LOCKED DOWN: (A NICOLE GRANT THRILLER, BOOK 1)
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Locked Down
A Nicole Grant Novel
Ed Kovacs
The Phoenix Group
Los Angeles▲ Bangkok
Table of Contents
PRAISE FOR ED KOVACS
BOOKS BY ED KOVACS
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
ABOUT ED KOVACS
COPYRIGHT
PRAISE FOR ED KOVACS
For Good Junk:
“…the scenes of New Orleans are rich and real. Kovacs hopeless, elegiac vision of the city is touching, and his quick studies of hidden landmarks like the outré bar in the French Quarter that calls itself Pravda, and Pampy’s, a purveyor of soul food to politicians, are written with true affection and terrific humor.” –THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“Powerful prose that evokes a city still struggling to recover its infrastructure and identity elevates this well beyond most other contemporary PI novels.” –PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY, BOXED, STARRED REVIEW
*****
For Storm Damage:
“A sleeper here, a beautiful spin on hard-boiled fiction, and it’s all done with style and energy.”— BOOKLIST
“Kovacs noir take on the thriller will hook readers.”—ASSOCIATED PRESS
“Kovacs is a vivid addition to the thriller genre.” —STEVE BERRY, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
“Kovacs writes like a master.” —GAYLE LYNDS, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
“Highly recommended.”—JONATHAN MABERRY, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
*****
For The Russian Bride:
“This is a thriller packed so full of action, it leaves readers breathless. Kovacs does an incredible job at being technically accurate and easy to understand, so readers of all levels are engaged throughout. A must-read for fans of fast-paced stories that don’t let you go till the very end.”—RT BOOK REVIEWS
“Brisk, easy-to-read thriller” – PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
“Quick, entertaining action.” – KIRKUS REVIEWS
*****
For Burnt Black:
“The vibrant description of occult doings mixes well with the movements of the earthbound characters, making this Cliff and Honey’s best outing to date.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS
“The rough around the edges locale will be catnip to some readers, like myself. The book has more twists and turns than the streets and back alleys of New Orleans.”—CRIMINAL ELEMENT
*****
For Unseen Forces:
“Indiana Jones on steroids.”—COL. JOHN ALEXANDER, AUTHOR OF “FUTURE WAR”
“A spellbinding thriller that will keep you riveted well past midnight.”— THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
“A real page-turner rivaling The Da Vinci Code.”—PHENOMENA MAGAZINE
“A taut, suspenseful story that keeps the reader riveted until the very end.”—MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
“Will keep you up nights with anticipation.”—RANDALL FITZGERALD, AUTHOR OF “COSMIC TEST TUBE”
“Terrific debut novel that deserves to be on the bestseller lists.”—THE DAILY GRAIL
“I couldn’t wait to get back to it after I put it down.”—PAUL SMITH, AUTHOR OF “READING THE ENEMY'S MIND
*****
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BOOKS BY ED KOVACS
Unseen Forces
Storm Damage
Good Junk
Burnt Black
The Russian Bride
Locked Down
DEDICATION
This one’s for those who must remain unnamed.
With profound gratitude and heartfelt thanks for everything, and more.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sincere thanks to a terrific editor, Ed Stackler, who believed in this book from beginning to end and whose support never wavered. Ed always sticks to his guns when we cross pens, and that’s one reason he commands my ultimate respect.
I'm deeply indebted to Carl Scholl who time after time proves with his actions what a great friend he is.
In Hong Kong my deepest gratitude extends to JL, who made everything happen like a maestro with a magic wand. Bravo! And to LC, who first introduced me to Hong Kong decades ago, and whose intrigues with the Middle Kingdom could fill several fascinating volumes, if only she would write them.
Heartfelt gratitude to Tony Ritzman, David Tseklenis, MaryAnn Cochran (!), Ernest Norman (for the barstool diagnosis that was a lifesaver), Tom Hansen (for keeping things running), Christopher Graham (my Webmaster and IT genius par excellence), kindred spirit and kind soul Warren Sessler, and Paul and Vicky Hasse. Thanks to Allan Jackson and Gordon Danby for all the stuff you guys generously left for me at the “hotel” in Eastern Europe. And I tip my hat to all of the U.S. Navy MAs who served hardship duty with me and provided such good company during difficult times as I rewrote this book in my spare time while deployed.
And, of course, huge thanks to my family.
There is one person, however, who deserves to be singled out above all others, and that is David Reeves of The Bedlam Group in Las Vegas. David is incredibly bright, inventive, funny, articulate, creative, and genuinely kind. He provided invaluable technical and creative input to this book, and I remain humbly in his debt.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I prefer to write about places that I have personally visited. Hong Kong and mainland China are exciting places to do research and I have spent a lot of time there and all over Asia learning about and trying to understand the ways of the Far East.
