by Sam Masters
“I know. I’ve been thinking the same thing.” Molton doesn’t add that he’s also been wondering if the canine “present” from Xian had been meant to attack and kill him and his children.
“I’m going to go and tell them now, Clint.” Her voice sounds strained but focused. “I won’t sleep tonight if I don’t do it straight away.”
She hangs up.
For a moment the phone dangles in the President’s hand. He realizes he’s just urged his wife to tell the truth to his kids, yet that’s what he’s not done with the American public. As much as he’d love to blow away the smoke screen of lies, he knows he can’t. There’d be domestic panic and global instability on a scale never seen since the Second World War. For now, he has to keep quiet. Keep his silence and hope America prevails.
173
Big Cypress National Preserve, South Florida
Ghost lets one of Harries’s agents carry out battle zone surgery on his wound. They shoot him full of morphine, dig out the slug, wipe it clean, and stitch him up. Nothing pretty, but within the half hour he’s nursing a dressing and is back on his feet.
Harries insists he’s not fit to drive and has a copter airlift him from the big park all the way back to Jackson Memorial. She promises to take care of the Dodge and not fill it full of bugs and tracers.
Ghost gets directions from the hospital’s front desk and heads to the surgical wing. He sees a desolate, blond woman sitting on a plastic chair, near a low table full of magazines. Her head is down and she seems to be staring a hole in the floor but he knows it’s Jude Cunningham.
“How is she?” he asks gently.
Jude raises her head and her face fills with shock. First, because she didn’t hear or see him approaching. Second, because of his filthy, ragged state. His suit is covered in dried mud, his shirt ripped and his shoulder patched with bandages and sticky plaster. “I don’t know. She’s been in there for nearly three hours now.”
Ghost grabs a chair and pulls it up close. “What’s wrong with her? I mean, they said she was stable. I wouldn’t have left her alone here if I’d thought she was going to get any worse.”
“I haven’t been able to find out.” The medic in her takes over. “Head injuries are often complicated. I suspect there’s been bleeding.”
“Shit.” He stands and starts to pace nervously.
“What happened to you?” she asks. “You fight some dogs as well?”
“Not a dog, a bullet. These days bullets are less dangerous.”
The door opens and a nurse appears. She looks toward Jude. “They’ve just finished. The surgeon, Dr. Brook, says he’ll come and see you as soon as he’s scrubbed up.”
“How is she?” Ghost and Jude ask in unison.
The nurse smiles weakly. “Best I leave it to Dr. Brook to tell you.” She makes her exit before either of them grills her further.
174
Beijing
They strip him bare. Search every inch of his uniform. Every fold and sewn edge of cloth, where a garrotte or spike might be hidden.
They rip the dressing from his wound.
They ram fingers deep into his anus.
But they find nothing.
The soldiers kick the back of his legs and force him down to his knees at the side of the general’s desk.
“This very moment my men are arresting Chunlin,” Zhang tells Kai. “I know you serve him. I know you have been patronized and favored by him. I knew it the moment you were chosen to fight me. Did the pair of you not think I would have you checked out? You are a pair of fools. Now tell me, how were you supposed to kill me?”
Luo Kai says nothing.
“It is getting late and you are keeping me from my pleasures.” Zhang puts a hand to the man’s knife wound and digs his fingers through the stitches. Digs until he can feel the wetness of blood and the meat of his sinews and muscles. “Be honest and I will be merciful.” He twists with his fingers and works them back and forth in the wound.
Kai fights an urge to scream.
He locks off his thoughts. Hovers them in a space of nothingness.
Zhang senses he is fighting the pain. He frees his blooded hand, rests it on Kai’s forehead and slams his steel toe-capped boot hard into his testicles.
The young soldier doubles up.
His hands are cuffed behind his back so he can’t even touch the injured area. He falls coughing and spluttering to the wooden boards of the office.
“Hold him up.” Zhang pulls paper from a printer to wipe the blood from his hands.
Two soldiers struggle to straighten Kai. His muscles are locked up in pain and they don’t have the strength to force him upright.
Zhang can’t believe their incompetence. He strides over and forces his thumb into the soldier’s right eye socket. “Threaten a man’s eye and you control his body. See how it now yields.”
The young soldier is panting now. It’s no longer possible to keep the pain out. A stream of fire is burning its way from his reopened wound to his ruptured testicles. His heart is hammering its way close to the point of arrest.
Zhang holds his head up and screams at him, “Tell me!”
Then he punches him.
Hits him so hard, Kai’s lips burst and his jaw breaks.
He moves his tongue in the sea of blood swimming in his mouth.
It’s gone.
Zhang sees the blood and saliva, tooth bone and drool, spatter on the floor and he feels a deeply sadistic surge of power and excitement.
In the middle of the mess is a lump.
Not a tooth.
Something more interesting.
He bends down and picks it up.
An elliptical glass bead. Small enough to have been concealed as a filling in a tooth. Filled no doubt with something deadly.
