by Sam Masters
A twitch in the lieutenant’s left eye shows a sign of weakness.
“I wish now to speak to your senior officer.”
The guard’s tone softens. “I am the most senior officer here. Wait until we have communications back and I will talk to my captain.”
Jihai looks beyond him. The gates are open. Through them, in the distance, he can see the flicker of lights.
He walks away and slips the brake off the gurney. He grips the end rails and pushes.
“Stop!” says the guard.
Jihai pauses. “You will have to shoot me. Shoot an unarmed Chinese scientist pushing the body of his dead colleague. I hope you can explain that.” Jihai dips his head and pushes.
A second later the soldier shouts again. “Stop or I will shoot.”
This time Jihai doesn’t hesitate. He pushes hard and doesn’t look back.
138
Breezy Point, New York
Jackpot’s reappearance has kept Danny up all night.
Something has changed.
It’s not as elusive as before, not as Teflon-coated, and he’s been able to download endless hours of partial code. But he still can’t track down the IP addresses of the sending or receiving terminals. It’s like looking at a long length of digital rope without seeing who holds either end. Page after page of blue, green, and white alphanumeric instructions and reports scroll up before him, flashing their secrets but giving nothing away.
Every now and again he thinks he’s close. Thinks he’s picked up jump instructions, a different form of assembly language, or a vaguely familiar source code that’s been adapted.
Then he gets knocked back.
But this fish isn’t getting away.
Not this time.
He’s spent all night matching fragments of foreign machine code with “parodies” that he’s devised in the hope that the master computer might get fooled into contacting him directly.
He stands up and steps back from the action. Two out of five computers are still catching data bursts and trying to interpret them, but none are exposing the parties at either end, and none of the decoding packages are quite working. But they’ve not been defeated, they’re still plugging away.
He takes a bathroom break and almost falls asleep on the can.
Before coming back, he washes his face as well as his hands and tries to get some life back into his aching brain. He heads back to the screens and stretches tension out of his neck and shoulders before sitting back down.
Two blank screens light up with a burst of white letters, numbers, backslashes, front slashes, and all manner of symbols. At first it looks like the screens are twin feeds.
But they’re not.
He realizes it now.
The one on the left is running original machine code. The one on the right is a byte code created by the interpretation software he’d been relentlessly running.
It’s happening.
Danny’s heart pounds. He takes his hands off the computer desk, anxious that nothing accidental stops it.
It’s finally happening; the software he created is simultaneously translating the original Jackpot stream into code he can understand.
IP addresses appear. Instructions. Commands. Executions. Locations.
It’s like being let out of the black hole of solitary confinement into blinding sunshine.
Danny is suddenly awake. Never have his brain cells felt more awake.
On a parallel machine he throws every hacking code he knows at Jackpot, and slowly but surely the sonovabitch starts letting him in. It spreads its legs and gives him its all—the main source computer, passwords, files, recycle bins, video folders, documents, photographs, and every other piece of cyber treasure it’s ever created.
Danny’s eyes stay fixed on all five fast-downloading screens as he powers up the new burner Stevens gave him.
There’s a click.
Danny doesn’t even wait for the hello. “I’ve got it. The code has opened up.”
Stevens comes alive. “Derig and prepare to leave the house. I’ll have a moving crew with you in ten minutes. We’re going to bring you in before anyone gets to you.”
139
Police HQ, Miami
Ghost stays at the hospital until dawn; until he finds a new shift of medics to grill about Zoe’s condition and what might be done for her. He leaves in a mood of despondency, goes home to shower and change before heading into work.
Last night he’d walked out of his captain’s office without his badge and gun, and now he feels awkward going back, even though it is following a special request from the President to serve the country.
He pats his pockets as he enters the building and calls to the old-timer on reception, “Forget my swipe card, Al. Be a buddy and buzz me through.”
“Sure, no problem, Lieutenant.” Al’s crinkled old face smiles and he hits the button.
“Thanks.” Ghost waits for the buzz then passes through the security doors. He’d shaken Molton’s hand last night and agreed to help run the task force to combat the dog attacks. But now as he rides the elevator to his office, he’s still wondering why the President and the NIA had been interested in the attacks right at the beginning, back when young Kathy Morgan was killed on the beach at Key Biscayne.
Something is being kept from him.
From him and the country at large.
The thought is still troubling him as he heads down to Lost Property, where he eventually finds a charger that fits Zoe’s phone.
Back in the Incident Room, he plugs it in, and once the unit powers up he scrolls through the contacts. There’s only one Danny listed, and though it’s just 7:45 A.M., he dials the number.
The phone on the other end rings, then trips the answering machine message: “This is Danny, I’m busy doing other stuff, leave your details after the beep.”
“Hi, this is Lieutenant Walton of the Miami police. I need to talk to you urgently about your sister Zoe. Call me back at this number.”
