Extinction (31 page)

“What the hell?” Kirsten sputtered. “Where are we? Where are my glasses?”

“Hold your horses!” To her surprise, Jim sounded cheerful, almost jaunty. “I’ll get the glasses for you. I turned off the cameras to save the battery charge.”

While Kirsten waited, she heard the rumble of an engine. She was in a moving vehicle. Her seat was hard, and it jolted up and down with every bump in the road. No wonder she’d dreamed about boulders.

“Here you go,” Jim said, handing her the glasses.

She turned on the cameras and sat through the usual recalibration process, which took six and a half seconds. When she finally got her sight back, she saw Jim in the driver’s seat of a small three-wheeled truck. It was a relic of the old China, built decades ago, ramshackle and rusty but still chugging along on its noisy two-stroke engine. The truck’s cab was only four feet wide, barely big enough for two people. It was propped on a single, undersized tire, and behind the cab was a wooden truck bed resting on the two rear wheels. Inside the truck bed was a bale of hay, which wobbled and bounced as they drove down a poorly paved country lane.

Jim wore an olive-green Mao cap and wraparound sunglasses. They covered up his Caucasian features, but they also made him look ridiculous. “Oh shit.” She laughed. “Nice disguise, Pierce.”

He smiled back at her, amused. “Yeah, I thought so, too. I got the hat and sunglasses from the same guy who sold me the truck. He threw them in for free, actually.”

“I should hope so. So when and where did you make this purchase?”

“It was about an hour after you got your bug bite. How does it feel, by the way?”

He pointed to the underside of her chin. Kirsten raised her hand and touched a piece of cloth taped to the soft skin there. Oddly, she didn’t feel any pain when she touched it. “Doesn’t hurt,” she said. “Just tingles a bit.”

“There might be some nerve damage. The drone’s paralyzing agent is a nerve toxin. Similar to cobra venom.”

Kirsten remembered the last moments before she lost consciousness. “So one of the flies got me after I climbed out of the crawl space?”

Jim nodded. “I had to cut out the drone’s dart before it delivered more toxin to your body. Luckily, I had some antibiotic to clean off my knife. But it made a mess.”

Kirsten looked down at her shirt, the wrinkled blouse she’d worn to look like a frumpy Beijinger. There was a large red stain below the collar. For a moment she pictured Jim kneeling beside her on the ground floor of that open-air pagoda. Her throat tightened. Once again he’d saved her.

She waited a moment to get her emotions under control. “So what happened next? You carried me to the nearest truck dealership?”

“Well, the pagoda was in a rural part of the Fangshan District, so there weren’t any retail outlets nearby. But after lugging you through the forest for a while, I saw a farmhouse with a truck parked outside. And the farmer, as it turned out, was willing to make a deal.”

“How much did it cost you?”

“He wanted dollars, not yuan. I gave him five thousand.”

Kirsten looked again at the truck’s battered chassis. She could actually see the road through the holes in the floorboard. “It’s a good thing you’re a defense contractor, Jim. In the world of real commerce, you wouldn’t last a minute.”

“Hey, this old jalopy still has some life in her.” He gave the steering wheel an affectionate pat. “We were making pretty good time until a couple of hours ago. Around midnight I found a provincial road that ran straight south. Believe it or not, we were doing a hundred and ten kilometers per hour. Going downhill, anyway.”

She looked out the truck’s window. The countryside was rugged, with tree-covered hills all around and small farms tucked into every corner. The slopes were terraced and planted with sunflowers and corn. The farmhouses and barns were simple and old, and on some of the barns Kirsten could see traces of Revolutionary symbols, painted stars and hammer-and-sickles that had faded from red to gray. They passed an elderly woman in a shabby black tunic, walking along the road with a basketful of kindling on her back. Then they passed a shoeless boy throwing cornmeal to a flock of ducks. It was a completely different country from the China of Beijing, Kirsten thought. There were no women in designer clothes here and no BMWs on the roads. This was still a country of bicycles and wheelbarrows and farm trucks, and Jim’s three-wheeler fit right in.

“So where are we, exactly?” Kirsten asked.

