a.m.
Twenty-one minutes left.
He noted her attention. “I can carry you. We can still make it to the evac site.”
She recalculated in her head. She pictured Manuel’s shit-eating grin…and the many faces of the children. Pain worse than any broken bone coursed through her. She could not fail.
The man read her intent. “You’ll never make it to that house,” he said.
“I don’t have any other choice.”
“Then let me do it,” he blurted out. His words seemed to surprise him as much as it did her, but he didn’t retract them. “You make for the beach. I’ll get whatever you want out of the goddamn hacienda.”
She turned and stared the stranger full in the face. She searched for something to give her hope. Some hidden strength, some underlying fortitude. She found nothing. But she had no other choice.
“There’ll be other traps.”
“I’ll keep my eyes peeled this time.”
“And the office safe…I can’t teach you to crack it in time.”
“Do you have an extra radio?”
She nodded.
“So talk me through it once I get there.”
She hesitated—but there was no time for even that. She swung her pack around. “Lean down.”
She reached to a side pocket of her pack and stripped out two self-adhesive patches. She attached one behind the man’s ear and the other over his Adam’s apple. “Microreceiver and a subvocal transmitter.”
She quickly tested the radio while explaining the stakes involved.
“So much for my relaxing vacation under the sun,” he mumbled.
“One more thing,” she said. She pulled out three sections of a weapon from her pack. “A VK rifle. Variable Kinetic.” She quickly snapped the pieces together and shoved a fat cylindrical cartridge into place on its underside. It looked like a stubby assault rifle, except the barrel was wider and flattened horizontally.
“Safety release is here.” She pointed the weapon at a nearby bush and squeezed the trigger. There was only a tiny whirring cough. A projectile flashed out the barrel and buzzed through the bush, severing leaves and branches. “One-inch razor-disks. You can set the weapon for single shot or automatic strafe.” She demonstrated. “Two hundred shots per magazine.”
He whistled again and accepted the weapon. “Maybe you should keep this weed whacker. With your bum leg, you’re going to drag ass at a snail’s pace.” He nodded to the jungle. “And the damn apes are still out there.”
“They’re baboons…and I still have my handheld shrieker. Now get going.” She checked her watch. She had given Kowalski a second timepiece, calibrated to match. “Nineteen minutes.”
He nodded. “I’ll see you soon.” He moved off the trail, vanishing almost instantly into the dense foliage.
“Where are you going?” she called after him. “The trail—”
“Screw the trail,” he responded through the radio. “I’ll take my chances in the raw jungle. Fewer traps. Plus, I’ve got this baby to carve a straight path to the mad doctor’s house.”
Shay hoped he was right. There would be no time for backtracking or second chances. She quickly dosed herself with a morphine injector and used a broken tree branch for a crutch. As she set off for the beach, she heard the ravenous hunting calls of the baboons.
She hoped Kowalski could outsmart them.
The thought drew a groan that had nothing to do with her broken leg.
Luckily Kowalski had a knife now.
He hung upside down…for the second time that day. He bent at the waist, grabbed his trapped ankle and sawed through the snare’s rope. It snapped with a pop. He fell, clenched in a ball, and crashed to the jungle floor with a loud oof.
“What was that?” Dr. Rosauro asked over the radio.
He straightened his limbs and lay on his back for a breath. “Nothing,” he growled. “Just tripped on a rock.” He scowled at the swinging rope overhead. He was not about to tell the beautiful woman doctor that he had been strung up again. He did have some pride left.
“Goddamn snare,” he mumbled under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He had forgotten about the sensitivity of the subvocal transmitter.
“Snare? You snared yourself again, didn’t you?”
He kept silent. His momma once said, It is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
“You need to watch where you’re going,” the woman scolded.
Kowalski bit back a retort. He heard the pain in her voice…and her fear. So instead, he hauled back to his feet and retrieved his gun.
“Seventeen minutes,” Dr. Rosauro reminded him.
“I’m just reaching the compound now.”
The sun-bleached hacienda appeared like a calm oasis of civilization in a sea of nature’s raw exuberance. It was straight lines and sterile order versus wild overgrowth and tangled fecundity. Three buildings sat on manicured acres, separated by breezeways, and nestled around a small garden courtyard. A threetiered Spanish fountain stood in the center, ornate with blue and red glass tiles. No water splashed through its basins.
Kowalski studied the compound, stretching a kink out of his back. The only movement across the cultivated grounds was the swaying fronds of some coconut palms. The winds were already rising with the approaching storm. Clouds stacked on the southern horizon.
“The office is on the main floor, near the back,” Rosauro said in his ear. “Careful of the electric perimeter fence. The power may still be on.”
He studied the chain-link fencing, almost eight feet tall, topped by a spiral of concertina wire and separated from the jungle by a burned swath about ten yards wide. No-man’s-land.
Or rather no-ape’s-land.
He picked up a broken branch and approached the fence. Wincing, he stretched one end toward the chain links. He was mindful of his bare feet. Shouldn’t I be grounded for this? He had no idea.
As the tip of his club struck the fence, a strident wail erupted. He jumped back, then realized the noise was not coming from the fence. It wailed off to his left, toward the water.
Dr. Rosauro’s shrieker.
“Are you all right?” Kowalski called into his transmitter.
A long stretch of silence
