Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(76)

“You mean, is she dead from malignant hyperthermia, as your ogre threatened? No. The ogre was bluffing, Jason. He evidently has a kinder heart and more scruples than you do. Willing to let hundreds die in a pointless explosion, for the love of God.”

Hu sagged in relief. Tears trickled down his face. “Is she . . . did they—”

“Remove the tumor? Certainly. She’s still in intensive care. Doing well, all things considered, from what I was told. Asking for you, poor woman. Oh, good God, Hu, don’t start crying again.”

“Thank you, sir,” Hu said, brokenly.

“Don’t,” Greaves snapped. “Your ogre might have been bluffing, but I do not, Hu. Since this woman is clearly the only thing you care about, there is only one appropriate punishment for you.”

Hu started shaking his head. “No,” he said, wagging it back and forth as if he could not stop. “No, no, no. Please don’t hurt her.”

“Don’t worry, Hu.” Greaves smiled. “You’ll be there to greet her.”

“But I . . .” Hu’s voice broke off, as he fought for breath.

But there was no more breath. Greaves had caught him on the exhale, and would not allow his diaphragm to descend.

But it took many tedious, long minutes to asphyxiate, and such a lengthy period of twitching was unpleasant right before lunch. So he applied a telekinetic clamp onto the man’s heart, too, squeezing vessels shut, stilling the pump. He felt the man’s organs with his psi senses, fighting to continue their functions, and tightened his grip.

Hu’s face contorted with agony. He fell from the chair, lay sprawled on the floor. The twitches slowed, stilled.

Greaves walked over and stared down, sickened. He nudged at the man’s face with the toe of his shoe. Hu’s staring eyes were spotted with broken blood vessels. Greaves could feel no vibration, no trace of mental activity. No hiss of labored breath, no thud of a heartbeat.

He hit the mute button on the computer to stop the female newscaster’s yapping, and hit the intercom on his wrist. “Levine.”

“Yes, sir?” she replied.

“Who do we have on the Tokyo police department?”

“I will look that up for you, sir.”

“Be quick about it.” Stupid bitch. All that enhancement, and she couldn’t even keep their bribe roster straight in her head.

She was efficient in her information retrieval, fortunately for her, considering his state of mind. In less than a minute, she was back.

“Sir? We have a Liutenant Tanada in Tokyo.”

“Get him on the phone. Immediately.”

“Right away, sir.”

He put some distance between himself and Hu, and the unpleasant odors seeping into the room as the dead man’s bowels relaxed. “And send a cleaning crew in here, too.”

“Of course, sir.”

Greaves sipped his coffee, more to mask that unpleasant smell than from a desire for coffee. He mused upon his own behavior. He tried to be stern and uncompromising with himself, as well as his staff, to hold himself to the same high standard, and he had to admit that it had been rather spiteful, tormenting Hu with threats to his wife right before executing him. Perhaps he would let the woman live after all. After having probed her mind, for the sake of security. If she was clean.

But he had been sorely proven. Saving the ungrateful world from its own worst self was thankless work, and he could expect no reward other than the personal awareness of a job well done.

For God’s sake. With the effort he made, and the stress he faced, he was entitled to a little tantrum now and then.





18


“Shut up, *.”

John Esposito spat the words over his shoulder as he negotiated the hairpin turn on the mountain road. He rubbed the sore spot on his knee. He wasn’t usually so bad tempered on a job, but Franz, the target’s * boyfriend, had put up an unexpectedly good fight, and John was feeling it, being no spring chicken. Franzie boy had gotten in a vicious kick to the knee during their brief tussle. Of course, Franz was no match for John, who was unmoved by pain while in combat. He felt it, but did not give a shit, not while he was working.

Afterward was a different matter. He gave a shit now, after two hours sitting in a car, driving up here from Seattle with that crybaby piece of shit trussed in the back, blubbering through his gag.

It was going to be very tough on Franzie boy if the directions he’d finally coughed up about Keiko’s hidey-hole were incorrect. Stakes were high on this one. Pay was great, if things happened very fast. His client needed conclusion by mid-afternoon. If things didn’t work out, pay dropped to zero. With the added implicit threat of a bullet to the head, of course. Live by the sword, die by the sword, and who gave a f*ck.

But today would not be his day. Today was the day for frisky Franzie, with his f*cking Tae Kwon Do roundhouse. Sobbing * sonofabitch. And here was the place. Conveniently isolated. Not much of a hideout, considering that it was Keiko’s boss’s vacation property, and that he’d blabbed his location to the big-mouthed * boyfriend.

John pulled on his mask, negotiated the long driveway, and parked. An attractive lodge-style mountain retreat, huge windows with views of the mountains. He did not see videocameras. He got out of the Jeep, deciding to stick with plan A, using the mask just in case.