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And then there was a soft, strange noise behind me, kind of a wet crunch. Something red shot past me and went shplat! on the floor.
And Benny fell face forward. I mean, literally right on his face. Thump.
And you know what? This is really stupid, and I have no defense. But it’s true. It happened again. I saw Benny lying there in a puddle of blood, absolutely dead, and—
I felt hope.
Really; it jumped up in me one more time. I mean, seriously—was I just too stupid to live? Hope? Come on, Riley. In any case, at least it didn’t last very long. Only until I turned around to see what had snuffed Benny. That’s when all the hope died.
Bernadette.
Smiling that let’s-see-what’s-inside-you smile.
See you later, hope.
She stood there holding a small dagger, still dripping Benny’s blood and totally ready to put some of mine on there with it. I took a step backward, away from her, and my bad knee made me stumble and wave my arms like an idiot to keep from falling over.
Bernadette’s smile just got bigger, like she was a half-melted Cheshire cat—if you can picture a Cheshire cat that wants to cut you open and strangle you with your own intestines. “Tu es blessé, mon petit amour,” she whispered. You are hurt, my little love. And she seemed to salivate at the thought that there was no way I could run and no way I could fight her except really feebly. She took a small step toward me. “Viens à moi, mon chéri.” Another small step. She raised her knife. “Je vais—”
“Laissez tomber le couteau!” The voice was loud, commanding, and no more than ten feet behind me. I didn’t even have time to think about looking. But quicker than thought, Bernadette threw her knife. Almost as quickly, there was a loud gunshot that took Bernadette in the shoulder and spun her around and to the floor.
I turned now. A large man wearing a flak jacket that read “DGSE” on it in big gold letters was on one knee. He held an assault rifle in one hand. His other hand was at his throat, plucking feebly at the handle of Bernadette’s knife. I turned back to Bernadette. She was still on the floor, unmoving. It looked like my luck had just come in. Maybe I should have reconsidered my attitude toward hope. Because all of a sudden it looked like I had a chance to get out of here in one piece.
I didn’t check either one of them for a pulse, and I didn’t even think about calling for help. I just grabbed the French trooper’s rifle, pulled off his flak vest, and turned back down the corridor to the cells and hobbled away as fast as I could, stopping for just two seconds to grab the keys from Benny’s body. Then two seconds more, because the keys were lying in the puddle of blood and I had to wipe them off on his shirt.
Limping as fast as I could, I went to the door of Monique’s cell and opened it. She looked like she was in rough shape. I mean, not physically, except for the bruises I’d seen before. I mean mentally. Monique didn’t have my experience with this kind of crap. She had given up already. She didn’t even look up when I came in.
So I couldn’t help myself. “Come with me if you want to live,” I said. And I did it in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation, which I know is wrong, but what the hell.
Monique looked up. For a minute she just stared at me with dead eyes in a dead face. And then she blinked. “Idiot,” she said. “Kyle Reese says that, not the Terminator.”
Just like that, Monique had come back to life.
42
The sun was coming up over the Indian Ocean. Mercier, one of the French troopers, had said that New Zealand was over that way, around 7,700 kilometers east of Île des Choux. Delgado blinked into the rising sun and tried to convert that to miles in his head. Over three thousand—almost four? A long way. He was too tired to remember whether a mile was 2.2 kilometers, or the other way around.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was that the operation had been a huge success. They’d swept into the fortress inside Île des Choux and caught the defenders completely by surprise, overwhelming them quickly and with very light casualties. Boniface was in French custody, and Bertrand Bouchard and the men of his DGSE strike force were extremely pleased.
And Bailey Stone was in the hands of the FBI’s CIRG medics. He had two serious wounds, but he would probably live to face prosecution. All the surviving mercenaries from both sides, about half of them wounded, had been rounded up, sorted out, and bound with plastic zip ties. So SAC Finn was just as happy as his French counterpart. It was over, all wrapped up neatly, and they could go home knowing they’d done a very good job against long odds. A complete success.
Except . . .
Delgado had found no sign of Riley Wolfe.
He had definitely been here. Delgado had interviewed several of the captured mercenaries, and they all said, yes, Wolfe had been here, down in the cells. Delgado had gone to the cells and found them all empty. He had carefully examined all the captured mercenaries, looking for any sign that one of them was Wolfe in disguise. None of them were. He had just as carefully looked at all the dead and wounded. And again, he found nothing.
And so Delgado had gone through the entire interior of Île des Choux, searched all the rooms as carefully as he could, and still he found no trace of Riley Wolfe.
As a last forlorn hope he had come here, to the plateau on top of the island. There was a great deal of activity at the landing area—the makeshift field hospital was there, as well as a roped-off holding area for the prisoners. All he had found was a sunrise over the ocean.
Riley Wolfe had slipped away. Again. But how?
The answer didn’t come until an hour and a half later. Delgado was with SAC Finn preparing to transport Bailey Stone back to the French base and then to Cape Town for transport back to the States. Special Agent Rosemond was with them, since she would accompany Stone all the way home. SAC Finn asked Delgado to talk to Bouchard about using one of their choppers, and Delgado half turned to comply—
“Choppers are expensive,” Rosemond said. “We should have sent the bastard back on that boat.”
Delgado froze.
