Public Enemy

55

Cooper found the first-aid kit in his jumpsuit and located an Ace bandage.

He tackled Márquez and pinned him to the mucky floor of the cavern-thinking, as he did it, of his episode with Jesus Madrid in the velociraptor’s Manchester United-inspired workout room. He held Márquez down so he couldn’t squirm away, wrapping the Ace bandage around the leader’s mouth, winding it tightly behind his head and securing it with a few strips of the adhesive tape that came along with the bandage in the kit. He used the tape to “cuff” Márquez’s hands behind his back.

Then he pulled Márquez to his feet. He swung his assault rifle around to the front-figuring the MP5 would put on a better show than a handgun-and pocketed the Browning where he could quickly snatch it with his off hand.

“After you, Señor Presidente.”

He offered Márquez a hard kick in the ass to emphasize his point.

“Take us back in the way you came out. And don’t worry,” he said, “you’ve made your point that you don’t give two shits about dying. Rest assured I’m skilled at causing great pain with my choice of where to plug you full of holes. One at a time.”

He knew it was a mostly idle threat.

Márquez led him around enough corners to get Cooper feeling dizzy. He worked at keeping the ideal distance between them, close enough to grab Márquez the minute a guard came into view, but far enough away to prevent the guy from elbowing him in the chin. He learned the best way of using his flashlight was to pin it between his left arm and rib cage, the way he had while copying the names from the marble slab. He kept the beam trained past Márquez so he could see-and use the beam to blind, if necessary-the first security man to make an appearance.

A set of musty stairs appeared, and Cooper could see a bud of hesitation in Márquez’s step. The president hadn’t meant to reveal it and Cooper would take and use the error to his advantage. Another door, recently constructed like the one guarding the entrance to the crypt, stood at the top of the stairs.

Cooper poked Márquez in the shoulder with the end of his assault rifle.

“Open the fucking door,” he said in a caustic whisper.

He felt the temperature and humidity conditions shift the instant Márquez opened the door-this door led into the house.

Cooper closed the gap as the door swung over its jamb, shoving himself quickly against Márquez and propelling them both into and through the doorway faster than his quarry expected. This kept Márquez from doing any yelling or screaming-

And before the two guards, positioned on opposing sides of the wine cellar door, were even able to figure out what the hell the president was doing with an Ace bandage around his head, Cooper processed the scene-

Guard to the left. Guard to the right-slightly behind the opening door. You’re in the wine cellar-walls full of racks. Door opposite him-closed. Nobody else in the room-

The first bullet down the silenced barrel of his MP5 caught the edge of the first guard’s eyebrow and sent a chunk of his skull, and some of the brain behind it, into a row of Syrah. As he pivoted, Cooper delivered a savage kick with his combat boot into Márquez’s shin to keep him at bay. The second guard couldn’t decide between radioing in this disturbance and defending himself, walkie-talkie wrist rising from waist to mouth, gun arm reaching to take aim-neither act making sufficient headway before Cooper’s second bullet tore through the bridge of his nose and plastered an airborne mist of red, white, and gray across a pane of glass protecting a cooled section of Sauvignon Blanc.

He repeated the cycle of gunshots, ensuring that neither man, as he fell, would find enough remaining consciousness to sound an alarm. Then he reached out and picked up Márquez by the collar and set him back on his feet. He jammed the hot barrel of the assault rifle into Márquez’s spine and listened.

He wondered how much racket he’d made. He saw that the Maglite had fallen from beneath his underarm, that the armor-piercing shrapnel, or skull fragments, or whatever, had broken a few bottles of the Syrah. Plus, Márquez had crumpled from the kick to the shin and the guards had fallen like redwoods.

He stood, waiting-listening for another pealing two-tone shrill, or the crackle of radio static, or the shuffle of hustling footsteps. There came no sound but the whirring of some climate-control device doing its thing in the cellar.

I need a fucking fax machine.

Time was running out-it wouldn’t be long before his usual half-ass sort of plan caved in on itself.

“Let’s go, King,” he said, and shoved him toward the door that would take them into the house.

The phone on Laramie’s bedside table jangled noisily.

