Dragonfire

by Ted Bell

  Stoke jumped down, taking the seat adjacent to the helm, and Harry and China, wearing a big fat smile, both leapt down into the cockpit and seated themselves on the aft banquette.

  Hawke swiveled around and looked at China. “What the hell, China?” he said. “I mean, seriously. That’s one extaordinarily valuable automobile. What were you thinking?”

  “Tell you later, dear. Just tying up some loose ends, that’s all.”

  “Lines free! Hit it, boss!” Stoke said, and Hawke firewalled the two chrome throttles. The pointed bow of the big Wally came up out of the hole in a hurry, and the boat surged forward, picking up massive speed as Hawke put the nose of the bow dead on the breakwater and the harbor mouth leading to open water. At this speed, he put them at Devil’s Island sometime just before one o’clock. He’d run bow up on shore, and they’d follow the trail Stoke had hacked through the jungle to the site overlooking the camp.

  If it was all quiet, he told his team, China would descend alone to the bottom of the hill, approach the gate, and use the facial ID system. If it worked, she’d give them a high sign, and they’d all descend to meet her, then emerge from the jungle cover and run straight through to where all the red jeeps were parked. In addition to those lovely .50 cal machine guns mounted at the rear, China said the jeeps all had keys in them. They’d split up, two per jeep, and drive straight to the building where she believed the victim still might be.

  If he was not, they’d jump back into the jeeps and go straight to the infirmary. The driver of each jeep would be using the light machine gun. The second passenger would be firing the .50 cal.

  If the gates wouldn’t open, China would come right back up to their hilltop position and grab her AR-15. Then the four of them would get ready to storm the gate and fight their way into the compound.

  At that point, Stoke, on Hawke’s signal, would use the M203 40mm grenade launcher to take out the two guard towers, one after the other. One RPG fired at each end of the perimeter fencing topped with razor wire would suffice. Then he would blow the main gates off their hinges with another couple of well-placed RPG grenades. Then they’d race down the hill and follow China to get the two jeeps and head to the D building and rescue the prisoner.

  That was the plan so far as Hawke had thought it through in his mind. Hawke handed the Zeiss binos to Brock, then cupped his hand around the Zippo and fired up another fag. As China made her stealthy descent down to the compound entrance, he needed to settle himself a bit to prep for what was to come. He kept harkening back to the scene up at the Castle. He had been shocked to learn the truth about Zhang Tang. It had been his intention, prior to tonight, to tell her at some point about their shared history. That both their grandfathers had been lifelong friends! He’d realized that the Chinese ambassador whom he’d met as a boy, his grandfather’s close friend, was also Zhang’s grandfather!

  But that was back when he’d thought she was a harmless person who just happened to have two violent criminal masterminds for brothers.

  After all he’d heard of Zhang’s true nature from China at dinner that night, he knew he could never feel the same way about her. In his experience, only the truly evil were capable of looking away from their epic crimes against humanity. And here she was, a prime example of the species. Just before they’d left the garden to go to the Castle, he’d asked China about the twins. . . .

  “They’ve been detained, apparently. Guests of the state.”

  “Why were they detained?” he’d said.

  “Fraud against the government. Not the first time, either. The Tang brothers had huge shipbuilding contracts courtesy of the government, and forensic accountants had discovered they had been keeping two discrete sets of books for years, bilking the government of billions.” She’d informed her superiors at SHA, the Strategic Huyou Agency, about this and other actions they’d taken that were strictly forbidden.

  “What’s the penalty?” Hawke had asked.

  “Prison time. Some white-collar country club jail or other. I don’t know how long they’ll get, simply because they annually funnel huge amounts of off-the-books profit into PLA coffers.”

  “Pity I never got to meet them,” Alex Hawke said.

  “No, it isn’t,” was her reply.

  “Because?”

  “Because while they are very attractive and incredibly charming, they are thoroughly despicable human beings, responsible for decades of incredible human suffering around the world. Why, I’d like nothing better than to see them behind bars for life, not to mention that ghastly beast of a sister of theirs.”

