His gaze traveled the rest of the room, taking in the metal-framed hospital bed he was laying on, the sterile, bare walls surrounding him, the door that appeared to lead to a small washroom, the safety-wired glass window with drawn curtains, and the security-locked, handleless door that was keeping him from leaving. Instinctively he sucked in a breath of the slightly metallic-tasting air as he realized that wherever he was, he was a prisoner.
He looked down to the left at a cheap pressboard nightstand next to his bed, and right, where a wheeled tray sat with what looked like a call button on it. With cold fear starting to swirl in the pit of his stomach, Liao tested his legs and found that they worked just fine. Swinging them over the side, he got up, steadied himself as a wave of dizziness crashed over him, and walked to the washroom.
Everything in here was either stainless steel—like the toilet and sink, which were both bolted to the wall—or plastic, like the water cup, which was so flimsy it couldn’t be used for anything other than its intended purpose. Liao drank two cups of flat, warm water, and washed his mouth out with another cupful. He splashed some water on his face, feeling somewhat refreshed at the wet sensation, then dried himself with the small rough-cotton cloth sitting on the side of the sink.
With nothing left to do, he returned to the bed and sat. Spotting the window again, he got up and walked over to it, moving the blinds aside just enough to peek out.
As he’d feared, it didn’t show the outdoors. Instead it looked out onto a drab hallway, where men and women in drab-colored scrubs bustled back and forth down the corridor. One additional thing that he knew most hospitals didn’t have: the armed guard standing outside his door.
What is this place? he wondered. Where am I?
Just then the door clicked and swung inward, making him scoot back toward the bed. A man in a doctor’s white coat and dark maroon scrubs walked in, followed by the armed guard he had seen outside his room. The doctor, carrying a computer tablet under his arm, was probably a decade younger than him, his black hair already receding from his forehead buzzed short so he didn’t have to worry about it. The guard was even younger, maybe midtwenties and, from what Liao could see, in excellent physical shape. He was also well armed, with a holstered black pistol on the belt at his waist and a stubby submachine gun hanging from a strap over his shoulder. He stood stiffly just inside the door and never took his eyes off Liao.
“Mr. Liao, so good to see you awake!” the doctor said in Cantonese, forcing Liao to focus on him. “I hope you have been comfortable during your stay.”
Liao frowned at the man’s seemingly easy manner. “Who are you? Where am I? What is going on here?” He rose from the bed as he asked the last question, making the guard step forward.
Without turning, the doctor raised his hand, gesturing for the guard stop in his tracks.
His expression sobered and he motioned for Liao to sit.
“Very well. You wish answers, and there is no reason to keep them from you. I am Dr. Chen Xu, head of surgery here at the Guaw Li transplant facility. You are Zhang Liao, a government employee turned traitor and attempted defector. Instead of holding a trial, which could prove very embarrassing to the government, they have delivered you to me.”
“What?” Liao’s heart sank. “There must be some mistake,” he said, his brow creasing in confusion.
The doctor smiled. “Oh, no. If you are brought here, then there was a very good reason. But do not worry about trying to contact anyone. This facility has been built over the past decade at great cost and secrecy, to avoid public embarrassments like what has happened with other facilities of the same type.”
“And what is to happen now?” Liao asked, even though he had a terrifying feeling he knew the answer.
Xu consulted his tablet, flicking through screens with his finger. “Well, we still have to run a few tests to get a sense of just how healthy you are—your blood work came back with excellent results, by the way.” He looked down at Liao and all trace of human warmth or compassion was gone from his demeanor. “And once those are completed to our satisfaction, we will sedate you and harvest as many of your internal organs as possible.”
Liao stared at the doctor for a long moment. He’d heard what the man said, but it was as if his brain refused to comprehend the words. His mouth opened and closed as he struggled to come to terms with what was going on. “But…you can’t…what about my family?”
Xu checked his watch, as casually as if making sure he wasn’t running behind in his appointments. “By now, they are no doubt in the hands of the Ministry of State Security. But do not worry, Mr. Liao, you will provide a far greater service to your country and its people in death than you ever did in life.”
He turned and began walking to the door, temporarily blocking the guard’s view of the prisoner.
Blind, unreasoning rage suddenly filled Liao. If what the doctor had said was true—if his family was captured, and him slated to die, with no one possibly knowing where he was and what had happened to him—then he might as well take at least one of them with him.
Liao launched himself off the bed at the doctor’s back. He leaped on the doctor and bore him to the floor, his clutching fingers seeking the other man’s neck. If he could just get his hands around the smug bastard’s throat—
Blinding white stars exploded in his vision and Liao blinked them away, only to find himself lying on the floor, clutching his head. The guard stood over him, his pistol aimed at his face.
“Stop! Do not fire!” Xu said as he picked himself up and straightened his disheveled lab coat. “I do not hold your actions against you, Mr. Liao. In your circumstances, I cannot be sure I would not have reacted in much the same way to this news. I am sure that, given a choice, you would not have wanted it to end this way. However, sometimes we do not have a choice in what happens to us.
“Double the guard on this room, and no one is to attend to him alone,” the doctor said to the guard as he left.
Pistol still aimed at Liao’s face, the guard slowly walked backward to the door and exited, leaving the man bruised, sore and very much alone.
For the next several hours all he did was lie on the floor and weep softly.
Forty-one hours after the briefing at Stony Man Farm, Mack Bolan sat in the back of a fifty-year-old, olive-drab military truck among a load of crated, bright green melons as it jounced along narrow mountain roads toward the outskirts of Beijing.
Unlike most insertions, this one had been much more difficult. There had to be absolutely no trace back to any US military involvement, which scratched most of the usual methods, such as a HALO drop into the boonies. There was no way the United States was going to risk sending an aircraft into Chinese airspace—it would most likely bring their air force and army down on him.
A commercial flight had been out of the question, as well. Even with an airtight cover, once he began moving through Beijing, any police attention would quickly trace him back to his entry into the country. Even if he had taken a trip through Europe, they would have backtracked him to the United States.
In the end Bolan had hopped on a commercial airliner to Moscow, changed his identity there and then caught a local flight to Irkutsk International Airport, in the middle of Russia. From there, he had taken a dizzying array of transportation modes—including a two-hundred-mile cab ride and a six-hour stretch in the back of a horse-drawn wagon—before reaching Beijing. He’d crossed Mongolia entirely; every time his Russian passport had seen him through.
Bolan had been careful to keep any answers to questions short and to the point. He didn’t have a native Russian accent, and didn’t want to give any customs