by Matt Miksa
The men burrowed deeper into the subterranean labyrinth, passing through another series of locked doors. The general’s clearance defeated all obstructions, including a keypad code scrambler and fingerprint scan. The final chamber was cold and cramped. The kitchenette, lumpy sofa, and twenty-year-old television set did nothing to soften the bunker’s jailhouse charm. Two men in civilian clothes slurped noodles in front of the TV. The watchmen.
When the general and his entourage charged into the room, one of the watchmen started to stand, his mouth bursting with half-chewed ramen. Before the man could speak, General Huang raised his pistol and fired two shots into the watchman’s chest. Bloody broth erupted from his mouth, and he fell backward, toppling over his chair.
The second watchman raised his arms in surrender, palms trembling. The general swiveled his outstretched arm and fired again. The bullet tore through the man’s windpipe. He collapsed, clawing at his punctured neck, gurgling. His lungs filled rapidly, and within seconds his wriggling stopped.
General Huang turned to face his lieutenant. His eyes flared with a menacing thrill. “It’s a new day, Xiao Wang.”
Lieutenant Wang’s pulse raced, but he knew better than to react. The other PLA soldiers in the general’s entourage looked astonishingly calm. One even appeared to smile.
The massacre had begun so unexpectedly, and then it was over. But Huang had more business to conduct. Wang noticed a steel hatch behind the table. It opened by turning a small wheel, like a bank vault. The general rotated the wheel and stepped inside. Wang followed dutifully, stamping red shoe prints onto the floor.
The lieutenant caught up to the general, who stood before a desk situated in the center of the vault. Behind the desk sat President Li Bingwen. He’d been reading by the muted light of a brass lamp. Silver roots now streaked his shoe-polish-black hair. He wore a wrinkled undershirt and clearly wasn’t expecting visitors. Most likely, only a handful of people knew the president’s location.
Li’s voice wobbled. He must have heard the gunshots. “General, our country is suffering. You can’t hold me here forever.” Li looked so feeble, so decrepit. His eyes glistened.
General Huang lifted his pistol. He pressed the muzzle into the president’s eye socket. “I don’t intent to,” he growled.
The top of President Li’s head cracked like an egg.
CHAPTER
40
Dzongsar Village, Tibetan Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China
JO USED HER sleeve to erase the whiteboard. Aiguo had given up his brother’s location more easily than she’d expected, probably only because he was in extreme pain and not thinking clearly. The virus had ravaged Aiguo’s internal organs. Death would come within days, if not hours. Aiguo must have known it was only a matter of time, yet when Jo switched off the ventilator, raw panic had filled the man’s eyes. He wanted to live, and that desire was powerful enough to force him to divulge even the most guarded information.
Jo believed Aiguo had come to the Q-Zone to retrieve the hypodermic needle Chang had buried near the soccer field. Aiguo had meant to ensure no one would ever uncover the evidence of Ru’s biological weapon. In a twist of ironic justice, Aiguo had become infected before he could recover the needle.
The thought of her ex-husband and his brother helping the Taiwanese government develop a weapon of mass destruction sickened Jo. Ru was an acclaimed virologist. He’d dedicated his professional life to the eradication of devastating diseases—or so Jo had thought.
At one time, Jo had believed that science—a field devoted to the advancement of humankind’s understanding of the natural world—was supposed to operate above the trivialities of politics. However, over the years she’d learned that ideology was still the most potent contagion, and no one was immune to its noxious effects. That didn’t excuse what these men had done. Blood River virus hadn’t emerged from the depths of the virgin rain forest. It had burrowed out from the darkest corners of the human soul.
Jo watched Aiguo’s shapeless body sink into the hospital bed. She’d increased his morphine drip after reactivating the ventilator. The man drifted into unconsciousness. Jo doubted he would ever wake up.
