His Mysterious Ways

Where she had come from or who had left her, no one knew. For the first forty-eight hours, her condition had been touch-and-go. Finally, on the third day, her temperature had dropped and her breathing became less labored, but she still had a long way to go for a full recovery.

Melanie had barely left the little girl’s bedside since she’d frantically carried her into the clinic three days ago. She’d sat with her morning and night, reading to her, talking to her softly, sometimes praying. Now she reached out to touch a tiny hand beneath the oxygen tent, but the child didn’t stir.

Dr. Wilder, who ran the clinic, squeezed Melanie’s shoulder, then nodded toward the door. Reluctantly, she got up and followed him out. His solemn expression alarmed her.

Melanie turned to him anxiously once they were outside the closed door. “She’s better today, right? Her fever is down, her color is improving…”

“Yes, that’s the good news.” Dr. Wilder stripped off his surgical gloves and dropped them in a nearby waste receptacle. He wasn’t a particularly tall man, standing only a couple of inches above Melanie’s five foot seven, but he was trim and toned and the close-cropped beard and mustache gave him a distinguished, intellectual appearance. He was American, but Melanie couldn’t place his accent.

When she’d first met him, she’d judged him to be around fifty-five, but after having spent the past few days in his company, she’d come to the conclusion that he was one of those men whose age could be anywhere from late forties to late sixties.

He was refined, gentle, a very good doctor from what she’d observed, although, admittedly, a premed dropout such as she was perhaps not the best judge. Still, she’d been impressed with his care and treatment of Angel. Melanie was convinced the child wouldn’t have made it through that first day without Dr. Wilder’s expertise.

Why someone with his obvious skill and talent had ended up in a place like Santa Elena, she couldn’t imagine. Nor did she ask. She’d learned a long time ago that curiosity courted curiosity. Her own reasons for coming to Cartéga were private and complicated—perhaps even dangerous—and she had no intention of discussing them with anyone, much less dragging an innocent bystander into her murky quest.

Dr. Wilder’s worried gaze met hers. “Angel is responding to the treatment, but unfortunately, the epidemic has depleted our supply of antibiotics. I’ve made repeated calls to the Ministry of Health in San Cristóbal, but the government either can’t or won’t help us. I haven’t even been able to get the results of Angel’s blood tests, and without them, I can’t even be sure what we’re dealing with…”

He trailed off, shaking his head in disgust. “The minister claims that airlifted medical supplies from the U.S. are being stolen by the rebels, but I’m just as inclined to believe they’re being confiscated by the army to sell on the black market.”

If Melanie had learned anything in the brief time she’d spent in Cartéga it was that in the bloody civil war that had raged for nearly five years, there were no good guys. Only victims like Angel.

She drew a long breath. “What happens to Angel if we run out?”

Dr. Wilder glanced at the door behind which the tiny, dark-eyed girl valiantly fought for her life. “She’s very weak. Without the antibiotics, her immune system may not be able to fight the infection. Complications could set in. Pneumonia, acute renal failure…” He gave a helpless shrug. “Without the drugs, she could die.”

“We can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen,” Melanie said stubbornly.

He gave her a weary, defeated smile. “We may not have a choice. Some things are out of our hands. If the shipments can’t get through…”

“We’ll just have to find the drugs somewhere else.”

He frowned. “Where?”

Melanie thought for a moment. “An American oil company has a drilling site thirty miles north of here at the base of the mountains. They have an infirmary on the premises, as well as an airstrip, and supplies are flown in twice a month.”

Dr. Wilder’s gaze narrowed. “How do you know that?”

“I talk to people in the village. I hear things,” she replied evasively.

“Did you also hear that the drilling site is like a fortress?” Dr. Wilder demanded. “Kruger Petroleum has hired a small army to guard the perimeter of the compound. No one can get in or out without proper authorization. You won’t get within a hundred yards before you’ll be turned away.”

She shrugged. “We’ll see about that.”

“Melanie…”

“Look, I’m not going to let that little girl die, Dr. Wilder, no matter what I have to do. But things could get a little dicey,” she admitted. “The less you know the better off you’ll be.”

“Deniability, you mean.”

“Exactly. But please don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

“I hope you do. Because I hear things, too.” Dr. Wilder’s expression turned grim, cautious. “The mercenaries Kruger has hired to guard his wells are a pack of ruthless savages, the kind who shoot first and ask questions later. They’re led by a man the locals call el guerrero del demonio.”

Demon warrior.

An icy dread tingled down Melanie’s backbone.

“They say he has…unnatural powers.”

