Code of Honor

by Marc Cameron

  Captain Goodrich had originally trained to fast-rope off the back ramp of a V-22, before the Weapons and Tactics folks had switched to having them deploy out the hellhole—the cargo hole in the belly of the aircraft. Now those same folks had decided Marines should once again disembark via fast rope from the ramp. This was going to suck for Staff Sergeant Ski, who would go down first, as the rope would swing violently due to downwash from the Osprey’s props. If he wasn’t being shot at, he’d hold the rope while the rest of the squad disembarked.

  And that’s the way it worked out—except Staff Sergeant Ski did get shot at, as did the second and third Marines down the rope. They returned fire as soon as their boots hit the deck, chasing the remaining crew back toward the wheelhouse and engine room twenty feet farther aft.

  Goodrich sidestepped around a metal box on the foredeck. It was the size of a dumpster, good cover for either side, but he hadn’t seen anyone behind it from the Osprey. Halfway around, two Chinese crewmen sprang out of the box itself, pushing open the entire side on a long piano hinge. Goodrich gave the first one a three-round burst to the face from his M4, but the second pressed in quickly, using his partner’s falling body to slam into the Marine and shove the rifle sideways.

  Gunfire popped and zinged all around him, slapping and ricocheting off the metal hull. Goodrich roared, towering above the much shorter man. This was no fisherman, but a Chinese Special Forces soldier dressed as trawler crew. He knew how to fight, and came up with a knife, slashing at Goodrich’s chest. Goodrich parried, deflecting the blade with his rifle. He attempted to bring the muzzle around but the little guy was too close. He swatted the knife away a second and third time, hearing the blade scrape the metal rifle magazines in the pouches in front of his load-bearing vest. The same slash took him across the biceps, not to the bone, but bad enough. It was only a matter of time before something important got cut.

  Chest-to-chest with the Chinese soldier, Goodrich used the M4 as a shield and transitioned to his sidearm. He drew the M9 and, knowing he was more likely to get cut at this point if he tried to create distance, pressed the muzzle directly against his assailant’s head, holding his thumb behind the slide to make sure it stayed in battery for a contact shot.

  The Chinese soldier hit the deck before he realized he was dead. Goodrich let him fall. Holstering his Beretta, he fought his way to the wheelhouse door with little resistance. All the sailors had dogged themselves inside, presumably with the missile, to wait for the Chinese gunboat to arrive.

  * * *

  —

  On board USS Makin Island, Black Sabbath finally stopped playing on the intercoms. IT2 Townsend, with her counterpart on the Fort Worth, had isolated the Calliope software and deleted it from the system. She, in turn, assisted the IT2s aboard the two destroyer escorts.

  Admiral Peck was on the horn with Captain Avery Denny in the 11 lead Osprey, getting a sitrep. He felt as if he’d been slapped hard in the face when she described how 12 had been struck with an RPG.

  One of the pilots had cut his leg egressing the bird, but everyone was alive. The MH-60s, cut off from any communication with the ship, had located both Skeet and Oh and were in the process of hoisting them to safety.

  All good news, but Peck could hardly relax.

  “Captain Goodrich?” he asked.

  Captain Denny described how the trawler crew had bunkered up in the fortified wheelhouse. “He’s working on it, sir.”

  “Radar is back online,” the operations specialist said from the console. “The Chinese gunboat and the trawler are closing on each other. ETA thirty minutes at their present speed.”

  “Get Captain Goodrich on the radio,” Peck said.

  “No contact, sir,” the OS1 said. “He’s working on a different band.”

  “Scooter,” Peck said, using Denny’s call sign. “Get Goodrich and his men out of there.”

  “Sir?”

  “Do it now!”

  The executive officer turned to the IT2, who sat hunched over a computer keyboard. “Let’s work on the FAST platoon’s radio band next.”

  “Belay that order,” Peck said. “Run diagnostics on the Harriers’ computers. I want them in the air with ordnance in the next ten minutes. We’re going to blow that trawler out of the water before the gunboat gets there.”

