Edge of War - [Red Dragon Rising 02]

by Larry Bond

  Grasso paused. The blaring of the traffic behind them was so loud he had to raise his voice as he continued.

  “But why should the U.S. intervene? Why should we get involved in another costly war? What’s in it for the American people?”

  Josh started to answer, but the senator wasn’t done.

  “And let’s say there’s sanctions against China. How do they help us? China holds trillions of dollars of our debt. Don’t you think there’ll be repercussions?”

  “I think the repercussions will be more serious if we do nothing,” said Jablonski.

  Jablonski’s phone rang. He ignored it.

  “That’s what the president says.” Grasso swung his hands up, making his point. “But I think he overstates it. I think he wants confrontation. It’s all he knows. What do you think, Josh? Are the repercussions so serious that we should risk everything? What are we risking it for, anyway? Who cares if Vietnam becomes a colony of the Chinese? Do we really care?”

  We should care, thought Josh. There was something fundamental— something so unjust and unfair that it had to be countered. But Josh couldn’t find the words to express it.

  “I know what you’re going to say,” continued the senator, who really didn’t want an answer from anyone except himself. “We should be idealists. But where has idealism gotten us? Look at Vietnam. You’re too young to know what that was like, but the president isn’t. He of all people should know the limits of idealism.”

  Josh turned away from the senator, looking out across the traffic toward the Manhattan skyline—ideals, he thought, made tangible.

  Something streaked through the line of cars at the far end of the left lane. A man on a motorbike.

  With guns on his back.

  Josh stared at the man, sure he was having a psychotic episode.

  The man was Asian.

  It was a hallucination, his mind flashing back to Vietnam. He was seeing the man who had pursued them, the man who had attacked the helicopter just before they escaped.

  He was losing his mind.

  It’s real!

  “Out of the car!” yelled Josh. He turned and pushed Jablonski and Grasso toward the opposite door. “Senator! Get out of the car! Now!”

  ~ * ~

  Jing Yo saw the limousine to his right as he drove up the narrow space between the row of cars and the barrier dividing traffic on the bridge. He was just past the first tower on the bridge. The cars were bumper to bumper, with no space to get between them.

  It didn’t matter now. He had him.

  Jing Yo continued on for several car lengths until finally a large panel truck blocked his path. He hopped off the scooter just behind it, pausing for a moment to get his bearings and plan his route to the limo.

  The driver of the car next to him was talking on a cell phone. He looked up suddenly, just as Jing Yo’s eyes turned in his direction. The man’s expression was one of profound fear.

  The look of a hen before the hawk struck.

  Jing Yo felt a wave of disdain. He leapt onto the hood of the man’s car, pulled up his grenade launcher, sighting for the limo. He saw it, and pressed the trigger.

  ~ * ~

  Mara saw the flash and smoke, then the streak toward the limo. The missile crashed into the front of the car. In the same moment, there was a loud crack and an explosion. Flames appeared, giving way to a white cloud that turned brown in the next second.

  “Josh!” yelled Mara, raising her gun and firing in the direction the grenade had come from.

  ~ * ~

  Josh felt the rush of a tornado as the grenade blew up the limo. The bridge vibrated madly.

  The cone of white-hot gas and metal that had been the warhead set the inside of the vehicle on fire, filling it with flames and hot gas. Glass shattered, body crinkled, the limo started to disintegrate into bits of molten metal and evaporating plastic.

  “The gas tank!” yelled Josh. He saw Grasso and Jablonski on the other side, stunned, lying next to a damaged car.

  “Get off the bridge!” Josh yelled. “Go that way.” Josh pointed back toward the Queens side. “Go! Get away from the car!”

  He glanced at the vehicle, knowing there were two more men inside. But they were beyond hope now. He started to follow Jablonski and Grasso on his hands and knees, then saw Mara running up through the cars, gun drawn, coming for him.

  ~ * ~

  Jing Yo felt the bullet hit him in the right thigh, the sting of a bee on an early summer day, a diversion, an attempt to shake his focus. He concentrated on the limousine, working the stream of bullets into the front of the car, firing until a second shot grazed his left side and pushed him off the car, sent him tumbling to the pavement.

  Jing Yo scrambled to his feet, a little wobbly but still able to move. He dropped the box from the P90 and fished another from the pocket of the coveralls. It took him a moment to fit it into the unfamiliar gun.

  Someone began firing from the right, near the divider. Jing Yo slammed the magazine home and returned fire.

  ~ * ~

  Mara saw Broome go down as the Chinese assassin fired in his direction. She fired two more shots even though she couldn’t see the gunner, hoping to distract him. Realizing it was futile and that she wouldn’t be able to reload, she stopped.