Melanie forced a smile to her suddenly frozen lips. “You’re a man of science, Doctor. Surely you don’t believe in superstitions.”

“Where science is corrupted, evil often flourishes,” he muttered obliquely. “Tread carefully, Melanie.”

The hair at the back of her neck lifted at his strange warning, and she watched him curiously until he’d disappeared down the hallway. Then she turned and slipped through the door to Angel’s room.

Resuming her position beside the child’s bed, she settled in to await the coming darkness.

THUNDER MINGLED with gunfire in the mountains as nightfall swooped like a vampire’s cloak over the jungle. Jon Lassiter scanned the area in the deepening twilight as a knot of tension formed in the pit of his stomach. It was a familiar sensation. A mixture of elation, dread and adrenaline that he always experienced before a battle.

Neither the storm nor the rebel skirmishes with the Cartégan army had moved any closer in the past twenty-four hours, but he wasn’t about to let down his guard. He’d learned a long time ago that disaster usually struck when and where you least expected it.

And in Cartéga, disaster was never far away.

The tiny Central American country had once been little more than a blip on the international radar screen, a lush, primitive paradise that time and progress had forgotten. But the discovery of oil, along with one of the most significant archaeological finds in decades, had propelled Cartéga onto the world stage.

Representatives from all the major oil companies had stampeded into the sleepy capital of San Cristóbal, throwing enough money around to corrupt an already corrupt government. Lassiter had no idea how Kruger Petroleum, his current employer, had managed to outsmart the international conglomerates, but knowing Hoyt Kruger, it had probably been a combination of charm, chicanery and a pact with the devil.

Lassiter could appreciate that.

A chain-link fence topped by razor wire enclosed the compound, and sentries were posted at the entrance and at intervals around the perimeter. Lassiter nodded to the dozen or so guards he encountered as he made his nightly rounds. He didn’t know half their names, nor did he want to. He didn’t trust any of them. Money could buy a lot of things in this part of the world, but seldom loyalty.

Lassiter could appreciate that, too. He was a member of a dark and sinister society whose allegiance was sworn only to the highest bidder, and he labored under no delusions about his men’s fealty. He commanded this operation for one reason only. The money came through him. In another time, another country, in another hellhole of a jungle, he was just as likely to be following the orders of one of his comrades. Or to be fighting against them. It all depended on the price, and every man had one.

As he walked back inside the camp, Lassiter breathed in the familiar fragrance of rotting vegetation, cigarette smoke, sweat and diesel fuel. And fainter, the acrid smell of gunpowder that clung to the twilight like the remnant of some mostly forgotten nightmare.

The past three years of his life were all wrapped up in that smell, Lassiter thought with a keen sense of inevitability. The location changed—Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador—but that scent stayed the same. He sometimes thought he could smell it on his skin. Like the stench of a rotting corpse, it had gotten into his pores, his hair shafts, his sinuses. He could no more scrub that odor away than he could banish the screams from inside his head.

Screams from another life, one he only vaguely recalled, although at times the memories would come back with startling clarity, usually after one of the dreams. Then he’d lie awake, staring at the sky and forcing himself to recall everything he could about his previous life—the farm where he’d grown up deep in the Mississippi Delta, his frail mother, a girl named Sarah who’d wanted to marry him.

He had no idea what had happened to that girl. He didn’t even know if his mother was still alive. Home was a lifetime away.

Stopping for a moment to light up one of the thin, black cigarettes he ordered from a cigar shop in Tegucigalpa, he listened to the raucous laughter and cursing coming from the crew as they continued to work in the illumination from the floodlights that had been set up around the third well site. They worked in twelve-hour shifts, just as Lassiter’s men did.

When Kruger had first moved in the heavy equipment six months ago, preparing for what promised to be a long and profitable arrangement with the Cartégan government, he’d been assured of round-the-clock protection. But then the rebel incursions had intensified around the capital, and the beleaguered and poorly equipped army had been called into service to snuff out the guerrilla encampments in the mountains.

His operation soon the target of saboteurs and snipers, Hoyt Kruger had decided to put together his own army, not just as protection against the rebels, but as a safeguard in the event one of the local drug lords decided to move in and try to take control of the wells.

When word had reached Lassiter in Caracas that Kruger wanted to meet with him, he’d been a little surprised by the request. The reputation he’d acquired in Central America hadn’t exactly served him in good stead in recent months. Clients had become few and far between, which was why he’d drifted south. But he’d had a feeling from the moment he shook Kruger’s hand, sealing the deal, that the rumors keeping others at bay had been the reason the enigmatic Texas oilman had sought him out in the first place.