Threat Vector

by Tom Clancy

  Quickly Sam checked his six-o’clock position. With the heavy rain, many motorists on the street could not see the melee until they were just a few hundred yards from Driscoll, which meant now a massive sliding car wreck was starting behind him. He put the slight danger of getting run over during this operation out of his mind, reloaded the launcher, and fired another grenade. This explosive shot right by the open driver’s-side door of the rolling work truck and struck the second troop transport, which had just slammed its rear into the center dividing wall between the northbound and southbound lanes while trying to back up to reverse direction. The broadside hit of this grenade meant fewer soldiers were killed outright, but the truck was ablaze and blocking the road so the surviving vehicles in the motorcade now had no way to escape.

  Sam ran off the southeastern side of the road, slid into a ditch containing two feet of cold, swiftly moving water, and began firing his AK at the soldiers who were still pouring out of the two burning trucks.

  —

  All along the wet, grassy hillside on Caruso’s right, barking undisciplined rifle fire pierced the air. Dominic fired his rocket launcher three times. Two rockets hit high on the far side of the road, and the third made a glancing blow on an SUV, causing it to wreck into another vehicle but by no means destroy it. Dom grabbed a rifle off a dead rebel and, in contrast to his frantic comrades on the hill, carefully put his front blade sight on a running man seventy yards distant. He tracked him a few yards from right to left, then carefully pressed his rifle’s trigger. It popped in his hand, and the man seventy-five yards away fell down dead.

  He repeated the process with a soldier running north from one of the burning trucks.

  And next to him fifteen other shooters, little Yin Yin included, poured inaccurate but energetic fire up and down the motorcade.

  —

  Domingo Chavez scanned the sedans in the middle of the motorcade, looking for officers. Giving up for the moment, he settled on a plain-clothed security guard who fled a wrecked SUV and then ran to the dividing barrier for cover. Ding shot the man in the lower torso while he ran, and then he took his eye off the scope while he changed out the spent magazine in his hot and smoking Dragunov. He took a half-second for a wide view of the battle space. To his left, the troop transport trucks were engulfed in rolling flames, and pouring black smoke rose into the sleet-gray sky. Bodies—from this distance they were just tiny forms on the ground—lay strewn near the truck.

  The black SUVs and sedans were in front of the troop trucks and behind the two burning vehicles at the front. They had stopped in the road in an accordion fashion, and a half-dozen or more men in black suits and green uniforms lay prone behind the tires or crouched on the near side of the engine block. Many others from these three vehicles Ding had already shot dead.

  Everyone had bailed out of the vehicles by now because the rocket-propelled grenades and the anti-tank weapons flying through the air showed them that a stationary vehicle was the last place to be at the moment.

  Ding tucked his eye back behind his scope and scanned quickly, right to left, searching for Su. He estimated there were still at least thirty soldiers and security men on the road or on the shoulder. Those firing their weapons all seemed to be shooting off to the east, away from Chavez.

  He swept his scope over the firing position of Dom and the rebels, about three hundred fifty yards from his position. He saw several bodies lying in the grass, and an impressive amount of mud, grass, brush, and other foliage was getting kicked up into the rain by the incoming fire from the Chinese in the road.

  Domingo knew the tiny position of poorly trained fighters would be wiped out in another minute if he did not pick up the pace, so he lowered his scoped rifle back to the road and centered his crosshairs on the mid-back of a security man in a black raincoat.

  The Dragunov spit fire, and the man pitched forward, tumbling across the hood of an SUV.

  —

  Caruso shouted over the sound of gunfire, “Yin Yin is dead! I can’t communicate with these people.”

  “Keep pouring fire!” shouted Chavez.

  Driscoll called over now, “We’ve got police cars coming up the shoulder from the southwest!”

  Ding said, “Deal with them, Sam!”

  “Roger that, but I’m going to run low on ammo in about a minute.”

  Ding shouted back, his words punctuated by his sniper rifle, “If we aren’t moving in a minute”—boom!—“then we aren’t moving!” Boom!

  “Roger that,” shouted Driscoll.

  —

  General Su Ke Qiang crawled away from the cover of his sedan, and behind the row of men firing on the hillside to the west. To his left and right vehicles burned and bodies lay in the heavy rain, with blood running in long rivulets of rainwater off the road.

  He could not believe this was happening. A few feet ahead of him he saw the slumped form of General Xia, his second-in-command. Su could not see his face; he did not know if he was dead or alive, but he clearly was not moving.

  Su screamed as broken safety glass on the street ground into his hands and wrists as he crawled forward.

  Chattering automatic fire came from the south, from the hills along the opposing lanes of traffic.

  —

  Two hundred fifty yards away, Domingo Chavez caught a quick flash of movement by the side of the road near the fourth vehicle. He centered his rifle’s scope on a uniformed man crawling there, and without hesitation he pressed the taut trigger of the weapon.

