what was going on in his head.
“Hold it a second,” the operator shouted. “We’ve got a snag.”
The guy up top signaled back, and the operator actually leaned out over the pit and shook the heavy chain, the old-fashioned way, before kicking up the generator again. A tiny plume of smoke, or steam, escaped from a valve on top.
“Should it be doing that?” Carter shouted over the whine.
“Does that all the time,” he said, before looking back into the pit.
Carter looked, too, as the chain, swathed in black asphalt, continued to rise. The fireman appeared pleased, like a fisherman who’s just caught a big one. Carter’s feelings were certainly more mixed — relief, if it came to that, and dread, at the grisly sight that was probably about to unfold.
“Okay, any time now,” the operator shouted as he watched the clanking chain. Coated in tar as it was, Carter could only guess how he knew they were about to reach the claw end at last. Across the pit, Carter could see Del, his white hair blowing loose now in the afternoon breeze, waiting expectantly.
And then something emerged from the mire. Something caught in the claws of the dredge.
A slender object, wedged between two of the prongs. Carter leaned closer. What was it?
The chain pulled up, slowly, another few inches, and now Carter could see that it was a foot. In some kind of shoe.
A moccasin.
The fireman looked at Carter, who said, “Keep on going.”
Another prong had apparently snagged the end of Geronimo’s trousers.
The body emerged gradually, the tar seeming to reach up and hold on to it until the last possible second before rolling back off and plopping into the pit. The corpse, hanging upside down like a slaughtered animal on a meat hook, was glistening black from head to toe, the arms hanging listlessly in the fringed buckskin jacket. It twirled languidly on the hook, until it had come around to face Carter at eye level.
The fireman quickly looped a nylon cord around its waist to keep it from slipping off the hook and into the pit again.
Geronimo’s long black braid had a knot at one end and hung straight down, like an exclamation point, all the way to the surface of the pit. His face was entirely covered in tar, which only now began to ooze and drip off the skin. As Carter watched, transfixed, the man’s features began slowly to emerge. The chin, the nose, the cheeks. The hot tar gleamed in the late-day sun.
Apart from the whine of the generator, there was no noise in the pit. Everyone was dumbstruck by the horror of the sight.
Then, just as the fireman reached out to pull the dangling corpse over the walkway, more of the tar seeped off the face — and the eyes, sealed tight, were slowly revealed.
Carter was reminded of the slitlike eyes of a mummy.
And then, perhaps due to the pull of the falling tar, or simply gravity, the eyelids opened.
In the blackened, slack, and silent face, the whites of the eyes were now like slivers of light. Carter looked directly into Geronimo’s eyes; he couldn’t stop himself — and it felt, in some strange way, as if he owed him that.
But as he stood there, in the stifling confines of the pit, a sudden chill coursed down his spine. He knew it was impossible — what could be more so? — but it seemed as if Geronimo, even now, was looking back at him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Jesus,” Greer said, “that hurts.”
Indira laid the leg down slowly onto the table. “You must not neglect your home exercises.”
How many times had he heard that? But it wasn’t as if the damn leg hadn’t been getting a workout lately.
“Maybe we should do some ultrasound,” she suggested.
“Yeah, ultrasound,” Greer said, “that’s always good.”
In honesty, he couldn’t say it ever accomplished a thing. But it didn’t hurt, which was one thing you could say for it, and it didn’t require any exertion on his part, which was another.
Indira first went to get some hot packs and wrapped the leg in them, while Greer lay flat on the table. He knew he should say something, there was a lot of stuff hanging in the air, but he just didn’t know where to start. Indira’s feelings were hurt, he could see that without even asking. She’d probably been wondering why, after their first “date”—if you wanted to call it that — he had never suggested they go out again.
But Christ, hadn’t she been there, too? It had been a mistake, right from the start, and Indira had acted like it wasn’t a date at all. And then there’d been that humiliation at the restaurant, when the girl tripped over his leg and Indira flew to his defense… well, shit, did she really think any man was going to want to relive an experience like that?
“Thanks again,” he said as she bent over the leg, tucking in the hot towels.
“For what?”
“Having dinner with me, you know, the other night.”
Even under her coppery skin, he thought he saw a slight reddening. Shit, maybe he should have just let it go. It wasn’t as if she’d thrown herself at him or anything. God, he could not read women.
“I was happy to do it,” she said, still not looking him in the eye. “Now, I will be back in ten minutes for the ultrasound.” She set the egg timer, and he turned his head to see where she was going so abruptly. Mariani, in his wheelchair, was having some trouble navigating out of a tight spot.
He adjusted the neck rest, closed his eyes, and tuned out the rest of the noise in the room — the clanking of the machines, the moans and curses of the other vets as they suffered through their various therapy routines. What he wanted to do was sleep; he reminded himself to hit up Indira for some more sleeping pills before he left. But if he thought he’d been having trouble before, it was nothing compared to what went on in his head ever since that night on the al-Kalli estate.
Now, every time he closed his eyes, he saw that guy, that prisoner who was coated in blood, running for his life in the huge animal pen.
And the creature that had hunted him down and dragged him, screaming, out of the tree.
Now he knew what had lived in the empty, broken cages of Iraq… now he knew what he’d glimpsed in the headlights the night Lopez had been snatched.
And now he knew what kind of man he was up against.
Which still didn’t tell him what to do about it.
After al-Kalli and Jakob had left in the golf cart, Greer had slunk out from his hiding place, behind a pile of feed crates, and with shaking legs stumbled to the doors. He had tried not to look into the other cages lining the west wall of the facility — he’d seen enough already — but he could hear an occasional grunt or growl, and once something had lunged at the bars and its spittle had hit his neck like hot oil. He didn’t have the remote control that he’d watched al-Kalli use to open the doors, but after a few frantic seconds, he’d found a mounted panel with a door release handle built into it.
Once outside, he’d hauled ass, as best he could, for the back entrance; he found it by following the rear service road that ran along the northern perimeter of the estate.
Sadowski, thank God, was parked across the road in a patch of deep shadow. Greer looked both ways to make sure nobody was coming, then sprinted, his leg blazing, to the car and climbed in.
“You’re late,” Sadowski said. Then, “And you’re sweating like a pig.”
“Just get out of here.”
Sadowski started the car. “What’s that shit on your neck?”
Greer felt where he’d been spat on; it was thick as mucus and when he glanced at his fingertips, he saw it was pale green, too.
“It stinks.”