  “The Marines, sir,” the XO said.

  “Captain Denny will get them out of there,” Peck said, hoping he was right.

  * * *

  —

  Breacher up!” Goodrich called over his shoulder and into the Molar Mic.

  Staff Sergeant Ski padded up behind him, blood on his forehead from some hand-to-hand fighting of his own. “PFC Geddis is down, sir,” he said, panting.

  “Down?”

  “He’s dead, Captain. Hit seconds after we got on deck.”

  “Wounded?”

  “Everyone else is good, sir.”

  Goodrich clenched his jaw. “I need a breacher.”

  “Explosives are in the water with the other squad,” Staff Sergeant Ski said.

  “How about this, sir?” A lance corporal named Garcia held up an RPG.

  SEALs were coming over the side now, working aft from the bow.

  Goodrich waved them back, still fuming about his dead Marine. “Who knows how to shoot one of these?”

  “I had experience with them in Fallujah, sir,” a corporal named Cooper said.

  “Very well.” Goodrich pointed a knife hand at the wheelhouse hatch. “Marine, I want you to blow these guys a new asshole.”

  * * *

  —

  The operations specialist, petty officer first class, sitting at radar and IFF—Identification Friend or Foe—system held up a hand, watching his screen intently.

  “What is it, OS1?”

  “The trawler is turning, Admiral,” he said. “One eight zero degrees.”

  Captain Denny’s voice came across the radio. “Captain Goodrich has given me an all-good,” she said. “Marines and SEALs have control of the trawler and the LRASM.”

  “The gunboat?” Peck asked.

  “It’s turning as well, Admiral,” OS1 said. “Bugging out.”

  “Very well,” Peck said. “I still want the Harriers in the air ASAP. There is still the matter of an American warship bobbing around out there that we’ve dressed up to look like a Chinese destroyer.”

  70

  Clark was lying down reading a book at the JW Marriott Hotel in downtown Chicago when his cell phone began to buzz on the nightstand. Marriott had good mattresses, and he’d learned over the years to take advantage of a soft bed when one presented itself. There was plenty of opportunity to be uncomfortable. He half-rolled with a quiet groan and reached over the Glock 19 nine-millimeter pistol that lay next to the lamp on a folded washcloth and picked up the phone.

  Resting the open book, pages down, against his chest, he tilted his head until he got to the right spot on his glasses so he could make out the number on the caller ID.

  “Hey, Gavin,” he said.

  “Shit’s about to get real, John,” Biery said. Breathless, like a kid about to tell his dad he’d won a race at school. He was known to gloat a tad when he came through in a pinch—which he obviously had.

  “What have you got for me?”

  “I got him,” Biery said.

  “In Chicago?”

  “For now,” Biery said. “You have something to write with?”

  Clark sat up straight, tossing the book on the mattress and swinging his legs off the bed, stifling the groan this time. “If it were up to me, you’d get a raise,” he said while he got the hotel ballpoint pen and notepad off the nightstand.

  “You know me, John,” Biery said. “I’d do this for free. But still—”

  “I’m ready.”

  “Okay,” Biery said. “I don’t know
where he is right now, but I do know where he’ll be at two p.m.”

  “Two?” Clark checked his watch, already on his feet. “You should have led with that, Gavin. It’s almost one.”

  “Sorry, Boss,” Biery said. “He’s close, though.”

  Clark put the phone on speaker and threw what little gear he had in a small daypack while Biery filled him in on the details.

  Kang was indeed close, but Clark had a lot to do to make it work. This was going to be tight.

  71

  The last cubes of ice that Kang had brought with him aboard Amtrak Number 5 westbound out of Chicago melted in the early hours of morning somewhere between McCook, Nebraska, and Denver, Colorado. He’d bumped the wound on the wall coming through the door of his compartment, nearly sending him to his knees in agony. Alone, he’d been able to replace the sodden bandage and study the wound more closely somewhere other than a public toilet.

