He wondered whether this was another round in General Deng’s charade. In the past five days there had been four other passing boats and one private plane, meaning that in the span of less than a week, Mango Cay had seen a three hundred percent increase in casual passersby as compared to the entire last two and a half years. Gibson knew this had nothing to do with coincidence: while the increased traffic flow, arriving at the worst possible time for the project, might have been the result of a leak from one of the general’s guests, or even a freak occurrence of chance, the more likely scenario was that Deng had planned it. Either the general was conducting a test or, Gibson thought, worse.
This latest drive-by felt different, though. It wasn’t Deng’s style. This one felt to Gibson like a visit from some dumb, oblivious asshole in a noisy speedboat snapping random shots of a beautiful tropical isle, or better yet, the opposite: a visit from somebody who knew exactly what he was doing and just happened to be acting like a dumb, oblivious asshole.
Gibson deposited the binoculars on the bar between the lounge and the kitchen in his suite and fired up a Black & Decker blender. The blender was racked full of sliced fruit, which the maid, whose name was Lana, knew to leave for him three times a day. He shoveled six ounces of creatine powder into the blender along with ice, nonfat milk, and the fruit, downed the protein shake in three tremendous gulps, stretched his massive arms above his head, and flipped off the kitchen’s ceiling fan on his way out of the room.
It was time for a workout.
In a meticulously designed circuit, iPod blasting N.W.A. in his ears, Gibson pumped iron for ninety straight minutes. He worked with massive stacks of weight in endless sets. While he pumped, he cleansed his mind of impurities and focused solely on the dumb asshole in the Apache racing boat.
While he was fully capable of detecting and tracking such passing boats anywhere within miles of Mango Cay, he was generally forced to allow these visitors to take their look and move on. It was only when he suspected something sensitive had been revealed-say, for instance, the dozen fucking commie pinkos funding the whole project being photographed frolicking together in the water of the lagoon-that Gibson was forced to take additional measures. He always made sure the additional measures took place back on the visitors’ home turf-as far away from the island as possible.
The pilot of the Apache, whoever he was, had taken photographs of people who could never be photographed together, and that meant that Gibson would now have to deal with the man.
He hit the climax of his workout with a series of lat pull-downs, veins nearly popping from his arms as he mimicked pull-ups in a seated position with over two times his body weight. He polished off the last rep with ease, stretched on the aerobics mat he kept in the corner of the room against a mirror, then made his way through a set of double doors at the back of the weight room. It was necessary for him to punch in an entry code to pass through the doorway.
It was here-and in the daisy-chained series of dual-G5 processor-based desktops functioning as the system’s central processing unit-where the software was housed for Gibson’s $168 million surveillance system, the cost of which he knew to the nickel, since he’d been the one to commission its installation.
With a few keystrokes he had on the monitor in front of him the full array of data that the system had already gathered on the topic of the Apache racing boat. Radar and sonar readings, 360-degree infrared photography, 1,200-millimeter zoom lens snapshots, background checks on any registered owners-all automatically conducted by the software while Gibson had worked out. Also there were the Apache’s registration data; numerous close-up photographs of the asshole piloting the vessel, in which photographs Spike Gibson was able to see that the man had been reviewing maps, not simply taking photographs; and the precise location of the boat every five minutes following its departure, made possible by the private satellite aboard which Gibson rented camera space. He saw that the Apache was steaming west-northwest across the Caribbean Sea, on a course, the system speculated, for either the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, or Florida. When the trace on the vessel’s owner popped up on his screen, Gibson saw that the boat was registered to Albert Einstein, listed under an address in Paris, France.
Funny guy, Gibson thought. Funny fucking guy.
The stench of trouble wafting from the man behind the wheel of the racing boat was, he thought, nearly overwhelming-but if nothing else, it had become obvious the dumb asshole had nothing to do with General Deng and his fucking games.
Gibson returned to the balcony and stared out at the Caribbean, across which his new acquaintance Albert Einstein had arrived, and then left.
Albert, Gibson thought, you’ll soon see that I can be a pretty funny fucking guy too.
The revolutionary leaders attending Deng’s Mango Cay missile seminar were permitted to carry firearms. The weapons allowance would make the guests more likely to accept Deng’s invitation, and attend, as the invitation stipulated, solo. No security detail was permitted-not for the final segment of the leaders’ voyage, nor for their time on-island-so the firearm policy served as a security blanket.
This sense of security proved useful when, near the conclusion of a celebratory meal arranged for the men on the final night of their stay, Hiram the bartender flipped the knob on a rather large canister lodged beneath the poolside bar. His introductory remarks concluded, Admiral Li-who, following Deng’s departure the prior day, had assumed the duties of host-excused himself from the dinner. Lana the maid quickly served the hors d’oeuvres, depositing seven platters of food on the long table before moving into the kitchen and out its rear door. This left Hiram alone behind the bar, at least until the point at which he turned the knob on the canister and strode calmly off in the direction of the Greathouse.
While it appeared to supply the bar’s soft-drink gun, the canister actually housed a batch of the nerve agent VX. The canister was charged with sufficient supply-assuming the gas was administered judiciously-to exterminate most of the inhabitants of any major metropolis.
The premixed VX took approximately forty-nine seconds to flow from the canister, down its tubes, and out through the heater stands beside the dining table, the stands tripling as the source for illumination, nighttime heat, and the thin, odorless, amber mist of the world’s deadliest airborne nerve toxin. It took fewer than thirty seconds for the concentrated dose to paralyze every leader seated at the table.
Four of the men managed to draw their personal firearms upon being struck by the initial physical symptoms of the fog-seized lungs, immediate vomiting, defecation, and seizures-but the guns fell from fingers or froze in clutched hands as full paralysis followed. The remaining complement of guests perished within one minute of the initial emission. Only two men remained conscious for longer than fifteen of these sixty seconds.
Just over an hour later, outfitted in a Gulf War-style chemical warfare suit, Hiram returned to the poolside party. Wheeling in on one of the resort’s golf carts, he removed an industrial-strength, oscillating fan from the vehicle and stood it facing the lagoon behind the dinner table. He stepped behind the bar, shut off the VX canister, and proceeded to crank the fan to its highest setting. He returned after another two hours armed with a hose from the pool house; still wearing the suit, he left the fan running as he hosed down the entire poolside deck, including every body, chair, utensil, and scrap of food that occupied it.
Another two hours after Hiram’s initial cleansing, Gibson, Li, and Lana arrived aboard the pair of limousine-length carts. An emaciated black man rode in the rear of Lana’s cart, and when Lana braked to a stop, he rose as though she’d ordered him to do so, which she had not. He exited the cart and stood before her on the poolside tile wearing no protective gear. At Lana’s command, the former wino from the pawnshop alcove on East Queen Street then loaded the bodies collapsed around the dinner table aboard the pair of limo carts.