HELIX (a technothriller)

11 - Puerto Barrios

TODAY

Guatemala

Damien could barely see Nasira's face in the cold glow of the speedometer, but he knew the fire in her eyes had extinguished hours ago. It was past midnight and she was running on fumes. There were no street lamps on this lonely stretch of Guatemalan road and all Damien could see outside were distant mountains, flat ground, and occasional spots of jungle. Sometimes he wished he had Jay's pentachromatic vision rather than enhanced hearing.

'How are you holding up?' Damien asked, swallowing a metallic aftertaste.

'Your new passport's in the rucksack,' Nasira said.

'Right.' He reached down with bandaged hands, plucked the Greek passport from the open zipper and stuffed it in his pocket. 'You didn't answer my question.'

'I'm all right.' She winced. 'Could be better.'

Damien cleared his throat. 'Since when have you and Jay been—'

In the darkness, she glared at him.

'—on good terms?' he said. 'You used to hate him.'

Nasira resumed her focus on the road ahead. 'He grew on me. Unfortunately.'

'We'll find him,' Damien said. 'We'll get him back.'

'Don't need your words of reassurance.'

A passing car illuminated her face. He could see tears on her cheeks. She wiped them quickly.

'Just want the son of a bitch back,' she said.

'Wherever he is, whatever's happening to him, he knows you're out there looking for him. He knows you won't give up.'

She shook her head. 'He doesn't know that.'

'You're the reason he has hope.'

'He's the reason I have hope.' Nasira swallowed. 'I know you know who took him. Just spit it out.'

'Facility in Colombia,' he said. 'One of those border control officers told me. Right before I killed him.'

She didn't look at him. 'The Fifth Column are holding him there.'

'That's not logical,' Damien said. 'The Fifth Column only control Central America and the United States. They don't hold much ground in Colombia.'

Nasira stared ahead. 'That's rare these days.'

'If it was the Fifth Column, they'd take him back to the States. Like they were about to do with me.'

'Colombia's a nice out-of-the-way place to interrogate Jay,' Nasira said. 'Give him a lobotomy and throw him in the ocean, Bin Laden style. Or Bin Laden stunt double style, whatever.'

Damien hoped she was wrong. Rescuing Jay from some sort of shady underworld was one thing. Rescuing him from the Fifth Column was another entirely.

With one hand, Nasira shoved a cigarette in her mouth and lit it.

'Do you have to smoke?' he asked.

'Yep,' she said. 'You know, there's one thing he said to me that I'll never forget.'

'What's that?'

'He told me you were his brother.'

'He lost his brother when he was young,' Damien said.

Under the whisper of moonlight, he watched the jagged mountains on their left.

'No, I mean he said it for real. That's how he sees it.' Nasira sucked on her cigarette, then opened her window a crack. 'And it made me think. We're all family now. We're not programmed zombies running jobs for the Fifth Column anymore. We're on our own and we're all we've got.' She breathed sharply. 'I don't want to lose that.'