by Tom Clancy
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 would 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 Xichang. 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?”
“Possibly. The team said they were returning to their posts,” Hood went on. “If they do, great. If they try to leave the complex, we’ll know why. Mike has got to stop them, make them talk.”
“I’ll tell him,” Herbert said. “Do you have a description of the men?”
“No. I didn’t meet with them.”
“Do they speak English?”
“Doubtful,” Hood said. “Mike can have them draw a diagram. In blood, if they have to.”
“Got it,” Herbert replied.
Hood clicked off, and Herbert swung over to his computer monitor. The thin, flat screen was attached to a boom on the left armrest of his wheelchair. Herbert accessed Rodgers’s text address and quickly drafted a message. He then reduced it to as few words as possible.
Tam Li detail had access to boosters. May flee before ignition. Stop them and assess.
As Herbert typed, ideas began to form. A direction had been indicated. Tam Li blowing up the rocket — his own rocket, effectively — to solidify opposition to Chou Shin was a reason, but not strong enough. Besides, with the intelligence director dead, there would be no reason to continue that operation. However, there was a more compelling notion: it could be blamed on Taiwan as a counterstrike to the attack on their city. And who better to reply to such an attack than Tam Li, who was sitting across the strait with an army?
The scenario quickly acquired weight and detail. All it had taken was a phone call from someone with whom he had enjoyed an often hostile but very symbiotic relationship.
That was all.
But that was a lot.
FIFTY-FIVE
Xichang, China Thursday, 11:20 A.M.
Mike Rodgers was sitting in his rental car in a field of high grasses roughly a quarter mile from the front gate of the space complex. The dark, asphalt road was to his left. It was a two-lane road that had simply been asphalted through the plain on a straight line from point A to point B. Cynically, Rodgers did not imagine that any environmental studies had been done to protect whatever wildlife may have lived upon, under, or in its way. There were several other cars parked in this area, along with motorbikes and even a horse. Obviously, a few hardy space buffs knew about the launch and were eager to witness it.
The amber grasses came nearly to the side window of the small car. They caused Rodgers’s eyes to itch. He had taken off his sunglasses to rub them. He did not bother to put them back on. In a way, that was helpful. Rubbing his eyes and squinting into the bright daylight made it seem as though he had roused himself from a distant bed to get here in time for the launch. It added to the look of casual inattentiveness a spy tried to achieve. He slumped in his seat to enhance the sense of insouciance, just in case security guards were watching from inside the complex or from a quartet of helicopters that circled the perimeter of the space center. They had gone up at around the one-hour mark, probably to keep unauthorized planes from entering the Xichang airspace.
Rodgers reached for a bottle sitting beside him. It was a Chinese concession to American sensibilities, the sudden cultural need to suckle on an ever-present water bottle. Rodgers had bought it at the airport, not knowing how hot it might get out here. Unlike bottles in the United States, this one was made of glass. Someone somewhere in China probably had a lucrative recycling contract. For all Rodgers knew, the same guys who made the new bottles filled them with tap water. It tasted like it.
The text-message-capable cell phone sat beside him, plugged into the dashboard. Rodgers watched it for messages from his team.
It is not really your team, the former general reminded himself. They were on loan. He was out of the military business, downsized from the spy game. Sure you are, he thought. That is why you are in the middle of a field in China waiting to hear from marines who are conducting emergency recon on a PLA rocket. The irony was, all of that no longer defined a spy. It accurately described private enterprise in twenty-first century Asia.
Rodgers did not want to hear from the marines. He wanted everything to go as planned, and he was tired of his old life. It was not just the constant shuttling from one place to another but the sense of fighting a holding action instead of moving toward victory. For every overzealous general or corrupt politician he stopped
, there was always another and another to fill his iron boots.
That was when his phone beeped. He looked down. There was a message. Rodgers input his code to retrieve it. He sat up straight and was instantly in action mode. He glanced outside for just a moment, immediately reacquainting himself with the surroundings. That gave his brain a chance to process the details. Years of experience had made his subconscious mind a very powerful tool.
The message was not from the marines. It was from Bob Herbert. Rodgers read it quickly, then again. If he understood it correctly, some of Tam Li’s people had been inside with access to the boosters. He was supposed to stop them if they tried to leave, find out what they knew.
Rodgers did not waste time responding, asking for further details. Herbert was good about packing everything he knew into small communiqués. The former general assumed the command center simply did not delay the launch because Tam Li’s plan might be time sensitive.
Rodgers pulled his sunglasses on and looked toward the main gate. He knew from having studied the maps that even if the men exited one of the other gates, this was the only road from the complex. And chances were good that if anyone did come this way, it would be them. Though vehicles were continuing to arrive now and then, none was leaving the space center. Everyone who was inside either had a job to do or was watching the liftoff. He knew from experience that seeing a launch, any launch, was a thrill that did not get old.
Which was why the dark green vehicle immediately grabbed his attention. It looked like a van or minivan, and it disappeared into a small dip in the road about one mile away. When it reemerged, Rodgers could tell it was in a hurry. He looked to his left. The road was too wide to block, even if he parked sideways. The van would just swerve around him. If this were his quarry, Rodgers would have to find some other way of delaying them.
He had about thirty seconds before the van reached him. The retired general took a few of those moments to type a message into his cell phone. He considered his options as he typed. There were only two. One was to ram the oncoming van. Even though the compact might not actually stop the men, it would slow them. But if these were not Tam Li’s men and Rodgers totaled his car — and possibly himself — he would have trouble mounting a second assault.
