by Marc Cameron
The embarrassment of their most recent failure had proven one thing: Peter Li was not to be underestimated. The man was a dragon. In different circumstances that didn’t include the death of his friends, Kang might have respected Li’s inner fire. As it was, the assassin had vowed to feed the man his balls. On some level, Kang knew his seething fury made no sense. How could one be angry at a man who was protecting his family? They had come to kill him and he’d killed two of them instead. In truth, Kang was angry at himself. He merely focused the emotion on Peter Li. Killing him was the job. Slaughtering the rest of the family was a personal matter, a way to save face, however long it took.
Finding a replacement for Lily was not an easy task. Getting another operator was no problem; there were plenty of those in the U.S., some just biding their time, waiting to be activated by the likes of Kang. Some were green but willing to learn; others had been tested under fire in conflicts around the world. But locating someone who could blend his movements with Kang and Rose, that took some doing. This new man, Gao, had studied Muay Thai in Thailand, then further honed his skills with the monks of Shaolin. A year of paramilitary training with the activities arm of the Ministry of State Security added weapons skills as well as taught him the lethal side of martial arts—turning strikes meant to knock out one’s opponent into throat-crushing techniques.
Gao had an excellent reputation among the people that mattered. He had come highly recommended. Kang saw skill and commitment in the man’s eyes, and found himself glad to have him along.
It was well after midnight. Restaurants and businesses in downtown Chicago were closed. It had been a warm day, and the sour smell of trash mixed with the odor of the river that had recently been upgraded by authorities to be only slightly toxic. Still, Kang thought, it was exponentially cleaner than any waterway in Beijing. Black plastic bags were piled five and six high on the sidewalk, waiting for the legions of garbage trucks that would roll through soon to pick up the mountains of trash.
“They must be in a boat,” Kang said, gesturing at the railing that ran along Wacker Drive above the Riverwalk. The boy’s phone had pinged for a time in a neighborhood near the Indiana line, then gone dark. Things like this happened. Any number of things might have blocked the signal. It gave them time for Gao to join them and to prepare for the assault. The phone had come online again two hours earlier. A blue dot that signified its location pulsed over a map of the Chicago Riverwalk on the screen of Kang’s cell.
Both Rose and Gao nodded that they understood.
The group paused at the limestone tender house at the southeast corner of the bridge, bearing the heroic sculpture commemorating the rebuilding of the city after the Great Fire. Gao looked up and down Wacker Drive watching a marked Chicago PD patrol car roll by behind a yellow cab parallel to the river.
“Why a boat?” the new man asked. “Boats are difficult to defend.”
“A trap?” Rose asked quietly, almost as if she were speaking to herself.
“That is possible,” Kang said. “But boats can also be moved.”
Kang led the way, as a proper leader should, looking at the phone he held down by his waist while Rose and Gao walked a step behind, providing overwatch.
The normally teeming streets were quiet enough that the sound of distant coughing could be heard. Here and there a metal door rolled down, fortifying a storefront against break-in, if not vandalism with gang graffiti.
The dot hovered over the blue portion of the map, signifying it was over water. Kang moved to his right at the top of the steps leading down from the tender house, far enough to get a quick peek at the walk below. Two large boats used for architectural tours of the city were moored along the concrete pier. Forward of the tour boats, farther to the west, a forty-foot sailboat and a cabin cruiser of similar size were cleated bow to stern along the pier. They were close enough together that it was impossible to tell exactly where the phone was, but an orange cabin light glowed in the saloon of the middle cabin cruiser. The dot floated back and forth. It was difficult to tell if the phone was moving, or if the satellite was merely settling in. Kang imagined it was the latter.
“We are close,” he whispered, pausing at the top of the stairs. The concrete walk and ticket stands below looked deserted, but a croupy cough told him there were homeless people there. That was normal. A siren wailed in the distance. Also normal. Someone below hawked up a throat full of phlegm and spit. Night sounds. Nothing out of place. “They do not expect us, but be prepared to meet some resistance nonetheless. They are frightened, so they will have guards.”
