“Oh no,” said Matt.
Her lips barely moved as she groaned at the touch of the hard surface against her body.
“Rosa, can you hear me?”
Her blue eyes flickered into life, dulled by a sensation of pain caused by the wound.
“Why didn’t you say something before?”
“You went to check on Gratia.”
The big man produced a scalpel-like knife and readied to cut into the material encasing her body but lost his balance as the plane hit a pocket of air and jerked upward.
“We can’t do it up here,” said Matt. “Stumble again and you could cut into something else.”
He darted back to the cockpit.
“Gratia, get to the surface,” he yelled. “Rosa’s hurt.”
“No,” said Baresi. “We can’t afford to stop.”
She flinched under the spotlight of his witheringly dark, vicious stare.
“One more word out of you and I swear I’ll kill you where you stand,” he hissed. “Gratia, do as I ask and get us down to the surface,” he repeated.
Using compression he made a desperate attempt to stem the flow as they fell from the sky. Rosa closed her eyes.
“Stay with me,” he said. “We need to be stationary before we can cut away the suit. Just stay with me.”
The fall to earth lacked the urgency he would have liked, but he wasn’t the pilot. Every second felt precious. With each tick of the clock Rosa weakened. The thump of the floats on water pumped the adrenalin through his veins. Soon they would come to rest, thank God.
“I’ll keep the pressure on,” he barked to the big American.
Stone’s knife scythed through the suit with both speed and precision, carving away huge chunks of the material in and around the injury to allow Matt to examine the entry wound.
The bullet had entered the left side and travelled upward in a diagonal line, passing dangerously close to the heart judging by the trajectory. He searched for an exit wound but there was none to be found. Nor could he feel the presence of a missile underneath her skin, as had happened before, confirming his suspicion it had rested somewhere deep inside. For a moment he was unsure, the expression of mounting concern on his face all too evident. Her gaze drifted to the other faces around him, all strangely silent and subdued.
“That bad?” she whispered.
“I need a little time, that’s all.”
“You don’t have any.”
“Then we’ll make the time.”
“You know the routine.”
“Screw the routine. We’re not leaving until I’ve fixed you and that’s the end of it.”
He felt her hand rest on his leg.
“Not this time.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do. I’ve fixed you before and I’ll do it again.”
“Matt,” she whispered. “Think of the others.”
Her words galvanised him into action, exerting greater pressure on the wound while his mind searched for some kind of inspiration. Limited knowledge or not he knew there had to be something he could do.
“First we need to stop the bleeding,” he snapped.
She cried out at the pressure his hands exerted on the open wound. It was always going to hurt, he told himself, but there was no other choice.
“Matt, stop, please stop,” she called. “You’re hurting me. I don’t want you to hurt me.”
“This has to be done, Rosa.”
“I don’t want you to do that. Please, stop.”
He ignored the pleas for mercy. This had to be done and he was going to do it.
“Matt, Matt!” she called.
“What!”
“You can’t fix this. Not this time. Please, let me lie. Just let me lie.”
He couldn’t believe she would give up so easily. Not Rosa. A hand fell on to his shoulder.
“Let her lie,” said Will. “It’s what she wants.”
“You can all quit if you want to but I’m not!” he yelled, shaking the hand away.
Gratia had joined them from the cockpit. He could feel her rich eyes watching him intently, her ears listening to his every word. She spoke gently.
“Matt,” she said. “Think of Rosa.”
“I am thinking of Rosa for God’s sake!”
The mists of rage descended; fanned by thoughtful words he preferred to interpret as incendiary devices. They viewed the situation differently. And he despised them for it, despised their weakness. They might wish to concede so easily but he wasn’t going to, and he was determined to let them know in no uncertain terms. Gratia grabbed at his blood-caked hands before he could speak and held them firmly.
“Stop,” she said.
Again he threw off the thoughtful touch as though shaking an angry swarm from his body. Gratia’s hands returned. This time she pushed him away, away from Rosa.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
She pinned his shoulders back and stared into his eyes.
“Rosa has cancer, ovarian cancer. It’s inoperable. She told me on the way to Maria’s.”
