He tried to think it through even while gunning his engine, pushing to close the distance between them.
Having sent Newell for medical treatment and dispatched their prisoners to a holding area with one of the other units, his squad had been returning to their car when they saw the invaders hasten back into their own vehicle, pull it around in a screeching circle, and whip toward the fence. As the men who by chance were closest to them, Carlysle’s team had launched off in pursuit… but the jeep had been passing through the fence before Carlysle even got behind the wheel, giving it a good head start.
What troubled him was a simple question of authority. UpLink’s host government had sanctioned the emplacement of an independent security force on the ISS compound, period. It was not prepared to have that force move about at will, engaging in what amounted to a small war. Carlysle was sensitive to that, and because he was a disciplined professional, could not close his eyes to the boundaries of his license to operate. If there had been no prisoners taken on the compound to hopefully yield information about the motives and objectives behind their raid, he might have been inclined to push those bounds and carry on the pursuit, calling in the Skyhawks for aerial support. But there were, and it was hard to justify going forward knowing the repercussions that might be expected as a consequence.
He gripped the wheel, his eyes on the taillights ahead of him. Stop or go, what was it going to be? With Thibodeau not answering his radio, the decision was his to make.
Producing another string of curses, he shifted his foot to his brake pedal and eased it down. The chase car lurched to a halt over the bumpy road.
“Never mind that bunch, we’re going back,” he said to the man beside him. “There’s a whole lot of pieces that need picking up at the facility, and nobody but us to do it.”
Its engine throbbing, Kuhl’s jeep shot through the gap in the fence at full horsepower, reversing the path it had taken into the compound.
Kuhl turned in the front passenger seat and saw the twin points of headlights in the darkness behind him. But they were a good distance away, and that distance seemed to be growing. Still, he wanted to keep his eyes on them.
The jeep plunged ahead into the jungle, bouncing over the road, vines and branches lashing its windshield, leaving behind long, drippy swipes of moisture. Soon the unbroken tunnel of vegetation around it was screening out the sky.
Kuhl watched the headlights steadily, convinced they were indeed becoming further off. Why might that be so? he asked himself. Certainly their position beside the jeep had given Kuhl and his three companions a jump on the security teams, who had dispersed from their own vehicles during the firefight. But that only accounted for his head start, not the absence of any concerted and determined pursuit. And what of the helicopters? Why hadn’t they been sent after him?
A faint smile touched his lips. Even flight had its lessons, and it struck him that he’d just gained another bit of understanding about UpLink’s vulnerabilities, limitations, and the dynamics of its relationship with the Brazilians.
It was knowledge he would have to carefully digest along with the rest of what he’d learned tonight.
Knowledge that was bound to be very useful as the next phase of the game commenced.
FIVE
The bald eagle launched from the tall trees downhill to their right, soaring above the old pilings at the marshy tidal band, its long outspread wings a serrate outline against the sky, the untinged whiteness of its head and tail feathers contrasting so strikingly with its blackish body they seemed almost like luminous, painted-on accents to guide the eye across its perfect form.
Megan watched it circle the pilings twice, rise gracefully on an updraft, and then swing out across the shiny waters of the bay. The shore below her was silent. Nothing moved amid the rushes. Nor was there any motion in the tangled scrub sloping off from the deck where she sat with Nimec and Ricci, a cup of strong black coffee on the table in front of her.
“It’ll generally stay quiet for five, ten minutes after she’s gone. Then you’ll see the gulls, terns, and ducks come back, sometimes a few at a time, sometimes hundreds of them at once, like there’s been an all-clear,” Ricci said. “The eagles prefer eating fish to anything else, but when they’re really hungry or nursing a brood, they’ll make a meal out of whatever they can sink their talons into. Smaller birds, rodents, even house cats that stray too far from their backyards.”
Megan reluctantly dropped her gaze from the eagle’s path. Its sudden appearance had given her a thrill of excitement, but Ricci had promised an explanation for the ugly scene on the road, and she was more than ready to hear it.
She shot a glance across the table at him. “How about urchins?”
Ricci smiled a little. “Them too,” he said.
She kept looking at him pointedly.
“I think Megan was offering you a neat little segue there,” Nimec said from the chair beside her. “Might not be a bad idea to take it.”
Ricci paused a moment, then nodded.
“You two want to go inside first?” He gestured toward the sliding door leading back into his house. “It’s getting pretty brisk out here.”
Nimec’s shoulders rose and fell. “I’m okay.”
“Same,” Megan said. “I can use the fresh air after all the schlepping around we’ve done. To use an Irish word.”
Ricci sat there, his face showing not one iota of concern about the headaches he’d caused them. That irritated Megan, and she hoped the expression on her face made it abundantly clear to him. The schlep she’d mentioned had included following his pickup for nearly an hour as he’d led them to a fish-smelling wholesale seafood market on a wharf at the foot of the peninsula, where they’d had to wait while he’d spent another hour hustling back and forth between one saltbox shed and another, haggling with buyers over the value of several large plastic trays he’d been carrying in the flatbed of the truck… or more accurately the layers of spiny, tennis-ball-sized green sea urchins inside those trays, what he’d earlier referred to as his catch. And all that after she and Nimec had traveled three thousand miles across the country by air and ground, and the unexpected confrontation with the warden and deputy sheriff.
“I suppose,” Ricci said at length, “you’d like me to tell you why those uniformed humps were on my case.”
Megan watched him coolly over the rim of her cup.
“That would be nice,” she said.
Ricci lifted his own coffee to his mouth, sipped, and then set it down on the circular tabletop.
“Either of you know anything about urchin diving?”
Megan shook her head.
“Pete?” Ricci said.
“Only that urchins are a specialty item in foreign seafood markets. I’d assume they can bring good money.”
Ricci nodded.
“Actually it’s the roe that’s valuable. Or can be, anyway. You ever been to a sushi bar, it’s what they call uni on the menu. The bulk of it gets shipped out to Japan, the rest to Japanese communities in this country and Canada,” he said. “Its price depends on availability, the percentage of roe in comparison to its total weight, and the quality of the roe, which has to be a bronzy gold color — kind of like a tangerine — if you want to fetch a premium. Those trays I unloaded had about two and a half bushels of urchins each and were worth almost a grand to me.”
Megan looked at him. “If somebody had told me that when I was ten, I’d be worth millions today. My big brother and I would walk along the beach and collect them off the jetties in our plastic buckets. Then we’d fill the buckets with ocean water and try to convince our parents to let us bring them home as pets. My dad would tell us to get those damned sea porcupines out of the house.”