175
Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami
The morphine has all but worn off. Ghost is feeling the pain, a deep throb like someone is sliding a hot sword in and out of his wound. He steps into the corridor and makes a series of calls. Things he’s been putting off. People he’s been putting off. He calls Vasquez over in Jacksonville then sends an e-mail on his phone to Annie, listing a whole bunch of things that need to be done quickly, quietly, and confidentially. Finally, he asks her to buy a new shirt and bring a pile of stuff to the hospital from his desk so he can tie up loose ends.
When he returns to the waiting room, Jude Cunningham is fighting sleep in a chair. Her head is resting against a blue plaster wall and the sun is busting through a side window and illuminating one side of her face.
The door creaks open and a tired looking surgeon comes in and lets it bang shut behind him.
Ghost breaks from his trance and looks across the dull room. Jude slowly gets to her feet.
The medic is in his late thirties, well-tanned, dark-haired, and slim. But for the bags under his eyes he’d look a picture of good health.
He fastens the blue suit jacket he’s clearly just changed into from his operating room scrubs. “Lieutenant Walton?”
“Yes.” He gets up from the back-aching, black plastic seat. “This is Zoe’s friend Jude.”
“Jude Cunningham.” She offers a hand and the nervous suggestion of a smile.
“I’m Nathan Brook, I’ve just finished operating on Zoe.”
“And?” Ghost takes a worried breath.
“We won’t know for a while. She’s had major surgery and we need to see how that plays out.” He studies the cop and the woman in order to work out how technical he should get. “Do you know what an epidural hematoma is?”
“I have a medical degree,” says Jude in a nonboastful tone. “It’s a bleed in the brain, between the dura mater and the skull.” She says it for Ghost’s benefit more than anything. “It’s a bad place to have a bleed.”
�
��It is.” Brook adds a little more info for the cop. “The dura is the tough outer membrane of the central nervous system. It surrounds the brain and spinal cord and is responsible for keeping in the cerebrospinal fluid. The blow to Zoe’s head caused a buildup of blood there and it reached a point where it could have killed her.”
“Could have?”
“Pressure was building up in the intracranial space, compressing delicate tissue and causing what we call a brain shift—a type of hernia in the head. We think we’ve relieved it.”
“Thank God for that,” says Jude.
“Is it common?” asks Ghost.
“No. Not at all. Which is why we were worried. The condition is present in only 1 or 2 percent of head injuries, and when it does manifest it often proves fatal.”
Ghost feels as though he’s sinking. Every question he asks brings an answer laden with new terrors. “But she’s okay now, right? You’ve fixed everything.”
The forced smile says things are not that simple. “We had to perform a type of decompressive craniectomy. In layman’s language, we took out part of her skull in order to remove the etiologic mass and relieve the pressure. If we hadn’t, she’d have died. Or at best, the risk of permanent paralysis and possible brain damage would have been very high. She’s a long way from being okay, Lieutenant, a very long way. But the next few hours will tell us which direction she’s heading in.” He checks his watch. “I’m going to have to go to another operation now. But I’ll check on her when I’m done and if there’s any improvement I’ll let you know.”
176
Beijing
They’re coming for him.
Geng Chunlin knows they are.
The fact that he hasn’t heard from Luo Kai means that the young soldier has been discovered.
Zhang is probably torturing him. The thought makes him wince. The brute is without mercy and will mix humiliation and cruelty in measures that even he wouldn’t think of sanctioning.
Chunlin thinks it is unlikely that Kai has been killed. Just as it’s unlikely that he will be. The general will want them alive for a show trial, for a way to discredit President Xian and as justification for his planned coup.
He thinks for a moment about his old friend and leader, destined to touch down soon in Hawaii. Once he’s out on the blistering blacktop of the runway, he will be desperate for good news and will try to contact him.
The minister picks up his cell phone and removes the data card. He walks to the corner of the office and squeezes it between the corner joint where the skirting boards of two walls come together.
He throws the carcass of the phone into a bottom drawer and begins to shut down his computer. Zhang’s men will find nothing incriminating on it, but he doesn’t want to make life easy for them. Let them search. Let them waste their precious time.
Chunlin takes out his pistol and puts it on the rectangle of white blotting paper in the middle of his desk. He pushes back his chair and takes a book from the shelves behind him. It’s a gardening manual, dedicated to the creation and care of miniature landscaping. The minister has always had a soft spot for paying attention to the tiniest of details.
The office door opens and six armed soldiers march in. At the front is Senior Colonel Lie Han, Xue Shi’s right hand man. “Minister Chunlin, I have a warrant for your arrest for crimes of treason.”
He swings his legs down and puts a piece of paper in his book so he doesn’t lose his page. “I presume you have no objection if I bring this with me?”
177
Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami
The door to the waiting area opens. An Hispanic nurse, coils of sumptuous black hair tied back, enters with an expressionless look on her face. “Dr. Brook says you can see Zoe now. Please come with me.”
Ghost and Jude virtually jump from their chairs and follow her a short stretch down a doglegged corridor to a sign saying ICU. “She isn’t conscious, but her vital signs are stable again. So don’t expect too much.”
“Is the surgeon coming back?” asks Jude.
