The American nodded. “Because you want to, not because you have to, though. Am I right?”
Grigor gave that a single nod.
“Good,” said the American. “That works for us.”
Grigor made a slight gesture and one of his aides came hurrying out of the shadows. Grigor spoke to him in the language of the Red Order-a language Vox had learned well enough over the last year to catch the gist of Grigor’s orders. The aide bowed and scuttled away.
“It will be so delicious to hang him by the heels and let his blood rain down. I would not even drink it. I would let it pool upon the ground and then piss in it.”
“I like the way you think,” said Vox, “but we need him alive for a little while longer. Him and Rasouli.”
“Why? All we need now are the codes.”
He gestured to a small device that lay on a brass table beside his throne. It was a converted satellite phone that had been rebuilt with Vox’s own scrambler technology.
“Everything’s in motion, Grigor,” assured Vox. “A little more patience, a couple of tweaks, and then you can start your revolution and crack the pillars of heaven.”
The King of Thorns glared with red hatred into the shadows. “I wonder sometimes if I can trust you, Hugo.”
“You can definitely-” Vox suddenly doubled over as a ferocious coughing fit tore through him. He spat out the whiskey and reeled, catching himself on a stone wall as the coughs racked his wasted frame. The coughing fit lasted a whole minute during which Grigor did nothing except observe with a faint smile of amusement on his lips.
Vox tore a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his mouth as the last deep coughs shook him. When he removed it the center of the cloth was stained with a few drops of blood. The scent of it perfumed the air.
“God,” he wheezed. “Goddamn it…”
Grigor traced the contours of his own mouth with the tip of a black fingernail.
“What does it feel like to be so weak? To be sick?”
Vox glared up at him from beneath knitted brows. “Fuck you.”
The King of Thorns laughed.
“You’d better step up the goddamn treatments,” rasped Vox, “because that scrambler isn’t worth shit without the access code, and without that scrambler you and your bloodsucking freak show of a race are going to remain slaves for the rest of time. So wipe that shit-eating smile off your face and find out where that asshole Dr. Hasbrouck is. I need my shots.”
The smile on Grigor’s face faded only a little as the echoes of Vox’s words bounced off the cold stone walls of the caverns. “The doctor says that you’d never survive the last round of treatments.”
“You better pray he’s wrong, Grigor.” Vox spat onto the floor. The sputum was dark with blood. “If I die then all your dreams die with me.”
Part Two
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Golden Oasis Hotel
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 10:02 a.m.
Ghost and I made it down to the hotel’s basement laundry without being seen by anyone. I opened the back door and listened for commotion or sirens. There were none. I was right-no one had heard the fight and the shot was either silenced or fired from a great distance. It felt a little weird to me, even after everything I’ve done, that such a traumatic and dramatic moment could go unnoticed by people a couple of floors away. It makes you wonder about all of the ghastly things that happen every day all around us.
There were so many things about what had just occurred that I didn’t know where to begin thinking about them. No-that wasn’t true. The goon with the fangs knew about the flash drive, and he seemed pretty damned stunned when I mentioned the nukes. I wasn’t sure how to interpret that. Did it mean that he knew what was on the flash drive but didn’t think either Rasouli had told me or that I’d had a chance to check the drive’s contents? Or was the nuke thing a big surprise to him?
Or did I not yet know enough to ask myself the right question?
Yes, muttered the Cop in my head.
The Warrior was still freaked out about the goon with the fangs. When you spend most of your life training in martial arts, military technique, and the specialized skills of special ops as I have, you come to accept that combat in all of its forms is a science. It’s largely mathematical. If you hit someone in a specific part of the body at a precise angle and with sufficient force there is a predictable response, give or take some necessary variables. The same applies for a wide range of things, from lifting a barbell full of weights to shooting a pistol at a target. For some of this stuff there are thousands of years of trial and error as well as data collection to support what we know. Not what we guess but what we know. When you separate it all from sports or esoteric pursuits, combat is a science. I’ve dedicated my life to that science; if I have a church then that’s it.
However, what I just experienced did not make sense according to anything I knew or believed.
I will rip your throat out and drink your life. The killer’s voice kept whispering that to me.
I pulled out my cell and called Church.
“Go,” he said.
“Boss, I am having a really, really bad day,” I said.
“Are you talking about the devices?”
“Not directly.”
“I’m on with the president. Do you need immediate assistance or can you wait ten?”
“I can wait ten,” I said, “but not eleven.”
“Understood.” Church disconnected.
I sighed. In a very odd and childish way I felt snubbed by Church. I recognized it as a human overreaction to great fear mingled with physical injury. I needed Mommy or Daddy to kiss the boo-boo and tell me everything’s all right. So, yeah, I’m immature at times. Just like everyone else.
I found a cracked bowl and filled it with clean water for Ghost. While he drank, I tried to assess my current situation. It was like inventorying a Kansas trailer park after tornado season. I hurt in so many places I stopped counting. My arms throbbed from blocking his punches and kicks, let alone those spots where his shots had actually landed. When I pulled up my shirt I saw huge red bruises forming; the intensity of color a clear indication of the amount of tissue damage he’d inflicted. Last time I had bruises like that was when I’d taken a pair of heavy-caliber rifle rounds in my vest; the Kevlar had kept me alive but the psi of the impacts had to go somewhere.
Ghost looked up from his bowl, water dripping from his snout. I doubt Shepherds could identify bruises by sight, but his sensitive nose could probably smell the blood seeping through the damaged muscle tissue.
He whuffed and began drinking again.
“Whuff,” I agreed.
I dearly wanted to curl into a fetal position on my couch and sleep until November. Alternately, six shots of Jim Beam and a gallon of beer would work well as comfort food; but I was deep in Indian country, and there were hard miles to go before I had any kind of comfort.
“If you’d gone to the damn FBI academy you could have been politely arresting people between afternoons on the golf course,” I reminded myself. All of my inner voices told me to shut the fuck up.
The coin-operated washers and dryers were full but no one was down there. I jammed the cellar door shut, then I turned on the faucet in the laundry sink and held my head under the cold water for almost a minute. The water that sluiced over my scalp ran red for almost half that time. The cold knocked the pain level down a few notches though, and I could feel my brain reluctantly starting to clear.
My phone rang. Church was early. Sputtering and pawing water out of my eyes, I pulled my phone and punched the button.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Hello,” she said. “How many brownie points do I have now?”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Golden Oasis Hotel