Red Dragon

by Jerry Pournelle

  "Yeah. OK, we're up here. What's on the agenda now?"

  He was opening some of the boxes in the plane. The long one that ran through both compartments yielded a pair of scope-mounted rifles, little Winchester lightweight 30-06's, the sporterized models. Another box had two pair of big night glasses and a radio. He handed me a rifle and binoculars, fished around and came up with a box of ammunition. We loaded up and divided the rest of the ammo.

  "You are said to be expert in rough country. I am going down that hill to get as close to them as I can. If you would like to come with me, I can use the help."

  "Help in what way?"

  "The man you know as Hudson. If there is any trouble, concentrate on him. You have a rifle, and you will get into a hidden position where you can watch their camp."

  "You want me to kill Hudson."

  "Well, I do not insist that he be killed. Only that he does not kill me."

  "Yeah. The things I do to earn an engineering consulting fee. OK, let's go, Montezuma. Sorry, wrong man. About now we could use Cochise or Mangas Colorados."

  "Or Davy Crockett. There is one thing, Señor Crane."

  "For God's sake if we're going to get killed together you can at least call me Paul."

  "Paul. One thing. Bruce Ching must leave the country. Steen Hoorne and Li Kun must not. Leave that to me, and concentrate on Hudson."

  "Sure. OK, lead on, Santa Ana." We turned and plunged off the road, headed down toward the oil camp below.

  It wasn't really hard going. Everything was dry, but there'd been some strong wind along those hills, so there weren't many dead leaves, and the chaparral had burned off a couple of years before. A lot of it had grown back, of course, but it wasn't too thick except for scattered briars and a spiky sort of bush, all over thorns. There were regular Scots thistles too, but at least there wasn't any of that jumping devil-plant Steen and I ran into on Anacapa.

  We headed down the ridge line of the finger jutting out into the desert. There was more cover there, and it figured that their guard in the oil derrick wouldn't be watching that direction as close. He'd be far more interested in cars out on the desert road, especially any that stopped.

  By the time we got to where we could just see their camp, the sun was gone behind the Temblors, and the light was fading out fast. We didn't have to worry about reflections from our binoculars.

  I didn't recognize the man in the oil derrick, and after some thought Sam assigned him to me to worry about. The instructions were to not alarm them unless we had to, but after that I should keep Hudson and the guard occupied, letting Sam concentrate on the mission. If he saw Li Kun, he would have Shearing create a diversion and the battle would start.

  When it got dark enough we worked our way down closer, until I found a position about a hundred yards from their camp. I was on a level with the man in the oil tower, and with the big night glasses I could see him fine. There were electric lights in the main building, but no sign of the airplane. They must have hauled it into another shed, and I tried to pick out which one. I wouldn't want to put a bullet in there and risk knocking out their transportation.

  Sam left me and moved around to my right where he could see into the main building. I had to admit he was pretty good, probably better than I was. I knew where to look, but after a few minutes I couldn't see him, and he didn't make any noise. I sat there for an hour, waiting, wondering what comes next. This was the damnedest outfit for not telling me anything.

  Of course it figured. I wasn't really one of their little band of brothers. More like a brother-in-law, say. The rest of them would have been briefed long ago, and there'd been little time to clue me in on everything. The real puzzle was why they were letting Ching go. After the trouble we'd taken to authenticate Steen, it had to be what he was giving him. I wondered if big lasers exploded, killing everyone in the laboratory, if you built them wrong. Or maybe there were some super-expensive lines of research that didn't pan out, but by changing the results a little they could look like just the thing to do, draining off Chinese talent in wrong directions. I remembered somebody once telling me that we had about five different approaches to the atomic bomb during World War II, and if any enemy agent had just managed to tell the Germans which lines were not working, Hitler would have had the bomb before we did by concentrating all his effort on the one that did. Technological warfare is pretty complex, and it had to be something like that, I'd never know what.

  All the time I waited I was watching their man in the oil tower. Suddenly he stopped sweeping his binoculars across the desert, concentrated on a spot a mile or so away. I looked over to see what he was searching for but couldn't see a thing. I had concluded he was hunting coyotes when there were several shots out there.

  Car lights came on out at the blacktop road, and there was more gunfire. Somebody must have tried to force his way up the road, probably Shearing's men. Sam would know, but he had the only radio.

  Men came boiling out of the camp buildings below. Two of them went into the shed, and a few seconds later I saw a low-winged single-engine airplane being pushed out onto the dirt road. More people came out of the buildings, moving too fast for me to recognize from that distance.

  Off to my right there was a rifle shot, and one of the men near the plane went down. The guy in the oil tower turned toward the flash, firing a little automatic weapon, some kind of carbine. I shot at him, missed, worked the bolt and fired again. I thought I'd hit him that time, but I hadn't killed him. He turned on me, sprayed the area around me. I heard the swish of the bullets, felt a couple of pieces of chaparral fall on my back where they'd been clipped off above me. I steadied the rifle, got a good picture of him in the scope, and knocked him out of the tower with my third shot. Then I turned the scope back onto the group around the plane.