His eyes shot back to Rosa’s beautiful face, her pallor fading with each passing second.
“I thought I was pregnant,” she said. “It turned out to be something entirely different.”
“Rosa, no …”
Her sad smile provided shattering confirmation. The news ate into his gut, preventing any rational thought formulating in his mind. Anaesthetic couldn’t have been any more effective at confusing his thought processes. Time stood still. Then he spoke.
“There are specialists ...”
“Tried them, tried them all, everything,” she said. “Looked promising at one time, but it didn’t last.”
He leapt to Rosa’s side and started to re-exert pressure to the wound.
“There’s always a miracle cure in the pipeline.”
Her face twisted in agony, the cries from her mouth filling the cabin with pain.
“Matt, stop,” shouted Gratia. “You’re making her suffer more than she needs to.”
Cautionary words that somehow found their target, took the venom from his mind. Matt released the pressure and fell onto his rear, head sinking onto blood-stained arms crossed over his knees. He felt Rosa’s hand brush up and down his leg and looked over.
“Talk to me,” she whispered.
“I can do this,” he said. “A couple of minutes and I’ll think of something. I know I will. You have to let me do this.”
“That’s my Matt, forever the optimist.”
“I’ve fixed you before.”
“I know when I’m beat.”
“Rosa, you have to let me try.”
Her resulting silence said everything. The sparkle in her eyes had gone and he made a weak attempt to clear his throat, to insist once more. She forced a smile.
“We should have had sex,” she said.
He knew he was supposed to smile. Somehow the muscles in his face refused to comply. He whispered the reply.
“We should.”
“There were plenty of opportunities.”
“There were.”
Rosa found the strength to grin mischievously.
“I think it would have been good”
“No,” he said. “It would have been spectacular.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.”
“Just sex though.”
She forced another smile.
“With you, it could never have been just sex.”
Matt bit at his lip.
“Do you love me, Matt?”
He glanced towards Gratia, blankly staring at the unfolding scene, before returning his gaze to Rosa’s ashen face.
“You already know the answer to that question.”
“If I knew I wouldn’t have asked.”
Again he sank his teeth into the lower lip. She deserved an answer from him.
“It was Toronto,” he said.
“What, what was Toronto?”
“The moment you fir
st touched my heart, though I didn’t realise at the time. We met at the restaurant by Lake Ontario and ate and danced under the stars on a summer’s eve.”
He could see her remembering.
“Ah, that’s what the cryptic phrase means? ‘A warm night in Canada’ Now I get it. How sweet is that? I touched your heart. You really do love me.”
He did. In a way he wasn’t able to describe or explain. The bond was special, unique. And it was about to be broken.
“Just not the way you love her,” she said.
There were so many things he wanted to say, explanations he wanted to give. Somehow he couldn’t respond.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I approve.”
His intended smile became a grimace.
“Matt?”
“Yes.”
“I think this is better,” she said. “Quicker. I couldn’t face a long illness, drag it out. I’m right, aren’t I?”
“I’m sure you are,” he croaked. “Best not to talk any more though, save your strength.”
She was finding it as hard to form words as he found it to keep the emotion in check.
“Hmm, strength,” she said, barely whispering. “I can feel it slowly slipping away.”
He turned his head away to hide the anguish.
“Matt?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to die,” she said, a tear finally escaping from her eye.
“Rosa …”
He caught her hand as it slipped off his leg and peered out of the open door at the bright blue sky above through misted eyes, searching for a divine intervention that he knew would never come. Rosa, impossibly beautiful Rosa Cain, will speak to him no more. A shake of the head and his teary eyes settled on Gratia.
“We need to go,” he whispered.
“Matt …” she said softly.
“Get us out of here.”
They rose to the sky in silence, save for the drone of the single engine working overtime to lift them from the surface of the water. Finally, he felt able to release her hand.
“How are you doing?”
Matt shook his head, unable to answer, thanking God that at least Will, alone of the others, remained alive.
“I didn’t know either,” said his friend.
Still the words wouldn’t come.
“Why don’t you go and sit up front with Gratia?”
