Beth had never been in a car accident, but she now understood what people who’d gone through one meant when they said it appeared to happen in slow motion.
She perceived both groups of men drawing their weapons as if they were moving through molasses. She was aware of every acute detail, from the jackets being flung aside to get at pistol holsters to the shouts in two different languages.
She caught a glimpse of Raven slamming into her and flinging her to the floor as guns fired in all directions, chewing into wood, drywall, and bodies. Beth wanted to put her hands over her ears to shut out the deafening gun blasts and the shouting men, but her arm was against her side, pinning the tube to her body.
The door swung open, and the bouncer stationed outside ran in, gun blazing.
“Come on!” Raven shouted in her ear as she dragged Beth to her feet and pushed her into the hallway.
She involuntarily turned to witness the carnage and saw one of Udom’s men pointing his pistol at her. Before he could fire, a bloody hole appeared in his forehead and he went down like a sack of cement.
It was only then that she registered the shot had come from behind her. She turned in astonishment to see that Raven had fired the pistol she had shown to Beth when she slipped it into her rear waistband back at the hotel room.
“Move!” Raven yelled and yanked the door closed behind her as they ran into the hall. Shots poured through the door, but they tore harmlessly into the wall.
As they scrambled downstairs, the huge bouncer at the front door was coming up, his gun drawn.
“Oh, my God!” Raven cried out to him, sounding hysterical. “They’re killing each other up there!”
That spurred the bouncer to run faster. He tore right by them without giving them another glance.
When they reached the ground floor, Beth heard the door above slam open and more gunshots in the hall. There was a huge thump, which sounded like the bouncer collapsing. It was followed by heavy footsteps heading their way.
“Outside!” Raven shouted and took Beth by the arm.
They sprinted for the exit. As the evening approached, the street scene had gotten livelier and more crowded. As they ran onto the road, Beth crashed into a woman, who went sprawling and cursed at her in Thai.
“Sorry!” Beth yelled instinctively before Raven pulled her away.
As they rounded the corner, screaming erupted behind them, probably from the emergence of menacing killers from the club brandishing pistols.
“We’re not going to make it to the car,” Raven said. She wasn’t even breathing hard, while Beth’s lungs ached from the adrenaline, shock, and exertion.
“What do we do?”
Raven steered her over to an idling motorcycle, whose owner was buying some food from a street vendor. She threw her leg over the seat and shouted, “Get on!”
Beth shoved the tube through her purse strap, hopped on behind Raven, and grabbed her waist.
Raven revved the throttle and laid down a skid mark as they accelerated away, leaving the owner shouting as he ran after them with a skewer of pork in his hand. Beth had a death grip, as she hung on.
She turned to see Tagaan sprinting toward them at full speed. It was obvious he wasn’t going to catch them, so he stopped abruptly and raised his pistol. Beth ducked as they swung around a corner. Two bullets ricocheted off a wall, and then Tagaan was out of sight.
Raven took three more quick turns and merged with traffic on a busy boulevard. They were now one of a hundred motorcycles cruising down the road.
“Nice work back there,” Raven said over her shoulder. “For a civilian, that is. I’m impressed you didn’t panic.”
“I didn’t?” The vibration of the motorcycle must have masked her shaking.
“You have your passport with you, right?”
“Always,” Beth replied. “Why?”
“Because we can’t go back to the hotel. We need to get out of Thailand as soon as we can.”
“That’s okay. Everything in my room is replaceable. But we’ll have to figure out what to do about the painting.”
“You want to turn that over to Interpol now? We just heard Tagaan say they had a mole.”
Raven had a point. If his gang still had the other Gardner paintings, a report to Interpol might make them too hot to handle. They could all be destroyed to wipe out the evidence.
There was still the microtransmitter Beth had attached to the finial. “Tagaan was holding the bronze eagle when we left. We can track it.”
“If they really have an informant at Interpol, they’ll know as soon as we start following it and deactivate the transmitter.”
“That’s why we’re not going to Interpol,” Beth said.
“Then how are we going to recover the other paintings? We can’t do it on our own.”
“The guy who gave me the transmitter can help us. I consult with him on art that he acquires for his firm. His name is Juan Cabrillo.”
14
THE PHILIPPINES
In his spartan private quarters, Salvador Locsin wolfed down a huge traditional Filipino breakfast as if he were an athlete training for the Olympics. Heaping plates of corned beef, garlic-fried rice, salted milkfish, and chocolate rice pudding took up nearly the entire teak table. In the week since he was shot by his own men escaping from the prison transport, every one of his meals was a feast. It was the fuel his body needed to recover from his bullet wounds, injuries that would normally have confined someone to a hospital for weeks. Not only did Locsin feel better than ever, his scars were barely visible and would be completely gone in a day or two.
Locsin had grown up the son of a local politician and a teacher. As avowed socialists, his parents had been at the forefront of the island’s agitation for better services for the people. Then an attempt by the police to break up a socialist rally went bad.
