Fallout (2007)

  Squeeze.

  Fisher rolled over. He looked between the seats, searching for the M-14, and spotted the stock between the center console, which had detached itself during the rollover, and the roof. He grabbed the stock, gave it a tug. It didn’t budge.

  From outside came the roaring of an engine, then tires skidding on dirt. Three car doors opened and slammed, and Fisher heard boots crunching on gravel.

  He reached out, wrapped both hands around the stock, took in a deep breath, and heaved. The M-14 came loose, the butt smacking him in the lip. He tasted blood. Rifle held lengthwise down his body, he pushed off the dash with his legs, squirming until his torso was out the side window, then pushed again and drew his knees out.

  On the other side of the Rover he heard a whispered voice say something, then once more. It took a moment for Fisher to realize it was Kyrgyz—something about going around.

  Slowly, quietly, Fisher rose into a crouch. He flipped off the M-14’s safety, took a few breaths to clear his head, then crab-walked to the rear of the Rover. Around the corner post he heard footsteps chafing the grass. He switched the M-14 to his left hand, drew the Applegate, flipped it open, and clenched it in his right hand, blade down and pointing back along his forearm. A thought popped into his head: Crime scene. He laid the M-14 in the grass.

  The footsteps came closer. Fisher saw a man-shaped shadow fall across the grass. In one smooth motion, Fisher stepped around the Rover’s corner post and rose up, grabbing and lifting the man’s rifle stock while sweeping the Applegate up in a tight arc. He jammed it hilt-deep into the hollow spot behind the man’s jaw and beneath his ear. The man never made a sound, dead before he hit the ground.

  Fisher kept moving. He reversed the man’s rifle—a FAMAS 5.56mm—shouldered it, took three quick steps out from behind the Rover, and saw a man turning toward him. He fired twice. Both rounds punched through the man’s sternum. Even as he fell, Fisher was moving again, this time in the opposite direction, back across the rear of the Rover, where he dropped to one knee and leaned out, rifle at his shoulder. The last man was moving down the passenger side, his FAMAS coming up. Fisher fired. The bullet caught the man in the hip and spun him around. He screamed and toppled onto his side and kept rolling, trying to bring the FAMAS to bear. Fisher fired again. The bullet drilled a neat hole in the man’s forehead. His head snapped back, and he went limp.

  Moving on instinct, he checked each man to ensure he was dead and for any identifying papers (there were none), then crouched down and took ten seconds to catch his breath. He looked around. No cars on the road, none visible. He thought for a moment, running scenarios in his head, then made his decision. He dropped the FAMAS in the dirt, then hurried back to the driver’s side window and dropped to his belly.

  “Jimiyu, can you hear me?”

  There were a few seconds of silence, the Kenyan cleared his throat and said softly, “I can hear you. Is it safe to no longer be dead?”

  32

  HE pulled Jimiyu from the Rover and checked him over. The bullet, moving slightly backward to forward, had carved a groove in the bony tip of his shoulder, then punched cleanly through the skin of his neck between a tendon and his jugular vein. There was a lot of blood but only superficial damage. A half inch to the right, and Jimiyu would be dead.

  Fisher dug the first aid kit from the Rover’s glove compartment, then dressed both his wounds and covered him with a blanket.

  Next he picked up the M-14 and jogged the quarter mile to a rocky outcrop overlooking the lake. He hurled the rifle far into the water, then ran back to the Rover.

  “Who were those men?” Jimiyu asked.

  “The less you know, the better,” Fisher said. “They were highway bandits. They ambushed us, and we never saw them coming. When you woke up, the Rover was lying on its side, and the men were already dead. You didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, and you don’t remember anything after your window shattered. Got it?”

  Jimiyu nodded. “I understand.” Then, softly: “You killed them, Sam.” There was no reproach in the Kenyan’s voice, only astonishment.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

  “No apologies necessary, my new friend. What do we do now?”

  The police were going to be involved; there was no way around it, which is why he’d chosen to not use the M-14 and to dispose of it. The better he could play the lucky victim, the easier things would go.