Rose gave a derisive chuckle. “Surely nothing more than a few policemen.”
“Maybe,” Kang said.
He imagined what he would do to the teenagers . . . to the wife. He’d force Li to watch everything before he died. Perhaps they would move the boat and everyone on it out onto Lake Michigan so Kang could take all the time he wanted. Rose had tools for many kinds of mayhem.
She carried a small backpack with a Taser, some plastic bags, a roll of Gorilla Tape, and a pair of pliers. She had her blades, of course, as did Kang, though he had lost his good one fleeing out of the house with Li blasting away with his shotgun. That alone was enough to warrant serious retribution. In addition to the knives, each member of the team carried their suppressed Beretta and a can of pepper spray to get control of the teenagers prior to taping them up.
The concrete stairs made a dogleg midway down, eventually spilling onto the Riverwalk beside a series of blue canvas awnings that covered the ticket booths. The concrete promenade was deserted. Few people would venture down here after dark in a city with Chicago’s reputation. Kang saw no guards, but imagined they were foolishly on the boat with their charges—if there were any guards at all. Li had mentioned hiding in plain sight. A wise enough move, if one could pull it off.
The blue dot floated perhaps fifty meters ahead, beyond the booths, on the water.
Kang motioned the others forward, whispering orders as they stepped past. “Rose, watch for any guards patrolling above us at street level. Gao, keep your eyes on the cabin cruiser. I will watch the sailboat.” He repeated the orders he’d given when they first began. “Move quickly, cutting down any guards until you get to Li. If we can, take the woman first, alive. If not, kill Li and we will deal with them after.”
Wu Chao had been the one to insist they take Li alive for questioning. Kang only wanted to see him dead—preferably after he’d watched his wife suffer. Either way, Peter Li would die.
Gao gave a curt nod, professional, confident, but not overly so.
“Of course, sir,” Gao said, and raised his pistol to low ready. He knew his way around a pistol. Though he was new to the team, it was a Beretta as well. He’d checked when he joined, realizing the importance of the interoperability of weapons systems. It was good to have such a man on the team. Impressive.
Gao padded forward, crouching slightly as he passed the last ticket booth—directly into an oncoming bullet. His head snapped back, and he stood there, swaying, pistol clattering from his hands as they dropped to his sides.
Kang recognized the sound of suppressed gunfire immediately. He’d caused enough of it. But they were all moving quickly, and momentum carried him forward. He ran directly into Gao’s body as it toppled backward.
Rose went wide, firing twice at a form in the shadows ahead, behind a concrete planter. A round slammed into her hip. The injury chopped her sideways, sending her directly into the path of a bullet meant for Kang. Kang cursed, trying to push away, but he was too close. Rose crashed into him, clawing to keep her footing, knocking the pistol from his hand. He jumped for the flimsy cover of the ticket booths, anything to escape, but Rose grabbed him reflexively, staggered, firing blindly as she dragged him with her. Flashes of light told Kang the shooter was close, less than ten feet away—and alone.
He groped for Rose’s gun but missed, his
hand failing to comply with the orders his brain sent. A burning pain told him something was wrong, but he was too busy to check. He yanked the pepper spray from his belt with his left hand, emptying the contents of the bottle toward the gunfire while he used Rose’s rapidly folding body as a shield. She realized what he was doing as she died, and did her best to protect him, catching at least two more bullets in the stomach.
Kang threw the empty bottle of pepper spray as his friend fell. Scuttling backward, he tripped over Gao’s body, his left hand brushing the man’s pistol and grabbing it. Scrambling to his feet amid more gunfire, he stumbled into a loping stride, running for his life—the second time in a week.
