The Heaven Trilogy (122 page)

He sprinted on his toes, directly toward the glowing face, knowing the light would blind the man momentarily, knowing the wind carried away what little sound he made. He covered the twenty yards in the time it took the guard to light his cigarette and draw deep once, with his head tilted back.

Carrying his full momentum at the man, Shannon slammed his left palm under the raised chin and snatched the man's knife from its sheath in one abrupt motion. He lunged forward after the back-pedaling man, stepped into the reeling body, flipped the blade in his hand, and jerked it across the exposed neck before the man had gathered his senses for a cry.

He hadn't planned the steps to the attack—he'd simply seen the opportunity and gone. Blood flowed from the guard's jugular, spilling to the stone. The dangling cigarette momentarily lit the man's bulging eyes and then tumbled from his lips. The guard crumpled in a heap and then flopped to his back, his boots twitching between Shannon's spread legs.

What's happened to you, man? You're a sicko.

Yeah, a sicko.

Shannon reached for the man's rifle, wrenched it free, snatched an extra clip from his belt, and ran for a large boulder ten meters to his right. He slid to his knees, panting.

No sounds of pursuit carried in the night. He quickly checked the weapon in his hands, found a round chambered, and snapped the firing selection to single shot. It was an AK-47; he'd fired a thousand rounds through one like it down on the range. From long distances the weapon could only scatter hopeful fire, but within a couple hundred meters, Shannon could place a slug wherever he wanted.

He slid up the boulder and studied the camp, no more than seventy meters away. The men still talked around the fire. The helicopters were old Bell machines, identical to the one Steve Smith used to shuttle supplies to the plantation.

A spark ignited in Shannon's mind. “You know why they never used the Bell in conflict?” Steve's voice came. “Because of the fuel tank,” and he'd pointed to the pod hanging on the tail boom, just under the main engine. “That there tank's made of steel.” He'd smiled. “You know why steel's no good?”

Shannon had shaken his head.

“Because steel gives off sparks. It had better stop a bullet, 'cause if the bullet goes through you're gonna have one heck of an explosion.
Kaboom!”
Steve had laughed.

Shannon drew a deep breath and lined his sights up with the exposed fuel tank under the tail boom of the old Bell. He could easily place a bullet into that skin.
Kaboom!
And what if it didn't explode? They would be over him like a swarm of bees.

You just killed a man back there, didn't you? Yeah, and you still have his blood
on your fingers
.
You're definitely a sicko.

Shannon fought a sudden surge of nausea. He closed his eyes and fought for control. The black fog swarmed his mind. For a moment he felt disoriented, and then he was okay. He glanced around in the night. Yeah, he was okay.

He snugged his finger on the trigger, but it shook badly and he took another deep breath. He applied a little pressure to the trigger.

The Kalashnikov suddenly jerked in his arms, crackling in the calm night air.

A thundering detonation lit the dark sky, mushrooming with fire. The helicopter's tail section bucked ten feet into the air, flipped once as it rose, reached its apex, and slowly fell. He removed the rifle's butt from his cheek and gazed, open mouthed, at the sight. Then the flaming wreckage crashed to the ground, and pandemonium erupted in the camp.

Shannon quickly pressed his eye back to the sights and swung the weapon to his left. Black silhouettes jumped about, scrambling for the rifles. Shannon exhaled, lined the sights with one figure, and pulled the trigger.

The gun jerked against his shoulder. The man fell to his knees and threw his arms to his face, shrieking.

Then Shannon began to shoot on count—one, two, three, four—each time pulling the trigger, as if the dancing silhouettes were clay pigeons and he in a head-to-head contest with his father. Five, six, seven, eight . . . On all counts but one—count six, he thought—a man staggered.

When he reached the twelfth count, the firing pin clicked on an empty chamber. The guerrillas fled toward the jungle now. Shannon yanked out the spent magazine, slammed another into the rifle, chambered the first round, and swung the weapon to bear on the fleeing men. He squeezed off shots in succession, barely shifting the rifle to acquire each new target. All but one lurched forward midstride and fell to the ground short of the jungle. Only one escaped, number seventeen. Two, counting number six.

