44
A CHILL RAN UP KURT’S
SPINE that had nothing to do with the soaking wet conditions. He
stood forward, careful not to react. With one hand, he waved Joe
over.
“You find anything?”
he asked a little louder than necessary.
“Nothing,” Joe said.
“He’s gone.”
Kurt nodded his head
toward the door behind him. Joe glanced at the door, which was
slightly ajar. He nodded. He understood.
“All right,” Kurt
said, “let’s get out of here.”
But instead of
getting out, he put his hand back on the round knob. Taking a deep
breath, he shoved it open with a snap of the wrist.
There was a sudden
squawking and the sound of scampering and skittering feet, but no
one was there. Kurt saw a cage filled with toucans and some other
brightly colored birds he didn’t recognize. Behind them another
cage held a huge iguana the size of a thirty-pound
dog.
As the birds settled
down, a few feathers floated through the air.
“So much for the
element of surprise,” Joe mumbled.
Kurt had to agree,
but seeing more wet tracks on the floor told him for certain they
were onto Ion’s trail.
“Some kind of pet
store,” he said, although he couldn’t imagine taking the giant
iguana, which looked like a small dinosaur, for a
walk.
He glanced back at
the door. The wooden frame was broken and splintered where it had
been kicked in. Ion must have pushed the door shut once he’d gone
inside, but damaged the way it was, it couldn’t be latched
again.
Kurt’s eyes moved
upward. A sign read “Rare and Exotic”—apparently, it meant the
animals.
There were two aisles
in the long narrow store. In the center stood a row of stacked
cages; on the sides were larger enclosures, some with bars, others
with clear plastic walls and doors.
Kurt pointed to the
right, and Joe moved toward that aisle. Kurt took the other
one.
As he moved down his
aisle, Kurt saw a Komodo dragon sleeping under a dim light. Lemurs
and monkeys and a sloth slept in large cages in the center. A
caracal, a wild cat with tawny fur and black ears, occupied a
medium-sized cage beside them.
Treading softly, Kurt
listened for movement. He heard noises, but they sounded like the
snores and shuffles of the animals as far as he could tell. Then he
heard a clink like metal on metal. Silence followed and then
another metallic sound.
Footsteps came next,
but not two at a time. There were four.
They stopped, and
Kurt heard a low growl. Suddenly, there was a hiss and a roar and
the crashing of cages.
The monkeys woke in a
start and screeched and banged the bars of their enclosure, and
another roar went out from some larger cat.
Kurt lunged around
the corner to see Joe squashed into the thin space between the top
of the monkey cage and the ceiling. A juvenile leopard swatted at
him, with its teeth bared and its ears flat against its
head.
Kurt grabbed what
looked like a bowl of food and threw it at the leopard, hitting the
animal in the shoulder. It turned his way in shock, let out another
growl, and then ran the opposite way toward the front of the store.
Kurt watched it until it slipped out through the gap in the open
door.
“Remind me to call
animal control when we’re done,” he said as Joe clambered
down.
Before Joe could
answer, a shadow moved near the back of the store. This time, it
walked upright.
Kurt ran that
direction. Ion had made it to the rear exit and was pulling on it
with all his might, but the steel door was locked tight. And unlike
the front door, it was designed for security, not looks. He pulled
and then pounded on it with his shoulder, and then turned and
stared at Kurt.
Desperate, he tried
to race past Kurt, but Kurt grabbed him and flung him back into the
door. He darted for the other aisle, saw Joe, and
stopped.
In a last desperate
act he pushed a fish tank off a shelf toward Kurt. It crashed to
ground and exploded, sending glass, water, fish, and a flood of
tiny blue pebbles across the floor.
Somewhere in the
tank, Kurt guessed, there were piranhas or some other kind of
tropical fish, but he didn’t care at the moment. He jumped back.
Avoiding the main impact, he looked up in time to see Ion making
another break for the front door. This time, Kurt lowered the boom,
clotheslining the elusive little man and body-slamming him to the
floor.
Dazed and defeated,
Ion looked up, surrounded by blue gravel and flapping
fish.
“This could have been
so much easier,” Kurt said, grabbing him by the lapels and yanking
him to his feet.
“I’m not going to
give you anything,” Ion said.
“You don’t even know
what I want,” Kurt replied.
“You want Andras,”
Ion said. “I know you’re looking for him.”
Maybe that’s why he’d
been so resistant.
“He’ll kill me if I
talk to you,” Ion explained.
“Not if I kill him
first,” Kurt said.
“You’ll never kill
him,” Ion said. “He’s always been ahead of you.”
“You’d better hope
you’re wrong about that,” Kurt said. “Because you are going to tell
me where he is.”
“Whatever you do to
me, it won’t be worse than what Andras will do,” Ion
said.
Kurt realized that
was probably true. A handicap of being a decent human meant that,
barring the worst circumstances, he wouldn’t stoop to the darkest
levels of inhumanity. And that meant people like Ion would always
be more afraid of someone like Andras than they would be of
him.
Glancing at a
bleeding abrasion on Joe’s arm that matched the claw pattern of the
leopard, Kurt suddenly had an idea. There had to be something in
this “Rare and Exotic” pet store that was a little less
evolved.
