War of Shadows

by Leo J. Maloney

  “But why?” Randall echoed her boss, trying, like everyone else, to figure it out herself.

  “And where is the real trick taking place?” O’Neal wondered.

  “Wherever it is,” Linc told her, “odds are it’s taking place right now.”

  “It could be anywhere in the world,” Dobrynin blurted. “How can we…?”

  “Get Hot Shot,” Bloch demanded. “He’s going to get the interrogation of all interrogations…”

  As they were all talking, only Dan noticed that the old woman who had been his server at the fishing village restaurant had made her way from the road, through the bamboo forest, and to Lulu’s side. Dan moved quickly toward them, hoping the woman could do her knife magic on Hot Shot the way she had to the spearman, but as he approached, Lulu’s face changed to anger and fear. Before he could say a word, she told him why.

  Dan turned and spoke above the others.

  “It’s all been a diversion,” he boomed. “A decoy. Alpha wanted to keep us busy while they pulled off the destabilization of all destabilizations!”

  Chapter 42

  “The Confucius Casino is under siege?” Bloch exclaimed as they double-timed it back toward the Flying Fox.

  “No,” Dan answered, glancing at Lulu to make sure his terminology was correct. “It’s locked down.”

  “Locked down?” Linc echoed as he struggled to keep up with the others, both physically and emotionally. “You mean, no one can enter or leave?”

  “Worse,” Lulu explained from where she was having her family friends unstrap the adapted Alpha weapons from the bamboo tree line. “Secretly, it’s been taken hostage.”

  “Secretly?” Randall asked with conviction rather than disbelief. “How so?”

  “One of my hostess friends managed to get a message to Madame Wu,” Lulu said, “before all communications were cut off. A butler, at great personal sacrifice, managed to crawl out the top of an elevator, climb up the shaft, and pull open the doors in the meeting hall to tell her what had happened.”

  By then Lulu had left her friends to complete the weapon collection, and joined the Zetas as they moved quickly back to Palecto.

  “What happened?” Conley urged from over his shoulder.

  “An elite squad circled the gamblers and threatened death if they moved,” Lulu explained. “An elite squad in visored helmets, carrying three kinds of rifles the butler had never seen before.”

  “Derrmo,” Dobrynin cursed in Russian. The R-comms translated it, but the Zetas needed no translation since they all felt the same.

  “Since then, no one has been able to enter or leave the casino,” Lulu concluded.

  By then Danhong had caught up from where she had been supervising Hot Shot’s imprisonment in a hot spring pool.

  “‘At great personal sacrifice’?” she wondered.

  Lulu turned to her. “He’s dead. From wounds suffered by needles, deep cuts, and internal bleeding.” She looked over to Dan. “His internal organs had burst.”

  Dan motioned for Lulu to take the lead as they moved into the bamboo maze, but waited when he saw Bloch stop short, with Linc, Karen, Lily, Jenny, and even Chilly behind her. Bloch shared a look with Smith, and then the Zeta boss led the others in another direction.

  “Where are they going?” Dan barked, taking a step after them before he felt Smith’s arm across his chest.

  “In the right direction,” Smith assured him, and motioned for him to quickly follow Lulu. After a jaw-jutting moment, Dan did so, followed by Smith, Renard, Dobrynin, Alex, and Guo. Conley didn’t have to follow. He was already in the lead. Bamboo maze or no bamboo maze, Dan knew his pilot partner could find an aircraft blindfolded with both hands tied behind his back.

  Everyone boarded as quickly as possible, while Lulu informed Conley of the casino’s location.

  “Confer quickly,” Conley suggested as he programmed the location into the aircraft. “This is going to be fast.”

  “As you say, a hop, skip, and jump?” Dobrynin offered, trying to lighten the mood.

  “As I say,” Conley said to the little Russian with a grim grin, “No skip or jump. Just hop.” He looked over his shoulder. “Ready?”

  But Smith was already deep in conference with Dan while Danhong was intently communing with Alex.

  Renard came to stand beside Conley, put his hands where the interior wall sloped to a gentle bump, and said two words to the pilot.

