The Medusa Plot

  The boy turned white as a sheet. “Me? I can’t cut Nellie! What if I do something wrong?”

  “What if we do nothing at all?” Fiske countered.

  “Let me do it!” Reagan exclaimed. “My hand is as steady as anybody’s.”

  Alistair shook his head. “I admire your courage, child. But Phoenix has the touch that’s required.”

  “Just so long as I don’t have to,” Natalie quavered, wrapping herself in her own arms. “The whole thing is so — medieval!”

  Nellie’s weak voice came from the bedroom. “I’m shot; I’m not deaf.” She had been drifting in and out of consciousness as her fever rose and fell.

  “All right, I’ll do the surgery,” Phoenix agreed. “But someone has to tell me every move.”

  “You have my word,” Fiske promised. He did not bother to mention that removing the scalpel from the dumbwaiter had been the first time he’d ever touched one.

  They tore apart a sheet to make bandannas that served as surgical masks. The bed was their operating table, simply because no one had the courage to move the patient. Phoenix entered the room, his hands as washed and sterilized as he could make them.

  It was time.

  Nellie did her best to smile at him. “You can do this, kiddo.” She watched his eyes fill with tears. “And no crying. You have to see what you’re doing.”

  He picked the scalpel off the tray and Nellie bit hard on the gag in her mouth. It was all the comfort she was going to get. This operation would be without anesthesia.

  Phoenix was amazed at how easily the scalpel cut through flesh. The gag muffled Nellie’s cry of pain. She tried to squirm away, but Reagan pressed her down to the mattress, keeping her firmly in place. Blood covered the incision, and Fiske mopped it away with a fistful of the sheet fabric.

  “A second cut,” Alistair suggested, observing from a step back so his twitching arm wouldn’t jostle Phoenix. “Forming an X. It will open wider and allow you to get inside.”

  And although he wasn’t sure he could even hold the scalpel, Phoenix did as he was told. More blood. He felt the top of his head rising toward the ceiling and fought it back down again.

  Of course there’s blood! When you cut people, they bleed!

  He had to keep it together. Everybody was counting on him.

  “Tweezers,” Fiske instructed, none too steady himself.

  Almost in slow motion, Phoenix set the bloody scalpel down and picked up the tweezers. He could hear Nellie’s moaned complaint as he probed into the flesh of her torn shoulder.

  “I don’t feel it,” he said, hysteria rising.

  “Move the instrument around,” Fiske coached. “Gently.”

  Phoenix was sweating now. He could feel the moisture pouring down his face, stinging his eyes. On the other side of the bed, Ted had gotten up from his chair and was pacing the room, hugging the wall. Natalie was curled up in a corner, whimpering. Even Reagan had lost her Holt bravado and was looking on in awe and dread.

  All at once, Phoenix became aware of something small and hard coming into contact with one tip of the tweezers. “There it is!”

  “Excellent,” Fiske approved. “Now pull it out slowly.”

  Phoenix worked his wrist and fingers. “I can’t get a grip on it.”

  “Keep trying,” Alistair encouraged.

  Desperately, Phoenix attempted to maneuver both tips of the instrument around the bullet. He knew that each move caused Nellie unimaginable pain, but he could not grasp the target. “It’s no use,” he sobbed. “And my hand is going numb.”

  In a frenzy, Nellie shouted something into the gag, but no one could understand her.

  “I beg your pardon, child?” queried Alistair.

  Nellie spat out the rag and rasped, “Get the Kabra chick!”

  “Natalie?” Fiske exclaimed. “She’s fallen completely to pieces.”

  “Get her!” Nellie demanded. “Anybody with eyebrows plucked like that knows how to use a tweezers!”

  Reagan bounded across the room and came back with a shivering, mewling Natalie.

  “I can’t!” she wheezed.

  Fiske poured alcohol over the girl’s beautifully manicured fingers. “You must.”

  Still protesting, her eyes tightly shut, she took over the instrument from Phoenix. “I can’t do it! You can’t make me — oh!” she said in sudden surprise. “This?” And when she pulled the tweezers out of the wound, the tips were firmly grasping a flattened, blood-slimed bullet.

