Jade Sky (29 page)

"Oh," Dawkins said. "Not his home in D.C. I'm talking about his home in La Madrague."

"Where is that?" Blossom asked. Her face betrayed not the slightest emotion.

"Giens Peninsula, Southern France."

Matt logged into the guest account on Janet's computer, pulled up Google Earth and typed in, "Giens Peninsula."

"Show us."

Brian’s home was the quintessential European villa on the water: trees screened it from the street and a picturesque half-wall surrounded the small property. With no yard to speak of, the two-story retreat ended in a rocky bluff that led down to a private dock. Someone had uploaded a picture of a brilliant purple tree growing under Frahm's balcony, giving them a perfect view of the ocean side. Invisible from above, a small cavern led through the bedrock into the darkness.

"All right," Matt said. "It's a big house, but not that big. What's it like underground? Raccoon City?"

"Could be," Dawkins said. "The bedrock could support something that large, though history suggests that there haven't been any ridiculously big construction projects going back as far as World War Two. My guess
—
and this is a guess
—
is no more than ten thousand square feet, and probably a lot less than that."

Blossom glared at the picture. "No army, but what about a small group? Are there a few people you trust with this?"

"With this?" Dawkins snarled. "No. There's a reason I had to be forced into this." He ran a hand across the back of the couch. "I could make something up that they'd believe. A revenge hit on a rival drug lord, or something. But Frahm might still find out."

Matt looked out the window. "If we can use your money, I have a better idea."

Dawkins caught his eye. "How much do you need?"

"Let me find out."

Matt and Blossom got off the plane into a blast of heat. The causeway had to be a hundred degrees and stank of straw and body odor and burnt cumin. The mass of humanity didn't help the heat. Or the noise. Or the smell. The oppressive humidity made for a pleasant change when they stepped outside.

Blossom handed a fistful of pesos to a vendor, picked up an apple, took a bite, and spoke with her mouth full. "I'm not sorry. You'd have done the same."

"Don't," Matt said. "If there's even a chance of saving Monica, I have to take it, but don't mistake that for trust or friendship. You could have told us."

"Dawkins would not go along to save my daughter."

"I would have."

She closed her eyes, nodded once, then opened them. "You really think taking some old woman off a machine will cure addiction? There's no such thing as magic."

Matt grunted at her continued denial of the fantastical truth. "I don't know. Two days ago I didn't believe in angels on Earth, despite what happened in New Mexico. I didn't believe a headless man could chew through my neck. I didn't believe—"

The car pulled up, a lime green 1970s Cadillac with diplomatic plates. They stood on the sidewalk as the driver frisked them. His eyes popped when he opened Matt's briefcase, but he covered his surprise with a polite cough. Blossom responded once he'd gotten back in the driver's seat.

"You believe Dawkins is psychic? Can see the future?"

He exhaled. "Yeah. That I believe all day long. I've done it myself, once or twice. Not like him, but way farther out than a split second. And I've seen too much not to believe that. He knows too much."

"And you think Gerstner is the key to stopping all this, that we won't go mad."

"I . . . maybe. I don't think the people who wrote the book knew about the machine, but if we destroy her or disrupt her somehow, I think maybe."

"You think."

He threw up his hands. "Maybe taking out Gerstner will make us all crazy. Maybe we'll all die. I have no idea. But it's a chance, and even if it doesn't work for us, even if we're all screwed, even if Mo—" He stopped, closed his eyes, swallowed a lump in his throat, and continued through the near-overwhelming desire to tear Blossom limb from limb. "Even if all that's true, if we can stop the flow of Gerstner carbon, the Jade trade will dry up, and nobody else'll get augs . . . that'd be worth doing. That'd be worth dying for." He opened his eyes and stared into hers. "The world won't need folks like us anymore."

She finished her apple in four quick bites and tossed the core into the trash bin, twenty feet away. "Okay. I don't know about angels, but I felt that thing in my brain, and I don't ever want to feel that again. If Gerstner is like that, we have to kill her. And Frahm, for using her. What happens next, happens."

Matt let silence voice his agreement, choked down his seething anger, and opened the door.

