The Messenger (40 page)

“Tell them to stay back, right? We don’t want to scare her. Does everybody copy that?” he says. His voice booms in the hood.

“Roger,”
Schumacher says, backing him up.
“All personnel are reminded this is a Level 4 biohazard area. Full restriction on that, and full Q and T. Copy?”

There begins a series of confirmations that are interrupted by a sharp crack. The sound is somewhat dulled by his hood, and Sam blunders ahead a half dozen steps before one of the Evacs yanks him down.
“Gunfire. One shot,”
a voice hisses in his ear.

Ahead he can see the deputy sheriff spring up and move away into the brush.

“We have to take her alive if possible, remember that! Alive!”

He hears a snap. Immediately, welling up through the brush, comes a cloud of red smoke. Another flare fizzes through the air, thrown like a high fly ball to land near the overturned tank.

“… she’s up, she’s up!”
someone says.

He begins to run, and the Evacs follow him; they cut through the brush, weave around the broken metal obstacles that litter the area. The ground is uneven and cratered. Now that he is past the tank, he can see that the girl has got ahead of them and is running, staggering into the desert.

“No!” he shouts, waving his arms, but she can’t hear him. Not with the hood on. He opens it and pushes it back over his head. “No!” he manages to scream, and begins to run toward her.

But she is too far out ahead of them. Maybe fifty yards away. He can see her plainly; she stops and whirls and points a pistol up at the helicopter and squeezes off a shot. A half second later a smaller helicopter, flat-black, hovering behind, spits out a single answering burst of machine-gun fire.

The girl is consumed by dust.

Sam is running, the hard metal seal of the hazmat suit slapping against the back of his skull.

The ground slopes down and he realizes they are heading into a wide riverbed. There is no real water at all, only slightly denser plant life at the bottom of the slope. In his ear, Schumacher is urging,
“… Maintain … Maintain …”
over and over.

He gets to the place where they shot her. The dust still hangs in the air. There is what looks like a splotch of something, fluid—blood. Just ahead of him there is a torn-up car, a rusted hulk with a shredded roof. He can see she has fallen inside, splayed out on the floor where the steering wheel ought to be. More blood, a smear down her leg.

“Can you hear me?” he calls.

Thirsty, Daria reaches for her water, but it is gone now.

Everything is new; she looks around the burned-out car, she stares out into the desert. There are animals out there. Birds fleeing. Larger animals too. She can see them moving through the brush.

The wind blows dust and bits of dry desert plants into the side of the car, flat little metallic chimes. The wind swirls and the grit is blown inside, stinging her face.

The world seems to be rocking, as if in a slow-motion earthquake. Smoke drifts by and there is a red fire burning somewhere around her. She can see the many holes that have been slashed through the roof of the car. Hell—she is here. There is no need to go farther.

Now is the time, she decides. In the distance there is thunder. Or maybe it is an explosion, or bullets being spewed from another helicopter. A fog of yellow smoke envelops her. Out there, things are moving in the dirt.

She breathes as deeply as she can, scratches her fingers against the flaking rust of the floor of the car, tries to connect with the nerve endings and get her fingers working. It’s like relearning how to walk, but she wills her hand to move until it rests against the grip of the gun.

“Can you hear me?”
comes a man’s voice.

* * *

From inside there is a groan. A rasping sound.

“Can you hear me?” Watterman says again, louder.

“Is she alive?”
It’s Schumacher’s voice.
“Seven-six, is the target viable?”
someone asks. The voices are small, like bees buzzing in Sam’s ear.

“Daria … I’ve got some water. Do you want some water? I just want to help you, that’s all. Just want to make it a little easier, okay?” he says. He needs to get in there, get a look to see how badly she’s wounded. He can do this, he tells himself.

Nothing. Just that raspy breathing. He takes a step forward, and then another, moving until he can see her better—slumped down in the shot-up derelict, leaning against the firewall, with her hand on an automatic. The weapon is resting on her stomach and she is breathing.

He holds the water bottle out to her. “I’ve got some water with me. Can I just leave it right here?”

