False Flag

by Jack Slater

  But he wasn’t going to get it. Nash was used to the frenetic pace by now; it came with the job.

  “You’ve got him?” he asked.

  “He’s waiting on line two, sir,” she said, withdrawing her frame from the doorway.

  The President shook his head and gestured for her to join him. “I need you in the room on this one, Emma.”

  She entered the office, and Nash leaned forward, jabbing a button on the Cisco telephone that sat on the right-hand side of his desk. “Mitchell?”

  “Mr. President. I’m here.”

  “Are you read in on the recent development in the Pacific?”

  “That’s affirmative, sir.”

  “I need to know: is this connected to the operation in Macau?”

  Mitchell paused before answering. “Who’s in the room with you, Mr. President?”

  “Just me and Martinez,” Nash growled. “Answer the damn question already. I want to know if there’s any possibility we started this fight.”

  “Apologies, sir. At the moment our best guess is that we–we don’t think so.”

  “You’re not exactly filling me with confidence, Mike,” Nash muttered, chewing the inside of his lip. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Shortly before the antisatellite attack, Trapp checked in. The operation was a mess. A third player took out the Chinese, left most of Trapp’s team dead, and took one of our people with them.”

  Nash struggled to process what his CIA deputy director was telling him. Hell, there was a lot about the last few hours that didn’t make sense. The Chinese–out of nowhere–had unleashed a devastating attack on America’s surveillance and communications capabilities in the most strategically significant region on the planet. And yet, as far as anyone could tell, they weren’t making any move to follow it up. If they had intended to start a war, it was a hell of a funny way of going about it.

  “What about Alstyne?” Nash asked. “Is he—” He paused, wondering whether to go with a euphemism in front of Martinez. He decided against it. “Did we take him out?”

  “We believe so, Mr. President. And we may have recovered the information he was attempting to sell. We’re trying to confirm that now.”

  Nash rubbed his temples, frustration rising in him like a rocket launch, and burning with the same intensity. He listed his current problems on his fingers, even though Mitchell couldn’t see him. “Mike, I’ve got two carrier battle groups heading for the Chinese coast. I’ve got half a dozen F-35 fighter jets watching over my plane in case the Chinese launch their nukes. I’ve got the Joint Chiefs hassling me to open up the nuclear football and throw a few plays. So what I need from you right now is a little more substantial than ‘may have.’ I need certainty, and I need it fast, otherwise this country will be at war with China. You understand?”

  Mitchell’s tone was more sober when he replied, as though he truly appreciated the import of what the president had just said to him. “I understand the gravity of the situation, Mr. President. My team will do everything we can to get you the information you need. But…”

  Nash’s nails bit into his fleshy palm. He didn’t want to hear any ‘buts’ right now. “But what?”

  “Trapp’s a lone wolf, sir. If he follows the extraction plan, he’ll be on a navy sub in about six hours. But I’m not counting on it.”

  16

  Trapp exited the Ritz-Carlton on foot, knowing that even as he moved, the combination napalm/thermite incendiary device would have activated in the hotel suite far above his head.

  Even now, white-hot flames would be burning at temperatures approaching four thousand degrees. By the time the flame burned itself out, there would be little left of the pyre of equipment and bodies. Nothing would be left for the authorities to pick over, magpie-like, in their search for the truth–and for Jason himself.

  A muscle on his clenched jaw flickered as images of the flickering inferno invaded his mind. He spared a prayer for the two dead CIA operatives and promised himself that their sacrifice would not have been in vain. Trapp did not yet know who the third party was, how they had known about Alstyne, or what they were planning.

  But he intended to find out.

  As he stepped out of the hotel’s darkened lobby, sparing a glance back at the gaunt, black structure, emergency lights reflected against the windows. Trapp quickened his step, knowing that he needed to get out of the area before the Chinese authorities worked out what the hell had just happened.

  Macau was, technically, a Special Administrative Region, with its own government, albeit one that reported to the Politburo in Beijing. Right now, the local police might not even know the true details of what had occurred inside the luxury hotel. The chaos would have disrupted communications, and the bulk of the fighting had taken place on an empty floor, with no witnesses.

  But Trapp wasn’t kidding himself. He knew that the Ministry of State Security was no laughing matter. They would have people on the ground, and those people would be headed straight for the Ritz-Carlton.

  And straight for him.

  Trapp’s mind spun as he tried to work out what the hell to do next. His link with Langley had been severed by the loss of the satellites in the skies above. He briefly considered finding an Internet café and contacting his handlers using the portal dedicated for that purpose, but discounted the option immediately. Just a couple of years before, the MSS had penetrated a system the Agency used to communicate with its Chinese sources. The CIA’s entire network of Chinese spies was quickly rolled up, and many executed.

  Given the importance of the thumb drive that now hung from Trapp’s neck, its chain circling the eponymous scar that had lent the operative his call sign, Trapp knew he couldn’t risk attempting to make contact. In China, he was the outsider. If the MSS realized they were looking for a Caucasian male, they wouldn’t play by American rules. They would shut the entire city down and arrest Americans, Canadians, Europeans, in fact anyone without even a hint of a tan until they got their man. He couldn’t give them so much as a single clue to his location.