  Josh and the others were up ahead somewhere. She started crawling for them. People were jumping from their cars, rushing to get off the bridge. The smoke and dust were so thick she started to cough.

  Bullets crashed into nearby cars, punching through the metal and plastic. She flattened herself on the pavement and glanced around, trying to locate where they were coming from.

  ~ * ~

  The gas tank in the limo exploded, the flames from the interior igniting the gas fumes. The force of the explosion pushed the car into the air; it slammed down on the hood of the car behind it, setting it on fire. Fortunately, the driver had already fled.

  A plume of smoke enveloped the bridge, a thick cloud of soot, dust, and debris. Josh started to sneeze.

  Panic gripped him. He started to get up. Something hit him, pushed him back against the car—a woman, running from the chaos.

  Josh fell to the ground, smacking his head on the bumper of the car. He was back in the past—not Vietnam, but the distant past, a child again, running from the men who had killed his parents.

  It was the same paralyzing fear, an emptiness at the center of his body, a certainty that he was going to be killed. He was a little boy again, desperate for life, desperate to live out the dreams he’d started to imagine for himself, half-formed wishes to be a hero, to accomplish something, to be a great man.

  Rather than a coward. Rather than a dead boy cowering.

  He was not a coward.

  Josh pushed himself to his feet, scrambling across the back of another car. He ran through a knot of dust, angled westward along another car, then turned behind a pickup truck.

  The cement barrier was a few feet away. He sneezed, put his arm over his mouth to block out the smoke and took a deep breath, then jumped over it. As he went over, he saw a body lying on the ground, next to the barrier, on the eastbound side of the road.

  The image didn’t register until he was over the cement, on the other side.

  Broome, lying on the ground. Wounded or dead.

  ~ * ~

  Jing Yo realized it was just a matter of time now. No one was firing at him anymore. All he had to do was walk down the line of cars and find the scientist.

  Assuming he was one of the people who’d gotten out. Jing Yo wasn’t sure. The limo was on fire now.

  Jing Yo steadied himself against the vehicle stalled next to him. Most likely the scientist was already dead, but he had to make sure.

  And then?

  It was his duty to try to escape. He was not seriously wounded. He would run until he was cornered, and then he would have an honorable death, a fulfillment of his fate.

  The next life would take care of itself.

  His leg dragge
d as he walked, his injured thigh holding him back.

  Someone was moving forward from the line of cars. He raised his gun and fired, but he didn’t have a good enough angle. He climbed up on the hood of the car next to him, then got up on the roof. He still couldn’t see. The car had crashed into the rail, trying to get away. Jing Yo sidestepped toward it, still trying for a good angle. His balance shaky, he reached up toward the bridge support. But it was too far away.

  The height of the side of the bridge would give him the right angle.

  If he hadn’t been wounded, he could have easily jumped up. He leaned now instead, clambering up.

  There was a woman with a gun. He twisted himself in her direction and fired.

  ~ * ~

  Mara realized a half second before he fired that she would be in the gunman’s sights. She ducked down, then raised the pistol, firing blind.

  A burst of submachine gun bullets told her she’d missed.

  She stayed down, crawling to the side of the car and looking up toward the limo. Where the hell was Josh?

  ~ * ~

  As soon as Josh heard the gunfire, he rolled back over the divider, landing on his side. He pushed forward, moving almost like he was swimming, crawling toward Broome.

  Broome was breathing.

  “You all right?” Josh asked.

  “Brother, I’m good. Stay down.”

  “Give me your gun,” said Josh.

  “What?”

  “Your gun.”

  “Stay down!”

  Josh saw the gun a few feet away, under a Lexus GS350. He started crawling for it.

  “Hey!” yelled Broome.

  “Stay down,” said Josh, grabbing the pistol.

  ~ * ~

  The top of the bridge railing was wet, and the grit from the explosion made it muddy and slippery. Jing Yo moved along the side, having trouble keeping his balance.

  The woman with the gun was three cars away. If the scientist wasn’t in the car, he would be with her.

  Just as Hyuen Bo had been with him.

  He would kill the woman. Kill her first, so the scientist saw what it was like, felt a shadow of the pain he had felt.

  He edged forward, sliding. Walking on the bridge was like walking on the beam—it was an exercise he had done when small, an exercise that tested not so much his balance but his faith in the Way, his trust of what the monks told him.

  “Close your eyes and walk,” said his mentor. “Walk simply, with your head erect. Trust that you will not fall.”

  He did trust.

