The China Dogs (30 page)

There's blood all over the floor and no sign of movement. He walks closer and stands on something. Part of dog's jawbone. Smashed clean out. Whoever she is, she put up a hell of a fight before they got her.

He pulls off the broken chairs and carefully unwraps the drape wound around her so he can see.

His heart catapults against his ribs and every breath of air is sucked from his lungs.

It can't be.

But he knows it is.

He's staring at the body and his mind is willing it to be someone else.

Anyone other than Zoe.

106

Weaponization Bunkers, North Korea

O
ne dog. One dose of serum. One last try.

Jihai brings a fresh shih tzu into the containment cell, injects it with the drug-loaded microchip, and once outside immediately activates the aggressor serum.

Hao would rather have used a larger dog and waited six to twelve hours before the activation but there isn't time.

Now he and his son have to sit patiently on stools in front of the glass and watch for signs of aggression before administering the pacifier. “How is Péng? What did Dr. Chi say?”

“He is much the same.” Jihai can't keep the worry from his voice. “Chi thinks he just has a cold virus and the bite is coincidence. Could that be?”

“It is possible.” Hao doesn't add that he thinks it highly unlikely. He turns to his son and does something he has never done before.

He takes him into his confidence.

“What you said to me about our work here—”

“I meant no disrespect, Father—”

He pats down the interruption with his left hand. “I know. As you said, you spoke as a scientist.” He pauses reflectively. “And you might be right.”

“About what?” He looks to the dog in the containment cell. “About the animals being part of an attack program?”

Hao nods. He finds it hard to speak. He feels foolish about how he has been betrayed and deceived. “I would never knowingly bring shame to our family. To my name or yours. Not shame of this historic magnitude.”

Jihai looks shocked. “The deaths in America—you think they could be from our dogs?”

Hao doesn't move. He doesn't speak. But his silence says everything.

The little shih tzu suddenly jumps at the glass and begins yapping furiously as soon as it gets to its feet.

Jihai steps from his stool and starts for his workstation. “It is ready.”

“Wait.” Hao grabs him by the arm. “Promise me one thing.” He glances at the snarling, crazed dog jumping in the cell. “Please, do as I say. No questions. No delays. Whatever I ask of you in the coming hours or days, just do it. Our lives and our names may depend upon it.”

Jihai bows his head. “I promise.”

Hao smiles. “Now let's work.”

The shih tzu hits the glass again. It lands and sets its tiny legs wide beneath a silky curtain of long brown and white hair. Its lips are curled back. Tiny teeth bared as aggressively as it can manage.

Hao realizes he is pinning the largest hopes of his life on one of the smallest dogs in the world. He checks his monitor readings then looks at Jihai. “Release the serum when you're ready.”

The young scientist triggers the atomized chemicals.

Both men hold their breath as they watch.

The tiny dog leaps once more.

It barks.

Then walks.

Walks not bounds.

Hao and Jihai exchange glances.

The barking stops.

The dog tilts its head back and opens its mouth.

No bark. Just a yawn. A disdainful sucking of air.

Then it sits and grooms.

Tāo burst into the room. “Professor! Péng has stopped ­breathing.”

107

Miami

T
here's a pulse.

That's the best he can hold onto.

A pulse.

Feint and weak but paramedics say it's there.

Zoe is alive.

Bitten up bad. Unconscious from a head injury and loss of blood from multiple bites.

But alive.

Ghost can barely function because of the shock. He takes the Hasselblad from around her neck as the medics finish up and lift her onto a gurney. Something drops from her jeans as they wheel her away. He picks it up. It's a pocketbook with a thin pen jammed in it. He slips it into his jacket and follows the crew outside.

He wants to go with her to the ER but knows he can't. Personal pain has to be buried for public good. There are operational ends to tie up, police business to be done, instructions to give. And there's Cummings and all his rot. All his anger at missing the great presidential phone-in.

“You okay?”

