51

When Cooper came to, he discovered his body to have recovered from its toxic bout with post-traumatic stress, or whatever the fuck, he thought, turned me into a puddle of hyperventilating mush. But maybe that’s what you get when you pay a visit on the worst episode of your past-you wind up throwing it in reverse for real, your body deciding it’s time to curl up and see whether there’re any available wombs interested in taking you back.

Coming around, the first thing that occurred to him was that he was screwed. Even if the security squad managing the presidential residence believed the intruder to have fled through the woods rather than into the belly of the beast, he held no doubt they’d keep the facility canvassed 24/7 for at least the next few days. And until some slice of evidence turned up proving he was no longer around, they’d be forced to maintain an elevated security presence.

Cooper knew they’d also need to operate under the assumption this raid was an attempt on Márquez’s life, aborted though it might have been. Point being, he wasn’t going to have much of a shot at getting home, let alone taking down Márquez. At the moment, the fact that he’d escaped capture and torture was satisfaction enough-at least now, having calmed his dysfunctional body toward something approaching normalcy, he had the freedom to mull things over. Could be there’s even a plan C, or a plan D, that could get you in front of the man.

He sat up in the dank, humid tunnel.

As much as he enjoyed playing whatever games with Laramie that would irritate her the most, there remained the issue of his mission-which, even as the most obstinate member of Laramie’s team, he had nonetheless come to believe to hold probable significance.

Having read Laramie’s documents from the terror book, examining the San Cristóbal theme park up close and personal, and seeing that fucking Pentagon memo…hell, even before dropping from the MU-2B, Cooper concluded that the U.S. populace was, in fact, up to its ears in some very deep shit. And were the U.S.-government-employed snuffer-outers who’d taken out the likes of Cap’n Roy also ultimately responsible for putting their own nation’s populace in the deep shit in which it currently found itself? Probably-make that definitively yes.

But it didn’t matter now-when it came to the suicide-filo threat, too many somewhat innocent lives were at stake. Which Laramie had been trying to point out to you during her huff at Paddy Murphy’s lively Irish pub.

Possessed of too much firsthand experience staring at the ass end of U.S. foreign policy, Cooper couldn’t discount the danger of the products the Guatemala research lab might well have turned out-meaning that whoever had been culpable to begin with, even if they were trying to silence that culpability now, the fact remained that if Márquez had got his hands on the filo that fucking lab had pumped out, and was now planning on using it in a wholesale bomb-dispersal scheme, then somebody had to stop him.

And why wouldn’t the bastard stepchild of the government that had empowered Márquez to begin with be the right man for the job?

Yet here you sit, an emissary of the Great Developer of Weapons and Hate, sent to dispose of public enemy number one-

And you’ve failed miserably.

In fact, you failed pathetically: all that you’ve managed to do is kill a couple of twenty-year-old soldiers and suffer a panic attack.

Flicking on his Maglite, Cooper picked a direction and started carefully down the tunnel. It wasn’t long before he grew comfortable-cozy, even-experiencing that feeling of pulling on an old sock, wrapped around you in a way you’re accustomed to, but not without a hole or two. Like a paroled convict finding solace in the stupidity of returning to the joint.

Apparently one fort’s maze of passageways weren’t much different from another’s-Cooper occasionally wondering whether he’d turned a corner into the same labyrinth of his imprisonment. Ducking down the short tunnels and into rooms, some featuring prison bars, some with decrepit storage racks, it occurred to him that these passages hadn’t been built entirely by Spanish land barons.

No historian I, he thought, but some of these are older.

He decided the more likely scenario would have seen the conquistadors discovering the subterranean tunnel work, razing whatever the natives had put atop it, then constructing palatial forts in which to hunker down while the pillaging continued apace.

He thought for a moment of Ernesto Borrego, a thought that made him curious how deeply Márquez’s contractors had explored the meandering rabbit runs he was caught in now, and whether there might be any number of buried chambers loaded with some good old-fashioned antiquities the Polar Bear wouldn’t mind snatching.

If so, maybe a new wave of violence would follow that stash wherever it headed too.

Márquez’s mansion, it seemed, was positioned at one end of a vast network of passages and rooms. Cooper spent a few hours poking around, and had almost convinced himself he’d seen all there was to see when he encountered something odd.

He’d made a few mistakes, been through the same tunnels a few times, but the door he now stood before was a new door. Not just a new sight for him on his exploration of the tunnels, but literally new-of recent construction, assembled with materials mimicking the authentic style of the arched, shoulder-high doorways that came with the place, but lacking rot and rust.

He thought suddenly that he heard a noise, and switched off his flashlight. In a few minutes-when there came no subsequent sound-he wondered how disoriented he’d become, and whether this section of the grid was too close to the main house for comfort. Congratulations-perhaps you’ve discovered Márquez’s wine cellar, including the armed security detail standing at attention beside the Bordeaux.

He kept the Maglite doused and his eyes soon adjusted somewhat to the darkness. He couldn’t detect any residual light from the tunnel, and it seemed no lights were on behind the door. Satisfied he remained alone, Cooper flipped the flashlight back to life, turned the door handle as silently as he could, and pushed open the door.

It hit him immediately-an oddly familiar, distinctly sour scent.

He thought immediately of Eugene Little, the malpracticing former plastic surgeon and current medical examiner for the U.S. Virgin Islands. Little always reeked of the scent Cooper had just taken in, mainly because the place the medical examiner worked reeked of it too. Which made sense for Eugene Little and his place of work-but not, Cooper thought, down in these tunnels.

The bouquet of vinegar and lime he’d just caught was unmistakable: it was the fragrance of formaldehyde.

He was half expecting some kind of surprise-a bullet or a punch, perhaps-but when he lifted the flashlight to pass its beam across the contents of the room, he found himself caught completely off guard by the unexpected sight before him.

Cooper had just seen a ghost.