by Sam Masters
Annie ducks beneath the tape and Zoe follows.
“The other side,” Ghost says firmly to her. “Or better still, go home and I’ll call you later.”
“No way, José.” She smiles and clicks the camera full in his face. “Man, you look sexy when you’re mad.”
He blanks her and returns to Annie.
“That’s a wild one,” she says as they head to the house.
Ghost ignores the comment. “Tell me about the victims.”
“Still making sense of it. Young woman and old woman, both dead in the kitchen. Mother and daughter, from the look of pictures in the living room. They’ve both virtually been skinned by a dog, and it’s chewed through wrist and ankle bones.”
“Animal still free?”
“No, sniper shot it. Neighbors heard the screams and called the cops. Dispatch sent the dog squad and a sniper.” She raised her hand and pointed to a man with an Alsatian standing partly down the side of the house. “That’s a Sergeant Lyndon, he’ll tell you about the dog. All I know from looking at it is that it’s a big one.”
Ghost veers over to the cop, a broad-shouldered man with a little neck and a shaved head. “Lieutenant Walton,” he says, and badges him. “ Can you fill me in on the canine?”
“Sure. It’s a GWP—”
“A what?”
“German wire-haired pointer. Beautiful thing. Least it was till they shot it.”
“Big dog?”
“They’re a good size, but not massive like a Great Dane, about two feet high and I guess sixty, sixty-five pounds.” His expression changes. “You won’t believe the damage it’s done. It’s like someone rolled a tank through there.”
“Thanks.” Ghost headed toward the kitchen to see for himself.
The cop had been right. The room was devastated. Cupboard doors, a kitchen table, and chairs had been smashed into firewood. There were spilled food, drinks, and sauces all across the brown-tiled floor. And then there were the bodies. Or rather, what little remained of them.
Annie Swanson put her hand to her mouth and had to rush into the yard to hurl. The women’s faces had been all but eaten off. What clothing was left on their bodies was soaked in blood and hung in tattered rags from bones broken and almost entirely stripped of flesh, muscle, and sinew. Blood had pooled and cloyed in the corner of the room, where the women had been pinned down and killed. Ghost could see where they’d slipped, grabbed with bloody hands at worktops, fallen, and were dragged. He could see the animal’s paw prints across the tiles, where it had slithered in the remains of the two women.
He walked outside and took a breath of fresh night air. Moments like this made him realize how precious life was. How it could be snuffed out in just one fateful minute. Across the tape he could see Zoe, snapping shots that were meaningless—close-ups of dog handlers, faces of frightened residents, uniform cops standing in the blinking red and blue lights of their cars. “Zoe!” he shouted.
She turned and saw him.
“Come here.” He waved her over.
She pointed Ghost out to the cop by the tape and he let her under. Seconds later she was at his side.
“You wanted to see what this is all about—take a look. Take a long look and snap whatever photographs you want—the world should see this shit.”
77
Nian Command Center, Beijing
A seventy-inch flat-screen monitor in the operations room shows a map of Florida peppered with hundreds of multicolored lights. Green indicates the whereabouts of weaponized canines that are “untriggered.” Amber signifies animals that have been activated but are yet to reach viable levels of aggression. Red denotes more than a dozen dogs across the state that have already gone into attack mode and killed or caused serious injuries.
Refreshed after a few hours sleep, General Zhang taps the giant screen as he strides through the room in his full uniform. “Today, we will paint the American state of Florida red. Red with our precious lights—red with their capitalist blood.”
He has the attention not just of Lieutenant Xue and Minister Chunlin, but also of more than a dozen other members of the command team who are hanging on his every word.
“Already in Washington they are learning to fear us. To fear each and every one of you.” He smiles like a proud father. “They don’t know your names, or your faces, but they see your shadows as you guide our dogs to the throats of their citizens, and slowly, day by day, they are learning obedience. Until now we have been merciful. Controlled strikes. As surgical as smart bombs. Domestic dogs triggered in specific areas to do maximum damage in minimum time.”
He sits on the edge of Xue’s desk. “But not anymore. Now, I want you to activate all the weaponized dogs that the Americans call strays. The dogs they have turned their ignorant backs on. The outcasts of society. Those packs that roam the streets of the state’s top ten cities.”
“General, please keep in mind that breed by breed and size by size the activation time on each canine varies. The lag between us triggering the aggression and the dog actually becoming violent varies from six hours to sixteen hours.”
Zhang had forgotten the gap was so large. “The smaller the dog, the quicker the response?”
“Yes. Terriers can be triggered much faster than the big dogs, the rottweilers and Alsatians.”
Chunlin can’t help but voice his concern. “We cannot escalate to this level without pacifiers. It would be reckless and—”
Zhang cuts him off. “As I told you last night, such military decisions are now down to me.” Zhang glares at him. “We are past the point of waiting for scientists, Minister. Time is now of the essence. When the pacifiers are available, we will deploy them. But I will wait no longer.”
The minister turns his back on the room so that his words are only heard by Zhang and Xue. “General, even in combat there are rules to be followed and lines not to be crossed. Unleashing packs of wild, uncontrollable dogs is tantamount to widespread civilian slaughter.”