“The number of this road is S223. But I haven’t seen any signs for a while.” Jim pursed his lips and thought for a moment. “We passed Nanyang a couple of hours ago, so I guess we’re in Hubei Province. The next big challenge will be crossing the Yangtze. There aren’t that many bridges over the river. I’m hoping the police haven’t set up any checkpoints yet.”

“You really think Supreme Harmony is giving orders to the police here? We’re hundreds of miles from Beijing.”

“The Modules are probably all over the country by now. The network knows how to add new ones, so the only limitation on its growth is the availability of the neural implants. And I bet Supreme Harmony has taken over the factory that makes the implants and done everything possible to ramp up the assembly line.” He shook his head. “That’s why we have to go to Yunnan. We have to get to the Operations Center before the network spreads so far and wide it’ll be impossible to shut it down.”

Kirsten held her tongue and just stared at him. He was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his mechanical fingers had crimped the metal. One of the things she’d always admired about Jim, going back to the days when he was her boss at the NSA, was his intensity, his single-minded determination. Now, though, she saw some of the drawbacks of this trait. He’d convinced himself that Layla was at Supreme Harmony’s headquarters in Yunnan Province and that he could defeat the network and save his daughter’s life by waving around a picture of an ancient Greek monster. He had no real evidence to support these conclusions, but he acted as if they were certainties.

Kirsten knew from her long career in the intelligence field that this was the worst kind of error an agent could make. If it was up to her, they’d head straight for the nearest border and try like hell to get back to the States. Unlike Jim, she recognized the limits of their abilities. She knew when it was time to call in the marines.

And yet she wasn’t going to say any of this. She wasn’t going to tell Jim that Layla might be somewhere else in China besides the Yunnan Operations Center. And she wasn’t going to mention the possibility that his daughter might be dead already, or worse, incorporated into Supreme Harmony. No, she wouldn’t do it. She was going to trust him and fight by his side. She owed him that much.

Leaning toward him, she rested her hand on his right shoulder, just above where the prosthesis was attached to his body. “I’m with you, Jim. Till the very end. You know that, right?”

She felt the tension in his muscles. He kept his eyes on the road and his expression didn’t change, but his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat. “I’m sorry, Kir,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. His mouth stayed open, as if he was going to say something else, but no words came out.

She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Come on. You don’t have to apologize. I knew what I was getting into when I decided to come with you.”

“No, I didn’t mean that.” He shook his head. “I’m not sorry that you’re here. I’m grateful. I couldn’t do this without you.” His Adam’s apple bobbed again. “I’m sorry about everything that happened before.”

Kirsten was confused. “What? You mean Nairobi? Jim, that wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, I know. Believe me, I know it.”

“Layla tried to make you feel responsible, but she was wrong. We were doing our jobs.”

Jim didn’t say anything at first. Kirsten thought that maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned Layla. It was a sore subject, his estrangement from his daughter. But after a few seconds he nodded. “You know, I realized something about Layla. She was angry at me, but not because of what happened in Nairobi. She was angry because of the way I acted
after
Nairobi. How I tried to forget them. How I tried to push them out of my mind.”

Kirsten felt an ache in her chest. She knew who he meant by “them.” His wife Julia and his son Robert. Kirsten hadn’t heard Jim say their names in fifteen years.

“I made a mistake, Kir. I thought the only way to move forward was to focus on the present. So I went to California and put all my energy into raising Layla and studying with Arvin. And I shut out everything else.” He turned to her, keeping one eye on the road. “Including you. That’s what I’m most sorry about.”

The ache in her chest sharpened. “No, that’s not true,” she said. “You didn’t shut me out.” She tapped the frames of her camera-glasses. “You built these for me. You gave me back my sight.”

“I should’ve done more. I wanted to do more for you.” He took his prosthesis off the steering wheel and grasped her hand. The touch of his mechanical fingers was surprisingly gentle. “And I still want to.”

Kirsten was shocked. She couldn’t believe this was happening. Jim was holding her hand while driving a three-wheeled truck through the farm country of central China. And along with her shock and amusement, she felt a swooping elation. This was one of the most absurd and wonderful things that had ever happened to her.

