The Soul Collectors

78

Darby's eyes opened to a tunnel of bright light, the heavenly kind people reported in near-death experiences. She didn't see God, though, just a big hand holding a medical penlight directly above her right eye.

The light shut off and the hand moved away and she saw slants of revolving blue and white and red lights moving across a scratched white metal ceiling. A helicopter roared somewhere outside and when it died she heard beeping sounds and, from the south, voices.

She found she could turn her head and she did, to her right, and saw IV lines and Jack Casey. He lay next to her, unconscious, an oxygen mask strapped across his swollen, bloodied face. Nose broken and left ear mangled. A steel frame had been mounted across the front of his torso so he couldn't move — it was a Stryker frame. You put someone in that when you suspected possible paralysis and didn't want the body to move.

She wiggled her toes, felt them move along with her fingers and arms. She craned her head — a pain like nails being hammered through her skull — and saw her body lying on a simple stretcher. Her boots had been removed but the rest of her clothing, torn and dirty and bloodied, remained. Her wrists were strapped. Two more straps covered her chest and she saw one across her thighs. They had strapped her down to keep her body from moving in case she had suffered a spinal injury.

The pain turned into a jackhammer and before she sank back down to the pillow she saw the back of the ambulance, the open doors revealing patrol cars, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles parked on wild grass twisting in the wind, while above a pale milk-coloured sky filled with smoke.

Someone jumped on the back bumper and she heard heavy footsteps.

Sergey's face hovered above her own. The man looked beaten down, broken, but he didn't have a single scratch on his face. Good. The copter had made it out.

It took great effort to speak.

'Taylor,' she said in a hoarse whisper.

'En route to the hospital. You're going there too, in a moment.' Sergey touched her hand, squeezed it. 'You're fine. Probably a concussion and that's it.'

'Three.'

'Three what?'

'Third one. I keep this up I'm going to end up like Muhammad Ali.' She licked her lips. 'The listening device.'

Sergey hadn't heard her. He leaned closer and she asked him about the listening device she'd found inside the USB drive.

'The Boston techs couldn't track it down,' he said. 'My guess is they shut down their listening post from their car or wherever they were hiding.'

'Hatch?'

'Gone. Blown apart, have no idea who or what was down there.'

Sarah, she thought. Had Sarah Casey been trapped somewhere beneath that hatch?

'Same with the mass grave site where you found Jack's wife,' Sergey said. 'Explosion blew it apart, scattered shit everywhere. We've started the recovery effort, collecting body parts, evidence, whatever we can find. We almost didn't get out of there.'

'Farrell?'

'Banged up but okay.'

She looked at Casey. Sergey answered the question.

'I don't know,' he said. 'The Stryker frame's a precaution. When they found him, he was unconscious. Could be a severe concussion or something more serious, we won't know until he gets to the hospital. That's where you're both going. Keats is going to be there with you. Keats and some of his men. They'll keep an eye on you and Jack.'

'I'll come back and help you search.'

Sergey didn't answer. He had already left.

An EMT, a doughy, bald man with cheeks red from the cold, came into view and she saw him knock twice on the side of the ambulance. It drove away a moment later, sirens wailing.

The EMT moved in the space where Sergey had knelt and checked the machine beeping somewhere behind her. A moment later he checked one of the straps binding her wrists to the gurney.

'Too tight?' he asked.

She nodded and looked up at the ceiling, drowsy. The EMT loosened the strap, then cupped her hand in his own.

She lifted her head slightly. It wasn't the EMT who was holding her hand; he had moved to the other side of the gurney to shoot something inside her IV line. It was Keats. He was kneeling by the end of the gurney and his eyes were damp.

'Sorry,' he said.

She swallowed, trying to get some moisture into her mouth. 'Not your fault.'

'I'm sorry,' Keats said again, and this time he lost it, broke down and started to cry. 'They made me do it. They have my son.'

A bolt of fear exploded through her and then died as the drugs floated through her system.

'They said they'd give Luke a lobotomy,' Keats wailed. 'He's only eight, and they said they'd turn him into a vegetable like Jack's wife unless I brought you to them and I had to… I'm sorry, I had to do it, God forgive me, I'm so, so sorry.'

Darby struggled to stay awake and Keats wailed as if he were about to burst apart at the seams. The EMT clapped a hand on the Secret Service agent's shoulder, leaned in close and told him not to worry. Luke was alive and everything was going to be okay.