“Was it just me, or did it look like Akira just sleepwalked in here to tell us how to do our job?” Kurtzman asked.
Price and Brognola exchanged a puzzled glance. “Normally, I would have said no—until he walked into the door,” the big Fed replied. “But, honestly, I don’t care, as long as his idea’s good, and it is.”
“Risky, but with the best chance of success,” Price agreed. “Bear, notify Striker of the change in plans. We’re going to either have to get him a new license plate or another new vehicle, since I’d imagine the car he’s in has been reported as stolen.”
“Barb, please, give me some credit,” Kurtzman muttered. “I didn’t choose that Mercedes for its looks, I chose it because the owner is on a week-long business trip to Australia and won’t be back for four more days.”
Price and Brognola shared a grin. “Excellent. Then let’s get Striker tailing Fang, and hope he leads us to Liao,” the mission controller said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Zhang Liao lay under his blanket in his room, not feeling well at all.
He was flushed and thought he was running a mild fever, which wasn’t good enough. He was concerned that the nurses would notice his condition and treat him with antibiotics that would knock out the infection before it really even got started.
On the plus side, the damp toilet paper poultice he’d made seemed to be doing a great job of keeping his waste warm and moist. He had kept it on for the entire night, and thought he was definitely coming down with something.
Now he lay on his side, with his legs together and brought up to his chest. Just as quickly, he got cold as a chill swept over his body.
The door to the room opened and the guards escorted in one of the silent, efficient nurses to check on him. That was a surprise. Usually they didn’t come in this early. Liao covertly wiped his face with the sheet before sitting up and greeting her. Despite his antagonistic tone with the doctor, he was always polite to the nurses. It just seemed to be something he couldn’t help.
The woman wheeled a small tray over to him. “I’m going to take a blood sample, all right? It will just take a few minutes.”
She swabbed his arm, then wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his upper arm and inflated it. “Make a fist and hold, please,” she said before inserting the needle. She filled three small test tubes, then cleaned and bandaged the puncture site.
“Are you feeling all right?” she asked. “You feel a bit clammy.”
“I’m fine,” Liao lied. “It was warm earlier and I may have been sweating a bit.”
The nurse eyed him but didn’t say anything. He breathed in and out evenly as he stared back at her.
“All right, then, you can go back to sleep,” she said. With that she gathered her things and wheeled the cart back out the door, leaving a worried Liao to watch her go.
What if they test that blood and find the infection? he wondered. As soon as he thought it was safe, Liao hid the poultice in his hand as he got up and headed to the bathroom, where he flushed it down the toilet. He also examined his wound, which had turned an inflamed, angry red, making him smile. He just needed a bit more time for it to truly take hold…
Returning to bed, he lay down and curled up, trying to shake off the surprise visit and get some sleep. It felt as though he had just closed his eyes when he was roughly shaken awake and opened them to stare at the stern face of Dr. Xu, flanked by two guards.
“Restrain him.”
Liao tried to struggle, but his arms and legs were pinned as they were placed into straps attached to his bed and cinched tight. In seconds he was securely fastened and unable to move.
“What is the meaning of this? Why are you doing this?” he asked, even though he knew exactly why they were restraining him.
“Did you think you could hide an illness from us for long, Mr. Liao?” Xu asked. “When I saw the nurse’s report, I immediately tested the blood she had drawn from you and what do you think I found?”
Liao tried to shrug, but his pinioned arms made that impossible. “I don’t know. What?”
“The early stages of what appears to be sepsis,” the doctor replied while pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “I’m unsure as to how you managed to contract it in here, since we keep our facilities scrupulously hygienic, but rest assured, I am going to find out. Now, I advise you to lie still while I am conducting my exam, otherwise—” he nodded at the guard standing on the other side of the bed, who was holding a stun gun “—you will be punished. Do you understand?”
Liao clenched his fists but nodded. “Yes.”
“Very good. Now hold still.”
Xu bent and began closely examining his prisoner’s body.
Gritting his teeth, Liao put up with the exam, hoping that the doctor might still miss the injury, since it was at the joint of where the leg met the pelvis. If he didn’t look too carefully…
It took a few minutes but eventually Liao’s hopes were dashed by the doctor’s surprised gasp. “Well, well, you have been a busy patient, haven’t you?”
Holding Liao’s legs apart, he leaned down and sniffed the wound. “Introducing your own fecal matter into your bloodstream—very clever indeed.” He straightened and shook his head. “All that will do is prolong the inevitable, you know.”
Liao spit in the doctor’s face. “I was hoping to poison my body and organs enough so that my corpse would be useless to you.”
Xu took out a handkerchief and wiped the saliva off his cheek, then shook his head. “A not uncommon scenario, I’m afraid. When faced with oncoming mortality, a patient often seeks to avoid that…finality by whatever means necessary, even to the point of infecting himself—or herself—with disease in the hope of being treated and gaining a few more precious days of life.”
