“I’m just putting him back.”
“What he say?”
“Nothing useful.”
“You want me make him talk?”
“I gave him a drug. Maybe later. Mr. Handler, anything to say to the man who shot you?”
Through his good eye, Marcus saw blond hair and a smirking mouth, and said, “Fuck you.”
“Seems appropriate,” Ferrol said.
“When you done, come up, please?” Gunar said to Ferrol. “Need to talk about bring more men to Spain.”
Ferrol pushed the button on the box under his suit and in a distorted voice said, “I’ll be right there.”
As Marcus was wheeled back through the laboratories, he tried to remember if he’d told Roberto Lumaga or anyone else about finding Gaytan. He couldn’t even remember where he was or how he’d gotten here. He didn’t know if help was going to come. He was badly injured, but there was only one person he could rely on, and it was himself.
Inside the white room, Bad Gray Man told the girls to remember they’d be punished if they undid Marcus’s restraints, then left him on his stretcher.
When they were alone, Elizabeth asked if he was thirsty. Ferrol had left the stretcher higher than before and she had trouble reaching him with the glass. As she rose on her tiptoes, she slipped and splashed his face with cold water.
It went up his nostrils and made him gasp.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Marcus! I didn’t mean to do that!”
“It’s all right, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”
“Vicky, get a towel,” she said, and the little girl scurried to the bathroom.
“Come close,” Marcus whispered very softly. “Are you a brave girl? Answer me in your tiniest whisper.”
“I think so,” Elizabeth whispered in his good ear.
“Will you do something very brave for me?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to unbuckle my wrist straps.”
“Bad Gray Man said he’d hurt us if we did that.”
“He won’t. It’s just a threat to scare you. I want to take you back to your grandparents, but first, I need you to help me.”
“We’re in space. What can you do?”
He wanted to set her straight, but the only thing protecting them was Ferrol’s ability to release them none the wiser.
“I can drive the spaceship home,” he whispered. “Here’s your sister. Tell her to be very, very quiet, then undo the straps.”
39
Lying on the stretcher, the pain was unbearable.
It was worse on his feet.
He made it through the gleaming labs to a door that took him to a cool, medieval basement of stone walls and dimly lit corridors. Along the way he found a broken ax handle and used it as a cane. He hobbled up a run of stone stairs, and at the top, he unlatched a heavy wooden door and slowly pushed it open.
He was in a long hallway.
He had to rest.
The dizziness he felt climbing the stairs was getting worse. He might have to throw up.
His lack of depth perception wasn’t helping. In the distance, he made out faint voices and as he crept closer he saw a kitchen. A little further down the hall, there was a large cabinet filled with crockery and he used it for cover.
He heard Ferrol in English, say, “No, keep them all on the roof.”
Gunar replied, “Take three days for more men. Till then, don’t have enough guys for big raid.”
“We don’t know if a raid is coming. We don’t know if Handler told anyone where he was going.”
“Okay. Getting dark now. Need to bring guys night-vision goggles.”
“I sent the servants away for the night. I’ll be upstairs. I’ll question Handler again in a couple of hours.”
Footsteps headed in opposite directions.
He waited until both sets had faded away, peered into the empty kitchen, then took another wider, grander corridor, this one lined with oil paintings and tapestries, until he was in a huge entrance hall with a floor of yellow and black tiles and a suit of medieval armor. A massive stone staircase swept to the next floor.
He almost fell on slippery tiles smeared with mopped blood and he wondered if he had anything to do with it. By the door, a shotgun stood on its stock. He traded his ax handle and when he picked it up, it seemed vaguely familiar. There was at least one shell visible behind the receiver shell-latch.
He started up the stairs, using the weapon to steady himself.
He reached a wide hallway carpeted with a long oriental runner that dampened his footfalls. There were closed doors on either side of the hall, but further along, there was an open one. Drawing closer, he heard a TV.
Ferrol came out of his bathroom, lay on his bed, and reached for the tablet on the bedspread. He glanced at the white-room feed. The girls were on their beds. He looked closer and spread his fingers to increase the magnification. Handler’s stretcher was empty.
He sprang up and grabbed the walkie-talkie on his desk.
“Gunar! Handler’s escaped! Get down here!”
Marcus turned the shotgun from a walking stick back into a weapon.
He heard Gunar’s reply come through. “Coming, boss,” followed by, “Fuck! Choppers!”
At the doorway, Marcus saw sheer curtains billowing at the open windows. The evening breeze carried the sound of rotor blades.
*
Gunar grabbed a rifle with a night-vision scope and scanned the skies.
He acquired the lead helicopter in his sights, a Eurocopter Tigre emblazoned with the black and gold serpent and warbird of the Grupo Especial de Operaciones.
Gunar shouted to his men in Slovakian, “Engage!”
The helicopter opened up on the castle ramparts with its nose-mounted thirty-millimeter turret.
The weapons officer had an excellent screen-view of Gunar’s blond head poking through a crenellation and directed a long burst into it.
*
At the first volley, Ferrol ducked away from the window.
The heavy automatic fire overhead was deafening.
Marcus shouted over it, “Looks like I did tell someone I was here.”
Ferrol turned looking like a trapped animal. His wild eyes darted about and settled on the kerosene lamp on his desk.
“Put it down,” Marcus shouted. It was hard keeping his balance. His headache made him want to scream.
Ferrol didn’t put it down. He poured kerosene over his
