Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(144)

The red eye shine in the Ripper’s eyes had grown brighter, adding another distraction to Eduardo’s whirling consciousness. As impossible as it seemed, he was being beaten. If he could just get his hands wrapped around the Ripper, he could squeeze until the killer’s head popped like a squashed melon. But that was looking increasingly unlikely.

Fine, he had some new tricks of his own.

Staring into the other’s face, he felt the Ripper’s flaming eyes lock with his own. Eduardo smiled.

“Now, Ripper, let’s see what you truly fear?”

Eduardo pushed his mind through those red eyes and into the darkness beyond. The blackness closed in around him so thickly it muffled all sounds. He thought he heard a soft whimpering, but couldn’t place it. Something pressed against the back of his calves, the rough edge of broken cement steps. His hand reached out before him, but in this blackness he couldn’t see anything. Where was he?

The damp smell of mildew seemed vaguely familiar, as did the whimpering, which had grown louder. His hand touched the wall to his left. Damp mud.

Lima! He was back in the cellar! But this time he wasn’t alone. There in the darkness, two flaming eyes stared back at him with a demonic hunger that leached the strength from his legs, turning them to rubber. And those eyes were coming closer.

Eduardo suddenly identified the source of the whimpering. It was coming from his own throat.

He stepped backward, his hands thrust out before him, but his foot caught the edge of the step, sending him tumbling to the muddy floor. Rolling back to his feet, Eduardo’s terrified eyes searched the darkness. Something touched his shoulder.

“Rangon!”

The scream escaped his lips as he stumbled away from that touch.

As Eduardo’s head swiveled, something long and pointed glittered in the moonlight, the force of the blow driving Janet’s hairpin through his left eyeball and into his brain. A great flash of light filled his mind. Then the demon was back, replacing the light with a new, all-consuming darkness.

Eduardo’s body pitched forward, but Janet hugged him close, twisting and turning the spike with all her might as she gently lowered him to the ground.

As Eduardo’s body convulsed one final time, her mouth brushed his ear. “Like I told you…You’re mine.”

Janet pulled the hairpin from the bloody eye-socket, wiping it on Eduardo’s shirt before returning it to her hair. Then Jack’s strong arms encircled her naked body, lifting her into an embrace that threatened to crush the wind from her lungs. When finally he released her, Jack bent down to examine El Chupacabra’s corpse.

“Damned fine work, young lady.”

“He should have spent more time practicing his knot tying.”

Jack frisked the body, extracting a Beretta from the holster strapped to the small of Eduardo’s back, and two shiny, horseshoe-shaped, metallic bands that reminded Janet of Alice hair bands. Something about the way they glinted in the moonlight gave her a déjà vu moment, but the memory slipped away before she could place it.

“What have you got there?” Janet asked.

“Don’t know. But you can bet he wasn’t carrying them for a bad hair day. We’ll have to take a closer look later. Much as I like your current outfit, we’d better get you dressed and get the hell out of here.”

“What about the satellites?”

Jack shrugged, “I cut the link, but didn’t get to finish the connections. I don’t know if it was enough to let those kids hack their way through a workaround or not. Too late to worry about that now.”

By the time Janet retrieved her clothes and dressed, alarm sirens had begun to warble across the airbase. Going back for her laptop was out of the question.

With one final glance back toward the sirens, Janet took a deep breath, then turned and followed Jack into the darkness.





148


In his dark suit, surrounded by the rich, dark mahogany of his private office, the light from the laptop screen made Dr. Stephenson’s face seem to float, disembodied, in the darkness. His normally impassive expression had tightened into a death’s mask of anger.

The news could not have been worse. The story had broken less than an hour ago, in a special Thanksgiving-night edition of the New York Post, and had swept across the broadcast media like a Montezuma Shit-Storm.

If it hadn’t been Thanksgiving night, with minimal staffing throughout the government, Dr. Stephenson would, no doubt, have already been escorted from the laboratory, his security clearance revoked pending investigation.

There it was on his computer screen, a reprint of the Post story with the hated byline—Freddy Hagerman…apparently not nearly as dead as they’d thought. An image of Dr. Stephenson stepping out of a helicopter onto the grounds at Henderson House filled the front page. The detail in the story proved to be some of the most impressive investigative reporting Stephenson had ever seen. He didn’t have much time.

Dr. Stephenson pressed the key combinations that activated a special secure video link. Raul’s strange face appeared on the screen, a look of annoyance scrunching his forehead beneath his Plexiglas-like brain cap.

Without waiting for a question, Dr. Stephenson spoke across the link.

“I have a coordinate for your girlfriend. I just sent it. If you want her, go get her. Now.”

The transformation of Raul’s face was remarkable, the harsh look melting into mad glee. Stephenson killed the link, letting the screen fade to black.