Shannon's heart hammered in his chest. Adrenaline flogged at his muscles and he staggered to his feet, his eyes peeled in the night, his fingers trembling.

He blinked. Where was he? For a horrible moment he didn't know. He was on the top.

A voice groaned near the burning, twisted wreck that had been a helicopter, and it all came back like a flood. He'd killed them, hadn't he?
Sicko Sula
.

He threw the weapon down and tore for the trees. He would go now, he thought. To the river. To safety. And then he didn't know to what.

FOR THE fourth time the switch to the strange visions had been thrown, and Tanya was floating above her house. Each time, her father had worked alone down there. Each time, his voice was the only sound she heard. Each time, it said,
“Look beyond your own eyes,”
as if it was information she needed.

Well now, what exactly could that mean? For starters, she could not
look
anywhere—she was trapped in her black box, dying. She could most definitely not look
beyond,
because there was no getting beyond the box. That was the whole problem. Father was saying look beyond, but he had locked the box. And as for the
own eyes
bit, well, she wasn't positive she had eyes any longer.

So the dream was nonsense. Unless it wasn't a dream. What if she were really seeing her father down there and he was really telling her to look? Imagine that! Now, what would that be? A vision, maybe?

Tanya heard a thumping below her, down on the ground near the house. Then it occurred to her that the sound came from her own chest, not from the dream or vision. Her breathing thickened and she might have shifted, but she'd lost touch with most of her body so she couldn't be certain. The parts she could feel moaned in protest. Her throbbing arm, her aching head, her bent spine.

If this were a vision or some episode of reality, then she should follow her father's suggestions, shouldn't she? She should look beyond her own eyes. Maybe look through the dove's eyes, if indeed this was a dove through which she peered. And what could she see? The clearing, her father, the house with all its framework.

Look
beyond
.

A thought struck her and she dove toward the house. Her heart now filled her ears. Why hadn't she thought of this earlier? If this were real, then she should be able to see the closet that Father had built. And the crate below. Her crate. Maybe she was already in the crate!

She swooped low and flew between the rafters—through the living room to the framed hall. The stick closet looked tiny without siding. The box rested in the floor, minus its trapdoor. Sure enough. There it was. Her box. Or an image of her box. Either way it didn't matter—she didn't see anything new here. Only a box that should have been labeled
The box in which I will lock up
my only daughter until she dies
.

She hovered for a moment and then fluttered down into the closet—into the box. She might as well see the thing well lit. Knowing what kind of box sealed her fate might be a juicy tidbit, a welcome morsel in her last moments.

The box looked very much like the one her fingers had helped her imagine. Except one small detail. There was a hole in one end.
Father has not yet covered
this one end
, she thought.
He'd better cover it. It won't do to have snakes
crawling through that there tunnel, 'cause someday I'm gonna be in this box.

Tunnel.

The image of a tunnel hit her head on, like a sledge to the forehead. Her head rang like a gong, setting off a vibration that hurt her teeth and buzzed down her spine.

Instantly Tanya awoke, wide eyed, gasping raggedly. For a brief moment she stared into darkness, trying to remember what had woken her. Then she jerked upright and spun to the wall at her back. The episode had revealed this wall as a door leading into a tunnel—she knew that now. It was the kind of door that snugged in place. She would have to pull at it, the one thing she had not attempted in her despairing hours.

Tanya whimpered and scratched at the stubborn wall. And what if the whole dream had been just that? Hallucinations spun by a despondent mind. She dug at the wood, willing her nails to find purchase. A long sliver ran under her right index fingernail and she gasped. Suddenly furious, she shifted back and slammed her right heel into the base of the wall.

It caved.

Warm, stale air filled her nostrils. It
was
a tunnel!

Quaking with anticipation, she ignored the passing thought that creatures might have taken up residence in the passage. She yanked at the twisted wall, slid it behind her, and scrambled into the earthen hole.