  “Punch it.”

  Sure enough, the Flying Fox went up as if via supersonic slingshot, then came down like God’s yo-yo, to hover over Feng San Wu’s family resort reception hall in what seemed like ten seconds flat.

  Renard made it look as if the floor had turned to glass so they all, after a second of regaining their balance, could see the resort below them with crystal clarity. Dan was not surprised that the place was not crawling with local militia or cops. It was, however, crawling with employees and gamblers’ significant others. But every person down there had a vested interest in not alerting the authorities to the existence of the casino.

  And, it seemed, every gloriously dressed person on the lawn outside the reception hall was looking up at them with expressions that combined wonder and desperate hope. He had only turned away when he nearly tripped on Lulu.

  “That’s everyone from inside the hall,” she whispered to him. “I called ahead to make sure.”

  “All evacuated?” Dan asked.

  “All evacuated,” Lulu answered.

  “Good,” Renard interrupted before catching Smith’s attention. “Agreed?” he asked somewhat innocuously.

  “What’s to agree?” Dan said for the master recruiter. “Alpha only wanted us to think they were after the software. What they actually wanted was us out of the way so they could do whatever the hell they’re doing in there.”

  Smith breathed deeply. “Agreed,” he said to Renard. But the tech billionaire was taking no chances if he could help it.

  “Ready?” he asked with an expression that said it wasn’t just a formality. In fact, he waited until he got a nod from every single person on board.

  “Set,” Renard continued, his fingers dancing on the smooth hump that circled the ship’s interior.

  Dan saw something that looked like a wave of sparkling water fly out, down, and over the reception hall. He also heard Renard muttering.

  “Remember when I told you that buildings have structural weak spots? Well, even ones built over dormant volcano peaks do. Especially ones built over dormant volcano peaks…”

  Smith interrupted to hustle Dan and Alex over to opposite places on either side of the pilot area. Dan looked at his daughter with concern since he didn’t remember a hatch on that side of the ship. But he couldn’t get Alex’s attention because she was still in deep discussion with Danhong, who was handing her the H-gun.

  Smith broke his attention.

  “Setting the drop handle for ‘free-fall,’” he warned, his arm in front of Dan’s face. “It will lower you until it senses the ground, or floor, whichever comes first.”

  Before Dan could react, Renard’s voice cut back in, only this time he was talking only to Conley.

  “Hit it.”

  Conley slapped his palm on a different part of the controls. Dan felt the ship lurch, as if it had just let out a monstrous burp. In a way, it had. Dan then totally remembered what had happened to the Guardian MAX assault vehicle when it had almost caught up with them in New Mexico. The same thing happened to the reception hall below them. A gigantic sonic hand slapped down on it, crushing the ceiling and sending the walls splattering outward.

  The resort’s employees scattered, looking like multi-colored insects making a break for the hills, as what was left of the building sagged.

  “Blast it,” Renard seethed. “We’re not strong enough.” He turned his head toward Smith. “
The flooring has got to be specially reinforced. Add that to the centuries-old dried lava cap, and we won’t…”

  “Belay that doubt,” Conley interrupted. “Here comes the cavalry.”

  Dan looked off in amazement as, rising above the surrounding mountains and trees, was a second Flying Fox.

  After several blinks, Dan noticed Conley and Renard smiling at him, the former with certainty and the latter with relief.

  “Well, how did you think the others got to the spa before us?” Conley asked.

  “And did you think I only had one?” Renard added. “Well, I only had one at Fox Burrow…!” He turned toward the second Palecto with pride. “And this one is militarized…”

  Before he even finished the sentence, what looked like heat waves erupted from the other craft’s underside, its sonic beams smashing into the reception hall floor like a big brother rushing to rescue its sibling.

  As they watched, two large sections of the reception hall floor caved like a table top punched by a karate master’s fists.

  Booming out over even that was Renard’s voice.

  “Go!”

  Hatches appeared, then opened on either side of the ship. Dan and Alex Morgan grabbed the handles of the automatic landing devices and jumped.

