by Jack Mars
Robert heard the sirens behind him and checked the rearview.
“What is it?” Fortgang said. He didn’t bother to turn around. The highway entrance ramp was just up ahead. Robert started to accelerate toward it.
He took one last look at the scene behind them. “I don’t know. Two cars coming fast. Looks like a cop in pursuit of a late-night speed demon.”
There was something mesmerizing about how fast those cars were coming. He almost couldn’t take his eyes off them.
“Robert!” Fortgang shouted. “Watch where you’re going!”
Robert looked ahead. A big black Hummer rolled out right in front of them. There was no way to avoid it. He tried to slam on the brakes, but there was no time.
“Robert!”
They crashed hard into the side of the Hummer. Hard. Heavy metal crunch at nearly fifty miles per hour. The windshield caved in, shattering glass all over them. Robert’s air bag deployed in front of him, forcing his hands off the steering wheel and into the air. He smacked himself in the head with his right hand.
A long moment passed. It could have been a minute. It could have been an hour.
It could have been a week.
Robert had a ringing sound in his ears. White talcum dust lingered in the air from the air bags. The air bags themselves had deflated. Robert glanced over at Fortgang. Fortgang was slumped in his seat, unconscious. He hadn’t been wearing his seat belt. Robert had told him about that… he’d lost track of how many times.
A black car zipped by, barely a blur. The wind from its passing shook the van. A split second later a police car flew past, lights flashing, siren howling.
Robert stared at the big Hummer he had crashed into. The entire side of it was dented in. Crushed.
He reached for his radio. He’d better call this in. Hmmm. Maybe he’d better go check the status of that other driver first. Or of the prisoner. He realized he wasn’t thinking clearly. People often became confused after car wrecks. He was one of them. Confused.
He wished that cop had stopped. Well, maybe the cop had called it in.
He turned to open his door. A black man with a closely cropped beard stood there at the window. He was broad and muscular. His eyes were cold and heartless. He held a shotgun, the barrel pointed at Robert’s head. Robert had never looked down the barrel of a shotgun before. He could see the shells mounted inside the barrel.
“Keys,” the man said.
“What?”
“Keys to open the back of the van. Give them to me, or you’re a dead man. You have three seconds.”
“I…”
“Two seconds.”
Robert reached for the key chain hanging from the ignition. He didn’t even feel frightened. He didn’t feel anything, except it was better to comply. He pulled the keys out of the ignition, picked through them, and found the key that locked the back. He held it out to the man.
The man took the keys.
“Thank you.”
In one fluid movement, the man reversed the shotgun. Now the butt end of the gun, the stock, faced Robert. He stared at it curiously.
BAM.
It came fast, smashing into his forehead. His head lolled for a moment. Darkness moved in from the edges of his vision. The gun butt was still there, hovering in front of him. Here it came again.
BAM.
Robert saw no more.
* * *
Ed took the keys and limped around with his heavy kit bag to the back of the van.
That crash kind of hurt.
It wasn’t supposed to go that way. The original scenario was that the prison van would stop when it saw the Hummer. Then Luke would sneak up behind in the fast car, they’d throw down on the guards, grab Trudy, and take off.
Ed shook his head. It was rare when anything went exactly according to plan.
“Swann, you still with me?” he said into his headset.
“I’m here. What happened down there?”
“The whole thing is one hundred percent FUBAR. We had a pretty nasty crash. My car is toast. Luke is off getting chased by a cop. Can you see him?”
“Wait a minute.”
Ed didn’t wait. He unlocked the back door of the van, undid the clasp, and opened the doors.
“Yeah, I’ve got him on satellite video. If that’s him, he’s out on the highway. He’s got two police cars on him now. There’s not much traffic this time of night, and they are whipping.”
“Terrific,” Ed said. “Listen, I need some wheels.”
“Where are the guards?”
“Knocked out. Out of commission, but I think okay. The driver’s gonna need some Tylenol tomorrow. I lumped him pretty good.”
“Why don’t you just put them out and take the van? Zip-tie them and dump them in the bushes somewhere? Somebody will find them in the morning. Drive the van until you see a spot to dump it. I have you on the GPS. I can direct Luke to you.”
“If he makes it,” Ed said.
“He’ll make it.”
Ed nodded. It was a good improv. Ed was on the ground here. He couldn’t think of everything. And Swann was a smart dude.
“Okay. That’s what we’ll do.”
Ed climbed into the back of the van. Trudy was here. She was slumped in her seat, her head hanging down. The guards had strapped her in tight, though. It looked like the crash didn’t do much to her.
Trudy wore the orange jumpsuit of a federal prisoner. It looked like she had lost some weight while inside, but even so, she could make anything look good. He knelt down in front of her and undid the leather straps at her ankles. He felt tender toward her, and gentle. He rarely felt that way toward anyone.
He had visited her in jail exactly once. He felt bad about that, but in a way, it was also the life. People died. People disappeared. When he visited her, there wasn’t much to talk about. She wished him luck. He did the same. Anyway, she had brought this upon herself, hadn’t she?