The police claimed they were there to arrest radical elements of the communist insurgency when someone in the crowd started firing. The police fired back, and Locsin’s parents were supposedly caught in the cross fire and killed. The subsequent investigation concluded that the radicals were at fault, but Locsin knew better. Witnesses told Locsin that his parents were deliberately shot by the police, but the final official report covered it up.
Locsin could see that there’d be no justice for his parents, so he didn’t return to his university. Fighting corruption by working through a rigged system was obviously a useless gesture. Joining the communist insurgency was his best chance to take down a government designed for the benefit of the rich and then rebuild it from scratch.
As he demonstrated his tactical abilities for inflicting maximum damage on government targets, he quickly gained a following in the insurgency. His methods became increasingly brutal because he adhered to Machiavelli’s maxim The ends justify the means. When financial support from the communist governments of China and North Korea wasn’t enough to fund his rebellion, he turned to smuggling drugs. The main consumers of his heroin and methamphetamine products were the rich capitalist countries, and he took satisfaction in knowing that the narcotic epidemic helped weaken those supposedly robust economies.
But, until now, nothing he had accomplished was revolutionary enough to make a real difference. It was another drug that would soon let him transform the world.
As he shoveled another spoonful of pudding into his mouth, Locsin glanced down at the round white pill sitting in a small dish next to his plate. It was etched with the symbol of a swirling cyclone and symbolized the wholesale destruction he was about to unleash.
Nikho Tagaan, a trusted comrade who had been with Locsin since the beginning, opened the door to his quarters and brought in a fresh pot of coffee. He poured mugs for both of them and took a seat on the opposite side of the table.
“Any progress from our laboratory on Luzon?” Locsin said, between bites of pudding.
br />
“Nothing yet. Dr. Ocampo hasn’t been able to isolate the formula and he doesn’t have an estimate for when he will.”
“Does he understand the urgency of the situation?”
“I made that very clear when I was there yesterday. He’s as motivated as we are, but he says that without the original list of the drug’s components, it’s virtually impossible to re-create.”
Locsin picked up the white pill and twirled it between his fingers like a worry bead.
“Why is this so hard to duplicate?”
Tagaan slurped his coffee and shrugged. “I don’t understand the chemistry. Ocampo says he doesn’t know what plant makes up the key ingredient and he can’t produce a replacement for it. It would be like trying to make cocaine without coca leaves or heroin without opium poppies.”
“What about a synthetic substitute?”
“If that was even possible, he said it would take years of research to create.”
Locsin’s uncontrollable rage that emerged on an ever more frequent basis threatened to bubble to the surface, and it took all his will to suppress it.
“We don’t have years,” he growled, popping the tablet in his mouth and washing it down with the coffee. He knew it would take several minutes for the drug to take effect, but a rush of invincibility surged through him. He’d been smart enough to sew an emergency supply of pills into the waistband of his pants, which was why he’d still been able to take his daily dose while in police custody.
When several of his men had been in retreat from police forces through the jungle, they had stumbled upon a cache of twenty thousand pills. The tablets had been stored in a secret underground bunker built by the Japanese in the middle of Negros Island during World War II, but the base must have been abandoned during the American assault. The entire supply of pills had been vacuum-sealed and stored in a steel drum with no papers to explain the contents. A code name was stenciled on the drum: Typhoon.
There were many guesses as to the drug’s purpose. Was it a narcotic? A stimulant? The Japanese were notorious for providing their kamikaze pilots with crystal meth. Or perhaps it was a poison for their soldiers to commit suicide with instead of surrendering. An antidote? An antibiotic? There was no way to tell.
Locsin could have sent the pills for analysis to a scientist sympathetic to their cause, but that would have taken too long. He used a more expedient method: he made one of his government prisoners take the pill.
It didn’t take long to observe the effects on the obese bureaucrat, an Interior Ministry functionary named Stanley Alonzo. Every day, Alonzo’s physical transformation was noticeable. He complained of constant hunger, and each time he was fed, his muscles grew rapidly and he shed fat as if he were exercising ten hours day. Torturing him for information became less fruitful as he fiercely resisted the beatings, seemingly oblivious to the pain being inflicted. Bruises healed in hours instead of days. Then when the drug was withheld, Alonzo’s muscles withered, and torture again became intolerable. His drug doses were restored, and within another week, his metamorphosis was so total and dependent on Typhoon that Locsin thought he could be effectively controlled and become an agent for their side. Alonzo was sent back to his post to spy for the insurgency.
In his research, Locsin discovered that steroids had been developed by the Germans in the lead-up to World War II to treat dysfunctional growth syndromes. The scientists even received the 1939 Nobel Prize for their work. Then, during the war, anabolic steroids were used to help malnourished German soldiers gain muscle mass long before they were distributed to athletes in the Soviet Union and East Germany so they could dominate the Olympics.
But Typhoon did more than improve strength and stamina far beyond anything possible with anabolic steroids. The Japanese had apparently developed a drug that enabled the user to tolerate an inhuman level of pain, rapidly healed wounds normally considered fatal, and allowed users to recover from grievous injuries within days instead of weeks or months. Typhoon was like steroids on steroids. Users weren’t invincible—broken bones and bullet holes didn’t mend themselves in seconds like they did for superheroes in movies—but quick blood clotting and accelerated tissue regeneration meant that almost nothing less than a headshot or a knife to the heart would be lethal. All the user needed was time and food to fuel the repair process.
