“Who’s Humpty-Dumpty?”

“His name is Leo.” Sarah unlocked the door to the house. “He’s one of Spider’s sons.”

“Are they here to brief me too?” He saw her glance away. “What is it?”

“I…I wanted to tell you before they showed up,” said Sarah. “I’m sorry.” Onscreen, Spider and Leo stood in the elevator as it rose rapidly toward the living level. Leo looked like he was going to throw up. “Leo…Leo’s going with you to the Belt.”

Rakkim laughed. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Direct order from the president.”

“When?” said Rakkim. “When did the president issue the order?”

Sarah straightened. “Earlier today. Just…just a few hours ago.”

“Just a few hours?” he said. “Why not just a few minutes?”

Michael started crying, looking from one of them to the other.

Sarah hurried over to the baby, picked him up. “There had been some talk earlier, but Spider…he wasn’t sure about sending the boy into the Belt.”

“This sudden change of plans sounds like something Redbeard would have pulled,” said Rakkim. “Measuring out the mission in teaspoons, not giving me a chance to reject it outright until I’m in too deep.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you.”

He saw the hurt in her eyes, but he didn’t back off.

She rocked Michael in her arms, quieting him. “I wouldn’t, Rikki.”

“Anything else you haven’t told me? Any other last-minute additions to the mission? Should I pick up a case of Moon Pies and a carton of Marlboros while I’m there? How about a few souvenirs from Graceland? Maybe one of those pillows that sings ‘Love Me Tender’ when you lay your head down?”

Sarah’s eyes flashed. “That won’t be necessary.”

“You sure? Long as I’m lugging around a civilian, I might as well make myself useful.”

“Leo’s not just a civilian,” said Sarah. “He’s smart-”

“All Spider’s kids are smart.”

“Not like Leo. He’s a genius, a true Brainiac. Spider says he’s smarter than any of them…except for the seven-year-old, Amanda, but she’s-”

“Amanda is not smarter than-” Leo stood in the doorway to the bedroom, suddenly aware of the blade of Rakkim’s knife a millimeter from his jugular. He blinked, a tall, pale, soft-bodied youth with a large head and wispy, dirty-blond hair plastered across his skull.

“Rakkim?” said Spider, hovering nearby. “I…I thought we were expected. Please?”

Leo licked his fleshy lips. “My father grossly overrates the intellectual capacity of my baby sister,” he said idly, a single drop of blood running down the blade of the knife. He ignored it. “Amanda came up with a more elegant solution than I did for the Riemann hypothesis and he acts as if she’s Stephen Hawking. She merely tweaked the zeta function, which I would have done eventually-”

Rakkim pushed him aside. Looked at Spider. “You want to get him killed? Because that’s what sending him to the Belt is going to do.”

“Rikki, if there was any other option, I’d keep him here,” said Spider, “but the truth of the matter is, you need each other.”

Rakkim laughed. “What do I need him for?”

“To tell you what’s buried in the mountain,” said Sarah. “To tell you if it’s a decoy, or a failed experiment, or if it’s dangerous and needs to be destroyed.”

“What are you trying to convince him for?” Leo sniffed, wiped his nose. “I’m the key man here. He’s just the…the travel agent.” He sniffed again. “You need to adjust the humidity in here. I’ve got allergies.”

“Leo,” soothed Spider, “please, shut up.”

“He’s got allergies, but no training,” said Rakkim. “He’s got a face that begs to be slapped, but no useful skills. No survival instincts. First time he opens his mouth in the Belt or doesn’t hold his utensils right, we’re going to draw attention. Then what? How am I supposed to explain him?”

“You’ll think of something,” said Sarah, rocking Michael in her arms. “You always do.”

“Leo’s physical attributes may not be impressive, but he stood up well during the hard times when the Black Robes searched for us,” said Spider. “He saved the family more than once. He complains, but he doesn’t break. And Rikki”-his voice softened-“he really is very smart.”

“Look, Mr. Fedayeen, traipsing around Holy Joe-ville wasn’t my idea,” said Leo. “Personally, I’d rather be studying plasma physics and let you idiots fight each other until there’s nobody left.” He blew his nose, shoved his handkerchief into his back pocket.

Rakkim turned to Sarah. “You’re right. I have thought of a way to keep Humpty-Dumpty from taking a great fall.” He smiled at Leo. “This is going to be fun.”

Chapter 10

How long are you going to stay mad at me, Rikki?

I don’t like being blindsided.

I didn’t have a choice, said Sarah. And neither do you.

Rakkim turned at the sound of Leo vomiting over the side of the small fishing boat, hanging on to the railing with his chubby fingers as he upended his gullet for the tenth time in the last two hours. There hadn’t been anything left for the last forty-five minutes but he kept trying. Rakkim half expected the kid to hurl his intestines into the Gulf.

Leo looked over at Rakkim, the kid still bent over, clothes soaked from the salt spray. Snot ran from his nose, glistened along his chin like an iri-descent beard. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? I can feel your brain stem twitching with glee.”

“I told you to take Dramamine.”

“I’m allergic to it.”

“Anything you’re not allergic to?”

Leo started to respond, grimaced, and lurched over the rail.

“That pendejo never been on a boat before?” said Vasquez, captain of the Esmeralda, bare-chested, his stringy hair billowing around his grease-stained cap.

“Kid must have had a bad tamale back in Rio Concho,” said Rakkim.

“You should choose your companions more carefully, amigo. A strong man tied to a weak man…when there is trouble, the strong man’s strength counts for nothing.”

Rakkim turned his face into the wind. “I don’t see any trouble.”

Vasquez spit, perfectly timing the wind to carry his burst of tobacco juice away.

Rakkim walked past the wheelhouse. Took a position forward. Bumpier near the bow but he liked watching their progress and catching the full force of the wind. Still no sight of land. He felt the Esmeralda’s engine underfoot. Heard the two mates, Hector and Luis, banging around belowdecks. The Esmeralda was in even worse shape than ten years ago, when Vasquez had delivered him to Santabel Island in a squall, lightning crackling all around them. Best way to avoid the Belt patrol boats. Vasquez thought he was a smuggler then, thought he was a smuggler now. He told Vasquez that Leo was a diamond cutter, a freelancer on his way to an unnamed client in Atlanta. A lot of the fishermen supplemented their meager income ferrying human contraband in and out of the Belt.

You would have thought the warming of the Gulf of Mexico would have made life easier for independent fishermen like Vasquez, that the waters would be teeming with even more fish than ever. Not so. Global warming had turned the Gulf into a cauldron of sudden storms and a hurricane season lasting six months and rising. Small boats like the Esmeralda were forced to remain idle half the year, and the central government of Aztlán, which now claimed most of the Gulf, awarded contracts to massive commercial trawlers who could better handle the storms, and whose miles-long nets swept the waters bare.

Rakkim glanced at the salt-pitted glass of the wheelhouse, then back to the sea. The boat groaned, engine sputtering briefly before kicking in. The best piece of equipment on the Esmeralda was a sophisticated new radio/sonar unit. Vasquez said he had spent three months’ wages on it, hoping the sonar would allow him to compete with the factory ships in the search for fish. Rakkim checked the stern, saw the kid slumped on the deck, holding his head in his hands. Pathetic. Thanks, Sarah. He tried to remember the last argument with her that he had won.