How many lungs? she wondered. How many hearts? How many deaths?
This wasn't trading in organs, this was simply stealing them — stealing them and implanting scenarios in the poor victims minds. When Luis was describing burying the bags containing the bodies of donors, she had wondered why that wasn't her fate as well. Now, she knew. She was being kept alive as a test subject for the product and technique being developed by Donald Cho and Cedric Zhang — a new cottage industry for the enterprising military policemen to support, and ultimately, more money for their coffers. In all likelihood, someone had been checking up on her in Boston, maybe by rifling the records of her therapist.
It all hung together perfectly.
'Did you run into trouble?'
Startled, Natalie whirled. Despite the dense undergrowth, Luis had come up behind her soundlessly.
'God, do not sneak up on me like that — especially when I have a gun.'
Luis's wry expression made words unnecessary. There was no way she would have ever gotten a shot off.
'Come,' he said, 'there is a better place for us to sit and talk.'
In silence, they walked north and west, rising up into some of the densest forest Natalie had yet encountered. This time, Luis seemed more mindful of her physical limitations, and actually helped her through some of the more difficult parts. At the top of a particularly steep rise, the forest suddenly opened up, revealing a solid granite plateau, fifteen feet across and eight feet deep, tucked against a hillside. To the south and east was a clear view of the hospital and the land beyond it. The spectacular vista, with the early morning sun washing across it, belied the evil that resided there.
'I nearly got caught,' she said after her breathing had returned to normal.
'I thought that you had, and actually said a prayer for you. Do you need to lie down?'
'No, no, I'm okay.'
Natalie quickly recounted her close call in the hospital.
'So, you were brainwashed into thinking you had been shot,' Luis said when she was done.
'The techniques they are developing could be a source of great profit when they are fully perfected. I don't know the exact details of how it works, but I suspect that first they used hypnotic drugs to open my mind to suggestion. Then, using a visor that's like a TV directly over my eyes, and a scene recorded as I would have viewed it, they implanted a reality in my brain. They even used electrodes to add the sharp pain in my back as the bullets hit me.'
'That is impressive.'
'It is terrible. I wonder how many poor souls have lost organs there.'
'They perform maybe one procedure every two weeks.'
'How frightening.'
'So, Vargas is dead, and you have the answers you were seeking. I guess we are finished, you and I.'
For a time, Natalie sat, arms folded around her knees, gazing out at the lush panoply below, sorting through her feelings. Luis was right. She had battled her depression and her demons and come to Rio again because of unanswered questions. Now, there was nothing left but to return to Boston, continue with her pulmonary rehab, and await her position on the lung allocation Scoreboard.
She had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, and as a result, life as she knew it had been destroyed. Still, the fire to end her life had, at least for the moment, been quenched by a sense of pride over what she had accomplished over the few days since her return to Brazil.
'Luis, what do you think would happen if I contacted the American embassy or the Brazilian police about what is going on here!' she asked.
'The truth?'
'The truth.'
'There is an enormous amount of money supporting this hospital. You can destroy the building, but unless the people behind it are dead, it will simply be built up again. Besides, I don't know how you do things in America, but here we need proof that a crime has been committed before people can be convicted. Right now the only proof we have is that Jeep you rented and the dead body of a policeman in the stream below it. Oh, yes, I also believe you have the policeman's car.'
Natalie nodded that she understood. For a time, as dawn brightened into morning, the only sound was the forest. When Natalie did speak, the words were from the woman who had stood up to Cliff Renfro and Tonya Levitskaya.
'Luis,' she heard herself say, 'these people have killed many and also have ruined the lives of many more — including mine. I am not satisfied with just answers, I want satisfaction. I want vengeance. If I die trying, then I die. The one good thing, if you can call it that, of all I have been through, is that there is little left for me to fear. I want to do whatever I must to close this place down for good — to turn it into dust. And I want Santoro and Barbosa behind bars or I want them dead.'
'You know,' Luis said, 'more and more as I think about what was done to my sister, I have been feeling the same way. If it had not been Vargas who had murdered her, it would have been Barbosa or one of the others.
'I agree.'
'You must be certain, though, that you are willing to risk everything for your revenge. What advantage we have will rest in that certainty.'
'I am certain, Luis. The best I have to look forward to is not a life I wish to lead.'
'Then we shall try.'
Luis offered his hand and Natalie held it tightly.
'So, what can we do?' she asked.
'Maybe nothing,' Luis said, slipping his fingers beneath his eye patch and rubbing at whatever was under there, 'maybe everything. First we need some weapons, and then we need some help.'
'Where do we start?'
'We start right here.'
Luis walked to the hillside behind them and pulled some shrubs from the ground. Behind those, five feet from top to bottom and also across, was the opening to a cave.
'I never noticed that!' Natalie exclaimed.
'That is the point. Very few know this is here. Inside we have guns, explosives, and a place to hide should we need it.'
'But why do you — ?'
'In my line of work, it always pays to be careful and to plan ahead.'
'Can I look inside?'
'You can, but first I suggest you look over there.'
Natalie turned toward where Luis had pointed, toward the southeast, but she saw and heard nothing new.
'Here,' Luis said, handing her a pair of high-powered binoculars he had retrieved from just inside the opening of the cave. 'Look beyond the hospital, then listen.'
Natalie saw immediately. A long runway, very long, lined with alternating blue and white lights, had been carved east to west into the forest some distance beyond the hospital. Nearly a minute later, she heard what Luis had heard some time ago, the drone of an approaching plane. Moments after that, she saw an airliner soaring in low from the east.
Luis and Natalie lay side by side on the rock shelf, trading off the remarkable binoculars, watching as the plane made a perfect landing, then turned at a cul-de-sac that had undoubtedly been created just for that purpose, and taxied to a spot midway down the runway. From somewhere in the trees, both Barbosa and Santoro, accompanied by four people carrying semiautomatic machine guns, materialized to greet the arrivals.
A hydraulic lift lowered from the belly of the jetliner, bearing an unconscious woman on a stretcher, along with an accompanying man and woman in surgical garb. Next trip, the platform bore three men, one of them a huge blond with a ponytail, and a woman. They were followed by a uniformed crew of two. As the procession neared the hospital, the lift made one more trip, bringing down a man dressed as the captain, wearing his uniform hat, and one other man, in shirtsleeves — perhaps, Natalie decided, the flight attendant.
Finally, Barbosa and two of his men entered the jetliner and began unloading luggage and other
