Jason Frost - Warlord 05 - Terminal Island by Jason Frost - Warlord 05

She looked up now, dark eyes moist as if covered with melting ice. “Someone slipped into our apartment one night and slit his throat. The job was so expert that my mother who slept beside him was never even disturbed from her sleep. Only the sticky blood drying on her fingers finally woke her.” She stared accusingly at Eric. “A note was left condemning him as a spy. My father sang opera. He was not a spy.”
    Eric replied softly, “It wasn’t me. I didn’t kill your father.”
    “No, but someone like you. I can see the way you move, the way you handle yourself. You were not just a foot soldier, a grunt. No, it was someone very much like you who stole into our home that night.”
    Eric stood motionless. She was right. It was someone like him. Not him, of course. Eric remembered each mission clearly. But the Night Shift had killed suspected spies before. Slit throats in bed, shot heads at dinner, bombed cars and even bicycles.
    “My mother took us back to China afterward, hidden among a cargo of dead fish at the bottom of a boat. There we lived since I was thirteen.”
    “Until Cambridge University.”
    “Yes. That is when I left. I have not been back since.”
    Eric reached over and began helping her dig the fence post deeper into the ground. It took only a few minutes to fix the fence. By then D.B. and Spock returned with Eric’s crossbow and bolts.
    “It won’t hold them, you know,” Eric said.
    Dr. Chen nodded. “I know. Not if they really want to get in. But they’re pretty domesticated for orangutans. They know the fence is more a statement than a real barrier. They’ll keep away for a while anyway.”
    “Maybe you just oughta feed them more,” D.B. said.
    Dr. Chen laughed for the first time since they’d been there. Her mouth opened revealing straight white teeth. Her eyes crinkled until they almost disappeared. “Orangs can never eat enough. That’s all they do. In the wild they spend almost every waking hour looking for food and grow to be an average of one hundred-sixty pounds. In a zoo, they can bloat up to three hundred-fifty pounds if not watched.
    D.B. patted her own stomach. “I know how they feel. I used to pack away a few Twinkies after school myself.” She poked Spock’s massive stomach. “Been chowing down a little yourself, eh Spocky?”
    Spock pointed his two index fingers toward each other and moved them up toward his neck.
    “What’s he saying?” D.B. asked.
    “He likes your necklace,” Dr. Chen said. “He wants it.”
    “How do you say, ‘Forget it, pal’?”
    Dr. Chen extended the index and middle fingers of her right hand, tapped them twice against her thumb, like an alligator snapping. D.B. mimicked the movement. Spock lowered his head into a sulk.
    “This is great!” D.B. laughed. “You gotta teach me more.”
    Dr. Chen smiled. Eric was pleased to see it was friendly smile, her fear and hatred momentarily subdued by D.B.’s enthusiasm. The way to any teacher’s heart is a curious student, even a teacher of apes.
    “Spock knows about four hundred signs.”
    “Great, I’ll teach him song lyrics. How about this one Spock: ‘Gorillas Just Wanna Have Fun’?”
    D.B. and Dr. Chen laughed.
    Eric cocked his crossbow and slid in a bolt. “Where are your prisoners, Dr. Chen?”
    Dr. Chen gave Eric an angry look. “Why are you so interested in them?”
    “I’m looking for somebody. They might know where he is.”
    “Who are you looking for?”
    Eric and D.B. answered at the same time. Only their answers were very different.
    “His son,” D.B. said.
    “Dirk Fallows,” Eric said.
    Eric and D.B. exchanged glances. He could see the bewilderment in her eyes, though he hoped she couldn’t see the same thing in his own. He looked away, staring out over the garden, seeing the swollen green zucchinis, the plump red tomatoes.
    Dirk Fallows. Is that what this was all about? Not Timmy at all? He had given himself such pure motives for every action: rescuing his son.