Medusa

suburban malls and neighborhoods petered out, and he was moving through an industrial-commercial area.

The GPS unit indicated that he was about a block from his goal. Reasoning that a turquoise Cherokee might attract unwanted attention, Austin parked it in an alley between two buildings. He made his way on foot to the front gate of the Good Luck Fortune Cookie Company. The parking lot was empty, and the only light came from above the door to the office.

The gate was locked. Austin walked the perimeter of the chain-link fence to the rear gate. He pushed the gate open and made his way to a rear loading dock lit by a single bulb. He kept to the shadows as much as possible.

He wondered if he had the right address. Those doubts vanished when a figure stepped out from behind a Dumpster and blinded Austin with a powerful flashlight.

A deep voice said, “Hold it right there, soldier. Put your hands in the air.”

Austin stopped in his tracks and did as he was told. He sensed rather than saw someone creeping up behind him and felt his pistol slip from its holster.

“That’s better,” said the voice. “Turn around . . . real slow. I’m giving you friendly warning. These guys call themselves Ghost Devils, and they mean it. I wouldn’t screw with them.”

At least a half dozen other figures had materialized from the shadows.

“Are you a ghost or a devil?” Austin asked.

The man stepped closer.

“Just a guy doing his job. The name is Phelps.” He turned the flashlight beam up to show his face, the angle turning his droopy smile into a Halloween mask. “This place is loaded with cameras. A moth couldn’t get close without being picked up. We’ve been watching you ever since you showed up at the front door. Thanks for making my work so easy.”

“My pleasure. But how do you know I didn’t let myself get caught on purpose?”

“I don’t, which is why we’re being real careful handling you.”

“Where’s Joe?” Austin asked.

Phelps pointed his flashlight at the loading-dock door.

“That way,” he said.

The door slid up. Phelps led the way up the stairs to the dock and herded Austin through the door into the dark warehouse. Phelps hit a switch, and the interior was flooded with light. The big space was empty except for a pile of smashed cardboard cartons against one wall and two chairs side by side facing a screen.

“Fortune cookie business must not be very good,” Austin said.

“That’s a cover,” Phelps said. “Place is used mostly to hold smuggled illegal aliens. Besides, you don’t want to know your fortune. The folks I work for aren’t too happy with you.”

Austin would have agreed that his prospects for a long and happy life were slim. In addition to Phelps, he was guarded by the tough-faced Asians, all men in their twenties, dressed in black running suits and shoes. They had red bandannas tied around their heads. They looked dangerously unpredictable, but from the cocky way they slouched around with their weapons they appeared undisciplined as well.

Phelps was a tall man in his late forties. He wore jeans, Doc Martens boots, and a black T-shirt that displayed his ropy arms. He wore a U.S. NAVY SEALS baseball cap on his head. And he had Austin’s Bowen, which he examined with appraising eyes.

“Nice piece,” he said.

“Thanks. When do I get it back?”

Phelps chuckled, and slid the pistol into its holster, which he clipped to his belt. He glanced at his watch and called to a couple of Ghost Devils. They went through a door leading to the front of the building and came back after a minute with Zavala. They shoved him over into one of the chairs and motioned Austin into the other. Both men were then handcuffed to the armrests.

Zavala’s face was caked with dried blood, but he still managed to smile when he saw Austin.

“Hi, Kurt, nice of you to crash the party. Time to leave?”

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Phelps. Are you okay?”

“Charlie Yoo set me up, and some of these guys used my face for a punching bag, but nothing broken that I know of.”

“We’ll have to remember to pay them back for their hospitality.” Zavala smiled through bloodied lips.

“That’s what I like about you, Kurt. The glass is always half full. Whoops-”

The warehouse went dark just then, and the two men were enveloped in almost total blackness. After a moment, a spotlight directly overhead blinked on, and they found themselves at the center of a circle of bright white light. A second overhead spot came on about twenty-five feet to the front of where they sat.

The screen was gone, revealing a table covered in green baize. Behind the table sat a woman who seemed to be scrutinizing the two men from NUMA. She was dressed in a dark purple, two-piece outfit, and a cloak the same color was draped around her shoulders. Her dark hair was parted down the middle, and high, arched brows framed a Eurasian face.

Austin stared at the woman in disbelief.

“This is crazy,” he whispered, “but I know her. She’s the Dragon Lady.”

“I’ve seen worse-looking dragons. Why don’t you introduce me?”

“Not sure I can, Joe. The Dragon Lady wasn’t a real person.”

Zavala turned and looked at Austin as if his friend had lost his marbles.

“I’m the one who got his brain bashed around,” Zavala said. “She looks pretty real to me.”

“Me too, Joe, but the Dragon Lady was a character in a comic strip. Terry and the Pirates . . . Stereotypical femme fatale. My father used to read it to me when I was a kid. She was always causing trouble. Damn. What was her name?”

The woman’s lips parted in a smile.

“My name is Lai Choi San,” she said in a voice that would have been seductive it if hadn’t been drained of all emotion. “Bravo, Mr. Austin. Few people know I even have another name. I have been looking forward to this meeting.”

“I wish I could say the same,” Austin said. “Now that we’re good friends, maybe you’d like to tell us why you invited us here.”

He could hardly believe he was talking to a comic-strip character. Next, he’d be chatting with Roger Rabbit.

“For a start, I want you to tell me the whereabouts of Dr. Kane,” she said.

Austin shrugged.

“Kane is under government protective custody. I can’t tell you where they are holding him. Apparently, someone is trying to kill him.”

“Really?” she purred. “Who would want to do that to the brilliant doctor?”

“The same people who hijacked the lab that was developing a vaccine from the medusa toxin.”

The woman gave him a slow-burn stare, and her face actually seemed to glow with anger. Austin passed it off as a manipulation.

“What you don’t know,” she said, “is that Pyramid created the new virus. Our pharmaceutical company was experimenting with an influenza vaccine for the world market and inadvertently produced the more virulent and adaptable strain. They wanted to destroy it, but wiser heads prevailed.”

“Why didn’t wiser heads prevent the virus from breaking out?”

“That was an accident, something we would have avoided until we had developed the antidote, which would have gone to members of my organization first. You see, the virus fit in with our larger plan of destabilizing the government. The outbreak of SARS almost toppled China’s leaders. Just think how the public would react to their impotence in dealing with an even more lethal virus. They would see Pyramid step in and cure the masses. In return, we would acquire power and fortune. We would replace the Chinese government.”

“Do you know that the virus is going to hit your big cities in a couple of days?”

“It was only a matter of time, no matter what the government did. The more, the merrier.”

Austin stared at the apparition.