The Bone Hunters (13 page)

19 May

1764 Gabriel Street

Detroit, Michigan

Macaulay smelled the putrid water coating the base of the dank, moldy passageway. It squished through his socks as he emerged into the pale darkness of the basement in the house next door. In the subdued, ambient light from his cell phone, he carefully picked his way across the low-ceilinged chamber.

Behind him, Lexy attempted to call Barnaby again on her own phone.

“Still no signal,” she whispered.

The basement exit door was blocked by fire-blackened wreckage that had congealed into a single mass. The staircase to the first floor was undamaged but covered with more fire debris.

He climbed slowly up the stairs in the darkness, trying to avoid making the slightest sound, feeling his way along with Lexy right behind him. Like in the Morrissey house, the staircase led to a door off the front parlor. The room was configured exactly the same, except that the bay windows facing the front yard were missing.

He could hear muffled voices across the yard from the Morrissey house. They were angry and excited. Through one of the empty windows, he saw the shadowy outlines
of two men standing at each end of Morrissey's porch and two more near the sidewalk where Macaulay had parked his car.

Otherwise the neighborhood was quiet. In the wasteland of abandoned homes, the sounds of the explosions and gunfire had apparently not led anyone to call the metropolitan police.

Steve remembered seeing a tall stockade fence that stretched across the backyards of the two identical houses and was divided by a redbrick garage. The garage faced onto a rear alley that ran parallel to the street. That was their only avenue of escape.

He led Lexy down the darkened main hallway. The back door of the house opened onto a rear portico from the kitchen, which had been stripped of anything having value, including the stove, sink, and refrigerator.

Only the lower half of the back door was still connected to its hinges. Stepping past, Macaulay slowly descended the portico steps and stopped. In the dull reflected light of a car passing on one of the cross streets, he saw that another commando was deployed in the backyard of the Morrissey house.

The man's back was to him. He was wearing an infrared scope on his helmet, and his light machine gun was trained toward the rear of the house. Every ten or fifteen seconds, he swung his head around to scan the area behind him.

There wouldn't be time to make it all the way across the backyard. The man had to be taken out. While Lexy waited by the portico, Macaulay crept back inside the kitchen to find a weapon. Crossing the room, he tripped over something. Picking it up, he saw it was a rolling pin.
He momentarily imagined all the piecrusts it might have rolled in more innocent times. He had a better use for it now.

Outside, he whispered his plan to Lexy and took off his soggy socks. He waited until the commando had scanned in both directions and then sprinted toward him while Lexy ran for the redbrick garage.

In full flight, Macaulay's right foot landed on a broken bottle, and he felt a searing pain shoot up his leg. Making no sound, he fell to the ground. At that moment, someone began shouting from the bowels of the house they had just left. They had apparently found the passageway behind the bookcase.

The commando turned his head toward the voice, which was clearly barking out a command in Chinese. He began running toward the house, at one point passing within ten feet of Macaulay's prone body.

Pausing at the back portico, the commando scanned the interior with his infrared scope and then disappeared inside. Macaulay was up and running again, the pain in his foot excruciating as it came down heavily on rocks and weeds. Lexy had already reached the garage. He hoped that the door leading into the alley wasn't jammed with junk.

Racing inside, he saw Lexy searching the back of it with her cell phone flashlight. The garage doors had been nailed shut to prevent intruders from coming through the alley. There was another brief staccato shout. They were out in the yard and coming closer.

A side door of the garage led past the stockade fence. It was their only chance. The door was swollen with mildew, but together they wrenched it open and stepped
through. A distant streetlamp cast a faint shadow down the alley. Macaulay pointed in the direction away from the streetlamp and they began to run.

•   •   •

He Does Not Blink stood in the hangar office at the Coleman Young Regional Airport nine miles northeast of central Detroit and fixed a stony gaze on his second-in-command. Colonel Mu stood at attention in front of him, his eyes staring straight ahead at the gold stars on Li Shen Wui's uniform collar.

