The Cutout

Two Ziv Zakopan, 1:23 a.m.

 “That is a lie. I know you lie!” Never had he spoken with such venom to his father, and for an instant, the boy felt sharply afraid. He cowered backward, white-faced and trembling, waiting for the punishment that would surely come.

“If she was not dead when I left her, she is certainly dead now,” his father told him calmly. “You should rest. You're still quite weak. Get back in bed before you disturb your intravenous feed.”

Jozsef set his foot on the floor. His muscles screamed as though they had been crushed under the wheels of a truck. He tasted blood, felt himself sway, and clutched at the mattress.

“Get back in bed.” His father came nearer, looming over him. “You were close to death yourself.”

The boy stared at his own hands, clenched around the sheet to keep from trembling.

“You cannot leave her in the ground, Papa. It is not right.”

“But it is done,” Krucevic said, “and nothing will change it now.” He closed his fingers over Jozsef's wrist, pried his weak hand from the sheet. Then he gathered up the boy and laid him carefully back in the bed, drew the sheet over his body. Jozsef closed his eyes on a surge of rage and anguish; he could not look at his father's face, could not trust himself to speak without sobbing. A tear slid from under his lashes and lay wetly on his cheek. He turned his face into the pillow.

“I am sorry for your pain, my son,” Krucevic said.

It was the first and last time Jozsef would ever hear an apology on his fathers lips. He did not answer him.

Krucevic turned away.

And at that moment, a shout went up from Vaclav at his security station down the hall.

She found the entrance to the ancient tunnels where Eric had told her it would be.

Mian's escape route from Ziv Zakopan. He'll be certain to keep it in good repair.

“He only has one?”

By land. But time's always the air.

Caroline glanced swiftly toward the dark hulk of hillside rising above the ruined barn. No lights, no sound from the heights, to suggest an armed encampment. Just the transmitter signal pulsing strongly in her pocket now, reason enough to keep going.

She crept forward through the withered November grass, the dead stalks rigid with hoar frost The smell of damp earth mingled with the sharp scent of distant snow — a fresh, nostril-flaring whiff that, absurdly, charged Caroline's blood with hope. The barn door's frame was blackened, the space beyond impenetrably dark. If Krucevic was waiting for her, this would be the moment for ambush — for some explosion of light and sound as death came shooting through the shattered door.

The floor of the barn disintegrated in the blaze, Eric reminded her. It fell into the sheep fold below. The drop may be eight feet. You can manage it. Drop close to the wall and walk around the foundation to the right. He's mined the center, where the going looks easiest. Remember, Mad Dog, never take the path somebody carves for you. It's there for a reason.

She balanced on the ruined threshold carefully, her gun in her hand.

The floor of the barn was a mass of rubble — tumbled bits of wood and stone, the shafts of a plow, glimpsed fitfully in the starlight streaming through the gutted roof. An iron bar, set into the dirt in the far corner —

“I know,” she told him irritably. “I see it, okay?”

“Mian,” Vaclav said, his eyes on the screen, “there's an infiltration. At the tunnel entrance in the barn.”

Krucevic was at his side instantly.

“It looks like a woman.”

“A woman?” He peered at the monitor with narrowed eyes, disbelieving.

“Probably some dick with long hair.”

“Do you want me to go down?”

They were short of men. Otto and two others — Ziv Zakopan guards — had driven north to Sarajevo Airport to meet the author of the E-mail messages. They had not yet returned. Six men patrolled the barracks area where the prisoners slept fitfully; another guard was on duty in the hospital ward. He could not spare Vaclav, who alone was monitoring the new security system. If the woman had penetrated the barn, others would be climbing the cliffs. Krucevic glanced swiftly at each of the video display screens — there were four in all, facing every possible means of ascent to the fortified aerie. Blank. No triggered alarms, no red lights blazing. He slapped the panel in frustration. Where the hell were they? Nobody attempted an assault alone.

The helipad. Dabog saliva! If they had already landed — But the security monitor showed him a quiet compound, two guards patrolling with machine guns at the ready. No rotors thunka-thunked through the clear night air.

“Stay on the screens,” he told Vaclav. “I need you to follow the assault.”

From his bedroom doorway, Jozsef watched his father wheel around, gun in hand, and race down the hall to the supply closet. He knew the tunnel ended there; he had often been locked in the dark and crawling passage as punishment when he was just a small boy. A woman was climbing steadily through the earth.

Mama, Jozsef thought, you came for me at last. You came for me. And his father meant to kill her.

Eyes huge and dark in his ravaged face, Jozsef lifted his hand from the support of the door frame. He swayed an instant, dangerously. Then he tore the adhesive tape from his wrist and threw the IV feed to the floor.

The dirt walls of the tunnel were crudely carved and narrow. She crawled on her knees toward an uncertain end, a passage that could be blocked, a possible cave-in. She had no flashlight; the first law of infiltration is never tell them you're coming. The dark was so profound that Caroline was disoriented; for a time she had no idea whether the passage was in fact rising or whether she was falling with infinite slowness toward the center of the earth. She closed her eyes and crawled on.

The tunnel widens at the end so that. You can comfortably stand, Eric whispered. But for God's sake, be careful.

Caroline stopped a moment to catch her breath. The darkness was smothering.

Blood pounded in her ears, a throbbing cadence, adrenaline-fueled, and so loud it must tell the entire terrorist world, Here I am, why not I fill me? She drew the homing device from her pocket. Soundless, vibrating, a needle point of red light — but the signal was fainter now. As though the transmitter was farther away. Apprehension knifed through her. What if I'm headed in the wrong direction? Shit.

Then her head came up. She sniffed the air. It was less heavy, less weighted with earth and disuse. She was only feet from the tunnel mouth.

She tucked the homing device away. She willed her heart to stop pounding. It ignored her. So she crawled on anyway.

Jozsef moved like a sleepwalker, like a child learning to toddle, his legs barely obeying his will. He moved out of his room toward the hospital ward three doors down the halkvay. Vaclav was staring at his surveillance monitors; the corridor was deserted.

At the entrance to the ward Jozsef stopped and clutched at the door frame. There was screaming behind him, his father's rage, a sharp cry of terror.

Mama — He fought the mad desire to run to her, to hurl himself at his father and save them all — because failure lay that way. Jozsef did not have time for failure. He drew a shuddering breath and