Immune (47 page)

Reaching across to gently squeeze Heather’s shoulder, his voice nudged her. “Heather. You with me?”

She turned toward him and nodded. “Good to go.”

“Okay then, let’s get it over with.”

Mark reached across the seat for the envelope of cash, but Heather stopped him. “Let me take the lead. Just stay by me and watch for my signal.”

Although Mark felt prepared for anything, this wasn’t good. Her last vision must have taken her down one of the more unpleasant paths.

Opening the door and stepping into the driveway, Mark shrugged. “Whatever you say, boss.”

As he followed Heather to the front door, he willed his face into a mask like he had observed on some of the high-roller bodyguards at casinos downtown. Ignoring the doorbell, Mark rapped three times on the door, then twice more.

Listening carefully, he made out the footsteps of three men, two moving away as the other approached. Three heartbeats matched the movements. A door closed softly just before the front door opened.

The man who smiled out at them looked like any male head-of-household a census-taker would expect to meet in this neighborhood, a neatly dressed blond-haired, blue-eyed man in tan cotton Dockers and a Michael Jordan golf shirt. Even the sandal straps matched the tan lines barely visible on his feet.

“Mr. Billings?” Heather asked.

“Yes?”

“I’m Amanda Fowler, and this is my associate, Jason. I believe you were expecting us.”

“So I was. Please, come in.”

Mark stepped in first, his eyes scanning the interior in a way Mr. Billings noticed. As soon as the door closed behind Heather, the warm smile faded from the man’s face.

“You have my money?”

Heather patted the fat envelope. “I would like to see our documents first.”

Billings smiled, this time allowing a slight sneer to warp his lips. “Follow me.”

Heather stumbled slightly, and Mark reached a hand out to support her arm, thankful that the sunglasses hid her eyes.

Billings paused momentarily, looking at Mark. “She on drugs or something?”

“Cut the small talk and show us the documents. Then you’ll get your money.”

“Fine. No need to get pushy.”

Billings led them into a small study just off the dining room. A large executive desk occupied the center of the room, and Billings slid into the chair behind it, reaching down into a drawer as he did.

“Easy,” Mark said, stepping up beside him so he could see into the drawer.

“What? You think I’d pull a gun on you? In this neighborhood?” Billings pulled a large manila envelope from a file and emptied its contents onto the desktop.

Heather flipped rapidly through the passports and visas, then slid the cash-filled envelope toward Billings, watching as he counted. “Satisfied?”

The smile returned to Billings’ face. “Actually, I’ve run into some unexpected costs associated with the urgency of processing your order. I’ll need another twenty-five grand.”

“No. We’ll pay the agreed price and not a penny more.”

Billings cleared his throat, and as he did, Heather nodded toward the closed door behind him.

Mark exploded into action, his thunderous sidekick catching the door as it started to open, the violence of the blow ripping the hinges from the frame and catapulting it back into the garage, sending two large men rolling backward into a jet-black suburban.

Continuing his forward momentum, Mark’s fist crashed into the jaw of the nearest as he attempted to bring a gun around. Without bothering to watch him hit the ground, Mark grabbed the right arm of the second man, feeling the muscles in the three hundred pound frame tense with effort as he struggled to wrap his massive arms around Mark’s body.

With a yell of satisfaction, the big man dragged Mark toward him. What happened next changed the yell into a scream. Mark’s grip tightened, snapping the bone of the right forearm, sending the sharp end jutting out through the skin, accompanied by a spray of blood that robbed the big man’s face of color. Without releasing his grip, Mark pivoted, sending his elbow crashing into the side of his opponent’s head. The sound of the heavy body hitting the floor was like a dropped watermelon. The screaming stopped.

Mr. Billings froze, too shocked by the explosion of violence to move.

Heather leaned in close, her voice barely rising above a whisper as she gathered the documents into her handbag. “As I said. Not a penny more than the agreed price.”

“F…Fine.” Billings’ eyes remained locked on Mark as he moved back into the office.

As they turned to leave, Heather turned toward him one last time. “Make sure this closes our business dealings. I’d hate to send my associate back for a more vigorous discussion.”

Billings swallowed. “We’re all done here.”

“Good.”

Mark walked Heather back to the car and backed out of the driveway. As they rounded the third corner onto East Washington Avenue, Heather leaned forward and vomited onto the floor mat.

“Oh, Christ,” she muttered as the gagging subsided. “That’s so gross. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I felt the same way after I broke Priest’s neck. At least until the asshole shot me in the butt with that tranquilizer dart.”

Heather laughed. “But you don’t have to sit here smelling it.”

“Oh, I smell it.”

Her elbow caught him in the shoulder, interrupting the grin just as it got started.

In a matter of minutes they were on highway 147 headed west out of Las Vegas. Vomit cleanup would have to wait for a truck stop on I-15, somewhere along the road between there and Salt Lake City.

Freddy Hagerman leaned back against the tree in the darkness, feeling the rough bark through his wet shirt. His breath panted out hard enough to scrape the skin from his throat. As a child, his mother had always given him a shot of Jack Daniels and honey to cure a sore throat. If he survived the night, he vowed to revisit that treatment. Hold the honey.

Now that he had stopped, the warmth that had come from his desperate scramble to get away from Henderson House leached away in the icy water that dripped from his clothes. The tremors that started in his extremities now moved into his core, growing in power until his teeth chattered audibly.

His janitor’s pants were ripped from crotch to knee, thanks to an old piece of razor wire just beneath the surface of the stream. Just how badly he had cut himself he could only guess. Considering the fact that he hadn’t yet passed out, the wound couldn’t be that bad. Then again, the shaking might not be solely due to hypothermia.

