The truck gathered speed and started to pull away.
Bobby stood staring at the empty window trying to understand what he’d just seen. It made no sense, but one thing was certain.
He could not let that truck get away.
CHAPTER 20
LUO STOOD NEAR a house thirty meters away from the action. He’d thrown the boomerangs as soon as he’d rounded the corner and had seen what was happening. He was rushing to help the woman and the man overcome the other Russian men but the scene unfolding before him caused him to stop in his tracks.
The boy was chasing the truck.
What was he thinking? The truck was picking up steam but the vehicle’s engine didn’t have much torque. Just like the Japanese cars Luo had driven in Moscow. They were powered by smaller engines that took time to build speed from a standstill. This shortcoming was only magnified in a heavy truck.
The boy covered ten meters to the truck’s bumper in two heartbeats. A narrow metal frame protruded from the bottom of the truck. It was the length of the bumper. A tow-hitch was attached to it, the kind a utility truck might use to attach a generator for emergency repair.
Five strides away from the bumper and on the verge of collision, the boy didn’t slow down. Instead, much to Luo’s amazement, he accelerated as though he’d been catapulted from a slingshot. He slid under the truck and grasped the metal frame. Luo looked for his feet under the truck but couldn’t see them. That meant he’d either found a foothold or was using his stomach muscles to hold his legs in the air. The odds of finding a foothold so quickly seemed low, which suggested the kid was staying alive by performing a gymnastics maneuver. It was among the boldest and most athletic maneuvers Luo had ever witnessed. But no matter how strong he was, the kid would have to find a foothold soon. If he didn’t, he’d fall onto the road and have to pray one of the wheels didn’t roll over his legs.
The boy was the key to the treasure.
Luo sprinted around the back of the house to a parallel street.
He’d flown to Tokyo as soon as he’d finished talking to Denys Melnik. His hotel had arranged for a translator. The latter placed some phone calls to Tokyo hotels on his behalf and discovered that Nadia Tesla and Bobby Kungenook had reservations at the Century Southern Tower in Shibuya. Luo was not surprised. It was just a matter of time until they, too, discovered that answers awaited in Fukushima. Just like Luo, and the men who’d killed Ksenia Melnik. That’s what a treasure did. It lured people.
He’d followed Nadia and the boy on the train to Aizuwakamatsu. His Siberian facial features and Black Beret tradecraft had helped him blend in and avoid detection. He’d stolen a car from the parking lot beside the inn and caught up to the old man’s truck on the highway. When the Global Medical Corps van pulled into the gate to the Zone of Exclusion, Luo drove on. He passed a barricaded entrance via a side street and wove his way through a lightly wooded forest to get inside the Zone. Eventually he spotted the van half a kilometer away. By the time he’d circled to park on the side street, a second truck had arrived and the fight had begun.
Now he would need to do the same in reverse. Luo climbed behind the wheel of the car he’d stolen, shifted into drive, and took off. This time he would not be following civilians and medical personnel. This time he would be following the boy.
And this time he had no idea where he was going.
CHAPTER 21
NADIA WATCHED THE truck disappear with Bobby beneath it.
Johnny looked ashen and disheveled. The remaining Russian lay unconscious beside him. “Where’s Bobby?”
“Gone.” Nadia ran to Nakamura’s body. “Get in the van. I’ll get the keys. They must be on him. Quick. We have to follow.”
“Follow what?”
“The truck. He’s on it. Or under it, to be more precise.” She cringed at the sight of Nakamura’s limp body. He’d been a doctor and healer until he came in contact with the formula. Now he was dead. She suppressed her discomfort with the task at hand, held her breath, and fished the keys to the truck out of his pants. “I’ll explain in the van.”
“Your bag,” Johnny said. “It’s in the house.”
Her wallet and passport were in the bag. “Shit.”
She raced into the house, down the hallways, and into the bedroom.
