Читать книгу His Mysterious Ways - Amanda Stevens - Страница 10

They called her Angel because they didn’t know her real name and because the tiny hand-shaped birth-mark on the left side of her face made it seem as though she’d been touched by God.

Even so, she was a very sick child, the latest victim of a deadly epidemic that had swept through remote villages along the banks of the Salamá River in the tiny Central American country of Cartéga.

Melanie Stark had found the little girl on the steps of the clinic in Santa Elena when she’d gone there to volunteer. Huddled beneath a dirty, ragged blanket, the child had been suffering from high fever, chills, chest congestion, persistent cough and a florid maculopapular rash over her face, arms and trunk that was similar to, but not entirely consistent with typhus.

Where she had come from or who had left her, no one knew. For the first forty-eight hours, her condition had been touch-and-go. Finally, on the third day, her temperature had dropped and her breathing became less labored, but she still had a long way to go for a full recovery.

Melanie had barely left the little girl’s bedside since she’d frantically carried her into the clinic three days ago. She’d sat with her morning and night, reading to her, talking to her softly, sometimes praying. Now she reached out to touch a tiny hand beneath the oxygen tent, but the child didn’t stir.

Dr. Wilder, who ran the clinic, squeezed Melanie’s shoulder, then nodded toward the door. Reluctantly, she got up and followed him out. His solemn expression alarmed her.

Melanie turned to him anxiously once they were outside the closed door. “She’s better today, right? Her fever is down, her color is improving…”

“Yes, that’s the good news.” Dr. Wilder stripped off his surgical gloves and dropped them in a nearby waste receptacle. He wasn’t a particularly tall man, standing only a couple of inches above Melanie’s five foot seven, but he was trim and toned and the close-cropped beard and mustache gave him a distinguished, intellectual appearance. He was American, but Melanie couldn’t place his accent.

When she’d first met him, she’d judged him to be around fifty-five, but after having spent the past few days in his company, she’d come to the conclusion that he was one of those men whose age could be anywhere from late forties to late sixties.

He was refined, gentle, a very good doctor from what she’d observed, although, admittedly, a premed dropout such as she was perhaps not the best judge. Still, she’d been impressed with his care and treatment of Angel. Melanie was convinced the child wouldn’t have made it through that first day without Dr. Wilder’s expertise.

Why someone with his obvious skill and talent had ended up in a place like Santa Elena, she couldn’t imagine. Nor did she ask. She’d learned a long time ago that curiosity courted curiosity. Her own reasons for coming to Cartéga were private and complicated—perhaps even dangerous—and she had no intention of discussing them with anyone, much less dragging an innocent bystander into her murky quest.

Dr. Wilder’s worried gaze met hers. “Angel is responding to the treatment, but unfortunately, the epidemic has depleted our supply of antibiotics. I’ve made repeated calls to the Ministry of Health in San Cristóbal, but the government either can’t or won’t help us. I haven’t even been able to get the results of Angel’s blood tests, and without them, I can’t even be sure what we’re dealing with…”

He trailed off, shaking his head in disgust. “The minister claims that airlifted medical supplies from the U.S. are being stolen by the rebels, but I’m just as inclined to believe they’re being confiscated by the army to sell on the black market.”

If Melanie had learned anything in the brief time she’d spent in Cartéga it was that in the bloody civil war that had raged for nearly five years, there were no good guys. Only victims like Angel.

She drew a long breath. “What happens to Angel if we run out?”

Dr. Wilder glanced at the door behind which the tiny, dark-eyed girl valiantly fought for her life. “She’s very weak. Without the antibiotics, her immune system may not be able to fight the infection. Complications could set in. Pneumonia, acute renal failure…” He gave a helpless shrug. “Without the drugs, she could die.”

“We can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen,” Melanie said stubbornly.

He gave her a weary, defeated smile. “We may not have a choice. Some things are out of our hands. If the shipments can’t get through…”

“We’ll just have to find the drugs somewhere else.”

He frowned. “Where?”

Melanie thought for a moment. “An American oil company has a drilling site thirty miles north of here at the base of the mountains. They have an infirmary on the premises, as well as an airstrip, and supplies are flown in twice a month.”

Dr. Wilder’s gaze narrowed. “How do you know that?”

“I talk to people in the village. I hear things,” she replied evasively.