Freddy sank to the ground, hugging the small pack with his camera and recorder tucked damply inside, trying to clear his head enough to come up with a plan. A quick review of his situation wasn’t comforting.

His fucking car was half a mile away, inside the Henderson House compound. No chance of getting that. In his desperate flight he hadn’t even had a chance to grab his jacket. At least the dogs had lost his trail in the stream. If he could just make his way down to the lake, he could steal a boat. Not that a boat would take him far on that little lake, but it would give him more separation from his hunters. Plus, if he could get down to the flood-control dam, it was only a short hike to a warehouse where he had seen some interstate trucks and trailers.

After that…well, one step at a time.

Success Lake had a marina just a short distance from where Success Valley Drive crossed highway 190. To Freddy it sounded like it had been named at a multilevel marketing convention. Hell, if he got that far he might just sign up for their business opportunity himself. After all, a little extra soap never hurt anybody. Those poor bastards in the depths below Henderson House could have used some.

Freddy shook his head to clear it. He must be fucking delirious. One thing was for sure, if he stayed here much longer, he’d find himself down in that hellhole. So much for his second Pulitzer. So much for putting a stop to that madness.

Patting the camera bag one last time, Freddy forced himself back into the cold water. He might have lost all the photos left hanging in his hotel darkroom, but what he carried in that bag was enough. Enough to bring down Dr. Stephenson. Enough to bring down a president.

Pieces of the alien machine floated in the air around him as Raul worked, each one tracked and catalogued by the ship’s improving neural network, each compared against specifications stored deep in the Rho Ship’s database.

If he had worked hard before, it was nothing compared to the way Raul now drove himself. As shocked and angry as he had been to discover Dr. Stephenson’s ability to override his commands to some of the Rho Ship’s systems, the task the deputy directory had offered him captured his imagination so vividly that Raul put everything else aside. Dr. Stephenson’s interest focused on a particular machine, one that had been heavily damaged by the weapon that had sent the Rho Ship crashing to earth.

For more than twelve hours, Dr. Stephenson had taken Raul through a series of equations and diagrams illustrating what he wanted done and making an offer so attractive that Raul had leaped at the opportunity. As he had listened, applying the full computational powers of his networked brain, he found himself more and more impressed with the span of Stephenson’s intelligence.

Somehow, without Raul’s level of access to the Rho Ship’s alien computing powers, the physicist had figured out the purpose of the machine in question. Not only that, he had worked out, with amazing accuracy, the underlying theory to its operation. Looking at the equations was like opening a hinge in Raul’s mind, unlocking parts of his database that, although damaged, filled in pieces of the jigsaw puzzle he would need to get the thing working again.

Another shocking development was the way his data search revealed blocks of historical data on the alien technology that had enabled the Rho Ship to travel the stars. Unlike the subspace technology employed by the Enemy, the Makers had mastered the manipulation of gravity. Their ability to warp the space-time continuum extended well beyond the little worm fibers Raul had been able to recreate, allowing for the production of much larger discontinuities, holes in space large enough to transport objects the size of the starship.

The larger the hole, the greater the spanned distance, the more time it needed to remain open, the greater the energy needed to produce the space-time fold. The machine he was working on was what made the large folds possible. And even though there was no way the Rho Ship’s damaged power systems could produce anything close to an interstellar fold, it should be possible to produce one sufficient for earthbound transport. That was the breakthrough Stephenson wanted.

And in return, he had offered to let Raul pass through and return with a companion of his choosing. Raul’s heart rate and breathing increased as his mind played with that thought. He would create a doorway through which he could pull Heather back to him, a completely untraceable action that would deliver his soul mate. And once Raul had her where he was a god, he would introduce her to pleasures beyond her wildest imaginings.

Raul refocused his attention on his work. At the current rate, repairs to the machine would be complete in another 184 hours and 13 minutes. After that he needed to shift his efforts back to the repair of additional power cells. What he needed to do would certainly take far more energy than he currently had available, especially since he needed to maintain plenty of shipboard reserves. It wouldn’t do to transport Heather but kill his Rho Ship in the process. Once completely drained, there would be no way to restart it.

Raul flexed his mind, feeling the energy crackle through his neural network, drawing on the working power supplies to fuse two damaged conduits.

184 hours, 12 minutes, 23 seconds…and counting.

The rural house just off Mattaponi Reservation Circle backed up against heavily wooded Virginia countryside. Although the tribe claimed over four hundred members, the number of residents living on the hundred and fifty acres of reservation land that snuggled up against the Mattaponi river had shrunk to around seventy-five. Seventy-six if you counted Janet. Clad in the manner of the locals, with her dark hair, skin, and pregnant belly, few outsiders would have given her a second glance.

Tall Bear’s connections never ceased to amaze her. She had been accepted into the tiny community with a warmth and protectiveness beyond what she could have expected. And although she received more than a few questioning looks from the young ones, the stoic elders of the river people quickly squelched any open inquiries. Janet didn’t know what Tall Bear had told them, but they seemed to regard her with a respect reserved for heroes from the Indian nation’s proud past.

The location was exactly what she needed, an isolated community just on the northwestern side of West Point, Virginia, less than a three hours’ drive from D.C. She’d been given access to a high-speed Internet connection, provided food, fresh clothing, and a secure place to stay. The nine members of the tribal council had been unwilling to accept her thanks. Whatever they thought she was doing had been deemed worthy of their support. As far as they were concerned, that ended all discussion of the matter.