“It tops out at seventy-five and I’m not yet trained to exceed—”
“Just do it!” She directed him off the end of the runway access road. A left along a rugged dirt one-lane, then a right onto a track that had probably been here since the goddamn Lewis and Clark Expedition.
The Striker’s big tires rolled over it all easily.
“Down.”
The driver eased over the edge into a narrow valley with all the verve of a doddering geriatric.
“Cross the river.”
The truck made far easier work of it than the driver.
“What the hell are they teaching you kids these days? How to run up a paved runway? Trust me, you get out in the field and it’s way the hell worse than this. Why do you think they made these things to climb sixty-percent grades, and be stable side-crossing a thirty-degree slope? Crashes don’t always happen on pretty runways. Now drive like someone’s life depends on it.” The moment she said it, she felt a cold chill slide up her spine.
The airman drove a little better after that, just enough better to keep her from screaming in frustration.
The last track they were on was more like a rabbit trail than a path. The steel plate under the sloped nose battered a path into the trees.
“Here. Stop here.”
Unable to force open her door jammed against the forest’s branches, she pushed out through the top escape hatch. Sliding down the sloped windshield, Debbie landed on her feet in the middle of the trail.
Nothing.
She checked her phone again. According to the locator, she should be practically standing on Bob’s phone.
Debbie signaled the airmen to cut the Striker’s engine, and the big diesel thudded into silence. Not a sound. Not even birdsong.
A Thunderbird shattered the silence, sweeping wide on one of its turns.
Nothing remained that she could hear.
But then she smelled it.
There was just enough of a breeze to clear away the lingering remnants of the Striker’s exhaust, and she could smell the iron tang of nightmares.
“Oh, shit!”
She scouted for the smell’s origin.
Blood on the air.
Lots of it.
Bob Wang was well hidden, but she finally located him by almost stepping on his face.
What was left of it.
His pulse was so weak that she had trouble finding it.
Debbie called Velma to mobilize the battalion’s CSAR bird.
“No! There’s no time for the hassle of aborting the Thunderbirds airshow. We’re the goddamn Night Stalkers. I don’t care if they scrape off all the paint by sliding through the treetops. Get their asses here now! We’ll worry about violating TFRs some other day.” Temporary Flight Restrictions for a stupid airshow be damned.
And, being Night Stalkers, they’d gotten it done.
She did what she could with the Striker’s first aid kit and her limited knowledge. It seemed like it was enough. That thready beat was still there at his throat by the time a medic had winched down through the trees from the Black Hawk—it was more than she’d expected to achieve with how much blood there was.
They all winched up together: her, the medic, and Bob Wang in the wire litter.
“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” the Striker’s airman called after her.
Like she gave a shit.
The medic went to work on him right away as the pilots turned them for the short race to Madigan Army Medical Center.
Bob slowly regained consciousness, though the medic was shaking his head.
“What?” She kept her voice to a whisper.
“Too much blood loss. I’m pumping more into him, but his organs have pretty much shut down.” His grimace said just how terminal a diagnosis that was, even if she didn’t know how to read the screen he was pointing at.
“Debbie?” Bob’s voice was vague and wandering. Her name would be incomprehensible through his shattered jaw if it hadn’t been her own.
“Right here, Bob.” She rested her hand on his shoulder and ignored the amount of blood that squeezed out of his uniform as she did so.
“You…okay?”
“Yes, Bob.”
“Good,” with a terribly long U sound and hardly any D at all.
The next thing she heard was the high, steady tone of the alarm on his heart monitor.
She rocked back on her heels to get clear as the medic tried jumpstarting his heart with the shock paddles.
No question about who had sabotaged her helo, though for the life of her she couldn’t imagine why.
For an answer, all she had was the alarm tone of a flatline.
50
The American Thunderbirds did some final noisy aerobatics, then swooped in to land. Finally, they would have peace to speak until the next segment of the airshow began. Though Ru would miss watching the longing in General Gray’s face.
They shared that combat pilot’s pain, watching others fly. It made him like her more than he’d have thought possible of a xiao riben guizi.
Drake shooed everyone except his wife and the Chase woman off to a nearby table. He could hear them talking about the crash, as if that’s what was important. Taking her to Wang Bob’s last night had been a fine test of Mei-Li’s loyalty. No, not her loyalty, her level of fear.
It was important that after declaring her new independence by coming to America, she witnessed the power he could still wield over her—even if she was in America. Good! If she dared reveal him, he had another move to protect himself. It was good that he didn’t need it this time.
Ru eyed the new arrival carefully.
This Miranda Chase looked about as exciting as a mouse. Small, disheveled brown hair, no standout features at all.
“To avoid more surprises,” Drake was unreadably calm, which was far more dangerous than when he was snarling like a wild dog. “Ms. Chase is the one who solved your Gyrfalcon problem. She’s our absolute best crash investigator.”
Ru looked at her again. Still a mouse—a highly intelligent one. And perhaps a useful one?
No time to find that out now. The report some minion had made to Drake that they’d found the helicopter mechanic meant he was fast running out of time. He’d rather hoped that the man had the good sense to become permanently lost.