  He hit speed dial on his satellite phone. When Grimsdottir answered, he said simply, “Napper, three, mess. Stand by.” Then he hung up and dialed Aly. She picked up on the first ring.

  “My God, what happened?” she asked. “I heard shots over the phone—”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “No, I wanted to hear from you.”

  “Good. How do you feel about not calling them?”

  She hesitated. “Do you want me to not call them?”

  “I’d be grateful.”

  “Okay.”

  Fisher thanked her, promised to be in touch, then disconnected. He cleared the phone’s call memory.

  East down the road he saw a car round the bend toward them. He jogged to the shoulder and started waving his arms.

  THE Western District Police and an ambulance from Kendu Adventist Hospital in Kendu Bay were there in twenty minutes. As Jimiyu was loaded into the ambulance, Fisher walked the one constable through the shooting and the accident while the other covered the bodies of the Kyrgyz in green plastic tarps and searched both vehicles and jotted notes.

  Fisher stopped and restarted his story a half dozen times as though confused, asked for water, to sit down, then wondered aloud if he should go to the hospital. At last, after fifteen minutes, he got the whole story out.

  “And you say these men just began firing at you?” The constable spoke perfect English with the barest hint of a British accent.

  Fisher said, “I didn’t even realize it until the third or fourth—or was it the fifth?—shot. I don’t know; it was a blur.”

  “And this,” the constable said, waving his pencil at the three bodies. “You did this?”

  “Yeah . . . uh, I guess. I was in the . . . in the army, the U.S. Army—the first Gulf War. Training, I guess. It just took over. I don’t know, it happened so fast. I don’t feel so good . . . Can I sit down?” The constable cupped Fisher’s elbow and guided him to a rock.

  They watched as the ambulance finished loading Jimiyu aboard, then pulled away.

  “Is he going to be okay?” Fisher asked.

  “It appears so. So tell me again how his happened. From start to finish, if you please.”

  Fisher did so, telling the same story, but not the exact same way.

  “And this knife you used . . . it’s the one in the dirt there?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Am I in trouble? They didn’t really give me a chance. When I crawled out of the car, they were pulling up. I stumbled around the Rover, and there he was, with the gun . . .”

  “I will forward my report to my chief, of course, but providing we find nothing contradictory here, a written statement from you and your friend should suffice. You are staying here locally?”

  Fisher nodded. “In Nairobi, at a friend’s.” Fisher gave him Aly’s contact information.

  “Do you wish to go to the hospital?” the constable asked.

  “Uh . . . no, I don’t think so.”

  “I will call your rental car agency and inform them of the incident. They’ll arrange another vehicle for you, I’m sure.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How long will you be staying in Kenya?”

  “Another day or two, I guess. I’ll go to the hospital, I think, and see how Jimiyu’s doing, then . . . I don’t know.”

  But he did know. More than ever he wanted to find out what was so important about Niles Wondrash and the Sunstar that Bolot Omurbai would send three killers halfway across the globe to keep secret.

  33

  0° 17’ SOUT
H, 34° 50’ EAST

  FISHER steered the Toyota Highlander off the road and coasted to a stop, his tires crunching on gravel. Through his windshield was a chest-high stockade fence bearing a sun-bleached, vine-entangled sign: RAKWARA WHCP (WATER HYACINTH CONTROL PROJECT) HEADQUARTERS. Through the trees he could see a ranch-style building. Faint strains of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” mixed with the chirps and buzzes of the jungle, filtered through the trees.

  He checked his GPS unit. This was, literally, the end of the road. From here, he walked. He climbed out, walked to the rear of the Highlander, and pulled out his Granite Gear pack, then started sorting through the gear he’d managed to salvage from the Range Rover.

  The constables had waited with him for the arrival of the tow truck from Kusa and a replacement car from the rental agency in Kisumu. Ostensibly making conversation, Fisher had asked the constables about the area—terrain, geology, history—and gotten in return much more than he’d bargained for. Both men had grown up along the shores of Lake Victoria and knew it intimately. In fact, one of them said as boys they used to search some of the shallower caves for pirate treasure.