* * *
—
John Clark forced an eye open with his left thumb and forefinger while he played the front sight of his pistol across the area where the threat had been. Spray-and-pray was for the movies. Pistol ammo was too precious to lay down suppressive fire. Clark shot when he had a sight picture. He wore a hoodie and had turned sideways in time to avoid the full can of capsicum, but he got a large enough dose to make accurate shooting problematic.
He’d set up cameras at either end of the Michigan bridge and then a half-block down Wacker in either direction, allowing him to watch the team’s approach, with the added bonus of capturing their faces on video. Ever wary for more threats, he kept scanning after the other man ran, stepping out of his alcove just far enough to kick the pistols away from the two that were down. They looked dead, but he didn’t have the luxury of checking quite yet—and he’d seen human beings absorb a hell of a lot of lead before getting up to kill again.
Reasonably satisfied that no one else was going to shoot at him, Clark slipped Li’s cell phone into a small Faraday bag and shoved it in the pocket of his jacket.
Sophie had told her husband about the strange device she called Cassandra shortly after they’d switched vehicles. James was the one who remembered he’d paired his phone with the device. It was a logical step to assume the hit team had used the phone to disarm the security system, and they would use it to track the Lis’ whereabouts. The phone went into a makeshift Faraday cage—alternating layers of plastic wrap and aluminum foil—and was left in place while Peter took his family to a secondary location to wait for Clark’s arrival. From there, it was a straightforward endeavor for Clark to remove the phone from the bag long enough to let Peter and Sophie be overheard talking about the Joint Terrorism Task Force—a plausible reason for them to hide in plain sight in Chicago.
Clark coughed, taking the time now to check the two bodies. Dead. He snapped close-up photos of their faces and their fingerprints before securing their weapons—there were only two. He worked quickly, wanting to be gone before anyone decided on a midnight walk along the river. His lungs felt like he’d breathed in a sack of stickpins. He fought the urge to rub his eyes. That would only make things worse. Two dead, but one was in the wind.
He stared at the black water in the direction the man had run.
Who are you?
He hoped he’d caught good enough images on the video feed to ID the bastard.
Something pale at the base of the concrete planter caught his eye. He blinked to clear his vision and then stooped, a grin spreading across his face in spite of the situation. A little finger lay on the concrete, neatly clipped off behind the second knuckle. Clark glanced over his shoulder at the two bodies. They had all their digits.
Knowing he’d drawn blood on the runner made his eyes suddenly feel better. He dropped the severed finger into his pocket along with the Faraday bag and walked quickly to the west, away from the bodies. He’d circle back and retrieve the cameras that were topside after he took a look around from a safe vantage point.
Clark pondered the vagaries of the universe that had put his friend in such danger—and those same capricious fates that had allowed him to get here in time to help.
* * *
—
The call from his old friend Admiral Peter Li had come as a surprise. They’d worked together some—or, rather, Li had picked Clark up in hostile waters and given him a ride on his ship. Clark was out of the Navy by then, doing jobs for the Agency, so the differences in rank had not impeded the men’s friendship. In this business, good friends were few and far between. Like most men, Clark and Li went for long stretches of time without speaking at all, then taking up where they’d left off the last time as though their families lived across the street from each other. Clark had attended Li’s late wife’s funeral, and Sandy had sent him something when he married Sophie. Li was younger by more than a decade, but command had made him an old soul. Clark enjoyed their infrequent talks, over-the-phone equivalents of old men sitting around a café, wearing John Deere hats and reminiscing about the good old days.
With the Calliope computer program safely in Ding and Adara’s possession, Clark had found a quiet spot to return his friend’s call. He hadn’t met the new wife, but she was pregnant, so she and Peter were apparently getting along swimmingly. Clark tried to imagine what it would be like to have a new kid at fiftysomething. Having grandkids was close enough to going through Navy BUD/S all over again, thank you very much . . .
The timbre of Peter Li’s voice had sent a chill up Clark’s spine. Something had to be very wrong for a man as unflappable as him to be shaken.