Blossom rounded the car and spoke over the top. "And Matt? There's no such thing as angels. That thing was a bonk. A weird bonk, a powerful bonk, but a bonk. Sounds like Gerstner is, too—maybe the first bonk ever, maybe the source of Gerstner augmentation, maybe even thousands of years old, but she is, or was, human. Don't screw up your head with this wishy-wash stuff. We need to be smart if we're going to save our families. Not give in to hocus pocus."

"Okay."

She gave him one last, long look before getting in.
Yeah, I don't believe me, either.

*   *   *

Matt couldn't fight the
déjà vu
as they hurtled down the one-lane mountain path, between towering oaks and even taller pines. This time Blossom drove, and as they rounded the bend toward the secluded mansion, there wasn't a uniformed soldier in sight. Instead, on the veranda, Onofre and Hernando Garza stood flanked by four bonks, nine-foot monsters in full tactical body armor, one of which held a steel hammer that had to weigh two hundred pounds.

The Garza brothers wore cargo shorts and Hawaiian shirts, Onofre's blue, Hernando's green. Hernando, clean shaven with graying brown hair cut in a severe flat-top, spat as they got out of the car, the bright red saliva spattering the whitewashed stairs. Onofre sidestepped it on the way down.

He stepped forward and offered his hand, first to Blossom, then to Matt. Hernando just stared with flat, lifeless eyes. Matt grabbed the suitcase out of the back and followed the Garza brothers up the stairs, between the bonks.

Onofre gestured to the enormous guards. "You will forgive me if I don't keep our previous deal on security."

"Not a problem," Matt said. "Again I apologize for . . . before."

They entered the house, which showed no sign of the damage caused when Matt and Conor had torn it, and each other, to pieces. Even the furniture had been repaired or replaced with identical pieces. As they sat, a small man in a dark brown suit took a seat behind Hernando. He leaned forward and muttered Spanish into Hernando's ear as Onofre continued.

"There is no need to apologize for things that are not your fault. You saved me and my daughter from your companion, and for that I am grateful."

"And . . . the woman? Your maid?"

Onofre shrugged. "She lives, though she left my employ to return to her village."

"I'm glad she survived."

Blossom ignored them all, her eyes on the bonks at the door.

"As are we all." Onofre offered them coffee, which they accepted. The black brew carried a hint of cinnamon and dark chocolate. "Again you have come to me for business, and this time you have even less to offer that I might want. Why are you here?"

Matt set the briefcase on the table and opened it. Twenty million euros, in neat stacks bound with rubber bands, filled it to capacity. "Dawkins escaped ICAP custody last week. They've pulled me off the case, said I'm too close to it, taking it too personally. I know where he's hiding, and I want him."

Hernando barked something in Spanish. The man in the suit spoke, his accent more Mississippi than Mexico. "Where did a government operative get this kind of money?"

Matt ignored him and kept his eyes on Onofre. "Do you want it or not?"

"That depends on what it's for."

"The guys by the door would be a good start, plus a few more like them. Dawkins is holed up in Europe, in a house with a bunch of bonks. I need muscle to deal with them while I stick a knife in his eye. And gunships."

"And if I do this, ICAP backs off of my expansion in the American south."

Matt shook his head. "I can't control that. I'm not here on ICAP's authority. This is a cash-only deal, though we both know what kind of opportunities Dawkins's death will create for you."

Onofre nodded toward the suitcase. "How much?"

"Twenty million."

Hernando barked out a laugh and said something the suit didn't translate.

Onofre shook his head. "Thirty-five."

Matt chuckled. "It's all I've got. This is a take-it-or-leave-it deal."

Silenced stretched for too long. Blossom didn't even twitch, a sure sign of imminent violence, if needed.

Onofre stuck out his hand. Matt shook it.

"Done."

*   *   *

Dawkins leaned over the tome on Janet's coffee table, head resting on both fists.

Matt traced his hand around an illumination depicting three slaves chained before a giant, antlered king in golden robes. "We should destroy this thing."

Dawkins closed it with deliberate care. "We should, but I'm going to offer to sell it to Frahm for a billion dollars."