There is no answer. He can see her plainly now. A great brown stain on her side. She’s filthy, her clothes are torn, bloody. Her hair is matted and her skin is yellow and scratched. Somehow, incredibly, she’s only been hit by a fragment, maybe a stone or maybe steel splinters. Surely if one of the high-caliber rounds from the helicopter had hit her, she would be jelly. Still … something has punctured her skin, little punctures in at least three places that he can see. They have antipersonnel rounds they can fire—little flechettes for crowd control—is that what they used? Is she still breathing? She’s hot. Level 4, with Khan’s superpox. Too late, now. Get in, get a line into her, he remembers.

“Okay, I’m just going to bring this to you, okay? No strings attached. Don’t shoot me. I’m not going to hurt you.” He reaches into the door of the car and places the water on the broken rusted floor where the seat ought to be.

“Watch yourself, Sam …”
he hears Schumacher say.

“This is just water. Here, look, I’ll drink some too. It doesn’t
have anything in it. You have to keep up your fluids, Daria. Here you go …” He swallows, reaches across the transmission tunnel and places the bottle on the floor beside her. “Okay?”

Now that he’s closer he sees that she’s cut—once across her stomach, and a slash on her thigh—an ugly cut right down to the muscle that is seeping blood. It’s not enough, somehow. There has to be more after a burst of gunfire like that. He tries to see behind her, but can’t find any pool of blood, no arterial blood spurting. She stares at him as he cranes his neck and tries to inspect all around her.

“You’re bleeding, okay? You’re in shock and we need to get you some first aid. Right away,” he promises. There is another flurry of buzzing in his earbud, and he realizes what he has just said has been interpreted as some kind of permission.

“Sam, back out of there, give it some time,”
Schumacher murmurs in his ear. But he can’t do that. She’s hurt. And he doesn’t want to lose her. He
can’t
lose her. So far, he hasn’t had to touch her. Maybe it will be all right. The girl is shaking her head slowly from side to side. Words gurgle out of her mouth. Maybe she can’t speak English.

“We’re going to take care of you.” He tries to be like Schumacher, supercasual, and even sits back on the rusted floor across the car from her. Behind her, the two Evacs have crept up. One of them holds a black nylon bag with a red cross prominently displayed on its side.

“I know Saleem Khan. I know what he did. I know what he gave you, Daria. I think I know how to cure it, or at least slow it down. But for that we need you.”

The girl’s face collapses, and she coughs.

“Didn’t you get a shot in Berlin? Or an … inoculation, where they scrape a place, a little place on your shoulder? Or maybe Khan gave you an injection?” he says, miming the action in his biceps like an addict. It sounds like Mr. Rogers trying to explain a morality tale to a small child. He waits to see if she will nod. She only looks up at him, eyes like a dog to its master.

“Well, the shot had something in it. A … an antidote. Do you
know what I mean when I say ‘antidote’? It’s a cure. It gives you an immunity …” And as her eyes roll back, “No, no … please don’t,” he pleads. “
Please
. There’s a medical team for you right here.”

For a moment he falls silent and they study each other. He stares into the dark eyes of this mass murderer. A monster. She looks nothing like the pictures, and he is suddenly aware of how small she is. A waif. Now she is going to die and cheat them all. Couldn’t he just leap over the rusting transmission tunnel and grab the gun before she could use it? He feels his muscles tensing. Why not? What does he have to live for anymore? Everything that’s any good has been ripped out of his life. He should have stayed at home with Maggie. Maybe if he had said no … He should have told Roycroft on the conference call that he’d been warning them about this for a quarter century and was, yes, retired, goddamn it.…

“You know what you’ve done, don’t you? You do understand it all? Don’t you?”

She lifts her head, stares into his eyes.

“And … you know what’s going to happen, that perhaps millions of people are going to die. You know that.” She begins to tremble and her eyes are full of tears. But there could be a million reasons for that.

“In Berlin, did Khan tell you? Did you know?” he says. His jaw is so tight it hurts.

“Deep breath, Sam … stay positive … tell her we can help her.”

“Even … if you did, still … we can help you. Instead of … well, starting now you can save lives. You can repay for what you’ve done. Just … put the gun down. Please. Then the medics can have a look at you …?”

