James Tabor - The Deep Zone

“Of course,” Rathor said. “Otherwise we’re just like… like a bunch of rutting hogs.”

Adelheid blinked, coughed. “Perhaps not how I would have phrased it, but the thrust is correct.” Adelheid glanced over his shoulder at the sunset, just then completing. “I believe we will have dinner now, but let us move inside.”

They all got up and went into the yacht’s saloon, a glittering cave of leather and marble. The two women excused themselves. “To dress for dinner,” Erika said.

“Just so.” Adelheid nodded.

Rathor needed to use the bathroom—the head, as Adelheid called it out here—and went there. It took him a while to get things working with the deck moving underfoot, but finally he did. When he returned to the yacht’s dining salon, Adelheid and the two women were already seated at a rosewood table long enough for twenty. Adelheid had donned a black blazer and put on a pale rose ascot for the occasion. Erika and Aimée, Rathor saw, had also changed for dinner, though not as he might have expected. Both had removed their blouses and now sat across the table from him bare from the waist up, shoulders back, sipping champagne with insouciance. Their tans, he noticed, were complete. Both smiled when he caught their eyes, but they might have been fully clothed, for all their poise. He swallowed. What promises here?

“Is there anything more exciting,” Adelheid said, “than anticipation? I think not. And what is anticipation but the sweet pain of self-denial? To be in the presence of great reward and endure an ordeal of delay. It is”—he gazed at the women—“an exquisite thing.”

Teasing , was how Rathor put it to himself. But he had to agree with Adelheid that by the end of a leisurely dinner with Erika and Aimée displayed this way, his pent need would be like the water held behind a great dam.

Adelheid raised his glass of champagne and said something—a grace or benediction, perhaps. Rathor had heard him say it before, had thought it sounded somewhat—but not exactly—like German. He had never asked what it meant, and Adelheid had never offered to explain.

Adelheid picked up a fork, but before starting to eat he said, “In case you were wondering, they are both for you. I have my own.”

“WELL, HELLO THERE.”

One of the men spoke, the huge one. They had not been there seconds earlier. For a moment she thought they were narcotraficantes . But the man did not sound Mexican. His accent was distinctly American South, red-clay, redneck cracker. The other man, standing to his left, was black, not quite as large. They wore camouflage uniforms, helmets, giant knives, sidearms, even grenades. They certainly looked like warriors, but they were too neat and their uniforms were too complete for them to be narcos . They wore no insignia of unit or rank. And their helmets were not U.S. mil-spec gear.

“You’re Americans?” Hallie thought perhaps they were part of some special operations unit sent to retrieve and protect the team. She had seen pictures of such fighters, and they often looked less than spit-and-polish. The two men exchanged glances and the big man snickered. She sank lower in the water, right up to her chin.

“We sure are, honey,” the big one said. “Patriotic Americans, both of us. Retired veterans, too. Hey, let me ask you a question: any of your friends coming out behind you?”

“Did BARDA send you?”

The huge man looked puzzled. He glanced at his partner, who shrugged.

“Well, no, as a matter of fact.” The giant was grinning, and she could not help noticing that he had amazing teeth, as even and white as a news anchor’s. “We work for the competition, you might say.”

“The what?”

“Never mind. Why don’t you come on out of there and we’ll get you a blanket and some hot chow. I bet you’re hungry after all that time down in that cave. We got some great stuff. Delta rations. None of that MRE junk.”

“How did you know how long I’ve been in the cave?” Hallie was feeling more afraid with each passing second. The two men radiated threat like heat. Watching them, she started to swim away on her back, sculling with both arms.

“Whoa now, that’s not very friendly. Come here so we can talk.” The giant was still grinning, but his mouth was tight around the white teeth.

She flipped onto her stomach and started swimming as fast as she could toward the other shore. Then she heard a short, sharp noise that sounded like puppuppuppuppuppup as the man squeezed off a six-round burst from the silenced rifle and the cenote’s surface erupted three feet in front of her face. She stopped, turned, treaded water, unsure of what to do. There was no way she could dive deep enough quickly enough to escape if they fired again. She was a good swimmer, but not faster than rifle bullets.

The big man held his rifle at the hip. Looking down, she saw the red laser aiming dot centered on her exposed breastbone. Twenty feet away. He can’t miss .

“Now why don’t you just swim your beautiful self on over here and let’s talk.” No more nice, the voice raw and frightening.

“We don’t have time for this, man,” the other said, standing with one hip cocked, his rifle stock tucked against his waist, muzzle pointing skyward. He sounded like someone who just wanted to get on with a piece of business. The big man ignored him.

There was no option. She swam slowly to the rim of the cenote, put her hands on the rocky edge, and pulled herself out, first to her knees, then up to stand in front of them in her underwear. She sluiced the water back out of her hair. The bigger man had the strangest expression on his face, mouth open, eyes glazed, breath coming in short, sharp little pants. Like a starving animal who sees food , she thought.

“Let me tell you something.” She tried to sound commanding. “I am on a special assignment for the United States government. Many people up to and including the White House know exactly where I am and what I’m doing. Do you understand that? If you interfere with me in any way you will—”

The giant cut her off. “What we understand is that you are here all by your own self. And we are here with you.”

“But I radioed for evac ten minutes ago, right after I came out of the cave. A serious military presence will arrive here in minutes.”

“No, you didn’t, as a matter of fact. We’ve been watching you every second.”

“All right, look.” She maintained eye contact with the big man, who stood six-six if he was an inch. “I’m going to tell you why I’m here. I think when you understand the nature of my mission—”

“Honey, you could be on a mission to save Jesus Christ himself and it wouldn’t matter to us.”

The other man spoke, his voice sharper: “Kathan—we need to move .”

He used the other one’s name , she thought. A very bad sign .

“You need to shut up and let me do my thing,” the one called Kathan said to the other in a voice heavy with warning. He never took his eyes off Hallie. “Honey, I got a question for you.”

“Like what?” She immediately regretted saying that, because the giant’s question had to do with what variety of sexual activity she preferred. He shifted his rifle to his left hand, then lowered the zipper of his camo suit.

“Here’s how we’re gonna start. You get down on your knees and I think you know what comes after that.”

“No.”

He moved more quickly than she would have thought possible for a man so huge, slapping the barrel of his rifle against the right side of Hallie’s neck, just below her ear. It wasn’t a hard blow but it hit the brachial nexus, the same spot where she had hit Cahner with a rock. Her legs collapsed and suddenly she was on her knees, trying to blink away bright sparks of light.