Medusa

Austin and Zavala exchanged a glance.

“No time like the present,” Austin said.

He jerked his wrist against the cuff, rose from his chair, and dragged it behind him, moving toward the Dragon Lady. After a few steps, he raised the chair to his chest, with the legs sticking out straight in front.

Zavala followed suit and got his chair into a similar position.

Together, they charged the table.

An actual person would have ducked or run for her life. But the system of camera, projectors, microphones, and computers that were the lifeblood of the holographic projection were not endowed with human instinct.

The figure seemed frozen in place. Only the facial features changed, and Austin and Zavala almost hesitated when the Dragon Lady morphed into a fierce-eyed man wearing a scarlet silk hat, then a series of fearsome male and female faces. Then the last face fuzzed at the edges and broke up into a cloud of swirling and sparkling motes.

There was only empty space by the time Austin and Zavala crashed into the table, overturning it. They climbed to their feet and saw Phelps standing under the spotlight where they had been sitting a moment before. He had the Bowen pointed in their direction.

“The boss isn’t going to like that,” he said in his lazy way.

“No, I suppose she won’t,” Austin said. “And that’s too damned bad.”

The corner of Phelps’s mouth turned up slightly.

“What were you saying about the lab vaccine and the virus?” he asked.

“The American and Chinese governments have been secretly working to develop the vaccine to head off a deadly virus, but your boss’s outfit stole the lab.”

“I know all about the lab,” Phelps said. “I’m the one who hijacked the damned thing.”

“If that’s true,” Austin said, “then you know where the lab is. Work with us to take it back from these clowns.”

“You weren’t kidding about the bug spreading to the States, were you?”

Austin looked him straight in the eye.

“What do you think, Phelps? What do you really think?”

“It’s not what I think but what I know,” he said. “I’ve got family in the States,” he added after a pause.

“There’s nothing to prevent them from getting sick,” Austin said. “You can’t let that happen.”

“I’m not going to let it. But I’ve got to do it my own way, and I work alone.”

He turned his head at the sound of more shots and shouting in the distance.

He reached in his shirt pocket and pulled out the keys to the handcuffs, which he set on the floor. Then he unclipped the holster from his belt, slipped the Bowen back in it, and, bending low to the floor, sent it skittering across the floor and out of sight. A second later, he disappeared into the shadows.

When the warehouse lights snapped on a moment later, he was gone. Cate Lyons had one hand on the light switch, the other on a pistol. When she saw Austin and Zavala, she came ru

“Are you guys okay? God, Joe, you look like hell. Sorry I’m late. I was waiting for backup. They’re searching the building, but I think everybody got away. Will one of you tell me what’s going on?”

Austin picked the key off the floor, unlocked his handcuffs, and did the same for Zavala. He stood up and retrieved his Bowen.

“We’ll tell you what we know on the way back to Washington,” he said. Austin clipped the holster to his belt. “Then we want to talk to a certain Agent Yoo.”

CHAPTER 29

AFTER LEADING ZAVALA TO FALLS CHURCH, CHARLIE YOO had headed back to FBI headquarters. He chatted with an agent from the Asian Crime Unit, looking for tidbits of information to pass along to his employers. As a member of one of the world’s largest crime organizations, Yoo got a perverse thrill wandering the halls of the world’s largest law-enforcement agency. He was still at the Hoover Building when Caitlin Lyons called and asked if they could get together for a drink at a Georgetown bar. Yoo jumped at the invitation. Caitlin was a good source of FBI gossip, and she was attractive as well.

He took the elevator down to the garage and was walking to his car when Lyons stepped out from behind a concrete pillar.

“Hello, Charlie,” she said.

Yoo gave her his widest grin.

“Did I misunderstand?” he asked. “I thought we were meeting at the bar.”

“I decided to save you the trip. You must be tired after setting up my friends Joe and Kurt for a hit.”

Yoo maintained his grin with some effort, and his hand reached inside his jacket.

“Hi, Charlie. How’s by Yoo?”

Zavala had stepped out behind him.

“Joe!” Yoo said. “Am I glad to see you. What a great surprise . . .”

“That I’m still alive?”

“Huh? Don’t know what you’re talking about, Joe. Guess we got separated at the warehouse.”

Yoo’s hand was moving under his jacket in a way that would have seemed casual to the untrained eye.

“Make a bet with you, Charlie,” Zavala said. “Five bucks says Lyons drills a hole through the back of your skull before you get that gun out of its holster.”

“I’m feeling lucky,” she said. “Make it ten.”

She held her pistol with both hands, arms extended.

“Take your jacket off slowly and drop it on the floor,” Zavala said.

Yoo did as he was told. Zavala stepped forward to relieve him of both his guns, not only the one in the shoulder holster but the one in the belt holster as well. Frisking him, Zavala found a short, double-edged knife in its ankle sheath.

“Let’s go for a ride, Charlie,” he said.

Zavala held his arm in the air as if hailing a taxi. Headlights snapped on. A car roared out of nowhere with a squeal of tires and screeched to a stop just inches from Yoo. Zavala produced a roll of duct tape, bound Yoo’s wrists behind him, put a strip over his eyes, and slapped another over his mouth. Then he shoved Yoo into the backseat and sat next to him, with Lyons on the other side.

They drove in silence for a half hour before stopping. They hustled Yoo out of the back and down a short flight of stairs. He was plunked in a chair, and the tape was removed from his eyes and mouth. He glanced around at the sparsely furnished room.

“Where are we?”

“FBI safe house,” Lyons said.

She was sitting on the opposite end of a rectangular table. Zavala sat on one side, staring at Yoo with no humor in his banged-up face. Across from Zavala was a pale-haired man whose eyes were boring into Yoo like blue lasers.

“My name is Kurt Austin,” the man said. “Who do you work for?”

“The Chinese state security agency,” Yoo said.

Austin sighed and glanced at Lyons.

“Charlie,” Lyons said, “do you remember the time we went to the shooting range and I showed you how well I shoot?” She lifted her pistol off her lap and pointed it at Yoo. “Answer Kurt’s question or I’ll drill you a third eye.”

Yoo swallowed hard.

“I also work for the Pyramid Triad,” he said.

Austin motioned for her to lower her gun.

“What’s your job?” he said.

“I never left the gangs,” Yoo said. “I’m a high-level foot soldier. I don’t make decisions. I only follow orders.”

“Who ordered you to get Joe to the fortune cookie warehouse?”

“After Joe stopped by my office, I reported his visit. I usually just talk to the next in the line of command. That’s as high as I go. That way, if I ever got busted, I’d be limited in what I could tell. This time, I talked to the top dog.”

Austin thought back to the raid on the Beebe.

“You’ve been with the Triad a long time,” he said. “What do you know about a guy in your organization with a shaved head and a bad temper?”

Yoo blinked in surprise.

“Sounds like Chang,” he said, “the one I talked to. He’s in charge of the gang network worldwide, guys like the Ghost Devils. Do you know him?”

Austin ignored the question.