Читать книгу The Tower - Simon Toyne, Simon Toyne - Страница 31

Carrie perched on the edge of one of the sunken motel beds watching Eli sleeping on the other. There wasn’t much to the room: a bulky air-con unit built into the window; a fifties-style table with cuss words carved into it and two mismatched chairs swamped beneath their drying cammo jackets. They were pushed up against the solitary wall heater, steaming slightly and filling the trapped, mildewed air in the room with the fresh, wet smell of the forest.

The phone lay next to her on the worn counterpane. She could never sleep when she was waiting on new orders. It was a limbo state she had never relaxed into, something which came with command. The grunts could always sleep like babies, but the officers and NCOs were like parents, with all the responsibility and worry that came with that.

Outside the rain had settled into a steady drumming, like the noise Humvee tyres made over a decent blacktop. The only other sound came from an antique TV set bolted high on a wall. When they had first come into the room and switched it on it had been tuned to a porno channel, the unmistakable fake panting making her fumble for a button to cut the sound or change the channel. She hadn’t been quick enough. The screen had briefly flashed pink with the urgency of flesh before she managed to turn it off. Neither of them mentioned what they had seen, though she knew it had chimed with something unspoken in both of them. The TV was now tuned to a local news station with the volume low, in case anything came up that might be relevant or useful.

She glanced at Eli’s sleeping form, feeling the frustration that, even though they were alone in this seedy motel room with the caved-in mattresses whispering of all the things they denied themselves, their still unfulfilled mission was keeping them apart. She just wanted it to be over so they could get married and finally be together, to face the coming judgement as man and wife, blessed in the eyes of God.

Eli let out a small sound, like a frightened animal. Eight times out of ten he would jolt himself awake, staring around for the horrors that came out to play when he slept. When she’d first met him in the mission hospital outside Kandahar, he couldn’t sleep at all without screaming himself awake so this was an improvement. He was getting better and it was she who was making him so. If she had enough time she would heal him completely, but she wasn’t sure how much time they had left.

The phone rang and she pounced on it, rising from the bed and moving away to the furthest corner of the room.

‘Hello.’ She faced the wall and kept her voice low so as not to wake Eli.

‘You were right about the people you saw,’ Archangel’s voice hummed in the earpiece. ‘They were FBI.’

Carrie let this sink in. It would make their job harder, but not impossible. They just needed to find Kinderman before the Feds did, and Archangel would help with that. She was still in awe of the reach of the network she was only one tiny part of. Archangel had contacts like you wouldn’t believe. She turned and saw Eli, his eyes open now and looking at her with the glassy mix of fear and suspicion he often carried with him from his dreams. She smiled and blew him a silent kiss. ‘You want us to keep our ear to the ground, see what we can find out?’

‘No. I want you to get a few hours’ sleep and then pull out. The Lord has many enemies and the Devil never sleeps. But I have a new target for you, a new sacrifice to make, one just as important as the one that got away.’ Carrie leaned forward, anxious to hear what he had to say, a calmness flowing through her like it always did when she finally got a new mission. ‘How quickly do you think you can get to the Marshall Space Center in Huntsville Alabama?’