“No,” he managed to say. “Not yet.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. The best he could do. Stone searched around and found a blanket. The woollen cover slipped over her still and lifeless form and her face disappeared from view. Despair tightened its grip, the urge to wail into the sky overpowering. Yet, still, the emotion choked inside. The fates had decreed there would be no release for him, only the constant pain of unbearable loss and guilt. Feelings he would be burdened with forever. Four had died because of his intransigent search for the truth.
“Oh Christ,” he muttered.
The miles came and went, serene and uneventful, empty and meaningless. Baresi stirred from her seat, making discreet eye contact with her partner Stone as she entered the cockpit. The big American responded by moving into the nearest seat to the pilot’s domain. Matt thought nothing of it until Gratia’s voice grew loud and impatient. He approached to find out what had caused the angry exchange and Stone reacted by producing a previously concealed hand gun.
“Back off, Durham,” he said.
A glimpse at his friend showed that he was also prepared to spring into action.
“I’m more than good enough to take you both before you make another move,” said Stone. “So I recommend you both back off and sit down.”
A confirmatory glance at Will and they did as instructed. Matt cursed himself for being taken off guard and allowing this to happen, more so when he saw Stone had unobtrusively secured ownership of the laptop.
“What’s going on, Stone?”
“Sorry to disappoint you man, but this is where Connie and I get off.”
Matt scanned the horizon, recognising familiar landmarks along the journey. They were some distance from the agreed drop-off point.
“The pilot flies the plane,” said Matt.
“The pilot does exactly what the pilot is currently being told to do.”
The angry exchange had reached boiling point.
“Then shoot!” barked Gratia. “But I’m not stopping until we get to ...”
“You don’t understand,” he heard Baresi say. “It’s not you I’ll shoot. It’s them.”
The message couldn’t have been clearer. The subsequent expletive added to the list he had now come to associate with an angry Gratia. The plane dipped a wing and started to drop from the sky, preparing to land.
“We might not want you to get off here,” said Matt, trying to remain calm.
The American offered a wry smile.
“There’s the rub,” said Stone. “The decision on where we get off is not in your hands. The objective has been met so you’re no longer needed.”
“You make it sound like we’re hired hands.”
“I prefer the word contractors.”
“Contractors?” asked Matt.
“We needed to use independents,” replied Stone. “In case anything had gone wrong.”
“Independent from who?” asked Matt.
“The people who wanted this,” said Stone, gently tapping the laptop.
“I don’t recall agreeing to break into a digital vault and steal its contents for someone else.”
“If we’d asked directly you’d have refused.”
“You’re damn right I would have refused.”
The American seemed amused by the remark.
“We had to rely on your natural instinct to want to do the right thing, so we laid down a few breadcrumbs here and there for you to follow.”
“Breadcrumbs?” snapped Matt.
“Nobody loses unknown quantities of the deadliest virus on the planet.”
”What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You lacked some of the requisite skills needed to get the job done. Selling you a line about recovering the inventory was purely a means of introduction, putting you in touch with the qualified team you were going to need.”
“They never had the real thing?”
“A harmless placebo,” said Stone.
“What if I’d refused to look for the inventory?”
“Once we told you Rosa Cain was involved your decision was foregone.”
The American’s words sounded alarmingly plausible, as though they’d planned this from the start.
“The path to Tillman’s widow was a breadcrumb?”
“Sure was.”
“Which means the log is a fake.”
The American’s huge, muscular shoulders rose and fell in an indifferent shrug.
“Served its purpose,” answered Stone. “The log gave you the necessary information on the individual skills of the team and the means to figure out how to get into the vault.”
Matt jumped to his feet and Stone pointed the barrel of the gun at Matt’s chest.
“Back off,” said the American. “Hell, Durham, we’re not the bad guys.”
“If you are the good guys then why is that weapon pointed at my chest?”
“We couldn’t let you keep hold of this stuff. You’re likely to do something stupid with it.”
“You mean make it public?”
“There are ways of dealing with this kind of situation.”
“Like covering everything up,” said Matt. “You forget. I’ve had previous experience of how you people work.”
“When people cross a certain line they know there’s going to be consequences.”
