Beijing Red

by Alex Ryan

  “Both.”

  An awkward pause hung in the air between them. Nick broke first and said, “What if I did it?”

  “Did what?”

  “The autopsy. If I do the autopsy, will you analyze samples?”

  She wiped her eyes. Would he really do that?

  “Well?” he said.

  “We’d need to get her to an autopsy suite. I have some connections at local hospitals I could—”

  “No,” Nick said, cutting her off. “Too risky. It has to be here.”

  “You really are insane.”

  “Think about it, Dash. There is no way we’ll get a body that looks like that into a hospital without drawing someone’s attention. Our only play is to do this right here, right now. We collect tissue and blood samples and then get the hell outta here before the police show up and arrest us.”

  He’s right, she thought. They only had one chance, and their window of opportunity was closing rapidly.

  “We’ll need PPE, surgical supplies, sample vials, and a cooler,” she said, thinking aloud.

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I’ll stay here with the body while you make the supply run.”

  “Okay,” she said, feeling a surge of adrenaline kicking in.

  “One more thing,” he said, stopping her at the door. “Keep your phone close. If things go bad here, or the police show up before you get back, I’ll text nine-one-one to your mobile and that will be your signal not to come back. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she said. “But what about you, Nick Foley?”

  “I guess you’ll just have to find a way to get one very pissed-off ex–Navy SEAL out of Chinese prison,” he said with a smirk.

  Chapter 23

  Jamie Lin’s apartment

  1425 hours local

  The hour and a half Nick waited in the apartment—alone and trapped with the reek of death—was more than ample time to question the stupidity of his offer. In what universe was he qualified to perform an autopsy, for God’s sake? He’d performed some dissection during his Eighteen Delta training and clinicals, and he’d assisted on two autopsies with the medical examiner, but that was the extent of his training. The thought of autopsying Jamie Lin made him sick.

  But what other choice did he have?

  Despite his initial misgivings, he now believed he could trust Dash. During the past twelve hours, she had assumed as much—if not more—risk than he had in this quest for answers by putting her personal safety and her career on the line. And she certainly couldn’t autopsy her best friend alone. Clearly, she needed his help as much as he needed hers. He had already risked his life for her once in the past twenty-four hours; why stop now?

  Because you hardly know this woman. Because if you get caught helping her, it’s your dumb ass that is going to end up in a Chinese prison, not hers. Because you do not work for the CIA, have not seen her case file, and the only information you know is what she’s told you. And because she’s married.

  He hated arguing with himself.

  He tried to clear his head and concentrate on the task. What they were about to do was unthinkable. He couldn’t even imagine the horror Dash must be feeling—watching her best friend die in front of her and then preparing to conduct the postmortem autopsy. Not to mention the feelings of betrayal and anger she was undoubtedly trying to work through after learning Jamie Lin was a CIA agent. When she walked through that door, he fully expected her to be an emotional train wreck, which meant that he would—

  His phone vibrated in his back pocket.

  He pulled it out and read the text from Dash:

  Coming up

  Nick tapped in his reply:

  Ready here

  The woman who walked through the door was not a train wreck. Her jaw was set and determined, her eyes bright with a fire. Dash was in the zone. All business. Not a hint of the emotionally haggard girl with tear-streaked cheeks who’d left ninety minutes earlier. He hustled to the door to unburden her of the stack of plastic-wrapped supplies that reached all the way up to her chin. Then he helped her unsling the oversized, duffle-style gym bag whose strap was biting into the base of her neck. To his surprise, she hugged him. It was a real hug—full of gratitude, trust, and earnest intent. The feel of her body against his was the solidarity he needed to push away the creeping thoughts that she might betray him.

  She let go first.

  “Thank you, Nick,” she said. “I would be lost without you today.”

  “You’re welcome.” Unsure what else to say, he focused his gaze on the last item hanging on her shoulder: a large, lunch-box-sized cooler bag.

