Power and Empire

Jack stood at the McDonald’s window and watched a well-dressed woman with dark curly hair pitch headlong into the crosswalk on the north side of the street. He thought at first she’d stumbled, but it was impossible to mistake the rigid spasms of someone who’d been shot in the brain. Her nervous system short-circuited, and she lay on her side, arms suddenly stiff, as if she were sleepwalking. Her legs made obscenely grotesque pumping motions as if she were riding an invisible bicycle. A dark wig fell away, spilling tresses of blond hair onto the pavement. A moment later her muscles relaxed and she was still.

“It’s her,” Ryan gasped, loud enough to draw a look from a little kid eating an ice cream cone at the window beside him.

The Gendarmería officer at the nearest barricade also recognized a shooting victim when he saw one. He brought his MP5 to high ready and began scanning the storefronts for a threat.

The blonde’s body lay half in the street. The light turned green and traffic honked, unaware. For a moment Jack thought she would be run over, but the drivers in the lead slowed down and stopped, forming a blockade, for the moment, at least. It really didn’t matter. She was beyond saving.

Ryan thought of running to act as though he was rendering aid, and maybe grabbing any identification.

Midas came over the net again, still a quiet hiss. “Jack, I can hear you thinking. Don’t go out there. This shooter is still on her gun.”

“Sitrep when able,” Chavez said, surely feeling blind.

“Shooter just took out the blonde from the airport,” Midas whispered. “Suppressed subsonic .22 and a bolt-action. I didn’t hear shit and I’m twenty feet above her.”

“He’s right,” Ding said. “You stay put, Jack. I mean it.”

Ryan started to say he understood, but a familiar face drew his attention across the street. A crowd of panicked pedestrians braved the traffic to cross against the light directly toward Jack. Amid the fleeing pack, a tall woman with her hair tucked up into a baseball cap walked briskly, working to go just fast enough to stay in the middle. She carried a mobile phone in one hand, and with the other she tugged at the bill of her cap. It was the brunette Jack had watched disappear into Villa 31. A look of barely controlled panic flashed in her eyes. She’d just watched her friend die, and it was obvious she thought she was about to be next.

• • •

Only the two men of the Gendarmería nearest the dead woman realized something was amiss. The second, though highly trained, had never seen anyone in the throes of death. Too far away to see the tiny spot of blood below the woman’s left ear, he thought she might be having a seizure — something she would get over — and it took him almost a full minute before he radioed his command post to request an ambulance. He was on a protective detail and did not leave his post at the door to the restaurant.

The officers in the room heard the call go out to the command post reporting a possible heart attack victim and turned their attention back inward to watch the staff. After all, this was a steak restaurant. Virtually everyone in the place had a blade.

Li Zhengsheng stood with both hands up on the bar and fumed, trying to think of something else to say. It had been well over a minute since he’d entered his half of the code — but nothing was happening. The bartender did not speak English or Chinese — the only two languages in which Li was conversant — making this an extremely uncomfortable predicament. Long Yun stood to his left, carefully positioning himself between the far wall and the foreign minister, but making certain to keep his body behind the protection of the heavy mahogany bar.

Li nodded stupidly at the bartender, forcing a smile that he was certain made him look insane. He kept his feet planted but tilted his head to the side toward the colonel. Anger knotted with the anticipation already in his gut.

“I cannot stand here forever!” he whispered. “Something has gone wrong!”

“Abort?”

That fool, Prieto, shouted across the room as if they were at a sports match. “Mr. Foreign Minister,” he said. “Please come and resume your seat.”

Li held up a hand, signaling that he would be a moment longer. What was the girl waiting for?

Minister Prieto stood and motioned toward Li’s chair with a flourish, as if he would not take no for an answer. “Please, señor. I will order you a special drink if you wish, but it is no meeting without our guest of honor.”

Li clenched his teeth, hardly able to breathe, let alone speak, he was so livid. He reached into his pocket to retrieve the device with which he could enter the abort code — at the same moment the west wall of the restaurant belched a great ball of dust and debris. The explosion was not a huge one, as explosions went. Li had seen much larger. Still, the concussion in the confines of the small restaurant was deafening.