144
In the past, Eduardo would have needed the artificial enhancement provided by night-vision binoculars to see the dark landscape stretched out before him. But the growth of his abilities since he had first placed the artifact upon his head had changed all that. While it wasn’t like looking out at daylight, this spectrum of illumination was almost as clear. Tonight, the darkness shrouding Schriever Air Force Base would not help conceal its secrets.
It was almost as if he could see into the Ripper’s head. The man had done exactly what he would have done, skirting the perimeter fencing of the air force base until he found the perfect spot, cut a hole in the fencing, and gone through, directly toward the GPS antenna visible in the distance. As pleasurable as it was to kill guards, dead guards attracted more attention than live ones, failing to respond to radio queries, failing to check in on required intervals. Best to bypass them, letting them cluelessly continue their ineffective patrols.
The man was good. But tonight, the Ripper was his.
Eduardo slid through the cut in the fence, the sniper rifle slung across his shoulders. In the distance, he could see the GPS antenna silhouetted against a number of lighted buildings farther away. Closer at hand, perhaps two hundred yards away from the antenna, a steel building jutted up from the ground, obviously a maintenance building of some type.
As Eduardo began to move forward, the door to the building slid open, causing him to sink down to the ground. A man moved into the doorway, paused momentarily as a woman moved to embrace him. As they separated again, the man paused, like an animal sniffing the night air, his gaze sweeping outward. Then he moved away rapidly, rounding the building toward the antenna. The Ripper.
Eduardo’s gaze refocused on the woman in the doorway, backlit by a dim glow from inside, something only he could see. Her extended belly told him all he needed to know. She was pregnant.
Why in the world would Jack Gregory bring a pregnant woman along on this mission? There could be only one reason. This was more than just a member of his team. This was his lover, and in her swollen stomach, his unborn child. Funny that Garfield Kromly hadn’t mentioned that. Had he known? Was it possible that he had taken that secret with him to his grave? A last, small victory?
Eduardo smiled. He didn’t think so, but it didn’t really matter. He now knew. And it was perfect.
Stepping back inside, the woman pulled the door closed. Immediately, El Chupacabra was up and moving again, covering the intervening distance in a ground-burning lope that kept the building between him and the antenna. Between him and the Ripper.
The metal building rose up before him like an ancient Sphinx rising out of the night, vainly trying to protect its Pharaoh. Eduardo paused just outside the door, a grin of anticipation spreading across his face. There would be no protection from that which had been summoned. Not here. Not tonight.
In the darkness just outside the door, Eduardo stilled his breathing, allowing the sounds within the maintenance building to caress his enhanced hearing. Inside, fingers tapped a computer keyboard. He increased his focus. There it was. A lone heartbeat. Wait. Two heartbeats, one at a steady fifty-six beats per minute. The other, much less distinct, raced along at a hundred-and-ten beats per minute. And this second was at a higher pitch, the volume of blood pulsing through a much, much smaller aortic cavity.
The mother and her unborn child.
The woman was close, sitting at a computer not more than ten feet from the door. El Chupacabra couldn’t have asked for anything better. What had started as a great night had suddenly gotten better. Much better.
With a pull that shot the door open along its track, El Chupacabra leaped into the room, racing across the intervening space with a speed that no mortal could match. Although surprised, the woman recovered immediately, her hand flying to the gun sitting beside the laptop. She was fast. But not nearly fast enough.
Eduardo’s blow knocked her backward out of her chair, sending the weapon flying into the center of the room. Landing in a tuck roll that brought her back to her feet, the pregnant agent-woman found herself too slow to deal with the onslaught that confronted her. Eduardo chopped into the side of her neck with a precisely gauged blow.
She pitched forward, face-first, but before she could hit the concrete floor, Eduardo caught her, tossing her over his left shoulder as if she weighed no more than a child.
His eyes swept the room. Definitely not the spot he wanted to take on the Ripper. Single exit, too enclosed. If the Ripper waited outside, Eduardo would be trapped here. Ignoring the laptop, his eyes moved to the walkie-talkie on the desk.
Picking it up, Eduardo paused in the doorway just long enough to ensure the path was clear. Then, backtracking along the way he’d entered the air base, he stuffed the woman’s unconscious body beneath the fence flap, then ducked through. Once again, he lifted her onto his shoulder, the feel of the unborn heartbeat in her belly elevating his pulse with anticipation.
A quarter-mile later he found what he’d been looking for: a draw that funneled into a perfect kill zone. Laying the woman down between two trees, he extracted his rape kit, pulling loose a pre-cut strip of duct tape and placing it across her mouth. He didn’t bother to bind her hands and feet. After all, he was a new god. Well beyond fear of any man, much less a woman.
Eduardo touched the woman’s pregnant belly, looked back toward the airbase, and smiled. In a few minutes he would press the button on the walkie-talkie to let Jack Gregory hear his girlfriend’s screams.
A grin of anticipation split Eduardo’s lips. The Ripper would come for him. And then El Chupacabra would show the Ripper the true meaning of fear.
145
Janet struggled toward wakefulness, her lips so dry that they felt like they’d been glued together. Then it came back to her.
Her eyes popped open, but her lips did not. A heavy strip of duct tape closed them as effectively as a padlock on a storage locker. She couldn’t move her arms either. They were pinned to the ground by a pair of knees that straddled her stomach.
