the house and noticed that the front gate to the driveway had opened automatically when the power was cut. Ten seconds.
“Have you sighted the charge on the fireworks display?” Hanley asked.
“Got it,” King said.
“Protect your eyes after the shot,” Hanley said.
“I’ll switch back to regular sights,” King agreed.
“We go in five, four, three, two, one.”
King squeezed the trigger and hit the explosive packet Murphy had laid in place hours earlier. The fireworks exploded with a roar. Roman candles streaked skyward and the large mortarlike devices began to spew forth in belches. There was shrieking and thumping sounds as the fireworks began to discharge. King rubbed his eyes and stared at the now-lit-up scene.
Three flickers from a flashlight at the front of the tent caught his attention.
“I have a signal the switch has been made,” King noted.
“Signal the helicopter,” Hanley said to one of the operators.
“She’s having a seizure,” Ho shouted.
Monica Crabtree hung on to Ho’s neck and rolled her eyes back in her head. A doctor Ho knew was dancing on one of the tables nearby, but he didn’t respond to Ho’s request to come over. At just that instant, Barrett walked over.
“This woman is sick,” Ho said.
The guard grabbed Crabtree and slid her to the ground. The inside of the tent was chaos, the music was blaring, but in the dim light no one noticed the band had left the stage. Ho’s head was spinning and he was having trouble concentrating. The guard placed his lips over Crabtree’s.
“No tongue, please,” Crabtree whispered.
Faking CPR, the guard turned to Ho. “This woman is dying.”
“Call for help,” Ho said.
The guard reached for the radio on his belt and called for an ambulance.
“Juan,” Hanley said, “the bird is inbound.”
“Time to pull out,” Cabrillo said to his team. “Round everyone up.”
Reinholt and Pryor were rolling the cart containing the false-bottomed speakers over the lawn to the far side of the heliport. Once the cart was positioned, they removed green light bars from their pockets and bent them in half. The chemical reaction made the tubes glow and they spread them in a crude circle so the helicopter pilot would know where to land.
The scene inside the tent was absolutely chaotic. People were singing, howling, dancing and prancing. Sung Rhee was groping a woman at his table, the mayor of Macau was drinking the water out of the table arrangement.
Only Winston Spenser seemed composed. When his stomach was upset, he was sensitive to fruit juice. He had faked the toast and was beginning to see something was terribly wrong. Right then, he felt a prick on his neck. A second later, his head slumped over on the table.
THE traffic opened up for a second and the police car racing along the Inner Port Road managed to make some headway. In the distance, the officer managed to glimpse the motorcycles making a turn onto Calcada da Barra. Pushing the gas pedal to the floor, he raced after the retreating pair of motorcycles.
“I have them in sight,” he shouted over the radio. “They’re northwest on Calcada.”
The man aboard the motorcycle carrying the Buddha glanced in his rearview mirror and saw the police car approaching. He waved his hand in the air and the second motorcyclist turned his head. Dropping back a little, he waited until the police car was right behind him. Then he reached over and tripped a lever on his sidecar.
20
STANLEY Ho’s meticulously planned party had deteriorated into a bacchanalia.
Juan Cabrillo walked over to where Ho was standing next to the prone Crabtree. Ho was in a daze. There were so many things happening, his drug-addled brain could not comprehend them all. A few moments ago, the lesbian party planner had come to him and said that she could not figure out how to restore the lights inside the tent and offered to have some workers raise some of the side panels to allow the scant natural moonlight to filter inside. It was now a little brighter inside the tent, but many of the guests had started wandering outside onto the lawn.
“Sir,” the security guard said, “the roads are choked with traffic and the ambulances can’t get through. They recommended an air evacuation.”
Ho stared down. A minor member of a royal family expiring at his party would definitely put a crimp in his social aspirations.
“Do it,” Ho said through the fog in his brain.
“I already did,” the guard admitted, “but we have another problem.”
That was all Ho needed.
“What is it?”
“There’s another guest slumped over,” the guard said, pointing toward Spenser.
