The Deep Zone: A Novel (42 page)

KATHAN WAS STANDING AT THE WEST EDGE OF THE CENOTE
,
his camoflouage suit all but invisible in the brush. They still had not seen
narcos, federales
, or savage Indians, but several times they had heard the sounds of firefights, long, ripping bursts of weapons on full auto, the heavier
whoomf whoomf
of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Once the fighting noise had come very close, no more than a half mile, but eventually it had faded and they’d relaxed as much as they ever did on missions like this.

Stiff and sore from sitting so long in the hide, and needing to urinate, he had made his way to the cenote. Finished, he was watching his reflection in the water. He saw a man dressed in camo, rugged face, body like a tree trunk, eyes invisible behind the dark glasses, shaved head rough now with stubble, cigarette dangling from full lips. The Marlboro was about down to the filter, so he shook a fresh one from the pack and lit it with the stub of the old
one. He tossed the butt into the water, where it hissed and went out, floating on the surface. He was smoking more now, and Stikes had been saying it could tip off people a long way away. But Kathan had not smoked at all until that day and it had about driven him crazy. He rubbed his cheeks, feeling the scruff of beard that had grown in while he and Stikes had been holed up here, waiting for whatever came out of the cave.

The waiting was starting to get to him, and that made him think of more unpleasant things to do to whoever the cave disgorged. They had eventually agreed that the best disposal would be to shoot, gut, and sink everybody except the blonde, for whom Kathan had elaborate plans. But now Kathan was not so sure he wanted to do any of them the great favor of a quick and easy death. One of his assets—given his line of work—was an ability to enjoy making other people hurt badly. In Kathan, it went beyond simply extracting information, which all special ops people had to do from time to time. It sprang from a fondness for the activity, which he anticipated the way other men might anticipate a round of golf or a good steak dinner.

So maybe we’ll do a little knife work first
, he thought, looking down at his reflection, the tip of his cigarette a red glowing dot in the water. He had never been big on gross dissection, stuff like cutting off body parts or removing eyes—in living people, anyway. It was messy and put subjects into shock. That way, they became useless, because they could feel less pain and could not communicate well. He much preferred refined techniques that he had developed himself. He knew, for instance, that the ulnar nerve on the inside of the elbow could be stimulated with something no more menacing than a hatpin. But the return on investment was immense. Penetrated, the ulnar nerve created indescribable agony without doing serious damage to the body. Another good one was the optic nerve; one ran from behind each eyeball to the brain. Those you could reach with a piece of stiff wire, going up through the nose and behind the eye socket.

He would not do those things to the woman, of course, at least not before he had taken his time exploring her in other ways, with
other instruments. After that, well, it would depend on what kind of mood he was in.

He smoked the second cigarette down, tossed it into the cenote, heard the hiss as it died. Then he looked up. His mouth dropped open. He whirled and disappeared into the forest.

Stikes had been napping on top of his sleeping bag when Kathan came rushing back.

“Move your ass. We’re on.”

Stikes stood, rubbing his eyes. “What’d you see?”

“Lights.”

“Lights?”

“Yeah. Light beams bouncing around inside the entrance to the cave. Somebody’s coming up.”

“About time,” Stikes said. “Full rig?”

“Full rig. We don’t know who’s coming out of there. Might be the big guy. Can’t take chances with that one.”

“The one who was Delta?”

“They said he was beyond Delta. Plus, this place is still crawling with
federales
and
narcos
. If we get compromised out in the open like that, we’ll need everything we have. Come on, gear up.”

They both donned full mission gear: utility belts with Beretta 9mm semiautomatic pistols and four extra twenty-round clips, tactical knives, backup switchblades, one frag grenade and one white phosphorus grenade each, Kevlar helmets with integral commo systems. They put on full-torso body armor, secured it with Velcro straps, and hung over it their chest harnesses with eight thirty-round magazines for their M4 carbines.

Grabbing their rifles, they slipped back through the forest to the tree-line hide. They settled down on their bellies and slid into the hide, an oval depression covered with a selection of branches and foliage that made it all but indistinguishable from the surrounding forest floor. From their positions, with binoculars they could watch the cave entrance as though they were lying just twenty yards instead of two hundred from it.

They watched. And waited. And watched. “What the hell are they doing?” Stikes asked. “I’m sweating like a pig, man.”

“Here we go.” Kathan’s eyes were pressed to his binoculars. “It’s
her
.”

Stikes brought up his own binoculars. “How many others?”

“Hang on.”

They waited. They watched Hallie come out of the cave, cover her eyes from the blinding sunlight, stumble around like a drunk. They saw her drop her pack and scan the meadow and tree line. She looked right at them, and her eyes kept on going.

“Can’t tell much with that suit on.” Kathan, frustrated.

“Looks like she’s eating a candy bar or something,” Stikes said. “She’s drinking out of a red flask. They carry that kind of stuff in caves? Should we snatch her now?”

“No. We’re two hundred mikes away. She sees us, bang, she’s back in the cave. Or into the forest. Either way makes a lot more work for us, exposed. Bad way to roll around here, you know?” Kathan was quiet, considering.

“So … what then? Suppose she calls in an evac team or something.”

“I been thinking about that, too. She couldn’t do that from inside the cave. Only out here. And she’ll have to use a radio. Can’t let that happen. She picks up anything that looks like a radio, we’ll have to take her out. Can you line her up and stay on her?”

“Roger that.” Stikes brought his M4 forward and settled it onto the rocks he had earlier arranged into a shooting rest.

“You got her?” Kathan asked.

“I have her,” Stikes said, not moving his eye from the telescopic sight.

“Head shot, if you have to take it.”

