“Any problems at the Dublin Airport?”
“No, sir. All the papers were stamped and signed properly by our friends at the Dublin Zoo. Customs didn’t even look in the cages.”
“Were there any injuries during transit?”
“Every specimen looks healthy. You want to see for yourself?”
Boone was silent while Harkness opened up the back of the truck’s shell. Four plastic cargo containers-the size of airplane dog carriers-were in back. The airholes were covered with a thick wire mesh, but all four boxes emitted a foul odor of urine and rotten food.
“I fed them upon arrival at the airport, but that was all. Hunger is always best for what they might have to do.”
Harkness slapped the flat of his hand on the top of a container. A raspy barking noise came from within the box, and the three other splicers answered. The sheep grazing in the nearby field heard the sound. They bleated and ran in the opposite direction.
“Nasty creatures,” Harkness said, showing his stained teeth.
“Do they ever fight one another?”
“Not often. These animals are genetically engineered to attack, but they have the same general characteristics of their species. This one in the green carrier is the captain and the other three are his junior officers. You don’t attack your leader unless you know you can kill him.”
Boone paused and looked straight at Harkness. “And you can handle them?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got some heavy pincers in the truck and an electric cattle prod. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
“What happens after we let them out?”
“Well, Mr. Boone…” Harkness looked down at his shoes. “A shotgun is the best tool once they’ve done their job.”
Both men stopped talking when a second helicopter approached from the east. The chopper circled the airfield and then settled onto the grass. Boone left Harkness and walked across the tarmac to the new arrivals. The side door opened, a mercenary lowered a short ladder, and Michael Corrigan appeared in the doorway. “Good afternoon!” he said cheerfully.
Boone still hadn’t decided if he should call the Traveler Michael or Mr. Corrigan. He nodded politely. “How was the flight?”
“No problem at all. Are you ready to go, Boone?”
Yes, they were ready. But it bothered Boone that someone other than General Nash could ask that question. “I think we should wait until night,” he said. “It’s easier to find a target when they’re inside a building.”
AFTER A LIGHT supper of lentil soup and crackers, the Poor Clares left the warmth of the cooking hut and went down to the chapel. Alice followed them. Since Maya had left the island, the little girl had resumed her self-imposed silence, but she seemed to enjoy hearing the prayers sung in Latin. Sometimes her lips moved as if she were singing along with the nuns in her mind. Kyrie eleison. Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy on us all.
Vicki stayed behind to wash the dishes. Sometime after they’d gone, she realized that Alice had left her jacket beneath the bench near the front door. The wind had picked up again, blowing from the east, and it would be cold in the chapel. Leaving the dishes in the stone sink, Vicki grabbed the child’s jacket and hurried outside.
The island was a closed world. Once you hiked around it a few times, you realized that the only way to break free of this particular reality was to look upward at the heavens. In Los Angeles, a smudged layer of smog concealed most of the stars, but the air was clean above the island. Standing near the cooking hut, Vicki looked up at the sliver of a new moon and the luminous dust of the Milky Way. She could hear the distant cry of a seabird that was answered by another.
Four red lights appeared in the east; they were like twin sets of headlights, drifting through the night sky. Airplanes, she thought. No, it’s two helicopters. Within a few seconds, Vicki realized what was about to happen. She had been at the church compound northwest of Los Angeles when the Tabula had attacked the same way.
Trying not to stumble over the rough chunks of limestone, she hurried down to the lower ledge and entered the boat-shaped chapel. The singing stopped immediately when she slammed open the oak door. Alice stood up and glanced around the narrow room.
“The Tabula are coming in two helicopters,” Vicki said. “You need to get out of here and hide.”
Sister Maura looked terrified. “Where? In the storage hut with Matthew?”
“Take them to the hermit’s cave, Alice. Can you find it in the dark?”
The little girl nodded. She took Sister Joan’s hand and pulled the cook toward the doorway.
“What about you, Vicki?”
“I’ll join you there. First I need to make sure that the Traveler is safe.”
Alice stared at Vicki for few seconds and then she was gone, leading the nuns past the chapel and into the night. Vicki returned to the middle ledge and saw that the helicopters were much closer now-the red safety lights hovering over the island like malevolent spirits. She could hear the dull thump-thump-thump of the revolving blades pushing the air.
Inside the storage hut, she lit a candle and pulled up the trapdoor. Vicki almost believed that Matthew Corrigan could sense the approaching danger. Perhaps the Light would return to his body and she would find Gabriel’s father sitting up in his tomb. Once the trapdoor was open it took her only a few seconds to climb down the stairs and see that the Traveler was still motionless beneath the thin muslin sheet.
Quickly, she returned upstairs, lowered the trapdoor, and covered it with a plastic cloth. She placed an old outboard motor on the cloth, and then scattered around a few tools as if someone were trying to repair it. “Protect your servant Matthew,” she prayed. “Please save him from destruction.”
That was all she could do. It was time to join the others in the cave. But when she got outside she saw flashlight beams on the upper ledge and the dark shapes of Tabula mercenaries silhouetted against the stars. Vicki slipped back into the storage hut and shoved the steel crossbar into its holding bracket. She had told Maya that she would protect the Traveler. It was a promise. An obligation. The Harlequin meaning of that word came to her with a terrible force as she pushed a heavy storage container up against the oak door.
More than a hundred years ago, a Harlequin named Lion of the Temple had been captured, tortured, and murdered alongside the Prophet, Isaac T. Jones. Vicki and a small group within her church believed that they had never repaid this sacrifice. Why had God brought Maya and Gabriel into her life? Why had she ended up on this island, guarding a Traveler? Debt Not Paid, she thought. Debt Not Paid.
THREE OF THE beehive huts were empty, but the fourth hut was locked and the mercenaries hadn’t been able to force open the door. Before coming to Skellig Columba, Boone had read all the available data on the island and knew that the ancient buildings had heavy stone walls. The walls made it difficult to use an infrared scanner, so Boone’s team had brought along a portable backscatter device.
When the two helicopters had touched down on the island, everyone had jumped out with a desire to capture or destroy. Now this aggressive impulse had melted away. The armed men spoke in low voices as their flashlight beams cut across the rocky landscape. Two men came down the slope with the equipment from the helicopter. One part of the backscatter device looked like a refractor telescope on a tripod. It shot X-rays through the target, and a small parabolic dish captured the resulting photons.
Hospital X-ray machines worked on the principle that objects with a greater density absorbed more X-rays than objects with a lesser density. The backscatter device worked because X-ray photons moved in a different way through various kinds of materials. Substances with lower atomic numbers-like human flesh-created a different image than plastic or steel. The citizens living within the Vast Machine didn’t realize that backscatter devices were hidden throughout major airports and that security personnel were peering beneath the clothes of passengers.