"Excuse me?"

"I figure he knows I'm out by now, knows the book is missing, and he's going to want it back. I'm an opportunistic bastard, so I'm going to set up a deal to sell it. In, say, Brussels. In eight days."

"Why would you do that?"

"So he'll be focused on the Brussels meeting in eight days instead of worrying about a hit on Gerstner in three. Even if he doesn't totally buy it, thinks it's a trap or something, it'll be a distraction. Remember, most of ICAP isn't in on the secret, and the UN sure as hell isn't, so it's not like he's got an army at his beck and call. That's why they tried to bonk you instead of killing you outright."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Certain?"

Dawkins put his head in his hands and spoke through is palms. "If we arrange the meet for eight days in Belgium and hit his Riviera house in three, it will minimize resistance. That I promise you."

"So we meet Garza's goons tomorrow, run surveillance Monday, and go in hot on Tuesday. That's the plan?"

Dawkins nodded. "That's the plan."

The six scarred, muscled men that boarded the forward helicopter would have been intimidating even if they hadn’t been nine feet tall. Their leader, a blue-eyed monstrosity who called himself Goro, carried a Dillon Aero M134D-T. The titanium minigun with six rotating barrels had been designed for a helicopter mount. It topped out at three feet long, and the exoskeleton around the bonk's torso that helped him wield it made him look even bigger. That his lower jaw had been replaced with serrated metal didn't help him in the charm department, but it matched up with the body modifications of the others: dorsal blades, steel plates riveted to bone, razor-sharp steel teeth.

Garza had vouched not only for their reliability but also for their tactical acumen. Matt had a hard time buying it. These men—not true men anymore—knew they courted insanity and didn't care. Such short-sighted, for-the-moment self-destruction left Matt cold. He didn't understand that mentality. Even before they bonked, bonks weren't the slightest bit sane.

The mercenaries took off thirty seconds before Matt's group did, thundering over the Mediterranean in a blast of salty prop wash. With only Blossom, Dawkins, and Matt in the passenger compartment, the second chopper had plenty of room despite their equipment. Matt had a bandoleer of grenades, two kilos of C4, a kilo of det cord, an AA-12 with a backup drum of directional explosive rounds, and in his pocket, Monica's cross and an autoinjector loaded with level-six musculoskeletal enhancements. His gut clenched with more than the typical pre-action nerves, and his mind boiled with uncertainty.

They streamed across the black water under the light of a quarter moon, flying by eye less than twenty feet above the waves. The resort town dotted the hills with lights, but at three in the morning there were no crowds, and the cities of the Riviera offered little enough illumination. Recon had confirmed that Brian Frahm had gone to bed at midnight. There were no visible guards.

Matt suppressed the urge to kill Blossom. Enemy or not, they stood a better chance with her, and her motivation burned no weaker than theirs. She and Dawkins had argued over whether or not they had the right location; Brian's presence didn't guarantee Gerstner's. She didn't trust his precognition, and if they attacked the wrong place they'd tip their hand. In the end, she agreed to follow his lead, but her already taciturn personality had turned black.

On cue, nine seconds to touchdown, light blossomed under the stabilizers on the first helicopter. A pair of missiles fell, then streaked forward in a burst of blue and yellow flame, a second pair firing just behind them. They broke the sound barrier just before impact. As the explosions washed the hidden cavern in orange, the helicopters banked to avoid the updraft, and slowed.

The bonks didn't rappel—they leapt. Twenty feet in the air at thirty miles an hour made for an easy jump for the massive men, who rolled on impact and came up running. They fanned out to the sides as the rear chopper rocked, firing missiles of its own. Flame shot out of the tunnel, and they followed the backdraft in, relieving Matt's first worry: the tunnel hadn't collapsed, and the missiles had breached the giant steel door inside.

He watched their progress on his heads-up display, six tiny screens on the right side of his vision, one for each of Garza's bonks. Goro led the charge, his screen a continuous burst of light as the minigun shredded the survivors behind the door. A rocket-propelled grenade streaked out of the tunnel into the water, erupting in a harmless splash of salt and foam.