Like a wounded dog, she dragged herself on all fours away from the box. Away from that death crate. Where the passage led she lacked the strength to imagine, but her father had laid it in before the house had been completed. He wouldn't end it in a pit of snakes.

Tanya slopped through the muddy tunnel for a long time. A very long time, it seemed. Three times she encountered furry things that scurried off. Many times she heard tiny feet retreat before she reached them. But she was far past caring about minor details. Life waited at the end of this tunnel and she would reach it or die trying.

And then she did reach it, so suddenly that she thought someone had flipped that switch in Frankenstein's cellar again and initiated another episode. But the fresh air pouring over her head suggested that this was no vision. Night had fallen, the crickets screeched, howler moneys cackled, a jaguar screamed— she had reached the outside!

Tanya spilled from the tunnel, past wadded brush, ten paces from a river. The
Caura
, she thought. A small dock confirmed her guess. The tunnel had surfaced south of the mission, near their dock. Tanya stood slowly, forcing her crippled muscles to stretch past their newly memorized limits. Then she stumbled forward, to the pier, to a canoe still swaying in the water. The Caura River fed within ten miles into the Orinoco, which then ran toward the ocean. Toward people.

She rolled into the wood craft, nearly tipping the whole contraption over, and ripped the tie-knot free. The river drew her out into its current slowly and she flopped to her belly.

Then Tanya surrendered to the darkness lapping at her mind.

SHANNON RAN all night. Up from the cliffs to the top of the mountain, and then down toward the river that would take him to the sea and to safety. The Orinoco, ten miles downriver, over the mountain from the plantation.

The jungle lay heavy and the night dark, making his progress slow. But then it would also slow down any pursuit. He ran in silence, lost in the fog of the last day. His bones ached and his muscles felt shredded by the miles of savage terrain. The cruel ground had bruised his already calloused feet. But one thought pushed him forward: the thought that he would come back one day and kill them all. Every last one of them and any living soul that had anything even remotely to do with them. Shove a bomb down their throats maybe.

The sun already climbed the eastern sky when he finally burst into the clearing that bordered the gorge. The sound of thundering water exploded in his ears. He approached the deep valley and peered down at the torrential river as he placed a hand on the rope bridge to steady himself.

The Orinoco River had cut a two-hundred-foot swath into the valley floor. An old trail on the opposite side switched back and forth to the river below. The only way across was on the old rope bridge that swung precariously over the two-hundred-foot gap. He'd decided he was going to cross the swinging bridge, descend to the river, pick his way past the rapids, and then find something— a canoe, a large log, anything—to sail down the river.

He looked at the boards strapped together on the bridge. The wood appeared rotten—the hemp rope frayed. The whole contraption looked as though it might go into the water at any moment.

In fact, even as he looked a piece of wood split and sent a small fragment tumbling lazily to the river.

He watched it fall. He would have to watch his footing as he crossed. Then another board bucked, splitting to its pale core, as if an invisible ax had attacked the wood.

A chill flashed up Shannon's spine. It all sprang to his mind in a brief instant: the fact that the wood wasn't crumbling but being hit. By bullets!

He spun around.

The helicopter fired from a long distance—too far for accuracy—but it bore in quickly. The sound of its whirling blades was swallowed by the rapids, but Shannon couldn't mistake the flashes erupting from its nose.

For a moment Shannon stood shocked by disbelief, unable to move. In that moment another board fell to pieces, two meters from his planted feet. Two options streamed through his mind: He could retreat to the forest or he could race forward, across the bridge.

With a sudden roar the gunship spun overhead, climbed sharply, and kicked its tail around. It was lining up for a second pass.

Shannon leapt to the bridge. He grabbed the rope and scrambled down the sagging span, but the sudden movement caused the bridge to lurch wildly under his feet. In a moment of panic he almost missed the rope entirely and then found it quickly. To his right the attacking craft lined up on the bridge for another pass.

Crossing had been the wrong choice—he knew it then, when the first bullets took a chunk from the board at his feet. He should have run back to the forest. Now he stood in the open, helpless, with a cannon playing the planks like invisible fingers on a keyboard.