Doc - 19 - Chasing Midnight

by Randy Wayne White

  He meant something a lot bigger than a bomb, apparently, and it was spooky the way he said it. Then it got spookier when Kahn stared at the old man’s body, then leveled his pistol at Umeko.

  “How many humpback whales you think your boss killed? How many dolphins you think he caught and sold to freak shows like that hotel across the bay?”

  I saw Kahn’s index finger move from the trigger guard to the trigger and I stepped closer to Umeko. “Take it easy. She worked for the guy, that’s all. She was Bohai’s aquaculture expert, for Christ’s sake. She hates the factory ships as much as any of us. She wanted to take his company in a different direction.”

  The woman pulled her arm free as if to say she didn’t need my help. I liked that. It asserted her independence. The move also confirmed she was smart enough to understand why I had lied and cool enough to play whatever role was required. I was trying to steer Kahn away from the fact that Umeko was Bohai’s daughter. He was already eager to pull the trigger. Why give him a powerful reason to do it?

  Kahn stopped blinding Umeko by lowering the pistol to her chest. But he wasn’t done with her. “You live in China? I’ve read that Bohai owns a huge mansion on the sea. I bet you live in the same house.”

  Umeko replied, “I live in Singapore because that’s where most of my research is done. I commute to Beijing when needed. Check my passport. Or my driver’s license—it’s in my purse. My name’s Umeko Tao-Lien and I was born in Singapore.”

  Very smooth. She had added another tier to my lie and then distanced herself from her father by offering proof of her legal name.

  Kahn, though, seemed determined to make his bones, and I got a tight feeling in my stomach when he turned to me and said, “You don’t think I can do it, do you?”

  Pull the trigger, he meant.

  I shrugged. “Of course you can—if you had a reason. But you don’t. Even if you did, it would be smarter to evacuate the lodge first.” My watch read 11:50 p.m.

  “Don’t be so goddamn sure, man!”

  Weird, but for the first time I got the impression he didn’t believe he could do it—a lot of men can’t—and now he was wrestling with his own doubt. But why did my opinion matter? I hadn’t exactly hit it off with him and Densler earlier.

  The guy was irrational, but irrational people can be manipulated. “What’s the difference between killing a whale and an innocent woman? You approve of that?” Touching my head to remind Kahn the camera was getting all this, I added, “It’s cold-blooded murder. The same with the people you’re putting at risk by not evacuating the goddamn fishing lodge!”

  I raised my voice to make the point because it was 11:51.

  “This woman works for one of the world’s most ruthless eco-criminals,” Kahn argued, oblivious. “You expect me to actually believe she disapproved? That’s like Göring saying he disapproved of Hitler. What do you think, Trap?”

  Kahn’s partner was behind us, exiting the bedroom, already pawing through what was probably Umeko’s purse. Like Kahn, he had added a black ski mask and mini-camera to his ensemble of jeans and black crewneck with the Third Planet Peace Force skull in yellow.

  Unlike Kahn, he was carrying a scoped rifle and wearing what looked like Soviet surplus night vision monocular. Mounted on the barrel of the rifle was a homemade sound suppressor—the sort of thing amateur anarchists learn to make when they’re not building homemade bombs. The equipment was cheap, like the semiauto pistol Kahn was holding.

  The man had probably been the guard on the balcony. He had come damn close to killing me.

  As my watch’s sweep hand raced toward midnight, I didn’t trust myself to look at the man because I wanted to slap the rifle from his hands and snap his neck. But I didn’t linger on the fantasy because I, too, was beginning to panic.

  I took a step toward Kahn and watched him recoil as if I’d raised my hand to slap him. “No closer! I’m warning you!”

  I told him, “I’m walking out that door. I have seven minutes to evacuate that building.”

  Because Kahn had the pistol aimed at my head, I had to screen my eyes from the flashlight as I brushed past him, ignoring his threats to shoot if I took one more step. As I neared the couch where the old Chinese man lay, I thought I was in the clear. But then Umeko’s scream and a simultaneous gunshot spun me around and I dropped to the floor.

  Umeko was yelling, “You shot him! You animal! Why did you shoot him?” as she started toward me, but Kahn grabbed her from behind.