“Did you also hear that the drilling site is like a fortress?” Dr. Wilder demanded. “Kruger Petroleum has hired a small army to guard the perimeter of the compound. No one can get in or out without proper authorization. You won’t get within a hundred yards before you’ll be turned away.”

She shrugged. “We’ll see about that.”

“Melanie…”

“Look, I’m not going to let that little girl die, Dr. Wilder, no matter what I have to do. But things could get a little dicey,” she admitted. “The less you know the better off you’ll be.”

“Deniability, you mean.”

“Exactly. But please don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope you do. Because I hear things, too.” Dr. Wilder’s expression turned grim, cautious. “The mercenaries Kruger has hired to guard his wells are a pack of ruthless savages, the kind who shoot first and ask questions later. They’re led by a man the locals call el guerrero del demonio.”

Demon warrior.

An icy dread tingled down Melanie’s backbone.

“They say he has…unnatural powers.”

Melanie forced a smile to her suddenly frozen lips. “You’re a man of science, Doctor. Surely you don’t believe in superstitions.”

“Where science is corrupted, evil often flourishes,” he muttered obliquely. “Tread carefully, Melanie.”

The hair at the back of her neck lifted at his strange warning, and she watched him curiously until he’d disappeared down the hallway. Then she turned and slipped through the door to Angel’s room.

Resuming her position beside the child’s bed, she settled in to await the coming darkness.

THUNDER MINGLED with gunfire in the mountains as nightfall swooped like a vampire’s cloak over the jungle. Jon Lassiter scanned the area in the deepening twilight as a knot of tension formed in the pit of his stomach. It was a familiar sensation. A mixture of elation, dread and adrenaline that he always experienced before a battle.

Neither the storm nor the rebel skirmishes with the Cartégan army had moved any closer in the past twenty-four hours, but he wasn’t about to let down his guard. He’d learned a long time ago that disaster usually struck when and where you least expected it.

And in Cartéga, disaster was never far away.

The tiny Central American country had once been little more than a blip on the international radar screen, a lush, primitive paradise that time and progress had forgotten. But the discovery of oil, along with one of the most significant archaeological finds in decades, had propelled Cartéga onto the world stage.

Representatives from all the major oil companies had stampeded into the sleepy capital of San Cristóbal, throwing enough money around to corrupt an already corrupt government. Lassiter had no idea how Kruger Petroleum, his current employer, had managed to outsmart the international conglomerates, but knowing Hoyt Kruger, it had probably been a combination of charm, chicanery and a pact with the devil.

Lassiter could appreciate that.

A chain-link fence topped by razor wire enclosed the compound, and sentries were posted at the entrance and at intervals around the perimeter. Lassiter nodded to the dozen or so guards he encountered as he made his nightly rounds. He didn’t know half their names, nor did he want to. He didn’t trust any of them. Money could buy a lot of things in this part of the world, but seldom loyalty.

Lassiter could appreciate that, too. He was a member of a dark and sinister society whose allegiance was sworn only to the highest bidder, and he labored under no delusions about his men’s fealty. He commanded this operation for one reason only. The money came through him. In another time, another country, in another hellhole of a jungle, he was just as likely to be following the orders of one of his comrades. Or to be fighting against them. It all depended on the price, and every man had one.

As he walked back inside the camp, Lassiter breathed in the familiar fragrance of rotting vegetation, cigarette smoke, sweat and diesel fuel. And fainter, the acrid smell of gunpowder that clung to the twilight like the remnant of some mostly forgotten nightmare.

The past three years of his life were all wrapped up in that smell, Lassiter thought with a keen sense of inevitability. The location changed—Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador—but that scent stayed the same. He sometimes thought he could smell it on his skin. Like the stench of a rotting corpse, it had gotten into his pores, his hair shafts, his sinuses. He could no more scrub that odor away than he could banish the screams from inside his head.

Screams from another life, one he only vaguely recalled, although at times the memories would come back with startling clarity, usually after one of the dreams. Then he’d lie awake, staring at the sky and forcing himself to recall everything he could about his previous life—the farm where he’d grown up deep in the Mississippi Delta, his frail mother, a girl named Sarah who’d wanted to marry him.

He had no idea what had happened to that girl. He didn’t even know if his mother was still alive. Home was a lifetime away.

Stopping for a moment to light up one of the thin, black cigarettes he ordered from a cigar shop in Tegucigalpa, he listened to the raucous laughter and cursing coming from the crew as they continued to work in the illumination from the floodlights that had been set up around the third well site. They worked in twelve-hour shifts, just as Lassiter’s men did.

