“You’d better take Tom with you. After tonight he’ll be useless here.”
“Will do,” McGarvey said, and he broke the connection.
YAK 38 Forger A Tail Number 13/13
Captain Xia Langshan was flying right wing escort for the Boeing 727 bringing the arresting officers to Taipei. Lieutenant Qaixo was flying left wing. Their transponders were all squawking 11313, which was the code for a peaceful-mission incursion into Taiwanese airspace. The same code was used when Taiwanese weather-spotting airplanes flew into PRC airspace. They just cleared the beach on their long approach.
“Green One, this is Eagle thirteen/thirteen, feet dry,” Langshan radioed his AWACS controller circling at thirty-five thousand feet, thirty klicks to the west.
“Thirteen/thirteen, this is Green One. You are clear to proceed, out.”
Langshan switched to the civilian frequency in time to hear the Boeing whose ID was Justice Wind Four receiving its landing instructions from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport at Taoyuan. He could hear the tension in the controller’s voice.
“PRC Flight Four, your escort aircraft will not be allowed to land. Acknowledge.”
“Taoyuan Airport tower, this is Justice Wind Four on final to one-seven with delta. We acknowledge your last transmission.”
“We want your escorts to leave our airspace the moment you land.”
“Negative, tower. They have been ordered to remain on station until their fuel has been exhausted, at which time they will be relieved.”
“Permission is denied, PRC Flight Four.”
“We didn’t ask for permission, Taoyuan tower,” the pilot, Colonel Hezheng, replied in polite but measured tones. “We will view any hostile response as an act of war, acknowledge.”
The radio was silent for several long seconds, and Langshan could almost imagine the scene in the tower as the controllers talked to their superiors by telephone.
“Acknowledge,” Colonel Hezheng repeated calmly.
The airport was visible now about twenty kilometers to the west. Langshan’s threat-assessment radar was clear, although he was being painted by at least a half-dozen ground-radar sets. None of them, however, were missile-facility radars. Those signatures were different. The Taiwanese military well understood that if they illuminated a target it was tantamount to aiming a loaded gun. It was universally recognized as an act of aggression. In that case Langhsan had permission to shoot, though it was not his primary mission.
“We acknowledge your last transmission,” the tower finally responded. “Your escorts will maintain flight level one-zero and remain within ten kilometers of the airport.”
“My escorts have been ordered to establish and maintain twenty-five-kilometer patrol zones centered on Taipei.”
“Negative, negative, negative!” the tower controller practically screamed.
Colonel Hezheng overrode the transmission, his voice still maddeningly calm. “The provincial government of Taiwan has not adequately informed the people about the real issue of the criminal Shi Shizong. We will drop leaflets guaranteeing the truth of our peaceful mission, and let the people decide for themselves who are the warmongers.”
Langshan grinned behind his face mask.
“PRC Four, we will shoot your escort aircraft out of the sky if they stray outside of the airport containment zone.”
The 727 was losing altitude for its final approach to landing. Langshan looked over at Qaixo and rocked his wings left-right-left. Qaixo responded.
“If our aircraft are fired upon, they will shoot back, tower. And we will request immediate backup. In force.”
The radio was silent again. Civilian traffic to Taiwan had been sharply curtailed since the troubles had escalated in the past ten days. And all traffic for the duration of this mission had been diverted to the airport at Kaoshiung in the far south.
Qaixo peeled off to the north to start the outer leg of his patrol zone. When he got over the city of Taoyuan itself he would begin to drop his leaflets.
Langshan watched for a few moments as the 727 continued gracefully down for landing, then hauled his throttles back and shot northeast directly for the heart of Taipei, maintaining an altitude of ten thousand feet while his mach indicator climbed past .7, the hard bucket seat pressing into his back.
In less than two minutes he was directly over the city, Grass Mountain rising off to his north, Green Lake spread out to his south, and the city of Keelung on the coast lost under a thick blanket of lowlying clouds directly ahead.