  Hudson was hauling on a smaller man kneeling on the ground. There was a body stretched out there, an older Oriental man I thought, and this guy seemed to want to stay with him, while Hudson was pulling him away. Hudson was my target, and I got him in the sights but I couldn't risk a shot at him for fear of hitting the other guy, who might have been the Ching we were so concerned about.

  The engine started on the plane, and Hudson got his man away from the body, heaved him into the aircraft. As he did, a tall man ran out of the shed, got to the airplane and started to climb onto the wing. From the height and the way he ran, I knew him. It had to be Steen Hoorne.

  Hudson stood out of his way, turned toward the hills and fired a couple of shots with a pistol, which seemed pretty stupid since he didn't have much to shoot at. The shots were answered, though. De la Torres' rifle barked again, and Steen fell backwards out of the plane, stretched out on the ground under the wing. Somebody inside flashed a light on him for a second, and with the full nine power of the variable scope I didn't have any trouble at all seeing the big bloodstain spreading across his shirt. I remembered how Shearing had put it. Li Kun and Hoorne must stay here. Somehow I didn't think Sam had been shooting at Hudson at all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I remembered that Hudson was supposed to be my assignment and I looked for him in the sights. I wanted to shoot somebody. I would have preferred Sam de la Torres, but Hudson would do, only I couldn't find him. They'd closed the door of the plane from the inside, maybe he'd climbed aboard while I was still looking at Steen's body. De la Torres had plenty of opportunity to shoot Hudson if he really wanted him, but I didn't think he'd hit him, there weren't any bodies showing. If he'd shot at the man, he'd have got him, I suppose. He'd already proved he knew how to shoot. There were two bodies out there to prove it, and one of them was my friend.

  The little Piper taxied away fast, rolled down the dirt track without a runup, which is bad procedure, but under the circumstances the pilot didn't have much choice. I didn't envy him taking off in the dark with those transmission lines down there somewhere. I put a couple of rounds out in their general direction for effect, we wouldn't want them to think they were supposed to get a
way. Now that he'd been killed for it that would be a hell of a waste of a good sailor.

  The plane roared off down the road, bounced, hit again, and was airborne, flying over the running gun battle still in progress farther off in the desert. It climbed steeply, almost at its stall angle, the pilot obviously unsure of those transmission lines and determined to get over them. He kept on climbing long after he'd got enough altitude, and the sound of the engines died away in the night. There didn't seem to be anyone left alive in the oil camp.

  I waited a couple of minutes, then began to work my way down there. With all that blood there wasn't much chance that Steen was alive, but if I could I wanted to help. On the way I tried to think what I might do, but the first aid courses I'd taken didn't include much about chest wounds. Back in OCS we had some drill on that, but I couldn't remember much about it. I'd slept through most of the classes.

  I was thinking about that instead of what I was doing, and I was almost to the sheds when I saw I wasn't alone. A little short guy was coming out of the brush fast, a rifle across his chest, big binoculars flapping at his side. When he got to the lighted area a burst from one of those automatic carbines cut him down, and he rolled over, flopping around in the dirt. Hudson came out of the shed fast, running hunched over, almost stumbling over Steen's body, headed out -into the brush where Sam had been. I realized that the man with the rifle must have been de la Torres.

  I whipped off a shot at Hudson, but the light was bad and I had to fire across the barrel without sights. Then I got down to the ground, worked the control on the scope to get back to about four power and a wider field of vision. Hudson reached the edge of the brush and fired another burst in my general direction, but he wasn't even close.

  We were back to stalking games again, but I had to work around the lighted area of the sheds, and by the time I got to the chaparral he'd moved on up the hill to another position. Neither one of us was very quiet about it. You can't be when you're in a hurry.

  I had the more accurate weapon, but his could spray down an area, and the light was too poor for good shooting anyway. I decided my best chance was to outdistance him, get above him and force him back down onto the desert where Shearing's people could take him. Crouching as low as I could, I dashed up a draw, running for altitude and the hell with the noise, anything to outdistance him.

  He could see my plan, but before he decided to make a race of it he fired another burst at me. I heard the bullets whipping around me, but he must have been moving the rifle to try for area shooting. Nothing hit me. Then he started to run up, but he wasn't making much progress. I began to wonder if my snap shot hadn't hit him after all. Anyway, it was simple enough to get ahead of him, and once above him I got a position and scanned through the brush, trying for a clear shot. He'd gone to ground.

  There was a car moving up the road toward us now, playing a big searchlight out ahead of it. Whoever it was didn't care about being seen. I listened and realized the battle was over out that way, which had to mean that Shearing's people had won. At least I hoped it meant that, but actually I had no way of knowing how many troops were involved from either side. I wondered about Janie, and if Shearing used the girls for an assault.

  At the moment I was in a pretty good position either way, able to keep Hudson pinned down below me, or run like hell to get away if it turned out the friends of suffering Asia had knocked off Shearing's clean-cut fine upstanding American boys. At the moment I didn't give much of a damn. Maybe it was important to keep Steen from being carried off to Peking, but they could have found another way. Sam de la Torres must have intended this all along, and I hated his guts. I wondered if he was still alive down there. The last time I'd seen him he was still moving.

