entrails of a roadkill pig. Walker had only remembered the scene recently. It played across his mind like something he’d seen, not something he’d done. But the memory of the smell of the rotting entrails, blood, and offal, the stench of the puddle of vomit and urine that little Jackie lay within—it was so powerful it had to come from his own memories, however imperfectly they were set within his mind.
At first his father had stood there, one hand on the door, the other at his mouth. What he was seeing wasn’t understandable, it wasn’t explainable. There were no words that could have been used to describe the feelings of helplessness, outrage, and fear that played a devil’s jig on his psyche as his youngest boy giggled with the voice of an old man.
“
His father had slammed the door shut immediately, leaving him in the darkness with his own insane giggles as he let the voices in his head take turns using his mouth.
“Why’d he do that?”
“You’re an ass licker.”
“Fuck a duck.”
“Suckie suckie on the rubber dubber duckie.”
The door opened slowly, almost of its own will. Jackie’s father was already backing away from the sight of his child, the lascivious look of hunger curving his little lips into something inhuman.
“Fuck a duck, Daddy. Fuck a duck.”
It would take three months for the father to find a way to get his son back, and in saving him, he’d find his own demise.
31
KADWAN. TWO MONTHS EARLIER.
The shipment from Temple of Heaven Importers had arrived. He’d had a dozen men bring the thin, man-sized box into the room he’d spent the last six months preparing. The walls, ceiling, and floor bore the results of his creation. A single brazier mounted in each corner of the room provided a dull glow.
While he sat languidly in lotus position, becoming one with the room, the men placed the box in front of him and hurried out, their eyes flashing their naive fear. He waited for the scurry of their steps to diminish, then resumed listening to the screams that were just on the edge of hearing. The power and energy of the women’s pain mixed inextricably with the swaths of their blood that he’d finger-painted upon the cold stone walls. He’d added the crushed petals of flowers to the mix, creating alternate pigments that breathed life into his work. So instead of a mere abattoir, he now had six planes of hand-painted hell, created through the agony of one hundred and fourteen women, three boys, seventeen men, and an elephant. What had once been a universal red had been transformed into an elegant multicolored creation of geometric slashes and curls, as if his artistic command of their lives had caused the blood to reshape into its own outraged intelligent designs.
With the mad screams of the dead loud in his ears, he opened the box before him. It took a while. The Chinese loved their knots and used them to keep both good and evil at bay. Finally he lifted the lid and stared at the thing that lay within the luxurious gold satin interior.
It glistened below him, telling the story of so many people who’d allowed their bodies to be colored. A tattoo of a snake here, a dragon there, a garish anchor with a naked Western woman next to the letters of someone’s long-forgotten lover, and a hundred more, all stitched together with thread stolen from the mandala rugs of Tibetan monasteries.
Touching it with a trembling finger, he felt its paper-thin fragility. Yet no matter how fragile it seemed to him, to the other it would be like a suit of titanium Kevlar. The men and women who’d gone into the creation of this wonder would keep the creature from latching onto his soul. It would allow him to survive the channeling and give him power over the one who’d been speaking with him all these months.
But he knew better. The suit of tattooed skin would be his commentary on the being’s desire to be trusted.
He unfolded his legs and stood tall. His angular shoulders and hips pressed against his rib-thin, naked brown body. His skin was a road map of self-discovery, crisscrossed with charts from thirty years of self-mutilation.
As he stepped into the suit of other people’s skin, he was delighted to hear the screams grow louder.
32
GOLDEN BUDDHA. IMPERIAL BEACH. LUNCH.
Walker and Ruiz sat in the ratty vinyl booth comparing birth dates on the Chinese zodiac. They were dressed in loose-fitting cargo pants, Hi-Tec boots, T-shirts, and hoodies. The hoodies hid the 9mms in quick-draw shoulder holsters. Their cargo pockets were filled with magazines. Each also had an MK3 knife strapped to his left calf. Walker’s T-shirt was from a restaurant in Salt Lake City called Steaks and Bitches, and had a prominent picture of a cowgirl with a steak on the end of a long fork. Ruiz wore an Old Navy shirt.
“You’re a cock,” Ruiz said.
“And you’re a goat.”
“But you’re a cock.” This time his smirk was in full force.
Walker shook his head. “It’s a rooster.”
“They’re the same thing. ‘Cockerel’ is the term for a young male fowl. We call them cocks for short. ‘Rooster’ is the slang term for a mature male. They made you a cock. Not me. Anyway, don’t blame me, blame the Chinese zodiac.”
Walker stared at Ruiz as though he’d just answered a Double Jeopardy question as the young Chinese waitress delivered their hot tea and bowls of steaming hot and sour soup. Ruiz dug in right away. Walker waited until the waitress left, then reaffirmed, “I’m a rooster.”
“Cock,” Ruiz said in between slurping his soup.
Walker ate a few spoonfuls. The taste was heavy with mushrooms, the way he liked it, and only had a bit of bite. He usually evaluated a Chinese restaurant by their ability to make hot and sour soup. This one was pretty terrific. It was going to be sad at the end of the day when they were no longer able to make the soup. But that’s what they deserved for housing a Snakehead sweatshop and way station in their basement, or so said the intelligence gleaned from the ship’s hard drive. At first, SPG wasn’t sure if it had any relevant information, but then one of the analysts began tracking the ship’s route of travel based on navigational buoy beacon responses along the coast and discovered that the ship had been anchored off the coast within ten nautical miles of the restaurant. What turned out to be a gold mine was a deeply hidden file with latitudinals and longitudinal, each with notations using the word “Pifu,” which translated roughly to “skin suit.”
When they finished, the waitress brought two heaping serving dishes of twice-cooked pork and Mongolian beef, along with a large bowl of steaming white rice. As he had with the soup, Ruiz dug in right away.
“You’re actually going to eat?” Walker asked.
“Sure, why not?”
Why not? Walker checked his watch. They were six minutes from making their move, that’s why. He looked around the restaurant. Five other tables were occupied. Three of those were regular customers. One table held a heavyset, mean-as-a-Rottweiler NCIS agent named Alice Surrey, and at the other sat Laws and Yaya. Holmes was still waiting for the board. He was forced to stay back and keep Hoover company. While Laws was yammering away at one thing or another, Yaya looked miserable. Or at least his eyes did, because that’s the only part of him that wasn’t covered in black fabric. Being the newest member of the team and conveniently Middle Eastern, he was chosen to wear the burka. Not only did it lend some authenticity, but it allowed for a lot of fabric with which to hide