  The bullet left the barrel of the rifle, raced over the chaos of the motorcade attack, and slammed into the left scapula of Chairman Su Ke Qiang. The copper-jacketed round tore through his back, spun through his left lung, and exited into the asphalt below where he lay. With a plaintive cry of shock and pain, the most dangerous man in the world died on the roadside, facedown, next to young soldiers who poured hundreds of rounds in all directions in a desparate attempt to push back the attack.

  Chavez did not know that the last man he targeted in the motorcade was Su; he only knew they had done their best and now it was time to get the fuck out of the area. He shouted into his radio, “Exfiltrate! Everybody move! Go! Go! Go!” His command would be translated by those who understood for the benefit of those who did not, but anyone with radio contact could easily put together the message he was trying to convey.

  Clark and his minder picked Chavez and his minders up four minutes later. Driscoll and three surviving men with him crossed all eight lanes of traffic and ran up the hill on the west side, met up with two of the Pathway of Liberty rebels who had run south instead of west, and they found Dom and two more surviving Chinese desperately trying to pull all the bodies off the hillside while staying in a gully that kept them clear of the sporadic fire from the road. Together they collected all the dead, and one man retrieved the minibus.

  The thunderstorm helped with the escape. There were helicopters in the air, Chavez could hear them churning the black, soupy sky as they drove to the northwest, but their view of the ground was limited and there was so much carnage and congestion at the scene, just figuring out what the hell had happened took most of an hour.

  The Americans and the ten surviving Chinese were back in the barn before noon. There were some wounds—Sam had a broken hand that he had not even felt when he was hit. Caruso had taken a ricochet off a rock that grazed his hip and bled heavily but wasn’t serious, and one of the surviving Chinese had been shot in the forearm.

  Together they all treated their wounds and hoped like hell neither PLA nor the police would find them before nightfall.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  President of the United States Jack Ryan sat at his desk in the Oval Office, looked down to his prepared text, and cleared his throat.

  To the right of the camera, just ten feet in front of his face, the director said, “Five, four, th
ree . . .” He held up two fingers, then one finger, and then he pointed to Jack.

  Ryan did not smile for the camera; there was a perfect tone to hit, and the longer he played this damn game the more he recognized that the rules, while still annoying as hell, sometimes were there for a reason. He did not want to show outrage, relief, satisfaction, or anything else other than measured confidence.

  “Good evening. Yesterday I ordered American strike aircraft to launch a limited attack on a location in southern China that was thought by American military and intelligence experts to be the nerve center overseeing the cyberattacks against the United States. Brave American pilots, sailors, and special-operations personnel were involved in the attack, and I am happy to report the attack was an unqualified success.

  “In the past twenty-four hours we have seen major reversals in the potent assault on America’s infrastructure and business capabilities. While we are a long way from repairing the extreme damage perpetrated on us by the Chinese regime, with the help of American government and business experts, working together across the full spectrum of attacks executed against us, we will see this crisis through and put in place measures to ensure this never happens again.

  “In the attack in China, many Americans lost their lives, and several more were captured by Chinese forces and are currently being held prisoner. Here in the United States, deaths and injuries from the loss of electrical power, the loss of communications services, and the disruption of transportation networks will take some time to calculate.

  “Additionally, eight American military personnel were killed in the opening salvo of the operation against us perpetrated by the Chinese, when the American Reaper drone was hijacked two months ago and missiles were fired on our soldiers and our allies.

  “I have told you about the loss of American life. The loss of life to the Taiwanese, the Indians, the Vietnamese, the Filipinos, and the Indonesians by Chinese aggression also plays a large role in measuring this calamity.

  “America and its allies have suffered needlessly, and we are all angry. But we do not want war, we want peace. I have consulted with Secretary of Defense Robert Burgess and others at the Pentagon to find a way to resolve this crisis with China that will preserve lives, not cost lives.

  “To that end, starting at dawn tomorrow, the United States Navy will begin a partial blockade of oil shipments to China entering the Strait of Malacca, the gateway from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea. China receives eighty percent of all its oil via this narrow waterway, and beginning tomorrow, we will restrict fifty percent of this oil.

  “The leadership of China has an immediate choice to make. They can move their warships out of the South China Sea, remove their troops from the islands and shoals they occupied in the past month, and cease all centerline incursions in the Strait of Taiwan. As soon as they do this, the oil will once again flow unrestrained through the Strait of Malacca.

  “On the other hand, if China continues to attack its neighbors, or launches an attack of any kind—land, sea, air, space, or cyber—on the United States of America, we will retaliate in kind, and we will shut off all of the oil to China through the Strait of Malacca.”

  Ryan looked up from his text. His jaw stiffened. “All of it. Every last drop.”

  He paused, then adjusted his glasses and glanced back down at his copy. “The United States has been a good friend and business partner to the People’s Republic of China for over forty years. We have had our differences, but we retain our respect for the good people of China.

  “Our quarrel now is with elements in the People’s Liberation Army and the Communist Party of China. Clearly, we are not the only ones dissatisfied with the actions of the military’s leadership. Indeed, there are factions within the PLA who are not happy with the aggressive actions China has taken.