  I’d felt nothing. No impact, no jarring pain. For a moment, I assigned it to the inevitable shock of being shot. Finally, though, I realized what had happened. Kahn had put a bullet through Lien Bohai’s thigh and was now wrapping an arm around Umeko’s throat out of panic or rage, I didn’t know.

  My chest was thudding, and I felt an esophageal burn that signaled nausea. But it was Markus Kahn who sounded giddy when he said, “I did it. Shot the old bloodsucker. First time, and hardly aimed.

  “Ford, if you… If you…” The man was hyperventilating, so he had to pause to gulp a breath. “If you screw with me, I’ll waste you, and this bitch, too! Think I’m scared to shoot now?”

  Behind him, Trapper sounded awestruck but a little nauseated himself, saying, “Look at the damn chunk you blew out of his leg. Jesus, really… mangled. How… how’s it feel?”

  Kahn laughed, “You’ve got a gun, old lady, try it yourself!” his manner suddenly arrogant as if he’d shot many corpses in his time.

  I was furious as I got to my feet. “You’re not shooting him again, dumbass, because he’s…”—I stopped myself to think what argument could possibly have any effect on him—”. . . because the round could go through a wall and kill someone else—or ricochet and kill you. Only amateurs take stupid risks.”

  For some reason, Kahn said to his partner, “See? This guy might be able to teach us something.”

  The endorsement didn’t raise my spirits. It was two minutes until midnight, which meant it was too late to stop whatever happened next. Even so, I said, “We’ve got to get to the lodge.”

  Kahn was grinning, but the skin around his raccoon eyes looked waxen like he was feeling queasy, too. He still couldn’t keep his eyes off the body. “Christ, not more of your bomb bullshit. It’s already after twelve, isn’t it?”

  Trapper said, “One minute thirty seconds to go. I’ve got the G-Shock atomic watch—exact time anywhere in the world. It’s what a lot of the SEAL guys use.”

  For the next ninety seconds, the four of us stood in the heat of summer candlelight and the stink of death as Trapper counted down. I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until Trapper got to the final seconds: “. . . seven… six . . five… four… three… two…”

  Nothing happened. For the next sixty seconds, then two minutes, then five minutes, I continued to wait for the first whiff of chlorine gas, or the delayed ignition of a faulty wiring device, as the two activists began to make sarcastic jokes.

  By 12:15 a.m., I decided that whatever was going to happen wasn’t going to happen—not now, anyway. Kazlov had received a warning about a device that would kill everything on the island. I believed it because I’d witnessed Vladimir’s reaction—the man had been scared shitless.

  I had a bad feeling I had missed something somewhere. But I didn’t have time to dwell on it, I had to move on. Markus Kahn’s first taste of violence had made him eager for more, and Umeko Tao-Lien would die in the same room as her father unless I did something to stop Kahn.

  I focused on Kahn, gauging his moves. Judging from his behavior, he wanted to shoot Umeko for no other reason than to prove he had the balls to do it. Judging from his physiology—twitching cheeks and rapid breathing—he would shoot her the instant he summoned the nerve.

  I knew that I had to make a move and do it fast.

  They had taken my knife, along with the makeshift weapons in my vest. With men like this, though, I didn’t need a weapon. They were both sloppy pretenders. They had already
given me a couple of clean openings—opportunities I didn’t risk because the woman would have been caught in the cross fire.

  As Trapper used a flashlight to go through the woman’s billfold, I dropped my glasses while cleaning them, kicked them accidentally, which moved me two steps closer to Kahn.

  Umeko noticed. It was in the way she lifted her hand, for an instant, as if to stop me. Kahn didn’t, so I gained another half step when I turned to watch Trapper.

  I wasn’t worried about a rifle. Not in such close quarters—especially when Trapper, the fool, knelt and wedged the rifle between his legs as he tossed credit cards and some bills onto the floor. I could have knocked the man on his skinny ass before he had time to get the weapon to his shoulder.

