Death Wave

They started walking.

LA PALMA AIRPORT

SOUTH OF SANTA CRUZ DE LA PALMA

LA PALMA, CANARY ISLANDS

MONDAY, 1410 HOURS LOCAL TIME

“Miss Howorth?” the man asked in brisk, no-nonense tones. “Mr. Carlylse?” James Castelano stepped out from behind a pillar. Nearby, on the other side of the entrance to the airport terminal, Harry Daimler pretended to read a newspaper.

“Good to see you again, James,” CJ said — and it was good. CJ’s knees were shaking as she shook his hand. There’d been no way to know if other assassins were waiting for them along the descent off Taburiente, or here at the airport. Being no longer alone gave her a tremendous surge of relief. Right now, Castelano looked about ten feet tall, and she was tempted to ask where his white charger was.

“Is this our package?” He gave Carlylse a cold look up and down.

“The very same.”

“Are you going to board the aircraft with us now, sir,” Castelano asked in a flat voice, “or do we knock you unconscious and carry you on board?”

Carlylse raised both hands. “I’m going with you! Jesus Christ …”

“He’s not available at the moment, Mr. Carlylse. You’ll have to settle for my partner over there instead.”

“You’re not going back?” CJ asked.

“No, ma’am. I’ve been ordered to stay with you.”

“Is it … is it safe?” Carlylse asked. He looked terrified, and CJ could understand why. He was a firm believer in the frailly of life … now.

“We flew in on a private plane, Mr. Carlylse, a Learjet 45. It was thoroughly checked before we left Rota, and there are two U.S. Marshals standing beside it on the tarmac now. Yes, it’s safe.”

“In that case, sir, there is nothing

I want more than to get off this godforsaken island!”

“We can get your stuff out of your room,” CJ told him. “Your computer and clothes and all that. I’m sure they can set you up at Fort Meade with a razor and a toothbrush.”

“Thank you. I don’t want to lose the laptop. It’s got half of my next book on it.”

They went through the terminal, and Castelano flashed a card at a security gate that let them all go through. The Learjet was waiting on the far side of the terminal, two tough-looking men in civilian clothes standing beneath it.

“Is that your plane?” CJ asked. “You really did arrive on a white charger!”

“I beg your pardon?” Castelano asked, looking puzzled.

“Never mind.” CJ had already decided that Castelano and Daimler, with body-builder muscles beneath their touristy bright-print shirts, were lacking in the conversation department and had social skills approximating those of bricks.

“This way, Mr. Carlylse,” Daimler said.

Carlylse turned suddenly. “Thank you, CJ. You … you saved my life back there a couple of times over.”

“Don’t mention it,” she told him. “That’s what we get paid for.”

“Well, I appreciate it. And … I wasn’t really that upset by your driving …”

She gave him a hug and a quick peck on the cheek. He nodded, then turned and followed Daimler across the tarmac toward the waiting aircraft.

When she’d called Rubens earlier, during the drive down the east side of the mountain, he said, that Charlie Dean, Ilya Akulinin, and a number of Force Recon Marines were on their way, by parachute. As she and Castelano stood in the blazing tropical sunshine outside the terminal, watching Carlylse walk up the boarding stairs, she looked away, toward the west and the southwest, wondering if she would catch a glimpse of them.

That was impossible, of course. She had no idea when they would be arriving. Rubens had not confided anything else about the op, and rightly so. He’d probably been bending security regulations just telling her that they were coming. They might still be on the way from the air base in Spain, or they might already be on the ground.

She did see something unexpected, though … an aircraft much closer at hand. It was a big, blue Aerospatiale Puma with a bright red Moroccan flag showing on the tail boom, and the white-letter logo of Marrakech Air Transport, a civilian air charter service. She’d seen two like it yesterday, when the three of them had picked their way across cinder slopes and through puine forests to peer into the ten calderas along the Cumbre Vieja. This one, with a thunderous roar, was lifting off of the southern end of the La Palma runway. As she watched, it hovered a moment, then dipped its nose and turned away, angling toward the mountainous interior of the island.

From this angle, it looked like it was heading straight for the San Martin volcano, just seven miles to the southwest.

She pulled out her cell phone for another call to the Art Room.

GREEN AMBER ONE

EAST SLOPE OF SAN MARTIN

MONDAY, 1422 HOURS LOCAL TIME

“Charlie? Ilya?” Jeff Rockman’s voice said over Dean’s implant. “You may be about to get company.”

Charlie Dean was panting with the effort of the climb. They’d emerged from the pine forest on the slope below the San Martin crater and were in the open now, trudging slowly up the loose cinder scree of the volcanic cone. He stopped, looking up. The crest was still two or three hundred yards ahead, and another three hundred feet above them.

“Whatcha got?” he asked.

“CJ’s at the airport,” Rockman told him. “She just called in a report. A Moroccan civil helicopter is on its way, headed in your direction.”

Dean whirled in place, fumbling for his binoculars — and suddenly he realized that he didn’t need them. He could see the aircraft now, between him and the airport, several miles away.

“Take cover!” he called, his voice barely above a sharp whisper. “Incoming aircraft!”

The others saw the helicopter now as well. It would be over them in less than a minute — and they were well above the tree line, nakedly exposed on the volcano’s eastern slope.

Inside his backpack, on the very top, was the special gear from Fort Meade, a tightly rolled bundle of tough, waterproof fabric. He ripped open the closures, unrolling it on the ground. A seven-by-seven blanket with elastic loops at each corner, its color was a faded and mottled red brick and dark gray, a close match for the colors of the surrounding volcanic landscape. Slipping a corner strap over one boot, then the other, he pulled the blanket up over his body, and in seconds effectively disappeared.

During his years as a U.S. Marine sniper, Charlie Dean had frequently used camouflage Ghillie suits, making them himself in the field from locally available materials. The tech-Ghillie was a high-tech wrinkle on an old idea. The surface color adapted to the local light levels, fading in strong light, darkening in shade. A ceramic weave inside the layers of fabric blocked infrared radiation — heat — rendering the tech-Ghillie effectively invisible under IR. That last made the things ungodly hot, since the wearer’s body heat couldn’t escape to the open air, but then the same was true of traditional Ghillie suits, which commonly inflicted temperatures of 120 degrees on the people wearing them.

The things were custom ordered for specific environments; the color scheme of these blankets had been based on satellite photos of the top of the Cumbre Vieja taken just a few days ago.

Dean could hear the stuttering whop-whop-whop of the helicopter now as it grew closer. Helicopters, he knew from his briefing, were being used to transport men and material up to the volcanic craters, but there was always that small chance that something had gone wrong, that the op had been compromised and the aircraft overhead was actively searching for them.

The thunder of rotors grew louder, then still louder. Dean hugged the ground, motionless. As the noise passed overhead, he raised his head slightly, risking a look. The helicopter, a civilian Puma, was flying over the rim of the crater ahead. As he watched, it circled to the left, hovered, then drifted slowly down, vanishing behind the lip