  He was on his own.

  Hotel employees were attempting to corral the Ritz-Carlton’s guests in an empty lot just opposite the dark structure. A short, yet nevertheless powerful firefighter collided with Trapp as he rushed toward the hotel, a length of hose coiled around his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he grunted. The man didn’t stop.

  That was good, Trapp thought. He was invisible. He took advantage of the momentary confusion, aware that every second he lingered, more emergency personnel were arriving on scene. The second the firefighters reported on the blaze burning in the suite the CIA had coordinated their operation from, or the bullets and bodies strewn two floors below, the tone of Trapp’s evening would change – and it would change fast.

  He had no intention of rotting away in a Chinese jail. Not with so much on the line.

  Trapp glanced around, checking no one was watching. His eyes fell upon irritated businessmen and vacationers, cell phones pressed to their ears as they no doubt attempted to book different accommodation. He was clear. He propelled his body at a chain-link fence, swinging his legs up and hooking his feet at the top. He crouched there for a second, and then dropped down into a building site that faced the hotel. Above the emergency sirens, he could hear the dull roar of traffic from the four-lane highway not far from where he stood. His first order of business was to put that road between him and the cops.

  Then he could figure out what to do next.

  Trapp entered the Venetian and paid cash for a dark blue windbreaker in the hotel store. He replaced his baseball cap and quickly cleaned himself up in the nearest bathroom. A guest looked at him quizzically, no doubt noticing the dark hue of the water disappearing down the basin as he washed his hands, cleansing them of the thick layer of blood and grime he had acquired in the Ritz-Carlton. But the man asked no questions, and Trapp was in no mood to provide any answers.

  He splashed a few droplets of water on
his face and briefly closed his eyes. In the darkness, he saw Ikeda’s slate-gray eyes looking back at him, her expression accusing.

  Why did you abandon me? it asked.

  Trapp gripped the basin tight. The chain around his neck hung low, swinging in and out of his peripheral vision–a constant reminder of the gravity of the situation he found himself in. He was at a crossroads. He knew what he wanted to do: drive off after Ikeda, and do whatever it took to find her.

  But he also knew that right now, that was a fool’s errand. He had no idea where she was, nor who had taken her, what they wanted or where they were going. But there was one person who might. Kyle Partey.

  Trapp had sent the young CIA analyst the photographs of the dead soldier before his communications went down. It was the only lead Trapp had–and without the Agency’s help, he knew Ikeda was as good as dead.

  Following his extraction plan went against Trapp’s every instinct. He knew that every moment he tarried was another in which Ikeda was only getting further away. It was entirely plausible that doing so might cost him so much time it would also cost her life. But Trapp also knew he didn’t have any other choice. Macau was about to be a very dangerous place for a CIA operative to be. Standing at six foot three, with his powerful frame and tanned, weathered–yet still recognizably Caucasian—complexion, there was no way he would be able to operate in secrecy in this town. He stood half a foot taller than most of the local population, and a full foot above some.

  No. He only had one option: to get out now, while he still had a chance.

  The city was crawling with cops. The officers of the Public Security Police Force, which was still known by its Portuguese name as the Corpo de Policia de Seguranca Publica de Macau, wore light blue short-sleeve shirts, navy blue baseball caps and had radios clipped to their left breasts. Unlike most American police, they didn’t wear ballistic vests.

  But they were most certainly armed.

  Trapp was in the grips of a dilemma. Though the Agency, and specifically Special Activities Division Director Mike Mitchell had considered this particular operation of such preeminent importance to America’s national security to allow the stationing of a Los Angeles class nuclear submarine off the coast of China, no one had expected it to go this far sideways.

  By the time Trapp made it across town on a rented electric scooter, the city was in lockdown. Everywhere he looked he saw another officer of the CPSP, and the thought filled him with dread. He was still armed, though a magazine down, but he had no desire to be forced into killing a cop.

  The guys in blue shirts were just beat officers–they wouldn’t know who they were hunting, or why. If there was no other option, Trapp would fire the lethal shot. He had done it before, and would no doubt do it again.

  But he hoped it wouldn’t come to it.

  His destination was the Macau Ferry Port, the same location from which he had entered the city that very morning. There was a small boatyard attached to the commercial harbor, designed for wealthy, yacht-owning gamblers to leave their vessels while they delighted in the luxuries the city of Macau had to offer. And there was a boat waiting for him there.

  Baseball cap pulled down low over his face, Trapp scanned the yard. Sailboat masts swayed as the yachts beneath them bobbed gently on the slightly choppy surface of the bay, and motorboats swayed at their moorings, the ropes that held them fast groaning as they moved. But Trapp’s attention wasn’t taken by the boats.

  It was on the cops that were swarming the whole area. Blue-shirted men with flashlights were walking up and down the closely-packed piers, gruffly interviewing the owners of the boats that were occupied, and carefully searching the ones that weren’t.