Zhang’s face is empty of emotion. “A campaign like this has no rules, Chunlin. It is invisible. It does not even exist. Our soldiers wear no uniforms. They fly no flags. Instead, they sit innocently on the enemy’s rugs and blankets and beds, and they lick at their palms when they are petted and fed. Or, the abandoned ones lie in the animal shelters waiting to be euthanized.” A flicker of warmth comes into his dark eyes. “Imagine the surprise of the Americans when they find how many of them we control, how many we took on as ‘charitable acts’ and we are now able to open the doors of. Those dogs will run riot. They will do more than bite the hand that didn’t feed them. They will rip out their ignorant throats and hearts.”
78
Coral Way, Miami
It’s 5:00 A.M. when Zoe and Ghost get back to Jude’s apartment.
They shower together. Not out of desperate sexual need but because of the urge to psychologically rinse away the scene that still lingers on them.
Wet and wrapped in towels, they tumble into bed.
The room is dark but dawn is already breaking on the other side of the curtains. Ghost can see enough to tenderly hold Zoe’s face as he kisses her. He feels guilty about exposing her to the carnage, to dragging her into his world.
They start to make love. So slowly it’s almost as though it’s not happening. Each caress is as healing as it is arousing. They shared a trauma together and now they’re helping each other recover.
“Open your eyes.” Zoe reaches up and tenderly touches his lids. “Let me see you.”
At first he doesn’t. Years of albino awkwardness have taught him to keep them shut.
“Please,” she pleads.
Tentatively they flutter open. In the shade they seem darker, more ruby than pink.
Ghost sees Zoe looking at him. Not with shock or horror. Not even with curiosity or pity. With a glistening look he can�
�t describe because he’s never seen it before.
“What you do is incredible.” She kisses him softly. “You are a wonderful and amazing person.”
He smothers her words with his mouth and slips slowly inside her. There’s no crazy urgency consuming him, no frantic desire for release. Instead, he feels a rush of energy that’s alien to him. One that dissipates the horrors in his mind, one that makes him feel as though he belongs to the woman who’s so freely bound her flesh to his.
Zoe is lost. All the mental toughness she wears to face the world now lies somewhere on the floor, carelessly discarded along with her jeans and blouse and underwear. Making love now feels to her like she’d always imagined it would, long before the first frantic teenage boy ruined her dream.
Lost in love, the last of the night dies with the last of their sighs. Morning breaks around their entwined bodies, flooding through the crack in the curtain, floating in on the birdsong that drifts through the open window.
79
Starz Cawfee, Fifth Avenue, New York
The all night coffee shop is packed pretty tight. A mix of night workers, party stragglers, and early starters. Two men sit in a beat-up corner booth near the banging doors of the restrooms and stacked brown boxes waiting to go out into the yard where they’ll be squashed and torn and rammed into the recycle bins.
It’s the least attractive spot in the joint.
Unless you need to go unnoticed.
And that’s what Danny Speed and the man opposite him need more than anything.
Their meeting is the type that has to look accidental. Meaningless. Everyone has to grab breakfast, eat, and drink. It’s just coincidence that the only place a law-abiding suit-wearing respectable business type like Brad Stevens can sit with his BLT and Americano opposite a scumbag cracker hacker like Danny with his chocolate muffin and full fat cappuccino.
Stevens sits so he can see the front of the restaurant and notice everyone coming and going. It’s how he likes it. Mid-forties, he doesn’t look anything but middle-aged. Except his eyes. His eyes look older—like they’ve seen two lifetimes worth of stuff you’d rather never witness in one. They’re sunk in dark wrinkle pits and scurry from side to side like rats that never rest. He’s round-faced and gray-haired, bagged up in a charcoal gray suit that’s seen almost as much service as he has. Life’s many blows are summarized on the empty finger that once bore a wedding band.
Brad picks a newspaper off the table and opens it. Columns of dire events stand raggedly between his two hands. More shit in Syria. New athletes caught doping in cycling. And this crazy dog business. Normally, he’d read it all and worry. Right now he has other things on his mind. “So, what have you got?”
Part of Danny’s thoughts are still hooked on the strange call from his sister. He rang back and there was no pickup. Which is odd during the day. He’ll try her again later. It’s most likely nothing to worry about.
“Hey, I don’t have all day—what is it?”
Danny pulls at his food as he answers. “I don’t know exactly what it is. Not yet. But it’s hotter than lava. The code is unlike anything I’ve come across. Superprotected. Teflon coated. First strands of it just shot through the standard capture programs like greased lightning.”
“You’re thinking it’s noncorporate?”
“This is platinum grade intel that someone is protecting. Reminds me of when I cut across the VICAP feeds in Quantico and we had to move because the feds got nervy.”
Stevens folds his newspaper and places it on the table equally between him and his table companion. “Sounds like a big one, Danny boy. Do you need someone older and wiser to help you haul it in?”
“I might. I’ve got ident trackers on it now, so I’m capturing bursts whenever they come, but I’m having real problems decoding the data. I’m trying to write something special.”
“Special is why we pay you the big bucks.”
