He found his clothes, put on his shoes, and snuck out the door.

CHAPTER 61

At the helipad in Campeche, armed men piled into the bay of the Skycrane, taking seats and stowing their weapons. There were twenty men in all, followed by their leader, who strode calmly up the ramp, most of his body wrapped in what looked like Kevlar armor.

Kang stepped aboard the Skycrane and looked into the hearts of his men. They had no fear of what was ahead, but they regarded him with a sense of foreboding. He was a man encased in a machine now and they were not sure what to make of it.

He turned toward the cockpit, finally getting used to the speed at which the hydraulic actuators responded to the electrical input from his own nerves. At first it had felt too quick, as if he were being shoved around by some will other than his own. But now that he was used to it, Kang had begun to revel in it.

In the suit, he had the strength of a bear and the quickness of a cat. He had already decided that once he was healed he would continue to develop this suit and use it as he saw fit. He had been right all along. The machines would save him.

“We will find the boy and the other stones,” he said to his men. “And we will take them without pity. And when we return, there will be fortunes waiting for you all.”

A cheer went up from the men, instinctive, unplanned for, like soldiers from the dynasties of old. They had just needed their leader back and now that they had him, Kang knew they would follow him to the end.

He motioned to the pilot and the engines began to roar.

CHAPTER 62

All through the night, Danielle had worked to stabilize McCarter, rigging IVs that she hung from a lampstand, cleaning and dressing his wound, and dosing him with antibiotics. Shortly after Hawker left, Father Domingo had come down to help and sometime around dawn, the fever had broken. McCarter wasn’t out of the woods yet, but she believed he would survive and recover.

Relieved by his progress, she’d rested, until being awoken by the church bells ringing across the street. Was it Sunday? She had no idea.

She checked her patient. He was doing well, lying on the floor of the small guesthouse, conscious now.

“You’re awake,” she said.

He strained to get the words out. “Who can sleep with all those bells?”

He had a point. The church bells were ringing rather insistently.

Insistently.

Danielle sprang to her feet, suddenly realizing that the bells could be a warning. She grabbed her gun and ran outside.

A pair of armed men waited there, aiming weapons at her. Two others held a couple of the town folk as hostages, and an older man, who seemed like their leader, stood off to one side.

“Put it down,” the scruffy-faced leader said.

She dropped the pistol as he walked toward her. “I’m Ivan Saravich,” he said. “And you have something that belongs to me.”

Twenty miles away, Hawker was picking his way toward the fourth ridge. He had hiked through the night, one hour on, ten minutes off. Upon crossing a small canyon, he’d taken a slight detour and flung the radioactive pellet down into it. If he was lucky Kang’s men would track the pellet to the canyon and begin a search there. With all the nooks and caves he’d seen, it might be awhile before they knew they’d been had.

Since then he’d come five miles, though exhaustion was slowing his pace considerably. He stumbled on, scratched and cut from the briars and thornbushes, drenched in grime and sweat. He was exhausted, trudging forward, not thinking anymore, not looking at anything but the ground right in front of him.

In that semi-oblivious state, he failed to hear the sound of danger until it became too loud to ignore. A buzzing noise in the air, not a plane or a helicopter, it sounded more like a flying lawn mower.

He turned and ducked down, then glanced around, scanning sections of the sky. A mile or so behind, he spotted a small object cruising directly toward him. He knew what it was: a remotely operated drone. It meant Kang had found him.

He ran from the sound of the drone. He didn’t bother ducking or hiding in the scrub; the drone had seen him. His only hope was to get to some real cover. The ridge-line up ahead looked like a possibility.

As he scrambled through the brush, the drone made a pass, buzzing by so closely that it almost clipped him.

He glanced at the stubby wings and gave thanks for the fact that it seemed unarmed. Then he heard a second drone coming in behind him, followed by the shrill whistle of an unguided rocket.

He dove to the ground. The missile whipped past him and exploded a hundred feet ahead. He felt the shock of the concussion and a wave of heat, but it was far enough away to be safe.

As the second drone passed him and broke into a turn, Hawker sprinted to the ridge and clambered up and into the rocks. He took cover, near the top, surrounded by a crown of boulders.

Safe for the moment, he looked around for the drones. They had pulled up higher, cruising in a lazy circle above him like mechanized buzzards. That could mean only one thing: They were there to keep their quarry treed. The real hunters were still on their way.

At gunpoint, Danielle was forced back inside the guesthouse. The man who identified himself as Saravich followed. Father Domingo and several of the townspeople were brought in. Danielle recognized Maria, the woman who had cared for Yuri and had given her the dress. They were ordered to their knees.

“Don’t do this,” Danielle pleaded. “They have nothing to do with me.”

Ivan raised a vodka bottle to his lips. “You deceive yourself, young lady. They are here only because of you. They’re hiding the boy,” he said, “just as you did.”

Danielle looked at Ivan’s men. They were young, with hard faces, the same type of men who’d come to the hotel. Undoubtedly they would want revenge for their friends. She could see it in their faces.

And Ivan … Ivan had a look in his eyes that suggested he’d done this work before, done it for a long time.

For the first time in many years Danielle felt a type of fear she could not control.

She was ordered to sit next to Father Domingo.

“Where is the boy?” Ivan asked.

She did not want to give up Yuri, but she was certain that the Russian would kill everyone if she didn’t.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You lie!” he shouted, flying into a rage and smacking her in the side of the head with his Makarov pistol.

She fell and he aimed and fired. The crack of the powder charge shook the room. Everyone jumped and dust drifted upward from a hole in the floor just inches from Danielle’s face.

Cautiously she returned to her kneeling position, her hands raised up beside her. Saravich stepped back and took another long swig from the bottle, like a man preparing for something he didn’t want to do but could not avoid.

“We have already searched the church and the house of this woman and each of the houses on this street. And still the boy is not found,” he said.

“He’s missing,” Maria said. “We don’t know where. He must have run off.”

Saravich wandered behind her to where McCarter lay. With a finger he flicked the IV line.

“I’m not afraid of you,” McCarter said.

“You don’t look so good,” Ivan said. “Maybe I should put you out of your misery.”

Danielle held her breath, realizing any response might be enough to set him off. She relaxed only slightly as the sound of Ivan’s footsteps circled away from McCarter.

He walked out in front of the prisoners, eyeing them, waving a finger at them.

“You have all spoken the same,” he said, sounding as if he approved. “But a well-concocted lie is not equal to the truth.”