He grabbed Ion by the
neck and dragged him across the floor.
“Where shall we put
you?” he mumbled, stopping in front of one cage after another. “The
monkeys are too smart for you. The sloth might mess you up, but we
don’t have all night.”
With Ion looking at
him as if he were crazy, Kurt dragged him up to the Komodo dragon’s
enclosure. The giant lizard had not moved a muscle despite the
commotion.
“Now, this guy might
do,” Kurt said, putting his hand on the door and working the
double-levered latch.
“What?” Ion shouted.
“Are you crazy?”
As Kurt managed to
get the door open, the lizard’s tongue flicked out and sampled the
air. A single eye opened, but it didn’t move.
Ion tried to squirm
out of Kurt’s grasp, but Kurt grabbed a collar off of the shelf
beside him. It had a long stick attached to it. It looked like some
kind of animal control device that allowed the keeper to either
push or pull the animal as needed, especially designed to keep a
dangerous mouth away from a trainer.
In his own way, Ion
had a dangerous mouth, but Kurt needed it to open.
He pulled the collar
over Ion’s head and onto his neck and shoved him forward with the
pole, pressing Ion up against the open door.
“I don’t know if this
is the right choice,” Joe said.
Kurt looked back at
him.
“I mean, the dragon,”
Joe said.
“No on the dragon?”
Kurt asked.
“Something about
their bite,” Joe said. “It’s poisonous. But not like a cobra. They
bite and then leave their victim to die. It takes
days.”
“Huh,” Kurt said.
“You’re full of surprises, Joe. Since when do you know about
lizards?”
“Worked at a zoo one
summer,” Joe said.
“Was there a girl
involved in this story?”
“Callie Romano,” Joe
admitted.
“Of
course.”
Kurt yanked the stick
collar back, and Ion was dragged across the floor and almost fell
on his face. As Kurt shut the door, the Komodo dragon closed its
eye and went back to sleep.
“So what do you
suggest?” Kurt asked, beginning to enjoy himself.
Joe moved slowly down
the row of enclosures. “How about this?”
He stopped in front
of one of the largest enclosures in the small store. Eight feet
deep and six feet wide, with some foliage, a small pool of water,
and brown dirt on the floor. There was also a box with a grate over
the top just outside it. A pair of large rats crouched inside the
box.
Kurt looked into the
larger enclosure. What he first thought was part of a tree moved a
bit.
“Reticulated python,”
Joe said, looking at the notes on the front of the clear plastic
door. “Nocturnal hunters. They can reach almost thirty feet in
length,” he added, “though this one is supposed to be only
twenty-two.”
“Constrictor,” Kurt
said, thinking aloud. “A twenty-two-foot, two-hundred-seventy-pound
snake. Perfect.”
“You’re not going
to—”
Before Ion could
finish his sentence, Kurt had flipped the latch on the door, swung
Ion in front of the opening and shoved him backward. He splashed
down in the snake’s water pit.
Kurt opened the
collar, pulled it over Ion’s head, and withdrew it. Joe slammed the
door and pinned the latch.
“This thing’s handy,”
Kurt said, looking at the stick collar and putting it
down.
Ion got to his feet
and looked around. Incredibly, the snake had already begun to move.
Just its head and neck, sniffing around, nothing aggressive so far,
but it seemed interested.
“I’ve been to a
couple zoos,” Kurt said. “Honestly, never even seen one of these
things move before.”
“Yeah,” Joe said.
“The pythons in zoos are fed all the time, and they get so fat and
overweight that they don’t do much of anything. But see how thin
this one is.”
Joe pointed. The
snake didn’t exactly look thin to Kurt, but he played
along.
“He does look a
little skinny,” Kurt said.
“Probably been
starved for months,” Joe said.
By now Ion had moved
toward the door.
“Why would they
starve him?” Kurt asked.
“The owners of these
places sell to rich collectors who want to see the snakes in
action, crushing something and eating it,” Joe said. “So they keep
’em hungry until a buyer comes around. That what the rats are
for.”
Kurt had no idea if
Joe was serious or just making this stuff up, but it was a good
shtick.
The snake was
cooperating too, sliding down from the ledges near the back of the
enclosure and beginning to stretch out.
Ion came up to the
door. “Let me out of here, Austin.”
Kurt ignored him,
instead looking at some type of poster describing the python. He
looked at Joe. “It says here these things can eat a
goat.”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Joe
said.
Kurt looked into the
enclosure. “He’s not much bigger than a goat. I wonder if it can
get him down.”
“I don’t know,” Joe
said. “He’s got a big head.”
Kurt turned. “He does
have a big melon. Bet his neck gets tired holding it
up.”
Ion went to speak and
then froze. The snake had moved up behind him, its tongue had
flicked out and grazed his thigh.
Kurt wondered if it
would bite him first or just start coiling around him. Before it
did either, Kurt decided to give Ion another shot at
freedom.
“You want to tell me
about Andras?” he asked, the joking nature of his voice long
gone.
“I can’t,” Ion
whispered.
