by Mike Maden
“Because of their excellent care, I am in perfectly good health. I had a very slight incident of insulin overdose last night and passed out. Fortunately, my good friends were there to call an ambulance and I was rushed over here immediately.”
To his credit, Ito gave strict orders to the ambulance crew and his staff that Myers’s identity was to be strictly guarded. But someone tipped off the Japanese press and set off a media firestorm.
Just as Myers had hoped, actually.
Ian McTavish’s anonymous tip to several local media outlets did the trick. Pearce’s gifted computer genius could break into almost any computer system in the world, but in this case he didn’t need to. Simple text and e-mail messages to news-starved reporters was all it took.
The media questions came fast and furious. What was the former president doing in Japan? Why wasn’t this widely known? Was she on a secret mission? Was her visit in response to the Chinese attack on the Japanese dive boat? Does this mean the United States will be coming to the aid of Japan now? Will a carrier be dispatched? Myers deflected each question, as did the prime minister who promised an “off the record” conversation later with the press in attendance.
Myers continued.
“I was diagnosed with adult-onset type 1 diabetes just over a year ago. It’s an extremely rare condition, and I have been able to manage it quite nicely thanks to my personal physician and endocrinologist back home in Denver. I’m afraid that I didn’t monitor my insulin and glucose levels closely enough in the last few days, and this induced a hypoglycemic reaction. Too much fast-acting insulin and not enough carbohydrates, I’ve been told. I was rushed to the hospital and treated, and within an hour, I was fully recovered. But it was at that time we decided to take the unusual step and install a bionic pancreas.”
The press gasped at the words “bionic pancreas” and began shouting questions louder and louder over one another to catch Myers’s attention. Once again, Ito quieted them down. Myers continued.
“I’m going to let Japan’s leading endocrinologist, Dr. Hironaga, explain the technology behind the bionic pancreas. She is far more qualified than I am to answer your questions. Thank you.”
Myers bowed slightly again to the press out of respect, and Ito signaled his security staff to clear a path. They led the way out for Ito, Tanaka, Myers, and Pearce as the press peppered Dr. Hironaga with questions about the bionic pancreas. She was happy to explain the device components and their respective functions.
As per her security briefing, however, Dr. Hironaga was careful not to reveal the fact that the high-tech wireless device was manufactured by Pearce Systems.
SEVENTEEN
VICE CHAIRMAN FENG’S PRIVATE RESIDENCE
BEIJING, CHINA
9 MAY 2017
Feng jabbed the volume button on his HD television. The party music pulsing on the other side of the door was deafening. He could barely hear what Myers was saying. He barked an order at his aide, who rushed back out of the media room. A tidal wave of noise assaulted Feng’s ears when the aide opened the door, worsening the stabbing pain behind the vice chairman’s eyes.
Feng fell onto an overstuffed leather couch, his head still swimming with liquor. His aide shouted on the other side of the door and the music dropped by half. Better.
His English wasn’t very good. He didn’t understand the words “bionic” or “pancreas.” No matter. He’d have translated transcripts on his tablet within the hour. More important than the words were the pictures. Former president Margaret Myers was in Japan, standing next to the fascist Ito and his lapdog Tanaka.
The vice chairman raged. What was Myers doing in Japan? Was Lane sending some kind of message to the Japanese? Was she there to lend America’s support? Perhaps negotiating a new secret treaty?
Another wave of techno beat rushed through the opened door, and just as quickly it subsided.
Feng seethed. Why hadn’t he been informed of Myers’s presence in Japan? He swore. Another MSS failure.
Soft hands reached from behind the couch and began massaging the tension out of his neck.
“So much stress. You need to relax. Come back to the party.”
The soft hands belonged to an even softer feminine voice. A Thai boy, eighteen years old, pretty and fey. One of Feng’s favorites in his stable of young androgynous consorts.
“You don’t understand,” Feng said. He closed his eyes for a moment against the raging headache. The soft hands on his neck felt good.
“Who’s the white lady?” The Thai drove his moist palms deep into Feng’s shoulders.
“No one for you to worry about,” Feng said. “Just shut up and rub.”
“My pleasure.”
Feng opened his eyes just in time to watch Myers, Ito, and Tanaka depart the press conference. He snapped off the television and tossed the remote. The MSS was becoming increasingly inept. He would have sacked Huang Yong long ago, but the minister had powerful friends on the Central Committee.
Worse, Huang knew all about Feng’s financial ties to Mao Island and the ECS initiative, partly because Feng had paid Huang substantial sums of money to support it. Like so many other relationships among the ruling elite, Feng’s web of corruption extended widely, with each strand of the web terminating in a rope around the neck of the man or woman being paid off with dirty money. In Feng’s case, dirty petromoney. If Feng pushed Huang off the cliff, he would only break Feng’s neck on the way down and drag another hundred conspirators tied behind him. It was the Party’s version of mutual assured destruction.
Huang could still prove useful for the time being, but Feng was determined to find a way to rid himself of the fat fool. He never forgave Huang for not discovering his nephew Zhao’s killer. Feng had a blood debt to repay and Huang’s failure was standing in the way.
