Medusa

  “I’ll talk to Dooley. Maybe he can fill in the gaps.”

  As Trout approached the dock, he smelled cigar smoke before he saw Dooley. Trout started to speak but Dooley shushed him. Trout listened, and he heard the murmur of an engine echoing off the canal. Dooley mashed his cigar out with his shoe, grabbed Trout, and pulled him down behind a pile of wooden fish boxes.

  The engine sound came closer, and a boat nosed into the canal. It was moving at a crawl, its spotlight sweeping back and forth, until it came to the end of the canal, where it made a U-turn and headed back to open water.

  Dooley’s 16-gauge followed the boat until the sound of its engine could no longer be heard. He lit up another cigar.

  “I’ll keep watch, but I think maybe we’d better get Dr. Lee out of here,” he said.

  “No argument there,” Trout agreed.

  Trout went back to the trailer. As he was telling Gamay about the suspicious boat, his cell phone buzzed. He checked the caller ID. Austin was calling to check on Gamay.

  “I’m in Florida now,” Trout said. “Gamay is all right. But we ran into trouble off Bonefish Key.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “Gamay was attacked along with a Bonefish Key scientist named Dr. Song Lee, who was working on something called the blue medusa.”

  “I want to talk to Dr. Lee in person,” Austin said. “Call NUMA and have them send a plane down right away to pick you up. Joe and I will be leaving town in a few hours. Meet me at the airport.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Thanks. I’ve got another favor.” He gave Trout a phone number. “Call Cate Lyons, Joe’s friend at the FBI, and extend my apologies for cutting her off. Tell her I’m heading for the Good Luck Fortune Cookie factory in Falls Church. Got to go.”

  Moments later, Trout relayed Austin’s message to Lyons, who thanked him and hung up. As he tapped out the number to connect him with NUMA’s transportation department, he said, “We’re flying back to Washington tonight. Kurt wants to talk to Song Lee as soon as possible.”

  Gamay shook her head.

  “Kurt’s instincts were right on the mark as usual,” she said. “He said to look for something funny on Bonefish Key.”

  “This is about as funny as it gets,” Paul said.

  Gamay glanced over at the slumbering Chinese woman, thinking of their close call in the abandoned boat, and then looked at the serious expression on her husband’s face.

  “If it’s so funny,” she said, “why isn’t anybody laughing?”

  Unknown

  NUMA 8 - Medusa

  CHAPTER 28

  A FEW MINUTES BEFORE AUSTIN CALLED THE TROUTS, HE had driven past the Corvette parked near the Eden Center clock tower and thought that Zavala must have had a good reason to leave his pride and joy unattended. He drove onto Wilson Boulevard and joined the traffic that moved at an agonizing crawl. Eventually, the suburban malls and neighborhoods petered out, and he was moving through an industrial-commercial area.

  The GPS unit indicated that he was about a block from his goal. Reasoning that a turquoise Cherokee might attract unwanted attention, Austin parked it in an alley between two buildings. He made his way on foot to the front gate of the Good Luck Fortune Cookie Company. The parking lot was empty, and the only light came from above the door to the office.

  The gate was locked. Austin walked the perimeter of the chain-link fence to the rear gate. He pushed the gate open and made his way to a rear loading dock lit by a single bulb. He kept to the shadows as much as possible.

  He wondered if he had the right address. Those doubts vanished when a figure stepped out from behind a Dumpster and blinded Austin with a powerful flashlight.

  A deep voice said, “Hold it right there, soldier. Put your hands in the air.”

  Austin stopped in his tracks and did as he was told. He sensed rather than saw someone creeping up behind him and felt his pistol slip from its holster.

  “That’s better,” said the voice. “Turn around . . . real slow. I’m giving you friendly warning. These guys call themselves Ghost Devils, and they mean it. I wouldn’t screw with them.”

  At least a half dozen other figures had materialized from the shadows.

  “Are you a ghost or a devil?” Austin asked.

  The man stepped closer.

