The China Dogs (37 page)

They're pounding toward the spill of blood and rip of flesh. Drawn by the scent of violence.

Jackson sees adults writhing on the ground. Men on their backs with dogs on their chests. An old woman is facedown in the dirt. A lurcher has her spread-eagled and is chewing at her legs and back.

The NIA director has seen bad shit in his time, and counts this right up there with napalm victims drowning in seas of orange fire and dismembered babies being found in the aftermath of missile attacks.

He looks across the room, and there are half a dozen monitors all telling similar stories. All showing their own horrific silent movies.

136

Beijing

T
en thousand miles from Don Jackson's spy screens in Washington, General Zhang, Lieutenant General Xue Shi, and Minister Chunlin are watching the same footage.

Zhang and Chunlin are standing behind Xue Shi at his desk, viewing the massacre at Old Town over his shoulder.

Dozens of bodies lie across the field. Men. Women. Children. The weaponized strays are killing everything in their path.

“It goes well.” Zhang claps a soldierly hand on his loyal number two's shoulder. “Today's increased activities—here and elsewhere—will break the Americans.”

A portly old grandfather with white hair and beard is backed into a fenced corner of the field with a young boy and girl clinging to his legs. They're facing a pack of seven snapping dogs and he's holding them off with a handgun, an old revolver drawn.

He misses with one shot and kills a boxer with a second.

Xue Shi smiles. “Four bullets left and six dogs on him—the odds are not good.”

Chunlin can't help but say what's on his mind. “Now is past the point we should have been able to pacify the dogs.”

The old man shoots a black mongrel.

Zhang looks at him with contempt. “Please, Minister, don't lecture me on morality. Not you of all people.”

Chunlin points at the screen as the old man kills another dog. “I would never countenance this. I have never targeted a civilian in my life. Operatives, agents, soldiers—yes. Old men with children. Never.”

“Be quiet and watch. Or be more useful and leave.”

A Labrador leaps up on the boy's back. His grandfather jabs his old gun forward and shoots it in the head at point-blank range.

The spray of blood and bone doesn't seem to even be noticed by the remains of the pack.

“He is bold for an old man,” observes Xue Shi. “Maybe he was once a soldier. But now I think he has only one bullet—and three dogs.”

The grandfather fires the last of his bullets and kills a sandy-colored mongrel. He quickly stoops, gathers the children tight to his chest and turns his back on the two remaining dogs.

Zhang, Xue Shi, and Chunlin watch the silent footage and wait for the inevitable to happen.

But it doesn't.

One of the dogs inexplicably falls on his side.

The head of the second spurts blood.

Into the frame come two local sheriffs. Guns extended. Determination etched across their faces.

They climb the fence and one of them touches the hunched-up man.

He shudders with fright.

At first he thinks it's a dog. Braces himself for the pain.

But it doesn't come.

Slowly, he turns and straightens up. He sees the cops, and a smile as long as the Mississippi breaks out across his face.

Chunlin walks away from the monitor desk. “A great general once said that those who look most beaten often end up the greatest victors.” He opens the door. “We would all do well to remember it.”

137

DMZ, North Korea

J
ihai and Shin have been left standing with the gurney at the gates.

Two guards have AKM assault rifles aimed at their chests.

Fifteen feet above them, rain still hammers on the iron roof of the open-windowed watchtower.

Silhouettes of soldiers stand out against the searchlights and starless night sky.

Jihai recognizes one of the men who spoke to them.

He has a phone pressed to his ear. In his other hand is all their documents.

Finally, he puts the receiver down, exits the box, and quickly descends the ladder to the gate.

“The lines are down,” he explains. “You will have to wait.”

“I cannot wait.” Jihai blurts the words out. “My colleague has to be buried by nightfall. His religion demands it.” He looks at the two stars on the soldier's olive green uniform. Despite the man's presence and confidence, he is only a junior officer, a
jungwi
. “If you do not let me through there will be a diplomatic incident. One involving your country, the Americans, and mine. Do you want that?”

A twitch in the lieutenant's left eye shows a sign of weakness.

“I wish now to speak to your senior officer.”

The guard's tone softens. “I am the most senior officer here. Wait until we have communications back and I will talk to my captain.”

Jihai looks beyond him. The gates are open. Through them, in the distance, he can see the flicker of lights.

He walks away and slips the brake off the gurney. He grips the end rails and pushes.

“Stop!” says the guard.

Jihai pauses. “You will have to shoot me. Shoot an unarmed Chinese scientist pushing the body of his dead colleague. I hope you can explain that.” Jihai dips his head and pushes.

A second later the soldier shouts again. “Stop or I will shoot.”

This time Jihai doesn't hesitate. He pushes hard and doesn't look back.

138

Breezy Point, New York

J
ackpot's reappearance has kept Danny up all night.

Something has changed.

It's not as elusive as before, not as Teflon-coated, and he's been able to download endless hours of partial code. But he still can't track down the IP addresses of the sending or receiving terminals. It's like looking at a long length of digital rope without seeing who holds either end. Page after page of blue, green, and white alphanumeric instructions and reports scroll up before him, flashing their secrets but giving nothing away.

Every now and again he thinks he's close. Thinks he's picked up jump instructions, a different form of assembly language, or a vaguely familiar source code that's been adapted.

Then he gets knocked back.

But this fish isn't getting away.

Not this time.

He's spent all night matching fragments of foreign machine code with “parodies” that he's devised in the hope that the master computer might get fooled into contacting him directly.

He stands up and steps back from the action. Two out of five computers are still catching data bursts and trying to interpret them, but none are exposing the parties at either end, and none of the decoding packages are quite working. But they've not been defeated, they're still plugging away.

