Page 149 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest

She tasted the blood in her mouth. She touched the scalp wound that hadn’t stopped bleeding. In fact, she’d left a trail of blood in the water—no doubt drawing the hungry sharks to her. Her peripheral vision caught sight of another shark fin racing toward her in the distance, butthe back of her neck tingled like a burglar alarm as the distant whining grew louder. She refused to take her eyes off the charging shark—

The ear-splitting whine of a big four-stroke motor exploded behind her. She cried out in confused terror as she felt herself yanked out of the water at speed and tossed onto the long hard seat of a big Yamaha WaveRunner that had barely slowed.

“Hold on tight, missy,” Cabrillo said as he gunned the throttle, racing away from the circling sharks and back toward theOregon.

The girl could barely wrap her thin arms around the muscled torso of the man driving the Jet Ski. She felt the backpack pressed against her chest, forgetting she even had it. She breathed a sigh of relief.

The hard drives with all of the core Neural Reef algorithms were safely tucked inside, along with living tissue samples suspended in neuroplasm. She hoped Bose had survived, but doubted it after that huge explosion. At least the doctor’s creation would live on.

She closed her eyes again, and laid her forehead against the man’s broad back.

She was safe.

81

Colombia, 1997

Vladimir Suárez was cuffed to a steel chair beside a battered desk inside the dank cell. A single naked bulb burned with a sallow light high and out of reach. Anguished cries echoed in the corridors beyond the steel door.

Two weeks earlier, the American spy had delivered him bound and gagged to the fascist Colombian Army, who dropped him into this secret prison. His body bore the evidence of their interrogations. His left eye was now swollen shut, his unshaven face was caked with dried blood, and his flesh was covered in deep bruises from the brutal punches and truncheon blows of the sadistic inquisitors.

He didn’t care.

In fact, he wished they’d finish the job. Just beat him to death and get it over with. Anything to quiet the agonizing screams of his wife burning to death every night in his fitful dreams.

A set of keys jangled in the lock and the steel door swung open.

A lean, clean-shaven man stepped inside. He wore a pair of Levi’s 501s, a loose collared cotton shirt, Saucony running shoes, a thick mustache, and an easy smile. He also carried a worn canvas messenger bag. The soulless prison guard shut the door behind him.

Suárez feigned indifference, but he sized up the man with his one good eye, catching him in his peripheral vision. As near as he could tell, the man was unarmed.

“So you’re the new torturer?” Suárez asked.

“I don’t believe in it.”

The man pulled out a pack of Marlboros and a lighter from his shirt pocket, lit one up, and put it in Suárez’s mouth. The Colombian killer took a long drag as the man pulled a key and unlocked his cuffs, then tossed them with a noisy clang onto the table.

Suárez rubbed the blood back into his wrists as the man lit a smoke for himself. He then pulled the other steel chair around from the back of the table, dragged its scraping feet across the tiled floor next to Suárez, and fell into it.

The two Colombians smoked for a minute in silence, like two old friends on a park bench. Suárez inhaled deep lungfuls of nicotine as if it were pure oxygen. The small room clouded with blue smoke.

Suárez dragged the last bit of cigarette to its filter and then flicked it away.

“If you want information,” Suárez finally said, breaking the silence, “it will take more than a cigarette.”

The man held up the pack. Suárez took another, snatched up the lighter, and took a long drag. “And it will take more than two.”

The man chuckled.

Suárez closed his eyes, and let the tendrils of smoke escape his nostrils like a brooding dragon. He didn’t open them when the peep slot on the steel door slid open and the guard looked in to see what was going on.

The easygoing interrogator threw a look at the guard that made him nearly soil himself. He slammed the peep slot shut and didn’t come back.

The man returned his attention to Suárez, his face a mask of unrelenting grief—impervious to any physical pain anyone could ever level against him.

“I’m sorry about Nadia,” the man began softly.

Suárez opened his eyes. They flickered with simmering rage.