When Kruger had first moved in the heavy equipment six months ago, preparing for what promised to be a long and profitable arrangement with the Cartégan government, he’d been assured of round-the-clock protection. But then the rebel incursions had intensified around the capital, and the beleaguered and poorly equipped army had been called into service to snuff out the guerrilla encampments in the mountains.

His operation soon the target of saboteurs and snipers, Hoyt Kruger had decided to put together his own army, not just as protection against the rebels, but as a safeguard in the event one of the local drug lords decided to move in and try to take control of the wells.

When word had reached Lassiter in Caracas that Kruger wanted to meet with him, he’d been a little surprised by the request. The reputation he’d acquired in Central America hadn’t exactly served him in good stead in recent months. Clients had become few and far between, which was why he’d drifted south. But he’d had a feeling from the moment he shook Kruger’s hand, sealing the deal, that the rumors keeping others at bay had been the reason the enigmatic Texas oilman had sought him out in the first place.

Lassiter ground the half-smoked cigarillo beneath his heel, then continued on his rounds. The camp consisted of five tin barracks crowded with bunks—four housing the drilling crew and one for Lassiter’s men—an office packed with computers connected to Kruger’s headquarters in Houston via satellite, a mess tent, a medical clinic and a rec hall of sorts where the off-duty crew could watch videos, play cards or shoot the bull. Not exactly the most effective activities for warding off tension and boredom, but on rotating weekends, there was the always unpredictable nightlife in Santa Elena, a thirty-minute jeep ride away.

The door to the office was open, and Lassiter could see the gleam of Kruger’s bald head in the glow of a CRT screen as he and his partner, Martin Grace, pored over the paper scrolling out of the printer like cardiologists reading an EKG.

Kruger was tall and powerfully built, not handsome except for his piercing blue eyes. He was in his late fifties, a good twenty-five years older than Lassiter, but still with a quick mind, a quick temper and an uncanny knack for making money.

Sensing Lassiter’s scrutiny, the two men looked up with tense expressions, then Kruger relaxed when he saw who it was. But Grace’s features tightened. He didn’t like Lassiter and made no bones about it.

He wasn’t a small man, probably just shy of six feet, but Kruger seemed to dwarf him, in both stature and personality.

“Don’t you know how to knock?” he barked irritably.

Lassiter shrugged. “Door was open.”

The offhand remark seemed to irritate the man even more, and Kruger laughed. “You’ll have to excuse Marty, Lassiter. He’s been jumpy ever since he got here. But he’ll soon get used to the gunfire, right?”

Lassiter shrugged. “I hardly even notice it.”

Martin Grace’s eyes narrowed. “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but isn’t it your job to notice the gunfire? And what about the snipers?”

“What about them?”

“The men were fired on again yesterday. Luckily, there weren’t any injuries, but that’s no thanks to you. We hired you to protect the crew and our interests down here, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s what you’re doing.”

Lassiter’s name crackled over the radio fastened to his belt, and he gave Martin Grace a pointed look. “We’ll have to take this up later. I’ll come look you up as soon as I take care of this matter.”

Grace glanced down at the paper in his hand as if suddenly alarmed by the notion of a one-on-one meeting with Lassiter. “I’ve said my piece,” he mumbled.

Lassiter nodded to Kruger, then stepped outside to answer the radio. Lifting the unit to his ear, he said his name into the transmitter.

“It’s Tag,” the man on the other end responded. “I’ve picked up something on one of the monitors you need to take a look at.”

“What is it?”

Taglio hesitated. “I think you’d better see it for yourself.”

Uneasiness tripped along Lassiter’s nerve endings. There was something in Taglio’s voice—

“Anything wrong?” Kruger stood in the doorway, one hand propped against the frame as he regarded Lassiter anxiously.

Lassiter shrugged as his gaze met the older man’s in the semidarkness. “Whatever it is, I’ll take care of it.”

“See that you do. The men are getting skittish with all that damn gunfire. And I heard today a kid was brought into the clinic in Santa Elena with the fever. When the crew gets wind of that…” He didn’t bother to finish the sentence, but Lassiter knew what he was thinking. The disease, along with the fighting, was getting closer.

Shouldering his rifle, Lassiter strode across the camp to the sheet-metal building that served as operation headquarters. As he neared the structure, the smell of diesel fuel from the generator grew stronger.