  “Just a guy doing his job. The name is Phelps.” He turned the flashlight beam up to show his face, the angle turning his droopy smile into a Halloween mask. “This place is loaded with cameras. A moth couldn’t get close without being picked up. We’ve been watching you ever since you showed up at the front door. Thanks for making my work so easy.”

  “My pleasure. But how do you know I didn’t let myself get caught on purpose?”

  “I don’t, which is why we’re being real careful handling you.”

  “Where’s Joe?” Austin asked.

  Phelps pointed his flashlight at the loading-dock door.

  “That way,” he said.

  The door slid up. Phelps led the way up the stairs to the dock and herded Austin through the door into the dark warehouse. Phelps hit a switch, and the interior was flooded with light. The big space was empty except for a pile of smashed cardboard cartons against one wall and two chairs side by side facing a screen.

  “Fortune cookie business must not be very good,” Austin said.

  “That’s a cover,” Phelps said. “Place is used mostly to hold smuggled illegal aliens. Besides, you don’t want to know your fortune. The folks I work for aren’t too happy with you.”

  Austin would have agreed that his prospects for a long and happy life were slim. In addition to Phelps, he was guarded by the tough-faced Asians, all men in their twenties, dressed in black running suits and shoes. They had red bandannas tied around their heads. They looked dangerously unpredictable, but from the cocky way they slouched around with their weapons they appeared undisciplined as well.

  Phelps was a tall man in his late forties. He wore jeans, Doc Martens boots, and a black T-shirt that displayed his ropy arms. He wore a U.S. NAVY SEALS baseball cap on his head. And he had Austin’s Bowen, which he examined with appraising eyes.

  “Nice piece,” he said.

  “Thanks. When do I get it back?”

  Phelps chuckled, and slid the pistol into its holster, which he clipped to his belt. He glanced at his watch and called to a couple of Ghost Devils. They went through a door leading to the front of the building and came back after a minute with Zavala. They shoved him over into one of the chairs and motioned Austin into the other. Both men were then handcuffed to the armrests.

  Zavala’s face was caked with dried blood, but he still managed to smile when he saw Austin.

  “Hi, Kurt, nice of you to crash the party. Time to leave?”

  “You’ll have to ask Mr. Phelps. Are you okay?”

  “Charlie Yoo set me up, and some of these guys used my face for a punching bag, but nothing broken that I know of.”

  “We’ll have to remember to pay them back for their hospitality.” Zavala smiled through bloodied lips.

  “That’s what I like about you, Kurt. The glass is always half full. Whoops—”

  The warehouse went dark just then, and the two men were enveloped in almost total blackness. After a moment, a spotlight directly overhead blinked on, and they found themselves at the center of a circle of bright white light. A second overhead spot came on about twenty-five feet to the front of where they sat.

  The screen was gone, revealing a table covered in green baize. Behind the table sat a woman who seemed to be scrutinizing the two men from NUMA. She was dressed in a dark purple, two-piece outfit, and a cloak the same color was draped around her shoulders. Her dark hair was parted down the middle, and high, arched brows framed a Eurasian face.

  Austin stared at the woman in disbelief.

  “This is crazy,” he whispered, “but I know her. She’s the Dragon Lady.”

  “I’ve seen worse-looking dragons. Why don’t
you introduce me?”

  “Not sure I can, Joe. The Dragon Lady wasn’t a real person.”

  Zavala turned and looked at Austin as if his friend had lost his marbles.

  “I’m the one who got his brain bashed around,” Zavala said. “She looks pretty real to me.”

  “Me too, Joe, but the Dragon Lady was a character in a comic strip. Terry and the Pirates . . . Stereotypical femme fatale. My father used to read it to me when I was a kid. She was always causing trouble. Damn. What was her name?”

  The woman’s lips parted in a smile.