Most of the locations in this book are real and well worth a visit. Change, however, is inevitable; businesses close and new ones open in their place. Thanks in advance to my readers for understanding that while the majority of locations in this book as of the time of this writing are real, a few others are purely fictional.
PROLOGUE
TWO YEARS EARLIER
10:03 PST
Nicole Grant and everyone else sitting in the converted cargo container in Southern California knew that something had gone horribly wrong in Guangzhou, China. They'd all watched the spy drone's video feeds as fifty black-cl
ad, SWAT-style Chinese operators carrying QCW-05 sub-machine guns had suddenly arrived in army trucks, surrounded the luxury five-story drinking club, and then stormed inside.
That was six minutes earlier. Right now Nicole's computer monitors showed a live night-vision feed taken from eleven miles up as their target, sixty-two year-old Wang Hongwei, one of the four Vice Premiers of the State Council of the People's Republic of China and the 7th ranked member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China, was roughly manhandled into the back of a panel van at the rear of the club just off Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street a little after 1 AM, Guangzhou time.
Wang was one of the most powerful politicians in all of China and the odds-on favorite to become the next president. As Grant sat in the drab stillness of the steel Conex box in a Pomona, California warehouse, it shocked her to watch as his mouth was roughly covered with duct tape. One of the most important men in China was being treated like some kind of street hoodlum. Of course, she'd learned over the last ten days as her team watched his every move and intercepted all of his communications that he was a corrupt, back-stabbing, rotten snake.
“They've put Wang into that panel van,” said Grant over her communications link. “And the SWAT guys have his briefcase with the laptop inside.”
On her own initiative, and without bothering to state it over the com-link, the slender fingers of Nicole's left hand danced upon her keyboard as her right hand manipulated a joystick which targeted a sensitive laser eavesdropping beam onto a window of the panel van. She exhaled audibly as the equipment began recording whatever was transpiring inside. She spoke perfect Mandarin, but didn't listen in live even though she thought the audio surveillance might provide good intelligence.
“They're not SWAT, they're soldiers from the Guangzhou Military Region Special Forces Unit,” said Ron Hernandez, the person with the nebulous title of AIC—Agent in Charge—for the spy drone operation. His title could have been Main Honcho or Top Mucky-muck or Big Kahuna—rank and titles had meant nothing since the whole affair was so deep black, so far off-the-books that all personnel had even been discouraged from so much as having a drink together.
Not that they could do much socializing while confined to their individual RVs parked inside a gargantuan 50,000 square-foot warehouse in a Pomona industrial park. The same warehouse where the cargo container / drone control room sat. She figured Hernandez wasn't his real name since she herself had been assigned an alias.
Nicole Grant was a U.S. Air Force SIGINT, Signals Intelligence, analyst attached to the NSA, National Security Agency, and normally posted in Ft. Meade, Maryland. A Mandarin-speaking twenty-seven year-old Chinese specialist, she'd been responsible on this operation for tracking Wang's laptop. Since the briefcase was now in the van, she hadn't thought twice about the laser targeting.
All six personnel in the control room communicated via headset/boom mikes: Hernandez, the drone pilot, the sensor operator, Grant, and two other SIGINT technician/analysts like herself. All the analysts in the room were cross-trained and could do each other’s jobs. After only three days of spying on vice premier Wang Hongwei, she and the other techies had discovered that Wang's personal hackers had managed to secretly crack the encryption used by the President of China.
Wang's laptop contained elegant software hacking suites allowing him to access encrypted phone calls, chat, e-mail, and instant messaging of the Chinese president, in an apparent attempt to solidify Wang's own political power base and increase his chances of being elected president in two years. Since Grant's team had compromised Wang's communications, they also had a doorway into the current Chinese president! Her team could listen in at will. Heady stuff.
But now Wang and his special laptop were in custody and no one in the control room had said much of anything. It was driving her nuts. Her normally pale skin had taken a more sallow pallor during the last few days of stressful pressure, abetted by her not being allowed to set foot outdoors. The lack of color made her appear fragile and her gangly physique seemed coiled, anxious to unwind but unable to.
“So, what's going on?” she asked, as she guided auburn hair away from her face and tucked it behind an ear.
“What's going on is that we need to pack up our toys and go home before we get caught with our hands in the cookie jar. Mission complete,” came Hernandez's disembodied voice over her headset.
