Her attention snapped back to the news van, the side door open now. She was a good distance away but close enough to make out the frightened expression on Rick Bernard's face as he stepped out into the parking lot.
Pasha blinked and the next image she had was that of Rick Bernard being torn apart.
The van exploded. Too close, she thought, I'm too close. Then the shock wave slammed into her body and knocked her up into the air so hard and fast she saw her shoes jump off the ground. Her arms stretched wide, her hands clutching at the air, she flew backward with dizzying speed to the row of cars parked behind her. The last image she held in her mind before blacking out was that of her father sitting next to her at the kitchen table, his stern, cold voice telling her to shut her mouth as his meaty hand pressed the medicine-soaked rag against the freshly burnt stump on the side of her head.
Conway's hands were quick. He removed the harness and then worked himself out of the jumpsuit, the air hot and smelling of baked grass and dirt. He noticed that his phone and Palm Pilot were still attached to his belt. A wave of relief washed through him. He thought that while he was unconscious, Angel Eyes's men may have removed the devices.
First, the phone. He removed it from its leather case and dialed Pasha's number, each number beeping loudly in still air pounding with heat from the unrelenting Texas sun. He hit the SEND button and pressed the phone against his ear. High above, very faint, was the sound of the plane's engines, fading. Conway made a visor with his hands, and covering his eyes looked up and saw the Cessna, so far away it looked like one of those remote-controlled model flyers.
He listened to the phone ring… and ring… Come on, Pasha, pick up.
The connection died.
Conway swallowed, his throat dry, and dialed the number again. The call wouldn't go through.
Either the satellite was down or sunspots were interfering with the signal.
Or Angel Eyes is jamming your signal. He knows you're alive, that you're going to try to call and warn the others. You think he's going to let you get away with that?
If they were jamming the signal entirely possible that meant Angel Eyes and his men had to be close by. That didn't help Conway with the more pressing problem: calling to warn Pasha.
Conway tried a third time. Nothing. He shoved the phone back into the leather case and snapped it shut. He started pacing.
You're pissed because Pasha and Bouchard didn't listen to you.
Congratulations. You won the "I-Told-You-So" Ribbon. Go ahead and pin it on your chest. Feel better? Good. Now get to work and solve the problem.
I'm standing in the middle of afield, surrounded by trees, and I need to get back to the skydiving school.
Conway's Palm Pilot had been modified by the Information Fusion Lab, one of the many labs within the CIA's massive Office of Science and Technology. He removed it from his case, powered it on, and then pressed his thumb against the square pad area normally used for writing. His thumbprint was scanned and then accepted. In the bottom right was a whisper-sensitive microphone half the size of an eraser.
Conway brought the Palm closer to his mouth.
"Global."
The voice-recognition technology kicked in; the global positioning system program loaded and within seconds Conway had a bird's-eye view of where he was standing, all of it in full, rich color on the active matrix screen. A red circle was drawn around Conway's figure; next to it were the letters: SC.
Conway's red Saab was also equipped with a GPS transponder.
"Locate Saab."
The position on the screen pulled back and then stopped. Con-way could see the rooftops of the school, and in the upper right-hand quadrant of the screen, parked in the dirt lot in front of the school was his red Saab, looking no bigger than the tip of a match. Now Dixon.
Conway spoke Dixon's code-name into the microphone: "Locate Traveler."
A blue circle appeared in the field behind the school, not far from where the plane had taken off, the word TRAVELER glowing in blue letters.
Dixon's still at the school, and he's still bugged.
Conway removed the plastic stylus from the back of the Palm and drew a line from himself to Dixon. A red line linked the two circles together. Distance: 6.3 miles.
"Shit."
On a good day, dressed in shorts and running sneakers, and if he pushed himself to the limit, he could do a six-minute mile. At that rate, he could make it to the school in just under forty minutes. Factor in the heat and the aftereflects of the stun gun and the six-mile run seemed like a marathon.
