by Alex Ryan
She thought of Jamie Lin, writhing on the bathroom floor as the macrophage nanobots liquefied her organs. Was Qing responsible for her death? Had he discovered Jamie Lin’s link to the CIA and murdered her because of it? Had her husband sent the three thugs to rough her up in the alley outside the club?
“Dr. Chen?” Li said, growing impatient.
She blinked twice and said, “My husband wears many masks, has many secrets, and has always kept his true thoughts and feelings to himself. Maybe I should be ashamed to admit it, but I do not know my husband. I do not know the real Chen Qing. Five years ago, if you had asked me if he was capable of murder, I would have said no. Today, I’m not so sure. If he was pushed to the limit, I don’t know what kind of malice Qing is capable of unleashing.”
The confession took her by surprise, but it was also profoundly liberating. She did not consider it a betrayal. She did not love her husband. She hadn’t for a very long time.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell us, Dr. Chen?” Li asked. “Any details or thoughts you might have left out that could be relevant to this investigation?”
Like the fact that my best friend was a CIA agent? Or maybe the secret parallel investigation I have going with an American Navy SEAL?
Dazhong glanced at the row of clocks on the wall above Director Wong’s head. It was after eleven PM—she was more than two hours late for her meeting with Nick. She had promised to text him if she was going to be delayed, and she suspected he must be worried sick. She needed to call him as soon as possible and apologize. Certainly he would understand.
But she needed to close this loop first.
“Nothing I can think of,” she said at last while resisting the urge to fold her arms across her chest.
With a sharp rap of his knuckles on the table, Zhang stood. “Then what are we waiting for? I think it’s time to go have a chat with the other Dr. Chen.”
“Are you sure direct confrontation is the best strategy, Commander?” Li said, not moving in his seat.
“Oh, I don’t plan to confront Dr. Chen,” Zhang said. “I plan to take him.”
“I would feel more comfortable with a joint operation,” Li said. “This is not the sort of thing that should be rushed.”
“Unfortunately, Major, I must disagree. Rushing is a necessity for all counterterrorism operations. Time is our single biggest adversary.”
“Yes, that may be true, but I am the ranking official here.”
“The moment Dr. Chen became classified as a terrorist threat to China, operational control for his apprehension shifted from your unit to mine.”
Li eyed Zhang for a moment and then said, “Keep me posted as events unfold, but let me be clear. Dr. Chen is not to be harmed during his apprehension.”
“Dr. Chen’s personal safety is a priority, but let me be clear—his safety does not and will not supersede that of my men and the general public.”
Major Li sniffed but had no retort.
Zhang turned to Dazhong. “Do you know where your husband is at present?”
“He is most likely home at our apartment, but we have not spoken this evening,” she said, her mind still reeling with thoughts of nanobots and all the innocent people her husband might have murdered.
“Has he tried to contact you in the last twelve hours?” Zhang asked.
“I don’t think so,” she said, checking her mobile phone. “No text messages. No voicemails.”
“All right. We start with your apartment and branch out from there,” Zhang said. “If he suspects you are working with us, we may be too late. He could already be on the run.”
She touched Zhang’s sleeve as they all exited the conference room. “Why would Qing do this?”
“I don’t know,” Zhang said. “Most likely, he is working with a foreign government. Perhaps the Americans or the Iranians. Possibly the Russians.”
“So not only is my husband a psychotic mass murderer,” she said through clenched teeth, “but he is also a traitor to China.”
“I’m sorry, Dazhong,” Zhang said, turning to her, his face an unreadable mask. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never suspected you had any involvement in this.”
“Thanks,” she said, wondering how much longer she could bear the crushing weight of the world she was carrying on her shoulders.
“Are you sure you want to come with me?” he asked with genuine concern. “You don’t have to, you know. We’ve got this under control.”
Do you? she wondered, thinking about the sequence of events over the past five days. It seems to me he’s been operating one step ahead of all of us since the beginning.