His threat-radar screen remained blank, and the moment he crossed the Tamsui River he released the first of his canisters programmed to fall like a bomb to one thousand feet before opening and spreading the leaflets on the wind. At the very least, he thought, the bastards would have a big cleanup job tomorrow. In his underwing pods he carried one million messages on long, thin strips of rice paper, like giant fortune cookie fortunes.
He dropped a second canister near the stadium and a third on the densely populated shantytown in the western suburbs before he continued to Keelung and the coast twenty-five kilometers to the west-northwest. Within a half minute he was enveloped in a dense cloud, rain smashing into the canopy like machinegun bullets. His forward-looking radar was clear of any air traffic, and his lookdown-shoot-down radar showed him exactly what was happening on the ground.
In two minutes he was over the city of Keelung, where he dropped two more of his canisters and then made a long, sweeping turn out over the harbor.
At the last minute, about three miles off the coast, Langshan dialed up a special canister on his port wing rack, checked his position, hit the release button, and then headed back for his second run over Taipei.
1920 Local SSN 21 Seawolf
“Conn, sonar.”
“This is the captain speaking. What do you have, Fisher?”
“Skipper, something just hit the water eighteen hundred yards out, bearing one-eight-seven. It’s not very big, but from the angle it made I’d say that it was dropped from something moving real fast. Maybe a jet, but definitely not a boat.”
“Any idea what it is?”
“I think it’s a comms buoy, sir … stand by.”
Paradise came in from the officer’s wardroom with a couple of cups of coffee. He handed one to Harding. It had been a very long day since McGarvey and Hanrahan had locked to the surface. They’d all existed on coffee.
“Okay, skipper, that’s definitely a comms buoy. She’s started to transmit acoustically.”
“Good work,” Harding said. He switched to the radio room. “Comms, this is the captain. Somebody just dropped an acoustical communications buoy to our south and it’s starting to transmit. It’s probably in Chinese and in code, but see what you can do with it.”
“Aye, aye, skipper,” the radio officer said with even less enthusiasm, for a job he was not equipped to handle, than he felt.
“A message from home for our friend?” Paradise asked.
“So it would seem. Question is, what kind of a message is it?”
“It could be about us,” Paradise said. “But you have to wonder what makes them think that they haven’t told the entire world where their boat is hiding.”
1945 Local SSN 405 Hekou
Z112530ZJUL
TOP SECRET
FR: CINCEASTSEAFLEET
TO: 405 HEKOU
A. ACKNOWLEDGE UR Z145229ZJUL
1. DETERMINE AT ALL COSTS IF SHI SHIZONG IS TRANSPORTED TO SEAWOLF UR REPORT.
2. THIS IS A MOST URGENT OPERATIONS FLASH MESSAGE. COMPLIANCE IS MANDATORY.
3. SHIZONG MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO LEAVE TAIWAN. ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS ARE SECONDARY. GOOD LUCK SZE LAU SENDS BT BT BT
Captain Heishui handed the decoded message across the table to Lagao. They were alone in the officers’ wardroom. His XO read the message, then read it again before he looked up, a grave expression on his face.
“If they manage to get him aboard the American boat, we will be obligated to a
ttack,” he said.
Heishui nodded. “But we would have two advantages,” he said. “In the first place, they don’t know that we’re back here. But even if they do find out, they’ll never believe that we would open fire. You have to shoot at an American six times before he will start to respond.”
“Yes, Captain. But when he does it’s usually fatal.”
Chiang Kai-Shek International Airport
Peyton Graves powered down his window and pointed a tiny parabolic receiver at the PRC Air Force 727 as the boarding stairs were brought up and the forward hatch swung open.
A lot of cars and military vehicles surrounded the jet, which was parked in front of the old Pan Am hangar. Everyone seemed restrained. No one wanted this situation to accelerate out of control. There were no media.
Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Daping, chief of the Counterespionage Division for the Taiwan Police, went up the stairs, followed by a lieutenant in uniform whom Graves did not recognize.
