“No one! I was surprised when I heard. He… he was a strange man. I think he fell a little in love, but knew I’d never go with him. He blamed the men here, what they were doing.”
“Your smuggling operation.”
“Yes.”
“How many people are involved?”
“Many! All over the states. At Tropicane Sugar, several. But only three behind it alclass="underline" Dr. Stokes, Aleski, and a man named Luther Earl-he looks like a black Abraham Lincoln. They supply exotics to environmental idiots, anyone who’ll buy. The big plans, though-real biological sabotage-it’s just them. And they’re all still here.”
When I didn’t respond, her glistening eyes narrowed. “Kill them if you want. I’ll help!”
Her tone said, Don’t miss this opportunity.
I lowered the woman to the ground, then let her drop. She managed to stay on her feet for a few seconds-a good athlete even with ankles taped. She did several quick ballerina steps on tiptoes before falling hard on tile.
Her expression changed: surprise, a flash of anger. Her inexplicable disappointment had vanished.
“Is everyone on the island armed?” I was watching Ox-man. Listened to her correct me: two islands, not one, a treacherous cut between. The man was a hundred yards away, head scanning. He appeared nervous now, holding his weapon at combat ready.
“I kept all the guns locked in a safe, but then I stupidly gave Luther Earl permission”-she choked up, emotional-“I stupidly lost control. They’re armed. I’m sure they are. But Mr. Earl and Aleski, they’re the only ones you have to worry about. Maybe one other. Aleski’s cousin, Broz.”
I stepped to the door that opened toward the bay. Locked. Hurried toward the opposite door.
“Don’t open that!”
I froze with my hand on the door’s handle.
“That opens into a pit where they dug coral. It’s where we keep the snakes, the monkeys. I mentioned feeding time? Last night, when the place started going crazy, some idiot opened all the cages. That’s why the staff’s running away. You’d have to be insane to go out there without a weapon.”
Her voice began to crack again-panic. “Please, help me get my legs free. Don’t leave me alone with Aleski. We can overpower him, then take his boat. No one can get across to the other island without a boat because of the current-”
She stopped talking as I turned the handle and began to open the door slowly. “Lady, I’ll take my chances with the snakes.”
“Why? I helped you.” “Because you’re right-I’m a pro. I think you’re a bad actress with an angle. I think you taped your own legs. And if I’m wrong-”
I pushed the door wider, looked out: a rock pit that was gymnasium-sized, mossy coral walls, panes of shattered Plexiglas, retainer screening above ripped away.
“-Lady, if I’m wrong, I hope you have better luck than Frieda. Or Jobe Applebee.”
I took a moment to confirm that the door’s lock was not the sort that latched automatically. Then stepped into the pit.
33
The quarry floor was coral chips and ferns. Banana thickets and birds-of-paradise created scattered domes of shade. Otherwise, it was a rock crater with walls fifteen to twenty feet high, open to the sky now that the overhead screen had been torn away.
The walls were vertical. There were calcium remains of limpets, brain corals, sea fans, vertebrates-evolution etched in limestone. They’d mined the stuff in blocks, so the walls were scarred with ridges where seeds of ficus and fern had rooted. There were cascading vines with umbrella-sized leaves.
Along the wall to my left were shelves of wooden cages of varying size, some as big as small rooms. Each had a door or lid, usually Plexiglas. Most of the doors were open.
Nearby was an enclosed cement circle, and a laboratory table, not unlike the table in my lab. Beneath a roof of corrugated plastic was an industrial-grade incubator, heating tubes suspended above.
This was a place to hatch crawling creatures. A safe place to extract venom.
A serpentarium.
There were also larger enclosures made of wood and wire mesh. Tire swings hanging from chains; rotting banana peels on rock floor.
Monkeys. They’d been freed, too.
The woman hadn’t lied, as I’d suspected. I’d ignored her warning, and now I’d have to deal with it. It gave me a sick feeling in my stomach.
The incubator was operational. A light was blinking near a row of gauges. I got close enough to see that, beneath the incubator’s opaque cover, were hundreds of eggs in open cartons.
Some reptiles are protective of their nest. They use their tongues to wind-track eggs if they’ve been moved. This was not a place to linger.
I walked to my right. Vines grew sunward on pitted rock. They looked strong enough to hold a man’s weight, and there were crevices for feet and fingers. I had to find a way out of the quarry, or soon face Ox-man, the Russian. Him and his rifle. Maybe him, his rifle, and the woman, too.
Or worse.
I reached, grabbed a vine, feeling its triangular edges, and began to pull myself up the wall, hand over hand. Got a few feet off the ground when the vine snapped. I landed butt-hard on gravel, dust and leaves raining down.
Got to my feet, all senses firing. Stepped toward a neighboring vine. I was reaching to get a grip when I noticed a shadow moving through the high foilage. Stood for a moment, then backed away.
Something alive was up there. It appeared as a descending darkness, thick as a man’s wrist, augering downward at a speed that created a barber-pole illusion. A wall of elephant’s ear leaves, from quarry lip to floor, rustled incrementally, syncronized with the shadow’s slow uncoiling. The expanse of trembling leaves suggested the shadow’s size. Twice as long as I am tall. Longer.
In a pool of sunlight, I got a glimpse: green scales flexing as muscle undulated. A single black eye in a head the size of my fist.
I became a statue, temples thumping.
Ahead and to my left, there was unrelated activity. A second shadow, rustling. Ferns in the area were knee-high. I watched ferns parting in a pattern of serpentine switch-backs as something vectored toward me, ground level.
For an instant, an image of the woman came to mind. Crawling after me over tile.
I began retreating, eyes shifting from vines to moving ferns, until I reached the metal door. Searched blindly. Finally touched its handle. Tested. Felt the door begin to open. Second option, confirmed.
My choices: snakes at feeding time, Russian with a gun.
I’d shifted into crisis mode; began projecting, then rejecting, a rapid list of alternatives. My eyes drifted to the incubator. Paused. Remembered the words of an African friend: “They get aggressive. Deadly mean, if you’re near their nest.”
I touched the door again. Not much of an escape route. But all I had.
I hurried past the cages to the incubator. Opened the lid… then froze.
Shit.
A few paces away, a cobra sprouted from the ferns, skull ribs flattening its head like a mummy’s cowling, black eyes lasering. It leaned toward me, unhinged its mouth wide, and exhaled. There was a stink of rodents. Hiss does not describe the sound.
The snake’s swaying head was chest-high. Ten or twelve feet of reptile. A king cobra.
It was aware of me; unimpressed.
In the banana thickets, other reptiles were stirring. On the quarry’s far wall, I noticed snakes exiting crevices. Beyond the swaying cobra, ferns had become animated.
My body remained motionless as my hand moved. It reached without looking and found a carton of eggs. Felt to make certain the carton was full, took it. I began to back away, slowly at first, then turned to run… but stopped. Froze once again.
To my right, shadow had touched earth. A hatchet-sized head lifted off gravel, tongue-testing the molecular content of air, a yard of its lichen-colored body visible. It was an African mamba, the genetic model of ascendency. I looked up. Saw its tail twitching twelve feet above among vines on the quarry wall.