Hell's Gate(89)

“So on a scale of one to ten, how much shit is he bringing this time?”

“Thirteen?” Yanni said.

Once Mac laid out the plan, Thorne realized that Yanni had underestimated. “You want to go where?” he said. “Well, this time you’ve gone too far. And we are not going with you. In fact, I may rat out your plan to Hendry, just to keep your ass off that plateau.”

“No, Bob, you will not tell Hendry,” Yanni countered quickly. “And you are not going. I am.”

Thorne looked like someone who had been punched in the stomach. “But—”

“We belong to the chupacabra, Mac. And we will save them,” Yanni said.

Bob was suddenly agitated. “What’s with this ‘we belong’ shit? Who belongs to what chupacabra?”

MacCready, who was no less dumbfounded than Thorne, paused for a moment. Although her statement seemed as distant from all prior reality as space-planes and sentient vampire bats, he knew she was right. Deeply intrusive and frightful, there was an intensely personal quality about the song of the draculae. Once received, one was apt to obsess.

“Then I am going, too,” Thorne announced. “It’s settled.”

“Well,” Mac said, “Hendry did order me not to go up there alone.”

His friend managed a laugh. “So it seems that now you are only following orders.”


MacCready knew that if any of Wolff’s men had survived to tie up loose ends, now that the rockets were away, they had at least a full day’s lead. So, to shave off several hours, Mac led Bob and Yanni up the same path he had taken during his escape from the draculae lair.

The first thing MacCready discovered as they stood atop the forest-capped Mato Grosso Plateau was that he’d been correct about the source of the winds in the caverns below. It’s as if the plateau itself is breathing.

He encountered the first fissure by accident. A downward gust nearly sucked a map from his hands, even before he saw the deep slash in the ground. The fig trees around its edge had been deformed by the downdraft; trunks leaning into the crevice, while roots clawed in the opposite direction, seeking to anchor the plants against the tug from below.

The second thing MacCready discovered was that Wolff and his mapmakers had done their homework. Underfoot, the tabletop formation was cobwebbed with vertical fissures. The map led him to a second crevice, and in what appeared to be just the right place, someone had planted an explosive device.

“Shit, I knew it. It’s a f*cking shaped charge.”

“Which is?” Thorne asked.

“It’s designed to channel explosive energy in one direction. So that even a small blast can have a big effect.”

“And what direction is this so-called shaped charge pointing?”

MacCready pointed downward. “We’re standing on a diamond.”

“A what?”

“No time to explain. I need you and Yanni to look for more of these things.” He handed them his own hand-drawn version of Wolff’s charge placements and pointed to the forest on the opposite side of the fissure. “And if you find anything—do not touch it. Just let me know.”

“No worries, Mac. What do I know from disarming bombs?”

“And keep your eyes peeled. Whoever planted this thing could still be up here.”

Thorne responded with a reluctant nod. Yanni holstered her sidearm and unslung her blowgun. “Shhhhhhhh,” she whispered.


Twenty minutes later, MacCready shimmied out of the crevice, placing the dissected bomb on the ground beside him. And while it was no longer dangerous, he knew it had taken far too long to disarm the device.

Mac thought back to Wolff’s notebook and the multiple detonation points he would now have to deal with (too many of them and maybe not enough time), when Yanni’s voice called out.

“Lookee what we found!”

She was walking behind a blond-haired man in his early forties, hands raised over his head.

“My name is Eugen S?nger,” he said in accented English. “And under the articles of the Geneva Convention, I am officially requesting that you protect me from this savage.”

MacCready ignored the comment. “Where are the rest of these things, *?” he said, pointing to the bomb at his feet.

“I have been stranded. Have you seen my guides?”

MacCready winced, reminded of Corporal Kessler’s pursuit of him across the swamp. “Where do you guys come up with this shit?”

Yanni responded by poking S?nger hard, in the back of the head, with the business end of her blowgun. The man staggered forward a few steps.

“Pally,” MacCready said, “if you don’t start talking right now, you are going off the side of this f*cking plateau.”

“My name is Eugen S?nger and under the articles of—”

MacCready unleashed a savage right cross that not only broke the rocket designer’s jaw but a bone in his own hand as well. S?nger fell to his knees and looked up with a blood-smeared grimace that turned into a grin.

Mac felt a flutter in the pit of his stomach. Something about the man’s expression conveyed a single fact: It was already so clearly too late.

He turned to Yanni. “Where’s Bob?” And the blood drained from his face when she pointed to the forest on the cliff side of the fissure.