  Hawke smiled. “Got the picture,” he said. “And it ain’t pretty. I agree.”

  CHAPTER 59

  Warm Springs, Georgia

  February 1942

  The Chinese ambassador, accompanied by his ADC, or aide-de-camp, Yang-Tsing, also known as his bower and scraper in chief, his minder, had not yet finished packing his bags. Tiger was planning a long winter weekend down in the heart of the American southland. The White House social secretary, a tallish beauty with snow-white hair always in a chignon, Mary Trice Clewis, had rung up the embassy a few days earlier.

  Miss Clewis had informed Tiger’s secretary, Kimberly Li, that the president was spending the weekend down at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. Save for his staff and his beloved Scottie, Fala, FDR would be all alone. Eleanor and her very close companion, the AP reporter Lorena Hickok, whom she called Hick, were traveling together to Appalachia.

  And Miss Clewis had informed Miss Li quite frankly, “The president was feeling somewhat down and worn out. He thought it might be cheery to consider this a belated Christmas holiday. The one you both had to skip because you were working so hard.”

  FDR had asked Miss Clewis to ring up the Chinese Embassy and see if she could not enjoin the ambassador to take the presidential train down to Warm Springs, join him at the Little White House, and keep him company. Tiger was a bit torn. He had been planning to spend the weekend in the country at his beloved Sevenoaks, with his beautiful Spanish countess.

  But, of course, Tiger had replied that he’d be delighted to take the train down South for faux Christmas with the president. He’d never spent any time there, but just two years earlier, he’d been a huge fan of David O. Selznick’s fabulous Civil War epic, Gone With the Wind, and was thrilled to see a bit of Georgia while entertaining the president. FDR had recently purchased a brand-new four-ton blue Packard convertible, and the ambassador was looking forward to chauffeuring him about and exploring the countryside.

  “Well, I think that’s about it, Mr. Ambassador,” Yang-Tsing said, fastening the leather straps on all three pieces of Goyard luggage.

  Tiger scratched his chin, considering. “My shaving kit? My sleeping pills? A bottle of Scotch whiskey to give to the president as a present? You sure you haven’t forgotten anything?”

  Yang-Tsing scratched his balding pate and said, “No, sir, I think we got it all. If we don’t want to miss that train, we’d best get downstairs now and get to Union Station, sir. It’s raining pretty hard out there right now, and we might hit a lot of traffic.”

  Tiger paused and took one last look around the room, trying to remember if there was anything he’d forgotten. Satisfied there was not, he said, “Lead on, my good man. I’m right behind you!”

  At the elevator, as Yang loaded all the luggage inside, Tiger suddenly turned to his ADC and said, “Go ahead down and help Bobby Ray Beavers get all the luggage inside the car. I’ll be right down. I just remembered something I forgot to pack.”

  “Yessir,” Yang said, pushing the button for the main floor. Tiger, as if in some kind of freaky trance, walked quickly back to his quarters and into his bedroom. He walked straight over to his mahogany chest of drawers and pulled open the sock drawer. Socks? Had he really forgotten his socks?

  In a slow motion, almost dreamlike manner, a
s if in some kind of sleep walking coma, stuck his right hand inside the drawer, fishing around among all the socks until his fingertips grazed cold metal and he found what he’d come back for. He withdrew his hand and lovingly admired his most-prized possession. The pistol his father had given him during a short and highly unpleasant visit to his country home.

  The beautiful but lethal short-barreled Colt .45 revolver with carved ivory handle grips.

  He ejected the cylinder and saw that there were six .45 hollow-point caliber slugs inside.

  He quickly snapped the action shut and, suddenly wondering what the hell to do with the damn gun, slid it into the right-hand pocket of the handsome new Burberry mackintosh that the countess had given him for Christmas. He’d hated breaking the news to Victoria about his abrupt change of plans. But the Countess de la Maza had been very understanding. It was part of her charm, and he thought the emerald-and-diamond brooch he’d selected for her at Van Cleef & Arpels would salve all wounds until his return.