  “My name is Lai Choi San,” she said in a voice that would have been seductive it if hadn’t been drained of all emotion. “Bravo, Mr. Austin. Few people know I even have another name. I have been looking forward to this meeting.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” Austin said. “Now that we’re good friends, maybe you’d like to tell us why you invited us here.”

  He could hardly believe he was talking to a comic-strip character. Next, he’d be chatting with Roger Rabbit.

  “For a start, I want you to tell me the whereabouts of Dr. Kane,” she said.

  Austin shrugged.

  “Kane is under government protective custody. I can’t tell you where they are holding him. Apparently, someone is trying to kill him.”

  “Really?” she purred. “Who would want to do that to the brilliant doctor?”

  “The same people who hijacked the lab that was developing a vaccine from the medusa toxin.”

  The woman gave him a slow-burn stare, and her face actually seemed to glow with anger. Austin passed it off as a manipulation.

  “What you don’t know,” she said, “is that Pyramid created the new virus. Our pharmaceutical company was experimenting with an influenza vaccine for the world market and inadvertently produced the more virulent and adaptable strain. They wanted to destroy it, but wiser heads prevailed.”

  “Why didn’t wiser heads prevent the virus from breaking out?”

  “That was an accident, something we would have avoided until we had developed the antidote, which would have gone to members of my organization first. You see, the virus fit in with our larger plan of destabilizing the government. The outbreak of SARS almost toppled China’s leaders. Just think how the public would react to their impotence in dealing with an even more lethal virus. They would see Pyramid step in and cure the masses. In return, we would acquire power and fortune. We would replace the Chinese government.”

  “Do you know that the virus is going to hit your big cities in a couple of days?”

  “It was only a matter of time, no matter what the government did. The more, the merrier.”

  Austin stared at the apparition.

  “You’re willing to wipe out scores of your countrymen to stir up trouble with your government?” he asked.

  “You know a great deal and very little,” she said. “What if we killed a few hundred, or even a few million, Chinese? We have a billion people. An epidemic would be far more effective for population control than the one-child-per-couple rule.”

  “You’ll never be able to keep that virus contained, even with the vaccine the lab has been working on. It will move too fast. It will be in every country in a week or so.”

  “Wouldn’t you say that the deaths of millions will be the most convincing reason for people to buy our vaccine?” she said. “Think of it as marketing and promotion.”

  “You’re insane to think a scheme like that will work,” he said.

  “It is our government leadership that is insane. Pyramid has been in our family for generations. Past governments that have tried to destroy our organization have paid the price. We were here long before those so-called leaders were even born. We won’t be thrown into history’s dustbin.”

  The figure at the table seemed to glow incandescently as she launched into a diatribe against the Chinese Communist government for having the audacity to take on an organization that goes back hundreds of years.

  Zavala had been staring spellbound at the woman.

  “Kurt,” he whispered, “I can see through her. Look at her right arm, the one she’s waving around.”

  Austin focused on the moving right arm. Through the material of her loose-fitting silk sleeve, he caught faint glimpses of the brick wall behind her.

  “You’re right,” he said. “She’s nothing but a projection, like Max,” referring to the name Hiram Yeager gave to the holographic personification generated by his interactive computer.

  The Dragon Lady noticed Austin’s grin and stopped her tirade.

  “You are a strange man, Mr. Austin. Don’t you fear the prospect of death?”

  “Not from someone who’s no more real than a comic strip.”

  “Enough!” she snarled. “I will show you how real I am. My brother Chang awaits your arrival. He will make sure your death is long and painful.”

  She issued an order in Chinese, and the guards moved in. “Wait a minute,” Austin called out. “What if I can produce Dr. Kane?”

  She barked a second order, and the guards froze in their tracks.

  “You said that Kane was in protective custody,” she said, “and couldn’t be reached.”

  “I was lying . . . I do that a lot.”

  “That’s true,” Zavala threw in. “Kurt is one of the biggest liars I know.”

  Austin gave Zavala a sidelong glance that told him he was laying it on a bit too thick.

  “Let me make a phone call,” Austin said, looking back at the Dragon Lady, “and I’ll set him up.”

