Extinction Machine

Chapter Eighty-seven

VanMeer Castle

Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Sunday, October 20, 12:31 p.m.

Mr. Bones sat and listened in silence while Howard Shelton had a screaming match with Admiral Xiè, the head of the experimental aircraft division of the People’s Army. Bones sipped an unsweetened iced tea and listened with total fascination.

The call had started with at least a show of civility. Compliments and respectful acknowledgments. All right and proper, all total horse shit.

Once that was out of the way—and once Howard was convinced that Admiral Xiè was alone—Howard became much more direct.

“I trust your spies have been keeping you up to date on certain events around the world?”

“There have been some reports,” agreed Admiral Xiè.

“Like the unfortunate incident in the Taiwan Strait?”

“Like that, yes.”

“What about Dugway? Did you hear about that, too?”

Admiral Xiè was quiet. “Why would you ask me about that?”

“Why do you think I’d ask you?” replied Howard.

“I do not know, Mr. Shelton. There is a tone in your voice, or is it a quality of a bad connection?”

“Seriously, Admiral? You want to play these kinds of games? Are you going to tell me that you don’t know a single thing about what happened at Dugway this afternoon?”

“I—”

“And I suppose you don’t know anything about the sightings of a black triangular craft seen buzzing through the skies near Changxing? Right where a certain testing facility is rumored to be located.”

Admiral Xiè said, “What can I tell you, Mr. Shelton? What is it you would like to hear?”

“I would like to hear that you aren’t invading U.S. f*cking airspace and shooting down U.S. f*cking stealth jets is what I’d like to f*cking hear.”

“Are you deranged?” demanded Admiral Xiè. “Running test flights on a prototype craft is one thing, but do you think everyone here has taken total leave of their senses?”

“Don’t you goddamn lie to me, Xiè. We had a deal and—”

“And I kept my part of that deal,” the admiral fired back. “It is you who cannot be trusted to leave your toys in the toy box rather than succumb to the childish desire to play with them.”

The conversation went downhill from there. Mr. Bones spoke good enough Mandarin to appreciate the vulgar acts Admiral Xiè said were common among the female members of the Shelton family. He also liked Howard’s replies, which, though not as flowery, hit home just as solidly. He knew for certain that had the two men been in the same room they would be wrestling on the floor, kneeing crotches, spitting in eyes, and probably biting.

Somewhere in the middle of the shouting match, though, there was a bit of a sea change and it took Mr. Bones a couple of minutes to figure it out. The tenor of the conversation shifted from a straight-up mutual defamation competition to something resembling unqualified attack and unflinching defense.

That was very troubling. What he expected to happen—what Howard had predicted would happen—was that the admiral would reach a point where denial was no longer useful, convenient, or fun and then he’d go on the attack. He’d throw the truth in Howard’s face and make him eat it uncooked.

So … why wasn’t that happening?