Austin prodded the man with his toe and told him to get up. When there was no response, he rolled the limp man over onto his back and pulled the mask back to reveal broad-faced Asian features. Blood drooled from the man's mouth.
"He's going to need a good orthodontist when he wakes up," Zavala said.
Austin felt for a pulse in the man's neck.
"That's the least of his worries," he said. "He'd be better off seeing the undertaker."
Zavala stepped on the cigarette that had flown from the man's mouth.
"Someone should have told him that smoking is bad for his health," he said.
They dragged the body inside the bridge. Austin radioed a quick Mayday while Zavala picked up the man's gun. They descended to the deck. Crouching low and taking advantage of the shadows, they made their way to the fantail. The powerful floodlights used to illuminate night operations had been turned on, bathing the deck in bright light. The crew and officers were huddled in a tight knot guarded by two of the commandos. The clean-shaven man had his machine gun trained on Gannon with one hand while with the other hand he brandished a photo of Kane in Gannon's face.
The captain shook his head and pointed skyward. He looked more exasperated than frightened.
The man angrily pushed Gannon aside and turned to the Beebe's crew. He held the photo high.
"Tell me where this man is hiding," he announced, "and we will let you go."
When no one took him up on the offer, he strode over to the crewmen, studied their frightened faces, then reached out and grabbed an arm that belonged to Marla. He forced her to her knees, glanced at his watch, and said, "If Kane does not appear in five minutes, I will kill this woman. Then we will kill one of your crew every minute until Kane comes out of hiding."
Austin lay belly-down on the deck next to Zavala, trying to train his sights on the commando. Even if he took the man out with the first shot, he might not get the other two, who could sweep the deck clean with a few bursts from their automatic weapons. He lowered his gun and signaled to Zavala. They crawled backward until they were in the shadows of the ship's garage.
"I can't nail Bullethead," Austin said. "Even if I do, his pals could go on a shooting spree."
"What we need is a tank," Zavala agreed.
Austin stared at his friend and punched him in the shoulder.
"You're a genius, Joe. That's exactly what we need."
"I am? Oh, hell," he said as if something had occurred to him. "The Humongous? That's an ROV, Kurt, not an Army tank."
"It's better than nothing, which is what we've got," Austin said.
He quickly outlined a plan.
Zavala saluted to show that he understood, then turned and sprinted off to the remote-control center. Austin slipped through a door to the ship's garage and turned the lights on. The Humongous had been pulled up close to the doors in preparation for the search for the sunken ROV the next morning.
The Humongous was about the size of a Land Rover. It was built with treads that allowed it to crawl along the sea bottom. It had a flotation pack full of foam that held the instruments, lights, and ballast tanks. Six thrusters allowed for agile, precise maneuvering in the water, and it carried a battery of still and television cameras, magnetometers, sonar, water samplers, and instruments that measured water clarity, light penetration, and temperature.
The pair of now-folded mechanical manipulators that extended from the forward end could be operated with surgical precision. Their claws could pluck the tiniest of samples from the bottom and store them in a collection cage slung under the front of the vehicle.
A couple hundred feet of umbilical tether had been coiled behind the ROV. Austin stood in front of it, waiting, as precious seconds went by. Then the vehicle's searchlights snapped on, and the electric motors began to hum.
Austin waved his arms at the camera. Zavala saw him on the monitor and waggled the manipulator arms to signal that he was at the controls.
Austin went around behind the ROV and climbed on top. Zavala gave the vehicle power. The Humongous lurched forward and crashed into the double doors, pushing them wide open. As it emerged onto the deck on grinding treads, Zavala waved the manipulators around and worked the claws, adding to the dramatic effect.
Marla's would-be executioner whirled around to face the garage doors and saw what looked like a giant crustacean heading directly for him. Marla took advantage of the distraction, scrambled to her feet, and made a run for safety. One of the other commandos saw the third mate trying to escape and aimed his weapon at her fleeing figure.