Mu was twenty-seven and shaped like a miniature Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although he had never been tested in combat like his predecessor Colonel Wong, Mu had proven to be merciless in Li's cleansing missions and he followed Li's every order without question.

Mu had just returned from the attack on the old marine's house and had given his report. The mission had been a complete disaster. It was impossible for Mu to mask the shame in his eyes.

Li again briefly contemplated the reasons he had decided not to lead it himself. It came down to his fear of failure. Now he would be held accountable anyway. He stepped away from Mu and paced around the decrepit office.

He had rented the airport hangar as a staging area for the assault team and to shelter their two transport jets from prying eyes. The whole complex was a decaying mess like everything else in the ruined city. When his jet had landed, he thought he was in Cuba.

While the assault team was carrying out its mission, Li had ordered his supply officer to organize a party for
them to celebrate their returning with the old man who held the secret of finding Peking Man.

“When will the replacements arrive?” Li demanded.

“Their plane has departed San Francisco,” said Mu. “They will be here in three hours.”

“Assemble the men for me to address them in the hangar,” said Li, dismissing him.

There was a light knock on the office door thirty seconds later. It was warped from age and misuse and wouldn't close properly.

“Come,” said Li.

The door opened to reveal Sergeant Shi. He marched forward three paces, stopped, and saluted.

“It is Lord Zhou, Your Excellency,” he said, “calling on the secure line.”

Li pretended a look of supreme satisfaction.

“You may go,” he said, picking up the secure phone.

“Tell me the thrilling news,” said Zhou Shen Wui.

The clarity of his father's voice made it seem as if he were in the next room, his fat ass settled into his favorite throne chair. Li had to assume that one of his father's spies had already reported the debacle to him.

“I am writing the report now,” said Li neutrally.

“How did your stealth cavalry do on American soil?”

Li tasted the hint of mockery in his voice.

“There is much work that remains to be done, my lord,” he said.

“Did you lead the mission yourself?” Zhou asked.

Li wondered where his father was calling from, maybe aboard his high-speed train somewhere in the highlands or possibly in the bed of his favorite concubine, Chunwa, the girl who had once been engaged to Li.

“I thought it better to coordinate the mission from our base here at the airport so that I would be able to follow up immediately on the valuable information I expected to learn from the old marine,” said Li. “My orders to Mu were to eliminate Macaulay and Vaughan and to capture the old marine and bring him to me.”

“And has he talked yet?”

Li's rage and humiliation swept through his intestines like liquid fire, although the only physical indication of his true feelings was the further bulging of his protruding lower lip.

“Unfortunately, the old marine died in the attack,” he said in a measured voice. “Macaulay and Vaughan have temporarily eluded us. We did find a blood trail that indicates that one of them was badly wounded by my force.”

The silence lasted so long that Li wondered if the connection had been broken.

“Your force,” Zhou repeated finally, “your stealth cavalry.”

His voice was soaked in ridicule.

“Were there casualties?” asked Zhou.

“Yes, my lord,” answered Li.

“Well?” demanded Zhou.

Li knew the gross pig wouldn't relent until every detail was extracted.

“Four men were killed in the attack, three by gunfire and one by a poisonous snake. One man is wounded. He is paralyzed from snakebite.”

“Of course . . . the famous snakes of Detroit,” said Zhou. “Did your men at least bring back the snake?”

“I do not know, my lord,” said Li, his lower lip bulging even farther.

Wo hèn ta
 . . .
Wo hèn ta
 . . .
Wo hèn ta,
he silently mouthed into the phone.

“Your men did no reconnaissance?”

“The old man's house was set up like a fortress, my lord,” said Li. “The old man looked harmless. He was observed in a wheelchair. There was no way to know what was inside.”

“Of course,” agreed Zhou. “The outcome was inevitable.”

Li was about to respond that he had developed a new plan to trace the movements of Macaulay and Vaughan, but by then his father had hung up and a tonal beep kept repeating itself in his ear.