  Nellie laughed — and promptly fainted.

  CHAPTER 24

  The hulking SUV’s headlights illuminated rocky terrain and endless trees. The Sentinel range of upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains was paradise for winter skiers and summer boaters and hikers. But it was a navigator’s nightmare, with narrow winding roads and few signs.

  Ian Kabra rolled up his window. “My God, what’s that smell?”

  Behind the wheel, Sinead laughed. “It’s called fresh air. Growing up in London, you’ve probably never breathed it before.”

  “And I hope I never breathe it again,” Ian said feelingly. “Who would put a mobile phone factory where the closest civilization is a petrol station thirty miles away?”

  “Someone who wants to keep his factory top secret,” came William McIntyre’s voice over the SUV’s Bluetooth communications system. He and Evan Tolliver were monitoring the quartet’s progress from the attic of Grace’s house. “Whether DeOssie Industries is connected to the Vespers, or Vesper One is merely a client, a low profile serves the company and its customers well.”

  Jonah emitted a loud yawn. “Are we there yet, yo?”

  “Are we boring you, Jonah?” Sinead demanded. “I apologize if rescuing our hostages isn’t cool enough to get you on Entertainment Tonight.”

  The star straightened in his seat. “What I’m saying is, I’ve got my game face on, and I’m good to go. Enough playing around — let’s find our people and end this tonight!”

  Hamilton leaned forward and gave the GPS system a flick with his sausagelike finger. “This thing must be busted. Either that or we’re going someplace that doesn’t exist.”

  “Impossible,” Sinead said confidently. “We’re running off the Gideon satellite. We get occasional interference from the aurora borealis, but I haven’t seen that for a few weeks.”

  They crested a rise, and there it was, in the hollow between rolling hills — a low, square building, ghostly gray in the moonlight.

  “Is that it?” asked Hamilton.

  “It probably isn’t the local opera house,” groaned Ian.

  “Why’s it so empty?” Jonah wondered.

  “It is after midnight,” Sinead pointed out.

  “That’s weird,” Evan commented from the comm. center. “A place like that should never be completely deserted. They’d have security.”

  “The parking lot’s a ghost town,” Hamilton supplied. “And the factory’s dead black.”

  “That’s a good thing,” Sinead reminded them. “After all, we’re breaking in.”

  They left the SUV in a gap in the trees and approached the main gate cautiously on foot. As Sinead turned her attention to the security keypad, Hamilton leaned against the fencing, which swung wide under his weight.

  “Yo,” mused Jonah, “would you buy secure technology from a fool who doesn’t remember to lock his own gate?”

  “It is highly irregular,” came McIntyre’s voice, now from their cell phones. “Proceed with caution.”

  It was eerie walking by flashlight through acres of parking lot without a single vehicle in sight.

  Jonah spoke what everybody was thinking. “Wouldn’t it be Twilight Zone if the door was open, too?”

  Hamilton tried the knob. It didn’t budge.

  Ian stepped forward and examined the lock. “Natalie’s diary has better security than this.” He produced a credit card and slipped it between the latch and the jamb. There was a click, and the door swung wide.

  The f
oursome tensed for the wail of an alarm. It didn’t happen.

  They scanned the walls and ceiling for motion detectors and surveillance cameras. There was nothing. Sinead produced a small spray bottle and pumped a cloud of water vapor into the air. No geometric grid of red laser lines appeared. In fact, there seemed to be no security at all.

  Hamilton held up his cell phone to stream a view of the office to the comm. center. “You guys see anything we don’t?”

  Four flashlight beams played around the room. There were identical employee cubicles, a coffee station, water cooler, and snack machine. Productivity charts and job assignment boards covered the walls.

  “It looks like where Dilbert works,” was Evan’s comment.

  “Word,” Jonah agreed. “If I had to nine-to-five it in a place like this, I’d off myself.”

  “Not everyone lives the high life, Jonah,” McIntyre reminded him gently.

  “I did once,” Ian said wistfully. “Those were the days.”

