He had already told Jason to improve the University’s technological reach into Eastern Europe and Asia. It would take money, which they had, and time, which they didn’t have. If this trip turned out as well as he hoped, the Vanguard might be set back several months, maybe even a year, but they wouldn’t be destroyed. There were too many facets of the organization spread around the world. Taking out the people at the top would weaken the Vanguard for a while, but its business was too lucrative to be sidelined for long. As the previous Dean had often said, “Where there’s a cash flow, there’s a way.” And the arms deals brokered by the Vanguard were lucrative enough to keep them in business for a very long time.
Hicks had no delusions about destroying the Vanguard in a single week. But he already knew more about them than he had only a few days before. And would know still more about them if Demerest’s Beijing plan worked.
And that plan hinged upon one very important event. That Colonel Tian didn’t make Hicks shoot him when he walked through the door.
Hicks sat in a wooden chair facing the door. It was far enough from the window so he couldn’t be spotted and far away enough from the door to keep Tian from seeing him immediately.
Patel put his handheld away. “And you’re sure he knows we’re supposed to be here?”
“No, I’m not sure because I didn’t order it done myself. Demerest said he got word to the colonel to expect to be contacted today. I don’t think he’s expecting two Westerners to break into his apartment, which is why I have this.” He put the NP-28 on his lap.
“Hope you don’t have to use it.”
“Would kind of make this whole trip pointless if I did. And getting out of the country will be damned near impossible as it is. Killing a colonel would make it even worse.” He looked up at Patel. “I just hope your Mandarin is as good as you say it is, or shit will get real complicated, real fast.”
“If this goes bad,” Patel checked his watch, “it won’t be because of the quality of my Mandarin. I just hope Roger can get Tessmer to give us a precise location. Talking to the colonel is one thing. Giving him something to hit is something else.”
Hicks checked his handheld. Still nothing from Roger. “He’ll get him to talk by the time the colonel is ready to mobilize. Just focus on getting him to cooperate. Roger will handle the rest.”
Patel checked his watch again. “Four minutes until he’s due, assuming he’s punctual.”
“He is. Silence until further notice.”
The two of them spent the next two hundred and forty seconds waiting to see how their trip to Beijing would turn out. Hicks hoped the colonel had gotten Demerest’s message. Messages had trouble reaching Assets even in the best of times in the most open societies. China was one of the most closed societies in the world, where everyone spied on everyone else. The military was not immune. If anything, they were held under even closer scrutiny by a Communist Party that distrusted those charged with defending their way of life.
But as he sat in that dusty, dingy apartment in the center of Beijing, Hicks realized that these were the first two hundred and forty seconds of absolute quiet he had enjoyed since he had been woken from his sleep by the proximity alert back in New York. He didn’t count the drug-induced euphoria Roger had put him in. Every moment since had either been running away from something or running toward something. These moments were the first in days where he had absolutely nothing to do but sit and wait to see what happened.
So much had already happened. So much had already been lost on both sides, to where the balance was almost even.
But Hicks didn’t want balance. He wanted to smash the scale into a million pieces. And the colonel in charge of China’s anti-terrorism efforts would help him do just that.
Both men looked up when they heard the key in the door. Hicks gripped the NP-28 but kept it flat on his lap. If Patel did his job, that was where it would stay.
Colonel Tian rushed into the apartment, shut the door, and leaned against it. He was breathing heavily, his face damp with sweat. He kept his eyes closed as he stood flat against the door, trying to control his breathing. It looked like Demerest’s people had gotten word to him after all.
Either that or the colonel was having a bad day that was about to get a hell of a lot worse.
Since Demerest’s file on Tian said he didn’t speak a word of English, Hicks signaled Patel to start the script.
“Colonel Tian,” he said in Mandarin, “we mean you no harm. We are here to…”
The colonel’s eyes opened. He looked at the two men in his apartment. He answered Patel in clipped tones and gestures that told Hicks that he was a combination of pissed off and scared.
“He’s not happy,” Patel translated. “He said coming here was stupid. That it could get us all killed.”
Hicks had heard enough. “Remind the colonel that the Party is watching him, not his apartment. Assure him we weren’t followed or watched.” He waited for Patel’s translation to catch up before he said, “Then ask the colonel if he’d like to be a general.”
Colonel Tian looked at Hicks.
Hicks smiled. Advancement. The true international language. “I thought you’d understand that one.” He motioned to the chair opposite him, offering the colonel a seat in his own apartment.
The colonel sat. They were off to an excellent start.
THE MAN was not happy.
It had been over a day since he had heard from the German. There were scattered reports of some kind of a confrontation in Berlin, but his sources had been unclear. He did not know if they were discussing the raid of the Facility or of the stabbing on the street or something new. Nuances between the barbarian tongue and Mandarin often left many important details lost in translation. And if the Man had learned anything in his long life, it was that details always mattered.
