting something solid, but managed to keep hold of his gun. The blast faded and screams filled the air, echoing throughout the ship.

The riverboat listed to starboard.

“That ain’t good,” Malone said as they both regained their balance.

“You think?”

The boat continued to list, tilting farther starboard, confirming the hull was taking on water. A glance past the balcony revealed a pall of black smoke wafting skyward.

Something was on fire.

A pounding of boots sounded from beyond the cabin door. A shotgun blast tore through the dead bolt and the door crashed open. Both he and Malone swung their guns toward the smoky
threshold. Two men barged inside, dressed in paramilitary uniforms, their faces obscured by black scarves. One carried a shotgun, the other an assault rifle. Pierce shot the man with the double-barrel, while Malone took down the other.

“This is interesting,” Malone muttered, as Pierce quickly checked the hallway and confirmed only the two gunmen. “Seems we’re not the only ones looking for Trask’s poison. Were you able to find it?”

He shook his head. “I only had a chance to search half the suite. But it shouldn’t take long to—”

Gun blasts popped in the distance.

Pierce cocked an ear. “That came from the dining hall.”

“Our visitors must be going after Trask,” Malone said. “He could have it on him.”

Which was a real possibility. He’d already considered that option, which was why he’d gone to great lengths to keep his search of the cabin under the radar. If the effort proved futile, he didn’t want to alert Trask and make him extra guarded.

“Finish your search here,” Malone said. “I’ll get Trask.”

He had no choice. Things were happening fast and off script. Lawyer or no lawyer, he needed the help.

“Do it.”

MALONE RACED DOWN THE CANTED
passageway, a hand on the wall to keep his balance. He’d not seen Gray Pierce since that day in his bookshop a couple of years ago. He actually liked the guy. There were a lot of similarities between them. Both were former soldiers. Both recruited into intelligence services. Each seemed to have taken care of themselves physically. The big difference came with age; Pierce was at least ten years younger and that made a
difference. Particularly in this business. The other contrast was that Pierce was still in the game, while Malone was merely an occasional player.

And he wasn’t foolish enough not to realize that mattered.

He skidded to a stop as he approached the stairs that led down to the riverboat’s dining hall. Take it slow from here in. Through a window he surveyed the river outside. The boat sat askew, foundering in the swift current. Past a roil of smoke he spotted a gunmetal-gray craft prowling into view. A uniformed man, whose features were obscured by a wrap of black cloth, stood at its stern, the long tube of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher resting on his shoulder.

Which was apparently how they’d scuttled the boat.

He rounded the landing and double doors appeared below. A body lay at the threshold in a pool of blood, the man dressed as a maître d’. He slowed his pace and negotiated the steps with care, approaching the door from one side, and snuck a quick peek into the room.

More bodies lay strewn among overturned tables and chairs.

At least two dozen.

A large clutch of passengers huddled to one side of the spacious room, held at gunpoint by a pair of men. Another two men stalked through bodies, searching. One held a photograph, likely looking for someone who matched Trask’s face. Amid the captives Malone spotted the good doctor. Stephanie had provided him an image by e-mail. Trask kept his back to the gunmen, hunching into his dinner jacket, a hand half covering his face, trying to be one among many.

That ruse wouldn’t last long.

Trask was strikingly handsome in a roguish way, with unruly auburn hair and sharp planes defining his face. Easy to see how he
became a media darling. But those distinct looks should get him flushed out of the crowd and into the assault force’s custody in no time.

Malone couldn’t let that happen.

So he bent down and patted his palm into the maître d’s blood. Not the most hygienic thing in the world, but it had to be done. He painted his face with the bloody palm, then slipped the pistol into the waistband of his pants, at the small of his back, and tugged the edge of his shirt over it.

Why he did stuff like this he’d never know.

He stumbled into view, limping, holding a bloody hand to his fouled face.

“Help me,” he called out in a plaintive tone, as he wove a path deeper into the room—only to be accosted by one of the gunmen holding the passengers at bay.

Orders in Portuguese were barked at him.

He feigned surprise and confusion though he understood every word—a benefit of the eidetic memory that made languages easy for him. He allowed the man to drive him toward the clutch of passengers. He was shoved into the crowd, bouncing off a matronly woman who was held close by her husband. He shifted deeper into the mass, bobbling his way through until he reached Trask’s side. Once there, he slipped the pistol out and jabbed it into the botanist’s side.

“Stay nice and still,” he whispered. “I’m here to save your sorry ass.”

Trask flinched and it looked like he was about to speak.