Ghost hangs up and searches the rest of the phone’s names and numbers. There’s only one Jude listed in Zoe’s directory, but it has two numbers—a Miami landline and the cell—so he’s fairly sure this is the friend she’s been staying with.
Again he gets palmed off with an answering message.
“Hi, this is Jude Cunningham. I’m really sorry I’m not around to take your call. Please leave me your details and I’ll get back to you just as soon as I pick this up. Thanks for calling.”
He leaves the same message as he gave Danny, hangs up and surveys the wreckage of his desk. Part of the reason he came in early was to clear things before he dives into his new set of responsibilities. There are skyscrapers of brown internal mail envelopes, and around them a multicolored settlement of Post-it notes left by various team members, secretaries, and other departments.
He’s only begun to scratch the surface of the paperwork when Annie turns up. She greets him as she slips her car keys in her purse. “’Morning, how is your friend?”
He looks up from the desk mess. “Not good. She’s still unconscious.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She can see he doesn’t want to talk about it. “You want me to get you some coffee or water?”
“No thanks. Can you ask Sandra Teale to come in? I want to quiz her more on the pathology reports.”
“Sure. I’ll call her right away.”
“Hang on, don’t rush off.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out Zoe’s pocketbook plus some scrap paper that he’s scribbled notes on. “And get in touch with this animal shelter. Zoe went there yesterday. I want to find out who she spoke to and what was said.”
She takes the book. “Can I ask why?”
“It seems she was following up some kind of link between the shelter and the breeders who sold the Gerbers the dog
that killed them.”
Annie looks surprised. “Should she have been doing that?”
He ignores the question. “I want to know what that link is and what sent her from the shelter to the home of a man named Li Chen and from there to Bicentennial Park.” His thoughts wander for a moment. “It’s as though she had an inclination that something bad was going to happen.”
“Maybe she did,” says Annie. “Anyway, I’ll find out.” She lifts the pocketbook as a goodbye gesture and drifts off to make the calls.
Ghost sits in silence. He doesn’t like that he’s given away the pocketbook. It makes him feel like he’s lost a link to Zoe. He distracts himself by opening up computer access to the Police Records System and searching for Li Chen.
He finds nothing.
Not that he expected to get lucky on his first shot. No matter. He’s got plenty of other searches to perform: immigration, work permits, health insurance, tax, credit ratings, and a million other ways the government has of snooping on the average man.
140
DMZ, Korea
The shot doesn’t come.
Jihai counts the seconds.
Thirty.
Thirty-one.
Thirty-two.
He tells himself that if it hasn’t come by now it isn’t going to come at all.
His spirits rise. He’s going to make it.
He’s in the DMZ and they won’t fire at him here. They wouldn’t dare.
Through the howling wind and swirling rain, the lights of distant buildings grow brighter. This is where Shin said the main buildings were. The Peace House. The Bridge of No Return, where prisoners and spies were exchanged. The Conciliation Pavilion, where both sides still meet to discuss DMZ issues. Now it’s just a matter of struggling on.
Getting there and defecting.
Telling the world what has been going on.
The front left wheel of the gurney plummets into another pothole.
Jihai is tired and barely has the strength to lift it out. He’s soaked to the skin and the greatcoat is now more a liability than a help. It weighs as much as the gurney and is dragging him down.
He unfastens it and lays it across the middle of the body bag.
The plastic in front of his hand splits open.
At first Jihai doesn’t understand.
Then when another split appears he does.
He’s being fired at.
The wind is so deafening he hasn’t heard the crack of a rifle, but the two holes in the body bag couldn’t have been caused by anything else.
He runs.
He abandons his lifelong friend and runs toward the lights, weaving as much as he can, hoping that the zigzagging will make it impossible for a sniper to hit him.
It doesn’t.
A bullet burns the tip of his right hand. It feels like it’s been hit with an axe.
Adrenaline kicks in and Jihai keeps running.
His lungs are bursting. He’s barely able to breathe. The lights are coming up fast now. No longer blurred and shapeless. He sees vertical and horizontal rectangles.
Windows.
His right leg buckles.
Only as he hits the ground does he realize he’s been shot in the back of the knee. A soldier with a sniper rifle and night sight is trying to pick him off.
The lights are so close.
He tries to rise, but his leg won’t take it.
He falls.
A bullet rips up a chunk of road and spatters his face.
Jihai rolls away from it.
Rolling is all he can do.
He pushes down with his right hand to turn himself and sees the ends of his middle fingers are missing.
There’s no time for fear. No time for pain or self-pity. He pushes the stumps against the hard road and completes the turn.
Then he rolls again.
Rolls toward where he saw the lights.
Rolls toward freedom.
141
DMZ, Korea
Jihai hears voices as he bumps hard into something huge and solid.
A bullet tears apart a piece of wood above his head.
He’s reached a building.