  Chapter 43

  From below it looked like both sides of the volcano peak had broken into shards. The Taiwanese people, well prepared for earthquakes, moved away quickly as the jagged stalactites crashed into the fountains with splashing roars.

  Every eye was looking up, so no one missed the sight of two people in dark gray doing a controlled fall through the holes—one hand up, holding a handle-ending cord, and the other hand down, filled with some weapon.

  Within a second, everyone could see it was a man on the left and a woman on the right. The man was dropping much faster, seemingly spotting everyone below him individually, while the woman’s eyes were intent on a rectangular bump in the center of her unwieldy weapon, the thumb of her hand moving almost impossibly fast.

  From Dan’s point of view, it looked like he was rapidly landing in enemy territory, with frightened gamblers’ faces and blank-visored heads inexorably pin-pointing him. He had the element of surprise, but he also had only his Walther PPK—no matter how much Alex and Bloch had pleaded with him to use a handgun that had more in its magazine.

  “Six rounds hitting their target is better than fifteen missing,” he had answered.

  But now even he knew that the element of surprise could only keep him unperforated just so long. And by the number of visored, helmeted faces converging on him, six rounds, even perfectly shot, would be far from enough.

  Come on, Alex, he thought. Come on, come on, come on…

  Needle, laser, and air gun barrels were rising to his level. He kept dropping, seemingly to meet the weapons halfway. He brought the PPK up, targeting the closest needle gun, remembering how it had burst in the Boston underground. He hoped he could do the same before his body was cleaved and punctured or his internal organs were hemorrhaged.

  As his feet neared the top of the fountain water, he aimed and tightened his trigger finger, then heard a click and a multi-leveled woosh above him.

  This time he wasn’t trying to find a way to escape a Boston ambush, so he clearly saw what looked like tracer bullets seemingly making a multi-directional sculpture of an opening blossom in mid-air. He watched as the tendrils curved and shot into the bodies of two dozen helmeted, visored, uniformed guards all around the fountain.

  He saw them react as if they had been punched or lanced, their helmets cracking and their bodies crumbling. Once again surprise was with Dan and Alex, but that only compensated slightly for the fact that it wasn’t enough. There were at least two dozen other helmeted visors keeping guard on the gamblers, and maybe, by quick glance, even more.

  Dan stopped caring about the numbers. His feet hit the fountain base, and he shot five of those two dozen one after another, running toward them as they fell. As his PPK clicked on the final round, he grabbed one of the falling needle guns and swung it around just in time to see Alex land. She had already dropped the H-gun, and her double Sig Sauers were in her fists.

  That made thirty more rounds, and Dan couldn’t help but be a little sorry for the survivors of the Morgans’ initial drop. As he heard her automatics start roaring, he marched over to the sixth man, whom he had purposely shot to drop, not kill. Standing on no ceremony, he kicked off the man’s helmet to find a young Asian face wracked with pain.

  “More hired help?” Dan seethed, mostly for R-comm listeners’ benefit.

  “Has to be the elite hired help,” he heard Bloch in his head. “No way they have unlimited human resources.”

  “Speak English?” Dan yelled at the man, drowning out the end of Bloch’s statement.

  The man answered frantically. “Yes, yes. I speak English.”

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded over the sound of Alex’s guns.

  “I don’t know!’ the man babbled. “I swear I don’t know! We just guarding the gamblers. That’s all we told to do! They move, we shoot! That all. I swear!”

  Dan kicked him in the jaw and stood, amazed by the sight that met him. First, the elevator doors had opened and Lily Randall, Karen O’Neal, Lo Liu, and Valery Dobrynin had appeared, protecting Bloch, who was behind them. But neither they nor Alex had to shoot anymore, because all the gamblers were attacking the remaining guards with a ferocity that wouldn’t have been out of place in the jungle.

  “Hell hath no fury like a gambler stopped,” Dan’s daughter muttered as she placed her back against his.

  “But why guard the gamblers?” Dan wondered. “What the hell…”

  “Stop this!” The words were bellowed, and contained unmistakable strength and command. “Stop this at once!”