  “Caves?” Fisher asked.

  “Yes,” replied the constable. “Our word for them does not translate well.” He thought for a moment, then held up an index finger. “In Mexico, I think, they have something similar—deep ponds—like shafts—with underwater caves.”

  “Cenotes,” Fisher said.

  “Yes, that’s it. Cenotes.”

  A lightbulb came on in Fisher’s head. The climbing gear in Wondrash’s plane . . . He’d assumed it was climbing gear, but in what direction? Up or down? According to the legend, Wondrash and Oziri had flown straight into Kisumu then set off for Addis Ababa a few days later.

  “No mountain climbing nearby?” Fisher asked.

  “Mountain climbing? No, not near the lake. Mount Kenya, perhaps, but that’s closer to Nairobi.”

  So, what, Fisher thought, had Wondrash and Oziri been doing with climbing gear?

  ONCE satisfied with his pack’s contents and weight distribution, Fisher set it aside and dialed Grimsdottir. Lambert was also on the line: “What’s going on? What happened?”

  Fisher explained, then said, “Jimiyu’s going to be fine. I called the hospital and talked to the doctor personally. As for the police, I’m pretty sure they bought it. I’m due in the Kisumu District headquarters day after tomorrow to write my statement.”

  “And you’re sure they were Kyrgyz?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Then clearly we’ve touched a nerve. The very fact that he sent his own men rather than hiring locally says something. Grim, what can you give us on topography?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. If there are cenote-like caves in the area, they are not listed, and they don’t show up on satellite. Sorry, Sam.”

  “If there’s something there, I’ll find it,” Fisher said.

  THE path led him away from the WHCP Headquarters building and deeper into the forest, winding northwest toward Lake Victoria. The terrain steadily lost elevation, and the forest slowly turned more junglelike. On either side of the trail, the ground appeared spongy, and soon Fisher heard the croaking of frogs.

  After an hour’s walk, he stopped and studied the GPS’s screen. This was the area. He was a quarter mile from the lakeshore. He turned his body, checking each of the cardinal directions, until he was oriented, then pulled Jimiyu’s machete from his belt, stepped off the trail, and started hacking.

  Twenty minutes later, he emerged from the trees and found himself facing a craggy rock wall entwined with vines and dotted with pockets of bright red flowers. He craned his neck upward. The wall, only ten feet high, was topped by a berm of shrubs. He climbed to the top, then boosted himself over the lip, wriggled through the foliage, and found himself lying on a narrow stone shelf. Across from him, six feet away, was a matching shelf, and between the two, a ten-foot-wide crevice. Fisher peered over the edge. The crevice dropped away into darkness. He picked up a stone and dropped it in. A second later he heard a faint splash.

  TEN minutes later, with a few essential items transferred from his Granite Gear to his waist pack, he secured the rope to a nearby tree, rigged his rappelling harness, and started down the crevice. After twenty feet the light dimmed enough that he flipped on his headlamp. The walls were comprised of jagged, volcanic rock mottled gray brown by lichen and molds. Above, the mouth of the crevice was a sun-filled slash through which Fisher could see overhanging branches. As his hand bumped over the thirty-foot knot in the rope, he stopped and sniffed the air. Water. Stagnant water. Somewhere below he heard dripping, echoing through a larger space. His heart rate increased. Then at fifty feet, with only ten feet of rope remaining, his groping foot plunged into water. Carefully, a few inches at a time, he lowered himself until his feet touched solid stone. The water, surprisingly cold, came up to his knees.

  He unraveled the rope from the descender ring, then shined his headlamp left, down the length of the crevice, then right. He saw nothing but darkness. Which way? He thought.

  He tossed a mental coin: heads for right; tails, left. Right.

  He set out.

  AFTER fifty feet he bumped into a solid wall. The water here was hip-deep. He felt a slight current swirling around his thighs, so he scooted down until he was kneeling, then probed the wall with his right hand. At the bottom of the crevice where it met the wall, he found a jagged plate-size hole through which cold water was gushing.