They stood at the head of the stairs for a few moments until a full bird colonel in the uniform of a civilian police officer, blue tabs on his shoulder boards, appeared in the doorway. A much taller man in a captain’s uniform showed up right behind him.
“Good evening, I am Colonel Lian Shiquan, Beijing Police. I am here with a warrant for the arrest of the criminal Shi Shizong.”
Graves turned up the gain on his receiver. Even so it was hard to pick up the Taiwanese officer’s reply because his back was turned to the receiver. When it came, however, it was a complete surprise to Graves. The government had caved in even faster and more completely than he thought it would.
“Yes, sir,” Colonel Daping replied. “He is being held not too far from here, at a home on Grass Mountain. We have transportation standing by to take you there immediately.”
It was too far for Graves to see the expression on the Chinese colonel’s face, but he heard the surprise and the smug satisfaction in his voice. “I should think so. There are eight of us, plus myself and my adjutant, Captain Qying. Let’s proceed.”
Graves tossed the receiver on the passenger seat and headed past the hangars toward the back gate. He used his cell phone to call the safe house where McGarvey was staying.
“Switch,” he said as soon as McGarvey answered.
“Right.”
Graves hit star-four-one-one. “You’ve run out of time. I’m just leaving the airport. The Taiwanese are handing him over without an argument. They’re taking the PRC delegation up to Grass Mountain right now, so you’re going to have to hustle.”
“How many of them?”
“Ten PRC and I don’t know how many Taiwanese cops. But if you get caught in the middle of them, you’ll get yourself shot.”
“Thanks for your help, Peyton. We’ll take it from here,” McGarvey said. “Get back to the embassy and keep your head down, there’s no telling what might happen in the next twenty-four hours.”
“Good luck.”
Taipei
It was after 8:00 P.M., but still light by the time they cleared the city and headed east on the Keelung Highway. Grass Mountain, off to their left, was tinged in brilliant pinks and salmons at the higher levels, but the sky toward the coast was dark and threatening. The highway was choked with traffic of all descriptions, from eighteen-wheelers to hand-drawn carts. There seemed to be tiny scraps of paper blowing everywhere.
“I think we’ve got a tail,” Tom Preston said from the front.
McGarvey crawled forward to the passenger seat, opened the window, and adjusted the door mirror. Preston switched lanes to get around an old canvas-covered flatbed, and a yellow Fiat followed.
“It was outside the apartment this afternoon,” McGarvey said. In the middle of an operation he had a photographic memory for people and things. Patterns and anomalies. The ability had saved his life on more than one occasion.
“Sorry, I missed it.” Preston had struck McGarvey as easygoing but very capable. He and Hanrahan, who were football fans, had argued heatedly, but good-naturedly, about the Pack versus the Vikes all afternoon. But he was apologetic now.
“I only saw him the one time,” McGarvey said, studying the image in the mirror. “Same driver, but he’s picked up a passenger.” He missed the look Preston gave him.
“They’re not our people,” Preston said. “I’m sure of at least that much.”
“Taiwanese police?”
“No. I know all of their tag series. That’s not one of them. Civilians. PRC supporters. Maybe spies. Either they knew about the safe house and were watching it, or someone from inside the consulate tipped them off. Whatever it is, we’re going to have to deal with it pretty soon because our turnoff is coming up.”
“What do you want to do, Mac?” Hanrahan asked from the back. “We’ve got the PRC delegation from the airport breathing down our necks, so we don’t have a hell of a lot of time.”
McGarvey took out his Walther PPK and checked the load. “No matter what happens, we’re not going to hurt any Taiwan national if we can help it. That means cops and soldiers as well as civilians.” He checked the mirror. The yellow Fiat was still behind them. He holstered his pistol and checked the two spare magazines.
“Here’s the turn,” Preston said.
“Head up toward the house: I’ll tell you where to pull over,” McGarvey said. It was an early evening like this when he’d come up here nine months ago. Visiting the spoils of war, he’d told his chief of staff in Washington. In reality he was picking up the pieces of a mission that had nearly cost him his life. After all was said and done he wanted to see the house where Lee had lived in order to get some measure of the man who’d almost brought the world to a nuclear showdown. Not terribly unlike the situation they were in again.