“I’m coming with you,” she said, staunchly. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Zhang nodded. “And if things get ugly, are you ready for that?”
“If the accusations about Qing are true,” she said, balling her hands up into fists, “you might have to stop me from pulling the trigger myself.”
Chapter 27
One block south of the Chen residence
Chaoyang District
0045 hours local
Nick had the eerie sense that everyone was watching him. No, not watching—surveilling. Was he being overly paranoid? Yes. Was someone actually watching his every move? Most likely. Somewhere in the thin crowds and the dark cars with their dark windows were agents of the CIA, the Snow Leopard counterterrorism unit, the Chinese Ministry of State Security, the People’s Liberation Army, and of course whoever was actually behind the insane attacks in Kizilsu.
God only knew what other governments had agents following him now as well.
Nick was out of his lane in this world. His dismal performance with Lankford today had proven that. He’d played his best cards on his opening hand, ceding his advantage immediately to the Company man. Now, here he was, playing spy games without training. He had tried some of the rudimentary countersurveillance techniques he had used in the teams, but those were not techniques designed to thwart true professionals in this environment. If he had, by some miracle, shaken some surveillance teams on his way here, he was just picking up new ones with his arrival. But what other choice did he have? His repeated calls and texts to Dash had gone unanswered, and she was more than three hours overdue for their meeting. She had promised to text message if she was tied up so he would know not to make the meet, but she had not done so. He had sat for nearly two hours at the coffee shop on Jinghua Street, supplementing adrenaline with caffeine as the time ticked by. Nick realized—with a modicum of shame—that he was far more concerned about Dash than he was about the next bioterrorism event.
He tapped his thumb on his thigh, dissipating some nervous energy.
Where the hell is she?
Coming to her apartment was a big risk. If the watchers hadn’t observed them together yet, this would change that going forward. He glanced at the map on his phone where the little blue dot (him) was closing in on the little red dot (her apartment). He prayed he had properly understood the address she had given him, but Chinese words gave him fits. Given the late hour, if she was home, then certainly her husband would be home with her. She had not spoken to him about her husband, other than notifying him of her marital status. Now he realized that he should have asked about her husband’s profession. For some reason, he imagined the man was some variety of doctor, too, but he could not recall why he thought this.
He looked up and down the quiet street. There were a couple of cars parked along the curb, but none with their engines running. In movies, the bad guys always sat in running cars, but that was the extent of his expertise on the matter outside of a war zone. Nick grinned tightly and snorted as he realized that, for the first time in years, he very much wished he had a weapon. A SOPMOD M4 rifle with EOTECH Holosight and a PEQ-2 laser designator was his preference, though the circumstances called for something a little less overt—a semiautomatic pistol with hollow points would do. Hell, he’d be grateful just having a pocketknife in his sock.
; He checked his phone again. The blue dot and the red dot were right on top of each other.
“I’m here,” he said and tried to resist looking up at the apartment building to his right. He turned the corner and walked with feigned confidence and certainty toward the entrance. The apartment building was new but had an ornate, classical façade—like a university or embassy building. Block out the rest of the skyline and the building could have been an Upper East Side luxury co-op in Manhattan. As he strode up the short flight of steps to the lobby, he wondered what excuse in God’s name he would give for asking to speak with Dash if the husband answered the door.
At the top of the steps, he glanced casually around, saw nothing of note, and then reached for the heavy door and pulled. The door did not budge. No rattle meant it was secured with an electromagnetic lock. Nick noted an intercom panel to the right of the door, which he assumed was a call box for the residents of the building. All the writing was in Chinese hanzi. He had no idea which button to select.
So much for getting buzzed in.
He looked left and right, searching for a decent hide where he could wait to follow a resident covertly into the building. But there was nothing—no alcove, no basement egress, no short alley—nowhere he could conceal himself.
“Shit,” he sighed.
Now what?
He decided to circle the block. A solution would come to him in time.