  He reversed course. Ten feet past his dangling rope the crevice walls began narrowing, and soon he was pressed flat against the rock, his face turned to the side as he shuffled along.

  He stopped. Ahead, he could hear the distant splattering of water on rock. He pressed on, stepping and sliding, stepping and sliding.

  His left foot plunged into open space.

  He jerked back and went still, his heart pounding.

  He stepped left again, foot probing, until he found the opening again. He probed with the toe of his boot until he’d circumscribed the opening. It was a fissure, two feet wide, beginning just below the surface of the water and dropping vertically through the rock floor. He stepped left until he was straddling the slash and pressed his back against the wall. He had a decision to make. He had no idea how far this main crevice extended or what might lie ahead. He pulled the GPS unit off his belt and checked the screen: According to the extrapolation buffer, he was precisely on top of the coordinates, but with a margin of error of six to eight feet horizontally and who knew how much vertically, this fissure could be what he was looking for, or it could be nothing at all.

  Then he saw it. Jutting from a quarter-inch crack in the wall before his eyes was a rock screw—a rock screw identical to the ones he’d seen aboard the Sunstar.

  HE pulled the twenty-foot coil of emergency 7mm climbing line from his waist pack, looped it through the rock screw’s eyelet, tied it off with a modified clove hitch, then grabbed the rope with both hands and lifted his feet off the ground. The screw held.

  Fisher didn’t give himself time to think, didn’t give himself time to fully acknowledge that tingle of fear in his belly, but rather stuck both feet through the fissure and began lowering himself. When the water reached his chin, he took a deep breath, ducked under the surface, and began forcing his way through the opening, wriggling his legs, then his torso, and finally his shoulders until at last he slid through and suddenly found himself hanging in the open air.

  He looked up. From this angle the fissure was shaped like a jagged, narrow triangle and through the opening he could see diffused sunlight. Water poured through, crashing over his head and shoulders before plunging into the darkness and spattering against unseen rocks below.

  Fisher extended his legs and felt his boots touch rock. He kicked off, swung out from under the waterfall, then glanced down. Ten feet down, his headlamp illuminated a flat shelf of rock off which the water was splashing. He lowered himself to it, then sideste
pped left, out from under the waterfall, and looked around. Off the side of the shelf was a natural switchback stone staircase, worn smooth by millennia of water. At the bottom was a pool, roughly oval, and measuring twenty feet by twenty feet, and across from this a gravel beach that backed up to a sheer rock wall.

  There was something different about the wall, Fisher realized. Unlike the rest of the cave and the crevice above, this wall was not mottled with brownish gray lichen but covered from top to bottom in a scabrous red growth.

  Fisher felt the skin on his arms and on the back of his neck tingle with goose bumps. And then, for reasons he’d never quite be able to explain, four words from Peter’s mystery note popped into his head: “Red . . . tri . . . my . . . cota.”

  34

  CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  FISHER sat sipping coffee in one of the leather club chairs beneath the windows and watched as the attendees, looking frustrated and haggard, wandered back into the room one by one and retook their seats at the conference table. The first hour of the meeting had been little more than a circuitous debate, going nowhere and revealing nothing, so the DCI (Director, Central Intelligence) had called for a break.

  The others present were Lambert, three biologists from the CMLS (Chemicals, Materials, and Life Sciences) Directorate of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Department of Energy’s undersecretary for science and two of her deputies, one from the office of Biological and Environmental Research, the other from High Energy Physics.

  “Okay, let’s get back to it,” the DCI called, and everyone took their seats.

  Round two, Fisher thought, his mind drifting back to that cold, dark cave . . .

  AGAINST his every instinct, after staring at the red growth for five solid minutes, he’d waded across the pool, which he found was only knee-deep, and walked up the beach to the wall. He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen, but of course the growth hadn’t leapt off the wall at him, nor did it explode into a lethal powder when he’d taken the tip of his Applegate and gently pried loose a quarter-size chunk of it from the wall and deposited it in an empty trail mix baggie he’d found in the bottom of his waist pack.