Part of the bargain Kruger had struck with the Cartégan government had been the routing of electrical lines through the jungle to the camp. But even in the capital, service was unpredictable at best, and Lassiter hadn’t wanted to take a chance on a complete power blackout.

The generator was a safeguard and had been one of a long list of items he’d presented to Kruger before he’d signed on to the operation. To the oilman’s credit, he hadn’t batted an eye at the price tag. And with good reason, Lassiter figured. His fee for services and equipment was substantial, but the wells that had already been drilled were producing thousands of barrels a day. If they continued at that rate for several months, let alone years, Kruger Petroleum stood to make millions.

Along with the generator, Lassiter had also requested portable thermal-imaging cameras which he and his men had camouflaged and mounted around the perimeter of the camp. The monitors were watched around the clock in the event the guerrillas or one of the drug cartels—or even the Cartégan army—decided to launch an assault.

The door to the building was open to allow in the night air, and when Lassiter stepped inside, Taglio glanced up with a frown. He was several years younger than Lassiter, well educated, well traveled and with a grace and style that often caused people to underestimate his toughness. Sometimes even Lassiter wondered what had brought a man with Danny Taglio’s looks and privileged background to a place like Cartéga, but he never asked. No one ever asked.

“You better take a look at this,” the younger man said.

Lassiter crossed to the monitor and watched as Taglio played back one of the surveillance tapes. Noting the time and date in the right-hand corner of the screen, Lassiter automatically glanced at his watch. Less than five minutes had elapsed since the image he was now watching had been captured on tape.

“Which camera?” he asked.

“Sector Seven.” The camp was divided into a grid similar to a tic-tac-toe board. Sector Seven was the lower left corner, the area closest to the mountains and to the heaviest guerrilla fighting.

Lassiter studied the screen. The resolution from the thermal-imaging cameras was a vast improvement over the night-vision equipment they’d once had to work with, but a thick mist had drifted down from the cloud forest, obliterating almost everything on the screen. Lassiter could make out the vague shape of trees, but that was about it. The camera spanned down, and the fence around the compound came into focus.

“I can’t see a damn thing,” he said. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“Just keep watching. It should be coming up—” Taglio glanced at his own watch “—right about…now.”

Lassiter caught his breath. The image was there, then gone in a single heartbeat. He couldn’t even be sure of what he’d seen.

“Roll it back.”

Taglio did as he was instructed, and Lassiter watched the monitor, not daring to blink. “Freeze it!”

It took Taglio a couple of tries before he was able to freeze the frame Lassiter wanted, but when he had it, Lassiter leaned forward, a chill going through his body. “What the hell?”

“It’s a woman,” Taglio said. “Right outside the fence.”

She wore a scarf over her head, but Lassiter didn’t think she was one of the local peasants. “Where’d she come from?” he muttered. They were miles from any kind of civilization.

“The better question would be, how is she there one second and gone the next?” Taglio asked tensely.

“Press play.”

The moment the tape started, the woman vanished. In the blink of an eye. The fence was still there. The trees were still there. But the woman was gone.

It was as if she’d stepped off the face of the earth.

Impossible.

But then, Lassiter knew better than anyone that nothing was impossible.

“It must be the mist,” Taglio said. “Somehow it created an optical illusion.”

“Were any of the alarms tripped?”

He shook his head. “There’s no way she could get through the lasers without all hell breaking loose.” He glanced up at Lassiter. “You want me to put the camp on alert?”

“No, not yet.” Lassiter was still watching the video, which now showed nothing more than mist swirling around the fence. “Let me have a look around first. I’ll let you know if I find anything. In the meantime, don’t mention that tape to anyone else.”

Taglio shot him a look, but whatever was on his mind he kept to himself. “You’re the boss. But just for the record, you never answered my question. How can a person just disappear like that?”

Lassiter shrugged. “I think you answered it yourself. It must have been some kind of optical illusion.”

“Yeah, that must have been it.” But Taglio didn’t sound convinced, and his expression was anxious as his gaze moved past Lassiter to the open doorway and the gathering darkness beyond. “Or else…”

“Or else what?”

Taglio’s gaze lifted and something that might have been fear flickered in his eyes, giving Lassiter a glimpse of vulnerability in the younger man that he suspected few people had ever witnessed. Taglio seemed almost embarrassed by what he had to say. “Maybe she isn’t human.”

Lassiter frowned. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“A ghost, Lassiter. I’m talking about a damned ghost.”