He regarded Liao not with a look of anger but of pity. “It is the only worthwhile goal, is it not? To survive, to continue your existence for as long as you possibly can. Sadly, however, for some, that is not possible. For you, this is certainly true. We will cure you, and what was going to happen is still going to happen, but first…”
He nodded at the guards, who had been standing by the door now that Liao had been restrained. They opened it and in walked the same nurse he had seen earlier that morning, along with a man carrying a small leather satchel who looked vaguely familiar. With a start, Liao recognized him as the MSS agent who had questioned him about four months earlier.
Had they known about me that long ago?
“We will be starting you on an antibiotic drip to fight the infection before it goes too far. However, Agent Fang has some questions he would like to ask you first.”
“Hello, Mr. Liao,” Fang said as he set the satchel on the end of the bed and opened it. “I am afraid that I have some unfortunate news—your wife and children were all killed earlier today in a botched attempt by the Americans to get them out of the country. I am sorry for your loss.”
Liao stared at him in shock, trying to comprehend the words the other man had just said. Baozhai? Zhou? Cheng? All…gone… Tears welled in his eyes and ran down his cheeks.
“Even with this unfortunate news, there is still the matter of finding out what you have already given or told the Americans,” Fang said as he removed a hypodermic syringe and small glass vial. “I am afraid that we must know everything.” He inserted the needle in the vial and drew out 30 ccs of a clear fluid, tapping the syringe to make sure there were no air bubbles in it.
He nodded at the doctor, who assisted the nurse in preparing Liao’s left vein for an injection.
Normally Liao would have struggled or fought against them, but he was still too stunned by the news about his family.
“We will begin in a few minutes…once the Sodium Pentothal has had time to take effect,” Fang said as he expertly injected the drug into Zhang’s arm. “I think we will start with the first time you contacted the Americans…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Bolan sat in the Mercedes-Benz on the
top level of a parking garage, looking through a pair of knockoff Zeiss binoculars at the fenced-in and heavily guarded facility, where, according to Tokaido and Kurtzman, the Chinese government was holding his target.
With his lack of appropriate armament and gear, Bolan thought it would be just short of impossible to infiltrate the facility. The easiest part had been finding the place. Once turned on to Agent Deshi Fang, the Executioner had picked up his staff car coming out of the MSS headquarters and pulled into traffic behind Fang’s sedan.
But once they had reached the so-called “organ transplant” center, his trained eyes had immediately seen that although the place wasn’t heavily fortified, it was heavily guarded. Two-man patrols circled the inner perimeter of the fence, and the only way in and out was manned by three guards, one of whom always stayed in the guardhouse. They were alert and very thorough, using mirrors to check underneath cars and searching the trunks. They also searched both the top and cargo area of a laundry truck that had driven up. Bolan had also spotted what he thought were motion sensors attached to the tops of the fence posts and ceramic capacitors wound with razor wire, telling him the fence was electrified. No doubt the place was well lit at night, too.
Lowering the binoculars, he stared at the otherwise nondescript four-story building. The fence could be neutralized, the sensors hacked and the entrance security could be taken care of, but even if he did find Liao, how would he get him out of there?
It didn’t matter, however, how difficult the mission was. Bolan had taken it on and he was going to execute it, come hell or high water.
Over, under, around or through, he thought. The four ways of achieving an objective. So far, it would seem through was the best way…
He grabbed his new burner phone—the other one and the first tablet he’d used had been wiped and smashed beyond repair, the fragments divided up among three different garbage bins in the city. Tapping a quick email to the anonymous drop that would eventually get back to Stony Man, he sat back and waited.
Less than ten minutes later, there was a reply.
Feasible. Working on it. Check every 30 for update.
Bolan picked up the binoculars and began looking at the grounds again, taking notes on security patterns and weaknesses. He might have come up with a way to get in quietly, but more than likely he was going to make a hell of a lot of noise getting back out.
*
FIVE HOURS LATER Bolan drove the Mercedes-Benz sedan up to the front gate. He was dressed in an ill-fitting, dark blue suit with a white short-sleeved shirt underneath, and had plastered his hair down with gel until it gleamed. He’d also picked up a pair of horn-rimmed reading glasses with no magnification, so he could still see while looking the part. On the seat beside him was a thick, expensive-looking briefcase that was crammed to the gills with what he’d need to get inside—he hoped.
He rolled down the window and held out his cell phone to the approaching guard. “John Randine, General Electric Healthcare Service Division. I understand you folks are having a problem with your CT 750.”
The guard blinked at him, then took the phone and looked at the electronic identification as he spoke into his vest mike. It took a few minutes, but eventually he gave the phone back. A man started walking around the car with a lighted mirror on a pole, using it to scan the undercarriage as the first guard said, “Open the trunk, please, sir.”
“Of course, of course, just a sec.” He popped the trunk release and waited patiently while they looked through the immaculate space. All the while, his fingers, drumming a nameless tune on the armrest, were only inches from the Beretta pistol, although if he had to put these guards down, the mission was already over.
“Please show us what is in the briefcase, sir.”