  “Let’s keep our heads in the game,” Sinead suggested. “Look at this place — there’s still work on the desks, pictures of people’s kids —”

  “Here’s a half-eaten sandwich,” put in Hamilton. “I wonder if it’s still good.”

  “The snack machine is stocked,” Sinead went on, “the assignment board is up-to-date. What hit this place?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Ian mused. “Could be they’ll be back to their pathetic little jobs in the morning all right and tight.”

  “No chance,” Evan interjected from Attleboro. “There should be cleaning crews and at least one night watchman. These people provide phones to the CIA! It’s not reasonable that they’d leave the place unattended like this.”

  “You think we’re being set up?” asked Jonah.

  “Not necessarily,” Ian reasoned. “Futuristic mobile phones, futuristic security. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t here.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sinead decided. “Security or not, trap or not, the hostages could be as close as a secret compartment, maybe even right under our feet. We have to search this place, and I mean inch by inch.”

  The four began a methodical sweep of the building — every drawer, every closet, every file cabinet. From the office, they moved to the factory floor, past workstations, conveyor belts, and towering shelves of raw materials. They operated mostly in silence, holding ultrasensitive sound detectors, hoping to catch a hint of speech or movement coming from some remote or hidden area of the building.

  “Freeze!” Evan exclaimed suddenly. “One of you — Hamilton, I think — take a step back! There — in the bin on the middle shelf.”

  Hamilton moved his cell phone closer to provide a better view. “This one?”

  “Jackpot! Sinead — go and have a look. I think that’s the missing charger we’ve been working on.”

  In less than a minute, Sinead was at Hamilton’s side. She stared into the bin. “Great. I’ll grab a bunch so we’ve got some spares.”

  “Yeah, great,” Hamilton echoed without much enthusiasm. He had come here to rescue Reagan and the others. A charger seemed a poor substitute, because he was beginning to doubt there was anyone to be found in this place.

  For half an hour they scoured the facility without result. There was a bitter truth to be faced. The hostages were not here, nor was there any clue linking this deserted factory to the Vespers. This had been a good guess, but the wrong one.

  Depressed and defeated, they reassembled in the office.

  Even Ian was surprised by the depth of his disappointment. “There’s only one thing worse than coming to a wasteland like this, and that’s coming here for nothing.”

  “At least we got the chargers,” Sinead sighed. “We can send a couple to Amy and Dan in the morning. Let’s get back to the car.”

  Hamilton approached the snack dispenser. “I’m going to grab some Cheez Doodles for the ride home. My dad taught me this — watch.” He wrapped his massive arms around the machine and tipped it up slightly. Then he made a product choice with his elbow and smashed his head against the coin slot. Chip bags began to rain down.

  “Sick skills, cuz,” Jonah approved. “Pick me up a Baby Ruth —”

  An enormous explosion rocked the building on its foundation.

  “Hit the deck!” cried Sinead.

  The four dropped to the floor just as a wave of flame passed over them, searing them with its heat. There was a second blast and the file cabinets against the far wall disappeared in a fireball.

  “The door!” Ian croaked.

  They were halfway there when a series of charges went off in front of them, blocking the exit. More explosions detonated all around. And then an even more terrifying sound — the roar of a fire blazing out of control.

  “The factory!” Sinead howled, leading the rush from the burning office down the four steps to the manufacturing plant.

  But no sooner had their feet touched the concrete floor than a massive blast took out the storage shelving, sending a barrage of burning electronic components raining down on them. From all four cell phones came the frantic voices of McIntyre and Evan.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve lost you!”

  No one could hear the words from Attleboro as a cannonade of explosions engulfed the entire factory.

  One by one, the handsets went dead.

  “This is not cool!” croaked Jonah in a voice none of his fans would have recognized.

  A piece of suspended ceiling tile landed on Ian’s shoulder and he had to shrug off his jacket and beat the fire out.

  The flames towered over them, growing ever closer, sucking the oxygen out of the air. Breathing became difficult as smoke and glowing embers billowed around them.

  “How do we get out of here?” Hamilton gasped.

