Douglas Preston - The Obsidian Chamber

“Wait!” Constance cried.

Pendergast looked at her.

Diogenes stepped forward, grasped the muzzle of the gun, pressed it hard against his own temple. “Go ahead, frater . Do it.”

“Don’t kill him,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Much better to spare his life — to force him to live with his loneliness, with the memory of his wrongdoing. And…” She hesitated. “I learned something about him.”

“Which is?” Pendergast’s voice was cool, clipped.

Constance glanced back at Diogenes, who was still standing there, swaying in the moonlight, muzzle held against his head. “I didn’t want him to hear me say this — but now there’s nothing for it. He’s not totally responsible for what he’s become. You, of all people, know that. And there’s a small seed of good in him — I’ve seen it. I believe he truly did want to reform, to start a new life. What he wants now, I can’t say. Looking at him in this condition, my thirst for vengeance is thoroughly slaked. If you let him live, perhaps — just perhaps — he’ll nurture that seed.” Then she added, bitterly: “Perhaps he can water it with his tears.”

As she spoke, a change came across Pendergast’s face. It lost just a little of its marble-like hardness. But it was still impossible to know what was going on in his mind.

“ Please ,” Constance whispered.

In the distance now, over the low whisper of wind among the palm trees, she could hear the sound of helicopter blades — faint, but growing ever closer.

Longstreet sat in the jump seat of the lead chopper as it thundered across the Keys, heading for a small cluster of islands north of Upper Sugarloaf Key. There were two SWAT teams coming in: Team Blue would land on an LZ near the main house on the northern end of the island, and Team Red, his own, would land in an open area by a few old outbuildings at the southern end. In addition, he had a Zodiac inbound, with more waiting in Key West on high alert, ready to shuttle in additional backup and shuttle out any casualties. He believed that, by employing a textbook pincer movement, they could land, secure the island, and capture Diogenes in less than ten minutes, provided it did not devolve into a hostage situation. That was always a possibility, although an unlikely one: he was fairly certain this Constance Greene was Bonnie to Diogenes’s Clyde and that both would go down in a quasi-suicidal blaze of gunfire. But he also had a carefully worked-out alternative plan, just in case, with two experienced negotiators as part of the team.

He wondered once again what the hell had happened to Pendergast. He knew the man hadn’t liked the SWAT approach and wanted to go in covertly. That was damned foolish, Longstreet knew; nothing was better than a blitzkrieg of overwhelming firepower. Back in their special forces days, there were times when Pendergast had disappeared just like this — no word to anyone — only to reappear later with some important objective accomplished. It had happened often enough that their team developed a slang term for it— Don’t pull a Pendergast meant “Don’t disappear without explanation.”

Well, he couldn’t worry about that now. If the man had indeed “pulled a Pendergast,” he would be reappearing soon enough. Longstreet just hoped to God he hadn’t gone rogue and prepared to do something stupid, triggering a nightmare of paperwork, questions, and hearings.

As they came in low and fast, he could see Halcyon Key loom into view through the open door of the chopper. Only a trace of light remained along the western horizon, on the edge of a dark, moonless night. Off to his right he could see the chopper conveying Team Blue, keeping good formation with them.

He murmured into his headset: “Blue, separate north and go in for a landing. We’re landing south. Both teams on the ground at nineteen hundred twenty, to the minute.”

“Roger that.”

The chopper turned and slowed as it came in. Below, in the faint light, Longstreet could see the outbuildings and plenty of open area in the form of saw-grass-carpeted sand.

“Check weapons, body armor, and activate night vision,” said Longstreet while checking his own equipment and 9mm Beretta, and lowering his night-vision goggles.

A moment later, he said: “Take us in.”

The pilot came around and brought the helicopter down, streamers of sand blowing away in the downdraft, saw grass thrashing. The chopper settled on the sand and the team leapt out, weapons at the ready, spreading out, running for the cover of the outbuildings and the bushes, following Longstreet’s predetermined plan to the letter. Longstreet was the last out, and he headed directly toward the beach.

Pendergast had stripped off Constance’s heavy dress, leaving her in her slip. She was trembling all over. He doctored her knife wounds using supplies from his medical kit, cleaning them with a disinfectant, applying a topical antibiotic, and closing them as best he could with bandages — all the while keeping his gun trained on Diogenes, whose hands he’d cuffed behind his back.

He heard the throbbing of Longstreet’s choppers.

“The cavalry approaches,” said Diogenes tonelessly.

He ignored his brother. The wounds were not dangerously deep, but they were not shallow, either, and would require stitches. Constance had lost a lot of blood and was, he feared, about to go into shock, although she seemed strangely alert. Beyond that, her psychological stability at the moment remained very much an open question.

She had to be removed from the island as quickly as possible.

“Well, frater ,” said Diogenes. “If my life is to be spared, what now?”

Pendergast put an arm around Constance, bracing her and keeping her upright. He could feel the strange animal trembling that had taken hold of her form. She had fallen silent: vibrantly, glowingly silent. A strange state that he did not understand; but then, he realized, he had never fully understood her.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Put your arm on my shoulder, use it as a brace.”

She grasped his shoulder, her body leaning against his.

Pendergast gestured toward his brother with the muzzle of the gun. “Let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“Keep quiet and follow my orders.”

“And if I don’t? You’ll kill me?”

“ They will kill you,” said Pendergast.

“ They are in for the surprise of their lives,” said Diogenes. And then he chuckled, low, as if in response to a private joke. The chuckling went on.

At that moment, Pendergast heard the sound of a two-stroke engine out on the water and looked over to see the dim form of a Zodiac approaching the pier at the far end of the beach.

“Into the woods,” he said.

Diogenes obeyed, chuckling and cackling under his breath, and all three went into the darkness of the buttonwood grove.

“That way,” he said to Diogenes, gesturing with the gun.

His brother moved through the darkness, down a faint path among the trees. Pendergast supported Constance, who clung to him like a child.

“What’s this surprise?” Pendergast asked.

“You shall know very soon. About now, in fact—”

An enormous explosion erupted behind them, a huge fireball rising into the darkness, weeping flaming debris and sparks; a split second later the pressure wave hit, pressing down the trees and generating a blast of wind. The explosion caused an instant reaction from the southern SWAT team, with the sound of gunfire, shouts, a couple of smaller explosions from RPGs being fired: a burst of frenzied activity that, Pendergast could hear, was rapidly approaching.