  Kahn was the one I needed to deal with. If I could get to him before he turned the pistol from Umeko to me, I might be able to snap his elbow before he got off a round, then strip the gun from his hand and shoot Trapper in the thigh or the kneecap—I didn’t want to kill the guy. Then, depending on Kahn’s reaction, I would disable him temporarily or long-term. His call.

  I needed a distraction, so I stared at Umeko until we established eye contact. Her face was orchid white in the flashlight’s glare. She was trembling, but still composed enough to acknowledge me with a nod, but then shook her head as if telling me Don’t try it.

  The response was confusing. Did she really understand what I was trying to communicate?

  Yes. The woman verified it by saying to Trapper, “In my billfold, there’s a hidden compartment behind the driver’s license. You want proof I hate what Lien Bohai stood for? You’ll find it there.”

  Trapper tossed a couple of more credit cards onto the tile, then used the flashlight to take a close look at something.

  After a few seconds, his tone changed. “Hey, Rez! This woman’s in the Chinese Army! Here’s her ID card, the hologram and everything. And she’s in uniform!”

  Umeko and I exchanged a quick look as Trapper addressed her directly. “What’s your rank? If our parents hadn’t made us go to fucking college, we’d both be Special Forces now. Wouldn’t we, Rez?”

  Kahn interrupted, saying Umeko’s military service didn’t prove she hadn’t profited from Lien Bohai’s factory ships. Which caused the men to bicker briefly until Umeko cut them off, saying, “That’s not what I wanted you to see. There’s another card in there. Same compartment.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Trapper whispered when he had the card in his hand. “You’re not going to believe this shit, man! Take a look! She’s one of us! A 3P2 member, dues all paid and everything.”

  I was thinking, The seventh member, while Kahn crossed the room to look.

  Umeko’s tone became confessional as she told the men she had to keep the card hidden because Lien Bohai, or anyone else in the company, would have turned her in to the Chinese government for belonging to a subversive organization. For the same reason, she used a separate personal computer when logging onto the web page or chat rooms. And only in Singapore. Never China.

  “That wouldn’t have been the worst of it,” she added, then nodded toward the old man’s body. “He was a dictator, very cruel. I’d have been beaten—or jailed. It wouldn’t have been the first time he did it to an employee. You have no idea the amount of power he had in China.”

  I watched Kahn accept the card from Trapper. He inspected it closely as if he didn’t want to be convinced. Finally, though, he used the pistol to summon the woman closer.

  What happened next was bizarre. Kahn gave Umeko a quick, impersonal kiss on the cheek, then backed away as if human contact was unsavory. “If this thing’s real, you’re my double S, like it or not. Symbiotic sister. But you better not be bullshitting us.”

  Umeko deflected it. “I follow your posts in the chat room—I see you almost every night when I’m home. I’m Dragonfly.”

  Trapper said, “I’ve seen the name, man! I shit you not.”

  Umeko continued to manipulate them like the pro she obviously was. “I’ve wondered what you looked like in person. On the web page, there’s a photo of you on an assault boat. It was posted about a year ago, when you started operations on the Caspian Sea. You and someone with the screen name Genesis, I think. But the picture’s blurry and shot from too far away.”

  Trapper asked Umeko, “A short little chubby guy, right? That’s one of the Neinabor twins! Genesis and Exodus, though they only use those names online. With us they’re just Geness and Odus. Their parents were Jesus freaks who lived in the desert in a bus or van or something. So they’re into the whole biblical thing, which is how they knew the Internet would crash tonight.”

  I was giving the man my full attention now, thinking, They predicted it?

  “Not the only ones,” Kahn said, irritated. “I saw it coming, too. Everyone gives them the credit, but all they really do is just whine and bicker.”

  Trapper said, “Not since the power went out. The way they took charge—you’ve got to admit it—like they knew exactly what to do. Serious badasses all of a sudden. I bet they’ve already scored a couple of kills. Odus can be a mean little bastard.”

  Kahn was getting pissed off. “Give me a break! Two core gamers who still carry Super Mario bags from sixth grade and talk to dead people? Last year, I dropped Geness’s PlayStation in the toilet and he started crying. Yeah, badass nutcases.”