The old woman’s brow creased as soon as she saw Nadia. She unloaded a barrage of questions in Japanese. Nadia saw the panic button in her hand, the phone beside her. Good, Nadia thought. Her doctor was dead and the volunteer was gone. If she became ill, she could get help. By the time they arrived, Nadia and Johnny would be gone.
Nadia grabbed her bag and ran out the door. The phone rang behind her. The shrill ring gave way to the burble of the van’s engine. Johnny sat in the driver’s seat. Nadia raced to the passenger seat and climbed inside. Johnny took off.
“Left turn at the first intersection,” she said.
“Same way we came here.”
“That’s where he went.”
“It was a TEPCO truck,” Johnny said. “I saw the lettering on the side. He could get out the main exit if he has a hazmat suit. The guards didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the folks that were leaving the Zone.”
“Did those guys look like the type who would finesse an entry or exit?”
Johnny turned left. The tires squealed. “No. You’re right. They came in off the grid.”
Johnny pressed the throttle. They zipped through the residential area, passing home after home without sign of life. Johnny slowed down through the first two intersections, fearing another car would appear at the worst possible place at the fatal moment in time. When he reached the third intersection, however, he crossed it at full speed.
“I just can’t figure out why Bobby would do something so reckless,” Nadia said.
“Genesis II is on that truck, right? What did Nakamura say his name was? Yoshi?”
“Yeah. But Bobby’s no fool. He has his father’s instincts. He understands danger. He measures probabilities before he acts. He weighs pros and cons. He calculates a risk-adjusted reward for any action he takes. It’s all subconscious. It’s instinctive. But that’s how his brain works. You saw that in him when you got him off for murder, didn’t you?”
“Not sure his brain is working right.”
“What’s the probability he can hang onto that truck the entire trip?” Nadia said.
“What was the probability he could latch onto it in the first place?”
“And if he does hang on, what’s the probability the driver or one of his buddies at the destination sees him and kills him?”
“Is this Nadia staying positive?”
“Bobby knows that. But he still did what he did. What does that tell you?”
Johnny considered the question. “He must know something we don’t.”
“Impossible. He didn’t tell me what Genesis II meant initially. He just didn’t want to get into it. But his guilty conscience caught up with him before we left for the airport. He told me everything.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t playing you?”
“Positive,” Nadia said.
“You said it yourself. The kid’s a natural con artist.”
“No. Not that morning. He was emotional. He wasn’t acting. I’d stake my life on it. He told me everything that was in his heart.”
“Then if he does know something we don’t know, it can mean only one thing.”
“He learned something between the time we left the apartment and he ran after the truck.”
“Maybe from those Russians at the airport,” Johnny said.
“He didn’t talk to them.”
“Maybe he met someone at the hotel.”
“He wasn’t out of my sight long enough.”
They drove toward the center of town. Nadia kept her head on a swivel but didn’t see any trucks
or signs of human life.
“There’s another thing we need to talk about,” Johnny said.
Nadia imagined the driver capturing Bobby. This time there would be no angel there to save him.
“The boomerangs,” Nadia said.
“Who threw them?”
“No idea. An angel.”
“You see anybody?”
“Nope,” Nadia said.
They drove another mile until they came upon the intersection to the main road in town. A bilingual sign instructed them to turn left for the exit from the Exclusion Zone. Johnny stopped at the intersection.
“We can drive around if you want,” he said. “But the odds are high this guy is out of the Zone by now. These guys were organized. They had a plan.”
Despair gripped Nadia. She’d found Bobby in a radioactive wasteland in Ukraine, and now she’d lost him in a similar one in Japan.
“Our best bet is to get back to the hotel and wait for a phone call. He’s got his own cell, right?”
“Yes.”