Lee’s eighteen-room house was perched on the side of the mountain a couple of hundred feet above its nearest neighbor. A maze of narrow roads led in all directions into narrow valleys and defiles, in which other mansions were built. But Lee’s compound was at the head of a very steep switchback that had been cut through the living rock. Except for the helicopter pad, there was only one way in or out. Had the Taiwanese police decided to bring the PRC delegation up by chopper, the mission would have been over before it had begun.
Within a few blocks of the highway the Grass Mountain road rose up sharply from the floor of the valley. The traffic, except for an occasional Mercedes or Jaguar, ended, and a thin fog began to envelop the twisting side streets and houses set back in the trees in an air of gloom and mystery. This was the Orient, and yet a lot of people with money built Western-style homes up here. It was a curious mixture, just like Taipei itself.
“Okay, Lee’s driveway is coming up around the next curve,” Preston said.
McGarvey had spent only a half hour up there, looking around the house and down across the valley toward the city from the balconies. The view had been nothing short of spectacular. But he tried to recall how steep the slope was just below the house on the side of the compound away from the road. Maybe negotiable, but he wasn’t sure. He’d not been on a life-or-death mission that time.
“As soon as we’re around the curve and out of sight of the Fiat, you’re going to slow down and let me off,” McGarvey said. “Then drive past Lee’s road, pull into the next driveway, turn around, and wait there.”
“What about the guys in the Fiat?” Preston asked.
“I’m going to try an end run. If they miss me, they’ll come past you, probably turn around, and wait to see what you’re going to do next.” McGarvey screwed the silencer on the end of the Walther’s barrel.
“You’ll need some help. I’m coming with you,” Hanrahan said, taking out his Beretta.
“I know one of the guys up at the house. If I show up alone, they might listen before they start shooting.”
“Goddammit, Mac, that’s not why I signed on—.”
“You signed on to take orders, Lieutenant,” McGarvey said harshly. “If I can grab Shizong and get him out of there, I�
�ll be moving fast. I’ll need someone to watch the back door. I don’t want to get caught between the PRC delegation coming up from the airport and the goons in the car behind us. Do you understand?”
Hanrahan wanted to argue, but he held himself in check. “Yes, sir.”
McGarvey softened. “If we do this right, nobody will get hurt.”
“Here we go, guys,” Preston said. They came around the sharp curve, passed Lee’s driveway, and Preston jammed on the brakes.
“If the group from the airport makes it up here, give me ten minutes and then get the hell out,” McGarvey said. He popped open the door, jumped out on the run, then ducked into the trees and brush beside the road as the van disappeared and the Fiat came charging around the curve.
He got the impression of two men, both of them intent on catching up with the van. He was sure that they had not seen him.
As soon as they were gone he jumped up, hurried across the road, and raced up the driveway, conscious that the mission clock was counting down in earnest now.
The road was steep and switched back several times. In a couple of minutes he reached the top, the road splitting left and right around a fountain in front of the low, rambling, steel-and-glass house. The fountain was operating, and there were lights on inside the house. Anyone watching from the outside would have to assume that nothing suspicious was going on up here. No one was trying to hide anything. Life as normal.
Holding his hands in plain sight out away from his sides, McGarvey headed to the right around the fountain. The hairs at the nape of his neck prickled. He couldn’t see anyone at the windows, but he got the distinct impression that he was being watched, and that guns were pointed at him.
A wooden footbridge arched gracefully over a winding pond that contained large golden carp. When McGarvey got to the other side the front door opened and Joseph Jiying stepped out. He wore jeans and an open-collar shirt. He was unarmed.
“Good evening, Mr. McGarvey. I’ve gotta say that you being up here is one big surprise.” Jiying had spent eight months working in Langley on an exchange program. McGarvey had gotten to know him and some of the others; all of them dedicated, and most of them pretty good intelligence officers.
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