Danny drops the remains of the muffin and wipes crumbs and chocolate from his hands. “I’ll crack it. Trust me on that.” He gets to his feet and picks his computer bag off the back of the chair. “But if I shake up a nest of gun-toting badge-wavers with wasps in their asses you better have somewhere I can run to.”
Thunder cracks as he heads outside and the bad feeling that ran through Danny’s head in the coffee shop keeps on brewing all the way back to his place in Greenwich Village.
It rains all night.
Rains like it must have done when Noah decided it was time to start gathering wood and gathering companions.
In the damp, two-room rental above Kuzniaki’s bakery, Danny Speed has hardly been asleep when he opens his baby blues and stares at red numbers blinking back from the bedside clock.
0305
That’s no freakin’ time to be awake.
He listens to the rainfall as it comes down hard and vertical, like gunfire from an angel sniper on a thick, black cloud.
Blasts of buckshot bounce off the metal tops of cars and the fat plastic garbage bags dumped at the kerb. Heaven is raising a racket loud enough to wake the dead.
His bed seems empty without Jenny.
She doesn’t like staying at his place and he doesn’t blame her. He doesn’t like it much either. One day, they’ll live somewhere like the loft down in the financial district, the place he works from. One day, soon he hopes, when he gets enough money together and stops taking risks like he does.
He lies on his left side and listens to feral dogs barking in the alley beneath the fire escape at the back of the bakery. He pictures them fighting for scraps from an overturned trash can.
The landlord’s faded brown curtains don’t quite fit and through the gap he watches moonlit droplets hit the pane, roll together and run in streams down the window. It reminds him of camping as a kid. Lying awake beneath Boy Scout canvas, watching storms flash and supernatural shadows climb the sides of the tent.
There’s a bass roll of thunder that rattles the old casement window.
Or at least that’s what he hopes it is.
But he’s not taking chances.
He slips out of bed in just his CK’s and slides a hand underneath a big stand-up wardrobe. Among the dust and dead flies his fingers find what he’s looking for.
The moulded grip of a semi-automatic pistol.
If burglars, crackheads or any kind of liberty-takers are breaking in, then he’s got a shock for them.
A forty-five-calibre shock.
Danny checks the magazine and silently unlocks the front door of the apartment.
He takes a long slow breath to calm himself and to concentrate. He puts his foot against the bottom of the wood to stop it creaking as he eases it open.
The light on the landing is out.
There’s a creak on the stairs.
He presses himself to the wall and runs through his options.
He could shout a warning. Or just rush forward and fire at anything that looks like it might shoot back.
Danny hears a surge of wind and rain outside, a passing car. The downstairs door must be open.
There’s a click.
Maybe the latch.
Maybe something more sinister.
He drops to the floor and spreads himself flat, arms outstretched; the Glock clasped rigid in both hands.
A figure in black is almost at the top of the stairs. The head of a second man is coming up a few steps behind him.
Danny waits a beat.
The first man reaches the top step.
Danny shoots him mid torso. It’s lower than he would have liked but enough to drop the sonovabitch down the stairs.
Before the second figure can open fire, Danny puts a bullet in the middle of his head.
He scrambles to his knees and runs to the stairs.
The first guy isn’t lying there. Despite the gut wound he�
��s got his shit together and fled.
But his buddy is flat-out and dead.
Even in the blackness, Danny can tell that the prostrate shape with arms spread wide isn’t ever going to give anyone any trouble again.
The young hacker walks quickly back to his apartment to pick up his phone. He needs help and needs it quick.
80
Coral Way, Miami
Ghost rises and dresses first. He makes coffee in Jude’s small kitchen and watches the morning news on her TV. Middle Eastern tensions have taken over the lead spot. The tinderbox tensions of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Egypt all stacked like one big bonfire that constantly gets lit and doused. Straight after the international news comes an update on the dog attacks. There’s a clip of him and the reporter in the Everglades where the four holiday makers died, followed by brief shots of him and Annie Swanson arriving at the scene in Coconut Grove where the two women died. The bulletin names them as twenty-four-years-old Astrid Gerber and her mother, Heidi.
Zoe appears in the doorway, wearing his shirt. “’Morning, what time is it?” She rubs a hand through mussed hair.
“Just after eight.” He gets up and heads to the worktop. “You want coffee?”
“Intravenously.” She gets up on her tiptoes to kiss him as he passes.
Ghost notices his shirt ride up and can’t resist cupping the curve of exposed buttock as her lips find his.
Zoe’s eyes slip to the TV as he finds a clean mug and pours her coffee. “What time do you have to go in?”
“I want to be there by nine.” He passes the drink over.
She takes it. “Thanks. Can I come with? I can be like your own personal photographer.”
“No, you can’t. Last night was a one-off. I just wanted you to see how horrible it was.”
She puts her drink down. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess I wanted someone to understand.”
“Doesn’t that cop Anna understand?”
“Annie. You mean Detective Annie Swanson.”
“Yeah, Detective Swansong. Doesn’t she understand?”
He laughs at her deliberate mispronunciation. “I meant someone close to me. Someone I can talk to without having my guard up.”