He puts his shattered hands to the board and lifts himself.
His knee shakes but he gets his balance.
Bloody fingers feel out the edge of the building.
He claws his way around it.
There are lights on either side of him. Dawn is breaking beyond the ridges of the huts that flank him.
He’s face-to-face with soldiers.
Soldiers from both sides.
He looks toward the blue uniforms of the South Koreans and stretches out his arms. “Help me. Please help me. I’m Chinese and I—”
He never finishes.
The sniper’s bullet roars through his back and bursts his heart.
The words stick in the young scientist’s mouth, then he falls limply face first to the ground.
142
The White House, Washington DC
Clint Molton is on his way to the West Wing when he sees the ashen face of Vice President Cornwell appear in the corridor. “What is it, Pat? More dog attacks? Is that the welcome home you have for me?”
“That—and worse.”
“Worse?”
“A Taliban bombing at Camp Leatherneck.”
Molton goes into shock. “Damnation. How many hurt?”
“More than thirty Marines dead. I don’t know how many injured. The reports are still coming in.”
“Dear God. I thought this part of the world had quieted down and all we really had to worry about was the Middle East.”
“It seems not.” He jabs a thumb toward the door. “I was just on my way to the Briefing Room when I saw you were back.”
“I’ll come with you.” Molton turns on his heels. “I spoke to Xian on the flight over.”
“Not good news?”
“He wants to talk. I’m going to fly to the APEC conference to meet with him.”
“Of course he wants to talk. Talk and up the ante.”
“I don’t know. I got the feeling he was being squeezed by Zhang. And not in a loving way.”
“The only love that Zhang knows is war. His dogs have been giving us hell in the last few hours. Attacks all across Florida, villages are being wiped out.”
“What about the National Guard and the police?”
“Still getting their acts together. Quick to respond, slow to anticipate.”
“We have to turn that around.”
“I know.”
They arrive at the Briefing Room. Secretary of Defense Leo Cagnetti is hunched over a secure phone finishing a call to Major General Jon Sherman, the force commander in Helmand and Nimruz.
Molton takes a seat across a small conference table. “What’s the latest, Leo?”
“Thirty-nine fatalities now, sir. Six more Marines critical but stable, and around twenty more being treated for blast injuries.”
“Pat, make sure we convey my condolences to their families. I will write personal notes as soon as I have all their details.” He turns back to the Defense secretary. “Sorry, Leo, please continue.”
“Sir, it seems we’re able to treat most of the casualties on site, but some are going to have to go over to Dwyer—”
Cornwell interrupts. “Dwyer? Why not the field hospital at Bastion, it’s right next door.”
“The explosion took out part of Bastion, sir, damaged the section of the runway over there and they’re still sweeping for secondary devices.”
“Any British casualties?”
“Afraid so, sir. Four injured at Bastion and two killed inside Leatherneck. The UK’s Deputy Prime Minister David Pearson was there at the time but is unhurt.”
Cornwell shakes his head and shows his rage. “None of this would have happened if they’d stayed away. They knew we were at a tense point in the pull-out strategy but had to go chasing photo-opportunities because it’s their damned election year.”
Molton turns to his VP. “Enough. Let’s talk about this afterward.” He focuses on Cagnetti again. “How can I help, Leo? Have your people got everything they need out there to do their jobs properly?”
“Thank you, I believe so, sir.”
“Come to me if you think I can open doors, twist arms, or speed anything up. Is there any news yet of how the Taliban bomb got through security checks?”
“We think it was plastic explosives built into the frames of a new rank of portable toilets, sir.”
The President huffs out a long sigh. Taliban ingenuity and determination never ceases to amaze him. “They’ve come a frighteningly long way from legacy bombs and IEDs. I need the fullest details you can give me, so I can go over it with my press secretary and prepare an address to the American people.”
“Yes, sir.”
Molton gets to his feet. “Thanks, Leo, keep me apprised.”
“I will, sir. Thank you.”
The President heads out, followed by Cornwell.
“I’ll talk to Prime Minister Hatfield, Pat. You need to get yourself over there, both as a mark of respect for our dead and for the British.”
“What?”
Molton stops in his tracks. “We need Britain close. Especially with this damned dog problem. We need every ally we have. So just do it, Pat. Don’t give me shit, just do it.”
143
Police HQ, Miami
Within the half hour, Annie reappears at Ghost’s desk. “Bella is just showing Mrs. Clabbers—Monique Clabbers—to an interview room—”
“Who is she?” he asks, studying yet another set of records that doesn’t correspond to Li Chen.
“She’s the manager of the animal shelter Zoe visited. Fortunately, she was coming downtown when I caught her on her cell.”
Ghost pulls his nose off the tiny data print on the screen and tries to focus. “Okay that’s good. Did she say what went on with Zoe?”
“No, the car line was too bad.”