They put their hazmat suits back on. Their respirators cloaked their faces. Five blocks away from the open stretch of road that led to the exit from the Zone of Exclusion, Johnny pulled into a side street and parked beside a post office. He picked a spot that gave them a distant vantage point of the guardhouse. They waited until a vehicle arrived on the opposite side of the guardhouse, looking to gain entrance to the Zone. In this case, two enormous dump trunks arrived with three pickup trucks in tow.
Johnny wasted no time. He drove to the gate. The guard was engrossed in a conversation with the dump truck driver and waved them through. The hazmat gear prevented him from seeing Nakamura wasn’t at the wheel.
When she’d first arrived, Nadia had noted the similarities and differences between Chornobyl and Fukushima. Nature had reasserted its control over the former, while man was still wrestling with the residual risks of the latter. Both seemed casualties of unlikely events—the mismanagement of a crumbling Soviet empire and a natural disaster of unlikely magnitude. Now that she was leaving, Nadia noted another unfortunate similarity. She was leaving Fukushima as she’d left Chornobyl. In search of a boy who could change the world.
Except now there were two of them.
CHAPTER 22
JOHNNY DROVE FOR three hours. As soon as they entered Tokyo city limits, he got off the highway. He parked the car on the street near a warehouse. The sidewalks were empty except for the stray passerby. Nadia found an all-purpose cleaner and some paper towels in a box in the back. They used it to wipe down the surfaces they might have touched. Then they left the truck, found the subway, and went back to their hotel in Shibuya.
During the trip, Nadia asked Johnny if he thought she should call Bobby’s mobile phone. Nadia was the most logical thinker he knew. When she asked his opinion, it usually meant she didn’t like the conclusion she’d reached. Johnny loved those moments. They were the most intimate ones she shared with him.
“If he was in a position to get a call,” Johnny said, “he would have made one.”
“Meaning?”
“If you make his phone ring at the wrong time, you could put him in danger.”
“But if it were the right time . . .”
“He would have already called you.”
Nadia shook her head. “I was thinking the same thing. But isn’t there a chance he can answer but can’t dial?”
Johnny thought about it for a moment. “What has greater odds? That he can receive but can’t dial, or that he hasn’t called because he can’t and your ring can only hurt him.”
Nadia stared at her phone. “Am I overanalyzing this thing?”
“Probably, but under the circumstances, who wouldn’t?”
She chose not to make the call and the phone didn’t ring.
They arrived at the hotel at 5:25 p.m. They went to their respective rooms to clean up and rest before dinner.
Johnny took a shower hoping the hot water would rinse him of his frustrations. Bobby and Genesis II were gone. At home he got things done. He did whatever was necessary to protect the ones he loved. He’d framed Victor Bodnar and his twin blond protégés for drug trafficking because they wouldn’t have left Nadia alone until the formula was theirs or they were certain it didn’t exist. In Japan, Johnny was out of his element. It showed in his lack of results.
Nadia needed more help. More help than he could provide. And now another problem loomed. His week’s vacation was coming to an end. He needed to leave on Saturday to be at work on Monday. His boss had generously allowed him to leave on zero notice. Asking for an extension would be the equivalent of quitting. He loved his job and it had taken him years to find a man he could work with. But if he and Nadia didn’t find Bobby and Genesis II by Saturday, Johnny would have no choice but to resign. He certainly wasn’t going to leave Nadia alone.
They met at the bar at 7:00 p.m. As soon as he saw her he knew something was wrong. He could tell by the clouds in her eyes.
“I called him,” she said. “I couldn’t resist. I had to know.”
“And?”
Nadia’s eyes fell.
“What?” Johnny said. “No answer?”
“No. There was an answer.”
“And?”
“The person said hello in English, but the voice didn’t belong to Bobby.”
CHAPTER 23
BOBBY CLUNG TO the truck’s undercarriage. His head rested below the gas tank. Petroleum fumes filled his lungs. Road noise strained his eardrums. The tires kicked up dust. It stung his eyes, blew up his nose, and covered his lips.