Conway drew a box around Dixon and then said, "Magnify."
The satellite zoomed in. The image grew fuzzy until it reassembled the image of a man dressed in a yellow jumpsuit lying on top of the front hood of an SUV, an old Ford Bronco by the looks of it. Dixon's still knocked out by the drugs. Two other men stood beside the vehicle.
Conway looked at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen that listed Dixon's six transmitters. They were all on and working.
For now, a voice said. If Angel Eyes knows about my watch and the group, then he knows Dixon's bugged and will remove the transmitters.
What were the men waiting for? They should have already stripped Dixon of his transmitters. They wouldn't want him wired. That would send the Hazard Team into action.
Unless Angel Eyes has taken care of them.
Conway felt his chest tighten.
The only thing we know for sure is that the guys in the plane know you're alive. They know you're on the ground, standing in the middle of nowhere. The only way out is your car. It's not like you can just jog over to another road and call a taxi. You have to go back to the school. It's your only escape route. They know that and are waiting for you.
And while we're playing the guessing game, chew on this: Don't you find it the slightest bit odd that while you were unconscious, they didn't remove your phone or your PDA? They knew about your watch you heard the cameraman say so himself.
Conway looked up at the blue sky. The plane was barely visible but was beginning its descent. Once it landed, they would head to the next logical place: Praxis. He slid the Palm back into its holster. A six-mile sprint in this heat. Jesus.
Bitching about the distance isn't going to change the number of miles.
If you want to save Pasha if you want to save Dixon's life then get moving.
Fear blooming inside his chest, Conway started sprinting.
At the age of three, one night after dinner Amon Faust's mother duct-taped his mouth and hands and feet, picked him up and carried him into the bathroom. She dropped him into a tub of scalding water, and while her three-year-old son thrashed and screamed, she walked to the front door, picked up the suitcase she had packed earlier that day, and headed out of their tiny San Francisco apartment to the taxi waiting for her downstairs.
An elderly neighbor had heard the commotion and ran upstairs.
Fortunately, the door to the apartment was unlocked. Without hesitating, the old woman, who had grandchildren of her own, reached inside the water and rescued Amon from the tub, burning both her hands in the process. While Amon was at the hospital being sedated for pain, his mother was in Los Angeles, picking up her fake license, passport, and social security card. She then disappeared into a new life.
The burns were so severe that they required numerous and painful surgeries, all of them paid for by the state. He was lucky, the doctors had said. His face wasn't damaged, and his hands were healing nicely. Still, foster homes had been reluctant to take him. Nobody wanted to be responsible for a child who was constantly sick, his immune system having been weakened from the burns. At the group homes, where children knew no mercy, Amon was ridiculed and avoided. Nobody wanted to be around a freak whose entire body was covered with thick, hard red coils and rubbery patches of scars that resembled seaweed.
Amon had retreated into the world of literature and art. He discovered that he had a talent for painting. He preferred oils over watercolors, and in times of great stress, he would pick up a brush and lose himself in a blank canvas for hours. He was painting right now.
The human physique had always fascinated him. The female body, while sexually appealing, seemed too soft. It lacked strength. Amon preferred the male anatomy. Maybe because he lacked a denning male physique of his own, but the truth was that Amon preferred to be in the company of men. He understood the male psyche's vast complexity, its testosterone-filled drive to dominate and shape its world, while women were, by their very natures, slaves to their moods and hormonal storms, irrational creatures who had difficulty grasping the most basic tenets of logic and reason. As a result, Faust had little use for them in his organization.
Faust was painting a portrait of Stephen Conway. While he painted, he thought of the young man's troubled background. Like himself, Stephen had grown up an orphan. Stephen had a strict moral code, was intelligently gifted, adaptive, and, when needed, so very cunning.
