Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(75)

Easy does it. Don’t kill the goose.

“Tell me about his speech patterns,” he said to Hu. “I’m still astonished you didn’t have the audio in her cell. I can’t imagine what possessed you to turn it off. Start at the beginning.”

He turned to meet Hu’s dim, bloodshot eyes. The man drooped like a wilted flower, head slack on his chest. A judicious zap of coercion jolted the man’s spine, straightening it with a jerk.

Hu whimpered. His battered face was almost unrecognizable. His broken arm hung useless, his hand hugely swollen and empurpled.

“Jason,” Greaves said gently, “sharpen up. Again, from the top. And perhaps I will let you have some painkillers.”

“Yes. Ah . . . the tire blew. In the mountains,” Hu faltered. “I stopped to change it. That must have been when he got into the trunk of my car, but I just don’t understand how I didn’t feel it, or hear him, or something. He was huge. Enormous, six seven at least—”

“Just under six five, according to the video from Kirk’s cell,” Greaves corrected. “Do not exaggerate. It is unhelpful.”

“Ah, no, sir. And he said . . . he said—”

“What was his accent?” Greaves prompted. “East coast, Midwest, Northwest? California? New York? Southern? Foreign?” He’d tried to hear the attacker’s speech in Hu’s stored memories, but Hu’s brain was not wired particularly well to retain aural impressions.

“I didn’t notice any accent at all, so I’m guessing West Coast.”

“Guessing,” Greaves said. “I did not hire you to guess, Jason.”

“Sir, I’m sorry. I—”

“So at the car park, he grabbed you and put the gun to your head. And then?”

Hu stumbled and stuttered once again through his pathetic litany of failure, defeat, and betrayal. Whimpering cravenly while the attacker had slashed all the tires in the garage and gutted the security center. As if he had not had a single opportunity to raise the alarm.

Worthless, gutless, ball-less turd.

But he listened carefully, for the umpteenth time, trolling for that one fragment of information that might yield some new avenue of inquiry. He had reamed the man’s brain telepathically three times, now. The smallest detail that Hu was too stupid to see as salient could be the key to everything.

“He was so strong,” Hu whimpered, tears bubbling in his nose.

It was painful to watch. Greaves walked to the sideboard for a cup of coffee, upping the volume on a newscast that played on the computer monitor, so as not to hear the man’s wet, phlegmy gasps for breath.

A map of Oregon was on the screen. He stared at it, mentally superimposing all the roads and byways the thieves might have taken.

How had they gotten past his telepathic sentinels? He’d posted people on every exit from all the roads they might have taken. His range was enormous, but even he had to narrow them down to within a five-mile radius before he could telepathically sweep with any effectiveness.

“. . . in her psi-max visions.” Hu’s voice, somewhat steadier.

“Excuse me?” He looked at Hu.

Hu was staring at the newscast. “The terrorist attack,” he said. “In Tokyo. Lara must have called them and told them about the bomb. She was always on me and Anabel about that. Begging us to tip them off.”

Greaves shook his head angrily. “Call who?” he snarled. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Hu jerked his chin toward the screen. “The bomb. At the train station in Tokyo. They found it just in time. Lara kept seeing it in her visions. It would have taken out a big chunk of the central Tokyo train station.”

“. . . an anonymous tip,” said the attractive Asian female newscaster. “This tip led to the recovery of a duffel bag of explosives on a commuter train, which was discovered at two this afternoon. There is no information yet as to who is responsible for the bomb, and the investigation is ongoing. An amazing story, with hundreds if not thousands of lives saved—”

Greaves muted the audio and turned back to Hu. “You mean to tell me that you and Anabel knew about a terrorist plot to blow up the Tokyo train station, and you did nothing?”

Hu looked confused. “But, ah . . . well, at first, we didn’t know if she was having true visions, or . . . and with the secrecy we need to maintain for you, we just assumed—”

“Two gifted, highly trained minds put together, and you could not eke out enough creativity between you to come up with a way to discreetly, safely notify the authorities in Tokyo about this bomb?”

Hu’s mouth worked frantically. “Ah . . . ah—”

“Don’t.” Greaves held up his hand. “There’s nothing to say. You don’t care about my mission. You don’t care about the health and well-being of the people in the world around you. You are self-interested, thick and heartless. And you do not belong on my staff.”

Hu sagged, panting in short, ragged breaths, which Greaves, with his heightened senses, could not fail to smell from across the room. The wretched man lifted his eyes. Awareness of his impending death was clearly written there. Greaves did not even need telepathy to read it.

Luckily, as he did not have the stomach for it.

“Sir,” Hu said, his voice weary, but clear. “Please, just tell me. The attacker said he’d changed the info in the database. The suxamethonium. For my wife’s surgery. Please. Do you have any news about her?”