Juan Gómez-Jurado - Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

She kicked the sleeping bag to the floor, grabbed a boot in each hand and returned to Andrea.

‘I have to put on my boots and go over to the medicine cabinet. You’ll be all right in a minute,’ she said, pulling on her boots. ‘The poison is very dangerous, but it takes almost half an hour to kill a person. Hold on.’

Andrea did not reply. Harel looked up. Andrea had brought her hand up to her neck and her face was starting to turn blue.

Oh, Holy God! She is allergic. She’s going into anaphylactic shock.

Forgetting to put on her other boot, Harel knelt next to Andrea, her naked legs exposed to the floor. She had never been so aware of every square inch of her flesh. She looked for the place where the scorpions had stung Andrea and found two spots on the reporter’s left calf, two small holes, each surrounded by an inflamed area roughly the size of a tennis ball.

Shit. They really got her.

The tent flap opened and Father Fowler came in. He was also barefoot.

‘What’s going on?’

Harel was leaning over Andrea, trying to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

‘Father, please hurry. She’s in shock. I need epinephrine.’

‘Where is it?’

‘In the cabinet at the end, second shelf from the top. There are some green vials. Bring me one and a syringe.’

She leaned over and blew more air into Andrea’s mouth, but the swelling in her throat was hindering the passage of air into her lungs. If Harel didn’t treat the shock straight away, her friend would be dead.

And it’ll be your fault, for being such a coward and climbing up on the table.

‘What the hell happened?’ said the priest, running to the cabinet. ‘She’s in shock?’

‘Get out,’ Doc screamed at the half-dozen sleepy heads peering into the infirmary. Harel didn’t want one of the scorpions to escape and find some other victim. ‘A scorpion stung her, Father. There are three in here right now. Be careful.’

Father Fowler flinched slightly at the news and moved carefully towards the doctor with the epinephrine and syringe. Harel immediately injected five CCs into Andrea’s naked thigh.

Fowler grabbed a five-gallon jar of water by the handle.

‘You take care of Andrea,’ he told the doctor. ‘I’ll find them.’

Harel now turned all her attention to the young reporter, although by this point all she could do was observe her condition. It would be the epinephrine that would have to work its miraculous effect. As soon as the hormone entered Andrea’s bloodstream, the nerve endings in her cells would start firing. The fat cells in her body would begin to break up the lipids to free extra energy, her heart rate would increase, her blood would carry more glucose, her brain would start producing dopamine, and most importantly, her bronchial tubes would dilate and the swelling in her throat disappear.

With a loud gulp, Andrea took her first breath of air on her own. To Dr Harel, the sound was almost as beautiful as the three dry thuds of Father Fowler’s gallon jug that she had heard in the background as the medicine continued to work. When Father Fowler sat down on the floor next to her, Doc had no doubt that the three scorpions were now reduced to three stains on the floor.

‘And the antidote? Something to deal with the poison?’ asked the priest.

‘Yes, but I don’t want to inject her just yet. It’s made from the blood of horses that have been exposed to hundreds of scorpion stings so that eventually they become immune. The vaccine always carries traces of the toxin, and I don’t want to risk another shock.’

Fowler watched the young Spaniard. Her face was slowly starting to look normal again.

‘Thank you for everything you’ve done, Doctor,’ he said. ‘I won’t forget it.’

‘No problem,’ replied Harel, who was by now all too conscious of the danger they had been through, and began to shake.

‘Will there be any after-effects?’

‘No. Her body can fight against the poison now.’ She raised the green vial. ‘This is pure adrenalin, it’s like giving her system a weapon. All the organs in her body will double their capacity and prevent her from choking. She’ll be all right in a couple of hours, although she will feel like shit.’

Fowler’s face relaxed a little. He pointed to the door.

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

‘I’m no idiot, Father. I’ve been in the desert hundreds of times in my country. The last thing I do at night is make sure all the doors are closed. In fact, I double check. This tent is more secure than a Swiss bank account.’

‘Three scorpions. All at the same time. In the middle of the night…’

‘Yes, Father. That’s the second time someone has tried to kill Andrea.’

OUTSKIRTS OF WASHINGTON, DC

Friday, 14 July 2006. 11:36 p.m.

Ever since he had started hunting terrorists, Orville Watson had taken a series of basic precautions: making sure he had telephone numbers, addresses and postal codes under different names, then buying a house through an unnamed foreign association that only a genius would have been able to trace to him. An emergency hideout in case things got ugly.

Of course, a safe house only you know of has its problems. For a start, if you want to stock it with supplies then you have to do so on your own. Orville took care of that. Once every three weeks he would take to the house cans, meat for the freezer, and a stack of DVDs of the latest films. He’d then get rid of anything that was out of date, lock up the place and leave.

It was paranoid behaviour… no question about it. The only mistake Orville had ever made, other than letting himself be followed by Nazim, was that the last time he’d been there he’d forgotten the bag of Hershey bars. It was an unwise addiction, not only because of the 330 calories per bar, but because an emergency order to Amazon might let the terrorists know that you were inside the house they were watching.

But Orville hadn’t been able to help himself. He could’ve done without food, water, internet access, his collection of sexy photos, his books or his music. But when he’d entered the house in the early hours of Wednesday morning, thrown the fireman’s coat into the garbage bin and looked into the cupboard where he stored his chocolate and saw that it was empty, his heart had sunk. He couldn’t go three or four months without chocolate, having been totally hooked ever since his parents’ divorce.

I could’ve had a worse addiction , he thought, trying to calm himself. Heroin, crack, voting Republican.

Orville had never tried heroin in his life, but not even the overwhelming craziness of that drug couldn’t compare to the uncontrollable rush he felt when he heard the sound of foil crackling as he unwrapped his chocolate.

If Orville were to go all Freudian, he might have decided that this was because the last thing the Watson family had done together before the divorce was to spend the Christmas of 1993 at his uncle’s house in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. As a special treat his parents took Orville to the Hershey factory, which was only fourteen miles from Harrisburg. Orville grew weak at the knees when they first entered the building and absorbed the aroma of the chocolate. He was even given some Hershey bars with his name on them.

But now Orville was even more worried by another sound: that of breaking glass, if his ears weren’t playing tricks on him.

He carefully pushed aside a small pile of chocolate wrappers and got out of bed. He had resisted touching the chocolate for three hours, a personal record, but now that he’d finally given in to his addiction, he planned to go all out. And again, if he’d gone all Freudian about it, he would have worked out that he had eaten seventeen chocolates, one for each member of his company who had died in Monday’s attack.