  “A few hours ago in Beijing, the chairman of the Central Military Commission and chief architect of the coordinated attacks by China on its neighbors and the United States was assassinated. Early reports suggest members of his own military were involved in the attack on his motorcade. There could be no greater underscoring of the dissatisfaction with the military’s current path than the audacious killing of Chairman Su by his own men.

  “President Wei has an important choice to make, and his choice will affect the lives of one-point-four billion Chinese. I call on President Wei to make the correct choice, cease all hostilities, call his military back to their bases, and work tirelessly to rectify the damage caused by China’s actions over the past few months.

  “Thank you, and good night.”

  —

  Wei Zhen Lin sat at his desk, his palms down on the blotter, and he looked straight ahead.

  The Politburo Standing Committee wanted his head. Clearly, Wei thought, they wanted Su’s head, but since Su was dead already, they were more than willing to destroy Wei as a substitute in order to channel their rage and distance themselves from the policies—economic, social, and military—that had failed so completely.

  President Wei felt the stab of regret that Su had not just done what Wei had asked. With some saber rattling and bluster regarding the South China Sea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, Wei felt certain, he could have made the region happy to align itself with the strong economy and future prospects of the People’s Republic of China.

  But no, Su wanted to have it all, to make a proper war out of it, to defeat the United States Navy and send it running for cover back home.

  The man was a fool. Wei felt that, had he been chosen to lead the Central Military Commission, he would have done a better job than Su Ke Qiang.

  But wishing things would have been different was a waste of time, and Wei had no time to waste.

  He heard the heavy vehicles of the Ministry of Public Security outside his window. They had come to arrest him, just as they had done a few months earlier, except this time Su wouldn’t show up to save him.

  Save him? No, Su had not saved him back then. Su had only delayed Wei’s fall long enough to further tarnish his legacy.

  With a heart full of anger, regret, and insolence at those who still did not understand him, President and General Secretary Wei Zhen Lin took his right hand off the blotter, wrapped it around the grip of the pistol, and then quickly put the weapon to the side of his head.

  —

  In the end, he made a mess of it. He flinched with the anticipation of the gun’s report, and the barrel jerked forward and down. He shot himself through the right cheekbone, and the bullet tore through his face, passing through his sinus cavity and exiting on the left side.

  He fell onto the floor, grabbing at the indescribable pain, writhing around behind his desk, kicking over his chair and flailing in his own blood.

  One of his eyes had filled with tears and blood, but the other remained clear, and through it he saw Fung standing over him, shocked and irresolute.

  “Finish it!” he cried, but the words were unclear. The agony of the wound and the shame of rolling around on the floor of his office after failing such a simple task tore through his soul like the bullet had torn through his face.

  “Finish it!” he yelled again, and again he knew he could not be understood.

  Fung just stood above him.

  “Please!”

  Fung turned away, disappeared around the desk, and through his own screams and pleas Wei heard Fung shut the office door behind him.

  It took the president four minutes to choke to death on his own blood.

  EPILOGUE

  China released the captured pilots after only three days, quietly putting them on chartered flights to Hong Kong, where they were picked up by DoD aircraft and flown home.

  Brandon “Trash” White was back in Hong Kong already. He had spent the first day after his crash in a small apartment in Shenzhen with the masked American named Jack and the Asian CIA man who c
alled himself Adam, and here he was visited by a doctor from Hong Kong whom Adam seemed to know. The man treated Trash’s wounds and prepared him for travel, and then, during the night, Jack and Trash crossed a river on a raft and then walked an hour through rice paddies before being picked up on the other side by Adam himself.

  From there, Trash went to a Hong Kong hospital, where he was met by Defense Intelligence Agency personnel and ferried to Pearl Harbor. He would heal, and he would be back in the cockpit of the F/A-18 soon enough, although he imagined it would never again feel the same flying without Cheese as his flight lead.

  —

  John Clark, Domingo Chavez, Sam Driscoll, and Dominic Caruso spent nine days in Beijing, moving from safe house to safe house, being passed from Pathway of Liberty to Red Hand and back again, until a large cash payment, hand-delivered by Ed Foley to an old man in New York’s Chinatown, really got things moving.

  In the middle of the night the four Americans were taken to a building housing Russian pilots for Rosoboronexport, Russia’s state-owned weapons exporter, and they were covertly put aboard a Yakovlev heading to Russia after dropping off cluster bombs for the Chinese.

  Clark had negotiated the return trip through Stanislav Biryukov, the head of the FSB. It went off without a hitch, though John knew that the favor Biryukov had owed him had now been paid in full, so he could not count on him again to be anything more than the head of a sometimes-enemy spy agency.

  —

  Valentin Kovalenko spent nearly a week locked in a room in a safe house belonging to Hendley Associates. He saw no one other than a couple of security men who brought him food and newspapers, and he spent his days staring at the walls and wanting to return home to his family.

  But he never believed it would happen.

  He feared, he expected, he was certain, that when John Clark returned he would walk into the room with a pistol in his hand and shoot Valentin Kovalenko in the head.

  And Kovalenko could not say he blamed him.