Painkiller

38

Admiral Li came down to the poolside lounge and found a stool at the bar. He wore the Bermuda shorts and tropical-print short-sleeved shirt he’d found in one of the revolutionary brotherhood gift bags. Spike Gibson, biceps protruding obscenely from a white tank top, sat three stools from Li, sipping a creatine shake. Hiram stood behind the counter, wiping down the glassware.

Gibson grinned as Li took his stool.

“Afternoon, Admiral.” As he always did in the presence of Li or Deng, Gibson spoke in Mandarin.

Li bowed from the shoulders up. Hiram moved over to draw even with him at the bar.

“Buy you a drink?” Gibson said.

Hiram’s long, narrow fingers, exuding the false impression of sluggishness, combined a series of juices and rum over ice, sprinkled the selection with nutmeg and cinnamon, and, on a small white napkin, pushed the glass across the counter into Li’s palm.

Li took a sip, savored the flavor of the drink, and nodded.

“Painkiller,” Gibson said.

“Yours?”

Gibson shrugged, taking a tremendous gulp of his shake. “Creatine and nonfat milk with pineapple and banana chunks.”

“Creatine?”

“Highly refined protein.”

Li nodded. “Steroids, then.”

“Not in my temple, Admiral. I prefer all-natural foods.”

“Such as bananas and pineapples.”

“Correct.”

“But this ‘creatine’ is a steroid, no? Certain American baseball players come to mind.”

“That’s Andro. Or worse.”

“There is a difference?”

“Vast.”

“Mister?”

Li turned sharply at the bright, light voice and watched, first in delight, then in increasing disgust, as a young American girl in a bikini, not a day older than fourteen, came out of the bright sun into the shade of the bar’s thatched roof. She was so drunk she could barely walk, but she made her way to Spike Gibson’s side nonetheless. The girl wore diamond earrings, a pink iPod Mini, sunglasses, a bracelet on each wrist, and an anklet above one foot. Her bikini top had slipped off one shoulder to expose a nipple; she was slick with a blend of tanning oil and perspiration, her blondish hair held back with a clip.

Gibson said, “Pardon me, Admiral.”

At that point the girl leaned in, and Gibson kissed her with a sloppy, tongue-ridden kiss, Gibson fondling the girl’s exposed breast with one hand, cupping her hip and ass with the other. Li stared. The girl removed an earpiece, twirled a loop of hair with her finger, and said something close-in to Gibson. Gibson said something back, turned to Hiram, said, “Rum punch,” waited for Hiram to hand him the drink, gave it to the girl, then squeezed her tiny ass as she turned and stumbled back to the pool. She ducked out of view and into the lounge chair in which she’d been planted before her approach.

“Spoiled rich girl down from New England,” Gibson said. “Connecticut. Parents think she’s on a boat ride. She likes to party.”

Gibson polished off his creatine shake and reached above his head, stretching his massive arms.

“Listen, Admiral,” he said. “I’m scheduled for a forty-minute exercise circuit in my gym. You look like a man who’s in excellent physical condition. You’re welcome to join me for the workout.”

Li, expressionless, stared into Gibson’s beady, blackish eyes.

“Perhaps later,” he said.

Wordlessly, Gibson rose, ducked behind the pool house and, a moment later, emerged on his personal off-road-grade golf cart. The cart’s electric motor thrummed as Gibson sped around the corner of the last poolside cabana and vanished.

Li drained his painkiller and pushed the glass of remaining ice cubes across the bar to Hiram.

Deng was in his Mobile War Room, seventh and smallest of the series of custom command centers, housed aboard the most recent generation of People’s Liberation Navy nuclear attack submarines. He’d built this particular suite expressly for the final stages of Operation Blunt Fist, and none of the crew, including the captain, knew what went on inside it. A trio of communications officers sat immediately outside its walls, fulfilling various actions ordered by way of the general’s command buttons inside the suite, but all communications Deng conducted with the outside world were encrypted before the communications officers could access the signal.