“The Gyrfalcon?” That bit of insight had launched him onto the CMC. “If that is true, Ms. Chase, I give you present.” He picked up his phone, swept the character Zŏu and pressed send. “I have telled a friend to ‘Go’—maybe not a friend, but he will go if he cares about wife and daughter. You now go also.”
She didn’t ask where. He couldn’t even be sure if she was paying attention. Instead she was staring so hard at his left shoulder that he brushed at it to make sure nothing was there.
Not an intelligent mouse. A blank-faced one. This was an American best? That seemed unlikely.
“She’s not moving without my instruction. Where is she supposed to go?” Drake was toying with his empty beer glass as if he couldn’t care.
“Drake, my friend, are you now simple in head? What do we speak of all this time? To Taiwan! There will be a crash there. Very pretty Chinese plane. Mighty Dragon. You call the J-20 a Black Eagle, yes? Though I not know why; Mighty Dragon is very good name. Very lucky. I give this information as good will. Good will? Yes? To prove niceness to you. You have twelve hours.”
He could see the avarice on Drake’s face. Yes, the Americans would like to see that very much. Even just the scraps from a crash. The only thing they would like more was the new J-31 Gyrfalcon, but that they would not be seeing.
“Twelve hours?” Drake just shook his head. “We couldn’t get her team there that quickly even if we wanted to.”
Ru pointed at the big cargo planes parked along the left side of the show area. “You put her and people in plane. And you fly.”
“Do you think I’m stupid, Ru? If I fly a US Air Force C-17A Globemaster III cargo jet into Taipei International, you’re go
ing to turn right around and make a media spectacle out of the US interfering in Chinese politics.”
Ru made a show of looking at his watch. “It will crash with or with not your peoples there. If they are not, the Taiwanese will take it. Then one of our people tell our agents in Taiwan quickly to destroy any evidence.”
“You’re a cold-blooded bastard, Ru.”
“Yes.” And Drake had best remember that.
Drake opened his mouth but, before he could say anything, the mouse woman spoke for the first time.
“A 767-300ERF, the Extended Range Freighter, is what’s needed. It is six thousand and seventy-four miles, that’s nautical miles (eleven thousand two hundred and forty-nine kilometers), from SeaTac to Taipei Songshan Airport. It has the advantage over Taipei Taoyuan Airport in that it also services their Air Force if we need any specialized equipment. Such a distance is safely within the range limit of a Boeing 767-300ERF if it travels below a sixty percent load. It would be lower profile than flying a military or even a special commercial flight. It would also allow us to retrieve key components up to three-point-four by four-point-three meters without any specialized transport. Assuming an unlikely hundred percent recovery of the crashed aircraft, an unfueled Chengdu J-20 weighs approximately six thousand kilograms less than the 767’s maximum load capacity. Therefore, there is no limitation there either.”
Ru hadn’t seen the woman consult her phone or anything else.
Then she turned to face him. “You should be ashamed of yourself, General Zhang. Ordering a crash.”
What simple world did this woman live in?
Drake didn’t look surprised, though perhaps puzzled. “The US Air Force doesn’t have any unmarked Boeing 767 freighters.”
Drake’s Jap, who’d already been smiling during the mouse’s recitation, began laughing quietly to herself like the devil she probably was.
“What?” Ru’s words echoed Drake’s. At least he wasn’t the only one who didn’t understand what was so funny.
Gray opened her mouth, but again this Miranda mouse spoke over her as if she was the one who was in charge.
“We need a helicopter. Right now.” She stood up and signaled her team, waiting at the other table. In a heartbeat they were all on their feet and moving. “We’ll get our packs from the van. Drake, please go and speak with the pilots. We’ll be ready in two minutes. They will need at least three.”
“The pilots? The pilots of what?”
Miranda Chase simply pointed at the Black Hawk that was on display in the middle of the crowd.
“Wait!” Drake rose to his feet, but his wife stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Miranda is perfectly correct. And it’s an ideal cover.” She pulled out her phone, looked up a number, and began dialing.
“What is?”
“Go,” she made shooing motions at Drake toward the Black Hawk helicopter. Like he was her servant.
Ru would never let a woman treat him that way.
Then someone answered her phone call.
“Hello, FedEx? Do you have one of your 767 freighters parked at SeaTac airport at the moment? You do? Excellent. This is General Elizabeth Drake of the National Reconnaissance Office. …No, I don’t need a satellite moved at this time. …No, nor a launch vehicle. What I do need is the plane fully fueled in fifteen minutes. I want to move a small team across the Pacific overnight. And they’ll be returning with a highly classified cargo within twenty-four hours. Yes, I’ll hold.”
Drake slapped his forehead, then hustled toward the Black Hawk.
Ru decided that all Americans were completely insane. But he liked this xiao riben guizi more with each passing minute.
51
Mei-Li had been abandoned at the table with no warning.
One moment, they were questioning her closely about the types of information she had on Ru and the CMC. The next, the little woman at Ru and Drake’s table had merely risen to her feet and raised a hand. Taz had squeezed her shoulder briefly, and an instant later Mei-Li sat alone.