He takes a bathroom break and almost falls asleep on the can.

Before coming back, he washes his face as well as his hands and tries to get some life back into his aching brain. He heads back to the screens and stretches tension out of his neck and shoulders before sitting back down.

Two blank screens light up with a burst of white letters, numbers, backslashes, front slashes, and all manner of symbols. At first it looks like the screens are twin feeds.

But they're not.

He realizes it now.

The one on the left is running original machine code. The one on the right is a byte code created by the interpretation software he'd been relentlessly running.

It's happening.

Danny's heart pounds. He takes his hands off the computer desk, anxious that nothing accidental stops it.

It's finally happening; the software he created is simultaneously translating the original Jackpot stream into code he can understand.

IP addresses appear. Instructions. Commands. Executions. Locations.

It's like being let out of the black hole of solitary confinement into blinding sunshine.

Danny is suddenly awake. Never have his brain cells felt more awake.

On a parallel machine he throws every hacking code he knows at Jackpot, and slowly but surely the sonovabitch starts letting him in. It spreads its legs and gives him its all—the main source computer, passwords, files, recycle bins, video folders, documents, photographs, and every other piece of cyber treasure it's ever created.

Danny's eyes stay fixed on all five fast-downloading screens as he powers up the new burner Stevens gave him.

There's a click.

Danny doesn't even wait for the hello. “I've got it. The code has opened up.”

Stevens comes alive. “Derig and prepare to leave the house. I'll have a moving crew with you in ten minutes. We're going to bring you in before anyone gets to you.”

139

Police HQ, Miami

G
host stays at the hospital until dawn; until he finds a new shift of medics to grill about Zoe's condition and what might be done for her. He leaves in a mood of despondency, goes home to shower and change before heading into work.

Last night he'd walked out of his captain's office without his badge and gun, and now he feels awkward going back, even though it is following a special request from the President to serve the country.

He pats his pockets as he enters the building and calls to the old-timer on reception, “Forget my swipe card, Al. Be a buddy and buzz me through.”

“Sure, no problem, Lieutenant.” Al's crinkled old face smiles and he hits the button.

“Thanks.” Ghost waits for the buzz then passes through the security doors. He'd shaken Molton's hand last night and agreed to help run the task force to combat the dog attacks. But now as he rides the elevator to his office, he's still wondering why the President and the NIA had been interested in the attacks right at the beginning, back when young Kathy Morgan was killed on the beach at Key Biscayne.

Something is being kept from him.

From him and the country at large.

The thought is still troubling him as he heads down to Lost Property, where he eventually finds a charger that fits Zoe's phone.

Back in the Incident Room, he plugs it in, and once the unit powers up he scrolls through the contacts. There's only one Danny listed, and though it's just 7:45
A.M.,
he dials the number.

The phone on the other end rings, then trips the answering machine message:
“This is Danny, I'm busy doing other stuff, leave your details after the beep.”

“Hi, this is Lieutenant Walton of the Miami police. I need to talk to you urgently about your sister Zoe. Call me back at this number.”

Ghost hangs up and searches the rest of the phone's names and numbers. There's only one Jude listed in Zoe's directory, but it has two numbers—a Miami landline and the cell—so he's fairly sure this is the friend she's been staying with.

Again he gets palmed off with an answering message.

“Hi, this is Jude Cunningham. I'm really sorry I'm not around to take your call. Please leave me your details and I'll get back to you just as soon as I pick this up. Thanks for calling.”

He leaves the same message as he gave Danny, hangs up and surveys the wreckage of his desk. Part of the reason he came in early was to clear things before he dives into his new set of responsibilities. There are skyscrapers of brown internal mail envelopes, and around them a multicolored settlement of Post-it notes left by various team members, secretaries, and other departments.

He's only begun to scratch the surface of the paperwork when Annie turns up. She greets him as she slips her car keys in her purse. “'Morning, how is your friend?”

He looks up from the desk mess. “Not good. She's still unconscious.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.” She can see he doesn't want to talk about it. “You want me to get you some coffee or water?”

“No thanks. Can you ask Sandra Teale to come in? I want to quiz her more on the pathology reports.”

“Sure. I'll call her right away.”

“Hang on, don't rush off.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out Zoe's pocketbook plus some scrap paper that he's scribbled notes on. “And get in touch with this animal shelter. Zoe went there yesterday. I want to find out who she spoke to and what was said.”

She takes the book. “Can I ask why?”

“It seems she was following up some kind of link between the shelter and the breeders who sold the Gerbers the dog that killed them.”

Annie looks surprised. “Should she have been doing that?”

He ignores the question. “I want to know what that link is and what sent her from the shelter to the home of a man named Li Chen and from there to Bicentennial Park.” His thoughts wander for a moment. “It's as though she had an inclination that something bad was going to happen.”

“Maybe she did,” says Annie. “Anyway, I'll find out.” She lifts the pocketbook as a goodbye gesture and drifts off to make the calls.

Ghost sits in silence. He doesn't like that he's given away the pocketbook. It makes him feel like he's lost a link to Zoe. He distracts himself by opening up computer access to the Police Records System and searching for Li Chen.

He finds nothing.

Not that he expected to get lucky on his first shot. No matter. He's got plenty of other searches to perform: immigration, work permits, health insurance, tax, credit ratings, and a million other ways the government has of snooping on the average man.

140

DMZ, Korea

T
he shot doesn't come.

Jihai counts the seconds.

Thirty.

Thirty-one.

Thirty-two.

He tells himself that if it hasn't come by now it isn't going to come at all.

His spirits rise. He's going to make it.

He's in the DMZ and they won't fire at him here. They wouldn't dare.