  She was there, on his right. Jing Yo let go of the bridge post, lowering the P90 to fire.

  “It’s me you want!” yelled a man’s voice.

  Jing Yo turned toward the voice. As he did, his balance shifted, and he felt himself starting to fall.

  ~ * ~

  Josh fired at the commando on the bridge. The nose of the pistol jumped up slightly, his hand a little shaky. He grabbed with both hands and fired again, twice.

  The man twisted back, falling away from the third shot.

  The assassin disappeared from the bridge.

  Josh began to run. He didn’t have a conscious plan, wasn’t sure whether he was still in danger or not. He saw Mara on his right, yelled at her.

  “Over the side!” he shouted.

  He reached the rail and looked over, looked down.

  The shooter was gone, somewhere in the water.

  Mara grabbed his shoulder. “Don’t!”

  Josh twisted around. “Don’t what?”

  “Just let him go.”

  His face was two inches from hers.

  “I wasn’t going to chase him,” he said, staring into her face.

  “Good,” she managed, before he kissed her.

  ~ * ~

  32

  UN Headquarters, New York City

  The head of the Secret Service detail literally had tears in his eyes as he repeated his advice to the president.

  “The most prudent thing is to get of here now,” said the agent. “We have a path north—we close down the FDR, have Marine One meet us at Yankee Stadium.”

  “See, now, if it were spring and we stood a chance of catching a ball game, that might be a winning strategy,” said President Greene. They were sitting together in the presidential limo in the garage under UN headquarters. Green reached across and put his hand on the agent’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Ted. I know you’re only doing your job. Excuse my black humor.”

  “Sir, we don’t know how many of them there are. We don’t know what else they may have planned.”

  “You checked the building for bombs, right?”

  “Three times. But—”

  “And nobody could come in or out in the last two hours?”

  “Yes, sir—well except for your people. But—”

  “You think I’m going to let the Chinese win this without even taking a shot? They weren’t shooting at me, were they?” Greene glanced at his national security adviser. “Walt, you think they were shooting at me?”

  “I can’t say at this time, Mr. President,” said Jackson.

  “But I can. We go on as planned. What did you do with Josh?”

  “He’s with the police on his way,” said the agent. “Mr. President—”

  “I’ll fire you if you say anything else,” said Greene. “Then I’ll have no protection. That’s not going to be a better situation, is it?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well then, let’s move, gentlemen.”

  Greene got out of the car. As best as he could determine, the situation was under control. The Chinese had tried to assassinate Josh Mac-Arthur on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Josh and Mara Duncan had turned the tables on them. The NYPD had arrived and ushered not only Josh and Mara, but Senator Grasso across the bridge, then taken them through the line of protesters in an armored car.

  The confusion had dulled the crowd a bit as well. People were shocked at the violence, not entirely understanding it. Even the Secret Service detail had reported the crowd had “diminished,” as close as the bodyguard ever got to saying things weren’t quite as dire as they had first appeared.

  “There’s Senator Grasso now,” Greene said, seeing the senator across the garage. He was standing with two emergency medical technicians. “Senator! Phil! Are you okay?”

  “George. George”—Grasso grabbed the president’s arm—”the Chinese are crazy! They tried to kill me!”

  “You’re all right?”

  “Yes. They’re out to kill everyone.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you that.”

  “We have to stop them. They got Smith. My aide. They killed him. And my driver. My God!”

  “It’s terrible,” said Greene. “It could have been you.”

  “MacArthur shot him. He got the Chinese bastard. I saw the whole thing. I would have taken a few shots myself, if I’d had a gun.”

  Greene had gotten a full description of what had happened from Jablonski; according to his blow-by-blow, the senator had cowered beneath an SUV for most of the encounter, and had to be pried out by the paramedics who responded. But Greene wasn’t about to contradict a senator, as long as his vote could be counted on.

  “Where is Josh?” asked Greene. “Is he okay?”

  “Mr. President, Dr. MacArthur is by the truck with Ms. Duncan,” said Jess Jordan, one of the NSC staffers traveling with him.

  “Thank you. Senator, excuse me a second.”

  Greene strode across the garage. He was a little apprehensive. He didn’t want to push Josh too far, and was genuinely concerned about his safety, and Mara’s. But his testimony was critical. Especially now— the delegates would know what had happened, or would hear of it before the end of the day. It would add an exclamation point to his testimony.

  Josh and Mara were standing near the back of the armored car. A nurse was cleaning the cuts on her forehead.

  “Josh! Mara! You’re all right?” said Greene, walking to them. H
e hugged Mara, then hugged Josh as well. “You’re all right? Are you all right?”