“My head still hurts,” Feng whimpered.
The Thai padded around to the front of the couch. He wore a brightly flowered silk kimono. He opened it. Nothing underneath but his smooth pale skin and swelling manhood.
The Thai knelt down between Feng’s legs, unbuckled his pants.
“I know how to fix it.”
Feng’s throbbing headache was soon relieved.
EIGHTEEN
PEARCE HOME
TETON COUNTY, WYOMING
APRIL 1991
She howled like a wounded moose.
Troy heard the pounding against the thin trailer wall all the way out here. Whoever his dad had dragged home last night was either having a stroke or a really good time. At least no one else could hear it. They lived too far outside of town at the end of a dirt track.
He checked his watch. Less than an hour until school started. No way he’d make it there on time this morning, but it couldn’t be helped. He was facing expulsion. Too many tardies and too many unexcused absences. They didn’t understand.
Troy still had to change the oil and plugs on the big Husqvarna chainsaw after he finished sharpening it. It was running like crap. His fingers were still numb from the early morning cold. He left his gloves in the trailer like an idiot, but he couldn’t go back and get them now that his dad and his new lady friend were back at it, and knowing his dad, that could take a while.
Troy was careful to count eight drags of the chainsaw file for each tooth and even more careful to keep the file at the same angle as the tooth, just like his dad taught him. Failure to do either meant the saw wouldn’t cut straight. It was tedious but important work. Work his dad wasn’t getting done lately, like a lot of other things. If he and his dad didn’t clear the stand of dead trees by the end of the week, they’d lose their Forest Service contract, and work was hard enough to come by these days. All the damn environmentalist lawsuits had practically shut down the lumber work on federal lands, and the Gulf War recession had crushed timber prices and demand. The job they were doing was chickenshit, but it was the only work
they’d had this year and maybe likely to get for the rest. But between his drinking and his whoring, Troy’s dad was proving to be an unreliable supervisor in their failing two-man operation.
The women he didn’t care about so much. The death of Troy’s mother had hit them both hard. It was the drinking that was going to kill his old man. In a way, it had killed his mother and sister. Why his mother had decided to leave Troy with his drunken father he’d never know. He’d probably be dead if she hadn’t, but this wasn’t exactly living, either.
Troy finished up the chainsaw and stored it in the back of the rusted out pickup with PEARCE LUMBER crudely stenciled on the side. He thought about driving it to school, but then his dad wouldn’t be able to work today, and work was more important. A vice counselor threatened to expel him if he had one more tardy, but it just couldn’t be helped.
Twenty minutes after the woman’s howling stopped, Troy headed back in to wash up. He made his way past the unfamiliar bright orange hardtop Jeep Wrangler and pushed through the door of the single-wide trailer. A coffeepot wheezed on the yellowing Formica kitchen countertop. The aroma was strong and sweet, masking the stale cigarette stink that permeated everything. He heard the shower running.
He washed the grease off of his hands with Ajax and hot water in the kitchen sink and toweled off just as his dad’s bedroom door swung gently open. The woman’s dirty blonde hair was still wet. She gasped.
“Oh, honey. You scared me,” she whispered, shutting the door quietly behind her. “Your daddy went back to sleep. Let’s not wake him up.”
“Nah, don’t want that.” Troy grabbed a chipped coffee mug out of the cabinet. “Coffee?”
“Please. I thought I’d make some before I run off. Hope you don’t mind.”
The woman was closer to his age than his dad’s. Plain face. A nice smile, though. She seemed familiar. Wide hips, big chest. Just his dad’s type. She wore a brightly patterned polyester dress down to her thighs with black tights. Must’ve been the one she wore last night, too, but the polyester didn’t hold wrinkles so you couldn’t tell.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” she asked.
He shook his head, embarrassed for her. Prayed she wouldn’t ask his name. He sure wouldn’t ask hers. What would be the point?
An awkward smile. “Doesn’t matter.” She squeezed past him in the narrow galley kitchen on the way to the living room to fetch her coat and boots. “Excuse me, honey.”
Her breasts brushed against his back. Troy wasn’t sure if that was on purpose or not. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Women had their fantasies, too. His dad said he was good-looking like his mother, sometimes proudly, sometimes mocking. Troy’s dark hair was straight and thick, and he wore it long, to his dad’s chagrin. But it was his blue eyes that grabbed most women. Since the summer, he stood just over six feet tall, but his size-fourteen feet suggested there was more to follow. He was still boyishly thin, with long, ropey muscles and a broad back, hardened by years of swinging an ax with his dad. His father was just five-eight, with dark curly hair and dark eyes that women like this one couldn’t resist—cold-blooded eyes that could steal away a lesser man’s courage. He was wide in the hips and shoulders like a fireplug, heavily muscled, and his powerful arms were slathered in tats drawn by the best ink artists in the Philippines.
Troy pulled down another mug and poured coffee into both.
The woman flopped on the couch and pulled on a boot. “Hope we didn’t make too much noise this morning. Hated to wake you up.” She blushed a little.
“I was outside doing some work. Didn’t hear anything.”
“Aren’t you going to be late for school?” She pulled on the other boot and grabbed her coat.