* * *
“We’ve got to get moving, Jo,” Olen said. “The military has cleared out. The streets are deserted. I think they’re planning to—”
A deep rumble cut him off. The floor beneath them vibrated, and loose bits of plaster rained from the ceiling. The tremors felt like an earthquake, but Olen knew it was something worse.
They were bombing the Q-Zone.
A succession of blasts echoed like fireworks. The explosions were getting closer. Olen heard the whoosh of two PLA H-6K bombers screeching overhead. Seconds later, a thunderous boom knocked him to the ground. Thick black smoke filled the clinic. His throat stung with every shallow breath. A section of the roof lit up in flames.
Olen waved his arm to clear away the smog. He crawled along the floor, searching for Jo. They needed to evacuate the monastery before it collapsed on top of them.
A hand grabbed his elbow and yanked him to his feet. Olen stared into the face of an unworldly creature—part human, part machine. Jo was still wearing the N95 respirator. A layer of soot dusted her face and hair, but she appeared to breathe normally. The doctor pulled a spare mask over Olen’s head, and filtered air spilled into his grateful lungs.
“Follow me,” Jo yelled over the sounds of crackling fire and crumbling stone.
Olen struggled to keep up with her as she leapt over debris. Instead of heading for the exit, she began climbing a staircase. After vaulting up three flights of stairs, Olen’s legs ached. The two reached the monastery’s pitched roof, and Olen peered over the edge. The entire village was ablaze. Families ran through the streets, frantic, searching for refuge from the attack, but there was no shelter to be found. Everything burned.
Olen thought he heard the distant whistle of the bomber jets returning for another flyover, but when he looked up, he saw a different aircraft approaching. The helicopter glowed orange from the fire consuming the monastery. It hovered noiselessly about ten feet over a level section of the roof. The bird had advanced composite skin and near-silent rotors, perfect for radar evasion. A stealth helo. A CIA exfiltration team wouldn’t have arrived so quickly. So who were they?
Jo scrambled over the steep rooftop toward the chopper. The side of the aircraft slid open and a rope ladder tumbled out. Jo reached it first and lifted herself onto the rungs. The doctor had anticipated the attack, and she’d already arranged for a getaway. Damn impressive, Olen thought.
Once they were safely inside, the helicopter ascended quickly and banked to the east. The smoke billowing from the burning village would screen their escape, and with any luck, the aircraft’s stealth technology would elude the bombers’ radar.
Jo pulled off her mask and strapped into a jump seat.
“What did he write on the whiteboard?” Olen asked.
“You saw it,” Jo replied.
“Sure, it was a blob.”
“Not a blob.”
Olen frowned.
“It was an egg. A black egg,” Jo clarified.
“Sounds spooky. What does it mean?”
“It refers to an ancient story, a Chinese creation myth about the birth of the universe. In the beginning, all matter swirled within an enormous black egg. When it cracked open, the two halves of the shell became the heaven above and the earth below—two opposing forces held in perfect balance. You’ve seen the black and white yin-yang symbol? It’s come to signify the interconnectedness of everything. Fire and water. Life and death. Peace and war.”
“I didn’t take Aiguo for a philosopher,” Olen said.
“The ‘Black Egg’ is also the unofficial name of a state-of-the-art military laboratory equipped for biosafety level four research. That’s where we’ll find Ru. In Shanghai.”
“Shanghai? I thought Ru was helping the Taiwanese.”
“The situation is compl
icated, Kipton. Despite the political tension, the Chinese government still recruits plenty of scientists from Taiwan. Ru is one of the foremost experts in our field. The PLA probably showered him with grant money. He must’ve developed the virus on the mainland, secretly, at the Black Egg. Right under the PLA’s nose, and then handed it over to the Taiwanese,” Jo explained.
“Then let’s go to Shanghai.”
“No,” Jo said. “First, we must return to Beijing.”
“What? Why?” Olen asked.
“Because, Kip. If we’re going to break into one of China’s most heavily fortified bioweapons labs, we’re going to need help.”
