The Judas Strain - James Rollins [128]
Gray checked his watch.
Not a minute to spare.
He held out his hand toward Vigor. “Your phone. It’s time to make a deal.”
Vigor passed him the cell phone and battery.
Gray snapped the battery in place, praying for some measure of good fortune. He dialed Nasser’s number, supplied by Seichan. Vigor reached over and gripped Gray’s hand, offering support.
The phone rang once and was picked up.
“Commander Pierce,” a cold and furious voice answered.
Gray took a steadying breath, struggling not to lash out. He needed to be deliberate and firm.
“My plane is about to land,” Nasser continued, not even waiting for acknowledgment. “For your treachery, I will allow you to decide which of your parents will die first, your mother or your father. I will make you listen to their screams. And that parent, I promise, will be the luckier of the two.”
Despite the threat Gray took some solace. If Nasser wasn’t lying, both of his parents were still alive.
Taking comfort in that, Gray kept his voice even, his jaw muscles aching with the restraint. “I will offer you a trade for their lives.”
“There is nothing you can offer,” Nasser barked back.
“Even if I told you that I’d solved the obelisk’s angelic code?”
Dead air answered him.
Gray continued. “Nasser, I know where Marco’s City of the Dead lies.” Fearing even this might not be enough to sway the bastard, Gray spoke the next words slowly, so there was no misunderstanding. “And I know how to cure the Judas Strain.”
Vigor turned to him, startled.
Silence continued on the phone.
Gray waited. He stared at the digital map of Angkor Wat on the laptop. He sensed that the two arms of the Guild operation—the one following the scientific trail, the other following the historical—were about to slam together.
But who would be crushed between them?
Nasser finally answered, his voice a trembling rage.
“What do you want?”
OUTBREAK
13
Witch Queen
JULY 7, MIDNIGHT
Island of Pusat
THE DRUMS POUNDED louder than the rumbles of thunder overhead. Lightning spattered, flashing the jungle into stark greens and blacks, limned in silver by the reflection off the wet leaves.
Bare-chested, Monk pulled Susan by the hand up a steep turn in the jungle path. They’d been following the trail for the past two hours in the dark, sometimes waiting for lightning to show them where to step next. Rain continued to pour through the canopy. The switchbacked trail had become a running stream. But the remainder of the jungle was a dense tangle of grappling vines, heavy leaves, thorny bushes, root-choked trunks, and sopping mud.
So they kept to the trail, heading up, always up.
Ryder climbed behind them. He had their group’s one pistol. A 9mm Sig Sauer P228 with a Teflon finish. Unfortunately he had no spare magazines. Only the thirteen rounds already in the gun.
Not good.
Monk knew that once the storm broke, the jungle would be scoured by Rakao’s men. This island was their base of operation, giving them the home-field advantage. Monk did not delude himself into thinking he could escape being tracked and captured.
He glanced back through a break in the jungle. They were about three hundred feet up. The giant cruise ship sat in the center of the lake, a quarter mile out. Somewhere on board was his partner, pulled alive from the black waters, out of the grip of some nasty calamari.
But was she still alive?
Until he knew for sure, Monk would not give up hope.
Not for Lisa, not for himself.
To that end, Monk needed allies.
Drums continued their perpetual beating, louder and more urgent, as if striving to drive the typhoon away. They had climbed high enough that each pound of leather drum now reverberated against his rib cage, down to the bone.
Monk pushed through a drape of branches, waterlogged and drooping low. He spotted a glow ahead, flickering.
Firelight.
He took another two steps and stopped.
Only now did he realize they