by Clancy, Tom
“But you have more,” Le said.
“A question. Is there any reason the general might have for wanting—or rather needing—to stay in Zhuhai?” Hood asked.
“I asked the defense minister a similar question,” Le admitted. “He said there is nothing unusual going on in that region.”
“Do you trust the minister?”
“I have no reason to distrust him.”
“Excuse me. Is that an endorsement or diplomacy?”
“It is my answer,” Le replied.
“Let’s try this, then,” Hood said with a trace of impatience. “Who will appoint Chou Shin’s replacement?”
“The president,” Le answered. “I was just conferring with him on that very subject. There is nothing in the appointment that benefits Tam Li. His replacement will be a Communist, not an ally to Tam Li.” Le glanced toward the rocket. “I am beginning to wonder if this is about nothing more than the rivalry between the two men. With Chou Shin gone, perhaps this facility is no longer in danger. Perhaps it never was.” He looked back at Hood. “You do not share that sense?”
“No, sir,” Hood said. “Allow me one more question. Are there any men from Tam Li’s command on the base?”
“Why?” the prime minister asked. “Do you now suspect that he may be planning an attack?”
“General Rodgers and I were wondering if an attack here might serve as a diversion that benefits Tam Li somehow,” Hood said. He used Rodgers’s title to remind the prime minister that there was a military voice in his reasoning.
“What could Tam Li gain by that?” Le asked.
“We don’t know. But he is sitting on top of a fat arsenal. And an attack on the rocket might be the trigger he needs to launch it.”
“Again, for what reason?” Le asked.
“Ambition?” Hood asked. “I don’t know the man. But we think the explosion at the airfield occurred beneath Chou’s jet, not on it. That could be a singular incident. Or it could be the start of something larger.” He looked at Anita. “A purge of government leaders, perhaps. More than a few are here now.”
The translator’s slightly angry expression suddenly grew more concerned. She finished translating and looked at her father. His own features were still neutral. He was, above all, a good politician.
“The guards are drawn from different branches of the military and rotated every six months,” Le said. “I will find out who may have come from the Zhuhai command.”
“Thank you,” Hood said.
Le excused himself and went back to his car. Anita and Hood remained behind.
“Your concern is for the rocket,” she said.
“And our lives,” Hood told her.
“Why don’t you leave the complex? We can search for the general’s personnel, if there are any.”
“I don’t like the idea of running,” Hood said.
“So you are staying to be manly?” she asked. “Like James Bond?”
He could not tell if she were kidding or not. “I am doing my job,” he replied.
She smiled. “That is a very responsible answer. It is also very Chinese.”
So, apparently, is megalomania and murder, Hood wanted to tell her. He refrained. The woman had her own definition of the Chinese character. It was about industry and honor, very much a reflection of how she saw her father. He would let her have that. He suspected that only events would rewrite her definitions.
Le returned. His expression bore a touch of gravity it had not possessed before.
“A unit was recently rotated in from Zhuhai,” Le said. “I have asked that those individuals be brought to the Command and Control Center. I am going to meet them there now.”
“Where were they stationed?” Hood asked.
“Originally, they were checking passes at the front gate.”
“Originally?” Hood asked.
“Three weeks ago they were relocated at the request of the general himself,” Le said. “He said this rocket was important to his base. He wanted to make sure the boosters were being watched by people he had trained and whom he trusted.”
“I would like to go with you,” Hood said.
“No. I will let you know what I find out. You can wait in the Technical Center if you wish. I will contact you there.”
“Sir, we have less than ninety minutes to launch—”
“All the more reason for me to get to the command center,” the prime minister said as he turned and left.
Hood started after him. “Anita, please ask him to wait.”
“My father has told you what he plans to do,” Anita said.
“Yes, but I have experience in this area—”
“Not here,” she replied. “You don’t even speak the language.”
“I can read expressions, body language.” Hood stopped. He looked back at the woman as Le got in the car. “Dammit, everything—anything—might help.”
“If my father wants help, he will ask for it.”
“When?” Hood asked. “After the rocket is destroyed?”
“My father knows what he is doing,” Anita said. “He is an able man.”
“But not infallible,” Hood snapped. “He let the entire situation with the general and Chou Shin get away from him—”
“Mr. Hood, we are quite finished.”
“No! You’ve stopped listening, which is not the same thing. The stakes are high here, Anita! This is not a time for ego.”
“For once I agree with you, Mr. Hood. He told you where to wait, and I suggest you go there. Now, please excuse me. I, too, have a job to do.” The woman strode toward the Technical Center.
Hood raised his hands in exasperation. But anger was not going to help, and he lowered them. He remained beside the wide asphalt road that ran through the complex. The cars were still parked by the side of the building. A guard at the door of the center watched Hood but did not move from his post.
The rising sun was hot, and Hood was perspiring. Only the slightest breeze moved across the field. Hood pulled his cell phone from the loop on his belt. He wanted to call Rodgers and tell him what he had learned about a squad from Zhuhai. At least he knew where the general’s team had been. It would allow the marines to narrow their patrol zone.
