Corsair - Cussler Clive. Страница 50

Max looked Eric in the eye, arching one of his bushy brows. “A distraction?” He then addressed the comm specialist. “Okay. Send an acknowledgment to Lang that we received his message.” He snapped off the phone and leaned back into his padded chair. “Another damned piece that just won’t fit.”

Eric wisely didn’t add that the piece might be part of an entirely different puzzle.

NINETEEN

HIS PRECIOUS FACE WAS A MIX OF DETERMINATION AND delight. His mouth was formed into a tiny O, and his eyes were open despite the chlorine sting. Beads of water clung to his impossibly long lashes like diamond chips. His body wriggled with the almost rhythm of his kicking legs, and the inflatable bands around his arms kept bumping into his chin with each awkward stroke.

Alana felt like her heart was going to explode, as she stood waist-deep in her condo’s community pool, Josh striking out for her as she retreated a slow pace at a time. He knew the game, would complain bitterly if he tired out before reaching her, or beam with pride if he made it to the sanctuary of her waiting arms.

Her buttocks pressed against the pool’s concrete side. Josh was a few feet away, his mouth now spreading into a triumphant grin. He knew he was going to make it. And then his water wings suddenly vanished, and his face fell into the water. Alana tried to push herself off the wall, but it was as though her skin and swimsuit were adhered to the concrete and tile.

Josh came up, sputtering. His eyes were wide with panic as the first choking cough shook his little body. Water and saliva bubbled from his lips. He managed to cry out “Mommy!” before his head slipped under the surface again.

Alana stretched her arms, feeling like they were pulling from their sockets, but she couldn’t reach him. Couldn’t move. There were people all around the pool area, lounging on chairs or sitting at the water’s edge with their feet dangling in the cool water. She tried to call to them but no sound escaped her lips. They were oblivious to her plight.

Josh’s thrashing became less frantic, his longish hair spreading around his head, swaying in the eddies like some sea creature. His hands were balled into little fists, as if trying to hang on, but there was nothing Alana could do. The pool’s filtration system was pushing him farther from her. Her arms screamed with the strain of trying to reach him, and her head pounded with an unholy ache—the punishment for being a bad mother, she knew.

Her baby was dying.

She was dying.

And she would have accepted such a fate, but reality was much more cruel.

She came back from the nightmare.

The pain in her head was from being clubbed and momentarily stunned by one of the guards. Her arms ached because she was being dragged from the serving line, where moments earlier she had been slopping a thin gruel onto the tin plates of the other prisoners. Her backside felt numb because the ground was rough gravel and the man dragging her set a strong pace.

Another of the guards shouted at the man who had hit her. He stopped midstride and let her fall to the dirt. She paid no attention to the rapid-fire Arabic the two shot at each other. She simply lay still, hoping against hope that they would forget about her.

The image of her son drowning, something her imagination conjured up to add more pain to her already brutal existence, was like a dull ache in her chest. Josh was eleven now, not the five-year-old she had seen, and he was an excellent swimmer.

The shouting match between the two guards grew more heated until a third man entered the fray. She knew he was one of the senior people at the work camp, and a quiet word from him ended the discussion instantly. The man who had hit Alana toed her in the ribs to get her on her feet and motioned for her to retake her place at the trestle table that served as the prisoners’ buffet. The servers were all women, while the people they fed were mostly men, men who were wasting away in the heat until their ragged clothes hung off their thin frames and their cheeks were shadowed hollows.

Alana had been here less than a week and already knew that most of these poor souls had been here for months. They looked no better than the prisoners liberated from Nazi concentration camps.

When she retook her place behind the table, the woman next to her muttered something in Arabic.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

The woman, who had once been heavyset, judging by the slabs of flesh that hung from her neck, pointed to Alana’s eyes and then pointed down to the table. Don’t look at the guards, she was trying to say. Or that was Alana’s interpretation. Maybe, keep your eye on your work. Either way, when the next prisoner shuffled up to her, she lifted her gaze just enough to see the plate he held in one trembling hand.

After getting their food and a cup filled with water that was hot enough to scald the tongue, the prisoners ate on the ground. A few were lucky enough to be able to rest their backs against one of the old buildings. The buildings were all two and three stories high, with badly rusted iron roofs. Their sides were powdery clapboards that the sun and heat had curled and split. On the other side of the buildings were rail sidings holding a few railcars as well as two locomotives, one not much larger than a truck. Unlike the buildings and railcars, the locomotives were newer, though still coated in dust. A little farther down the main line, which vanished around a curve in the mountains a half mile away, was an enormous rusted-steel structure with old conveyor belts and metal chutes that sagged from neglect.

It hadn’t taken her long to realize this was an old mine, and that the prisoners were working to reopen it. Gangs of the strongest detainees went off every morning to labor on the tracks to the north, while others toiled in the massive open pit at the bottom of the valley. There was little heavy equipment being used, only a crane mounted on a rail flatbed, to help lay track, and a couple of bulldozers. Everything else was done by hand under the watchful eye, and quick fists, of the guards.

A buzz of soft whispers suddenly swept through the prisoners while eating their meal, their eyes turned to the east, along the rim of the valley. A vehicle was approaching, coils of dust billowing from its tires as it negotiated the narrow trail.

The vehicle was identical to the one that had captured the two Americans, a desert-patrol truck with tall, knobby tires, and a machine gun mounted on its roof. As the truck drew closer, Alana could see a bundle of some kind roped to its hood. And closer still, she could tell it was the body of a man. His clothes were missing, and his once-dark skin was burned red and had begun to peel off in great sheets. She could tell an animal had gotten to the body, because there were bloody gouges all over his arms and chest. His face was a raw, pulpy mass.

The patrol had been sent out to track down an escaped prisoner.

The truck stopped just short of the trestle tables and the passenger’s door flew open. The man who emerged spoke to the guard captain for a moment. He, in turn, made an announcement to the assembled prisoners. Alana didn’t need to understand the language to know he was telling them that this is what happens to those who try to escape. He then drew a knife, cut the bindings holding the body to the truck, and strode away. The corpse hit the ground with a meaty sound, and the flies that were a constant swarm over the serving dishes suddenly found a more appetizing meal.

There wasn’t enough food in Alana’s stomach for her to throw up. Instead, she bent at the waist, braced her hands against her knees, and dry-heaved until her stomach was a knotted lump. When she straightened, a guard she didn’t recognize eyed her with some interest.

A half hour later, the meal finished, Alana and the other women were cleaning the tin serving dishes, using fistfuls of sand to scour the metal. Not that the prisoners back laboring in the mine and along the railroad had left much behind on their plates. One of the principal means for the guards to maintain control was to keep all the captives on the verge of starvation.