  He caught sight of his face in the dusky mirror above the dresser. He had a strange look in his eyes, one that reflected the almost-surreal trancelike state he found himself in.

  Oddly, he seemed at his worst when he was in the company of the little bald-headed ADC. A few weeks earlier, he’d been on the verge of firing the little gnome and had accused him of giving him frequent migraine headaches. It had occurred to him, early on, not unreasonably, that perhaps his father, who had asked a lot of strange questions about his relationship with his minder, was actually in league with the fat little traitor!

  And in the wake of the old man’s visit to Sevenoaks, there had been a series of late-night phone calls that, despite the lack of a caller on the line, caused him vicious headaches the next morning. Very few people were given his private number in the country. One person who’d always had it? Yang-Tsing.

  And then it struck him like a hammer to the gut. Tiger’s father had been the one who’d first put the little fellow on his son’s embassy staff! To spy on him? Or, worse, to practice his mind-control methods on Tiger in order to get the son to do his father’s insane bidding!

  He felt almost as if he were walking underwater . . . almost as if, during his brief visit to Sevenoaks, his father, using ancient Chinese mind-control techniques, had somehow hypnotized him. Buried preordained actions deep within his brain! Was that even possible? He’d been reading about recent astounding advances in the science of mind control that Chinese scientists were making. . . .

  “Shape up or ship out, mister!” he barked at his reflection in the mirror. Not even remotely sure what he’d meant by that absurd command, he then walked back out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him.

  It was all a bad dream, he told himself, climbing into the back of the big black Cadillac.

  “Union Station and step on it!” he said to Bobby Ray Beavers, his driver.

  “You got it, boss. Where you going, you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I don’t mind. I’m headed down into the heart of the southland, all the way to Georgia. A small hamlet outside of Atlanta called Warm Springs.”

  “The Little White House, sir?”

  “Bobby Ray, you know that’s classified Secret Service information.”

  “I know, I know. But Georgia? That’s the sacred soil, sir! Mr. Ambassador, you best get down on your knees and kiss the ground when you get off that train!”

  “Georgia’s that good, is it, Bobby Ray?” he said.

  “Way better than that. You’ve never been there before, right?”

  “First time.”

  “You want to hear about it, sir? I was born in a little Georgia town called Lower Bottom.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Well, it’s right down the mountain a ways from Upper Bottom.”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  “Makes sense, don’t it?” Bobby Ray said with a laugh. “But let me tell you about my hometown, Claxton. You like fruitcake?”

  “Never tried it, no.”

  “Well, sir, Claxton, Georgia, is the undisputed Fruitcake Capital of the World.”

  “Fancy that.”

  “You like football?”

  “You mean soccer?”

  “No, sir. I mean good old-fashioned American football. This year? Well, I’m here to tell you that my team, the Georgia Bulldogs, are going to the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on New Year’s Day, going up against Alabama’s Crimson Tide, a six-point favorite.”

  And for the next fifteen minutes, Bobby Ray Beavers did just that. He delivered an expert tutorial on all things Georgia and points south of the Mason-Dixon Line. And told the ambassador exactly why Bobby Ray Beavers had come to believe with all his heart and soul that the South well and truly would, one fine day, surely rise again.

  CHAPTER 60

  Union Station, Washington, D.C.

  February 1942

  Following the traitorous spy Yang-Tsing and the porter with the rolling luggage cart, to the sounds of slamming railway car doors echoing up and down the concrete platform, the ambassador found a string of eight coffee bean green Pullmans. They’d all been built in 1929, and they formed the presidential railroad fleet, Miss Clewis had told Miss Li. Each tipped the scales at more than one hundred forty-two tons and was a literal rolling fortress with the president inside one of them. The trick was that no one besides railway staff and the president’s Secret Service knew exactly which car he could be found in. Armor plating and three-inch-thick bulletproof glass added another layer of security.

