Chapters (5)
They piled into the van, and twenty minutes later they were seated in a military cargo jet. As the plane rolled down the runway of Guam's Air Force base, Pitt looked out the window and saw the senior intelligence agent leaning against his van as if confirming that Pitt and Giordino had departed the island. In another minute they were flying above the often overlooked island paradise of the Pacific with its volcanic mountains, lush jungle waterfalls and miles of white-sand beaches graced with swaying coco palms. The Japanese swarmed into the hotels and onto the beaches of Guam, but not many Americans. He continued staring down as the plane passed over the turquoise waters inside the reef surrounding the island and headed out to sea.
As Giordino dozed off, Pitt turned his thoughts to the United States, sailing somewhere on the ocean below him. Something terrible was in the works, a terrible threat that only one man on earth could prevent. But Pitt knew with crystallized certainty that nothing, except perhaps an untimely death, would deflect Qin Shang from his purpose.
The world may be a place that is scarce of honest politicians, white buffalo, unpolluted rivers, saints and miracles, but there is no shortage of depraved villains. Some, like serial killers, may slay twenty or a hundred innocent victims. But given financial resources they might kill many more. Those like Qin Shang who possessed enormous affluence could hold themselves above the law and hire homicidal cretins to do their dirty work for them. The evil billionaire was not a general who felt remorse over losing a thousand men in battle to achieve an objective. Qin Shang was a cold-blooded sociopathic murderer who could drink a glass of champagne and eat a hearty dinner after condemning hundreds of illegal immigrants, many of them women and children, to a horrible death in the frigid waters of Orion Lake.
Pitt was committed to stopping Qin Shang whatever the consequences, whatever the cost, even killing him if the occasion presented itself. He was drawn in too deeply to struggle back over the edge. He fantasized what it would be like if they ever met. What would the circumstances be? What would he say to a mass slaughterer?
For a long time, Pitt sat there staring up at the cabin ceiling of the aircraft. There was no sense in anything. Whatever Qin Shang's plan had to be, if nothing else it was mad. And now Pitt's own mind was running amok. There is nothing to do, he thought finally, but to sleep it off and hope to see things with a sane eye when we reach Washington.