She came over to the table, fumbled the phone in her first attempt to answer, then finally managed to lift the receiver to her ear-at which point Julie Laramie encountered the second strange call to greet her in the same twelve-hour span.

“Yeah-”

The screeching blare of a fax tone assaulted her ear before stopping abruptly. A rattle-and-bang sound was followed by a harsh, almost unrecognizable whisper, spoken so closely into the microphone on the other end of the line it was difficult to tell it was a human being doing the talking.

But Laramie could still tell who it was.

“Goddammit, I didn’t even think-I need a fax machine, what the fuck is the fax number at your hotel?”

The words from Cooper’s noisy whisper were bundled together like a ball of yarn. A rocket science degree was not necessary for Laramie to understand that she would need to hustle.

“Um, Christ, fax, ah, room Fourteen,” she said, “dial the same number and hit fourteen instead of-”

The line was already dead.

Laramie ran from her room, down the sidewalk outside the row of rooms, and banged on her guide’s door. The numeral 14 was affixed in cheap plastic to its exterior.

She barged in when he opened the door, heading for the fax machine she knew him to keep on his side of the two-room suite setup.

“It ring yet?” she asked her guide, to no reply-but then the fax machine answered her question, bleating out a gurgling ring, then going silent.

Then it rang again.

“Christ,” she said, “how many rings do we have this set for-”

The machine picked up and she could hear the screeching data-feed noise again, followed by silence, and then the machine’s status screen told her it was RECEIVING.

“Our operative,” she said, “has surfaced,” and she and her guide stood over the machine as it began printing page one, announced it was receiving the second page, and repeated the cycle for a third time before declaring with a bleep that the data feed had been halted, at which point Laramie heard Cooper’s whisper on the machine’s speaker.

“Goddamn this thing, how does it work-”

She snatched the machine’s receiver from its cradle. She could see the long list of names on the fax printouts, all seemingly Central American native in their spelling, hastily scribbled on a smaller sheet of paper highlighted by darker shading outside its rim on the pages-

“You’re alive,” Laramie said.

“Not for long. I sent three pages, you get ’em all?”

“Got ’em. Wait a minute, are you telling me-”

“Those are your sleepers. All one hundred and seventeen of them.”

“What? How could you-”

“These are their original names, obviously. So you’ll need to track ’em backward-or whatever way you analyst types and the Three Stooges you have working for you track those sorts of things.”

“My God,” Laramie said, looking at her guide, who offered her a shrug. She handed him the list and he went immediately over to the seat in front of his laptop and jumped on his telephone.

Laramie thought through what this meant as quickly as she could. It would be a challenge working backward against the clock, with only the original names and no places of original residence, let alone photographs to work from-but Cooper had just put them ninety-nine names closer than where they’d been a minute ago-one-seventeen minus Achar, the fifteen captured sleepers identified by them and the “other cell,” and the Illinois and Yakima bombers. Local records with photographs would be the first, and hardest step, depending on whether Márquez had recruited from multiple Central and South American nations-

“He sent the activation by television ad,” Cooper said, “and that’s all I’ve got, except for the fact that I’ve got our pal Raul here in a headlock. One question-just in case, against every probability imaginable, I make it out.”

“A headlock-what? What is it?”

“Yes or no answer. No maybes.”

“Fine. What is it?”

“You agree?”

“Fine!”

“Mr. Grand Poobah,” Cooper’s whisper said.

“What?”

“You let half of it slip-only once, but I need to know. For my own reasons, and don’t ask. Is Lou Ebbers your boss?”

Despite the evident circumstances in motion on the other end of the line, Laramie hesitated. What in the hell is he going to do with-

“No fucking maybes, Laramie. And have some goddamn faith.”

One-Mississippi-

“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

She flicked her eyes in the direction of her guide, who was busy at his workstation.

Then she said, “I’m glad you’ve made it-so far, I mean.”

“‘So far’ being the key phrase,” he said. “I wouldn’t be throwing me any parties anytime soon.”

A few snaps of static came.

“See you around,” he said.

Then the fax machine announced with another bleep that the line had gone dead.