Pandemic Page 76

“Steve, you have done your nation a great service, but our work is not over yet.”

Steve tried to speak with volume, with intensity, but his throat hurt, felt painfully scratchy — all that came out of his mouth was a cracking whisper, the voice of a boy rather than that of a man.

“We don’t have to kill them. They have no idea what’s going on. Just give them their money and they’ll leave.”

Bo Pan’s nostrils flared. He drew a breath, ready to give a lecture.

Steve spoke first. “If you kill them, I’ll tell.”

The words sounded petulant, childish, but it was all he could think to say.

Bo Pan’s head tilted forward until he stared out from under his bushy eyebrows.

The footage from the Platypus replayed over and over again in Steve’s thoughts. Not the low-res pictures taken every twenty seconds, but the full-speed, high-def footage stored on the machine’s internal drives. The dark footage of the man entering the Los Angeles’s nose cone, light beaming from a bulky suit that looked like it belonged to like a fat astronaut … the look of surprise on the diver’s face as the Platypus shot in, cut the umbilical cord and then s.n.a.t.c.hed the small, black container … a brief instant of that expression shifting to horror as the snake curled around his bulbous helmet.

Steve hadn’t seen anything else, because the Platypus was already slithering quietly through the wreck, leaving the diver behind to die in an explosion of C-4 that likely blew the sub’s nose cone wide open.

That diver’s blood was on Steve’s hands.

He’d thought only of himself. He’d programmed what Bo Pan told him to program, because he’d just wanted to go home.

Bo Pan wanted more death: Steve would not allow that to happen, even if saying no meant dying himself.

Steve sat very still, wondering if he’d die right in this very room, among empty cans of c.o.ke and crinkly bags of Doritos.

And then, Bo Pan’s face softened. The old man relaxed. He let out a sigh.

“As you wish,” he said. “We would not have achieved this without you, Steve. We will pay them, then we go on our way.”

Steve blinked. “You mean it?”

Again, the words of a child. He was in the middle of an international incident, had just defeated the U.S. Navy, was trying to stop the murder of three innocent men, and he sounded like a boy whose mother had just promised him a new toy.

Bo Pan nodded. “Yes. You are right. It would just cause too many problems. They don’t know what is going on, so it is not worth the risk. We will dock and I will leave.”

Which brought up another problem — Steve wanted to be as far away from Bo Pan as possible.

“Am I supposed to go with you?”

“No. You will return to your parents.”

Steve was going home. In a day, maybe a little more, he’d be sitting at the restaurant, eating his father’s cooking. Could it be true?

Bo Pan smiled a grandfather’s smile. “I am sorry you can’t come with me right now. Soon enough, however, you will be welcomed in China as a hero.”

The old man thought Steve still wanted glory, when all Steve wanted to do was hide and forget this had ever happened.

“Okay,” Steve said. “I understand.”

Bo Pan took out his cell phone. He awkwardly typed in a message, one slow thumb at a time. He sent the message, yawned, then put the phone away.

“I have arranged transportation,” he said. “Four men will be waiting for us when we arrive at the dock to help us with the Platypus. A truck will take you and your machine back to Benton Harbor.”

Four men? The Platypus wasn’t that heavy. Steve and Bo Pan could move it on their own — crate and all — and had done so many times.

Bo Pan rubbed his face. He sat on his bunk, laid his head on the pillow.

“I am going to sleep,” he said. “Don’t make noise.”

The old man started snoring almost immediately.

Steve tried to stay calm. He felt a fever coming on, but he didn’t have time to get sick. He was probably safe. Probably. Bo Pan still needed him; just because they’d found one alien artifact didn’t mean there weren’t more on the bottom of Lake Michigan, and only Steve and his Platypus could recover those artifacts if they were discovered.

But Bo Pan didn’t need Cooper, Jeff or José.

Steve stared at Bo Pan for a few minutes, made sure the man was actually asleep. Then, he sat down at his little table. His fingers started working the laptop’s keys: quietly, so quietly.

The storm outside was finally dying down. They would be in Chicago in a few hours.

He had to act fast.

KNOCKIN’ AT THE DOOR

Heat.

She felt it through her biosafety suit. Angry wind scattered loose papers across the crumbling asphalt and the cracked bricks that made up the road’s surface. At the end of the street, she could see the wide Detroit River — steam rose up from it, heavy steam, because the water was boiling. Abandoned buildings on either side of the street seemed to sag slightly, like they were exhausted, like the heat had taken the masonry and paint to just a few degrees below the melting point.

This wasn’t right. Why was it so hot? The bomb hadn’t hit yet.

She started to sweat suddenly, not in droplets but in buckets that poured off her, dripped down to fill the boots of her sealed suit.

Sweat pooled around her ankles … her shins … her knees.

Her hands shot to the back of her neck, clawing at the helmet’s release clasps. Sweat pooled to her thighs.