“They won’t start without me.”
She giggled. “You’re a funny kid.” She pulled on her coat and took the steaming cup of coffee Troy offered her. She sipped it. “Can I make you some breakfast or something, honey?”
With what? The fridge is empty, lady.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks.”
The woman saw the clock on the wall. “Shit. I’m gonna be late. Can I give you a ride to school?”
Troy saw the clock, too. If he left now with her, he’d only be late for gym, and the PE coaches didn’t give a shit. But this being nice stuff was getting on his nerves. These women always wanted to be nice to him. Like somehow being nice to him would get them closer to the old man. Stupid. And he didn’t want them around anyway.
“I’ve got it covered. But thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
She set the cup down on the counter and started to tell him something but thought better of it. Troy figured it was along the lines of “Tell your dad to call me,” but maybe she was smart enough to realize that would never happen. She pushed through the trailer door and headed out to her Jeep.
Troy felt stupid. He should’ve taken her up on her offer for a ride, but he didn’t want anything from her. Or anybody else, for that matter. People only cause you problems.
The Jeep engine coughed into life and the transmission clunked into first gear as Troy grabbed a couple of pieces of stale bread from the cupboard. He smeared two big gobs of peanut butter on them and washed them down with coffee before heading to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He’d shower later at the school gym. Hotter water.
He pulled on a heavy flannel shirt out of the laundry basket and sniffed it. Not too bad. Found his backpack and slung it over his shoulder. His tiny room was crammed with dog-eared paperbacks and a 1959 Collier’s encyclopedia set he bought at a garage sale for twenty dollars when he was a freshman. His twin bed was perfectly made with a single wool blanket and sheets so tight you could bounce a quarter off them. His dad was a lot of things, but a slob wasn’t one of them. He insisted that his son make his bed “the army way” every morning to start his day. “Bed’s made tight, the day goes right,” his dad always said.
His dad said a lot of shit that didn’t make sense.
Troy made his bed this way now because he actually liked it. It also avoided an unnecessary fight with the old man. There were plenty of necessary fights to go around. Like trying to get his dad to take his meds. “Don’t need ’em” was what he’d say if he was in a good mood. “Shut the fuck up about the goddamn meds” was the more common response. They were probably expired by now anyway. Troy had done his own research into the subject of PTSD at the small public library and managed to convince his dad last year to go to the VA for an evaluation. But his dad never followed up and never took his meds, so he kept cycling down, as deep as the next whiskey bottle would take him.
Troy laid his hand on the doorknob to open his father’s door but stopped. If his old man needed to sleep, better to let him sleep. He’d be home right after school and the two of them together would get more done if his dad was rested up than he would working by himself all day without Troy, tired and hungover. And Troy didn’t like the idea of his dad running those saws by himself, especially if he was having Mr. Jack Daniels over for lunch.
Troy shut the front door behind him and began the long trek to school. With any luck, he’d hitch a ride once he got off the dirt track onto the main road. His feet were already sore, cramped inside the too-small boots he got from Goodwill last week. He was probably an idiot for turning down that lady’s offer for a ride. His dad would’ve laughed at him, but he had his own rules to live by.
NINETEEN
TETON COUNTY HIGH SCHOOL
JACKSON, WYOMING
APRIL 1991
Troy was more than an hour late by the time he arrived on campus, a collection of cinder-block boxes strung together by covered walkways, typical school architecture from the 1960s. Troy never found a ride to hitch and had to hike all the way in. His still-hungry stomach grumbled for more food that wasn’t going to be coming anytime soon. For two bucks he could get a deep-fried bean burrito and a c
hocolate milk, but he didn’t have two bucks, and he wasn’t a mooch.
He qualified for the school lunch program, but his father wouldn’t allow it. “Pearces don’t beg.”
Pearces also didn’t make their son’s lunch, either, Troy thought, as he crossed through the faculty parking lot. The third-period bell rang and he knew he was in trouble. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mr. Felcher, a vice principal with a serious hard-on for misfits like Troy who had warned him just last week that his next tardy would get him expelled.
Troy ducked behind a two-door Chevy Nova at the last second and ran crouching between cars like a rat in a maze, finally making it onto campus without Felcher seeing him. The covered walkways were still jammed with students knotted in cliques of jocks, theater nerds, cowboys, cheerleaders, ROTC—groups he never belonged to. Troy bolted at full speed toward the temporary trailers on the far side of the campus, weaving in and out of the foot traffic with effortless grace. His PE coach last year begged him to join track, but Troy didn’t have time for extracurriculars at all. If he wasn’t working with his dad, he was hunting or fishing, in season and out. He wished the high school offered letters in rifle, bow, and fly rod. He’d own ’em all.
The door to his math class was shutting when Troy arrived breathlessly. He grabbed the handle.
“Excuse me.”
Susan Morrow, the math teacher, was on the other side. Brown pantsuit, glasses, hair in a bun. She was in her forties and pretty, but trying to hide it.
“Troy Pearce. So glad you can make it.”
“Sorry, ma’am.” The other students were already dropping backpacks, popping binders, pulling homework. Troy moved toward his desk. Morrow tugged on his shirt.