LASSITER TRIED to laugh off Taglio’s supernatural explanation, but he found himself shivering even though the night was warm and humid.

But Tag had it all wrong, Lassiter thought grimly as he climbed into his jeep and headed over to Sector Seven. The woman on the video wasn’t the ghost. Lassiter was. He’d died a long time ago and he had some pretty damning proof that he should have stayed dead. Dead and buried in a watery tomb that now rested on the ocean floor hundreds of feet below the surface.

For a moment, the claustrophobic memories threatened to engulf him, and he could hear the cacophony of clanking metal and human screams slowly making their way to the surface. He shoved them away, buried them deep and kept driving.

He checked the fence along Sector Seven, but the metal hadn’t been cut and the alarms were still set. The woman couldn’t have gotten inside the camp. But just to be on the safe side, Lassiter drove the perimeter of the compound, making sure the guards were at their posts, and then he checked all the buildings.

The mess tent and rec hall were deserted, but he could see Kruger and Martin Grace still at work in the office, heads bent low, their expressions gloomy. They appeared to be arguing, but what compelling business kept them at it for so long, Lassiter had no idea. He didn’t interrupt them this time. He had other things on his mind.

Parking the jeep, he crossed the interior of the compound on foot and checked the infirmary. The place was run by a man named Angus Bond, an Australian expatriate Kruger had dug up from somewhere who claimed to be a doctor. Bond had padlocked the door to keep the more potent drugs from falling into the wrong hands. Or so he said. But it had been Lassiter’s suspicion for quite some time that old Angus wasn’t above a little self-medicating. The padlock was probably more self-serving than precautionary.

Lassiter started to walk away when the sound of breaking glass stopped him short. He turned and put an ear to the door.

Someone was inside.

His first thought was that Angus had returned early from his day off, but Lassiter had seen the Aussie head off to Santa Elena just before lunch, and the good doctor never came back early or sober from a furlough.

Besides, how would Angus get through a door that was padlocked from the outside?

How would anyone get through that door?

A ghost, Lassiter. I’m talking about a damn ghost.

CURSING SOFTLY, Melanie whipped the scarf from her head and quickly wound it around the cut on her wrist.

Damn! She was getting blood everywhere.

And everything had been going so well until that point. She’d made it inside the compound without being detected. Located the infirmary and gotten inside without any problem. The locked medicine cabinet had presented the first real challenge, but she’d solved that by simply smashing out the glass front. No problem, except when she’d reached inside, she’d cut her wrist on a shard.

But even worse, the sound of shattering glass had been like a gunshot in the quiet. Someone might have heard the noise and would soon come to investigate. Melanie knew she had to hurry.

Fighting off a wave of dizziness from the sight of her own blood, she directed her penlight into the cabinet, playing the beam over the vials and bottles of medicine.

Whoa, some heavy-duty stuff there. OxyCotin, Percocet, Demerol. And some good old-fashioned morphine.

Tempting, but not why she’d come there.

Skipping the drugstore heroine, she went straight for the antibiotics, scanning the labels until she found what she needed. Quickly she stuffed the packets of tetracycline into the leather bag she wore draped over her shoulder.

A slight noise, nothing more than a swish of air, sent a chill up her spine, and slowly she turned toward the door.

A man stood just inside, almost hidden by shadows. Even so, Melanie could tell that he was tall, broad-shouldered, muscular. His features were indistinguishable, but she knew his gaze was on her. A cold, sharp, penetrating stare that cut her right to the bone.

He was dressed like a soldier. Camouflage jacket and pants. Rugged boots. A rifle barrel jutting over his shoulder, and he carried a handgun that was pointed at her.

She knew at once who he was, and her whole body went slack with fear.

El guerrero del demonio…

“¿HABLA USTED Inglés? Do you speak English?”

The woman didn’t answer, just stood staring at him, unblinking, as if frozen. But Lassiter knew she understood him. Now that he’d gotten a better look at her, he could tell she was American by the way she carried herself, by the clothes she wore, the cut of her blond hair.

“How the hell did you get in here?” he demanded.

Still she didn’t answer.

Slowly, she held up her hands as she began to back away from him.

“Stay where you are,” he warned. “Don’t move.”

She continued to back toward the window, and Lassiter guessed her intent. “Stop!”

He rushed her, but she turned quickly, took a step toward the window and…disappeared.

Vanished into thin air.

Without thinking, Lassiter opened fire.