He stalked out of the office to find that Colonel Mu had assembled the remaining members of the assault team in two ranks. They came to attention with clicking heels as he crossed the hangar to address them.

Smiling, he told them how proud he was of their first military engagement on American soil and that glory and reward awaited them at home in China after the assured success of their mission.

After dismissing them, Li told Mu to bring the man who had shot and killed the old marine to his hangar office. When they arrived, Mu vainly tried to shut the warped door behind him. The young man stood at attention and saluted.

No more than twenty, he was as comely as a girl, thought Li, with long eyelashes and a mouth shaped like a Cupid's bow. Li remembered him from the mission at the small village they had wiped out near the chemical factory. He had been the one assigned to shoot the surviving children. He had appeared to relish the task. Now
he was sweating profusely, the moisture staining the collar of his uniform.

“Why did you fire against my express orders?” Li asked politely.

“We were told that the man to be taken alive was confined to a wheelchair,” said the boy. “I saw a man escaping through the door. He was outlined against the light and standing up. I thought it was the target Colonel Mu approved for elimination.”

“You disobeyed my orders,” said Li as if he hadn't heard the explanation.

“It won't happen again, General,” said the boy.

“Another mistake will not be tolerated.”

“There will not be another.”

“You can go,” said Li.

After the boy saluted and left, Li gazed at the expressionless face of Colonel Mu.

“Make an example of him like you did the old man in the basement,” said Li. “And make sure the replacements are aware of the penalty for mistakes. Did you leave my calling card with the body at the house?”

Colonel Mu nodded. “As you ordered, Excellency.”

“If you need me I will be in the pool,” said Li, heading into the adjoining office where he had ordered them to set up his ten-meter portable lap pool.

•   •   •

They had run ten blocks before the range of the jamming signal had been breached and she was able to call Barnaby. They had stopped to rest in front of a well-lit liquor and convenience store. Steel mesh covered the front windows and entrance door.

While she briefed Barnaby on what had happened, Macaulay went into the store and bought a pint of Jack Daniel's, a roll of duct tape, and paper towels.

“I do no like my customer bleed on the floor,” said the Asian proprietor.

Sitting on the curb outside, Steve took a deep hit of the whiskey and then poured two inches of it over the gash in his heel. Wrapping the foot in paper towels, he bound it with duct tape while Lexy told him that an FBI team was on its way to the Morrissey house along with the metropolitan police and that a squad car would pick them up within a few minutes.

The Morrissey house was lit up like a movie stage set when they returned fifteen minutes later. Police cruisers flanked both ends of the block, and the yard was brightly lit with truck-mounted flood lights. A small swarm of police officers with Maglites was already combing the weed-strewn yard in front and back.

An FBI agent waited for them on the front porch. Through the open doorway, Lexy could see members of a forensic team working inside the hallway and up the staircase to the second floor.

“My name is McAdams,” said the agent.

To Macaulay he looked like Abraham Lincoln without a beard. Tall and spare, his gaunt, furrowed face and forlorn eyes were crowned by a mass of unruly gray hair. His voice was soft and husky.

“I've been told that I'm not allowed to ask you any questions about what went on here,” he said. “It would be nice to get a better understanding of why.”

“We are not at liberty to discuss it,” said Macaulay.

“Beyond my measly pay grade—I know,” he said. “Just thought I'd ask.”

They followed McAdams through the hallway and into the front parlor. A sharp metallic odor permeated the air mixed with the smell of cordite. Someone had set up halogen lights that garishly lit up the carnage.

“Some kind of gas residue here,” said one of the forensic technicians. “We'll check it out in the lab.”

“There is only one body left inside the house,” said McAdams, “but enough spilled blood to indicate plenty more. Someone did a pretty good job of cleaning up the mess before they left.”

Bullet holes laced the white plaster walls and the green plywood covering the bay windows. The couch where Macaulay and Lexy had hidden lay collapsed on the floor, its stuffing strewn everywhere and the steel plates indented with bullets.