If there was anyone Pax worried about, it was Robert. When he didn’t see him for nearly thirty minutes, he put Kat in charge of keeping the ferry on course and headed down to the main deck. He found Robert at the back, looking out at the two boats they were towing.
“Was checking the fuel gauges,” Pax said as he walked up. “We’ve got just under half a tank left. Might be able to make a run at Isabella from here, but I’m not sure. What do you think?”
Robert was quiet for several seconds before saying, “We should refuel in Limón first. Don’t want to run out when we’re in the middle of the sea.”
“Yeah. Pretty much what I was thinking.” Pax leaned on the railing next to Robert and watched their wake for a few minutes. Then he said, “Thanks for coming to get me.”
Robert made no reply.
“You, um, you going to be okay?” Pax asked.
“I doubt it.” A pause. “But who is really ever going to be okay again?”
“True.”
Silence.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” Robert asked.
“I have.”
“Do you…remember it?”
“Every night before I go to sleep.”
Robert nodded. “I guess I have something to look forward to, then.”
Pax put a hand on Robert’s back. “You did what you had to do. If you hadn’t pulled the trigger, he’d have killed you, and then maybe killed me. If that had happened, this boat would still be heading in the other direction.”
Robert said nothing for a moment. “What about the plane?” he asked. “It should be there now. What are they going to do when we don’t show up?”
“My satellite phone’s still on the bus. Didn’t want these jerks getting ahold of it. We’ll call when we get to Limón. They’ll be there.”
“What if they’re not?”
Pax allowed himself a tiny smile. “They wouldn’t dare leave me behind.”
It was nearly midnight before they arrived back in Limón and were able to retrieve the sat phone. For a few minutes, Pax received no answer from the plane. Then, after at least a dozen attempts, he was greeted with a groggy, “Hello?”
As he’d hoped, the plane had not left. Pax set a new rendezvous time for late the next morning and signed off.
“Well?” Robert asked as Pax put the phone away.
“Like I said, still here.”
They took twenty minutes to motor back to the small tugboat dock at the auxiliary port where Robert had left the fuel truck, but instead of filling up then, they decided to call it a night. They were both exhausted, and didn’t think they could make it across to Isabella Island until after they’d had some rest.
They moved the now conscious Luke down to the lower passenger area, where Aiden and Kat were. With Pax holding the gun, Robert untied Aiden from the bench they had strapped him to, undid the bindings around Luke’s wrists, then moved back over to the stairs.
“Listen up,” Pax said. “We’re going to be spending the night here, so that means we’re going to lock the stairway door. You all will need to make yourselves comfortable right here.”
The two men looked annoyed but not surprised. Kat, on the other hand, looked terrified.
“Please,” she said. “Please don’t leave me down here.”
Her message was directed at Pax.
After a few seconds, he nodded. “You can come with us.”
“Thank you,” she said, all but jumping up from her seat.
“What the hell?” Aiden said. “If she gets to go up top, we should be able to, too.”
“She never held a gun on me. Just be glad we’re letting you sleep here and not throwing you over the side.”
With that, Pax, Robert, and Kat headed up the stairs. Once back on the main deck, they shut the door and secured it with a rope that even the most talented escape artists would have a problem removing.
Pax pointed Kat to a bench near the rear of the passenger area.
“If you try anything, we will desert you,” Pax told her. “Do you understand?”
“I won’t. I promise,” she said. “You know I won’t.”
“Good. I just want to make sure we’re clear.”
“We’re clear.”
Pax relaxed his stern expression. “I want to trust you, Kat. You know I do. But given what happened, that’s something you’ll have to work very hard to earn.”
She nodded but said nothing, and then sat down on her bench.
Robert and Pax moved to the other end.
“Maybe we should take turns standing watch,” Robert said.
Pax glanced back in Kat’s direction. “She’s not going to be a problem.”
“I hope you’re right.”
Pax lay down on one of the benches and closed his eyes. “Me, too.”
January 6th
World Population
798,869,034
8
Van Assen packed into two plastic cases the weapons and ammunition that had been stored in the closet next to the senior manager’s office. Elsewhere, other Project Eden members cleaned out desks and destroyed equipment that would be left behind after the evacuation.
The order to abandon the Mumbai facility had come down from the new Project leadership twelve hours earlier. Van Assen was surprised it had taken them that long to make the decision. While the Project’s operations in Mumbai had worked smoothly through the first few hours of implementation, it had quickly gone downhill after that.
First, senior manager Schmidt had been killed, and a few boxes of vaccine had been stolen by a local Pishon Chem employee who had somehow learned the truth about what was going on. And then, over a week later, that same Indian son of a bitch had returned, freed most of the detainees, and taken the remainder of the vaccine. These events drove Dettling, the new senior manager, to take his own life. In the wake of all this, those who had escaped were probably intercepting any other survivors headed for the facility, because no new survivors had shown up at the station since the breakout.
A complete and total disaster.
As soon as van Assen finished packing the final boxes of the ammunition, he looked down the long hallway and whistled at a group of soldiers at the far end. “Two cases here ready to go.”
After the soldiers took possession of the containers, van Assen went up to the second floor.
In the aftermath of Dettling’s death, a man named Rainer had been elevated to the senior manager’s position. He was even less qualified than Dettling had been, but, in his favor, he seemed to realize this and was more than willing to cede much of the decisions to van Assen. So, in everything but name, van Assen was in charge of the evacuation.
He moved quickly through the management housing area, glancing into each room to be sure they had been cleaned out. Satisfied, he went to check on the rooftop communications center via the narrow staircase that had been constructed in a former closet.
He popped his head and shoulders through the trapdoor at the top and spotted Klausmann sitting at the counter, headphones on.
“Status?” van Assen asked.
Klausmann took a moment before he looked back. “The second plane is in the air. The last is ready when we are.”
Van Assen thought something was a little off with Klausmann this morning, but he figured it was probably a reaction to evacuation orders. He would note it later in the man’s file, but for now, van Assen had other things to check.