The roar of an engine snapped him out of his head. Reflexively, he moved toward cover behind a stone column as a black Mercedes SUV tore up the apartment complex driveway. The SUV screeched to a halt, the left tire popping up onto the curb a few yards away from where Nick had been standing. The driver’s-side door flung open and black boots dropped into view below the sill of the door.
“Stay where you are, Nick Foley,” a voice boomed from behind the dark-tinted window. “Raise your hands above your head.”
Nick’s mouth dropped open as Commander Zhang—head of the Snow Leopard Commando Unit—stepped into view, a pistol pointed at Nick’s head. Zhang was in uniform, but thankfully not kitted up in combat gear. Nick immediately noticed the large, triangular-shaped canvas bag clipped to the Snow Leopard Commander’s belt. MOPP gear—Not a good sign. His instinct had been right—he was being surveilled. The passenger door opened and a smaller man in a military uniform sprang out and then took a knee beside the vehicle, taking aim at Nick with a combat rifle, just as a second SUV screeched to a stop behind the first. This second man barked something at him in Chinese.
“My colleague,” Zhang said as he lowered his own pistol and walked toward Nick with a smirk on his face, “would like for you to kneel on the ground with your hands on top of your head.” The Snow Leopard Commander barked something at the smaller soldier, who nodded, but his face suggested he was unsure about his Commander’s order, whatever it had been. “I told him that will not be necessary, but I really must insist you keep your hands in view so that my teammate does not shoot you dead here in front of Dr. Chen’s home.”
Three other Snow Leopards now fanned out in a loose half circle from the second SUV, their rifles at the ready but at least not pointing at his head.
“What do you want?” Nick said, the calm in his voice incongruous with the dread blossoming inside. He was not afraid of combat. He was not afraid of death. But to be thrown into a deep, dark hole for a very long time was a fate he could not stomach. For an instant, he considered making a run for it—he could find Lankford, agree to help the CIA. If the spooks couldn’t get his ass out of China, then he’d go to the embassy and let the diplomats fight over him. But the little red dot on his chest implied that running would be a very bad idea.
“I think the question, Navy SEAL Nick Foley, is what do you want? And more importantly, why are you here at the residence of the most-wanted terrorist traitor in China?”
What the hell was Zhang talking about? Dash was no traitor. The Snow Leopard Commander must surely know that. This was insane. Unless . . . they had pieced together a damning triangular of connections: Dash and Jamie Lin, Dash and Nick, Nick and Lankford. In this unfortunate geometry, all lines pointed to the CIA.
Oh shit. We’ll both be prosecuted as traitors and framed for the massacre in Kizilsu.
“Stop—please,” called a woman’s voice in English.
Nick looked over Zhang’s shoulder in disbelief as Dash stepped out of the back seat of the Mercedes SUV. She walked to them and placed a hand on Zhang’s shoulder. Nick’s confusion replaced his fear, to be trumped seconds later by rage. Had everything that transpired been a setup? Was Dash a confederate, put in play by Zhang to manipulate him and ferret out Jamie Lin’s OC? Or had she simply used him to collect enough evidence to build a case against him so Zhang could frame an American SEAL in an effort to keep China’s image clean? The anger made it hard to think clearly. Something didn’t feel right. None of this felt right.
“This is not what you think,” she said.
“And what do I think, Dr. Chen?” Zhang said, his eyes never leaving Nick. “That Nick Foley is an ex-Navy SEAL employed by the CIA, bent on helping a bioweapons terrorist escape China, so that America can obtain the technology for itself? Does that spell things out clearly enough for you?”
“No, you have drawn the wrong conclusions,” she said, her voice low and deliberate. “Nick Foley is with me.”
“What?” Nick and Zhang spoke the question in unison, and this time Zhang did turn to her. “What are you saying? That this American spy was here to meet with you?”
Nick opened his mouth to speak, but she silenced him with a look.
