Painkiller

53

As Gibson’s echoing plea reached her ears, Lana the maid pulled her finger off the trigger of the MAC-10 assault pistol she had been about to fire. Instead, she took two long steps, covering the remaining distance between her and the trespassing figures of Cooper and Laramie, and struck Cooper in the side of the head with a roundhouse kick that sent him sailing six feet before his body hit the cavern floor. When he did land, it was with a skull-carom across the lava surface and a back-bending bash against a silo joist. Lana then spun in a short, efficient motion and rammed her left elbow into Laramie’s temple while Laramie attempted to rise from the floor of the cavern and fire back with her UR-14.

Laramie collapsed, sputtering, at which point Lana savagely and repeatedly kicked her, rolling her across the cavern floor until Laramie’s body flopped against Cooper’s at the base of missile 34.

Protection of Spike Gibson complete, Lana surveyed the carnage wrought upon the occupants of the cavern. Deng was nowhere to be seen; there was Gibson, alive and in perfect health; Li lay on the cavern floor, contorted, bruised, barely breathing; the four anonymous soldiers, dead and bleeding, were sprawled across the floor as though in formation; and finally there was Hiram, a six-foot-five-inch rag doll draped cold and dead across the dolly. Lana bent at the knees and touched Hiram’s face, lingering for a few long seconds.

Then she stood upright, nearly at attention, and lowered the MAC-10 to her side.

“Clear!” she said.

Deng clawed his way up the side of the hole beneath missile 36 and peered over its top edge at the floor of the cavern. He could see Gibson’s maid standing by the transformer; Gibson had just stood and said something to her. Everyone else was dead, dying, or comatose. Li was mortally wounded, but Deng didn’t mind this much, since if Li died here, now, it would only serve to make things easier.

He scrabbled his way to a foothold and rose from the hole. Gibson and Lana watched him do it.

He thrust a finger toward the prone bodies of Cooper and Laramie.

“Who are they?” he demanded.

Deng didn’t like the look in Gibson’s eyes, the security director looking him over as though Gibson were the one controlling his fate.

“They’re no one,” Gibson said.

Deng shifted his gaze to the docking bay. He did so confidently, the threat implicit: the military might of the People’s Republic of China crouches within the skin of that vessel. I have ordered them to remain aboard, but defy me now, and pay.

“I’m leaving now,” he said. It didn’t come out quite the way he meant to say it.

He could see Gibson was thinking something through, but the security director’s expression hadn’t changed, and he hadn’t moved. Neither had the maid.

Deng started walking.

As he passed by, Deng heard the words that Gibson spoke, but he neither acknowledged them nor altered his stride as he walked from the interior of the cavern and out through the wide, arching doorway to his submarine.

“Bon voyage, lou bahn,” Gibson said.

Li sucked at the air, sputtering, taking in as much blood as oxygen with every gasp. The admiral knew nothing but this simple task; occasionally, he would blink hard enough to clear the blood from his vision. After one of these blinks, the oil-greased, zit-scarred face of Spike Gibson loomed into view.

“How you doing, Admiral? You know, you aren’t a bad guy, so it’s a shame, isn’t it, that you’ll go down in history as the greatest all-time traitor to the people. Public enemies number two and one, my man. You and me. You figure this motherfucker out yet?”

Li’s breathing stopped briefly. When it resumed, its pace was more frantic than before. The fogged look behind Li’s eyes indicated to Gibson that the rear admiral of the People’s Liberation Navy had just experienced something like an impulse to spit in his face.

“Your buddy the premier never took a meeting with any of his investors, Admiral. It was always you or me. And the terrorists behind the Beidaihe bombing-they had to have somebody on the inside, don’t you think?” Gibson scratched his chin. “Deng does. He’s got pictures. Evidence. Probably even some sources who’ll squeal. What loyalist wouldn’t, when it turns out a Chinese traitor by the name of Admiral Li Zhu held secret meetings in Bern with the chief architects behind both the Beidaihe bombing and the horrible destruction wrought upon America afterward.”

Life was beginning to evaporate from Li’s eyes. Gibson drew his Glock and examined the gun as if for the first time. Fascinated.

“But, Admiral, you’re only number two. You realize who you’re looking at? Bin-Laden’s got nothing on me. I’m the new kid on the block-the mastermind behind not just one, but the two most brilliant and deadly terrorist strikes of all time. The chief assailant of two victimized superpowers.”

Li coughed. It sounded more like a wheeze.

“Your comrade premier found out I was yoking his warheads. You know that? He should have taken me down too, because I had no idea. But he didn’t. You know why? He didn’t do it because your new premier is one smart puppy.”

He waved the Glock skyward.

“As a loyalist, you should be pleased. When these missiles let fly, Deng will stand by America-China’s fellow victim. America’s military might will be shattered, but China’s will not; the People’s Republic will become the enforcer for the people of the world. All people-Americans too. The People’s Liberation Army will effect regime change, as it is called, in the nations it has shown to be responsible for these twin acts of terror. China, while benevolent, will nonetheless become the world’s supreme super-power. Pretty fucking cool, if you ask me.”

Gibson racked a shell into the chamber.

“But even the most powerful nation on earth needs an enemy. And what your ingenious comrade premier figured out, Admiral, is that if I get away-taking four thermonuclear warheads with me on my way out-then the great and benevolent Premier Deng Jiang will still have somebody left to fight.”

Gibson grinned, grotesquely stretching the sinewy muscles of his upper neck and jaw. “A lethal, invisible force of evil,” he said, “waiting to strike at any moment.”

He pressed the tip of the pistol against Li’s angular forehead.

“China must be vigilant!” he screamed.

The crack of the gunshot echoed through the cavern as the back of Admiral Li’s skull painted the coarse lava floor beneath it.