Austin snapped off a stuttering fusillade that stitched a row of holes across the man's midsection. The clean-shaven man and the other commando took cover behind a crane and peppered the oncoming Humongous with hundreds of rounds. The unrelenting gunfire blasted away its searchlights, then a lucky shot found its camera.
Inside the control room, the screen went blank. Zavala kept the vehicle moving at full speed, but without electronic eyes he was having trouble controlling it. The Humongous veered drunkenly to the right, came to a jerking stop, then shot off to the left. It went through the same moves again, peppered all the while by the hail of bullets. Fragments of plastic, foam, and metal filled the air until, finally, the shooting triggered an electrical fire.
Austin gagged on the acrid smoke filling his nostrils. He could feel the Humongous disintegrating beneath him. He dropped off the back of the erratically moving ROV and ran to one side of the ship, dove behind a tall air vent, hit the deck, and rolled several feet. He stopped and fired a blast directly above the stroboscopic muzzle flashes in front of him. It was his turn for a lucky hit. One of the guns went silent. Austin kept on shooting until he emptied his gun of bullets.
A moment later, the clean-shaven man took advantage of the lull and ran for the side of the ship.
Austin stepped out into the open, pointed his empty gun at the fleeing man, and yelled, "Hey, Bullethead! Don't leave so soon. Fun's just starting." Austin raised the gun to his shoulder.
The man stopped and turned to face Austin from twenty feet or so away. The Humongous was now ablaze, and the man's face and strange green eyes were visible in the light of the flickering flames. A smile came to his evil features.
"You're bluffing," he said. "You would have shot me if you had the chance."
"Try me," Austin said, squinting with one eye as if taking aim.
Either the man didn't buy Austin's bluff or he didn't care. He raised his own gun, and Austin thought he was going to shoot, but instead the man let out a snarl and dashed toward the railing, firing from the hip as he ran. Austin ducked for cover, and when he dared look again, the man had disappeared. He heard the sound of an outboard motor starting and ran to the railing. The boat was already up on plane, and within seconds it had disappeared into the darkness.
He stared at the pale wake foaming the water and was listening to the motor fading into the night when there was a new sound on the deck behind him.
Footfalls.
Austin pivoted into a crouch, only to relax when he saw why the man had decided to bolt. Zavala had emerged from the control center and was trotting toward him. They both grabbed fire extinguishers from a bulkhead and sprayed the Humongous with foam.
"It sounded like World War Three out here," Zavala said after they had the blaze under control. "Glad to see you're still in one piece."
"Thanks to your timely appearance," Austin replied. "Wish I could say the same for the Humongous," he added with a tinge of guilt in his voice.
Zavala gazed in wonder at the smoldering ROV, its components scattered around the deck.
"I can see now why the video died," Zavala said.
"That's not the only thing that died," Austin said.
He went over to the bodies lying on deck. He removed the mask from the man who had tried to kill Marla, revealing a cruel face with Asian features. The second man was Asian as well. Austin surveyed the deck, which was covered with cartridge shells. The smell of co
rdite hung in the smoke-filled air.
"Now we know why the B3 was attacked," he said. "Doc Kane… We've got to talk to him."
"Good luck!" Zavala said. "Doc made it pretty clear that his work was none of our business."
Austin's lips tightened in the smile that, in Zavala's experience, had always presaged trouble.
"That's too bad," Austin said in an even tone. "Because I'm making it our business."
CHAPTER 15
Shanghai, China
The license plate on the silver Mercedes S65 AMG sedan that emerged from the parking garage under Pyramid Trading Company's fifty-story building displayed only the number 2, suggesting that the car's owner enjoyed extreme wealth. Vanity plates were auctioned off for millions of dollars to affluent and superstitious bidders who believed that the low numbers would bring good luck.
To reinforce that good luck, the car's skin was fashioned from rocketproof armor plate and its tinted-glass windows were bulletproof. The underside was fortified against street bombs. The six-hundred-horsepower V-12 engine under the hood could push the car's speed up to two hundred miles an hour.