All he knew for certain was that the German had allowed a laptop to be stolen from the facility, and had failed to retrieve it. The German had drawn far too much attention to his organization in the past few days, making him something of a liability. They may have started this enterprise together, but neither man intended on allowing the Vanguard to die with them. Eventually, both would have to be replaced, but that time had come sooner for the German than for the Man. Fate had made it so.
Fate and superior planning. The German had always preferred a more cosmopolitan lifestyle than the Man. Spend enough time with the enemy, the Man had learned, and one begins to act like them, perhaps even admire them. He doubted the German had gone over to the other side, but he had become softer and more lenient than he should have been. He had taken the American too lightly and misjudged his abilities. This, the Man was certain, had led to his downfall. Whether he was in the custody of the West or not was of little importance. The German was done. His replacement had already been selected and agreed to the position.
The Man turned his attention to the events taking place on his wall of monitors. His base in Xinjiang was far too large to relocate, so they had begun to harden their defenses. They were deep in rocky terrain that was nearly impossible to see from the ground or air. Even satellites had been unable to locate it thanks to counter-surveillance techniques that further obscured the camp from above.
Still, the Man had learned that prudence was the better part of valor, and given the German’s disappearance, he had begun backing up the Vanguard’s systems to dozens of other sites around the world. Xinjiang was still the nerve center, but the German’s miscalculations about the security of the Berlin facility had called for a recalibration of resources.
By his most conservative estimates, the German had been out of touch for at least twenty-six hours. His capture had not appeared in any official database, so if he was in custody, one of the clandestine services had him. Their sources in the CIA confirmed they did not have him, so it must have been Hicks or the British.
The German’s death would be a major blow to the Vanguard’s mission, but his capture could be crippling. He knew enough abo
ut the organization to completely destroy it. Passwords could be changed. Money streams rerouted. Delivery schedules altered and cutout men replaced.
But the knowledge the German possessed of their institution, their way of doing business, was second only to his own. Combine that with the information stored on the laptop that had been stolen and it gave the enemy a glimpse into the Vanguard’s inner workings. It…
He looked up at his monitor when he saw an alarm sound briefly before it was replaced by an alert that both sensors were down.
The Man stared at the monitor. He had been around advanced warning systems for more than half his life. He had never seen them throw two entirely different signals at almost the same time. Unless…
He went to his keyboard and remotely activated the air raid alarm for the camp. Although ninety percent of the camp was well underground, attention must be paid.
From his keyboard, he toggled one of the monitors to show the camp’s radar system tucked discretely throughout the valley. But the feed was already off-line. He toggled to all the many surveillance cameras he had installed throughout the camp. Each feed was completely black, with neither sound nor static.
The Man pounded his desk, cursing his blindness and his sons for not calling him from the camp by now. He picked up the phone and dialed them directly, but the line rang busy.
Too much was happening at once for this to be a mere blackout.
He had just called to one of his assistants into his office when all the monitors changed to a wide-angle shot of his camp in foothills of Xinjiang. It was a shot taken at ground level and showed the camp in full detail. The communication huts and the armory and the facility where they stored all their various vehicles.
The Man stood as the screen flickered to black Chinese lettering on a white background. The characters spelled out one word: Watch.
The screen flicked back to the image of the camp. The Man saw his people moving between the structures as they carried out their daily tasks on behalf of the Vanguard. The fools. Hadn’t they heard the air raid warning? Why weren’t they taking shelter underground?
From the left side of the screen he saw columns of dust kick up just before the camp, dust he knew had come from strafing fire from an airplane. The Man yelled at the monitor as he watched thousands of rounds rake the camp, tearing through buildings and people and structures with the ease of a needle piercing fabric.
The Man watched the image, hoping at least some of his people had survived the assault. A few staggered out into the open, only to be cut down by yet another strafing run from a second fighter jet that passed overhead.
He watched them flop to the ground, their bodies jerking from the impacts of bullets. He looked to see if he could recognize any of them as his sons, but could not. The image on the screen was too far away.
The Man’s assistant finally appeared in his doorway. “Find out when this image was taken. Get someone to the camp immediately. I need to find out…”
He lost the ability to speak when a stunted mushroom cloud rose from the base.
The camera jostled from the shockwave, but remained in focus.
The Man lowered himself into his chair. His sons and some of his people could have withstood the strafing attacks. They could have even withstood the impact of several Hellfire missiles striking the site. But he recognized the last plane that dropped the final ordinance. It was a Chinese bomber that had dropped several bunker-buster bombs on the site.
Technology the Vanguard had stolen from Western defense contractors and sold to the Chinese.
Technology that had been used to kill his sons, for he knew they must be dead. No one could have survived that amount of firepower. The underground network of tunnels had been deep, but not deep enough to withstand such an explosion.
He had other sons. The Vanguard had other people, other facilities. But this blow left the Man gaping as his organization’s highest achievement burned before him. Its loss would be felt by the Vanguard for years.
He vowed those responsible would feel the loss much sooner than that.
The screen switched again, this time to white English lettering on a black screen. It took several moments for his assistant to translate it. And when he did, he flinched as he held it up for the Man to see.