They moved with an undeniable eagerness to follow her.
People followed General Zhang Ru from fear.
But the brown-haired woman wielded true power.
Ru came from the other table, leaving the lone woman on the phone. He then led her from the airshow back to the parking lot. They went against the general flow of the crowds watching old planes—so old they might have been from World War II—buzz by loudly overhead.
Over her shoulder, she saw a security team clearing a wide circle around the helicopter next to the one she’d sat in earlier. Its rotors slowly turned to life. Only Holly—who had the most aggressive questions—was visible by her gold hair as the team hurried over to it. Mei-Li lost sight of them in the crowd.
“It is good that we have an understanding, Mei-Li.”
Ru’s pleasure worried her. She needed to know what he’d said to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but had been unable to leave the table under the barrage of questions.
“You and Chang Mui may have your fun at the American university. I will let you know when I need something done here in America. Yes. That is good. Very good.”
“Yes, Uncle. We have a good understanding.”
When questioned, she had withheld many things about Ru, including his responsibility for the sabotage of the Chinook helicopter. By keeping them focused on the destruction of the Central Military Commission, they had worked together on ideas about how to destroy them.
It was a long way from possible—yet.
But now she had more hope than she’d felt since her gymnastics coach had selected her at nine years old to also receive his personalized “training.”
“Yes, Uncle. A very good understanding.”
52
“Where’s Jon?”
Miranda looked around but didn’t see him.
In moments everyone was looking, which wasn’t terribly constructive. There was not very much to see.
Then she recalled that he hadn’t been on the Black Hawk for the short jaunt from JBLM to SeaTac’s FedEx terminal either.
Still everyone was looking around.
The inside of the FedEx Boeing 767-300ERF was cavernous. Stripped to the hull, only a steel deck divided the long tube of the airfreighter’s fuselage into upper and lower cargo storage. The upper two-thirds of the hull made a very empty tube.
The hull’s interior was finished with white-painted aluminum. The eighteen hundred square feet of cargo deck was interrupted only by the tracks of the automated cargo handling system that could safely transport twenty-four containers. Holly could park her Corvette eight times from nose-to-tail down the length of the plane, and eight more beside those.
For this flight, there was only a simple pallet that had been attached at the very front of the bay, close behind the cockpit’s rear wall. On it were eight chairs in two facing rows of four, a small cooler of drinks and snacks, and a headset system so that they could talk among themselves—sound insulation was not a priority in the 767’s cargo bay. A tiny toilet was available in the cockpit.
But only six of the seats were occupied: herself and Andi, Mike and Holly, and Jeremy across from Taz. The other two seats were empty.
The noise level increased sharply as they accelerated to takeoff from SeaTac. The CF6-80C2 engines, the second-most powerful in the class, practically hurled the empty aircraft down the runway. It was impressive what a difference it made not having the normal forty-seven tons of payload aboard.
Holly finally barked out a laugh. “Jon said he was going to do the paperwork on the crashed Chinook at the airshow. Got his ass left behind.”
Miranda was unsure what Holly found funny about the situation.
“Perhaps it’s just as well,” Mike tipped his chair back now that they were airborne. “Having an Air Force major along might have caused problems at Taiwan security.”
Holly laughed again. “How about a dead colonel? Thoughts, Colonel Cortez?” she saluted Taz sha
rply with a palm-out, Australian Army gesture.
Taz didn’t return the salute. Miranda thought officers always did. Maybe because they’d been in different services, Taz didn’t feel it was necessary? Perhaps, being still technically dead and no longer Colonel Cortez, she didn’t feel the need to. Or—
“Oh my God! She’s right. I can’t be here. We’ve got to turn around. I’ll jeopardize the whole mission. I don’t have a passport that says I’m a civilian.”
Miranda knew how to manage that.
She pulled out the phone that she’d already synced to the onboard wireless system.
53
Clarissa Reese’s phone rang sharply in the hotel room. If she ever unleashed a magic genie from its lamp, her first wish would be to turn the damn thing off. But, as the Director of the CIA, it wasn’t an option for her to ever be fully out of touch.
Her assistant knew to block all calls for a few hours. Either the world was coming apart or it was from one of the few who had her direct number.
She dug for her phone; it had better not be Clark. He never understood that just because he was Vice President and she’d married him, it didn’t mean he could interrupt her whenever he was feeling bored.
This was the last Friday of the month, time for her very low profile monthly dinner meeting in the Presidential Suite at the Kimpton George by the Capitol Building. Originally the night that Senator Ramson, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, reserved the suite to spend the night fucking his wife, it now began with a strategy meeting over dinner for the three of them.
Rose Ramson, a former Miss Utah, might be the body beside the man, but Clarissa had learned that for four decades Rose had also been the brains behind his success. She knew exactly how to lead the senator where they both needed him to go—by his dick.
These meetings were sometimes just a pleasant dinner and friendly gossip about the Washington, DC, elite. Other nights were very…useful. It was still unclear which way tonight’s conversations might fall.
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