“Don’t talk,” he breathed. “I’m your only hope of getting out of here alive. So don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Trask stood still and asked, his lips not moving, “What do you want me to do?”

“Where’s the biotoxin?”

“Get me out of here, and I’ll bloody well make it worth your while.”

Typical opportunist, quickly adapting.

“I’m not telling you a thing,” Trask said, “until you have me somewhere safe.”

Clearly the guy sensed a momentary advantage.

“I could just identify you to these gentlemen,” Malone made clear.

“I have the vials on me. If even a single one breaks, it’ll kill anything and everything within a hundred yards. Trust me, there’s no stopping it, short of incineration.” Trask threw him a glorious smile of victory. “So I suggest you hurry.”

He took stock of the four gunmen. The two searchers had about completed their path through the corpses. To better the odds of success he needed them all grouped together. As he waited for that to happen, he decided to press his own advantage.

“Where did you find the orchid?”

The doctor gently shook his head.

“You’ll tell me that much, or I’ll shoot my way out of here and leave you to them—making sure I’m a hundred yards away fast.”

Trask clenched his jaw and seemed to get the point.

They both continued to stare out at the macabre scene.

“Six months into the jungle I heard a rumor of a plant called
Huesos del Diablo,
” Trask said, keeping his lips still.

Malone silently translated.

The devil’s bones.

“It took another year to find a tribe that knew about it. I embedded myself in their village, apprenticed myself to the shaman. Eventually he took me to a set of ruins buried in the upper Amazon basin, revealing a vast complex of temple foundations that
stretched for miles. The shaman told me that tens of thousands of people had once lived there. A vast unrecorded civilization.”

Malone had heard of similar ruins, identified via satellite imaging, found deep in the hinterlands of the Amazon, where people thought no one lived. Each discovery defied the conventional wisdom that deemed the rain forest incapable of supporting civilization. Estimates put the number living there at over sixty thousand. The fate of those people remained unknown, though it was theorized starvation and disease were the main culprits of their demise.

But maybe there was another explanation.

The searchers across the dining hall checked the last of the bodies. The two armed men closest to them alternated their attention from their colleagues to their captives.

“Among the ruins I found piles of bones, many of them burned. Other bodies looked like they died where they dropped. The shaman told me the story of a great plague that killed in seconds and wilted flesh from bones. He showed me an unusual dark orchid growing nearby. I didn’t know then if the orchid was the source of the plague, but the shaman claimed the plant was death itself. Even to touch it could kill. The shaman taught me how to gather it safely and how to wring the poison from its petals.”

“And once you learned how to gather this toxin?”

Trask finally glanced at him. “I had to test it, of course. First on the shaman. Then, on his village.”

Malone’s blood went cold at the matter-of-fact admission of mass murder.

Trask turned back. “Afterward, to ensure I had the only source, I burned all pockets of the orchids I could find. So you see, my rescuer, I hold the key to it all.”

He’d heard enough.

“Stick to my side,” he mouthed.

He eased toward the edge of the crowd, towing Trask in his wake. Once there, he knew he had to incapacitate the four armed men as quickly as possible. There’d only be a few seconds of indecision. The men were finally gathered in a group. Seven rounds remained in his gun’s magazine. Not much room for error. He eyed an overturned table with a marble top that should offer decent cover. But he needed to be away from the civilians before the shooting started.

He gripped Trask by the elbow and motioned to the table. “Come with me. On my mark.”

He did a fast three count, then sprinted toward the table, swinging his gun into view—only to have the floor beneath his feet jolt, throwing him high. He flew past the table, crashing hard, losing his grip on the gun, which skittered across the floor out of reach. He rolled to see the front of the dining hall tear away, glass exploding, the walls splintering open.

Dark jungle burst inside.

Then he realized.

The boat had hit shore and run aground.

Everybody had been knocked off their feet, even the gunmen. He searched for Trask, but the botanist had been tossed into the assault team. Trask straightened up and even the blood gushing from a broken nose failed to hide his features. Surprised voices erupted from the four gunmen. Rifles were pointed and Trask lifted his arms in surrender.

Malone searched for the pistol, but it was gone.

Trask glanced in his direction, the fear and plea plain on his face. The man’s thoughts clear.
Help me. Or else.
Malone shook his head and brought a finger to his lips, signaling silence, the hope being that the doctor would realize selling him out was not a good idea.

One of them had to be free to act.

Trask hesitated, was jerked to his feet, but said nothing.

A parrot screamed across the ruins of the dining hall, cawing, seemingly voicing Malone’s frustration.

And he could only stare as Trask and his captors vanished into the dark bower of the jungle.