  The car got closer, and there was another burst from that damn little spitgun down below me. The guy had got himself into a depression where I couldn't see him, and I stood, getting careful aim, waiting for him to show himself again. The lights went out in the car, and people were piling out of it, diving onto the road, with another burst from that carbine to keep them moving. At that range he couldn't hope for accuracy, but if you spray an area long enough you'll hit someone.

  I fired, worked the bolt, fired again. There wasn't any chance of hitting him, but it might keep him busy, and if I couldn't see him to shoot at, he had the same problem. He realized it and moved out of his draw, spraying down the general area around me, and I lined up the sights on his chest, began to squeeze off the round. Suddenly there wasn't any target to shoot at, and I heard the sound of a rifle from below us. We'd both forgotten Sam de la Torres. He might be a rotten swine, but he sure as hell could shoot. Hudson rolled down the hillside with half his head blown off.

  The camp was crawling with people when I got back down to it. Peters and a guy I didn't know had a group of handcuffed prisoners herded into the shed where they'd kept the plane. Two other men in white coats had bundled Steen's body onto a stretcher, covered his face with a blanket and were carrying him off to an ambulance that drove up with four or five other cars. A highway patrol cruiser and two Kern County sheriff's cars pulled up behind me, and some other character identified himself to them as the FBI special agent in charge here.

  There were more medics working on Sam de la Torres, putting tourniquets around both of his legs. He seemed to have taken one in each thigh, maybe more, and I wondered how he'd been able to roll around and work the rifle. Well, I never thought the little guy didn't have guts. Janie was in the circle around him, and I got to them just in time to see one of the medics slip him a hypodermic. De la Torres had the little smile I'd seen before, but it was an effort to keep it there.

  "Hold it right there!" somebody shouted. "You! Who the hell are you?" Someone grabbed me by the shoulder and whirled me around. A uniformed deputy took the rifle I was carrying while another frisked me, found the Luger and looked triumphant. "Trying to act like one of us," he said. "Now just who the hell are you, with this foreign gun?"

  "Don't say anything," Janie told me. "Bring him over here, officer."

  They frog-marched me around the building, and a minute later Nick joined us. "He's an undercover man for us," Nick told the deputies. "I didn't want the prisoners to get a look at him. It's all right, officer, give him his gun back."

  The cop looked like he was parting with his last friend, but he handed over the Luger. The other one started to offer me the rifle, but I shook my head. "The Luger's mine. I don't need that goddamn thing." The cops stepped back, but they weren't leaving a desperate criminal like me unwatched. They still didn't believe Nick, thought they had a good arrest.

  "It all—all worked fine," Janie said. "The whole mission." She glanced around at the policemen. "Perfectly."

  I could see them loading Steen's body into the ambulance. Another group had Sam on a stretcher. Whatever they'd shot him full of put him out, but he still had his little smile. Janie saw where I was looking and said, "His legs are pretty bad, but they think they can save them. He'll limp on his left one, but . . . ."

  "Too goddamn bad it didn't cripple him," I said. "OK, so it worked perfectly. Now leave me alone."

  The cops edged in closer, and the one who thought he'd caught a spy put his hand on his pistol. They were just kids, I saw. You couldn't blame them. A Kern County deputy wasn't likely to see a pitched battle in his lifetime, and never spies and secret service men. Janie gave me a hurt look, put her hand on my shoulder.

  I drew away. "Just let me alone," I said. "Look, there's a goddamn airplane up on the ridge. I'll go fly it out, take it to Santa Monica. Soon as it's light." I turned away from them and headed for the hill. It would be a long climb in the dark, something to do to keep from thinking about a big Norwegian character who could sit up on deck with the tiller all night in a gale.

  "Paul, wait . . . Paul!" Janie called.

  "There's nothing to wait for. Like you said, it was a perfect mission. Now let me alone, goddamn it." I started up the hill. She wanted to come after me, but Nick held h
er back.

  Chapter Twenty

  The water was clear and warm, and I had the anchorage all to myself, a little cove halfway up Catalina Island where I could swim ashore or just lie around on deck in the sun. At night I could hear the goats calling each other, and sometimes in the early morning the hills would be alive with them. I'd been there a couple of days and it was time to move on, but I wasn't sure where to go. It would be a long cruise back up to Seattle and I didn't have anybody to steer through the nights. Part of the way I could hop from harbor to harbor, but after I got out of Southern California it was a long way between safe anchorages. I could worry about that later.

  The tide rolled in, slipping through the rocks, reminding me of something with its rushing sound, but I didn't want to remember what. I kept telling myself I was a fool, I ought to at least let the girl say something, but what would she say? She was right, it was a perfect mission. Probably Steen volunteered for it, knowing perfectly well what might happen. They couldn't let him out of the country alive, and given the choice maybe I'd rather have a clean bullet through the back than years in a Chinese prison having everything I knew dredged out of me. Maybe we saved the country for a few years, but that was something else I didn't want to think about. Not right then.