A face swam into her blurred vision, a startlingly handsome face. In her memory, it had a name attached to it, although in her current state of confusion, that name eluded her.
The night breeze was cold on her naked body, squeezing her skin into tight little goose bumps, puckering her nipples. She was completely naked. The realization brought her out of the haze. She moved her gaze to the man who straddled her. Although fully clothed, he was plainly excited.
Weighing her options, Janet looked again into that face, her eyes locking with her attacker’s. Eduardo Montenegro.
She tried to scissor her legs, but they failed to respond. She was a cobra, locked in the snake charmer’s gaze, her body frozen so that she could only stare up into those strangely active eyes.
Eduardo smiled as his hands caressed her body.
“Hello, Janet. It is Janet, isn’t it?” The silky smooth Latin voice creeped her out more than her inability to respond. “With this round body, it took me a while to recognize you from your file photos.”
Eduardo leaned down and gently kissed her on the cheek, the feel of his lips sending a pulse of revulsion through her body. It felt like she’d just been kissed by her mortician.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I like pregnant ladies, especially ones as pretty as you. It excites me.”
His breath on her cheek smelled faintly of cinnamon candy. Red Hots. Christ, she’d dated a boy in high school who had chugged down Red Hots. Janet had never liked him either.
“You know what makes me really hot?” Eduardo asked, opening the buttons on his shirt.
“Fuck you,” Janet mumbled behind the tape gag.
Eduardo smiled. “That too. But first, indulge me with a bit of fantasy. Tell me, young lady. What do you really fear?”
Suddenly, Janet found her gaze bound more tightly to his, unable to move, unable to blink.
The night sky melted away, leaving her seated in a green, grassy park with a large sand playground. The sound of children laughing as they swung from the monkey bars tickled her ears. It was a perfect day. She didn’t know why she should be uneasy, but she was.
Where was her Robby? He’d been right here just a minute ago, whirling round and round on the merry-go-round, but now he was gone.
“Robby?” she called, her voice barely rising above the children’s laughter.
“Robby!” Her voice held an edge of the terror only a mother can know. “Where are you, baby?”
As she rose to her feet and took a step forward, she felt the sand shift between her bare toes, small fingers closing around them.
Looking down, she saw the familiar little hand slip away beneath the sand.
“No! Robby!” Janet screamed, dropping to her knees, desperately scooping at the sand.
Her fingers touched a headful of soft, curly hair, then a bare cheek. Another scoop revealed her baby boy’s face.
“Mama! Help!” Robby’s terrified scream was cut short by the sand as he once again slipped beneath the surface.
Suddenly, she felt it. The tiny hand gripping her own. Janet redoubled her efforts, sending great double-handed scoops of sand arcing into the air behind her as she dug with her other hand.
Robby’s head and left shoulder were now clear of the sand. Another few scoops and she should be able to pull him free.
Something metallic glinted in the sand just beyond her baby’s shoulder, shimmering in a way that attracted his gaze. Mesmerized, Robby freed his other hand and reached for it, his small fingers closing around the shiny object with a surprising strength.
Janet felt the tug pull her child away from her as the object disappeared beneath the surface,
“Robby! Let go of that! Give me your other hand!”
But Robby didn’t hear her. His little face turned away as he struggled to free himself from her tenuous grip in his efforts to retrieve the thing. With a sound almost like a slurp, the sand sucked him down, his tiny hand sliding from her grasp.
“Somebody! Help me!” she screamed. “My baby’s under here.”
But the other parents just sat on the nearby benches, pointing and laughing as if she was playing some sort of game.
There it was again, the touch of small fingers beneath the sand. Janet grabbed for the little hand, but she could only get the fingers, and those were slipping away, pulled downward by a suction she could not overcome.
As the little hand slipped away for the last time, her scream warbled out past the tape that gagged her mouth, carried away on the brisk night breeze.
Eduardo’s face was back, his smile having widened since she last remembered seeing it. “Good girl. I think we’ve found it.”
The Colombian grabbed her swollen belly in both hands, not exactly squeezing, but feeling very deeply. Janet coughed into her gag, her eyes watering so badly she could barely see. The vision of her unborn child filled her mind with more clarity than any sonogram could provide. And although it should have been a hallucination, she knew this was real.
Somehow, El Chupacabra had formed a three-way loop, piping the feelings of her unborn child through his mind and into hers. Her stomach writhed, the child curling into a tight ball, kicking out with both feet.
A terror worse than any she could have imagined formed in her baby’s mind, its small mouth working as if it was trying to form a scream. It rolled in the womb, twisting the umbilical cable around its throat, then again, tightening the fleshy noose.
“I’m gonna kill you, you sick bastard!” Janet screamed into the muffling duct tape, the white heat of hatred overriding her fear. “I swear to God!”
The baby rolled in her stomach again, twisting the umbilical so tightly that all blood supply was blocked off. Worse, its terror had risen to the point that its movements had become suicidal. But still, Eduardo increased his focus, steadily turning up the volume on her unborn child’s fear.
As Janet screamed her terror and frustration, Eduardo thumbed the microphone on the walkie-talkie.
“Ripper. Do you hear your lover’s muffled screams? If you hurry, she and your baby might still be alive when you get here. Come to me.”