The voice is Annie's. She's old enough to already know the answer.

“Yeah, I'm good. The woman the medics just took, she's my—” His hand grasps at the air as he tries to find the right words for what Zoe is to him.

“Girlfriend?”
suggests Annie.

“No,” he answers. “She's not that. It's not a good word.”

“Then what? Friend?”

He looks at her. “No. She's my love.”

Annie's not sure she heard him right. “Your what?”

He gets himself together. “Her name is Zoe. Zoe Speed. She's the civilian who stepped in and stopped the Citibank robbery the other day.” He takes a deep breath. “I want to be kept up to date on how she is. Have someone check on her condition every hour.” He corrects himself. “Every half hour. Any change in her state, you let me know. Doesn't matter who I'm with or where I am. Okay?”

“You got it.”

He has a flashback of pulling back the blood-soaked drape that she was tangled up in. That first glimpse of her face. Eyes shut. Just like she was this morning when she was sleeping, when he kissed her beautiful head and left her there in her friend's spare bed.

Now he sees the wounds.

Awful bites to her arms and legs. The gaping hole in her side. The flash of white hip bone through the sticky red gore.

He'd held her head in his hand and felt wetness in his palm. Pulled it away and looked, hoping it wasn't what he already knew it was.

A terrible head wound. Blood and swelling. A bad combination.

After that he'd gathered up the drape and made a soft pad to lay her on while he called the paramedics. Shouted at them like he was falling off the edge of a cliff and needed them there within a split second to save him.

Now they've come and gone. She's in their hands. And maybe God's.

“Boss.”

Annie is staring at him. She's holding up a radio, “Captain Cummings is on the line. He says he needs you back at base. Right away.”

108

Weaponization Bunkers, North Korea

P
éng is close to death.

The monitor hooked to him is beeping alarmingly and the small, birdlike form of Dr. Chi is spread over his big chest carrying out CPR. A last resort that is unlikely to restart the heart but could keep oxygenated blood flowing, delay tissue death, and avoid permanent brain damage.

Chi looks up at the stream of concerned people who've just flooded into the medical bunkhouse. “Someone pass my bag from over there.”

Jihai grabs a large, saggy brown leather carryall and brings it over.

“Open it,” says Chi, still keeping up the compressions. He looks around. “Does anyone know CPR?”

“I can do it,” says Tāo. “I have done it before.”

“Take over.”

Tāo slips into position, expertly rests his palm on Péng's chest and strikes up a steady and regular rhythm.

Chi half empties the bag. Bandages, thermometers, a metal box, all tumble across the floor. He ignores them and finds what he's after. A short plastic tube and a scalpel.

Everyone realizes what he is about to do.

Chi will cut into the neck and insert a tracheostomy tube into the wound.

One slip of that shaking old hand and the young man is dead.

“Have you done that before?” Jihai sounds skeptical.

“I'm a doctor.” He glares at him defiantly then turns to Tāo. “Okay. Step away from the patient.”

Tāo shifts to one side and Chi moves surprisingly quickly. He shuffles pillows under Péng and tilts his head back.

Unhesitatingly he cuts with the scalpel.

There's a spurt of blood as he creates the stoma, the hole in the neck and windpipe.

Chi feeds the single cannula tube in, secures the neck plate, and wipes away the blood. He then places his hands on Péng's chest and repeats the CPR.

There's a blip on the monitor by the bunk.

A sign of life.

Eyes swing to the screen and watch the HR climb.

Twenty . . . forty . . . sixty . . . eighty . . .

It stops at eighty-five.

Jihai smiles. “He is all right?”

“No. He is not all right. He is alive. That is all.” Chi turns to Hao. “Unless he goes to a hospital right now, this man
will
die.”

“I will go to my office and call Beijing for the authority for the transfer. Can you contact the military hospital aboveground and prepare them for the intake?”

Chi nods. “I will do it right away.”

Jihai can't help but ask the question. “Is it rabies? Is it rabies after all?”

