My mind was racing, and I could tell Tessa’s was also. They appeared to have no leverage, but why would they make a hollow threat? Tessa glanced toward the door, and I suspected she was debating ordering Captain Dombkowski and Lieutenant Connelly back inside, but that could well be what Ming wanted, perhaps aware than an assault force was gathering at the drawbridge, and hoping Tessa would displace the guards.
Reaching a decision in the blink of an eye, Tessa drew a gun and pointed it at Ming’s head with a speed that took my breath away. At the same time, her eyes flew wildly over the monitors, which didn’t display a single threat. “Explain!” she demanded. “Or you’ll be the one dying.”
“We knew we might be walking into a trap from the start,” said Ming calmly. “When our drone arrived, this seemed even more likely. Everything was too convenient. An isolated home, Jason sound asleep, and no one else nearby.”
“Yet you breached anyway.”
“It might not have been a trap. If it was, letting ourselves be caught might be the only way to get to Jason. So we prepared accordingly.”
“Prepared how?” snapped Tessa.
“We had our clothing impregnated with a powerful new explosive. Enough of it to take out anyone in this room.”
“Good try,” said Tessa. “But we checked. We didn’t find the signatures of any known explosive on any of you.”
“Like I said, this one is new. It has no signature. It’s not only undetectable, but more powerful than anything you’ve ever seen. As you Americans like to say, ‘a little goes a long way.’
“We have pea-sized electronic implants in our brains that allow us to trigger this explosive with our thoughts. You couldn’t kill us all before one of us did so, which would take you down with us. And don’t even think about removing yourself from the blast zone. If you make one move to leave this room, it will be your last.”
“Yours also,” noted Tessa.
Ming nodded. “Mutually assured destruction,” he replied.
I swallowed hard and felt my knees begin to buckle. Would he really blow himself up? Here was a rational player, not a raving lunatic or religious zealot.
Even so, there was something about Ming’s expression—absolute determination mixed with abject terror—that sold me. My intuition said he was telling the truth. And the tech was more than feasible. I had introduced characters in several novels with electronic implants in their skulls that could facilitate thought-control of external devices, and I was well aware that what Ming had threatened had been possible in the real world for some time now.
“You’re bluffing,” said Tessa.
“Am I?” replied Ming.
He barked a brusque command in Mandarin, and all at once a thunderous, concussive blast assaulted my eardrums, threatening to shatter them, and the head of the prisoner sitting on the far left exploded like a bloody watermelon, sending blood and splattered tissue raining down on Ming and his other comrades like grisly body art.
Dombkowski and Connelly reacted to the thunderous explosion by racing through the door, guns drawn, while I fought back vomit and collapsed to my knees in horror, trying to get my brain to operate again.
“Stand down!” I heard Tessa bark at the members of our team who had just entered, calmly and in full control of her faculties, making quick decisions while my mind was frozen, operating on the level of a terrified bunny.
Ming’s eyes moistened, and he appeared to be sick over the loss of his comrade. Yet he had still given the order. Maybe these guys were zealots, after all.
“Not a bluff,” he said sadly. “You just experienced the effect of a few grains of explosive embedded in a man’s skull. Our clothing has hundreds of times as much. Like I said, enough to kill anyone in this room.”
Connelly and Dombkowski had yet to react to Tessa’s command, forcing her to spin around and face them. “Weapons on the ground!” she demanded. “These prisoners are wearing suicide vests and holding deadman switches. You just can’t see them. Weapons down! Now!”
Her voice sounded as though it were coming from miles away as my rational mind struggled to break free of its paralysis. I had managed to keep my lunch down, but just barely. It was just lucky I hadn’t been hit by any human . . . remains. If I had found myself covered in what used to be a man’s brains, I’m not sure I’d ever stop heaving the contents of my stomach onto the floor.
How many times had I depicted similar gruesome scenes in my novels? How much carnage and grisly death had I written about, and seen in scores of movies?
But the best Hollywood special effects were nothing compared to the real thing. The earsplitting explosion, which had seemed to cave in my own head, and which had made me jump out of my skin. The odor that pervaded the air, of blood and brains and fecal discharge at the time of death, which heightened the terror I felt.
It was all far worse than I could possibly describe in words, despite having thought I was doing so on countless occasions.
I vaguely realized the captain and lieutenant had disarmed, and now wore the anxious expressions expected of anyone facing down multiple suicide vests.
“I know this isn’t your entire team,” said Ming. “So make sure none of them come here to investigate. You know what will happen if they do.”
“No one else on the team was on the comm channel during the explosion,” said Tessa. “No one has any reason to think anything is wrong.”
“You know not to test me, right?”
We all knew not to test him. The suicide of one of Ming’s men might not have been absolutely necessary, but it had made a bold and graphic case for his seriousness.
“Believe me, I have a full grasp of the situation,” said Tessa. “A rescue attempt will kill us all. It’s the last thing I want.”