Darkness settled within Jo’s eyes. The woman’s soul was wounded. Her ex-lover had deceived her. Again. Her own government had sent her on a wild-goose chase in Dzongsar and then tried to kill her with firebombs. Too many men had treated this remarkable woman as expendable—a pawn in a game with no clear rules or objective. Most people would want to crawl into a hole, tear out their hair, scream into a pillow. But not Jo. She was made of titanium alloy—lightweight, corrosion resistant, high tensile strength. This betrayal would not pierce her armor. Jo would fight back. She’d been transformed. From this moment on, Olen knew Jo would focus intensely on one goal: revenge.
DAY 12
CHAPTER
41
Washington, DC, USA
“COULD EVERYONE JUST shut up for a second?” The president’s chief of staff raised his voice over the maddening cacophony in the White House Situation Room.
The National Security Council Principals Committee had convened an emergency meeting after rumors of a Chinese military coup began seeping into their intelligence feeds. The room swelled with the president’s top military and foreign policy advisers, each armed with freshly bound briefs hastily pulled together by overcaffeinated staffers. The secretary of state tore a page from hers and waved it in the face of the director of national intelligence. The man pulled his chin into his neck as the secretary pilloried him with the top-secret diplomatic cable. Allyson couldn’t discern the woman’s specific grievance over all the other shouting. It was something about PLA surveillance of Chinese consulates in Belarus.
As the leader of a fledgling agency, Director Cameron rarely attended NSC meetings. Since the outbreak, President Barlow had extended her an open invitation. Allyson knew her inclusion in the White House’s inner circle irritated a few statutory members of the council, most notably national security adviser Nathan Sullivan.
“Seriously. Just sit down. All of you,” the chief of staff barked. “The president is on his way.”
The fracas subsided, and everyone found his or her assigned seat. Allyson was sandwiched between two crew cuts wearing polished flag pins.
General Thomas Goodyear snapped up when the door to the Situation Room cracked open. Three decades in the Army had made some habits unbreakable. Of course, President Barlow was now the only man for whom the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff rose to his feet.
Secretary of State Darlene Hart wasn’t so ceremonious. She’d known James Barlow for longer than most people in the room. The sixty-three-year-old former senator from North Carolina had succeeded in recruiting Barlow to run for office when all others had failed. Hart had argued that the country needed a man of keen intellect and sound judgment to navigate the chop of a changing world. Moreover, America needed someone untainted by the corrupt dysfunction that mired Washington. It needed someone outside the beleaguered Beltway—but not too far outside.
Like Allyson, many agreed that Barlow’s celebrated career in intelligence made him an exemplary candidate for the job. He understood the nuances of modern geopolitical affairs—how friends could become enemies in a heartbeat. Besides, as every late-night pundit dutifully observed, the Democratic field was total shit that year. The Party needed a dark horse, and Darlene Hart had delivered.
Nevertheless, no one thought of Hart as a hero. The woman’s legendary brusqueness over a twenty-year career in the U.S. Senate had earned her the cherished title “Bitch of the Hill.” Some accused Hart of landing the SecState appointment as a reward for securing Barlow’s nomination. They called her manipulative, cunning. Gold-digging housewives and beauty queens were “cunning,” Allyson thought. If Hart had been a man, they’d have called her a political savant.
Allyson didn’t believe any of it anyway. Nepotism wasn’t Barlow’s style. Besides, Hart had chaired the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. She was a well-qualified choice for chief diplomat in her own right.
“Motherhumper of a day, Jack,” Hart remarked in her enchanting southern drawl.
“It sure looks that way,” President Barlow said. “So, does anyone want to tell me what the hell is happening in Asia?”
“It’s a kung fu clusterfuck,” Hart continued, not waiting for others to speak. “General Huang, the thundercunt running the Chinese military, just took control of the government. A gosh-dang military coup! Good morning, everyone. The People’s Liberation Army is now in control of the largest economy in the history of Planet Earth. Please pass the banana pancakes and gooseberry jam.”