“You mean like early retirement?”
A wry grin crossed the American’s face.
“There are all kinds of retirement.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“They’ll clean it up.”
“And who are they exactly?”
“That you don’t need to know.”
The temporary lull gave Matt the opportunity to digest this sudden rush of information. Could it be true? That he and the others had been no more than pawns throughout, pieces on someone else’s chessboard, somebody else’s power game. If so, he’d been played. Led by the nose and made to dance to a tune like a stringed puppet, manipulated. Manipulation, now there was a word. He knew someone adept at that. Now was not the time, however, to have a rush of blood to the head. The touch of fibre glass against water meant they had landed.
“So what happens now?”
“Like I said, we get off here and leave you.”
“Alive?”
“That’s the plan.”
“After everything that’s happened and with that gun in my face you expect me to believe you?”
“I really don’t give a shit what you believe.”
Matt had succeeded in loosening the ties of the cushion to the adjacent seat. In one sweeping movement he lifted and then tossed it into the face of the armed man. The resulting shot flew narrowly by as he hurtled forward and crashed his fist into Stone’s jaw.
“Stand down,” shouted Baresi from the cockpit. “Or I’ll make her other arm bleed.”
The threat stifled his attack and he froze. Stone recovered the fallen weapon and brought the butt to bear against Matt’s jaw, drawing blood from the mouth.
“You’re going to have to learn how to start trusting people, Durham. Ingratitude is a real unpleasant attribute you’ve got there,” said Stone.
Dazed by the blow Matt spat out the excess blood and tried to focus his eyes. Normality returned as the craft ferried to shore and Stone threw open the door. Ahead, by the waterside, were a number of black, unmarked SUVs. One man stood in the open, communicating through a radio, and he noticed a second in the approaching dinghy.
“Stand away,” said Baresi.
The two men retreated to the rear the moment they spotted Gratia being forcibly removed from the cockpit, gun jammed underneath her chin.
“We’ll take the stick as well,” said Baresi.
He held position, mind in turmoil, weighing up the options. A hand touched lightly at his forearm.
“This is not the time,” said Will, tossing over the object.
Eyes narrowing he knew he was beaten, for now.
“You put as much as a bruise on her and I swear I’ll hunt you both down.”
Stone boarded first after emptying the cartridges from the remaining weapons into the lake.
“They’ll be closing Durham so I wouldn’t stick around too long. And in case you get the urge to follow you should know we’ve got surface to air.”
Baresi followed her companion and the trio watched as the dinghy reached shore. Within moments they had entered one of the vehicles and the convoy had gone.
“We don’t know who they’re working for,” said Will.
“No, but we know someone who does,” said Matt. “Let’s get out of here.”
Matt knelt by Rosa’s lifeless form and peeled the blanket away. She looked calm, serene, at peace. He stroked gently at her blonde hair and croaked a weak, emotional cough as he replaced the blanket. The noise of the single engine bursting into life signalled the plane’s intent to surge forward and he moved into the cockpit, slumping into the adjoining seat to the pilot. For a while they sat quietly. He made to clear his throat and she spoke.
“Are you okay?”
His head moved from side to side, rising emotion stifling any response. He cleared his throat for a second time.
“I thought I could save her,” he whispered. “I always have before, always believed I could. But … this time … I ...”
She held out a consoling hand. He grasped it and squeezed far harder than reasonable, though Gratia neither flinched nor complained. When he finally felt able to relax his hold she tightened hers.
“Jason Taylor once took me to Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, for the weekend. It was a USAF base until the Americans decommissioned it around 2008. The place is now a private airfield and home to an American flying club. It’s where I fell in love for the first time in my life. Sadly for Jason Taylor, it was with flying.”
Matt squeezed hard at the delicate hand in his grasp and she responded in kind.
“What are you going to do next?” she asked.
He’d decided this well before Stone and Baresi had made their exit.
“Will and I are going to hire a transit van when we make it to France,” he said.
“France,” said Will, his head making an appearance from the fuselage. “What’s on your mind?”
“Retribution,” said Matt.
Chapter Thirty Seven
Damned