The pilot revved the engine, the rotor’s speed increased, and the aircraft lurched up, tipped forward, and sped off across the field, staying low as it crossed the shoreline. Once over water, it shifted course slightly, briefly following the coast toward Honolulu before veering off to the southeast toward Molokai and Maui.
Forty minutes later Pedro Santiago peered down through the Plexiglas bubble in front of him as the helicopter swept across the rugged southeast coast of Maui and the dark blue surface of the sea was abruptly replaced by the undulating green carpet of the rain forest. The chopper dropped low, until it seemed to Santiago as if it were barely clearing the treetops. Then the trees gave way to a clearing dotted with several buildings whose green-tile roofs would make them invisible from any altitude higher than that at which the helicopter hovered.
Quickly, expertly, the pilot let the big aircraft settle onto a lawn surrounded by several buildings. As Santiago unstrapped himself from the seat and opened the door beside him, a man emerged from one of the buildings, but did not come toward the helicopter.
Instinctively recognizing his employer, though he’d never met him before, Santiago ducked his head protectively low as he dashed out from under the helicopter’s downdraft, cradling the Louis Vuitton case in both his arms.
“Mr. — Jennings,” the waiting man said, hesitating just long enough before using the alias to let Santiago know he felt the use of the code name bordered on the moronic. Santiago couldn’t have cared less — code names had kept him alive and fattened his Swiss bank account beyond the dreams of most men who had been born in the slums of Sao Paulo. Nodding curtly, he followed the other man into the building, down a corridor, and into a small, windowless room bare of any furniture save a small table on which sat a case identical to the one Santiago carried.
The man nodded toward the table, and Santiago set his case down, then tried the lock of the duplicate. The latch snapped open and he lifted the case’s lid. Though his instincts told him all the money would be there, he nonetheless took the time to count it.
It was in fifty-dollar bills, as he’d requested.
He’d had no particular interest in whether the serial numbers of the bills were sequential, but as he began counting them, he noted that they weren’t.
Whoever he was dealing with knew what he was doing.
He finished his counting and looked up. “Two hundred thousand.”
“Exactly as we agreed,” the man replied.
Pedro Santiago packed the money back into the makeup case, changed its combination, and snapped its latch closed. “Then we’re finished.”
The man nodded and extended his hand. Santiago ignored the gesture, turning back toward the single door that provided the only access to the room. Accepting that Santiago had nothing more to say, the man escorted him back to the outside door and waited while the courier got back into the helicopter, closed the door, and strapped himself in. As the craft rose up from the lawn and moved back toward the sea, the man remained near the door, watching.
The moment the man disappeared from Pedro Santiago’s view, Santiago began thinking about his next job, a run from South Africa.
That job, he suspected, would be a lot more interesting than this one had proved to be.
As the helicopter disappeared over the green horizon of the rain forest, the man reentered the building and closed the door behind him. Returning to the room where he had completed his transaction with the person he knew only as “Mr. Jennings,” he closed and locked the door, then opened the Louis Vuitton makeup case.
His hands trembled as he lifted the lid.
Inside the makeup case there was a single object.
A skull.
Its empty eyes stared up at him.
The hairs on the back of Pedro Santiago’s neck suddenly rose and a tiny alarm sounded in his head.
Danger!
The helicopter was five miles off the coast of Maui, and though he couldn’t have said what it was that set off his internal alarm, something had changed inside the cabin.
Not a movement — at least not a movement of the aircraft itself.
The pilot?
He couldn’t be certain.
Being careful to give no sign that he was now on full alert, Santiago glanced over from the copilot’s seat, but the pilot was staring straight ahead, seeming almost to have forgotten his passenger’s presence.
Or was he looking for something?
Santiago’s eyes left the pilot, sweeping the panorama of sea and islands that lay beyond the Plexiglas bubble that formed the cabin’s front. A few boats were scattered over the ocean’s surface, and except for a single airliner far in the distance, the sky was empty.
Yet Pedro Santiago’s internal alarms were sounding louder than ever.
His body tensed, though he still had no idea what the threat might be, nor from what direction it would come.
Once again his eyes darted toward the pilot, and now he could see the tension in the other man’s body: the narrowing of his eyes, the tightening of his grip on the helicopter’s joystick.
Suddenly, a flicker of movement was reflected in the curve of the Plexiglas, a flicker so faint and distorted that Santiago almost missed it. Then, as his body tensed, he understood.
Behind him!
Someone was behind him!
But it was already too late. Even as Pedro Santiago instinctively started to duck away, the man who had hidden himself in the back of the helicopter during the few minutes the craft waited in the clearing released the latch on the door with one hand, while he freed Santiago’s safety belt with the other.
At exactly the same instant, the pilot pulled hard on the joystick, and the chopper yawed over to starboard.
Even before he quite realized what had happened, Pedro Santiago was tumbling toward the sea, four hundred feet below.
CHAPTER 3
Michael stared down at the islands that had finally appeared out of the endless expanse of sea. Three months! Three whole months! What was he supposed to do here for three months? A couple of weeks, sure! But three months? He could barely believe his mother had actually yanked him out of school just as he was about to make the track team. Still, he sort of knew why she’d done it.
It was the black eye and the cut on his arm that had made up her mind. If he’d just managed to give Slotzky the slip that day …
But he hadn’t, so now here he was, out in the middle of the ocean! He didn’t know anybody at all, and he’d never really been very good at making friends, always afraid that his asthma would get in the way. So what was he supposed to do while his mom was working the dig? From what she’d said, there wasn’t even a city on Maui — only a couple of little towns, and they weren’t even going to be living in one of them! On the other hand, the islands did look beautiful, and there was always the possibility that maybe his mom would finally let him learn to scuba dive. Even now, he could remember his father promising to take him diving as soon as he was strong enough to pick up the tanks. But then …
A vision of the burning airplane in which Tom Sundquist had died filled Michael’s mind, and he felt the familiar sick sensation that still came into his stomach whenever he remembered that morning when his whole life had literally blown up in front of his eyes. And now, just when it seemed like things were starting to go okay, his mom had made him come out here! “Will you at least let me learn to dive?” he asked, peering out the window at
