The China Dogs (34 page)

“I hope you're right, sir.” He can't help but add the formality. “But I guess you didn't come here at this time to discuss patient welfare.”

Molton nods. “In a way I did.” He's been carrying something in his hand, something chunky wrapped in a plastic bag and rolled short and tight. He pulls it up and hands it over. “This is yours, I believe. Your badge and gun. I was at your station house talking to your captain and I asked to see the guy who ducked out of a video date with me—”

Ghost starts to explain, “I'm sorry, I—”

“No need to apologize. I know what you've been doing. And how you've been doing it. The Vice President and I saw you on TV yesterday—and again today. Forgive my language—you kick ass. You say what you think and you do what you know needs doing. I need ass-kickers like you. I've always needed them, now I need them like I've never needed them before.” He looks across at Zoe. “She's in good hands, Lieutenant—the best there is, from what I'm told. Now I need the best of people to help me and America fight the war we're facing.” He sticks out his right hand. “Will you help me—Lieutenant?”

126

Beijing

L
ieutenant General Xue Shi puts the phone down and looks at his notes.

He's learned from past experiences that bad news is best told quickly.

Such knowledge doesn't, however, dispel the trepidation he feels as he enters the briefing room for a routine update and prepares to recite the contents of the call to General Zhang and Minister Chunlin.

“I have just heard, General, that Hao Weiwei has killed himself, his son, and the unit doctor as well.”

“What?”

“It is correct. A night patrol found them dead in the laboratory. The doctor and Weiwei's son had been shot in the body and in the head from close range. Their faces were so badly blown off that guards only recognized them from the name tags on their lab coats. Weiwei had done the same to himself. He'd put a pistol in his mouth and shot himself.”

“Such loss.” Chunlin can't hide his shock. He'd known the scientist and had thought of him as an admirable man. “What possessed someone as bright and honorable as him to do that?”

“There were factors.” Xue Shi gives Zhang a knowing look.

“Leave us.” The general opens the office door. “Leave us, and speak of this incident to no one.”

The minister feels indignation and anger boil up as he rises from his seat and walks out.

“What did he know?” asks Zhang as Chunlin closes the door. “What brought on this ‘noble' act? For make no mistake, that is how the idiot scientist will have seen it.”

“He knew about the poison dogs. His suicide note condemned the Nian project as ‘morally reprehensible and beyond the boundaries of evil.' ”

“He always had such limited vision.”

“The shooting happened just a few hours after one of his team was transferred to the military hospital in a coma and then died.”

“Transferred? Who authorized such a transfer?”

“I don't know. It should have been me, or you, but I gave no such permission.”

“Then Weiwei faked it.”

Xue Shi completes the picture. “That's why he was calling us. He was seeking authorization.”

Zhang is anxious to contain any possible damage. “Let us be clear about things. Weiwei acted without authority. He faked your approval and jeopardized our country's safety. Lose the suicide note. Have it destroyed. Can you trust the commander?”

“Probably not.”

“Then have him and anyone else who saw the note returned to Beijing to report to us. And see to it that they never make it. For the moment, nothing must throw us off course. We cannot have Xian or senior members of the party casting any shadows of doubt over us.”

127

The White House, Washington DC

T
he security staff patch the encrypted call from the Chinese leader through to Pat Cornwell.

“President Xian, I'm afraid President Molton isn't in Washington tonight. Can I be of help to you?”

There's a pause before he answers. “No. When will he be back?”

“It's the middle of the night here, sir. The President is in Miami and will make an early morning return to the capital. He could call you on the secure line from Air Force One in about four hours, say seven
P.M.
Beijing time. Would that be suitable?”

There's a heavy pause before he answers. “Yes. It is suitable.”

“Can I tell him what it's about, sir?”

The line is already dead.

Cornwell holds the buzzing phone out to demonstrate his surprise to Don Jackson, who's sitting a few feet away. “And good night to you too, Mr. President.”

Jackson had been listening on a loop. “What do you think he's going to say to Clint?”

The VP puts the phone back on its cradle. “More threats, I imagine. Might even try to increase their ridiculous demands.”

“Do you think we should call him and wake him?”

Cornwell rubs his tired forehead. “Let the poor bastard have what little sleep he can. He was dead on his legs when he left here.”

“Yeah. Not a good time to be President. I'm going to head to my office and check on how the Army and the National Guard are getting their acts together.”

“I'll come down and see you later.”

Jackson raises a hand as a goodbye and walks out.

Cornwell settles down to his own to-do list. Come first light he wants police and sheriff's offices working with military units to hunt down strays across Florida and “dispose” of them. He wants a one-to-one with this freaky new guy that Clint has put in charge at the Florida end of things. And he wants fresh press initiatives to keep the media at bay.

For a short while he zaps across the news channels to see if he's missed anything and to try to get a feel for the mood of the country.

It's not good.

Channels are starting to move on from the scene of disaster reporting and are beginning to get more analytical. In turn, the average Joe is starting to ask smarter questions when a microphone is shoved in front of him. The big one is simple: What the hell is going on?

The Vice President wishes he knew.

It's still dark when he takes a rare cigarette break and downs another espresso. He's had much more caffeine than his doctor recommends. Too much stress as well.

Standing in the cool courtyard, he reflects on how he'll be disappointed when Air Force One returns from Florida and he's no longer calling the shots.

The VP flicks away the low tar butt and ambles back inside, his head still mixing up his personal ambitions to run for the next presidency with the current problems the country is facing.

The idea of secure containment areas for all dogs—or “safe homes,” as Jay Ashton is publicly branding them—was his, not Molton's. And it's a smart one. For now, dog owners will have the choice of putting their mutts in containment, but in the next few days, maybe even sooner, the government will make it compulsory. After that, it's almost inevitable that
most
, maybe
all
, of the dogs will have to be destroyed.

