New Year Island (68 page)

“What else did she say about me?”

“It wasn’t about you. I only thought it was. She said that the name of the company pretty much told us who set this up.”

“The Hippocrates quote?” He opened his eyes and stared at her. “
Ars longa, vita brevis
, and all that? But I don’t see what it tells us at all.”

“She said
what
didn’t matter.
Who
did. And, Juan, I figured you would have gone to strict Catholic schools. Latin would have been part of your curriculum.”

His jaw dropped. “No, don’t you see? Who! Who! Hippocrates,
that’s
who! That same quote probably appears in half the medical textbooks ever published.”

He stood and grabbed her arm.

“Camilla, Hippocrates was a
doctor
!”

FINAL ROUND

M
ason raised a hand as they approached.

“Waiter, another mojito, please. The Cruzan Estate Silver, and easy on the ice.”

He had dragged a chair and a threadbare blanket from the station to the top of the hill, where he now sat, next to the wreckage of the tower. Jordan’s grisly banner stood behind him, the seal head on top a festering, flyblown horror. The corners of the blanket were wedged between the twisted struts of the tower, blocking the sun like a beachside umbrella. He lounged in the shade, bad leg extended, like a tourist on vacation.

Camilla pushed ahead of Juan and Dmitry and stopped in front of Mason.

“We know who is behind this,” she said.

Mason nodded. “Brent. I figured out the answer to your question about the connection between us all. The best place to look if you wanted to find proven survivors.”

“A hospital,” she said.

• • •

The afternoon sun beat down on their impromptu four-person council of war. The blank-eyed seal head watched from atop the flagpole, lending its silent approval.

“Why this doctor wants to kill everyone?” Dmitry asked.

“I don’t know.” Camilla’s throat was tight. What had
she
done to deserve Brent’s hatred? “I just don’t know.”

“Let’s ask the man himself,” Juan said. “When’s the last time one of us saw him?”

“Last night,” Mason said. “Going into the factory building. Whatever else our Dr. Moreau is, he was drugged to the gills. You should have seen his eyes.”

Juan leaned against the wreckage of the tower. Looking at his handsome features, Camilla could see no telltale signs of plastic surgery. Undoubtedly, he had used the most skilled surgeons. Any traces they left would be very subtle. But they
would
be noticeable to a trauma doctor digging bullets out of his chest—a doctor fascinated with survivor stories, who might wonder how a charter dive boat captain could afford such an expensive makeover, or why he might need one. A doctor who might secretly begin an investigation to find out who his mystery patient
really
was.

She opened her mouth to say something but noticed that Juan’s face was pale. She looked down at his feet instead, and her heart squeezed. “You’re bleeding again.”

Dime-size drops of blood sprinkled the rocks and streaked his booties. Juan glanced at them. He shrugged. And then he coughed, wiping a hand against his chin.

Camilla stared at him, dismayed to see a smear of blood at the corner of his mouth. That meant the spear had nicked his lung. He was injured even worse than she had thought.

“Confronting Brent will be dangerous,” she said. “You and Mason are already in bad shape.”

Juan looked away.

“You know what you need to do,” she said.

He nodded. “JT.”

She took a deep breath. She hated to do this to him, to hurt him again. But she had to.

She reached into her purse, pulled out a black object, and laid it on a waist-high spar of the tower. Covering it with her hand, she hesitated.

What if she did this to him now, and something terrible happened again?

She pulled her hand away to reveal the Glock.

Juan’s eyes widened. He looked at her, and sorrow suffused his features.

She held his gaze. The gun that had killed Jordan lay between them—a mute harbinger promising more violence to come. For a long moment, no one said anything.

Then Juan picked up the Glock. “I know where to find JT.”

• • •

Juan walked onto the dock, the thick rubber soles of his scuba booties thudding on the wooden planks. Camilla stood on the rocky breakwater with Mason and Dmitry, watching him. Water lapped at the sides of the narrow jetty and frothed at the rocks of the shore. Nothing else moved. Camilla could see no sign of anyone else, but she didn’t expect to. She had already witnessed how invisible JT could become.

Juan stopped in the middle of the dock and turned to face the island.

