No Immunity

room, it looked like his fucking skin had been turned inside out. That answer your question?”
    “Completely.”
    “So, O’Shaughnessy, the boys? Navy got ‘em?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “What about that green spot behind us? That’d be damned attractive to south-of-the-border kids.”
    “Jeez, Adcock, don’t you think the navy would come up with that? Whadya think, you’re the only one with a noggin?” With a louder snort the Weasel burrowed back down.
    Kiernan nodded. “That’s the first place they’d have checked. It’s also downwind of their experiments. Not a place to go without a fall bodysuit.”
    “I don’t give a shit about the danger—”
    “You want to end up with your skin turned inside out?” Adcock kept the truck moving toward the highway. At the speed he was going, the three of them could have been any local family heading to the Doll’s House for an early-morning breakfast before moseying on down to Las Vegas. But they weren’t going somewhere as much as just moving, while Adcock made up his mind.
    “Fine, fine. But if they’re not here, where are they? I need to get them back before...”—he shrugged— “something happens to them.”
    “Let me think,” Kiernan said. Adcock still assumed the boys were seismic aides. Did he think they knew where Grady’s find was? Did he figure they could tell him? Was he planning on getting an interpreter to tell them to lead him to the oil?
    She glanced at Adcock’s face. Cured by the years in the sun, set-jaw lines etched deep, eyes that didn’t waste time looking around—everything about him screamed impatience and a real small tolerance for dissent. She could see him stalking into Grady’s room demanding the oil-exploration data. It was his right, after all. Grady Hummacher tells Adcock to go to hell. Adcock pulls a gun. A couple of escalations and Grady’s dead. Adcock figures the boys will take him back to Grady’s oil.
    But Adcock didn’t have the boys. So they were gone before he got there. The question was, where were they now?
    “Hey, O’Shaughnessy, I didn’t hire you so I could take you for a ride in the country.”
    “You didn’t hire me at all. I’m only doing this as a favor.”
    “You expect me to thank you?”
    “I’m doing this as a favor to Tchernak. Has he reported to you about Grady’s midweek flight to Panama?”
    “You mean after the Friday he flew in here?”
    “Right. He came in on Friday, picked up the boys and a woman named Irene, and drove up here to a park—the one you spotted—Saturday. Monday he flew to Panama and returned to Vegas on Wednesday.”
    Adcock’s jaw was clenched, but he held his silence. She remembered that about him, his ability to focus totally on the problem. “What’d he go for?”
    “That’s not the interesting part, Adcock. Both flights were on charters.”
    Adcock stared straight ahead, though she wouldn’t have put money on his watching the road. The Weasel’s body tensed, and Kiernan had the sense that he, too, was considering all the angles. But Adcock wouldn’t have given him all the pieces those angles came off of. Adcock revealed nothing he didn’t have to, and he played his cards so close to the vest that when she’d worked for him, only very fast talking had kept her out of jail. “Chartered to who?”
    “Nihonco Oil.”
    He slammed the wheel; the truck jolted. “The bastard flew down with Nihonco? He double-crossed me? He sold me out? Is that what he did?”
    “I only know he flew with them. He took the boys and Irene back to—”
    “Irene? Irene Hernandez?”
    “Who is she?”
    “Head of subsidiaries for Nihonco.”
    Kiernan sank against the seat back. Somehow it seemed more horrible that Irene Hernandez’s last day had been an extended business meeting. Maybe she liked the idea of a daylong trip to the tropical park, but chances were she’d have been happy signing the papers with Grady in the office. She’d have figured one more day was worth the millions Grady Hummacher’s strike would bring Nihonco. She’d have been picturing a promotion, greater stock options, a bigger office, whatever fills executives’ dreams. At thirty, maybe thirty-five, years old she had been a key executive with an international oil company, and once she died, Fox and the powers that be had taken a look at her Hispanic features and assumed she’d been merely a disease-carrying immigrant.
    It was an odd relief, Kiernan felt, knowing that Irene