Cornwell has already got Ashton and his spin doctors working on some cock-and-bull story about the dogs being infected with a rabieslike virus that justifies the culls. Rabies scares everyone shitless. Just one shout of the word and people will be grabbing shotguns and shooting their own dogs.

Around dawn he wanders down to the Situation Room.

Lights are burning in all the offices and a much bigger watch team than normal is putting together the “Morning Book,” the daily compilation of new reports from intelligence agencies plus diplomatic cables and a summary from the State Department.

Cornwell finds Jackson at the far end with a duty officer and intelligence analyst, working his hand deftly across a state-of-the-art Telestrator. The monitor screen always reminds Cornwell of the one sports commentators use when they draw rings around players and highlight offensive and defensive runs. Only down here, Jackson is working on a mix of 3D maps, live satellite images, and graphic overlays of where attacks have taken place.

“How's it going, guys?” The VP gives them an encouraging smile as he approaches.

Jackson answers on everyone's behalf. “We're just reviewing the implications of the decision to focus our National Guard and hit team resources around the areas where there have been the most damaging or most frequent attacks.”

“And?”

“And we're not sure the Joint Chiefs have made the right decision.”

“Go on.”

Jackson swipes a finger down the east coast of Florida and leaves a dotted white line on the screen. “Miami keeps getting hit. We've had multiple kills at Lummus Park, Jason Schaffer, Flamingo Park, Key Biscayne, Coconut Grove, and South Beach. But not here.” He runs a finger around the Miami city center. “There's not been so much as a bark in the middle of town, which is why we only have a small patrol allotted to give cover here.” His hand moves up the map. “Same over at Jacksonville. Nothing in the center. There have been no attacks there, and we just have a couple of crews doing watch-and-see deployed here.” He sweeps his hand across to Santa Rosa. “This is countrified. Way, way away from a center of population. And we had deaths here and over in remote places like Merritt Island and Millers Landing.”

Cornwell starts to get the picture. “You believe the big cities are going to be targeted? You think our armed resources are being pulled wide to the rural areas, then they're going to strike at the centers with a wave of weaponized dogs?”

Jackson takes his hand off the board. “I'm certain of it. The question is not really where they'll hit us, but when.”

Cornwell sees his point. “Strategically it fits. If I were running an attack campaign, I'd build things up. Smash the small, soft targets during the first stages of political negotiations, then when talks start to disintegrate, hit a densely populated area to prove your power.”

“Exactly. Our problem, sir, as you know from the briefing earlier today, is that we don't have resources to instantly cover all the areas at risk for all of the time.”

Cornwell winces. “A-fucking-ghanistan. We should have been out of there years ago.”

Jackson doesn't even mention that his latest intel shows troubles rising there as well. “Which brings us back to our dilemma, Mr. Vice President. Have the Joint Chiefs done the right thing by deploying units to rural areas in preparation for more rural attacks? Or, have they bet wrong? Will the next wave be the big cities? It's your call—and I'm afraid you have to make it right now.”

“Then we stay as we are. Doubts are always going to raise their heads, Don. We have to learn not to be distracted by them and stick to our guns. The Chiefs thought long and hard about this strategy, so we're sticking to it.”

128

Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami

T
he presidential visit puts some energy into the antiseptic air and makes the early morning hours pass more quickly.

Once Clint Molton leaves, nurses flit into Zoe's room more attentively than ever. Naturally, during their visits they are keen to ask Ghost what the President had said and what he was like.

Around 3:00
A.M.
the excitement fades and the lieutenant is left on his own again. Occasionally, he picks up Zoe's camera and notebook and imagines what she had done with her last day, from the moment he left her flushed pink from their lovemaking to the second he found her bloodred and unconscious.

Life seemed so fragile.

Letting her accompany him in the Gerbers' kitchen had been a mistake. The horror of the scene had touched her. He'd seen it in her face at the time. Her whole being had blotted up the violence and emotion spread in front of her. He guesses she only survived true trauma because she'd had her camera. The lens became a shield. It objectified things. Allowed her to see the two women as critical objects, to be framed properly, correctly focused, and diligently captured. But afterward she probably had craved a sense of balance, needed to find perspective for the photographs, something to validate them as more than proof of her journalistic voyeurism. He knows that if he'd stuck to rules and regulations, she'd have stayed on the other side of the tape and the chain of events that brought her to this ER would never have begun.

He tells himself not to feel guilty. That life is packed with awful twists of fate and that's just how things are. But he doesn't believe a word of it. He
is
to blame. And if she dies, it will unquestionably be his fault.

Looking at her pocketbook, it seems to Ghost that Zoe risked her life for a story. Her first true piece of photojournalism. Sadly, she had gotten lost along the way. If her intention was to tell the world about the heartfelt relationship between mother and daughter, then she'd have been better going back to the village school they'd both attended, or asked in the clothes stores where they shopped together, or even gone down to the local gym where they regularly cycled side by side on spinning bikes. His office had found all that stuff, from house-to-house inquiries as they looked for someone who knew family or friends who could identify the bodies.

Ghost taps the red book on his knees. He finds it intriguing that Zoe took almost the same direction that he would have had he been treating the dog as a murder suspect and not just a dumb animal. She'd sought out
its
antecedence and
its
known contacts. Tracked down its last movements and identified all key events in its life.

He could see that she'd found the kennel where the Gerbers bought the dog, but after that several things puzzled him. Most of all, what was the connection to the shelter? To Chen? And why had she left Chen's house and gone straight to a dog show—one that fatally ended with the animals turning on the audience?