  The bullet had clipped off his pinkie at the base, blowing away the proximal joint where the finger connected to his hand. Fascinated by the tattered flesh, he cleaned it as best he could, nearly breaking a tooth from the pain as he dug out a centimeter of white bone. He used superglue to close the wound, but it continued to weep blood. Some of the skin flaps were beginning to turn a deep purple. He’d need to cut them off soon, or they’d begin to smell. There was a doctor he could trust in Los Angeles. He could make it that far. He’d get the antibiotics he needed, some stitches—and proper pain medication. Then he’d put together another team and go back for Li.

  Kang leaned back and closed his eyes. Li might keep his family hidden for a time, but eventually he’d display typical American optimism. He would return to his job. His children would go back to school, and his wife would have her baby. Kang smiled at that, momentarily forgetting his throbbing hand.

  This was far from over.

  Completely spent, he fell asleep sitting up, watching the endless fields of Iowa corn and soybeans slide by outside his window. The steward’s knock stirred him, offering to fold out his bed. He refused, survival instinct telling him not to let anyone unknown in his compartment. The pain had blossomed while he slept, and now shot up his arm in electric jolts that kept time with the thumping wheels of the passenger train. A steady diet of Coca-Cola and ibuprofen only served to sour his stomach and make him angrier than he already was.

  Kang was accustomed to discomfort, but after two hours of gutting it out, he seriously considered throwing himself off the moving train. He replaced the dressing—a bloody stub was sure to draw too much interest—stuffed the Beretta he’d snatched from Gao in his waistband holster, and made his way to the café car as soon as it opened for the morning. The dining car was between his sleeper and the observation/lounge car, under which the café was located. People were already seated for breakfast, and he passed through without making eye contact with any of the other passengers, staggering in the quickly learned gait necessary to keep one’s feet aboard the swaying, lurching train. He thanked the attendant politely when she asked if he wanted a table, telling her he just needed a light snack. She’d see him returning from the café car with his ice and food anyway, so there was no reason to lie.

  He’d sweated through his clothing by the time he returned to his room. Fortunately, the other passengers—most of them twice his age—were too self-absorbed to notice him as he stumbled past.

  He slid the door shut to remove the holster from his waistband and tossed it on the couch. Latch locked and blue privacy curtains drawn, he collapsed beside his gun, panting from the two-hundred-foot walk.

  Wincing, he pressed the bandaged stump of his finger against the cup of ice. It had required every ounce of self-control to pretend his hand wasn’t killing him when he’d paid for the Snickers bars and two Coca-Colas.

  Kang had dealt with pain before. He knew it would dull in time, but that time would not come soon. The cold only took the edge off. He needed antibiotics—pills, an injection. He slowed his breathing, washed down four more ibuprofen with another can of Coke he’d gotten with the ice, and stared out the window at the passing cliffs. They were climbing, somewhere northwest of Denver. He didn’t care. He needed to rest, to plan what he was going to do next.

  None of this made any sense. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the man along the Riverwalk, but he felt sure that man was alone. Could it have been Li? That was absurd. Peter Li should be more worried about protecting his family than going on the offensive. Then Kang remembered how ferociously the man had fought when they’d invaded his home. The bastard had charged out with the shotgun where he should have cowered in the corner. Still . . . No. It couldn’t have been him. But if not, then who?

  Kang lifted a bottle of cheap whiskey to his lips with his good hand, keeping the other pressed against the ice. The liquid cut a trench from his tongue to his gut, at once warming him and adding to his confusion. He used his knees and his good hand to replace the lid, then held the bottle up so light from the window backlit the amber liquid. He’d drunk more than half since the train had rolled out of Chicago some twenty hours before. Disgusted, he tossed what was left of the bottle on the blue seat across from him, far enough out of his reach he couldn’t drink absentmindedly. He needed it for pain, to blunt the anger, but he also needed a clear head, and whiskey didn’t help with that.

  Neither did pain.