  Austin was trying to buy time, hoping to talk his captors into freeing him from his chair. His immediate plan was to grab a gun. It was a throw of the dice, but was all that he had.

  “A futile effort, Mr. Austin,” she said. “I no longer care whether Kane lives or dies. His project is near completion and his services are not needed . . . Good-bye.”

  Austin expected the Ghost Devils to move in again, but they had hoisted their weapons high on their chests and were staring toward the rear of the warehouse.

  The hologram shimmered.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  In answer, an amplified voice came from outside.

  “This is the FBI. Throw your weapons aside and come out with your hands up.”

  It was a woman’s voice, speaking through a bullhorn.

  Gordon Phelps had been off to the side, watching the exchange between Austin and the hologram. He stepped out of the shadows and into the spotlight. He yelled a command in Chinese to the Ghost Devils, then in English said to Austin and Zavala, “Don’t go away, boys.”

  Then he and the guards ran back toward the loading-dock door.

  Austin and Zavala exchanged a glance.

  “No time like the present,” Austin said.

  He jerked his wrist against the cuff, rose from his chair, and dragged it behind him, moving toward the Dragon Lady. After a few steps, he raised the chair to his chest, with the legs sticking out straight in front.

  Zavala followed suit and got his chair into a similar position.

  Together, they charged the table.

  An actual person would have ducked or run for her life. But the system of camera, projectors, microphones, and computers that were the lifeblood of the holographic projection were not endowed with human instinct.

  The figure seemed frozen in place. Only the facial features changed, and Austin and Zavala almost hesitated when the Dragon Lady morphed into a fierce-eyed man wearing a scarlet silk hat, then a series of fearsome male and female faces. Then the last face fuzzed at the edges and broke up into a cloud of swirling and sparkling motes.

  There was only empty space by the time Austin and Zavala crashed into the table, overturning it. They climbed to their feet and saw Phelps standing under the spotlight where they had been sitting a moment before. He had the Bowen pointed in their direction.

  “The boss isn’t going to like that,” he said in his lazy way.

  “No,
I suppose she won’t,” Austin said. “And that’s too damned bad.”

  The corner of Phelps’s mouth turned up slightly.

  “What were you saying about the lab vaccine and the virus?” he asked.

  “The American and Chinese governments have been secretly working to develop the vaccine to head off a deadly virus, but your boss’s outfit stole the lab.”

  “I know all about the lab,” Phelps said. “I’m the one who hijacked the damned thing.”

  “If that’s true,” Austin said, “then you know where the lab is. Work with us to take it back from these clowns.”

  “You weren’t kidding about the bug spreading to the States, were you?”

  Austin looked him straight in the eye.

  “What do you think, Phelps? What do you really think?”

  “It’s not what I think but what I know,” he said. “I’ve got family in the States,” he added after a pause.

  “There’s nothing to prevent them from getting sick,” Austin said. “You can’t let that happen.”

  “I’m not going to let it. But I’ve got to do it my own way, and I work alone.”

  He turned his head at the sound of more shots and shouting in the distance.

  He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out the keys to the handcuffs, which he set on the floor. Then he unclipped the holster from his belt, slipped the Bowen back in it, and, bending low to the floor, sent it skittering across the floor and out of sight. A second later, he disappeared into the shadows.

  When the warehouse lights snapped on a moment later, he was gone. Cate Lyons had one hand on the light switch, the other on a pistol. When she saw Austin and Zavala, she came running over to them.

  “Are you guys okay? God, Joe, you look like hell. Sorry I’m late. I was waiting for backup. They’re searching the building, but I think everybody got away. Will one of you tell me what’s going on?”

  Austin picked the key off the floor, unlocked his handcuffs, and did the same for Zavala. He stood up and retrieved his Bowen.

  “We’ll tell you what we know on the way back to Washington,” he said. Austin clipped the holster to his belt. “Then we want to talk to a certain Agent Yoo.”