  They all turned to see General Deng Tao Kung, in full military uniform, framed in the doorway of the Pai Gow Ultimate room, holding his QSZ-92 nine-millimeter automatic out in front of him.

  Just inside the door was Amina, holding a Yugoslavian M84 Skorpion submachine gun on Feng San Wu with one hand, and an M75 Serbian hand grenade in the other hand. She leered at Dan from over the old man’s shoulder.

  And behind them, lying on the Pai Gow table, was something neither the Morgans had seen before. But the metal, half-casket-sized rectangular thing was something they both recognized. It was a bomb. A big bomb.

  And beside it, leaning over it, was Paul Kirby.

  Amazingly, everyone did stop at the general’s command. But that didn’t stop him.

  “Are you insane?” Kung continued, berating the mob. “Do you know what this is? Do you know what will happen if you set this off?”

  Dan heard one word in his head. It was Smith’s voice.

  “Azide.”

  He recognized it as a rumor about a catalyst that was more powerful than atomic and hydrogen power, combined.

  And then the general saw Dan and the rest of the Zetas. His reaction surprised even them.

  “You’re all supposed to be dead!” he yelled at them. “Why aren’t you dead?”

  Dan answered him. “Your fault.” He took a step toward Kung.

  “Stay back!” the general warned, motioning at Amina and Kirby. “If this thing goes off…”

  Dan knew how bombs worked, especially big bombs. A small explosion had to set off a fusion reaction, which set off a fission reaction, which set off the real bad boom.

  “If this thing goes off,” he replied, taking another step, “you’re screwed. You didn’t do all this just to set up an elaborate suicide.”

  The entire casino seemed to stop. For a second, only the smoke moved.

  “No,” the general admitted bitterly. “Curse you.” He looked over Dan’s head to Bloch, pointing his gun at her. “For a dozen years I planned this. A dozen years.”


  “Are you sure it wasn’t thirteen?” Dan asked, seemingly quietly, but the general heard it.

  “Yes,” Kung said. “Yes, it was thirteen …when I first met with your Mr. Smith. Even then I was playing you.” His gaze shifted back to Bloch. “I played you all, testing this thing on your homes, your headquarters. Then I knew it was powerful enough, but I had to get you out of my way long enough to get it here.”

  “It was powerful enough,” Dan told him. “But you weren’t.”

  “Not to kill you, no,” Kung admitted. “Not then. But now?”

  General Deng Tao Kung stuck the gun out in front of him, pointing it full in Dan’s face. Perhaps he wanted to surprise the rest of them so much he might have managed to escape. Perhaps he simply wanted to exterminate the man who had been a thorn in his side for so long. Whatever the reason, it made no difference because just then, as before, a hook appeared—this time sinking deep into Kung’s gun hand.

  The man screamed, and all hell broke loose. The remaining helmeted Alpha ops grabbed their weapons and started shooting. Amina shoved her submachine gun over Feng’s shoulder and started shooting. Bloch and Smith dove to the ground as the Zetas returned fire with precision and expertise.

  Lulu reeled her catch in, dragging Kung toward her along the wall, but Kung was not a milk fish. He charged her, shouting savagely, and planted his boot in her chest. Wrenching the wire from her hand, unmindful of the hook in his own, he scrambled for his fallen automatic.

  Alex tried to get a bead on Amina, but the Serb mercenary was dragging Feng in front of her, shooting and laughing all the while. Just as Amina got a perfect bead on Alex, Feng seemed to spasm in her grip, sending her stumbling back, her face a mass of surprise.

  As the old man stepped away, still blocking Alex’s aim, Amina pointed her Skorpion’s barrel at the center of his back. But before she could pull the trigger, Dan smashed into her.

  Deciding that he had to get a gun with more rounds, he grabbed Amina’s arms, holding her M84 and grenade wide. His greater weight sent her back, but they both struggled to kick each other as hard as they could. Although his dark gray Zeta outfit had subtle padding and protection, he still had to adjust some of his kicks to shield his crotch.