Unfortunately, the communications at the complex interfered with the signal. He would have to find some other way to get this information to Rodgers.
Quickly.
FIFTY-TWO
Zhuhai, China Thursday, 10:49 A.M.
Before leaving his post, one of the soldiers in the booster security detail sent an E-mail message to Zhuhai. It read:
Team recalled by PM.
It was not the kind of message the general wanted to receive. There was slightly more than an hour until launch. If the device he had planted were discovered and the rocket took off safely, the rationale for what he was planning to do next would evaporate. Without the explosion, Tam Li could never convince the surviving president that Taiwan had used the disaster—perhaps even caused it—to press a military advantage, and only the quick action of the general had thwarted a major strike against targets along China’s eastern coastline.
It was dramatic action that would merit the general’s appointment as the new minister of defense, or perhaps even as the prime minister. Since it was no longer necessary to attach suspicion to the late Chou Shin, Tam Li could concentrate on the purely military aspects of the action.
As long as the rocket blows up. Without that, he had nothing.
Tam Li sat alone in his office, staring out the window and thinking. He was not a man prone to displays of anger or frustration. He preferred to use his energies more effectively. Every problem had at least one solution, often more. It was simply a matter of finding the right one. The general had spoken with the white team officers when they came in from extinguishing the fire. They were loyal soldiers who understood why he had destroyed the aircraft. They were also well-paid members of Tam Li’s black market gang. Explaining to Beijing what had happened on the airfield woul
d not be a problem. Chou Shin’s explosives-laden jet had blown up. The pulling of his rocket team was a greater concern, especially if the prime minister suspected an attack. A new security crew might find what had been done to the rocket.
The irony was that when they were called in, the Xichang team had been getting set to pull back and leave the space complex. They did not want to be within fifty miles of the facility when the plutonium core exploded. Tam Li could not count on them remaining silent as the countdown progressed. If they were still in the complex, chances were good they would die.
And then it occurred to him, a way to fix this situation. Tam Li would use the hide-in-plain-sight scenario.
He pressed the intercom on his telephone.
“Yes, General?”
“Get me the Xichang space center,” he said. “I want to speak with the prime minister at once.”
“Yes, sir.”
Tam Li would tell the prime minister why he had assigned those men to the boosters, and why he must let them finish their job.
It was important, he would say, to protect them from the attack Chou Shin had been planning.
FIFTY-THREE
Xichang, China Thursday, 11:00 A.M.
The voice on the loudspeaker was confident and proud.
“Launch minus sixty!”
Hood did not need a translator to know what he was saying. The digital countdown clock on the wall had just slipped under an hour. Not that he had a translator. Anita had gone downstairs with the rest of the observers. Hood had gone into the reception area as Le had suggested. There was a guard seated behind a gunmetal desk. There was no one else in the room. Hood had indicated to her that he wanted to use the phone, but she shook her head. When he tried to use it anyway, she rose and called someone’s name. The other guard entered. Hood backed off.
The launchpad was too far away, or he would have run over and attempted to find the marines himself. He tried his cell phone again. Then again. As the seconds slipped away, the only option Hood seemed to have was getting a ride to the gate to try to find Mike somewhere around the perimeter. But even if he succeeded, that left very little time to actually locate a potential problem.
“Hood.”
Hood turned to the desk. The woman was addressing him. She held the telephone toward him. Perhaps Rodgers had found him.
“Yes?” Hood said as he snatched the phone.
“Sir, this is Dr. Yuen, a fuel specialist on this project,” he said. “I am translating for the prime minister. He says that he spoke with the general and is satisfied with the conversation.”
“He is? What about the individuals he spoke with?”
Hood waited while the scientist translated. Either Tam Li was very convincing, or the prime minister was extremely gullible. In any case, there was one way to know for certain.
“The prime minister has allowed them to return to their duties.”
“Ask him if he is sending men with them,” Hood said. This was insane. The guy they were investigating vouches for himself, and Le accepts that?
Hood waited again.
“Mr. Hood, the prime minister is coming to the Technical Center,” Dr. Yuen informed him. “He will be there in five minutes. He said he will talk to you there.”
“Right,” Hood said. “More time wasted.”
“Sir, we invented rockets,” the scientist said. “We were going through these trials centuries before your ancestors were born.”
Hood did not respond. Built into that statement was the prerogative to venture and to fail. There was no way to argue with that kind of thinking.
Hood hung up. He needed to get in touch with Rodgers now. He smiled at the guard and reached for the keypad. The guard laid a hand across it.
“Le Kwan Po,” Hood said with authority.
The woman replied with equal authority. She rose and did not remove her hand. She gestured toward a seat and then toward the stairs leading to the bunker. Obviously, those were the only options Hood had.
Hood held up an index finger. “One call. One. Please.”