An armed guard wearing denim fatigues sat in the front seat next to the driver. For added security, the Mercedes was sandwiched between two four-hundred-ninety-three-horsepower Mercedes G55 AMG SUVs. Each SUV carried a driver and five guards armed with Chinese-made, lightweight Type 79 submachine guns that had firing capabilities of five hundred rounds per minute.
The three-vehicle motorcade followed a route that took it away from the high-rise apartment complexes and glitzy clubs around the Oriental Pearl Tower, the tallest building of its kind in the world. The car and its escorts sped along the banks of the Yangtze River, then turned off the highway and headed toward the destitute neighborhoods that are the embarrassing underside of the largest and wealthiest city in the People's Republic of China.
The procession plunged deep into the warren of slums, entering a hellish landscape of a no-man's-land that was so burned out and devoid of human life even the most desperate slum dwellers avoided it. The vehicles turned onto a narrow, unlit street and went through a gate, pulling up next to an abandoned brick warehouse. Weathered plywood covered the widows, broken glass and boards from packing crates littered the oil-soaked dirt parking lot, but the razor wire topping the electrified chain-link fence that gleamed in the headlights was brand-new.
The guards poured out of the SUVs and formed a cordon between the Mercedes sedan and a loading platform. The man riding shotgun in the sedan's front seat got out and opened the rear door. The lone passenger emerged and walked briskly toward the platform, accompanied by his bodyguard. As the men climbed the platform stairs, a door on well-greased rollers slid silently open.
They entered the warehouse and the door slid shut. The illumination from fluorescent overhead lights revealed that the passenger from the Mercedes was a small man dressed in a medium blue suit that had been hand-tailored in London, a neatly knotted silk tie, and Testoni shoes that sold for two thousand dollars a pair. He had a rigid, almost military posture about him.
Silver hair, neatly parted on the left, and black-plastic-framed glasses gave Wen Lo an avuncular air of bland respectability more befitting a desk clerk in a three-star hotel than the head of a giant real-estate and financial consortium that was the cover for extensive prostitution, gambling, and drug operations on a global scale.
Wen Lo's face was asymmetrical, not from left to right but from top to bottom. The lower part of his face featured plump cheeks and a boyish smile while the upper part had a wide forehead, heavy furrowing brows, and soulless jade-green eyes that showed no more emotion than an abacus.
Waiting inside the warehouse door were three men in blue-green hospital gowns and a pair of heavily armed guards wearing generic tan security uniforms. The hard-faced guards carried Tasers, sidearms, and clubs that hung from their wide leather belts.
A balding, weasel-faced man dressed as if for the operating room stepped forward.
"An honor to have you visit us, sir," he said, giving a quick bow of the head.
Wen Lo responded with a barely perceptible nod.
"Tell me how your work is coming, Dr. Wu," he said.
"We are making progress," Wu said with cheerful optimism.
Although the lower part of Wen Lo's face smiled, his eyes didn't mirror the same pleasant expression.
"Please show me your progress, Dr. Wu."
"I'd be glad to, sir."
Wu led Wen Lo and his personal bodyguard through two sets of airtight chambers and along a short corridor that ended in a thick glass door. Responding to a gesture from Wu, a guard pressed an electrical switch that unlocked the door. Wu, Wen Lo, and the bodyguard stepped into a cellblock. Steel doors, solid except for small rectangular openings, enclosed a dozen cells.
As they walked between the cells, Dr. Wu said, "The men and women are segregated, four to a cell. We maintain full occupancy at all times."
A few inmates pushed their faces close to the barred openings and called out to Wu and his guests to help them. Wen Lo, his face devoid of pity, turned to Wu.
"What is the source of these lab rats?" he asked.