Clark had listened, controlling his breathing to remain calm, noting details, making plans. Peter was as smart a man as Clark had ever met, with the wisdom that came from spending a lot of time under stress—and then coming out the other side of it. Clark knew from personal experience that the man could remain dead-dead calm in the face of unparalleled danger, but now his family was threatened, so it was only natural that he sounded harried.
Clark wasted no time telling Li to calm down. He was clearheaded and thinking strategically, but it would be some time before he’d be anything close to calm.
“Don’t tell me over the phone,” Clark said after Li had given a description of the attack and the events he believed precipitated it. “But are you somewhere safe?”
“We are,” Li said.
“Are your wife and kids there? Listening?”
“They’re in the other room.”
“Good,” Clark said. “Do you plan to call the authorities?”
“Aren’t you the authorities?”
“Not really,” Clark said. “Not anymore, anyway.”
“What would you do?” Li asked. “If it were your family?”
“I’d call someone like me,” Clark said. “Listen, my phone is encrypted. Are you calling from an open line?”
“Yes,” Li said.
“Do you have Signal on your phone?” Clark asked, meaning the encrypted texting app. It wasn’t as sexy as most of the other SMS services—no puppy-nose photo edits, no poop emojis. It was plain vanilla encrypted text from end to end. Perfect for Clark’s needs and personality.
“I do,” Li said.
“Okay, then,” Clark said. “Send me your location, and anything else you remember via Signal.”
“Very well,” Li said. “Should I call the police?”
“Let me make a couple of calls. If you’re still doing the same job, then there’s a good chance that what you’re working on and what I’m working on are related—actors from the same part of the world, at any rate. I’ll explain it more in a text. I’ll get back with you in the next ten minutes and we’ll make a plan. In the meantime, I’m heading your way on the next flight, but I’m a good twenty-four hours out. I hate to leave you twisting in the wind until I get there, but I can’t get there any quicker. Are you good to go?”
“Good to go,” Li said. “But, John, there’s one other thing. It’s sensitive.”
“Put it in the text,” Clark said. “Location first, then details. Talk to you in ten . . .”
* * *
—
And they
had talked at great length, coming up with a plan to lure Kang into the open. It had worked, partly, at least.
Clark retrieved the cameras from above the Riverwalk. Now it was time to go hunting.
67
Twenty nautical miles from the LHD—a little over two minutes after Skeet’s F-35 left the deck—he turned to look to his left, utilizing his helmet display and the six cameras mounted outside the jet to look “through” the skin of his airplane and get a visual on his wingman. The helmet itself cost the Marine Corps an astonishing four hundred thousand dollars per unit. It was an insane amount, but considering all the tech crammed into one of the things, it seemed to Skeet to be worth every penny.
Three minutes ago he overflew the mocked-up Chinese destroyer, making sure all personnel who’d removed the covers and camouflage from the superstructure were long gone. He’d been given the all-clear but wanted to take the extra few seconds to put eyes on himself before he pulled any triggers.
Schmidt’s voice crackled over the radio. “You’re good to go from my vantage point,” he said. “I’m turning west to—” He cut out. “What the hell was that?”
“Come again?” Skeet said.
“Nothing,” Schmidt said. “My airplane just hiccupped. Thought she was trying to fly herself. Downdraft, I think.”
“Everything check out?”
“We’re good here,” Schmidt said.
Skeet added throttle, making a wide four-minute turn that took him thirty miles northwest of the target vessel. He didn’t want to shoot with the Makin Island in front of him, and it wouldn’t be much of a test if he dropped the missile on top of the ship. Distance didn’t matter much to Skeet or his weapon. With the new tech, this LRASM could make a hole in one from three hundred kilometers. It would utilize GPS, real-time data-links, passive radar homing, and autonomous guidance algorithms to achieve a CEP—circular error probable—of less than twenty meters—the equivalent of flying up the ship’s snout.