Now he stood and moved to the straps at her back. He freed her, though it was going to take the bolt cutters in his bag to break those handcuffs.
He shook his head. Luke Stone and his ideas.
Trudy groaned. Her head lolled to the side for a few seconds. Then her eyes opened. It took another few seconds for them to focus.
“Ed?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
He smiled. “I’ve come to rescue you, Princess.”
She blinked her eyes. “I think I have whiplash.”
Ed heard a sound then. It was a sound he didn’t usually mind. Only, in this context, it wasn’t a good sound to hear. It was the metallic slide and crunch of someone chambering a round in a pump shotgun.
He turned and there was the guard at the door, the young ex-Marine. He was a flat-topped, healthy eating, weight lifting, by the book kind of guy. He was an American hero, at least in his mind. And he was groggy, but awake. He leveled the gun at Ed.
“Hands up where I can see them!” he shouted.
Ed slowly raised his hands. “Brother, let’s take it easy with that thing.”
“Hands up! Now get on the floor!”
Ed moved very slowly and carefully. This was the dangerous part, where overzealous, nervous types blew holes in people by accident.
“I’m going,” he said. “Real slow.”
“On the floor before I blow your brains out!”
Ed sighed. This was turning into a long night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
11:01 p.m.
United States Naval Observatory – Washington, DC
The next meeting would be short and sweet.
Li Ning, the Chinese ambassador, had just arrived at the house. Susan stood in the study with Kat Lopez.
Ning came in. She was a well-dressed, pretty woman of indeterminate age. Susan knew she was forty-five, but would never guess otherwise. She wore a business suit and her makeup was perfect. Not a hair was out of place. She was very petite, several inches shorter than Susan herself. She gave no indication that Susan had aw
akened her from her sleep, or that she had even been unwinding at the end of a long, hard day.
No. Eleven o’clock at night was a perfectly normal time for a meeting.
It was a plum assignment, being the ambassador to the United States. Susan also knew that Li Ning’s husband was a much older Communist party official. He had been the mayor of Chongqing for many years. For Li Ning, this was a patronage job. Well, not anymore.
“Madam President,” the woman said once an aide had shown her in. She offered a small bow of respect. She smiled. She didn’t seem nervous in the least. She spoke perfect English. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Luke Stone’s idea about the cult hadn’t panned out. SWAT teams had raided their headquarters in New Jersey, as well as churches, offices, homes, and warehouses they had in six different states. There was no evidence of advanced computer equipment, there were no stockpiled weapons, and no indication that anyone with the church had ever been in the CIA. All the SWAT had done was corral a group of terrified people, who really did think the world was ending when the big American policemen stormed into their churches and houses.
If it wasn’t the church, then who was it? It was China. It had to be.
“Ambassador,” Susan said, “I’m going to be very clear with you. We are very upset about the terror attacks of the past two days. We want them to stop, and we want the perpetrators identified, and surrendered to us immediately.”
The ambassador shook her pretty head. “I don’t know anything about this.”
“I imagined you’d say that,” Susan said. “In that case, please relay this message to your President and Party leaders.”
The ambassador nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“If these attacks continue, if any more Americans are harmed, we will be forced to bring the perpetrators to justice ourselves. We will not stop until we do, even if this means we must find them inside your country, and extract them.”
The ambassador’s soft face hardened. “We have no control over this situation,” she said. “You cannot make these threats.”
Susan was already done with her. She waved her hand as if to make the woman go away. “I want you out,” she said. “You, your staff, your entire embassy, cleared and vacated by the morning. We will have airplanes ready at nine a.m. to take your entire staff, and any family members, to Beijing. Anyone attached to your embassy operations must be on those planes. Shuttle buses will arrive at the embassy beginning at seven a.m.”
“Madam President, I don’t understand.”
“Well, Professor Li, it’s simple. We’re severing diplomatic ties. You are being ousted. We consider today’s attacks an act of war.”
The woman shook her head. “As I’ve said, I don’t know anything about this. We are not involved in these attacks. It must be terrorists, of course.”
Susan shook her head. “Have you understood everything I’ve said?”
“Yes,” the ambassador said. “You called it an act of war from China. This is incorrect. Surely you do not want war with the most powerful country on Earth?”
“That’s funny,” Susan said. “I was just about to ask you the same question.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
10:12 a.m. (11:12 p.m. Eastern Time in the United States)
The Skies Above the South China Sea
From 30,000 feet, the island didn’t look like much.
It was a small scrap of muted colors—tan, gray, and brown—surrounded by the vast turquoise waters of the ocean. The United States Navy P8-A Poseidon spy plane did a fly-by well to their north. At this height, and from this distance, the activity around the islands didn’t look like much—some ships anchored near a reef or shoal.
“Let’s bring it around,” said Lieutenant Commander Edwin Russell, the plane’s pilot. “We’ll drop it to twenty thousand, take a closer look.”