  It was, Tiger thought, a rather inspiring sight to behold. The railway cars were all glistening from a recent bath in the yards. They were lined up in the shadows, waiting for the powerful steam locomotive to arrive, the one that would tug the presidential rail fleet all the way down to, if you could believe Bobby Ray Beavers, the land of hope and glory.

  While the interiors were spare compared to the lavish Victorian clutter that ran riot inside the White House, the Pullmans were plenty fancy enough. Entering through the vestibule’s heavy door, a traveler would step into an observation lounge packed with stuffed velvety armchairs in shades of rust, green, and blue. Draperies hung from each of the room’s eight windows. Gleaming art deco ashtrays sprouted like chromium fountains from the wine red carpeted floor.

  The president’s guest would be rolling down to the Promised Land on the B&O Line, Tiger had been told by the Baltimore & Ohio’s general passenger agent in Washington’s Union Station. Despite his odd state of mind, Tiger found that his excitement about a train trip into the heart of the South was growing as departure drew near. The party came to a halt beside a Pullman with the name HILLCREST CLUB emblazoned in gold leaf above the windows, running the entire length of the big wagon.

  “All right, suh, I reckon this is us,” said the tall, distinguished-looking black porter, a handsome silver-haired gent who had introduced himself as the president’s trusted porter, Mr. Fair.

  A repository of countless overheard secrets, Fred Fair still remembered how embarrassed FDR had been the day the two had first met, years before, when “the boss”—as almost everyone called FDR, including those who did not work for him—had fished in his pockets for change but come up empty. “I want to tip these people,” FDR had whispered to an aide. The leader of the free world who was more concerned about tipping a Pullman porter than boarding his train on time—that was the president that Fred Fair knew and loved.

  The Chinese ambassador would be boarding the Pullman known as the Hillcrest Club, Fred informed them, and traveling in enviable quarters, one of the first-class staterooms. In addition to its eight spacious rooms, the club car harbored a lounge at one end with soft low chairs perfect for reading in and wooden tables just big enough for a game of gin rummy or canasta.

  The large windows were sparkling in the sunshine now, and Tiger Tang collapsed into the nearest a
rmchair, one right next to a window. He would wait there while his luggage was unpacked and probably for a good time after that. Untold sights lay ahead of him, and he’d be damned if he was going to miss a single solitary one of them!

  The light from the windows was marvelous and he pulled out a book he’d bought just for the trip. It was a runaway bestseller written by a Southern author named Margaret Mitchell. The book was called Gone With the Wind. He cracked it open and started to read.

  The story put him in just the right mood for the trip. He was looking forward to seeing the South. He was especially thrilled at the prospect of seeing the city of Richmond, Jefferson Davis’s capital of the Confederacy, which would be coming up about ninety miles south of Washington. He’d been something of a Civil War scholar during his first year at Oxford, and he’d found Robert E. Lee and the underrated Jefferson Davis and General James Longstreet all fascinating players in the tragic drama that split the bitter nation into a war that cruelly pitted brother against brother.

  A waiter appeared from the lounge car and asked if he’d like a beverage and at what time he’d like his evening meal served in the dining car.

  “Yes, dinner at eight.” Tiger smiled up at him. “I certainly would endorse a cocktail notion. A double shot of Mr. Jack Daniel’s famous whiskey with a splash of branch water, please, sir!”

  “Yes, suh, Mr. Ambassador. Bourbon and branch, yes suh, coming right up! The president, he likes that one, too!”

  CHAPTER 61

  Devil’s Island, the Bahamas

  Present Day

  By the time the little war party had raced the big Wally boat full throttle across the placid bay, run the bow up on the beach as far as it would go, stowed the boat up inside the mangrove swamp, and made their way through the thick, ropy jungle to their observation point atop the island’s only hill, an hour had elapsed since leaving the marina. They had met with no resistance and had observed not a single vessel during their seriously rapid transit.