Pyotr remained silent.
“Don’t bother answering. Your shoes told me everything.”
Pyotr grimaced as he looked at Parris. “I’ll say nothing to you, you worthless, black-”
The HK coughed out a single shot to his throat, and Pyotr flipped over backwards and onto the floor. She then pointed the gun to Walsh. “You want to make a redneck comment too?”
Walsh had his eyes shut when the shot rang out, but now opened them slowly and turned around. He looked at the hole in the wall where the bullet struck-there was blood spatter around it. Pyotr had been thrown back and he hung off the bed from the waist up.
“Jesus Christ, that was dumb! That was a real dumb thing to do.” Walsh looked back at Parris.
“Shut up!” yelled Parris with a hard Bajan accent. “You can shoot off you mout’ too and you’ll get exactly the same t’ing. But I ain’t done wit’ you yet.”
Walsh looked at her with a blank stare as though he would’ve said something had he understood what she just said.
“Up you get. Don’t try anything on me because I’m armed with enough Pandora to wipe out the city, so you best not try anything stupid.”
Walsh seemed to understand her that time, since she’d dropped the accent. “What? Are you insane? And where are we going anyway?”
“We’re going to pay the rest of your group a visit. Where are they?”
Walsh got up with both hands held high. “We were supposed to meet at the Tsukiji Fish Market.”
“When?”
“In half an hour.”
“Get dressed, ‘cause that’s where you’re taking me.”
Chapter 29
Tsukiji Fish Market, Chuo Ward, Tokyo
Raindrops dotted the windshield as Fox and his prisoner waited in the car, alone in a deserted parking lot in one of the world’s largest fish markets. Fox sat diagonally in the backseat where he could keep an eye on him at all times. He was relieved that Sato’s imposter had a cell phone-one with a digital voice recorder. The rest was easy. He forced him to record himself with the phrases Fox gave him. Then he called Walsh from a payphone in a discreet location and played back the recorded message into the phone. He did this while he made the imposter face a wall with both arms and feet apart. It was clean and efficient, with the absence of his voice and his and Walsh’s names- the Boeisho’s own Echelon system would never pick anything up.
Fox couldn’t recall the last time he had seen a parking lot that was so clean. Not a shred of paper was seen blowing about. He saw a car approach from the opposite direction, moments after, the imposter turned off the car engine. The other car stopped about fifty meters away. Why did Walsh stop so far away? Fox looked past the driver into Walsh’s car hoping he could gather a clue. He wasn’t able to.
He tapped the back of the car seat with the barrel of the gun. “Get out-and slowly. Remember your hands.” Obediently, the imposter stepped out, left the door open and kept both hands held up high as he walked forward. Fox got out too, leaving the Micro Uzi inside, and he closed both his and the driver’s doors.
Fox allowed a bit more than an arm’s length between him and the imposter before he followed. Something wasn’t right. He looked around. It was just an empty parking lot. The market itself was deserted. If a sniper had him in his sights, they’d have to be outside the market in one of the surrounding buildings. The chance that his phone call was intercepted was unlikely. Maybe the imposter somehow sent out a distress signal. But Fox had searched him from head to toe, he was clean. He didn’t sense an ambush, but his old army instincts kicked in. That’s when he noticed there was someone behind Walsh.
“Stop.”
The imposter obeyed as his hands began to drop slightly.
“Walsh, why don’t you come on out?” There was movement behind Walsh. The back door swung open and out came Dr. Parris with a sidearm pointed at Walsh. Her eyes narrowed and a slight scowl developed as she shook her head slowly. He saw her lips move and Walsh got out. With the opposite hand she shoved him forward, staying a few feet behind him.
Fox felt a slight chill as a gust of wind blew through the parking lot. “Would either of you mind telling me what’s going on?”
“She’s a traitor, and she’s armed with Pandora,” Walsh yelled.
Parris kept an eye on both Walsh and Fox. “Go ahead. Shoot me. You’ll kill me, yourself, and a few million others.”
She better not mean what I think she does. “I see. Do you mind telling me how you got hold of Pandora?”
“Your partner set us up,” Parris yelled. “His friends in Ares killed Dobbs and Levickis. They were counting on Hashimoto killing me too. Ironically, he saved me.”
It suddenly hit Fox. I knew it. But wait a minute…of course…the tracking bug in my watch. Only Walsh could’ve gotten close enough to bug it. He could’ve done so before I boarded the plane at Entebbe, while I was in the shower. “So what has Hashimoto promised you? A life of total bliss after the final holocaust?”
“I don’t plan to go on with them. I’m just as guilty as you are for corrupting what could’ve been a perfect world,” Parris asserted.
Fox noticed the imposter’s hands drop a bit more. “Keep your hands up. I’m still watching you.” His hands went up quickly. “Let me get this straight. We’ve both, in our separate times, helped bring down terrorists and other criminals, and now you’re saying that we were doing more harm than good?”
“You’re a fool. Marx said you wouldn’t understand.”
“Maybe not. But what I do understand is that you’ve been brainwashed by a psychopath. And I also know that the real Dr. Nita Parris wouldn’t be easily persuaded unless she was under someone else’s control.”
Parris smirked. “You’re always full of answers, aren’t you?”
Fox clenched his teeth. “You studied Clarity, you know what it does. The only thing is, you don’t want to admit that you’re a victim, do you?”
Parris nudged Walsh below his neck with the tip of her gun as his hands started to drop. They went back up again quickly.
“It’s too bad I didn’t get a chance to get to know you too well,” said Fox. “Although we started off on the wrong foot, I figured you for the type of woman that wouldn’t bend to someone else’s will.” Fox saw the instant change in Parris’s eyes and knew he’d better move quickly. The imposter certainly saw the same thing and both he and Fox dove to opposite sides a split second before he heard a loud bang which was instantly followed by an invisible object that flew by his left ear.
Parris was about to take a second shot when Walsh swung out his right arm, caught her arm underneath, sending the second bullet into the sky.
Fox was kicked to his lower back and fell to the ground, causing the Sig to fly from his hand. As he tried to get up, he received another kick to his stomach that flipped him over onto his back. This was not the position to be in, leaving himself at a disadvantage.
The imposter stood above him, with his right leg raised as though to drop a kick on him, when a splatter of blood along with small pieces of bone, muscle, and intestine exploded from his stomach. He dropped to his knees and keeled over onto the concrete as a red ring of blood formed around his torso.
That was the last shot from the HK before Walsh managed to grab hold of Parris’s arm, pulling the gun out of her grip and throwing her onto the hood of the car. Very quickly she spun around and kicked the suppressor from Walsh’s hand before he had a chance to fire a shot. While he was knocked off balance from the impact, Parris spun around the opposite direction and connected a second crescent kick to his jaw, making him stumble the other way. She charged him with a series of combo punches, too quick for him to block. As he stumbled back she pushed as hard as she could against the ground with her feet and propelled herself into the air. With a slightly arched back, she transferred her energy into driving her right knee upwards and struck Walsh in the chest with a flying knee