  72

  The eleven-car California Zephyr rolled out of Chicago’s Union Station on schedule at two p.m. Central Time. John Clark was on board, having purchased one of the few remaining roomettes on the train as soon as he’d ended the call with Gavin. He believed his target was in one of the two sleeper cars. He knew the man’s name, his background, and the names of his dead associates. Gavin had found the car and room number of Kang’s ticket, but that room turned out to be occupied by an elderly couple when Clark walked down the narrow corridor on the way to his own roomette.

  One would think that searching a train would be easy. There were three sleeper coaches, all located aft of the baggage car and the two locomotives. The dining car separated the sleepers from the lounge/observation car and lower-deck café, along with the three coach-class cars bringing up the rear of the train. Clark discounted everything aft of the lounge car. Kang was hurt. He would want privacy. He’d be somewhere up front.

  Each double-decker Superliner coach had five bedrooms, each with a cramped toilet and shower, along with ten roomettes on the upper deck. The bedrooms were all on the one side of the train. The much smaller roomettes were situated on the opposite end of the car, five on either side of a shoulder-wide passage that, apart from the carpet and semi-fresh air, put Clark in mind of a submarine. There was a stairwell located midpoint in the car, between the bedrooms and roomettes. Marked by the smell of self-service coffee, it led down to four lower-deck roomettes, a family bedroom, toilets, a shower for the roomette passengers, and a baggage rack. The forwardmost sleeper car was reserved for staff berthing and storage, allowing Clark to mark twenty rooms off the list. This left a total of forty rooms, where Kang might be hiding, thirty-nine discounting Clark’s. According to Gavin, Kang had originally purchased a roomette, but since someone was in that room, Clark suspected he’d upgraded at the station to a larger bedroom so he’d have his own sink to doctor his hand. If that were true, it narrowed his search to the ten full-size bedrooms, five on each remaining sleeper car.

  Clark ruled out all the rooms on his car by the time they reached Omaha a little after eleven p.m.

  The print from the pinkie finger Clark had liberated from Kang’s hand was a bust as far as leads went. The photos from the cameras he’d put on the street provided the breakthrough.

  One of the downsides of all the facial-recognition programs in the People’s Republic of China—at least from the viewpoint of the Chinese intelligence apparatus—was that their own system was hackable. Once Biery had uploaded the images, it took just a few hours before he began
to get possible hits. The first lead was for the woman. She was Zhang Zhulan, a PLA major. There was a Red Notice on her passport that noted she was wanted for murder in South Africa. She had several aliases, one of which was Rose. According to the Red Notice, she was known to travel with a man named Kang Jian. Kang turned out to be the mystery man. That name led Biery to numerous aliases, which he checked for recent activity. The Visa card for one of the aliases, Frank Lo of Temecula, California, had been used to buy a bedroom on Amtrak Number 5, the California Zephyr, between Chicago and Emeryville, California.

  Clark suspected Kang didn’t have any support in Chicago. If he had, he would have brought more than a couple of people with him to whack Li at the river. They would have been expecting at least a couple of guards. Now he was wounded, probably alone, on the run. Clark knew all too well how excruciating a damaged hand could be. The last thing Kang would want to do is drive himself, even if he did have a driver’s license. Whereas airports had layer upon layer of security and ID checks, a person could buy a train ticket online with nothing but a credit card. The conductor required nothing but the scan code on a cell phone. It was illegal to bring weapons on board, but there were no metal detectors. Amtrak Police with bomb dogs patrolled the station, but they weren’t likely to hit on something as small as a sidearm.

  Fortunately for Clark’s cover, he was on the youthful end of the average passenger’s age. Most were retired, traveling in pairs without the hassle of airports, meeting new people, watching the country roll by. Most had time on their hands. Some were afraid to fly. At least one was a spy, running for his life.

  Clark was halfway through a short stack of buttermilk pancakes, chatting amiably with a couple from Boston, both retired from MIT, when Kang staggered through the dining car. Clark took another bite, waiting for him to push the button to open the car before standing to excuse himself. His seatmates obviously missed the captive audience of the lecture hall and protested that he was leaving in the middle of their conversation. He apologized, saying something hadn’t agreed with his stomach, left a five-dollar tip on the table, and strode quickly after Kang.