At first the dust didn’t bother him. He knew how to disengage his senses. Years of brutal training sessions with the Coach had taught him to ignore discomfort. But then he remembered they were in Fukushima. The dust covering his face might be hot. The particles sneaking past his lips and up his nose might be radioactive. He’d seen pictures of the workers from the Chornobyl nuclear power plant who’d been infected after the explosion. Their bodies covered with burn marks. Their inner organs rendered useless. Miserable deaths had followed.
He might have sentenced himself to death the moment he dove under the truck. He’d been born with radiation syndrome but Dr. Arkady had cured him. He’d known kids who’d died in their teens. He had been one of the lucky ones. He’d survived. Now he was infecting himself again. What had he done?
Then he thought of Eva. She was dead. But if that was the case, how could he have seen her in the window? Or had it been a mirage? Had he imagined that the androgynous Japanese boy Nakamura had called Yoshi was actually Eva with her hair cut short? It was possible, Bobby thought. She might have convinced Nakamura to refer to her as a boy to further protect her real identity. Still, Bobby worried her face was a figment of his imagination. One thing was for certain, he was going to find out the truth. If there was a chance Eva was alive, he would accept whatever fate was necessary to see her again.
The truck continued on paved roads for another ten minutes, and diverted onto a grassy field. A wooded lot followed. Bobby absorbed bumps and jackknife turns. When the vehicle emerged on fresh asphalt, the road noise grew. Tires rolled in the opposite direction, and Bobby knew they had left the Zone. Wherever they were headed—an abandoned airstrip or an obscure port—it wasn’t going to be a five-minute trip. His arms and shoulders burned. He knew his stamina would be tested like never before. He banished doubt and told himself to live in the moment. The key to pain management was to control his mind. The prerequisite to controlling his mind was visualization.
And so he summoned memories of a fourteen-year-old witch with purple streaks in her hair and matching lipstick. She had two friends who dressed as witches, too. Everyone knew that Bobby lived with her, but she didn’t want anyone to see her associating with the school freak. The boy whose mother had been a prostitute. The boy who was rumored to have been b
orn in reactor four. What no one else in school knew was that Eva suffered from radiation syndrome, too. Eva swore him to secrecy, and Bobby kept his word.
Twelve months later, Bobby joined her in secondary school and became the favorite target of the bullies in his class. One afternoon they indoctrinated a new kid who’d just moved to Korosten into their gang. They followed Bobby from school. Introduced him to the new kid as human waste. Told him to watch what they did to radioactive scum. They chased and tackled Bobby. They pounded him with their fists and kicked him with their boots.
Bobby fought back but there were too many of them. He curled into a turtle position and covered his face with his arms. One foot broke through his guard and connected with his nose. Pain wracked his nasal area. A bitterness filled his mouth. It was the taste of blood. He heard someone howl. Realized it was his own voice.
“Hold his legs,” one of the bullies said. “I’m going to kick him in the knees until his kneecaps crack. I’m going to paralyze him. Then we’ll see how good he skates.”
Bobby struggled to get up and run but he couldn’t get out of their grasp. One kid pinned Bobby’s shoulders. Two others grabbed his legs. A third reared his right leg back and took aim for Bobby’s left knee. Bobby would never forget the gleam in that kid’s eyes as he prepared to ruin Bobby’s legs.
Then the bully crumbled to the ground. Eva stood behind him with a wooden bat. One of the other boys released Bobby’s leg.
“Lesbian bitch,” he said, and charged her.
She sidestepped him and clubbed him across the shoulder. He fell.
The other two boys froze. Bobby kicked the legs out from one of them. The bully tumbled. The boy who was pinning him down released his grip. Bobby pushed him aside, jumped to his feet, and coiled his fist to strike him. But the kid ran away. The other bullies followed, beaten, bruised, and confused.
The Boy Who Glowed in the Dark (The Nadia Tesla Series Book 3) Page 10