Allyson spoke up, if only to subdue the secretary’s hyperbole. “Our reporting shows General Huang sharply clashed with Chinese President Li Bingwen over the government’s response to the Blood River virus epidemic. The men initially kept the infighting behind closed doors, but after word leaked that patient zero was a Taiwanese spy, all bets were off. Huang demanded retaliation, and he took his case to the people. The Chinese were already terrified by the spread of the disease, and rightfully so. Tens of thousands have died in less than two weeks. The idea that Blood River virus may have been a biological attack pushed people over the edge. Nationalism hit fiver pitch, and—”
“And sixty-five years of détente flew straight out the window,” Barlow said.
“President Li looked weak,” Allyson continued. She didn’t appreciate being interrupted, even by the president of the United States. And Barlow should’ve known better. Good spies knew that people who interrupted others tended to miss things. “No one thought Li was doing enough to stand up to Taiwan. Massive antigovernment protests swept through the country. We think General Huang took advantage of the populist backlash to seize power.”
“He wouldn’t be the first general with that idea,” Barlow mused. “What’s the word on the street?”
Allyson shrugged. “Huang has the people on his side. They love him.”
“So, what happens next?”
“There’s only one possible scenario, Jim,” Nathan Sullivan cut in. “Huang is going to retaliate. He’s preparing to invade Taiwan, pure and simple.”
Not so simple, Allyson thought. Definitely not pure.
“And we’ve got to decide if we’re going to do something about it,” President Barlow reasoned solemnly.
Allyson knew it was the outcome he dreaded most. For decades, the United States had walked a thin line—building diplomatic and economic ties with the PRC while simultaneously shielding Taiwan from Beijing’s reunification fantasies. Maintaining the status quo was the key to regional stability, and every president since Richard Nixon had wrestled with the puzzle before them now—what to do when the status quo collapsed. Perhaps Hart had it right. A kung fu clusterfuck, indeed.
“We must respond prudently,” Allyson warned. “Chinese trade is critical to our economy. Beijing owns nearly three trillion dollars of U.S. debt. We can’t afford to—”
“We can’t afford to let a military junta ride roughshod over Asia,” Sullivan interjected. “If Huang takes Taiwan uncontested, what’s next? Japan? We have no idea how hungry this maniac is.”
“And what if Taiwan is, in fact, to blame for the virus?” Barlow questioned.
“I know you don’t believe that, Jim.” Nate was agitated. No doubt the president had discussed the possibility with his national security adviser at length, just as he had with Allyson. Barlow clearly had serious doubts that President Tang had resorted to bio
logical weapons. They were just too messy, unpredictable.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” Barlow contended. “The whole world seems convinced that Tang did it.”
“‘Taiwanese Spy Unleashes Plague to Cripple Chinese Superpower.’ That’s today’s headline in the New York Times, Nate,” Secretary Hart added. “It’s a modern-day David and Goliath. Except in the Sunday school version, David didn’t pick the fight. Who knows? The international community might actually support a Chinese counterattack.”
“We need to make sure we’re not taking the wrong side on this,” Barlow said.
“Only way to do that is to prove Tang isn’t a psychopath,” Hart mused.
“Okay.” Barlow surveyed the room. “What else do we know?”
Allyson thought of the anonymous parcel that SwissPax had delivered to her home that morning. The edge of the maroon folder peeked out from the stack of papers on her lap. She still hadn’t decided whether or not to share the intel with Barlow. The information could be misinterpreted. Or worse, it could be flat-out wrong. Allyson needed time to corroborate the document. Revealing it now would only push the hawks over the edge. Sullivan would probably spontaneously ejaculate when he saw what she had in the folder.
But not Barlow. The president would see the big picture, weigh the possibilities, assess the credibility of the intel. Yes, perhaps the president should know sooner rather than later.