  Trapp’s stomach sank. Unless he went full James Bond, there was no way he was making it to the small boat that the Agency’s local stringers had left at bay 47. And with several coast guard cutters prowling ominously in the waters beyond, Trapp knew that unless a nearby US Navy carrier group stepped in to provide aerial support, any attempt to make for the ocean would be doomed before it began.

  A nearby cop cruiser chirruped, and Trapp thrust his hands into his pockets, swiftly losing himself in the dark of night. He needed to find another route out of Dodge.

  And as his wraithlike gaze surveyed the inky seas, he decided he might just have found one.

  17

  Ikeda awoke into blackness, and a sharp, aching headache that throbbed like the thundering of war drums.

  Where am I?

  Her befuddled, damaged brain struggled to answer the question she posed it. She couldn’t remember where she was, or even how she had gotten there. She tried to move, but couldn’t. It was as though she was paralyzed, trapped in blackness, with no control over her limbs or even her mind. Panic surged within her. Was she dead? Was this what life was like in the beyond?–just nothingness, for ever.

  If so, Ikeda knew that she would surely go mad. Her thoughts raced as she searched for an explanation of what was happening to her.

  None of this makes sense.

  The ground swayed underneath her, and a wave of nausea rose in Ikeda’s stomach. At any moment, she thought she might vomit, but something stopped her. She forced the desire back, clenching her jaw tight.

  Okay. Back to the beginning, she thought. What happened? How did I end up here?

  Ikeda could sense the weight of beads of sweat on her forehead, and something else–an alien presence that she couldn’t yet make out. If she was dead, would she really be able to sweat?

  She thought not.

  The thought comforted her, and allowed her to tame the swell of fear that rose inside her, helped her to remember that the sensation of her heart thundering in her chest like a herd of runaway horses, hooves beating against the ground in a furious rhythm was just that–a sensation. A physical reaction to the cocktail of chemicals her brain was pumping into her bloodstream.

  She mastered it, reining back on her terror, breathing deeply to force her brain to regain control of the body it rode.

  And as her fear faded, her mind’s clarity increased. Ikeda was not yet firing on all cylinders, but she was returning to baseline. She focused on what she could control: her senses. She did not yet dare to move, as her anxious, fractious mind presented her with a million scenarios, each more terrifying than the last.

  She could be unconscious, on the edge of a cliff, and one wrong move could send her plunging to her death.

  It wasn’t likely, of course, but it didn’t seem a risk worth taking. Ikeda forced her mind’s attention back to her body, using a meditation technique she’d learned as a child in Japan. She focused all of her attention on her toes, wiggled them, and felt an entirely disproportionate level of pride at her tiny success. Next, she attempted to roll her ankles.

  But this time, she was out of luck. Her ankles seemed stuck fast as though they were glued to, to…

  To whatever it was she was lying on. Which Ikeda thought with frustration, she still did not know.

  Okay, forget the ankles. Keep going.

  Ikeda did exactly as she instructed herself, repeating the technique until she had performed it the length and breadth of her body. When she was done, one simple truth made itself immediately apparent: she was tied up. Wherever she was, and whatever had happened to her, she was a prisoner.

  The realization dumped a surge of adrenaline into her brain. In a fraction of a second, she went from numbed and groggy to entirely alive, her breath ragged in her lungs, and her limbs straining at her bonds.

  She quickly realized that the alien object she had sensed on her face was a blindfold. Now she could feel the plastic ties cutting off the circulation at her wrists and ankles, and the rigid surface of whatever she was lashed to sending the muscles in her back into spasm.

  The panic returned, and Ikeda forced herself to master it. Quicker this time, since she had been through the process already. Fear wasn’t helpful. Fear was weakness, and weakness would get her killed. She remembered what had happened no
w. The men storming Alstyne’s suite. Killing one and…and then the blackness that had taken her.

  Eliza Ikeda had never felt more abandoned. Forgotten by her country.

  On her own.

  And then a memory returned to her. The first day of training at the Farm. Her instructor had said something that had stuck with her for years. When the words left his lips, many of the trainees had blanched. Most of those never made it to the field: either the instructors washed them out, or they chose to transfer to a more sedate career in one of the Agency’s analysis teams.

  “When you leave this place, you are on your own. If you screw up, best case you’ll do ten years in some foreign shithole jail before they send your body back in a spy transfer. I say your body, because you’ll be alive, but your mind will be long gone.”

  At this, the trainee next to Ikeda had almost pissed himself.

  “Worst case,” the instructor had continued, “we’ll never know what happened to you. You’ll get your star on the wall at Langley, and no one will ever know your name. So ask yourself this: are you ready? Because there’s no shame in walking out of that door and never coming back. But if you stay, know this: when you’re out in the field, no one’s coming to save you. It’s up to you. You think you can handle that?”

  Ikeda had.

  She still did. And now she heard voices beyond the kind of blackness that surrounded her. The growl of an engine–low and throaty, some kind of goods vehicle. A truck, probably.

  A man spoke, again in that strangely accented Korean. “He’s dead.”

  “Fuck,” another swore. This voice reminded her of the leader of the unknown assailants. “And the drive?”

  “It looks real, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Without the American’s codes, it’s as good as useless. We might be able to crack it, but not in the time we have.”