  Dash opened the gym bag and pulled out two sets of coveralls and handed one to Nick. She walked across the room, hesitated at the doorway, and glanced back over her shoulder, her face flushed.

  “I’ll turn my back and promise not to peek,” he said.

  She lowered her eyes. “Thank you, Nick. You are a gentleman.”

  If she only knew how many times he’d undressed her in his head, she’d take that comment back.

  He turned his back as promised but caught her reflection in a starburst mirror on the wall beside the TV just in time to see her bent over and stepping out of her pants. The black thong she wore framed her nearly perfect . . .

  He squeezed his eyes shut and waited.

  “Thank you, Nick. I am finished,” she said a moment later.

  He turned as she was slipping on foot booties.

  “Your turn,” she said with a little smile, and she turned her back.

  Obediently, he stripped to his underwear and pulled on his own suit. At least the suit was bigger than the child-size coveralls they had given him at the Artux hospital a few days earlier. The booties, however, were another story, and they required him to curl his toes just to pull them on.

  “Okay,” he said, turning to her. “Gloves?”

  She handed him a pair of long, yellow rubber gloves, along with a purple respirator, mask, and goggles. He pulled up his hood, cinched it tight under his chin, and then donned the mask, goggles, and gloves. She did the same, and when they had finished dressing out, they stared at each other like two bug-eyed aliens in space suits.

  He smiled behind his mask and gave her a thumbs-up.

  “I will walk you through what to do and what tissues I need,” she said, her voice muted and breathy through the respirator. “I will try to help you, but if I cannot, you can describe for me what you see, and I may add some additional tissue requests. Are you sure you are okay to do this?”

  Nick nodded and shifted uncomfortably, already roasting inside the suit. He felt a trickle of sweat rolling down the small of his back, and another behind his left knee snaking down into his left bootie. On the plus side, the pungent stink of rubber from his mask completely replaced the reek of dead tissue, blood, and excrement he had fought to stomach over the last hour.

  “Yes, I’m okay,” he said. “I only hope I can do it right.”

  Of course, I would rather be on an assault team kicking doors right now with an M4 carbine in my hands.

  “You will do fine,” she said. “We do not need very much precision. We just need some chunks of tissue from a few places and that will be all. I will tell you everything to do.”

  She handed Nick a surprisingly heavy, rectangular package wrapped in plastic. He felt the metal box inside and understood—it was a surgical instrument tray. He carried it ahead of himself like some sort of burnt offering to Hades and headed down the short hall. At the bathroom door, Dash touched his shoulder. He turned and saw her wide eyes though her fogged goggles.

  “May I wait here a moment while you set up?”

  “Of course,” he said. “If you can tell me what to do from the hall, you won’t have to come in at all.”

  She smiled at him with her eyes.

  Nick took a deep breath and then stepped around the corner of the door and into the bathroom.

  It was tight quarters. He leaned back against the wall beside the pedest
al sink in a low squat. Then, he removed the plastic wrapper encasing the surgical instrument box and unfolded the blue paper draping. He spread out the paper and then set the tray down, unlocked the simple latches, and took off the top. He made a conscious effort to focus on the instruments and not yet look at the swollen corpse lying on the tile floor only a foot away.

  “Are you ready?” Dash called from the hallway.

  Nick swallowed hard to keep his stomach contents down where they belonged.

  “Almost,” he called back.

  The box held rows of large clamps, small and large scissors, a giant silver pair of what looked to be garden shears—God only knew what the hell he would do with those—and then a handheld circular saw with a blade perhaps the size of a drink coaster. There were two green-handled scalpels with opaque plastic covers over the blades. Nick gritted his teeth and forced his gaze on Jamie Lin.