You killed my family. Now I have killed yours.
You hunted me. Now I hunt you.
You will live with this sorrow for as long as I let you.
You will die when I choose.
Await me.
The Man’s assistant flinched when he crumpled the paper and threw it on the floor. “I want that burned, never to be read by anyone again. I want the footage of the attack removed from our servers and destroyed. All of our people are forbidden from seeing it or discussing it under penalty of death.”
The assistant grabbed the paper off the floor and tucked it behind his back. “Yes, sir, but I am afraid there is a problem.”
The Man balled his hands into fists until the old knuckles cracked. “What problem?”
“The footage was not sent to us directly. The footage we watched was from the site where it was posted. It has already been viewed by thousands of people. Our allies were able to purge it from Chinese sites almost as soon as it appeared, but the rest of the world is a different matter.”
The Man slammed both fists down on his desk. “We have crippled nuclear missile silos and shut down the electricity for entire countries and you tell me we cannot take down a video from YouTube?”
The assistant bowed. “We are already doing that, sir, and we are making progress. I simply wanted you to know the severity of the situation. Our enemies knew what they were doing. They had a plan to embarrass us. We are in the process of undoing that damage.”
The Man knew the only way to halt embarrassment was to avenge it. Vigorously.
And that was what he was about to do.
“Continue to take down the footage. Keep me informed. Have my car brought around immediately. I have work to do.”
Xinjiang, China
HICKS JERKED the wheel to the right, narrowly missing a massive hole in the ground. According to OMNI they still had a few hours before they reached the Mongolian border, and it was going to be dangerous driving most of the way. He wanted to get there before nightfall.
“Slow down,” Patel said as he held on to the roll bar. “You’re driving like a maniac.”
“Goddamned right I am.” He hit a flat stretch of desert and hit the gas. “We just blew the shit out of the Vanguard’s main facility, Ace. They’ll be sending someone to take a look at it, and they won’t be happy when they get here. I’d like to put as much distance between us and that base as soon as possible before they get here.”
An unseen divot jolted the Jeep. “Just don’t wreck us in the process. I’m pretty sure Triple A doesn’t make calls in this part of the world.”
He steered around another hole on his left. “You’re sure you scanned this vehicle after Colonel Tian left it for us?”
“I did,” Patel said, “and the colonel was true to his word. Not so much as a GPS signal to trace its whereabouts from whatever motor pool he stole it from.”
Hicks was glad for that much. He had enjoyed his taste of anonymity in the four minutes he had spent waiting for Colonel Tian at his apartment. He hoped things stayed that way, at least until they reached the extraction point.
He knew Demerest and the Trustee had wanted a report on the strike as soon as it had happened. If Colonel Tian hadn’t already told them about the mission’s success, they had probably seen the footage of the strike on the internet. They wouldn’t be happy about getting the news of the Vanguard’s destruction the same time the rest of the world got it, even though no one else would appreciate what they were looking at except them.
But Hicks didn’t care about what they liked.
He had fulfilled his end of the bargain. His way. And he intended to keep doing things his way for a long time to come.
They
hadn’t goaded the Vanguard out of hiding.
They hadn’t uncovered the Vanguard facilities.
They hadn’t forced Werner von Hayek to give them the exact location of the Vanguard’s base in Xinjiang.
They hadn’t lost people in the field.
Hicks had. The University had.
Hicks took a small incline a little too fast and the Jeep went airborne for a couple of seconds before slamming back down to the ground. For a moment, he thought the engine would die or he’d cracked an axel, but the vehicle continued to make good time.
“Christ,” Patel said. “This thing jiggles worse than a cheap belly dancer.”
Hicks stole a glance at his passenger as he dodged another hole in the ground. “That’s the second joke you’ve cracked in a couple of minutes. If I didn’t know any better, I might think you’re getting a sense of humor.”
Patel held on. “And if I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were becoming human again. Haven’t seen that side of you since you pulled me out of my cousin’s bar back in New York.”
Hicks kept his eyes on the road. “Don’t mention that day again, understand? I don’t like my people talking about their failures. It doesn’t accomplish anything.”
Patel braced for the jolt from another divot. “I guess that makes me one of your people now.”
Another rock jarred them. “Guess you didn’t get the email. The job’s yours if you want to keep it. The Vanguard’s not going to take this lying down. We’re going to need you, believe me.”
“Then I accept, as long as you realize we didn’t end anything today. If anything, we only stirred up more trouble.”
Hicks saw the ground level out again. A flat road with just a thin layer of sand drifting across it. He threw the Jeep into high gear and hit the gas. The sooner they made it to their Mongolian extraction point the better.
“I know.” The wind picked up and the new speed blew sand in his eyes, making him squint. “I’m counting on it.”
Thanks to my agent Doug Grad, my publisher Jason Pinter, and my attorney Eric Brown for their continuing faith in my work.
A Conspiracy of Ravens Page 25
