Finally, one of the men came to his senses and opened the emergency exit in the back.
‘If you can hear me,’ he screamed into the smoke, ‘come this way!’
Seconds later, he saw a petite woman fighting her way through the inferno, dragging a badly burnt man whose face looked like it had been removed with a blowtorch. The first man didn’t know where she’d found the strength, yet she’d somehow managed to drag him to the rear exit.
‘You’re almost out,’ he assured her as he helped them to the ground. ‘We’re almost free.’
She tried to thank him but could only manage a hacking cough. At least she was still breathing, he thought. At least she had made it through the flames and had managed to save one of the passengers in the process. Somehow, miraculously, they had survived this tragedy.
At least for the moment.
While staggering from the bus, he spotted the policemen in the distance and screamed to them for aid, not realizing that they had started the fire to begin with. The smallest of the cops rushed forward like he was going to help, like he was going to put out the fire with the long nozzle that he held in his hands. But instead of giving them assistance, he did just the opposite.
Stopping fifteen feet in front of them, the cop lowered the visor on his flame-retardant helmet and hit the switch on his flamethrower, sending a deadly stream of jellied fuel into the air. The chemicals ignited in a wicked flash, covering the victims like napalm and scorching them like marshmallows that had fallen into a campfire, their white skin bubbling and turning black as they slowly became a part of the burnt asphalt.
Smiling, the cop spoke into his headset. ‘The leak has been sealed.’
17
Tuesday, July 11
Dover, England
(eighty miles southeast of London)
Payne and Jones weren’t born yesterday. They had been involved in too many missions to ignore the obvious: there was something fishy about Manzak’s offer.
The CIA was a global organization, one that had agents and hidden connections all over the world. If they legitimately wanted to find Dr Charles Boyd, there was no way they would’ve turned to two outsiders for help. Yet for some reason Manzak came to Pamplona anyway. For some reason he wanted to go out of house (i.e., use non-CIA personnel) to track down Boyd and ultimately settled on two former MANIACs to do the job. Payne wasn’t sure why that was, but he had some theories. Perhaps Manzak was bucking for a promotion and felt the best way to get one was by catching a wanted man on his own? Or maybe Boyd had done something to Manzak long ago, and this was Manzak’s way of getting some personal revenge? Or maybe, just maybe, it was something more obvious. Maybe Manzak wanted to get his hands on Boyd so he could sell his stolen treasures and pocket the money for himself?
In the end Payne and Jones weren’t sure what Manzak’s motivation was. All they knew was he had the power to get them out of jail ASAP, and that’s all they wanted. Besides, they figured once they got back into circulation they’d have plenty of time to investigate Manzak, Boyd, and everything else that seemed shady to them. Which was just about everything.
After accepting Manzak’s offer, Payne and Jones collected their things before being herded into a helicopter and whisked away. During their flight Manzak briefed them on the mission and how to contact him once they had located Boyd. Instead of using a phone, they were to activate a high-tech beacon that looked similar to a garage door opener. Then they were to sit patiently and wait for the cavalry to arrive. Well, not the real cavalry. Their mission was supposed to be top secret, so the last thing they needed was for a bunch of horses to come galloping into town, shitting all over the place, while being led by a bugle-playing cowboy. Something like that might work during a gay pride parade but not on a CIA operation.
Anyway, their chopper touched down late Monday night in Bordeaux, France, where they were told to spend the night. Manzak gave them their travel itineraries for an early morning flight, then left with Buckner to save the world or something. Once alone, Payne and Jones started working the phones – first calling the Pentagon to check on Manzak and Buckner’s credentials, then calling Dover University to set up an appointment with Dr Boyd’s assistant.
England is smaller than the state of Alabama yet has three of the finest universities in Europe: Oxford, Cambridge, and Dover. The first two are the most well-known and for good reason. Oxford is the oldest English-speaking university in the world and boasts a roster of alumni that includes John Donne, William Penn, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Bill Clinton. Cambridge came into existence more than one hundred years later and was the school of choice for John Milton, Prince Albert, Isaac Newton, John Harvard, and Charles Darwin.