  The dead girl looked almost nothing like the gray, bloated thing he had watched die ninety minutes ago. The thing before him barely resembled a person—which could make it easier . . . or not. There was a puddle of thick, congealed, black blood in a huge oval around the body, and the crotch of her sweat pants were stained black and brown up to her waist. Reflexively, he immediately began tactical breathing to calm his nerves and steady the tremor in his hands. Unfortunately, the exercise did precious little for his rising nausea. He took one more long, rasping breath and called out to Dash: “Okay. What first?”

  “There is a small and large scalpel in the kit,” she said, and Nick marveled at how her voice sounded so strong and clinical now. “Take the ten-blade—the larger-bladed scalpel—and you will need to make an incision in her abdomen.”

  Awesome, he thought, rolling his eyes. Let’s just dive right in.

  “Okay. First I need to roll her.”

  “Do you need my help?” she called, her tone less convincing than her words.

  “No,” he grunted, shuffling toward the body in a squat. “I got this.”

  He grabbed the dead girl’s shoulders and his fingers sunk into the flesh like Jell-O. The tissue was way softer and squishier under his rubber-gloved hands than he expected. This felt like the opposite of rigor mortis, but his limited interaction with cadavers gave him little frame of reference for expectations. The bloated body was heavier than he expected, and he grunted as he rolled the swollen corpse to the left. It rolled onto its back, and a puffy, gray hand thunked against the toilet bowl. The face now looked directly up at him—or would have, if the eyelids had not swollen to the size of tennis balls. Nick touched the chin and pushed until the dead face looked away, at the wall beneath the sink. He took one of the blue towels from the surgical kit and draped it over the head and face, which helped settle his nerves. He shuffled down toward the feet and set his metal tray down beside him. Then he fished out the larger of the two scalpels and pulled the plastic guard off the blade with a shaking hand.

  “Okay,” he said. “I have the knife.”

  He pulled Jamie Lin’s shirt up to expose a bloated abdomen.

  “Make a deep cut from just beneath the breastbone all the way down past the navel—you know, the belly button.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know, the belly button.” He grinned tightly. He felt for the breastbone, blinked hard once, and then plunged the knife in deep. The puncture hissed, releasing trapped gas, and he choked back a reflux of vomit.

  “Disgusting,” he muttered, and he dragged the blade down toward the dead girl’s waist.

  The motion was easier than he expected, and in one long pull, the abdomen gaped open. He lost his balance at the end of the cut, and his right hand plunged into the warm goo. He jerked his hand out and several loops of gray intestines came from the cavity of dark liquid. The guts squirmed over his arm and spilled onto the floor with a wet splat.

  He gagged hard.

  “Did you do it?”

  “Yes,” he called back. “Just a minute, please.”

  While I throw up inside my suit.

  He scooted back a few inches, but the guts followed him like a wriggling snake and then rested against the bootie on his right foot. He closed his eyes and commenced another round of four-count breathing.

  It’s not a person, he told himself. It’s a thing . . . It’s not a person.

  “Are you okay in there, Nick?” Dash called.

  “I’m fine. Almost ready.”

  Just go clinical, dude. Like Dash did. Hardcore clinical.

  He exhaled, opened his eyes, and peered into the belly cavity.

  What he saw was not right. The human abdominal cavity was tightly packed, with a tidy arrangement of clearly discernable organs. But Jamie Lin’s insides looked like someone had dumped a bunch of organs into a barrel of motor oil. Everything seemed to just slosh around inside the dark liquid that spilled out and dripped down onto the tile floor.

  “I don’t know, Dash. This doesn’t look right.”

  “What do you mean?” she called.

  “The blood, for starters—looks like motor oil,” he said. “And the organs are just sorta floating around in it.”

  “I don’t understand. Are you okay to continue, Nick?”

  “Yes. Never mind. What tissues do you need?”

  “I need a piece of liver, intestines, kidneys, and the larger blood vessel in back—the aorta. Wait a moment, please. I need to see.”

  Dash came in from the hall and knelt beside him, leaning in for a good look. He looked at her eyes behind the fogged goggles and saw fascination instead of fear or disgust.

