Gunnar’s pilot had been waiting to take off the moment they were on board, but a three-hour flight meant they wouldn’t arrive in New York until nearly 10 P.M. EST. The DHS had stationed Federal Protective Service agents at every entrance to the hospital and locked down Marchment’s entire floor. Chris had volunteered to personally stand guard outside of the former deputy secretary’s room until he awakened. While the doctor had based his prediction on increased brain activity and fluctuations in respirations and blood pressure, which often preceded the return of consciousness, he’d been careful not to offer any guarantees. It was always possible that he was wrong and Marchment would never wake up again, but they had to take the chance. He was their only direct link to the Thirteen and Mason wasn’t about to let him die without spilling his guts first.
The regional computer forensics lab in New Jersey had come through for Locker, who’d uploaded a total of five files recovered from Yamaguchi’s broken desktop tower to the secure cloud. He hadn’t personally known what to make of them, so he’d also forwarded them to the brain trust at Quantico to see if they could figure out the significance.
“Just start at the top,” Layne said. She sat in the same seat as before, which afforded her a decent view of Mason’s laptop on the table in front of him. “Maybe we can make some sense out of them.”
Mason opened the first file and found a document labeled “CBC With Differential/Platelet” dated November of the previous year. It contained a list of test criteria with the subject’s results, units, and the reference intervals of normal values. Several readings were flagged with HIGH or LOW, while the values for WBCs, platelets, and neutrophils were bolded, underlined, and marked with ALERT. The ordering physician’s name was listed, but the patient was identified only by a series of numbers.
“I don’t have the slightest idea what any of this means,” Layne said.
“We’ll come back to it,” Mason said. He opened the second file, which contained another CBC test that had been run a full year prior. At a glance, the numbers appeared to be in line with the results they’d just viewed.
The third file featured dozens of squiggly horizontal lines, one above the other. They were obviously waveforms of some kind, although Mason had no idea what any of the abbreviations assigned to them stood for.
“It’s an EEG,” Gunnar said from across the aisle. “It measures brain-wave activity.”
“Can you tell how this one looks?”
“You’d need to ask a physician. I only recognize it because I had one as a kid.”
“All of these tests were performed during the past two years while Yamaguchi was living in the U.S. under the Nguyen alias,” Layne said. “He couldn’t have ordered them, so whoever sent them to him had to have known him prior to assuming that identity.”
“But the Scarecrow’s brother’s labs were on one of the computers that was left intact,” Mason said.
“Then they must be the Scarecrow’s.”
“What would be the point of destroying the computer with the Scarecrow’s results if he thought she was going to die while releasing the Novichok? Why keep them on separate computers when he could simply keep them in different files?”
Something about this felt wrong. Yamaguchi was trying to hide something, and Mason would be damned if he wasn’t going to figure out what. He opened the fourth file, which turned out to be a medical imaging report. The dictating radiologist detailed the findings of an MRI of the brain and cranial nerves, wherein he’d noted degenerative neurological changes but hadn’t given a formal diagnosis, or speculated as to the implications.
The final file appeared to be a physician’s notes summarizing the results of tests for liver function, serum creatinine, and bone densitometry. It was incomplete and offered neither diagnosis nor prognosis. Not even a treatment plan. It was merely a single page plucked from a file that must have once contained many.
“That’s it?” Layne said.
“Locker said we were lucky to even get that much,” Mason said. His phone rang from where it was plugged into the charger. It took him a second to recognize the incoming number.
“McWhinney,” he said.
“You handle him,” Layne said. She swiveled his computer so that she could view the file with the lab results and grabbed her phone. “I’ll see if I can figure out where these tests were performed.”
Mason answered the call before it went to voice mail.
“Special Agent? This is Ed McWhinney from the McAllen forensics department. You said to call you if I found out anything useful?”
“Hit me.”
“Well, I don’t know how useful this information might be to your investigation, but we were able to identify the victims in the stable near the back of the barn.”
“The oldest remains? The ones that were just broken bones?”
“Correct. We found a pacemaker buried in the straw underneath them. Its serial number was registered to Hank Peters, the owner of the property. Former owner, I should say. We’re still waiting on confirmation that the second set of remains belongs to his wife, Patsy.”