“I think so.” The nurse stops as they reach a small single ward just a few yards from an operating room. “Here you go.” She pushes a blue door and holds it for them as they enter the darkened room.
Jude’s eyes fall on the vital signs monitor. Systolic 129. Diastolic 75. They’re okay. Not perfect but fine for someone in her condition. Her heartbeat is high, though: 110 . . . 112 . . . 110. She looks from the screen to the drips, the stands, the ventilator, and the other monitors—all the paraphernalia of critical illness.
Her friend is lying on her back, head turned to the right, black hair on the pillow, mask to her mouth, tubes plastered to her arms. Sodium, potassium, and sugar are dripping from bags into tubes and then needles into veins. A Foley catheter runs discreetly from the bladder, a nasogastric tube from her stomach.
Ghost stands at the foot of the bed feeling empty. It breaks his heart to see Zoe like this. The stitches on her arms and legs, the dressing to her skull where they cut to release the swelling. This is not the vibrant, full-of-life woman he fell in love with. As he walks down the opposite side of the bed to Jude and takes Zoe’s tiny, pale hand in his, he has an acute sensation that he’s losing her. Her fingers feel lifeless. Corpselike. He’s picked up the limbs of enough cadavers to know the sensation. Instinctively, he slides his thumb and forefinger down her wrist and feels for a pulse.
He’s tired and his lack of expertise means he finds it and then loses it again.
It was so faint.
He searches once more and this time seems unable to locate it.
A monitor in the corner of the room lets out a loud warning bleep.
Jude has been watching the screens and is already a move ahead of him. She hits a red button by the bed.
A green jagged line on a screen near Ghost goes flat. Numbers disappear and hit zero.
The doors burst open.
The surgeon rushes in, concern etched into his brow. “Out. Out. Get these people out.”
Nurses push Ghost back to the door. He sees Jude asking questions. Overhears someone say, “She’s crashed. Her heart has stopped.”
178
Beijing
The bank of video monitors in the Nian Operations Room shows coast-to-coast chaos in the United States.
Xue Shi’s tired but vigilant eyes take in the live feeds and the glowing maps on his computer showing the devastation the dogs are wreaking. He’ll be glad when this mission is over. When he can grab precious sleep and the rewards for helping Zhang take over the presidency.
The Chinese satellites show that the U.S. Army’s lead teams are still trying to round up and kill the last of the attack dogs in New York’s Central Park, Wall Street, and downtown areas. In Los Angeles, Bel Air and Glendale police are pursuing a mix of pointers, labs, and boxers that have killed more than a dozen of the wealthy residents and injured close to twenty.
Across the monitor bank, the lieutenant general watches the National Guard fight a rear-guard action through Burleson Park in the north of Dallas. The bodies of dozens of locals and tourists are strewn across the grass, playgrounds, and picnic sites as marauding dogs rampage eastward toward the North Central Expressway.
In Dallas itself, shoppers are under attack in the Main Street area and the Historic and Arts districts. Traffic is at a standstill and paramedics are caught in the gridlock.
In Houston, four Alsatian guard dogs have been activated at the Mission Control center and have already killed two members of the International Space Station ground crew.
A pack of strays is attacking visitors leaving an antiques show in the George R. Brown Convention Center.
In Seattle, the first of a whole series of planned attacks has just begun. Sniffer dogs down at the dockside are attacking port workers. Across town, two kennel maids are being savaged to death by Lab
radors at a nearby animal shelter.
A message flashes on his computer. An alert he’s been waiting for. He picks up the phone and dials General Zhang’s private cell phone.
“Yes.”
“I have the results from the laboratory. The glass capsule that Luo Kai had in his mouth contained polonium.”
“Polonium-210?”
“Yes, General. The specially coated glass would have contained it, but once broken, the uranium would have proved deadly.”
179
Beijing
Tomorrow he will deal with Geng Chunlin. Until then the odious man can sweat and rot in a dark cell full of cockroaches and rats.
The world will be a very different place in twenty-four hours.
President Xian will have returned from making a fool of himself in Hawaii. The Americans will be broken. And he—Fu Zhang—will be assuming the presidency and total control of the People’s Republic of China.
It will be his world.
His in the way that only the great emperors of bygone China have ever known.
Absolute rule.
Not only of China, but soon, also of the other biggest superpowers in the world.
Starting with America.
True power.
Global power obtained through global fear.
Fear is the energy of power, like that uranium they tried to poison him with. Maintain the fear, and the power is regenerated over and over again. And once started, it only needs a little here and there to keep it running.
He slips off his robe and steps into the bathwater.
It is not as he wished.
He’d asked the private butler at the Raffles Hotel to run a tub that was tepid and filled with soothing herbs and oils. Any hotter and it inflames the scars on his chest.
But this is not tepid.
Far from it. When he sees the old fool he will hold him down in it and teach him what tepid is.
The anger rouses him. Acts as a perfect pick-me-up for the playmates that his soldierly contact is bringing around for him.
Special playmates.
Ones he needs to relieve all the excitement that’s been building tensely inside him. His desires need to be met. The anger and rage need to be vented through his sexual potency. Women need to understand him and fear him just as much as men.