Power and Empire

Pacheco snorted. “What is it with bitchy little Magdalena? Did you bid on her? And if you did, how did you find me?” He studied Clark for a moment and then threw him a conspiratorial smile. “You wily bastard! I knew Lupe didn’t know how to make that computer anonymous. You found me with the IP address, didn’t you?”

Clark nodded. “How much did Zambrano bid?”

“Twelve grand,” Pacheco scoffed. “Can you believe that shit? Hey, come on, let me out and I’ll get you set up with somebody even better. If Magdalena’s your type, I got a line on a couple young ones down in Reynosa—”

Clark slammed his fist into the red button. The trapdoor rattled upward. The fire greeted them with a terrifying roar. A cyclone of orange and yellow whorled and danced inside the glowing chamber. At the other end of the chute, the ram slid into the battery with a resounding clunk. Pacheco drew himself into a ball, flipped sideways, bent his neck, doing everything he could to brace himself. Nothing he did would stop the unrelenting steel ram from pushing him toward the flames. Now free of the gag, he loosed a shattered scream — surely the same kind of cry the countless young women he’d murdered had screamed before him.

Clark lowered the heavy door to the sound of metallic thuds and hysterical, shrieking pleas. The frenzied howls grew more intense, drowning out the hydraulic hum of the ram — and then fell silent, leaving only the roar and pop of the flames.

• • •

The Slaughterer,” Clark said, sliding in behind the wheel of his rental car. “What a dumbass name.”

51

The Hendley Associates Gulfstream touched down on Atlanta Hartsfield’s runway 8 right at nine thirty-four a.m. Pilot in Command Helen Reid made the short taxi to Signature Aviation FBO and brought her airplane to a stop on the FBO’s ramp. She hung her Lightspeed Zulu headphones over the yoke and climbed out of her seat to go check on fuel. Chavez wanted a quick turn-and-burn — and it was Reid who would make that happen. The flight from Buenos Aires to Atlanta had been just over nine hours, thanks to a decent tailwind. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t be quite so lucky on the Atlanta-to-Tokyo portion of the trip. First, she’d have to take the time to grab more fuel in L.A., and the winds were on the nose, adding back any time they’d gained on the trip north and then some.

Reid liked the hell out of Domingo Chavez. He was a good guy with lofty goals and a commitment to mission that was beyond laudable. But no matter how important the mission, physical laws being, well, the law, Tokyo was a lot of miles and minutes away. Reid expected total time in the air to be almost twenty-five hours. She and Hicks were talented pilots, but no one wanted to fly with a pilot who’d been awake for twenty-five hours. To that end, Reid had made a call to her boss before they left Buenos Aires. To his credit, Gerry Hendley had two G550 pilots waiting inside the FBO when they landed in Atlanta. Sonny Cobb and Rich Caudill both had thousands of hours in the Army’s C37B, the military version of the G550. After the military, Cobb had flown for the U.S. Marshals Service’s Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation Division, and Caudill for the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Teams. Neither of the pilots was a stranger to Campus operations, and they often provided relief and augmentation to Reid and Hicks.

Reid gave each man a peck on the cheek and then went to hit the head inside the FBO, relieved that they’d made it to Atlanta so she didn’t have to let Chavez down.

Twenty minutes later, Reid and Hicks were back aboard and snoozing in the forward seats across from Lisanne Robertson. The Signature ground crew pushed the Gulfstream back from the ramp with Cobb and Caudill in the cockpit for the Atlanta — Los Angeles leg.

In the rear of the airplane Ding had Gavin Biery on speaker.

“Any information on Chen’s phone?”

“The last activity was a ping off an antenna in Buenos Aires at… seventeen-thirty Argentine time.”

“Shit!” Chavez said. “I saw him use his phone after that. That means he’s already dumped the phone we know about.”

“Well,” Biery said, “for whatever reason, he’s gone dark.”

“I don’t like this,” Jack said, feeling an uncomfortable gnawing at his gut.

“Maybe Yuki and her team will grab him,” Adara said. “If he uses one of the IDs Gavin found for him.”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “But that’s an awfully big if.”

“Okay, Gav,” Chavez said. “We’ll be wheels up from Atlanta in five minutes. I’ll check in again when we get to L.A. if I haven’t heard from you before then. Keep us informed if you get anything else.”

Chavez ended the call and then looked at the rest of his team. “ETA Tokyo one p.m. local. That gives us thirteen hours to figure out how we’re going to find this guy.”

• • •