and asked to lie down. Mace and Stevenson tied up their surgical masks while Batman retreated to the corner.
Nolan’s eye patch was removed. He could see the doctors wince as they looked into his empty, damaged socket.
Mace retrieved another syringe, smaller, but filled with a hideous-looking red fluid.
“This will help a bit,” Mace said. “Not a lot, though.”
He injected it just below Nolan’s jaw. It felt like a dagger going in, but the pain was quickly replaced by a dulling sensation. In a few seconds, Nolan felt paralyzed from his neck to his nipples.
Out of the corner of his good eye, Nolan could see Mace was holding a large sewing needle and a long string of black thread.
“Are you ready, Major?” Mace asked him.
Nolan couldn’t speak—so he just gave a weak thumbs-up.
The procedure began.
* * *
THE FIRST PART of the operation lasted just fifteen minutes—but that was the only good thing about it. Even though his neck muscles were numb, Nolan still felt the pain every time the sewing needle pierced the skin above his throat and tightened it just a little more. It was like someone was slowly strangling him.
Once the surgeons had finished, they produced a small paint can and a pair of brushes. They stripped off Nolan’s clothes and proceeded to coat his entire body with a solution from the can.
“Highly diluted nitric acid,” Mace told him. “Normally this would turn pale skin to bright yellow, but when used in conjunction with the methoxsalen? Well, let’s just see what happens.”
The ten-minute application filled the room with a nauseating odor. Then the doctors performed two more suturing procedures, this time on Nolan’s eyes. Because no painkiller could be used so close to his optic nerves, he again had to take the sting each time the surgical needle went in and out of his skin.
Next the doctors brought in a portable dentist’s drill. Like everything else in the operation, it was courtesy of the SAS special equipment division.
Mace hooked up the drill to its battery pack and proceeded to bore a tiny hole about the size of a golf ball dimple into Nolan’s number seven incisor. Into this, Mace inserted a tiny one-way radio. This would allow anyone on the other end to hear every conversation going on around Nolan—an ironic twist, it would turn out. This procedure could not be done with Novocain, though, as any residue might interfere with the radio’s signals. So, once again, Nolan had to endure the pain.
When that was done, Mace used yet another large syringe to inject Nolan’s lips with a massive amount of collagen.
It was at that point Nolan realized Batman had been right. This was absurd. If he were married, if he had a wife and kids, or just some significant other, he would never have considered doing any of it.
But in reality, he had nobody—and thus, nothing to lose. Maybe that was why he was going ahead with it.
Truth was, he wasn’t really sure himself.
* * *
AT LAST, ALL the cutting and sewing was done.
Mace looked down at Nolan, flashing a small light in his good eye.
“Still with us, Major?” he asked.
Nolan could barely nod in reply.
Mace showed him one last hypodermic needle.
“Novapol,” the surgeon said. “It will help you sleep.”
The SAS surgeon injected him yet again, then said, “Count backward, slowly, from one hundred.”
The two doctors then replaced the surgical light with an ultraviolet lamp. Nolan could feel its heat burning his body almost immediately. He could also see Batman, still standing in the shadows, staring at him with a look of revulsion on his face.
Counting down as Mace suggested, Nolan passed into unconsciousness before he reached ninety.
24 hours later
NOLAN WAS OUT cold for an entire day. When he finally woke up, the Ocean Song was four hundred miles closer to its goal.
Stevenson and Batman were there when he opened his eyes. His first words to them were, “I dreamed about someone losing a nuclear submarine.”
Stevenson gave him a quick once-over and pronounced him no worse for the wear.
But then Batman came up with a mirror.
“Ready for this?” he asked Nolan.
“Just get it over with,” Nolan managed to say.
Batman put the mirror up to Nolan’s good eye—but Nolan did not recognize the person looking back at him.
His face was darkened and jaundiced. The corners of his eyes—both the good and bad one—had been stretched to an oval shape. His lips were hideously puffed out, as was his nose. He didn’t look Asian exactly, which was the whole point