He dug in with his fingers and felt the very tip of the thing. Hard and smooth. Then it slid away from his blunt fingertip. He needed tweezers, he needed light. He tried again, pressing down on the ragged, tormented flesh on either side of where it had been to force it out.
It popped out and almost dropped into the inky black water. His shaking hand grabbed at the air. It bounced four times. Amazingly, he caught it.
He rocked back and forth, gasping desperately for several minutes before he could bear to open his eyes and examine the thing.
A bloody little capsule, no larger than a pill. So small, made of plastic or ceramic. He puzzled for a split second about the power source. His own body’s electromagnetic field, perhaps.
He didn’t have the mental energy to wonder, wavering a breath away from vomiting or fainting. If he fainted, he would drown.
More decisions. He could drop the thing into the water here and be done with it. That would stall the search but not divert it. He needed to play for time, and the transmitter was the only card he had to play.
He stuck it into his pocket.
He had nothing to bandage the wound with, and he had to swim through the caves anyway, so he dragged his sodden shirt and jacket back on over his shuddering torso, almost screaming at the rasp of soggy, salty fabric against the wound. He could only hope that the salt would help disinfect it. He lurched forward into the cave.
What felt like hours of blundering and suffering followed. Finally, by pure chance, he saw the flickering glow of the light from the larger caves filtering in from the other side of the huge rock formation. He swam out into the lake, and found himself looking up at one of the boats that brought groups of tourists in to tour the scenic part of the Grotta. The boat slid by. A row of astonished faces stared down as the tour guide droned on in English. “…butterfly chamber, so called for the shape of the mineral formation in the center…”
“Would you look at that, Rhonda?” a fat, middle-aged man called out in English. “In January! Must be a German or a Swede.”
The tour guide looked over and gaped. “Ehi! Tu!” she shouted out. “Swimming is not allowed in La Grotta!”
It took several attempts to get the words out of his throat, he was shivering so hard. “Va benissimo,” he spluttered. “Believe me, signorina. I was just leaving.”
He was grateful when he finally crawled up onto the rocks at the entrance. He could barely move, but he couldn’t crouch there and just shiver and quake while passersby watched wide-eyed, and the transmitter betrayed him with RF bursts. He forced himself to trail behind a departing group, following them into the crowded port. Trying not to stagger and lurch like a zombie. Failing, for the most part.
San Vito was a tourist trap even in winter for the English and Germans and Scandinavians, for whom this nippy air was balmy and this watery sunshine practically tropical. He picked up his pace as he moved through the surging crowd, but did not allow himself to run. He was dead if he acted like prey. Nor could he look over his shoulder, up at La Roccia, although the effort not to was killing him. András or one of his men was almost certainly peering down with binoculars.
A ferry heading to a cluster of nearby islands was docked and loading, with a long file of vehicles in the chute to drive on. Val ducked through the line of cars and staggered alongside it, shoulders hunched, head down. Trying to look as unobtrusive as a dripping, bleeding, beaten up, hypothermic man at the point of going into shock could be.
Finally, he spotted a diversion. A small, three-wheeled agricultural utility vehicle driven by a grizzled old man. From the stink, it had held fish that morning. The fisherman had come to the mainland to sell his catch and was heading back to his island home.
Val dug the bloody capsule out of his pocket, tossed it into the back of the rickety contraption, and began to walk faster and faster.
Soon he was heading up the steep hill, taking every short cut through the meandering cobblestoned switchbacks. If he could get down to the car without being seen, he had half a chance.
He finally gave in to the nervous urge to lope, despite jolting agony in his shoulder at every step. Everyone was staring at him anyway.
Chapter
24
András was murderously angry, and the long, hard, breathless climb up to the top of La Roccia did not help his temper. That sneaky bastard had disappeared into the sea, and now he was holed up and out of range in the caves. Janos couldn’t stay inside for long, of course. He was soaking wet. He had to come out before he died of cold. But he was a tough son of a bitch and that process could be a slow one.
Meanwhile, András’s reputation for speed had just been put at risk. And old man Novak waited, chewing his yellowed nails.
None of his worthless local team had been willing to follow Janos into the smugglers’ caves, though most of them had been inside them at one time or another. Two had been dispatched to watch other exits from the caves on the north side of La Roccia, one was a lump of gut-shot meat on the beach, and the other was not far behind, bleeding onto the rocks from a thigh wound and attracting unwelcome attention. With luck, he was comatose or at least unconscious.
András had described exactly what would happen to anyone who had the misfortune to be wounded and then talked to the police. He hoped those cretins knew just how sincere he had been.
Which left only himself and that brain-dead ape Angelo to slog their way up and over La Roccia to monitor the other Grotta exit, the tourist one. If he hadn’t been down by two men, he would have killed the fuckhead himself, for shooting at Janos after he had been briefed on the necessity of keeping the man alive. Of course, the idiot was the brother of Massimo, the gut-shot man, but even so. That was no fucking excuse for unprofessional behavior. Orders were orders.
Angelo huffed and puffed over the crest of La Roccia, and flung himself down onto a flat rock to wheeze and gasp, silently protesting the pace that András had set. He clutched the handheld monitor that András had gleaned from Hegel’s room.
“On your feet,” András growled. “He could already be outside the cave. Let’s go.”
Angelo heaved his muscle-bound bulk up and followed him down the stonework switchback path at a heavy, shambling run. András stopped at a scenic overlook with benches not far from the bottom, and booted up the laptop to scan for the signal. His heart thumped when he saw the icon finally appear, blinking. He clicked, enlarging the map until it was a detailed street map of the San Vito port area.
And there he was, the crafty son of a bitch. Lurking down on the edge of the water, no more than three hundred yards from András’s own current position. He should be visible. Saliva rushed into his mouth as he peered down at the busy port swarming with tourists. Then another slight movement on the screen caught his eye.
He glanced down, alarmed, and watched the icon detach itself from the shore, move out over the water. What the fuck…?
András shielded his eyes from the sun and squinted. The ferry whistle shrilled. Oh, shit. No. The prick had climbed onto a boat and was sailing away to some godforsaken rock in the Mediterranean.
“On your feet,” he snarled at the ape, who had once again dropped down onto his lazy ass, wheezing. “We need to find someone with a boat immediately to get us to wherever that ferry is going.”
To András’s surprise, Angelo made himself useful by promptly locating a man with a powerful motorboat, fast enough to get to the island before the ferry did. A smuggler, no doubt. Negotiations were swiftly concluded. András peeled several hundred-euro notes off his money roll, put them onto the man’s grimy palm and was climbing on board, one leg on the side of the boat, when suddenly he stopped.
Motionless, he sniffed the air as a shiver ran down his