Grant blinked, looked up, and swiveled her head. Mission complete? She pushed more wayward strands of long, reddish-brown hair away from her green eyes flecked with hazel. Her forehead furrowed as she exchanged a questioning glance with the other techies sitting at workstations across from her in the cool confines of the cargo container, and they looked as confused as she did. She stretched out her long legs as far as she could and shifted uneasily in the supposedly ergonomic office swivel chair.
“Pilot, get the bird back to Udon Thani in one piece, please. I'm estimating wheels-down in Thailand at zero-one-forty-seven, local time,” said Hernandez over the com-link.
“Roger that,” responded the pilot.
For the last ten days one stealth spy drone had always been on station above Guangzhou while two other drones were either en-route, returning to base, or being maintained in a remote hangar at Udon Thani International Airport in northeast Thailand. With dual runways—one of them 10,000 feet-long—it had been easy for the team to use a front company and a good cover story to set up the secret operation at the airport / Royal Thai Air Force base that had essentially been built by the CIA in the 1960s in support of the Secret War that ran parallel to the Vietnam War.
The jet propelled, bat-winged RQ-180s resembled mini-B-2 bombers and were the most advanced and stealthy drones in the American arsenal. Housed in an old, secluded CIA hangar, they only took off or landed late at night on a stretch of macadam well away from any lights or prying eyes. The relatively close proximity of Udon Thani to Guangzhou meant the birds could stay over the target for over 24 hours at a time.
RQ-180s were usually flown by pilots of the U.S. Air Force's 30th Reconnaissance Squadron based at Creech Air Force Base north of Las Vegas. But the air force, which technically owned the three drones used in the current operation, was not involved. Nor, officially, was the CIA, which had often used stealth drones to track and kill terrorists or carry out secret spy missions over hostile territories.
“Taking up return-to-base heading now,” said the pilot, who sat in a cushy leather chair in front of ten computer monitors mounted on electronics racks. He held one of the joysticks from his console as he punched in a new heading on a keypad. A sensor operator sat next to him in a quasi-pilot / co-pilot configuration of consoles and monitors that made their work area look exactly like what it was—a high-tech virtual cockpit.
It was all pretty “spooky” but since Grant's air force assignment was working for the NSA, even as a desk jockey analyst, well, that still made her a spook, didn't it?
Still, this operation was something else entirely. The NSA had secretly assigned her to be part of an “Omega Team.” Omega Teams or “Cross Matrix” teams were specialized units formed from a convergence of private contractors, the military, and the IC, intelligence community. Distinct lines separating such disparate groups, and even chains-of-command became blurred when working as part of such a team. Grant assumed the other team members either came from NSA, the CIA SAD (Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Division), JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command), or were private contractors from such companies as Quick Services LLC, ManTech, GK Sierra, R4, or a host of others. One thing that united them was that they were all Chinese speakers.
Grant craned her neck to look at Hernandez sitting behind his console on a slightly raised platform further back in the control room. She guessed him to be late thirties; a tall, muscular man, he possessed a confident intensity, and there was a... what should she call it? A physicality about him that most other armchair supervisors in the NSA lacked. She pegged him for a soldier, although his th
ick, wavy, dark-brown hair was too long for someone in the military. Deep worry lines creased his forehead and the intense gaze of his dark eyes was heavy with responsibility and concern. When he turned slightly and she saw him in profile, his strong chin, somewhat hooked nose, and ever present five-o'clock shadow imbued him with an aura of menace.
Hernandez spoke into a secure phone in hushed tones, turned away from the others, so Grant couldn't read his lips. She was an excellent lip reader due to growing up in a hearing-impaired household, although she'd kept that fact to herself.
With some trepidation she turned back to her computer monitor. The temperature was downright chilly in the cargo container for the sake of the electronics, but she'd broken out into a light sweat. For her entire life she had experienced clamminess when she got nervous. Even sometimes when she felt perfectly relaxed, her hands would be sweaty. Right now, feeling seriously uneasy, she had a good excuse to sweat. The whole crew had seen the raid as plain as day. Why would Hernandez announce mission complete as soon as the raid took place?
Was Wang Hongwei's arrest the goal of the mission? The Omega Team had the communications of the Chinese president compromised, so why terminate the operation now? She suspected some very secret something else was going on here—perhaps someone in Washington didn't want Wang Hongwei to become the next Chinese president when elections would be held two years from now—but felt frustrated that as a mere analyst, she didn't have a “need to know.”
No wonder such elaborate measures had been taken to ensure mission security. All crew had been carefully vetted, but had still been forced to sign additional non-disclosure agreements, and were told in plain English not to even think about mentioning this operation to anyone, ever.