“Roll call, Corporal Washington.” His voice echoed off the rocks. “Time to redeploy. Mission’s changed. DR phase is over. It’s now DA.”

A splash sounded under the dock, directly below Juan’s feet. Ripples spread from beneath the boards. Then a shaved head and broad, muscular shoulders emerged from the water alongside the dock. A dripping JT looked up at him.

“What does a fucking drug lord know about ‘deep reconnaisance’? ‘Direct action’?”

Juan gave a cold, arrogant smile. “Quite a bit, actually. We had our own private G2, our own intelligence organization, you know. When you brought your war on drugs to our country and Pastrana’s ‘Plan Colombia’ became an excuse for the U.S. to send in your military, we studied you. We dissected your structure, equipment, doctrines, capabilities, weaknesses. We learned you inside out.”

He paused to cough.

“That’s all in the past, though. I’m a fellow American now. Just a dive boat charter captain, JT.”

He took a step forward and held out an arm. “I’m asking for your help.”

JT didn’t say anything.

Camilla held her breath.

Then JT reached up to clasp Juan’s forearm. He hauled himself up out of the water to stand dripping, facing him on the dock. They stood like that for a frozen moment. Then Juan held out JT’s Glock, butt first.

JT glanced down at it. Then he shook his head.

“You keep it… Captain.”

T
he ocean lashed against the other side of the seawall. The wind had picked up. It whipped their clothes and blew Camilla’s hair about her face. Juan had gathered them in the lee of the seawall, below the three connected buildings that housed the science station. The sun was setting. Shadows crawled across the rocky ground. No windows interrupted the broad shiplap sides of the largest of the three—the factory building. He knew it would be near-dark inside, between the ceiling-height rows of dusty machinery.

They would find Brent there. Juan tried to picture what the doctor might be doing, and couldn’t. He faced the others.

“We clear the station room by room. JT and I lead. Dmitry, you and Camilla follow, supporting Mason. With his leg, he’s going to need your help keeping up. Everybody, keep your eyes open.”

He coughed, spat a dark streak onto the ground, and smeared it away with his foot.

“By now, Brent knows we’re onto him. He’ll have surprises planned for us. Don’t get distracted. Watch out for him circling back around to come at us from behind. But no matter what, I want him alive. Is that clear?”

The taste of blood lingered in his mouth. It was constant now, like the ever-present tickling ache in his side when he breathed.

“Alive.” He looked at each of them in turn, but it was himself he was most worried about. Would he be able to control his own reactions when he was face-to-face with the person who had lured Jordan here? “I want some real answers from him. He’s got a lot to answer for right now, to all of you. And to
me
.”

Juan chopped the air with his hand, giving the signal. JT cocked his leg and piston-kicked the door of the first building, sending it swinging inward to slam against the wall. The loud crash reverberated through the dim rooms beyond. Juan went in low and to the left, speargun in hand. The Glock stayed at his thigh. He knew that once the gun came into play, their chances of taking Brent alive would drop to zero quickly. JT followed almost immediately behind him, holding a thick length of chain doubled in one fist. He went right.

The first room of the station was unoccupied. Juan stared about him in surprise.

Shredded papers rustled along the floor, stirred up by the wind through the open door. The former science station was almost unrecognizable. The scale of destruction visited on it in such a short time defied the imagination. Mangled binders and eviscerated books and reports lay thick on the concrete floor. A chair swayed brokenly from the wall at head height, its legs driven through the plywood wallboard. Pieces of another chair were strewn all around them. The cabinets and drainboard had been ripped away from the wall and lay in a jumbled pile in the corner, splintered and flattened. The twisted frame of a cot leaned upright against another wall. Its vinyl top had been shredded from the frame and now hung in strips that fluttered like flags in the draft from the door.

The large seal skulls had been shattered, their white shards scattered everywhere underfoot. The bone fragments trailed through the darkened doorway that led deeper into the station buildings—into the room where Heather had disappeared.

Juan waved JT forward with another chopping motion of his hand. They went through, weapons ready.

The destruction in this room was even worse. The cots lay in pieces. The card table was broken in half. The remains of the LED lamp were shattered in a corner. Jagged sheets of plywood, torn loose from the wall, dangled askew from one or two corners.