It had been sixteen hours since the Beidaihe detonation, and the Mobile War Room was currently serving in its official capacity as China’s equivalent of Air Force One. For the past six hours, Deng had been holding wall-to-wall video teleconference sessions with his newly appointed vice premier, who, in his absence, was executing various decisions generated by Deng.

Within two hours of being secreted into his submarine lair, Deng had ordered his vice premier to read his initial statement to the global media. An hour ago he allowed his own face to appear, taping a statement in the War Room and beaming it to Beijing. In the recorded statement, Deng announced that he had “personally confirmed” the intelligence captured by PRC operatives that represented “hard evidence of culpability” for the nuclear strike. His static-ridden, head-and-shoulder videoconferencing image had been retelecast across the world’s news channels:

“We have determined,” his image said, “that the responsibility for the act of mass murder committed against the People’s Republic of China rests with a highly organized, well-funded international terrorist organization. While we must acknowledge our intelligence failure in allowing this cabal of evil to conduct the first act of nuclear proliferation within China’s very borders, we will not fail again. Our intelligence operatives have made significant progress in isolating those nations responsible for the funding and strategic management of this organization, and once we determine with finality the authenticity of the evidence, vengeance by the People’s Republic of China will be exacted. That vengeance will be harsh. It will be swift, and it will be severe.”

Deng took note of a flashing indicator light on the main wide-screen monitor, the centerpiece of the War Board. He was afforded the luxury of positioning his submarine anywhere in the world, since no one knew where he was. He ordered the captain of the sub to approach the surface for a better signal, and the vessel’s communications array nipped the swells about eight hundred miles east of Miami and two hundred miles north of Mango Cay. This location happened to position him squarely within the generally accepted confines of the Bermuda Triangle.

He punched a command on his keyboard and Admiral Li appeared immediately on the monitor. Li bowed deeply. Deng could see that Li, as instructed, wore one of the gift-bag-issue tropical-pattern shirts.

The admiral began immediately.

“Preoperational status: all systems go,” he said. “System mainframe and redundant processors active. No security system failures. Primary power cell currently running at ten percent of capacity, backup online generators one through four fueled to capacity. According to all hourly reports from security director, perimeter alarms have remained active and silent, with radar traffic normal, during the past forty-eight hours.”

Li’s mouth twitched-not, Deng saw, from the static of the transmission.

“What is it, Admiral?”

“Comrade Premier,” Li said, tendering a brief bow of submission, “I recognize the importance of this assignment to the revolution.”

Deng suppressed a chuckle-he knew this had been coming and was surprised it had taken the career soldier this long.

“Go on,” he said.

“Thank you, Comrade Premier. It is just that as an admiral in the People’s Navy I am compelled, at this time of national crisis, to serve in, forgive me, but I’m not sure how best to put this-”

“A more traditional role?”

“Yes.”

“There is no more critical mission to the fabric of our nation’s future than the assignment I have entrusted to you. I recognize your more…standard instincts, but we no longer inhabit a standard world. Stay the course, Admiral. I will see you for your next status report.”

Deng killed the connection. He sipped from a cup of tea he’d had delivered through the room’s food-dispensing window, savoring its flavor, prolonging the tingling sensation he felt in his belly. In fact he felt it even in his soul, though Deng didn’t believe particularly in souls.

This was a moment for which he had been waiting a very long time.

In the upper left-hand corner of Deng’s control board was a hinged Plexiglas cube. He flipped it open, revealing a keyhole. Removing from around his neck a thin chain resembling the kind affixed to dog tags, he seized the lone key affixed to the chain. He inserted the key in the hole the open cube had exposed and twisted.

A red light began flashing beside the lock. On two of the monitors on the War Board, a set of numbers blinked to life. For the first second of their display on the monitors, the numbers read:

72:00:00.

Then the numbers changed immediately to 71:59:59, 71:59:58, and so on.

A smug grin creasing the hard lines of his face, it was somewhere around T-minus 71:56:22 when a thought crystallized in General Deng’s mind-the rallying cry he’d instructed Li and Gibson to use in the recruitment of Operation Blunt Fist’s pool of Marxist-Leninist investors:

Long live the Revolution!

Then he gave the order for the PLN captain to retreat.

The submarine dipped beneath the swells.