The guard shook her head and, pointing, repeated the options. Hood was about to pull her hand from the phone.
“Who do you wish to call?”
Hood turned at the familiar voice. Anita was standing at the top of the bunker staircase.
“I need to talk to an associate,” Hood said. “Please.”
“Apparently, my father was right.”
“Excuse me?”
“He was afraid his decision might bother you,” she said.
Hood walked toward her. “He was right about that, yes. I am not so sure he is right about the rest. I need to talk to someone for just a moment,” Hood said calmly, evenly.
“Mr. Hood, I do not wish to be unreasonable, but we are here to witness a launch—”
“And I pray that is what I see,” Hood told her. “I need to ask an associate just one question, Anita. We are desperately short of time, and you have nothing to lose. I promise, this will be brief.”
Anita regarded him for a moment. “All right,” she replied, then said something to the guard. The uniformed woman removed her hand from the keypad. She glared at Hood as she sat back down.
“One brief call,” Anita cautioned him.
“Thank you,” Hood said to them both.
He get an operator and gave him the number of Rodgers’s cell phone. Because this phone was a land line, and because Rodgers was outside the base, Hood hoped the call would get through the satellite dish interference.
It did not. After a long, discouraging silence, Hood disconnected the call and stood there.
“Is there no answer?” Anita asked.
“No.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Let’s go downstairs now—”
“Not yet,” Hood said quickly. He punched in a second number. “I need to try again.”
Anita was clearly unhappy, but she did not protest. Not with words, at least. Her expression said it all.
This time he did not call Mike Rodgers. He called someone else he hoped could help him.
FIFTY-FOUR
Washington, D.C. Wednesday, 11:11 P.M.
Intelligence work and patience have a long history together. Whether it was breaking codes in World War II or reconnaissance against the Persians by the warriors of Sparta before the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., this was not work that could be rushed.
Bob Herbert weathered patience impatiently. That was both a strength and a curse. He looked for fresh leads while he waited for old searches to bring results. He had a problem, though, when those new leads took him nowhere. When every road he studied was a dead end. When there was simply not enough information to go off road, or enough lift to hoist him aloft so he could study a bigger picture.
It was then that Herbert felt trapped. And when he felt trapped, Bob Herbert kept hurling himself at the problem until his head hurt, until his heart raced, until he wanted to scream. Until he sat in his chair and wept from frustration and blamed his wheelchair and, by extension, the fact that the U.S. embassy had been bombed in Beirut and he was there at all. But most of all he blamed himself for choosing this life instead of opening a tavern in Mississippi and playing guitar on open-mike night and never worrying about anything that happened beyond the confines of the small Southern town where the air was muggy and close, and you were safe because absolutely no one came there who did not belong there.
Herbert had always imagined he would go back to Philadelphia, Mississippi, when he retired. He wished he could go now, but to do so meant to acknowledge defeat. Under those conditions his retirement would be a trap and not a release.
The intelligence chief sat behind his desk at Op-Center. He did not want to go home and be useless. It was better to stay here with the night crew and at least have the potential to do something. But that still did not make him feel like the hub of a wheel around which activity turned. He was helpless and he was desperate, and not just to prevent a possible explosion in Xichan
g. Motion defined him. Without it, he had no idea who or what he was.
It was worse because Rodgers and Hood were not there. They were always pitching ideas. Even if Rodgers was knocking them foul, he was still swinging the bat. It was action.
There had been virtually none of that since Viens had come to his office the day before. Herbert had asked for more information about the blips on the Pacific Rim. Unfortunately, when the photo recon officer compared current satellite images to past photographs, nothing stood out. The process was called ODA: overlay dissonance analysis. It was similar to what astronomers did when they compared celestial photographs from different nights. If something were out of place in the heavens—such as an asteroid approaching the earth—ODA let them know it. The process was a little more complex with intelligence work. Past military maneuvers were compared to current maneuvers, along with the responses of surrounding nations. Computers sounded an alarm if there were anything out of the ordinary. So far, the Pacific Rim activity had not caused anything like that. The NRO had picked up the explosion on the Zhuhai airstrip, and that obviously had a place in the overall picture. But no one knew how or why or when. Certainly no one knew whether it was somehow related to the launch.
However many times Herbert reviewed the existing data about troop movements or the explosions in Charleston, Durban, and Taipei, he could not extrapolate what might happen with the rocket. He did not see how they related.
And then Paul Hood called.
“Bob, I’m glad you’re there,” Hood said urgently. “I assume Mike has a way of staying in touch with his people?”
“By text alert,” Herbert said. “They are all wearing—”
“I don’t need to know that,” Hood interrupted. “The uplinks here are messing with the cell phones. Can you get him a message?”
“Yes,” Herbert replied. Because it was text rather than more sophisticated audio, the watches worked on a lower frequency that would not be affected by satellite communications.
“Tell him that Tam Li had a crew working on booster security.”
“The fox watching the chickens?”