  They stood, paralyzed with shock — all but Sinead Starling. The brilliant Ekat ran for a large forklift parked nearby. She jumped behind the wheel just as a heavy piece of metal shelving hit the floor right where she’d been standing a split second before. A turn of the key, and the tow motor roared to life.

  She steered for the others, shouting, “Get in — now!”

  Ian, Hamilton, and Jonah piled into the cab, nearly crushing the driver. They were already picking up speed, rolling through the inferno.

  “Are you crazy?” Ian squealed. “There’s no way out!”

  “We can’t stay here!” Sinead kept on driving, shoulders hunched over the controls. They squeezed together even closer in an attempt to avoid the flames that surrounded them on all sides.

  At last, her destination became clear — the metal overhead door of the factory’s loading bay.

  “You’re losing it!” Jonah rasped. “We’re not going to get through that!”

  The forklift’s top speed was perhaps ten miles per hour, but amid the maelstrom of smoke and fire, it felt like they were barreling out of control.

  “Hang on!” Sinead ordered.

  A bare instant before impact, a final explosion blew the heavy gate clean off. It toppled outward, forming a ramp from the loading bay down to the driveway. The forklift rumbled down the broken door to ground level and keeled over on its side.

  The four occupants wriggled out and hit the pavement running.

  In the comm. center in Attleboro, Evan whipped out his cell phone and dialed 911. “I need the police and the fire department!” he babbled. “In upstate New York! The nearest town is —”

  In a single motion, William McIntyre snatched the handset away, threw it to the floor, and ground it to pieces with his heel.

  Evan was aghast. “What did you do that for? Now the cops won’t know where to go!”

  “Precisely,” the lawyer said calmly.

  “But our people need help!” Evan wailed. “They could get killed!”

  “Amy was right,” McIntyre told him. “You are not a Cahill. Or you would know that Cahill business is not a matter for the police or the fire department or any
other outside organization. There are hostages to be considered, and snooping from the authorities could add to their danger.”

  Evan stared, his heart thumping against his rib cage. What had he gotten himself into when he’d become involved with Amy Cahill?

  The four cousins, scorched and disheveled, watched from the deserted parking lot as the DeOssie factory burned to the ground.

  “That was some hard-core James Bond back there.” Jonah praised Sinead, his voice trembling despite years of vocal training. “How did you know the door was going to blow?”

  She looked at him, shamefaced. “I didn’t. I just figured it was better than burning.” She pulled a fistful of cell phone chargers out of her pocket. “It’s a good thing we took these. I don’t think we’re going to be able to order replacements anytime soon.”

  Hamilton opened the snack bag that was still in his shaking hand. He popped a Cheez Doodle into his mouth. “Hey, are these barbecue flavor?”

  “They are now,” Ian told him.

  “We all would be, if it wasn’t for Sinead,” Jonah pointed out. “This is the last time I underestimate Vesper One. When homey sets a trap, he’s not playing.”

  There was a loud bang, and a window blew, glass spraying uncomfortably close. They all hurried toward the gate and their SUV.

  Ian, limping a little, lagged behind. A small scrap of charred paper blew from the wreckage and landed at his feet.

  He would have ignored it but for the insignia in the corner of the torn page. It was unmistakable to him — two snake heads on a red crest, the symbol of the Lucian branch of the Cahill family.

  Ian’s branch.

  He picked it up and jammed it into his pocket.

  CHAPTER 25

  Their last hotel in Florence, the Ilario, had been awarded five stars and was celebrated as the finest in the city. Their current lodging was not mentioned in the guidebook and didn’t even have a name.

  The sign read CAMERE, which meant, simply, rooms. Sandwiched between a pawn shop and a sewage treatment plant, it offered neither maid service nor a working elevator. What it did offer — besides cockroaches of remarkable size — was anonymity. No passports were required at check-in. Few questions were asked of the young American girl traveling with an even younger American boy. Fake names were completely acceptable. Amy and Dan Cahill were wanted by Interpol; Mark and Caroline Farley were merely handed the key to room 6.