“Huh? Oh, sure. Boy you guys sure take your security seriously.” Chuckling, Bolan picked up the heavy briefcase and opened it to reveal a dizzying variety of electrical equipment. “Be happy to tell you what these all are.” Bolan picked up a fiber-optic scanner. “This is the X85 small-bore fiber-optic—”
The guard raised his hand. “No, no, that is fine.” The guard looked at the empty passenger seat and rear seat. The trunk lid slammed down with a thud, and the crossbar in front of him lifted. “Please go in, second parking lot on your left, then through the main doors. The receptionist will escort you from there.”
“Oh—okay. Thanks a lot, guys.” Bolan drove forward, noting the pop-up spike barrier on the road. Pulling into the parking lot, he picked up his briefcase, then got out of the car and went to the trunk. Opening it, he was relieved to see that the compartment holding the rear tire didn’t seem to have been tampered with. That was good, because if they had lifted the carpeted panel, the mission would have gone wet really quickly.
Bolan pulled it up now to reveal the spare tire and underneath it the black nylon bag containing his weapons. He picked the bag up, slung it over his shoulder, made sure the Beretta was secure at the small of his back, and headed toward the double doors of the main entrance. Thunder rumbled overhead and he looked up at a dark sky that appeared ready to unleash a huge storm. That might work in my favor, he thought as he pushed the door open and walked inside.
The lobby was simple and bare, with cream-colored walls, white tile underfoot and a simple, high desk, where a neatly dressed, middle-aged woman sat. Bolan walked up to her and presented his phone again, with the identification still displayed on it. She took it and scanned it under an IR reader next to her desktop computer. “Welcome to the Guaw Li Center for Organ Transplanting and Research, Mr. Randine. It will be just a moment while we create your visitor’s pass.”
“All right.” Bolan took the minute to look around the room. He spotted the electronically controlled double doors behind the receptionist’s desk, and hoped that Tokaido or Kurtzman had taken note of them, as well. There was no other furniture in the room. Apparently visitors who had to wait got to stand.
“Here we are, Mr. Randine.” Bolan looked back to see her proffering a small laminated card. “If you will please clip this to your lapel, it will allow you access to the areas where you need to be. If you will follow me, please?”
She walked to the double doors behind her and pushed them open. Bolan saw what was unmistakably a guard on the other side. He carried a nightstick, but no gun. The receptionist muttered something in Cantonese to the guard, who nodded and waved Bolan forward.
“I will escort you to your destination and introduce you to the team you will be working with,” he said in clear but accented English. “Please do not deviate from where you must work. The penalty for going into unauthorized areas is very severe.”
“You don’t have to worry about that, sir,” Bolan replied as he walked into the beginning of a long corridor, lined with several doors and broken up every so often by an intersection. “My only goal here is to get your body imaging scanner up and running again.”
The guard nodded as they continued down the corridor. So far, the layout corresponded with the plans the Farm had sent him, which Bolan had memorized. The full body scanner he’d be working on was located near a stairway that led to the below-ground level where Zhang Liao was being held.
About a hundred yards later, the guard knocked at a closed door. Bolan noted the stairway across the hall. The door opened after a few seconds and a middle-aged doctor in a white lab coat with salt-and-pepper hair looked out at the two men through thick-lensed glasses. “Shi de?”
“The service engineer is here,” the guard said in Cantonese, pointing at Bolan.
“Ah, excellent!” The doctor switched to thickly accented English. “Thank you for coming so promptly. Come in, come in!”
Bolan entered a small antechamber and stuck out his hand. “John Randine, General Electric Healthcare Service Division. We treat all technical problems with the same attention, no matter if it’s a country clinic or the biggest hospital in Beijing.”
The doctor pumped his hand heartily. “Good, good, well, it’s only the MRI
we have here that you have to worry about today.” He chuckled and Bolan smiled with him as they walked across the small room and into a larger one. “Well, here it is.”
The machine was one of the most advanced imaging units in the world. Bolan knew that without Aaron Kurtzman’s tutorial, he would have been completely lost. As it was, he walked to the nearby computer station and looked at the error message flashing on the screen.
“Yup, I’ve seen this before. You’ve got a firmware conflict with your Gemstone Spectral Imaging program. I’m going to need to update it and recalibrate the system.” As expected, the doctor smiled and nodded politely at what Bolan was saying, but he doubted the other man understood a single word. “I can take care of it, but it’s going to take a bit of time, that’s all.”
“Very well, please get started. I will be in the next room if you need anything.”
“All right, thank you.” Bolan couldn’t believe his luck—he would be mostly unobserved to perform the next stages of the operation. Unslinging his bag, he set it on the floor as he pulled out the chair and sat, setting his briefcase on the desk next to the computer.
Opening it, he removed the new tablet and set it on the desk. He then found a browser in the operating system and logged on to the dead-drop address and sent a blank email message.
A reply came less than thirty seconds later. A few seconds after that, Tokaido had control of the computer and, less than a minute after that, the building’s entire system. While they could have hacked in using backdoor programs, it was just so much easier with a man on the inside.
Bolan spent the next two minutes readying his weapons, then the next three waiting for the Stony Man cyber team to set up everything.
Finally Ok, we’re set on this end, Tokaido typed. You ready?
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