While Faust admired those traits, what fascinated him most was the man's ability to get back into the game after the Armand fiasco. Most people would have shied away, but not Stephen. He was consumed with proving himself, with proving his worth to his team members. Stephen Conway was that rare twenty-first-century gladiator willing to walk back inside the arena to slay a new foe. If Stephen could be molded and shaped, Faust could turn him into quite a valuable asset. Granted, it would prove to be a difficult challenge, but it could be done. Faust had an idea, a way to turn him away from the rest of his pack.
His phone rang. The headset still attached, he hit the TALK button on the phone attached to his belt and then continued painting.
"Yes, Gunther."
"You in your office?" Gunther's low voice sounded troubled.
"No. Do you have Mr. Dixon?"
"You need to turn on your monitor."
Trouble.
Faust had programmed himself not to react. Anger disrupted the natural homeopathic stasis of his body and released toxins that would rob him of his strength and energy and, even worse, do irreversible damage to his heart.
"Just a moment, Gunther." Faust put his paintbrush down and then went into the kitchen and refilled his water glass. Dinah Washington's marvelous voice swam around him. Glass in hand, he moved into a sunlit room of hardwood and windows that offered a spectacular view of the University of Texas's sprawling campus.
Set up on a glass U-shaped desk were three twenty-one inch flat-screen monitors, all of them pointed away from the window. Faust turned on the monitor showing the live video feed from Gunther's headset and sat down in the leather chair, leaned back and crossed his legs, his eyes focused on the screen now coming to life.
Through Gunther's Viper binoculars was a close-up of the computer prodigy, Major Dixon, splayed across the front hood of a rusted, battered Ford Bronco. Dixon was oblivious to the two men busily removing his clothing. Faust recognized one of them: Chris Evans.
Evans removed Dixon's pants and stuffed them inside a blue laundry bag.
"They're stripping Dixon of his transmitters," Faust said, his tone and heartbeat normal.
"Interesting."
"Who the fuck is doing this?"
"Language please."
Gunther sighed. Still young and still excitable.
"You recognize these dudes?"
"I was told that Mr. Evans and the other members of the school were who they purported to be." Obviously my inside source was misinformed, Faust added privately.
"You think they're leftovers from Armand's group?"
"Armand didn't hire the intellectually gifted. We have audio, correct?"
"If Dixon is still wearing the watch the CIA gave him, yes. Ask Craven." John Craven was Faust's surveillance expert. Like the IWAC group, Faust had the frequency of Dixon's watch and could listen in on Dixon's conversations.
Line two was ringing.
"Speak of the devil, Mr. Craven's calling in," Faust said and hit line two, bringing the second caller into the conversation. John Craven told Faust to turn on his monitor.
Monitor two: a jarred imaged of an overturned Delburn Systems van engulfed in flames, its metal twisted from an explosion. Bodies on the ground, the screaming muted as Dinah Washington broke into "Evil Gal Blues," her voice strong and clear as it played over the office's wall-mounted speakers.
"The man I got monitoring the airport just called in with this," Craven said.
"An improvised explosive device was placed on the first van and took down the Hazard Team. Then an unidentified man placed a second IED right above the gas cap on van number two, the surveillance van, and then jumped into a car and sped away."
Faust was quiet, his eyes locked on monitor two playing the carnage at the airport.
Craven continued.
"The IWAC guys placed inside the airport are both dead. Whoever's behind this is making sure there are no survivors."
"What happened on the plane?"
"Dixon had a meltdown and then it got real quiet."
"What about Mr. Conway's watch?"
"Nothing. And the teams monitoring and covering Conway have got real quiet."
Faust turned his attention back to monitor one. Dixon now lay naked on top of the car hood, his watch and clothing with its transmitters stuffed inside the blue laundry bag that rested on the ground.
Gunther said, "Gunshots."
On the screen Faust saw through Gunther's eyes the back of the skydiving school through the gaps between the trees.
"I just heard two more," Gunther said, keeping his voice low and calm, the way he had been trained. He tried to zoom in on one of the windows.
"I'm not in a good position. I can't see anything."