“Yes, he was here to meet me,” Dash said, speaking in English, no doubt for his benefit. “But he is no spy, I assure you.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Chen, but you have been deceived by this man. We have surveillance footage of him meeting with a ranking CIA field officer only hours ago. Did you know that?”
“Yes,” Dash said, “but that does not make him a spy. He was trying to help me.”
The young Snow Leopard, the one with the rifle pointed center mass at Nick’s heart, barked again in Chinese. Zhang scowled but nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “My junior officer is right. Explain why you have been in communication with this American and how he has been helping you.”
Dash stepped in front of Nick, shielding him from the barrel of the Snow Leopard’s rifle. “This American saved my life last night. He also risked his safety and reputation to help me obtain tissue samples so I could investigate this bioweapon. I will explain all this in detail later, but for right now, can we please get off the street? Qing may have people watching the apartment—warning him as we speak. We need to go inside and search for him immediately. Nick is coming with us.”
Nick watched Zhang’s mouth twist into something resembling a smile. The girl had brains and balls: two traits that apparently went a long way with the Snow Leopard Commander, because he barked something at his team.
The junior man grudgingly secured his rifle and walked directly toward Nick, his face a mask of professionalism. He said something to Dash, and she stepped aside. The soldier frisked Nick roughly and thoroughly for weapons. Finding none, he then gestured for the group to move out.
Nick looked at Dash and forced a smile. “Mind telling me what the hell is going on?”
“It appears likely that Qing—my husband—is the inventor of a terrible weapon and the person behind the terror attacks in Kizilsu.”
“What?” Nick said, shaking his head with incredulity as they jogged after Zhang. “That’s unbelievable . . . and terrible. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Yes, there are no words,” she said. “This day is like a nightmare, only I am already awake.”
“And your husband is upstairs right now?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I am most glad you are here, Nick. I would not want to confront Qing alone.”
Her words resonated inside. She was not alone. Zhang and his team were here
, but that was the point, wasn’t it? She viewed him as her protector now.
When they reached the entrance, Dash entered a code and buzzed them in. Feeling naked and awkward, Nick trailed Zhang and three operators, as the Snow Leopards advanced in a two-man clearing pattern. They covered each other’s corners fluidly as they moved quickly and expertly through the empty lobby. Nick felt like a bystander and again wished he had a weapon so he could be more than just baggage. The presence of the other two Snow Leopards behind him—where they could keep an eye on him as well as cover the flank—was not lost on the former Navy SEAL.
Zhang gestured to the stairwell. An assaulter pulled the door open, and Zhang entered in a tactical crouch. A beat later, Zhang gave an all-clear signal, and the group began the ascent in pairs. Nick took the rear position behind Dash, who was behind the assault team, figuring he could at least be a barrier between her and any surprise attack from behind should the other two soldiers be too focused on him to identify a threat from their rear. After ten flights, Zhang called for them to halt, and then Nick heard a loud, short conversation in clipped Chinese. Zhang called down the stairs from the landing above.
“Dr. Chen, please come up slowly.”
She looked at Nick, her expression grave.
Nick nodded encouragement: Whatever it is, I’m right beside you.
The strain in Zhang’s voice had been unmistakable. Whatever the Snow Leopard Commander had found, it was bad. Nick peered up the stairs to the next landing, where Zhang stood against the wall, MOPP mask now pulled over his face, his huge alien eyes staring down at them. Zhang raised a hand, stopping them. It was then that Nick noticed a thin stream of dark blood dribbling down the steps above. Zhang tossed down two small, green bags, which Nick caught in midair.
“Each of you put on a mask. There are latex gloves inside as well. Put those on too, but don’t touch anything,” Zhang directed. He then issued a curt command in Chinese, and the two soldiers on the landing took up defensive positions, looking back down the stars, rifles at the ready. “Also, please watch where you step. Dr. Chen believes that the weapon should not be contagious, but until that is confirmed, we must take great care.”
