Kate addressed the woman softly in Mandarin. “What was that? I didn’t hear.”
This time the old woman screamed in forceful Mandarin, slapping her open hand against her skull.
“What is it? What’s she saying?”
Kate struggled to understand, the old woman still screaming. “It’s in his head,” Kate said. “She says it’s in his head.”
Chapter 30
The old woman moaned down at the earth, arms clutched against the side of her skull.
“What? What’s in his head?”
Michael did his best to reach out to the woman, placing his hands on her shoulders to calm her, but she pulled away, slapping her skull, still screaming.
“Tell me what’s she saying.”
“The same thing. It’s in his head.”
Michael turned toward the villagers who had gathered from the surrounding hills. “Ask them if they know what she’s talking about.”
Kate addressed the villagers. They responded, but one look at Kate’s face told Michael she didn’t understand what they were getting at. “They say the old woman talked a lot. About the war.”
“Which war?”
Kate translated as the villager went on. “He says the war that happened long ago. The war with many doctors.”
“What kind of doctors?”
Kate translated. “He says, Japan. Japanese doctors.”
Michael thought about it. “The Imperial Japanese Army was a Nazi ally here. They had a whole lot of guns, but not many doctors, at least not out here. Not in the sticks.” Michael paused for a moment. “Oh, Jesus.”
“What?”
“I read some of the history of the area before I left home. There were hospitals in Guilin. They were known for certain procedures.”
“Procedures?”
“Keep the woman outside,” Michael said, already halfway back to the hut.
***
Michael knew what needed to be done, he just wasn’t certain he wanted do it. What he hadn’t made clear to Kate were the type of activities the Japanese Imperial Army had become famous for: namely the medical experimentation upon and vivisection of conquered peoples. Michael recalled that the experiments ranged from testing vaccines to the clinical administration of torture, right on through to genetic manipulation and vivisection. But staring down at the old man lying there in a spray of arterial blood, his head half blown off, Michael was less concerned with what the experiments were comprised of than with what came next.
Steeling his nerve, Michael looked away from the old man’s corpse to the clay oven in the corner of the hut. On top of the newly washed dishes sat a pair of yellow rubber gloves. Michael put them on, noting that the old man’s fingers were still wrapped around his pocket knife, rigor mortis setting in. Michael had no desire to make this process anymore invasive than it had to be so he reached into his own pocket for his newly purchased Swiss Army knife. He opened up the main blade thinking that this was probably not what the manufacturer had intended. The old man’s face was gone, disintegrated in a flurry of shot, and Michael knew that his first task was to cut away the skin so that he could get to the skull. Holding the head steady in one hand, Michael exhaled and made his first cut, sinking the blade into the flesh laterally along the pulpy scalp. Though this was definitely a first for him, he thought that all those years of carving jack-o’-lanterns could finally be put to good use.
“Michael?” Kate said, poking her head in the doorway unable to keep the look of what had to be horror from spreading across her face.
“Just keep the woman and the kid away.”
Michael carefully sliced the bloody skin back from the skull. He continued cutting slowly but firmly with the knife, slicing the skin down toward the left eye.
“What are you doing?”
“You heard her. It’s in his head.”
“It’s an expression. Like I’ve got a song in my head. It doesn’t mean I literally have a song in my head.”
“Here I think it does.”
Michael doubled back and continued his incision down toward the right eye. Holding the head steady in one hand, he took hold of the flap of skin between thumb and forefinger and peeled the flesh down the skull like the skin of a grape.
“Do you have to?” Kate asked, covering her mouth and looking away.
Michael’s medical training was limited to basic first-aid, but with the skin gone and the bone of the skull exposed beneath, he saw exactly what he had thought he might: a discoloration in the skull. The discoloration was darker than the rest of the area, round, and about two inches in diameter. It’s hue was a yellowish black, but when Michael rubbed it with his glove, the fatty substance rubbed away revealing a perfectly round metal plate inset in the old man’s skull like an all knowing third eye. Michael reached back toward the sink grasping a pitcher of water. Quickly rinsing the plate, the small recessed screws holding it anchored firmly into the skull became visible, their tiny Phillips heads shining out at him like stars. The four screws were encrusted with calcium deposits after being in the old man’s skull for decades, but with the help of his Swiss Army knife, Michael was able to scrape them off and twist them two turns each. After this he inserted the blade of his knife into edge of the skull around the perimeter of the plate. One smooth lever motion and the plate popped out, nearly hitting the floor before Michael caught it in his yellow gloved hand.
Though it was hard to tell in the low light if the plate was nickel or platinum, one thing was clear: it had been cast to resemble a full moon. Japanese Kanji were inscribed around its circumference, a stylized relief of a double peaked karst etched in the foreground. Twin peaks rising before a full moon, the pointed mountain looked strangely familiar yet like nothing Michael had ever seen before. It looked, Michael thought, like the devil’s pitchfork.
Chapter 31
Rand laid into Mobi like there was no tomorrow. He threatened prison. He threatened a lively physical interrogation before Mobi made it to prison. And he threatened an active sex life for the duration of Mobi’s stay in prison. Then, after several wasted hours during which Mobi was forced to sit in the corner like a new improved Buddha, Rand decided he needed him. He conscripted Mobi to assist his men in the installation of their equipment in JPL’s main tracking station. Apparently, the ASAT orbital platforms Alvarez had referenced could be controlled from just about anywhere provided there was a set of eyes to monitor their progress and a large enough antenna to provide secure communication. Through its Goldstone Deep Space Antenna Array and trained technicians, JPL provided both.
Alvarez clicked her tongue, clearly done with the long wait. “It looks like you’ve got all the angles covered, Colonel.”
“Nice try, but you and your engineer are sitting in on this one. I don’t want to encounter any resistance up here and the best way to ensure that is to keep you two on tap.”
“Respectfully, I have eleven active missions that I need to keep flying today. I’m sure NASA would prefer that you let us do our jobs.”
“I couldn’t give my sorry ass pension what NASA prefers,” Rand said. “That stunt your engineer pulled hacking beyond his pay grade proves he isn’t to be trusted. If there’s a problem with the uplink, I want him here where I can see him.”