“I don't know,” concedes Chi as he heads to the exit.

Hao doesn't answer.

But he does know.

He knows exactly what's wrong with Péng. The poison affecting him is rare and deadly. Whatever they try to do for him, he is going to die.

109

Breezy Point, New York

L
ocals call it the Irish Riviera.

It got the name because it has the second highest concentration of Irish-Americans in the country.

Danny thinks it should be called Dullsville.

Breezy is a summer getaway out in Queens, hanging over the western end of the Rockaway peninsula like a fat man's belly. It attracts walkers, golfers, fishermen, nature nuts, and no end of old-timers who want to sit and stare at sunsets and remember shit from their youth.

The area is a select five hundred acre cooperative owned mainly by the kind of rich residents who complain to the cops if you play your music a single decibel louder than their TV. The exception to the rule is the surfers who hang out on the beach and at least bring some life and color to the place.

Stevens has settled Danny in a big four-bedroom family home and even delivered the Kawasaki. If he's asked, Danny has a cover story that he's a rich Internet entrepreneur who's burned out and needs a rest.

The kitchen is stacked with groceries and there are enough pizzas in the deep freeze for him to set up in competition with Domino's.

The only thing he doesn't have yet is new equipment, and hopefully that'll be arriving soon. It's going to take him an age to get back on the trail of that Jackpot data stream.

Danny watches for the delivery van from a window with a view of the Rockaway Inlet and the local security force that patrols his street so regularly they've worn their own groove in it.

While he waits he calls Word, Kayoz, and Right. They're cool about the shutdown, especially when he tells them “the man” is going to pay them for the next month anyway.

He juggles the phone in his hand and thinks about his next call.

Jenny.

He has to tell her why he's disappeared.

And why he's not going to be around for a while.

110

Police HQ, Miami

T
he journey back from the Big Top is a blur, and Ghost is still in a trance when he walks into Cummings's office.

The big captain isn't alone. He's sitting with his boss, Major Bob Martinez, and the force press officer, Scott Young.

Martinez has a face that looks like a kid has drawn it, almost perfectly round with red cheeks and black dots for eyes. He gets to his feet and extends his big soft hand. “Good to see you, Ghost. You're doing a great job.”

Ghost knows he doesn't mean a word of it. The guy's been a full-time politician for thirty policing years. People say the first thing he did when he came out of the womb was shake the hand of the midwife who delivered him, then kiss himself on the head while his father took pictures.

“Take a seat,” says Cummings curtly. “Reason I'm not ripping you a new ass is that word's come down from the governor's office that we're going into a State of Emergency. Seems you're not alone worrying about these freaking dogs.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Shut your mouth and listen. The President is apparently on a plane and heading to Florida for a press conference. National Guard and all the shit that comes with it is being called out. Special Ops will be at the front of the multiagency initiative and the White House wants you to take the lead locally, along with an operational hotshot from Jacksonville—” He looks to Martinez for the name.

“Vasquez. Antonio Vasquez.”

“He'll help coordinate resources and back office with our people and units in Orlando, St. Petersburg, etcetera. So you and he best get on. On top of that, we've got the President landing 'round about now, so you best not stand the man up twice.”

It's Scott Young's turn to chip in. “He's going to make a live address to the nation from here. Probably from our press studio.” He couldn't look prouder.

The remark touches a nerve with Ghost. “It'd be better if he did it from the morgue—maybe then the whole damned country will know what's really going on.”

“Enough.” Martinez halts him. “The President has had the
cojones
to call a State of Emergency and he's promised us whatever resources we need to make our cities safe. In return, he expects us to step up to the mark, and
I
expect you to watch your mouth and honor this force when you meet him. Do you understand me, Lieutenant?”

Ghost doesn't answer. He just stares into the major's cold blue eyes. Right now he doesn't want to be here. Doesn't want to meet the President. Certainly doesn't want to head up any national initiative with some pen-pusher from Jacksonville.