  “This is most interesting,” she said, and she reached over, taking the scalpel from him without asking. She extended the lower part of the incision another inch or two. “It is most strange indeed. Things are not what they should be.”

  She plunged her hand in and felt around, no disgust at all in her eyes or voice, while Nick struggled to keep his stomach contents where they belonged. It seemed they both had skills they brought to the table, and this arena was clearly hers.

  “We need some liver first,” she announced, but he didn’t think she was talking to him anymore.

  Nick hesitated. In the top right side of the gaping hole, he saw what he thought was liver, bobbing free and unattached in the oily goo. He watched as Dash grasped the friable gray tissue. It crumbled under her forceps and then floated loose in the motor oil. He swallowed hard.

  “Oh my God,” she breathed.

  Nick looked up at her. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

  The rubber mask with its dual purple discs shook comically back and forth.

  “Never,” Dash said in a calm, clinical voice he had not heard before. She was all doctor now.

  She reached her hand into the dark pool and then, with a sucking sound that made Nick’s stomach turn, pulled out a kidney. The organ lay flaccid in her hand.

  “The kidney was not connected,” she said. “It should be connected.” With her fingers, she pulled a chunk, like wet, raw hamburger, from the kidney. “It is as if all the connective tissue in the body is gone,” she mumbled, rolling the flesh around in her fingertips.

  He reached around behind her and used his left hand to grab a small, plastic Tupperware container. He lifted it, the top already off, and she dropped the soggy tissue into the shallow container. He grabbed two more containers and slid them into the bathroom.

  She took a large sample of liver and placed it in a separate container.

  “We will take a piece of pancreas as well and then take some of the liquid, I think.” Her voice was calm and steady, as if they were simply lab partners in a freshman biology class. The trauma of her friend’s death had been buried under the fascination for whatever biological anomaly had dissolved Jamie Lin from the inside out.

  Moments later, they had pancreas and abdominal fluid added to the neat row of shallow Tupperware containers. Nick realized he was more of an observer than a participant now, as Dash reached into the metal box and fished out the small, handheld s
aw by its gleaming handle. It appeared to be battery operated, because she pushed a button and the silver disk of the blade spun with a loud, high-pitched squeal.

  “What’s that for?” Nick asked.

  “Brain tissue,” she said.

  The sudden ring of a mobile phone nearly caused Nick to lose control of his bowels.

  “Is that you?” he asked.

  “No,” Dash said, turning to pull the blue cover off of the corpse’s head.

  “I’ll check it,” Nick said, and feeling the coward, he scurried from the room. The sound of the saw and then, a second later, the sound of it biting into wet flesh and changing pitch as it hit the hard skull brought his stomach into the back of his throat.

  On the fourth ring, he found Jamie Lin’s phone on the floor in the kitchen. It rang once more and then stopped, and the green “missed call” icon appeared with the initials “CL” beside it.

  CL . . . Chet Lankford. Has to be. He’s her boss.

  The screen lit up again, and he read the text that appeared.

  Everything okay? Lots to discuss. You coming in or want me to swing by your place? I could be there in ten. Text me back—CL

  “Shit,” he breathed and hollered over his shoulder. “Dash, we gotta go.”

  He sped down the hall to help her clean up.

  “What’s wrong?” Dash asked, looking up from her ghoulish task.

  “We gotta go, Dash. I think we’re about to have company.”

  “Who?” she asked, dropping a glob of gray tissue into the final Tupperware container.

  “The CIA,” Nick said, snapping lids on containers furiously.

  “What?” Dash sprang up from beside the now horribly mutilated corpse. They both washed their gloved hands in the bathroom sink and then moved into the hall to pack the containers.

  He grabbed a permanent marker to label them.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Labeling them,” he said.

  “No labels,” she scolded. “I have to be very careful, Nick.”

  “Okay, sorry.”

  She sprayed each container with aerosol disinfectant, stacked them inside the lunch box among cold packs, and then zippered the top closed.