Dr. Wu was rewarded handsomely enough for his work to afford a large apartment in a new high-rise overlooking the Yangtze and to keep his wife and his mistress clothed in the latest fashions, but he had convinced himself that his research was for the good of mankind. Although his work required that he suppress his humanity under a thin veneer of medical noninvolvement, the coldness of Wen Lo's question stunned him. He was, after all, still a physician.
"As medical professionals, we prefer to call them subjects," he said.
"Very well, Dr. Wu, I'm sure these subjects appreciate your professionalism. But you haven't answered my question."
"My apologies, sir," Wu said. "This lab is surrounded by teeming slums, and it's easy to lure the subjects in with promises of food and money. We choose only those in relatively good physical shape. People in the slums rarely report the missing, and the police never follow up."
Wen Lo said, "Show me the next phase. I have seen prisons before."
Wu escorted the two men out of the cellblock to a black-walled room. One wall was half glass, like the viewing area for a maternity ward. Visible through the glass were a number of full-sized beds, each occupied and enclosed in a transparent cylinder.
The occupants of the beds were quiet for the most part, but occasionally someone stirred restlessly under a tightly tucked sheet. Figures in white body-encasing protective suits moved like ghosts among the beds, checking electronic monitors and IV tubes.
"This is one of several sick rooms," Wu said. "The subjects in each have been injected with the new pathogen and are proceeding through the stages of the virus. Although the virus is waterborne, it can be spread through contact as well. You can see by the way the technicians are dressed, and the separately vented enclosures for each subject, that we take every precaution to keep the disease contained to the rooms."
"If the subjects were left on their own, they would die?" Wen Lo asked.
"That's correct, sir, within twenty-four hours. The disease would take its course by then, and it is always fatal."
Wen Lo asked to see the next phase.
They set off down another corridor, through more airtight doors, and entered a second observation area similar to the first. The room on the other side of the glass held eight gurneys enclosed by cylinders. On the gurneys were four men and four women. Their faces looked like they had been carved from mahogany. Their eyes were closed, and it was difficult to tell if they were alive or dead.
"This is phase three," Wu said. "These subjects show the dark rash that is typical of the virus, but they are still alive."
"You call these ripe vegetables in your little garden alive, Dr. Wu?"
"Admittedly, it would be preferable if they were up and about, but they are still breathing, and their vitals are sound. The experimental cure is helping."
/> "Would you like to be infected and helped by your cure, Dr. Wu?"
Wu couldn't miss the implied threat. Sweat trickled down his back between his shoulder blades.
"No, I would not, sir. The cure is imperfect at this time. The virus is amazing! Its ability to adapt quickly to any treatment we try has made our task difficult but not impossible."
"In other words, you have failed."
Wen Lo's smile could not counteract the coldness in his eyes.
"Success is possible," Wu said. "But it will take time. I don't know how long."
"Time is the thing we have in little supply, Wu."
Dr. Wu couldn't help but notice that Wen Lo had dropped his title. He was doomed. He started to croak something about one more chance, but Wen Lo wagged a finger at him.
Wu was about to faint, but Wen Lo clapped him on the back.
"Don't worry, Dr. Wu," he said. "We appreciate your hard work here. We are near to developing a highly promising cure at our offshore facility. You will go there to make sure the work is satisfactory."
"I'm grateful for another chance," Wu said. "When might I expect to start new tests?"
"There won't be time," Wen Lo said. "The testing will be done using computer simulation." He turned back to stare at the forms on the gurneys. "Dispose of this material. The subjects in the cellblock too. We will find our way out."
After Wen Lo and the bodyguard left, Dr. Wu glanced through the glass at the supine forms on the gurneys and sighed heavily. He had fifty subjects going through tests and most of them would die, so it was simply a question of disposing of the remains. But those in the cellblock would pose a particular problem, and it was going to be a messy job getting rid of this batch. He hurried back to the main lab to fill his staff in on the task that lay ahead.
An hour later, Wen Lo got off the elevator on the top floor of the Pyramid Trading Company building, where he had his luxurious penthouse office suite. He was alone as he made his way across an enormous room decorated in French Empire style.
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