It didn’t take long for Locsin and his revolutionary comrades to see the profound benefits of Typhoon, so they started taking the drug themselves. They’d enjoyed the effects for the past six months, and his victories over the Filipino government had grown exponentially. Now he had the most fearsome soldiers in the world.
The problem was that their supply was swiftly dwindling. Within two months, it would be exhausted.
“I’m going to the lab tomorrow,” he said to Tagaan. “I want Ocampo to explain to my face why he can’t figure out the type of plant we need to find.” He had a project under way to get more Typhoon, but Ocampo and the lab were his backup.
“Yes, comrade. I’ll prepare your helicopter.” Tagaan nodded at the aluminum briefcase holding the eagle finial from the Gardner Museum. “The Manet we lost in Thailand has not surfaced yet. What should we do about the other artwork?”
Locsin felt his fury building anew at the setback, but he tamped it down. He’d been counting on Udom to be his conduit to Southeast Asia for Typhoon, but Tagaan had wiped out his men after the deal went sour. Not only would he have to build a new network in Thailand, he’d have to delay using the paintings as collateral. For now, they would have to go back to transporting money the old-fashioned way, in five-hundred-euro notes and hundred-dollar bills.
“We’ll keep the rest of the paintings for the future,” Locsin said. “Once production ramps up, we’ll be dealing in huge sums of money, and we’ll need them for our transactions. Any word about Beth Anders?” She was the only loose thread tying his men to the paintings.
Tagaan shook his head. “She disappeared, along with her companion. Our informant at Interpol says they haven’t contacted the authorities.” The spy within Interpol was another beneficiary of Typhoon.
“Did you find out who the other woman is?” Locsin asked.
“Our contact is working on that, but he hasn’t been able to identify her.”
“If you find them, try to get the painting back, although that’s not our highest priority.”
Tagaan nodded, but the white knuckles on his fist showed that he was on the brink of crushing his mug at the thought of his failure, another effect of the Typhoon. Like testosterone, it amplified aggressiveness in users.
“I will kill them both,” Tagaan said. Locsin didn’t share his desire to avenge being embarrassed for letting the two women escape. Their deaths were simply necessities.
Finally sated, Locsin left the empty plates and exited his quarters with Tagaan. They emerged into the center of a soaring cavern fifty stories high. It was one of the largest caves in the world but remained unknown to the outside world. Like the massive caverns discovered in Vietnam only a few years ago, this cave system was hidden in the jungle, and only a select group of his comrades knew the location. All others brought to it were blindfolded before making the journey.
Men carrying out their duties shuttled across the main square centrally located among the buildings that had been constructed to house the soldiers and their equipment. Power was provided by large diesel generators lowered through a massive sinkhole that allowed sunlight to illuminate the interior. It also made it possible for the insurgency’s helicopters to descend directly into the cavern. The only other access point was a truck-sized opening in the hillside where the original discovery of the cave had been made by a loyal communist. Now it was well concealed.
As he and Tagaan made their way toward the armory, Locsin stopped in the middle of the square where a huge stalagmite had formed. Steel rings had been drilled into the limestone, and a limp man was s
hackled to them.
The man looked up at Locsin with false hope. It was Stanley Alonzo. The bureaucrat had grown a conscience and betrayed Locsin to the police.
Just a week ago, Alonzo had looked like a bodybuilder, the epitome of health. Now he was little more than skin and bones.
Alonzo had made the mistake of thinking that when his supply of Typhoon ran out, he would simply revert to his previous tubby form. But as with many other drugs, Typhoon’s addictive properties meant that the lows were even worse than the highs. A week after taking the first pill, the user was addicted for life. Locsin had found that out when one of his men was arrested and couldn’t get his supply of Typhoon in jail. Racked by the agony and severe muscle deterioration caused by withdrawal, he died within a week. The perplexed medical examiner, noting that the man’s body literally consumed itself, chalked his death up to a non-contagious autoimmune disease. Locsin himself had avoided a similar fate when his men made the bold rescue from the prison ship.
He leaned down to Alonzo. “I told you that traitors would be dealt with severely. I lost six men in my prison escape because of you.”
Alonzo grabbed his pant leg. “Please,” he rasped, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I’m begging you. I need Typhoon. Just one pill. I’ll do anything you want.”
Locsin yanked his leg away. “You’re already doing it.”
As he and Tagaan walked away from Alonzo’s pitiful cries, Locsin vowed that he would not go out that way if they couldn’t regenerate their supply of Typhoon. He’d rather eat a bullet.
15
GUAM
With the NSA supercomputer removed from the Oregon and loaded back onto the C-5 for its return trip to Fort Meade, Juan finally had time to meet with Beth Anders and Raven Malloy. He chose one of his favorite bars on the island, a dim little pub called Abandon Ship. Most of the evening’s patrons were American sailors and airmen from the military bases that dominated the U.S. territory’s economy. A live band pounded out covers of classic rock songs by Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Eagles, so their conversation would stay private.