The plane was big, built on the same frame as the old Boeing 737. But that’s where the similarities ended. The P8-A was the most advanced surveillance aircraft in the American arsenal. Behind Russell and his co-pilot, in what would have once been the passenger cabin on a 737, ten men sat at computer workstations mounted along the walls of the aircraft. They had access to powerful radio and radar antennae, satellite transmissions, and sophisticated long-range still and video cameras, much of it mounted beneath the plane’s fuselage. Russell had heard one TV reporter refer to it as a “CIA listening station in the sky.”
The plane banked, dropped altitude, slowed, and approached the reef from the west, much lower and closer than before.
“Mischief Reef,” said Russell’s co-pilot. “Fast becoming Mischief Island.”
Russell stared at it, impressed by the pace of the work. Dozens of rusty Chinese dredging ships surrounded what only recently had been about a hundred narrow yards of sand and rock, a spit of land six hundred miles from the Chinese coast. The dredgers pumped sand from the ocean floor, spraying it high into the air and onto the surface of the reef. They were building an island out of thin air.
Further out from the dredgers, half a dozen Chinese warships were parked, lending protection to the construction project.
“I’ve been flying this stretch of water for eighteen months,” Russell said to the co-pilot, a young guy just out of flight school named Montgomery. “There was nothing here a year ago. Nothing.”
Russell thought of Fiery Cross Reef, just a few minutes to the south. It had started from nothing, too. Just a tiny spot of nowhere, surrounded by water more than three hundred feet deep. Now it was a large military installation with a runway, control tower, barracks, and a deep water harbor.
The Chinese had long laid claim to these reefs, which once upon a time barely peeked over the waves. Suddenly they were expanding them. These waters were Chinese territory now, according to them, as were the oil and natural gas deposits beneath them. More to the point, these were nifty little spots from which to dominate the whole region.
The radio crackled. A male voice spoke slowly in heavily accented and carefully enunciated English: “This is the Chinese navy. This is the Chinese navy. All aircraft in this sector, please leave immediately to avoid misunderstanding.”
Russell smiled at Montgomery. “You think he’s talking to us?” The kid shrugged. He seemed a little nervous for this type of assignment. Well, he’d either learn to man up, or he wouldn’t.
Russell picked up his radio mic. “Chinese navy, this is a United States navy aircraft on a routine flight in international airspace.”
A moment of quiet passed. Russell waited. He didn’t feel much about it one way or another. His mission was to fly above these waters. That’s what he was going to do.
“United States navy, these are restricted airspace,” came the reply. “Please leave immediately.”
“Uh… negative, Chinese navy. This is open airspace above international waters.”
More time passed. The plane flew over the construction site. Russell glanced at it. It wasn’t his job to look, of course. That’s what all the camera equipment, and all those intelligence men, in the back were for. But it was almost too mesmerizing not to look. These Chinese projects took place on a scale you just never saw in the United States. From zero, Mischief Reef was now twenty or thirty football fields long.
“American navy,” said the voice on the radio. From its earlier calm, it had quickly become agitated. The man was no longer speaking slowly. His voice was rising and speeding up, making it more difficult to understand. His English was beginning to deteriorate. “You please leave.”
Russell rolled his eyes. After a few times, he got tired of responding to these challenges.
“Negative, Chinese navy.”
This time, the reply was immediate.
“American, you go now! Last warning.”
That was new. In all the pointless challenges he had received from the Chinese navy during his assignment here, it was the first time they had ever referred to it as a warning, and damn sure the first time they had ever called it
the last one. That wouldn’t stand.
“Chinese navy. Repeat. This is an American navy aircraft, on a routine…”
The flight intercom interrupted him. Russell sighed. It was Smiley, his radar man in the back.
“Lieutenant, can you read me?”
“Yeah, Smiley, what can I do for you?”
“We’ve got two bogeys just took off from Fiery Cross. Number one headed west, number two on an intercept heading and closing.”
“What?” Russell said. No one told him the runway at Fiery Cross was operational, or that the Chinese had fighter planes stationed there.
“Intercept heading with what?”
“With us, sir.”
Russell glanced over at his co-pilot Montgomery. Young, crew-cutted Monty looked like he was ready to puke.
“Keep your chin up, Montgomery. That’s what they send us out here for. To be the guinea pigs.”
“Sir?” Smiley said over the intercom.
“What’s the distance on that bogey?” Russell said.
“Six miles and closing.”
“Can we outrun him?” Montgomery said.
Russell nearly laughed. It was becoming a comedy show out here today.
“In this thing? We’re flying a bubble-butt. We can’t outrun your grandmother. Not that we would want to anyway. Cheer up, son. This is the United States Navy. We don’t run from people.”
He glanced at the readouts in front of him.
“Arm torpedoes,” he said to the intercom. “If we get so much as a scratch from that guy, we’re lighting up this island. Prepare to hit them with everything you got. We’re not going to get a second chance.”
“Yes, sir.”
Russell held the mic to his mouth. “Chinese navy. Stand down.”
“American navy…”
“Listen to me, you punk. This is the United States navy calling, and this is your last warning.”
The Chinese man shouted over him. “No!”
Russell shook his head.