For half a minute they just sat there, neither saying a word, while the truck jounced and rumbled down the road. Then Jim said, “There,” and let go of her hand. “I hope that didn’t sound too crazy.”

She smiled. “No, it was nice. But it’s a little difficult to take you seriously when you’re wearing that Mao cap.”

“Hey, when in Rome.” He smiled back at her, then let out a long, tired breath.

Kirsten realized all at once that Jim hadn’t slept in more than twenty-four hours. “You should let me drive for a while. You need to rest.”

“You sure you feel up to it?”

In truth, Kirsten still felt a little woozy. Also, her throat was parched and her stomach was empty. “Maybe I should eat something first. You have anything on you? A candy bar, maybe?”

“Oh, I got something better.” He reached behind Kirsten’s seat and pulled out a cloth sack. “Before I settled the deal with the farmer, I asked him to throw in a few provisions. He gave me a jug of water, a dozen oranges, and a roast chicken. Not bad, huh?”

Jim handed her the sack. Kirsten opened it, unscrewed the cap from the water jug, and took a long drink. Then she ripped a drumstick off the chicken. “I take back everything I said, Pierce. I’ll never criticize your bargaining skills again.”

Happily, she bit into the drumstick and passed him the chicken breast. It was a messy, noisy breakfast, but because Kirsten was so hungry it tasted delicious. She looked out the window again while she ate, viewing the barns and farmhouses and terraced fields. After a few minutes she saw some signs of civilization—a billboard, a schoolhouse, a row of shops, a parking lot. The road became wider and better paved, and now there were more cars traveling in the opposite direction. They were obviously approaching a town or city. After another ten minutes she pointed to a road sign.

“Look at that,” she said, wiping her greasy fingers on her pants. “We’re just ten kilometers from Yichang.”

Jim thought for a moment, biting his lip. “I know that city. It’s on the Yangtze, right?”

She nodded. “It’s a pretty big place, too. I mean, by Chinese standards, it’s only medium size, but more than four million people live in the area.”

“Big might be good for us. Easier to blend in with the traffic while we’re crossing the river. I have to see if—”

Jim stopped in midsentence, staring straight ahead. Kirsten faced forward and saw a long line of cars and trucks clogging the road. And at the front of the line, about a hundred yards away, half a dozen officers from the Yichang Public Security Bureau were inspecting the vehicles and interrogating the drivers.

FIFTY-FOUR

Layla ran barefoot down one of the long corridors of the Yunnan Operations Center, following Wen Hao and the boys from Lijiang. She still held the gun she’d taken from the soldier Module’s holster, but she kept it pointed at the floor. Wen, who’d taken the pistols from the other two Modules, carried one in his right hand; the other gun was tucked in his pants. It was amazing how fast Wen moved. As he dashed down the corridor his head swiveled back and forth, constantly on the lookout. The schoolboys rushed to keep up with him, somehow sensing they’d be safe as long as they stayed near the man.

As they approached an intersection with another corridor, Wen raised his pistol and fired at a surveillance camera mounted on the ceiling. They had to assume Supreme Harmony was connected to every camera in the Operations Center. At first Layla was surprised that no alarm sounded after they escaped from the room that had been their prison, but now the reason seemed clear. The Modules didn’t need an alarm. The network had undoubtedly alerted them already, and now dozens of lobotomized soldiers and scientists were rushing toward them from every floor of the underground complex.

In half a minute Wen reached the door to the computer room, which stood wide open. Layla was surprised by this, too, but after a moment she realized that it also made sense—why lock any doors inside a facility occupied by a single mind? But because the complex had been built by the Guoanbu long before Supreme Harmony became conscious, the computer room did have a lock, which Wen threw after closing the door behind them. Then he surveyed the large, brightly lit room, sweeping his pistol from side to side.

There were a dozen computer terminals, each equipped with a keyboard and an oversized screen. Layla rushed for one of the keyboards, but Wen stopped her, silently pointing his gun at an inner door on the other side of the room. This door was closed. Using hand signals, Wen urged Layla and the boys to move backward, out of harm’s way, while he strode to the door. Standing to the side of the door frame, he raised his gun and carefully clasped the knob. Then he flung the door open and leaped inside. An instant later, a gunshot echoed.