  I was remembering the colorful computer bag I’d seen earlier, as Trapper explained to Umeko, “They used to be triplets. One of them died, but they still talk to him. You know, like their brother’s in the same room. That’s what he means about them being weird. Smart, but, yeah, seriously out there.”

  Kahn was done with the subject, his attention still on Umeko. “Having a membership card doesn’t prove anything. Any leech can go to our web page and do that.”

  Umeko Tao-Lien looked right at him. “Two years ago, I joined Third Planet Peace Force. Out of guilt, I guess. It made me sick what Bohai’s fishing fleet was doing. I felt like I was taking blood money.”

  As the woman spoke, I studied her face. For an intense instant, just an instant, our eyes linked to reassure me she was playing a role.

  “I’m not wealthy. But I still donate a thousand Singapore dollars every year to Third Planet, which is quite a lot in U.S. dollars. For a single woman who lives alone… ?” The daughter of one of the wealthiest men in China ended the sentence with a shrug.

  Kahn was now going through the photographer’s vest, and the rest of my gear, as he warned Umeko, “We have more than a thousand members and we know we’ve been infiltrated. Don’t get cocky. You’re not in the clear yet.”

  Umeko felt cocky enough to tell Kahn, “Dr. Ford has a head injury. It needs to be cleaned and dressed. Would you allow me to use the first-aid kit?”

  Kahn’s odd behavior toward me was suddenly explained when he reached for the kit and replied, “You mean Commander Ford, don’t you?” Then, with a piercing look, he said to me, “I’ve bet you’ve really seen some shit, huh? T told me you’re, like, one of the biggest special ops guys in the world. Which is what makes this so cool. I’m the dude who finally took you down!”

  I was about to ask Who’s T? but figured it out on my own. Tomlinson had been talking about me again.

  Kahn explained, “If Winifred hadn’t made me read T’s book, I wouldn’t have believed him. Big nerdy-looking guy—she was right about that. Which is sort of cool, too.”

  Umeko was listening as she scrubbed my forehead with Betadine, then applied salve. I had the impression she already knew the answer when she asked, “Is T the member who posted his theory about mass panic and the Internet? There was an acronym…”

  “Sudden Internet Isolation and Retaliation,” Kahn interrupted, getting it all wrong. “It’s what happens when the Earth has had enough of our poisonous bullshit. As of tonight, it’ll be months before the Internet is working again. Same with the electrical grids. And T’s the one who saw it coming, man. Like he made it happen. ‘Plasmic visualizati
on,’ he calls this weird gift he has for influencing future events.” Which is when Kahn removed one of the jars from my vest, opened it, sniffed, then looked at me, his expression asking What is this crap?

  Trapper was taking a roll of tape from his pocket, preparing to tape our hands, I guessed, as he told Kahn, “I keep thinking maybe it’s just this island. Power goes out here, it doesn’t mean the whole system’s down. Maybe in a couple of redneck Florida counties but not the entire country. The twins could be wrong about that.”

  “Bullshit,” Kahn said, capping the jar, “I knew it was going to happen before T’s first post. Long before those weirdos had a damn clue. So maybe I’ve got the same gift—plasmic visualization.” The man smiled, pleased by the idea, but then got serious again.

  “The world is coming to its miserable end, people. Do you have any idea how lucky we are to be on an island, safe from all craziness out there?”

  Coming from someone like Kahn, it would have been hilarious if the man hadn’t been sincere. He wanted it to be true, just as Tomlinson had said. I was thinking, Virtual world psychosis, as he added, “It’s like being in a space capsule and landing on a new planet where no one is prepared for survival but us.”

  Umeko was done cleaning my cuts, and I began repacking the first-aid kit as an excuse to ignore the man. Kahn didn’t like that. He began shaking the jar again, demanding a reaction, the smaller bottle inside clanking against glass.

  “Don’t do that,” I told him.

  “Why? What’s in it? It smells like shit.”

  “It’s supposed to,” I lied. “Someone took a shot at me from the lodge. I thought there might be hostages, so I made three homemade stink grenades to clear everyone out of the building. Because of the bomb.”

  “That goddamn bomb again,” Kahn laughed but checked his watch. “The bullshit story you invented to scare us? It’s almost twelve-thirty. Admit you were lying.”