“Once that snake
wraps around you, there’s nothing I can do but leave and try to
shut the door behind me,” Kurt said, “so you’d better talk quick
before it’s too late.”
Ion was pressed
against the plastic door. He seemed as if he was barely breathing.
The snake slithered past his legs and began to curve back
around.
“Can it sense him?”
Kurt asked Joe.
“Oh yeah. That tongue
senses heat.”
The snake began to
coil up as if it would strike.
Ion sensed it; he was
shaking but he didn’t speak. Then the snake lunged, knocking him
down, and wrapping around him.
Kurt hadn’t actually
expected it to happen.
Ion screamed and
struggled. Both moves were a big mistake because they expended air,
and as soon as his chest cavity shrank a smidgen, the constrictor
tightened.
“Austin,” he managed,
freeing one arm and grabbing at the snake’s neck. “Austin . .
.”
Ion could speak no
more, and obviously he could say nothing if he was dead. Kurt
opened the door and sprang into action. He looped the stick collar
over the snake’s head and tightened it. Moving to get leverage, he
forced the snake’s head and neck up and away from Ion.
Kurt pushed with all
his might. He found it hard to believe how strong the snake was. It
fought him and twisted and flipped, even with Ion still in its
coil.
“Joe,” Kurt shouted.
“A little zookeeper help please?”
Joe was already
there. He’d dropped down beside Ion and grabbed the snake’s
midsection, pulling with all his might. He arched his back and
managed to create a small amount of space in its tight
coil.
Thin, wet, and
desperate to live, Ion squirmed free, crawled out of the pen, and
collapsed on the floor.
Joe followed right
behind him, and Kurt released the snake and slammed the door shut.
He immediately placed the stick collar over Ion’s head again. The
man didn’t even resist.
“Where can I find
Andras?” Kurt asked.
Ion turned his eyes
toward Kurt, his face drawn, his look that of a beaten
man.
“I haven’t seen him
in over a year,” Ion said.
“Bull,” Kurt said.
“You were his go-to guy for work. We all know that.”
“He doesn’t need work
anymore,” Ion said. “He has a permanent gig now. He hasn’t looked
for action in two years.”
“And yet you saw him
a year ago,” Kurt said, tightening the collar again. “Get your
story straight.”
“I did see him a year
ago,” Ion admitted. “But he wasn’t looking for a job. He was
hiring.”
“Hiring?”
“He needed men,” Ion
said. “He needed some guys who knew demolitions and ships. More
than he could round up on his own.”
Kurt thought about
that, thought about the pirate attack on the Kinjara Maru and Dirk Pitt’s information about the
mercenary group that had loaded the superconducting material on
board in Freetown. It certainly sounded like Andras had built a
small army. But why?
“How do you contact
him?” Kurt asked.
“By e-mail,” Ion
said. “You want to go beat up a server in some office tower
somewhere?”
One of the problems
with the modern world: people could send and receive information
anywhere at any time. The days of the dark meeting and the dead
drop had passed, for the most part.
Kurt looked down at
Ion. He was still holding back, Kurt was sure of it. “You know
something you’re not telling me,” Kurt said. “Otherwise, you would
have told me all this without the hassle.”
Ion didn’t
respond.
“Joe,” Kurt said. “If
you please, it’s feeding time again.”
Joe unlatched the
door to the snake pen one more time. Kurt began to drag Ion over
there.
“Wait . . . Wait,” he
said.
“Talk to me,” Kurt
said, “or talk to the snake.”
“He lives at sea,”
Ion said. “Andras lives on the sea. He doesn’t have a home. He goes
from place to place on a ship. That’s why no one can find him.
That’s why he can get in and out of almost any country even though
he has no citizenship or passport and is wanted everywhere. He
comes ashore as part of the crew or even with the
cargo.”
Now it made sense.
Every time the CIA, FBI, or Interpol got a lead on Andras, he
seemed to vanish into thin air like a ghost, only to pop up
somewhere else a month later. It was like an international game of
Whack-A-Mole. But no one had been able to figure out how he did it.
Turned out he was like an evil version of Juan
Cabrillo.
“What’s the name of
this ship?” Kurt asked.
“It could be any
ship,” Ion said.
Kurt pushed him
toward the door.
“I swear,” Ion said.
“Do you think he would tell me?”
Kurt relaxed. He had
a better idea. “When was he last in Singapore?” he asked. “The
exact dates.”
“The last I saw him
was February fourth,” Ion said. “I know because it was the day
after Chinese New Year, a holiday here.”
Kurt sensed that Ion
was telling the truth. He glanced at Joe, who closed the door of
the snake enclosure tight. The python had retreated to the back of
the enclosure and coiled itself up defensively anyway.
Kurt released Ion and
stood over him. “We’re leaving,” he said. “Don’t even think about
warning Andras. If you do, he’ll know you ratted on him. And you’re
right. He’ll do far worse than feed you to the
snakes.”
“What are you going
to do?” Ion asked, looking up and rubbing at his neck where the
collar had choked him.
“I told you, I’m
going to kill him,” Kurt said. “For your own sake, you’d better
hope I succeed.”