“I said I have her. Two hundred mikes is nothing.”

“I’ll spot for you, stay on her with the binocs. Keep those crosshairs centered.”

“I can put one in her ear from here.”

They waited, sweating in the heat, besieged by biting insects from the air and crawling ones from the forest floor. As hides went, it was turning out to be unusually hellish.

Minutes passed. Stikes watched through the scope, crosshairs centered on Hallie’s head, the pad of his index finger putting two pounds of pressure on the M4’s trigger, which would fire with four pounds. Sweat burned his eyes. “I don’t see any others. You?”

“No.”

“You think
she
did all of them? Left them in the cave?” Stikes sounded skeptical, but he knew stranger things had happened.

“No. I think the cave did them.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Stikes saw Kathan lick his lips, massage his crotch. “I hope to hell we don’t have to shoot her.” He turned to Stikes. “Send the signal.”

“Not good. We don’t have it yet. The stuff from the cave.”

Kathan spat. “What do you think, she’s gonna kill us and take that stuff back herself? I don’t think so. Send the signal.”

“Kathan …”

“The sooner we let them know we have the stuff, the sooner they get our money flowing to the right places. I want it waiting for me when I get back.”

Stikes still didn’t think it was the right thing to do, but Kathan was the mission leader. From a uniform pocket Stikes took a sat transmitter. It was black, the size of a pack of cigarettes, and had a telescoping antenna, which Stikes pulled out to full extension.

“You sure about this?” he said one last time.

“Do it.”

The device had one purpose only: to send an encrypted data burst to a certain satellite, which would relay it to an intended recipient on earth. In this case, that was Gray. Stikes lifted a hinged cover, exposing a red button the size of a dime. He hesitated briefly, then depressed the button and held it for five seconds.

“Done,” he said.

“Done
deal
,” Kathan said.

STAGGERING FROM EXHAUSTION, EYES POURING TEARS FROM
the sudden glare, face bruised and swollen and with several cuts oozing blood, Hallie came out of the cave into the world of light. She had no idea how long she had been moving since the encounter with Cahner. Many, many hours, more than she could remember. It was daylight—that was all she knew and all she needed to know.

Her body hummed with pain. But she was out. She was out and she had the moonmilk. Her eyes would gradually calm down, the cuts would heal, the bruises would fade, the bumps and sprains would ease. Normally, when she came out of a cave, she felt a mixture of exhilaration and sadness, thrilled by the adventure and sad that it was ending. But not this time.

Stepping through the mouth of the cave had been like crossing the finish line of a marathon, squared. She had focused so hard, and for so long, on reaching the goal that when she finally made it, everything
fell apart. It was all she could to do shrug off her pack, let it fall, and drop down beside it.

For a while she just sat in a fog of exhaustion and pain, eyes blinking against the light, unfocused, unseeing. After a long time, thoughts began to coalesce. She thought of the EPIRB in her pack, an emergency signaling device, employing a secure frequency similar to those downed military pilots used to call for rescue. She had a radio, too. Bowman had given one to each team member. He had said to first activate the EPIRB, alert the extrication team, then wait for comm on the radio. She opened her pack and started rooting around, trying to find the EPIRB. Then she stopped. It was daylight. They would not come in daylight. There was no point in risking detection now, when they could not come. She would have to hide until nightfall.

Back into the cave. Oh God
.

But she did not move. She had become little more than the collection of her primal needs, hunger and thirst chief among them just now. She leaned toward her pack again and rummaged in it for something to eat or drink. She found a crushed energy bar and an empty water bottle. Bowman’s flask caught her eye, so she took that out.
Little early for a drink, but what the hell
.

She munched some of the energy bar and washed it down with a sip from the flask. The fiery rum burned taken straight like this, but it was better than anything she had ever tasted, good enough to cut through some of the fatigue like a light beam through fog and kindle a little spark in her brain.

Easy, girl. Won’t take much to get you stumbling drunk. Can’t have that
.

She put the flask away, stood, hefted her pack, and turned toward the cave. Then a glint caught her eye, all the way across the meadow, sunlight glancing off the cenote’s still, shining surface. She looked at the water, kept looking, and felt something like great thirst arising in her. She was thirsty and would drink, but this was an urge of another kind: to feel water’s cleaning, healing touch all over her
body. Hallie was filthy. “Disgusting” was the word that came to her mind. She had not bathed for more than a week. She couldn’t remember when she had run out of toilet paper, but it had been some time ago. After she had passed through Batshit Lake on the way out, there’d been no waterfall to shower beneath, so the stuff was drying and caking, giving off an unholy stink, layered over all the accumulated dirt and sweat and mud from the previous week. Some of her cuts had crusted and scabbed, and each one of those felt like a nail stuck through her flesh. She looked at the cenote and thought of all that cool, clear water. Thought of how good, no, how
exquisite
it would feel to wash again in pure water, to be
clean
, to actually see her own skin, to have the searing pains cooled and soothed.

“It will only take ten minutes.” She said this out loud and headed for the cenote. At its edge she dropped her pack, removed her boots and socks, stripped off the filthy caving suit. She took off her red long underwear and, wearing only a sport bra and panties, walked to the pool’s rocky lip, and dove straight in, entering with barely a splash.

It felt every bit as good as she had imagined it would.
Better
. She could not think of a word powerful enough to describe the feeling, in fact. The water was cool but not cold, caressing, cleansing, and she swam easily, relishing the smooth flow against her skin. She stroked out to the middle of the cenote and floated there, rubbing her face and pulling fingers through her hair. She turned over on her back and let the water hold her up, moving her legs and arms in great arcs, as though making a snow angel, limbering stiff muscles, relishing the water’s lovely touch.