‘I give a damn!’ Saffron wailed, and Ethan saw her hand move to the handle of a Bowie knife lodged in her pants.
‘Nicola,’ he said, sensing that whatever was between the two of them was about to explode into violence, ‘why not head down to the camp. See what you can find out about where those soldiers might have been headed?’
Lopez shot him a severe look, but she got up and walked off into the night down toward the camp below. Ethan turned back to Saffron.
‘Why defend him?’ he asked gently. ‘He may have killed people.’
‘So have I,’ Saffron replied.
‘Not for financial gain. It was an accident — Jeb Oppenheimer killed for information.’
Saffron sighed.
‘He’s all the family I’ve got left,’ she said. ‘Even if he is twisted and bitter, it’s not him. He was never the same after my grandmother died, because he couldn’t save her. That’s what’s driven him to become so completely focused on wealth and power: he really believes that if you have enough influence you can control anything.’
Ethan inclined his head in understanding. He had once traveled dangerous streets, scoured a land by day and night for years in search of Joanna Defoe, yet despite all his painstaking efforts he had never heard from her again. If he knew one thing for sure, it was that when you loved somebody you really would travel to the ends of the earth and sacrifice everything, even your own life, in order to protect them.
‘But you never can, no matter how wealthy you become,’ he said.
‘He’ll destroy himself,’ Saffron said. ‘And most likely take me with him just for the sake of it. We’re doomed one way or the other, but I can’t bring myself to betray him. I did it once before when I attacked his buildings and started this whole goddamned charade. I won’t do it again.’
‘Even though he blackmails you into those attacks?’
‘I’d have done them anyway, most likely,’ Saffron said, and then looked at him. ‘You got family?’
Ethan nodded. ‘Parents back in Illinois, a sister too.’
Saffron smiled.
‘You’re lucky to have them,’ she said. ‘Do you speak to them often?’
‘I call my sister now and again,’ he replied.
‘And your folks?’
Ethan considered lying, but he instantly decided that Saffron Oppenheimer had most likely inherited her family’s bullshit detector. He shook his head.
‘Why not?’ Saffron pressed him.
‘Because I left the Marine Corps,’ Ethan breathed finally. ‘My dad’s a Vietnam veteran and wanted me to reach higher in the ranks than he did. I served my commission in Afghanistan and Iraq but decided to do other things with my life after.’ He shrugged. ‘Guess he couldn’t understand why.’
Saffron moved closer to Ethan, and he felt a small but strong hand grip his forearm.
‘Call him,’ she said seriously. ‘Don’t leave it another day, you understand? Crap like this separates families all the time and then when someone dies all they can say is pathetic crap like: I wish I could have said goodbye. Get on the phone and do something about it, okay?’
‘He wouldn’t answer the phone,’ Ethan said, then realized almost immediately how thin the excuse sounded.
‘Like hell,’ Saffron shot him down. ‘Tell him you’re from the corps, organizing a veteran’s dinner or something. You’ve been there, you know how to pull it off. Who cares if it’s crap? Just talk to him.’
‘For what?’ Ethan asked gently. ‘We don’t get along, always at each other’s throats. I doubt it would do any good: it would probably make things worse between us.’
‘They can’t get any worse than when you’re not speaking,’ Saffron pointed out. ‘I’ve been trying to change Jeb’s ways for years. It probably won’t work, but I daren’t give up in case I lose him and then spend the rest of my life wondering “what if?”’
‘I don’t think my old man’s going anywhere fast yet,’ Ethan pointed out.
‘Maybe not,’ Saffron conceded. ‘But you’re sitting in the middle of one of the most dangerous deserts on earth and being shot at on a regular basis. You want him to suffer if it’s you who goes first?’
Ethan had a momentary vision of Joanna, and of how he had suffered when she had vanished without trace from his life. Suddenly, making a phone call seemed trivial in comparison.
He nodded.
‘I’ll do it, but only if you’ll turn yourself in and provide evidence against Jeb Oppenheimer.’
Saffron was about to say something when Ethan heard Lopez calling up to him from below.
‘Ethan, get down here! Now!’
49
Lillian Cruz looked down at the operating table before her, breathing slowly as she observed Lee Carson’s naked body.
In life, Lee Carson had been an impressive figure, that much she could tell from the corpse. The broad plain of his chest met wide shoulders, and his flanks reached a narrow waist that led down to long, muscular legs. He had the chiseled features of a matinee idol, thick and wavy black hair that fell to his shoulders and piercing blue eyes.
Although those features still shone through, what remained was a rapidly decaying carcass of graying flesh that even now was beginning to fall in clumps from Carson’s arms and sagged from his ribcage in drooping folds. Despite being on ice for several hours, Lee Carson’s remains were aging at a terrific rate, internally as well as externally. The large ‘Y’-shaped incision across his chest and down through his sternum to his pubic bone, where Lillian had opened him up, revealed his internal organs crumbling within. His kidneys and liver were shriveled, his intestines and stomach reduced to leathery rags coiled like the discarded skins of desert snakes. Lillian pushed the dried sacks of Carson’s once vibrant lungs up into his chest cavity to cover his heart.
‘Well?’
Lillian had almost forgotten about the man standing watch over her, his every breath rasping as though he were Darth Vader without the black outfit. Jeb Oppenheimer leaned on his cane, his face glaring at her like a wrinkled prune.
‘The decay is irreversible,’ Lillian said, more sickened by the presence of the live man in the room than the dead one. But she was also intrigued by her findings, even in her current predicament unable to quell her fascination with the bizarre human biology she was witnessing before her. ‘It doesn’t make any sense. You say that this body was frozen within twenty minutes of death?’
Oppenheimer nodded.
‘Give or take a minute or two. USAMRIID was on the scene within fifteen minutes of the shooting. I put them on standby myself, in case any of these men used the re-enactment in Socorro as cover to move freely.’
Lillian shook her head.
‘Then any bacterial activity, whether beneficial or detrimental, should have ceased once the body had cooled. That’s the very reason why biological remains are chilled to preserve them, to reduce bacterial activity. But this body is still decaying regardless.’
Oppenheimer moved closer, looking at Carson’s remains.
‘How could that be?’
Lillian shook her head.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this before. This is an entirely new kind of biology, something that hasn’t yet been described by science. It could take weeks or even months to understand what’s happening here at a cellular level, but this corpse will be nothing but dust by lunch-time tomorrow.’ She turned to look at Oppenheimer. ‘What’s left of Hiram Conley?’
Oppenheimer gripped the top of his cane more tightly.
‘Not enough to fill a bag,’ he rattled. ‘I need results from this body.’