But the girl doesn’t put the gun down.

By now they have had plenty of time to set up, Suárez knows. By now they have tagged her, at least two of them from different angles. If the girl puts down the gun, she lives. Anything else, well … maybe
the “special instructions” or whatever the fuck it is will prevail in a case like this, but … anything else, the terrorist bitch is meat.

The second negotiator comes up to kneel behind Watterman. They are both talking to the girl now. Bribes. Guarantees. Whatever they can dream up to disarm her.

From where Suárez hovers by the rear fender of the vehicle, she can see the girl, see her hand on the automatic. It rests across her stomach; she will have to raise her arm to point it at the negotiators. If there’re two snipers that have tagged her, even if the guy with the shot can’t see her gun hand, and the other can, they can work it off a voice command.

This is where they have to have patience, Suárez is thinking. This is where all the testosterone and adrenaline start to become a liability. The smart thing to do is for everyone to fuck off out of there, drop back a hundred yards and wait it out. Sooner or later she’ll want a pizza. Suárez turns and looks around to see if she can see where they’ve set up. If she edges up the fender any closer, she’ll probably mess up their angle, so she duckwalks back a couple of steps and crouches by the blown-off rear axle.

There’s more crap on the radio. Unnecessary crap. They’re all lucky to be alive. And the girl’s a Berlin carrier. Fantastic timing, Suárez. To have come all this way. Fought, just about been killed more than once. Had a double helping of shit and got through it and adjusting fine and now something like this.

“You know there is no choice, don’t you?”
she hears the doctor say.

Burning.

The fire is all around her. She can feel her cells bursting open, exploding. She loses and regains consciousness with each shallow breath.

“Can you hear me?”

Does she make a beautiful picture? Will she leave a splendid corpse? Will teenage girls cry when they get to this part in the movie?
In death, as told in Islamic tradition, does her rotting flesh have the fragrance of musk?

She has murdered. Murdered
children
. Innocent children. She has ruined families and destroyed everything around her. And now she is destroyed herself. There is a sound. A low cry that comes and goes, a dark animal sound. Over and over it comes to her, until she realizes that the sound is coming from her mouth.

The world begins to move again.

A face is there, a devil staring at her. They are going to ferry her down to hell. They are calling to her. Yes, yes, she can hear them. She tries to trick the devil, tries to lift the gun, tries to fight back and kill it, if only to demonstrate that she hates them, hates the demons, hates being one herself … hates the long road that has led her into their company.

She tries to get up. To do it she has to use the barrel of the gun to raise herself up and get to her knees and get out. She has no breath. Light-headed. Dizzy.

Daria twists away, tries to get her legs to work. The man reaches to help her. He manages to grab her wrist but she yanks away, and he overreaches and falls across the rusted floor of the car, as she struggles to a standing position.

She can read the frustration and pain on his face. He wants to play the part of her ally. It seems that he is another of the damned. Just like her, a citizen of the underworld. Poor man, she thinks. Poor old man. Watching him scrabble around at her ankles. If there were more time, she would help him.

Whatever the helicopter did to her, she can hardly breathe. There is a rumbling in her lungs. For a moment she sees spots on the desert floor, and lurches back against the jagged metal of the fender.

She can never relive her life, no matter what her schoolmates told her. She can never unmake this path. Choices, decisions, even accidents, are like a tree’s roots in time, one branching into two, two into five … on and on. The old man wants to save her life, but … her
life
 … is nothing really. Not nearly as valuable as little Daniel’s …

Right in front of her there are two devils. They are pretending to
be from the Red Cross, but any fool can easily see that in actuality they are insects, gargoyles. They crouch at her feet. She can see their mouths moving, hear their insect voices.

Well, she will not let them have her. She will deny them the pleasure. In the end they are just perverts, torturers, and hired thugs. They assume now that she’s wounded they’ll have an easy time of it. Why even waste firing a shot? Instead they are trying to lure her into giving up her last sting.

And the old man, offering her forgiveness. Who is he? A friend of Khan’s? This qualifies him to forgive?