The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(31)

Ashley touched my shoulder. “Company Base Echo!”

The chopper landed and we dove into the cold, hands on our heads to keep the hoods from flying off as we ran to the edge of the helipad. The two guys from the airstrip didn’t get out. When we were clear, the helicopter took off and swooped out of the valley, disappearing behind the jagged peaks. Then it got very quiet, so quiet you could hear our breath as it condensed and boiled out of our mouths and noses.

We hiked up a trail toward the château. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly I was very tired, the most tired I’d been in a long time, and I wasn’t sure I could make it. The trail wound through a dense stand of pine trees, the ground hard and frozen and covered with a thin sheen of ice. I kept slipping. Once I just stopped and leaned against a tree, trying to catch my breath. It felt like my heart was traveling up my esophagus on its way to my mouth.

“We’re almost there,” Ashley assured me.

“The Caribbean,” I gasped. “Or some remote island in the South Pacific. Where’s that Company base?”

“Come on,” she said, smiling. “Lean on me.”

“I’ll knock you over.”

“I’m stronger than I look.”

So that’s how I made it up the last fifty feet of the trail, my left arm around Ashley’s shoulders, until we reached the steps to the front porch and I could use the railing. Abby’s fingers raced over the keypad by the front door, a green light flashed twice, and then we were inside, standing in a huge entryway, the ceiling soaring three stories over our heads. A fire roared on the opposite wall of the great room. A long table sat in front of the fireplace, its top crowded with steaming platters and bowls.

“Food,” I said. “Thank God.”

Abby, Ashley, and I sat down to eat, but Nueve said he had pressing business and disappeared up the staircase. Abby and Ashley exchanged a look, and then Abby dropped her napkin into her plate.

“Excuse me for a moment,” she said quietly, and raced up the stairs after Nueve.

I turned to Ashley. “What’s going on? I heard them fighting on the plane.”

“They don’t like each other,” she said.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure, but the rumor is he wasn’t her choice for the new Operative Nine.”

“I read that section,” I said. “It says the director gets to appoint the Op Nine.”

“The board kind of forced Nueve on her.”

“The board?”

She nodded. “It’s a lot like a board of directors for a civilian company. The board chose Abby to be the new director after Merryweather was arrested.”

“So what does she have against Nueve?”

“I don’t think she trusts him.”

We could hear their voices above us, rising and falling like waves smashing against a seawall, though I couldn’t make out the words.

“I agree with Abby,” I said. “There’s something kind of slimy about Nueve.”

“Oh, I don’t think he’s slimy,” Ashley protested. “He just has a tough exterior.”

“Right,” I said. “Like an oyster. And inside: slime.”

“It isn’t easy being an Operative Nine,” she said.

“It isn’t easy being a lot of things.”

After we finished eating, Ashley led me back outside. I felt stronger after my meal and didn’t have to stop or lean on her on our way to one of the one-room cabins. A small plaque was mounted over the keypad by the door: 13 “Oh, good,” I said. “Cabin thirteen.”

“You’re superstitious?” Ashley asked as she punched in the code.

“The number keeps cropping up.”

“ ‘Cropping’? Is that some kind of pun?” She was smiling.

“In reference to a skull,” I said.

“What skull?”

“That’s what I’d like to know.”

It was a cozy little cabin. There was a fireplace, a couple of rustic rocking chairs, a bed with a small writing table beside it, and a bathroom in the back. I opened a slatted door by the bathroom and saw thirteen identical OIPEP jumpsuits hanging there. There was that number again. I wondered if somebody cosmically connected was trying to tell me something. “What now?” I asked Ashley.

“Try to rest. We’re getting started first thing in the morning.”

“No TV?”

She smiled. “The reception here isn’t very good.”

“There’s always satellite,” I said.

She left. I heard something go snick when the door closed. I tried the handle.

I was in lockdown.

04:04:25:31

That night I dreamed I was flying. Maybe it was the eagle I saw the day before, soaring high and alone over the mountains, but I was flying, arms outstretched, a thousand feet high, and below me I could see mountains and rivers, vast plains and open, empty desert. And cities, from sprawling metropolises to mud hut villages, until I soared past a rocky coastline and then I was over the open ocean, heading west toward the setting sun, cut in half by the horizon. I was alone, and for once it felt good to be alone, above a tranquil sea that had no boundary, the sparkling ribbon of reflected light from the dying sun the path that guided me.