Will Staeger - Painkiller

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.

The splash of water shocked him awake.

He knew immediately it was Caribbean water-lukewarm, with that mild, briny taste he knew all too well. He’d swallowed enough of it in the course of his free-diving escapades to fill a lake.

Cooper opened his eyes to a strange face-gaunt, harshly feminine, skin a wrinkled mahogany-and assumed he was having one of his nightmares. In his dreams, he would occasionally see faces he didn’t recognize. He knew that he’d once known these faces, that he’d seen them before, and the dream was merely a visual playback of the memory that failed him during conscious thought. Usually, afterward, he could remember the faces from that dream permanently, so that, nightmare by nightmare, he was piecing together some of the missing portions of his life following his escape from the dungeon cell.

Cooper was trying to place himself in the dream, to figure out what this face meant and where it fell within the chronology of the usual three nightmares, when he realized that he recognized the face too keenly. He had seen it recently against a bright white pool, a background of bright sand and thatched-roof cabanas-

The face leering at him was Muscle-head’s maid, and he wasn’t anywhere near the comforting familiarity of his dreams. He was on the floor of the missile cavern beneath Mango Cay.

The maid had changed both her uniform and demeanor since their brief encounter by the pool. She was staring into his face with a sort of fanatical hatred, barrel of a MAC-10 pressed under his chin. She wore an olive green tank top that displayed naked shoulders and biceps easily bigger than his. The gun was secured with a strap slung over her right shoulder.

“Shithead, up!” she spat in a Haitian Creole drawl. Cooper thought immediately of Alphonse. “On the feet!”

She thrust a wrist beneath Cooper’s right arm, lifted him effortlessly, said, “Against the wall!” and, using the muzzle of the MAC-10, pushed him backward against a web of scaffolding that Cooper figured she must have meant by “wall.”

Through with Cooper for the moment, Lana crouched, lifted a second bucket of seawater, and dumped its contents on Laramie’s face. Flat on her back as Cooper had been a moment before, Laramie shot immediately upright, gasping for air and clearing her eyes with both hands. She too got the muzzle of the MAC-10 against her chin.

“Fuck you!” Laramie yelled, lashing out in a reflexive burst that brought a smile to Cooper’s face.

Lana shifted her weight from one leg to the other and kicked Laramie in the side of her head, reached out before Laramie could fall, and threw her against the scaffolding beside Cooper. Cooper grabbed hold of Laramie’s shirt to hold her up.

Spike Gibson came into Cooper’s field of vision and threw an olive green duffel bag at him. Cooper caught it with his free hand; it clinked as he snatched it. The bag was heavy, maybe eighty or ninety pounds.

Gibson ignored the captives and spoke instead to Lana.

“Deng knows. He’ll do nothing, so I’ve unlocked all the doors. All alarms are deactivated. Get in, bring me another two hundred mill, and get off the island. The U.S. Navy appears to be interested in us now-there’s a destroyer fifteen miles east of Martinique and coming around. He does anything but break Hiram’s record,” he said, pointing at Cooper, then Laramie-“shoot her in the leg, then arm, and so on. See if that motivates him.”