Juan could hear the low exclamations of surprise behind them as Camilla, Dmitry, and Mason entering the first room. But Brent had brought them here and done all this for a reason. He was sure this rampage was meant to distract them from that.

JT pointed silently. Juan followed his finger to a sweatshirt, spread and spiked to the wall like a butterfly on display. The letters “UCSC” on its front were clearly visible—University of California Santa Cruz. The upper half of the sweatshirt was no longer gray. It was stained a uniform dark red. Juan reached up and tore the sweatshirt off the wall, tossing it into a darkened corner. An unpredictable reaction from Dmitry would be a complicating factor they didn’t need right now. JT nodded his approval.

Juan waved them forward. The next two rooms also bore signs of the rampage that had torn through the station, although there were no more gruesome displays like Jacob’s sweatshirt. Juan and JT stood to each side of the doorway that led into the factory building. Three rows of floor-to-ceiling machinery—a tangle of pipes, ducts, and gauges—stretched like library stacks into the darkness beyond. The narrow corridors between the rows were claustrophobic in their blackness.

This was where Brent would be.

JT lowered the night-vision goggles over his eye. He looked at Juan and gave the ready sign. Behind them, Dmitry, Mason, and Camilla stood in the doorway.

Juan turned to look at Camilla. Her eyes were huge in the darkness, but he could see determination in them, too. She had her fear under tight control.

He didn’t want anything to happen to her. He had to keep her safe, no matter what. He was surprised to find how important that seemed to him—more vital even than capturing Brent right now. He held up a palm and motioned her back.

Mason nodded and pulled Camilla and Dmitry a few steps back into the outer room. Juan liked the way Mason and Dmitry hovered protectively near Camilla. He forked two fingers at his eyes and waved a raised finger in a circle—
watch your back.

Mason raised the can of bear spray and grinned.

Juan returned his attention to the rows of machinery ahead. He met JT’s green insect-eyed stare. A sudden stab of pain through the hole in his side made him wince, but he forced himself to straighten.

He peered into the darkness ahead. An icy, detached calm spread through his body and down his arms and legs. His focus tightened. Senses sharpening, he raised the speargun.

Point of no return. This was it.

They slipped around the doorway into the dark, cavernous space beyond.

C
amilla watched Juan and JT disappear through the doorway. She had the dive knife strapped to her upper arm, but the thought of using it on Brent seemed inconceivable, horrific. How could someone who had dedicated his life to helping others, who had saved countless lives, be responsible for
this
? Was Brent insane? Did he have dissociative identity disorder—the condition that used to be called “multiple personalities”? She had trusted him. He had made her feel safe. Could they be wrong now? What if it
wasn’t
Brent?

Mason tapped her on the shoulder. He pressed something cylindrical into her hands—the bear spray. She looked at him in surprise, shook her head, and frowned at him. What was he doing?

He grinned at her. Then he limped away, retreating through the doorway they had come through. He disappeared back into the rooms they had already cleared.

Alarms clanged through Camilla. Had Mason run away? She didn’t think so—she had seen no fear on his face. But if he was betraying them, why had he given her the bear spray?

She stared wide-eyed at Dmitry, who held the concrete-capped pipe over his shoulder like a club. He shook his head, a disgusted expression on his face, and tightened his grip on the pipe.

No sound came from the darkened doorways in either direction. Camilla’s pulse raced, faster and faster, thudding in her ears. Her breathing sped up. She gripped the can of bear spray tight, her palms slick with pinprick beads of sweat.

What if it was Brent
and
Mason behind this? Or only Mason?

A cramp tightened her stomach.

Had they gotten this wrong?

T
he NVD goggles painted the interior of the warehouse in shades of monochromatic green. Three rows of machinery stood out from the background in high relief, stretching to the far wall in the distance. JT glanced at the six-foot wagon-wheel valve, jutting from the end of the center row like the helm of a battleship. A narrow corridor ran along each edge of the factory building, between the rows of machinery and the walls. Two more corridors extended toward the back wall, dividing the rows. The boilers, pipes, pumps, and gauges were packed densely in each row, with thick conduits rising to the ceiling.