“They were beaten to death on their own ranch?” Mason said. Layne covered the mouthpiece on her phone and glared at him. He lowered his voice before asking the obvious question. “How is it they’ve been dead for years and no one noticed?”
“That’s a question for the sheriff’s department, I’m afraid. I can only speculate.”
“Someone has to have been paying the mortgage or else the bank would have found them when it initiated foreclosure proceedings.”
“That makes total sense to me, but, unfortunately, I don’t have access to that kind of information. And in response to your next question? No, neither had criminal histories or ties to the cartel. As far as I can tell they were like everyone else around these parts: They kept to themselves and stayed out of other people’s business.”
“Thanks, Ed.”
“Oh, and I heard from the forensics unit on the other side of the tunnel in Mexico. They suspect that based on the number of empty fuel rods, whoever was operating that lab couldn’t have harvested more than eight to ten pounds of plutonium, and that’s if they were really careful and didn’t waste any, which the soil tests hardly support. The Department of Energy estimates it takes about nine pounds to make a single nuclear weapon, although there are scientists who claim it can be done with as little as two pounds, so take that update with a grain of salt and thank your lucky stars they weren’t able to produce more.”
It wasn’t much as far as good news went, but Mason would take all he could get.
“I’ll let you know if we find anything else,” McWhinney said.
The director hung up just as Ramses emerged from Gunnar’s bedroom at the back of the plane, where he’d been holed up making calls of a nature better not made in front of an audience, especially one consisting of federal law-enforcement officers.
“There’s nothing like that directed-energy weapon of yours on the streets,” he said, slouching into the seat opposite Mason. “I can easily find a handful of clients willing to pay seven figures for one, but even I can’t track down anyone who has access to a supply. One of my contacts said he’d heard about someone attempting to broker a deal with a source inside the Chinese military. Turned out the guy was a straw buyer for the DOD and wound up dropping off the face of the earth, alongside his contact in the PLA.”
“You’re certain the Chinese are the only ones with access to this technology?”
“Rumor is they haven’t quite perfected it, but even if they had, I guarantee you they wouldn’t share it at any price.”
“So how did the Dragon get one?”
“I’m not convinced that he did. This Chinese DEW technology is straight out of the movies. We’re talking industrial lasers capable of cutting open a submarine like a tin can or knocking a satellite out of orbit. Or at least that’s what the Chinese claim they can do. Burning people alive, though? That’s a different animal altogether.”
“How so?” Mason asked.
“The energy level, for starters,” Ramses said. “Lasers are designed to penetrate their targets, not set them on fire. And there are microwave weapons, but they heat their targets from the inside out. The Dragon’s weapon is different. Remember what it did to the border patrol agent and the dead guys in that stall? They were uniformly burned. It makes me wonder if we aren’t dealing with something capable of producing targeted bursts of gamma radiation.”
“Like a portable nuclear device?”
“Only on a much smaller scale.”
“You saw the crater that fizzle weapon created in Libya. That’s not the kind of power a man can wield at close range, at least not without vaporizing himself in the process.”
“You’re probably right,” Ramses said. “But we’re also talking about a guy who built his own lab to salvage plutonium from nuclear waste in order to create his own bombs. If anyone could pull it off, my money’s on this guy.”
“You don’t need fissionable material to create radiation,” Gunnar said. “A portable X-ray machine converts electrical energy to electrons and fires them at a tungsten target to produce X-rays. With the right combination of energy and target materials, you could undoubtedly produce radiation that causes considerably more damage without requiring a thermonuclear chain reaction.”
Layne set down her phone and pumped her fist.
“What?” Mason asked.
“Guess where both the lab and the hospital where the MRI was performed are located?”
Mason gestured impatiently for her to proceed.
“Come on, aren’t you even going to try?”
And then it hit him. Yamaguchi hadn’t destroyed the computer because it housed the Scarecrow’s medical records; he’d smashed it because it contained someone else’s. And something about the lab results would help whoever discovered the files identify the patient.
“Texas,” he said.
“Houston. All of the studies were performed at the Mayo Clinic in Houston, Texas. Just a short drive up the Gulf Coast from Rio Grande City.”
“I don’t follow,” Ramses said.
Mason looked him in the eyes and smiled.
“They’re the Dragon’s medical records.”