by Marc Cameron
Clark made it through the first set of automatic doors in time to look through the windows of the next coach and watch Kang duck into the first door on the right.
Coach 531, Bedroom A.
Clark’s roomette was in the next car, closer to the engines, but the dining car gave him a plausible reason to go back and forth. He kept walking, reaching A as he heard the metal latch click into place. Inside the compartment, a hand reached up and moved the pleated blue curtains over the door and the small window to the right.
The basics of a simple plan already clear in his mind, Clark returned to his roomette. He needed practice defeating the lock on his own door.
Clark had thought Kang might come out for supplies or even to leave the train for good in Denver, but he stayed in his room with the curtains drawn during the fifty-minute stop. Clark and a few others stayed on the platform enjoying the last moments of mountain air until the whistle blew and the conductor waved them aboard. The Zephyr began to slog steadily upward after leaving the city, slowing periodically when wires along the tracks registered rocks or trees from the steep mountainsides that might have fallen across their path. Snow and evergreens covered the slopes, falling away to a winding river below. An hour and a half later, the conductor announced that they would soon cross the Continental Divide through the six-mile-long Moffat Tunnel. He asked that everyone remain in their assigned car during the ten-minute trip under James Peak.
Two of the roomettes in 531 were vacant, allowing Clark to leave his roomette in 532 and step next door five minutes before they entered Moffat Tunnel from the east.
The train slowed some inside the narrow tunnel but still moved fast enough to double the noise level from what it had been outside now that they were in the belly of the mountain.
Clark waited a full minute, then made his move.
Peeking out the door of the roomette, he looked up and down the corridor one last time before he committed, then made his way quickly past the stairwell to the end of the car with the bedrooms, where he paused in front of Bedroom A. He knew the layout. The couch would be facing forward. A single chair near the window would face aft. He didn’t know where Kang would be sitting, but consoled himself that the room was so small it would hardly matter. He’d wrapped his handkerchief around the knuckles of his right hand, then held the Glock in his left, shooting two quick shots at the glass on the door, just above the lock. There was a chance he’d hit Kang, but he didn’t have a problem with that.
Moving purposefully once he began, Clark punched the glass away with the wrapped hand. The locking mechanism was relatively simple, a hooking metal latch with a second metal piece that swung down over the top, jamming the latch in place. Clark put two more rounds through the door to keep Kang on his toes as he pushed the metal tab out of the way. In less than three seconds from the time he first pressed the trigger, he stood to the side, pulling open the door and curtain in one movement.
Kang was seated on the couch, facing forward, which put his left hand nearer the window, forcing him to scramble for the pistol with his nondominant hand and bring it across his body to engage Clark. Still, he was incredibly fast for someone dazed and startled at the sudden attack. Fights in a room not much larger than a phone booth unfolded quickly. Clark rolled in, on top of Kang by the time he put a round in the top of the man’s knee. Kang tried to bring the Beretta around, but Clark’s left hand deflected it as he knelt on top of the injured hand. Kang let loose a ragged scream, almost too high-pitched to hear.
The Beretta slipped out of Kang’s hand, bouncing on the couch before falling to the floor.
Clark pushed off the couch cushion with his free hand and stood back, bracing himself against the curved swell of the bathroom door, his own pistol tucked in tight against his side.
“You speak English, Mr. Kang?” Clark asked, throwing in the name to keep the man guessing.
Kang nodded, chest heaving. His gun hand was busy clutching the bloody stump of the other.
“What’s your problem with Peter Li?”
“Who are you?”
Clark ignored the question. “Why attack the man’s family?”
Kang shook his head. Thinking. Stalling. Catching his breath.
The roaring noise of the train passing through the tunnel had covered the suppressed gunfire, but they were more than halfway through by now. The window was shot out, there was glass in the hall, and passengers would start to move around again as soon as they came out.
Clark tried again. “Who sent you?”
Kang shook his head.
Clark nodded to the bandaged hand. “I can get you some help.”
“A scratch,” Kang said.
“Are there more of you?”
Silence.
“Listen, pal,” Clark said. “Your friends are dead. You’re done. I can get you something for the pain, but I need to know who else is coming after Li.”
Kang glared, seething rage flashing in the otherwise dark pools of his eyes. “I have nothing to say.”
“You know,” Clark said, “I believe you.”
* * *
—
Kang was a germ, a bacterium that if not absolutely destroyed would only come back stronger. Still, to some—most, really—killing an injured man who was sitting, blinking up at you, was the act of a brutal barbarian. It was a point of fact that Clark could not argue. At the same time, he admitted another truth that civilized people almost always chose to ignore: Sometimes, the world needed a few barbarians.
Clark kicked the broken glass that had ended up in the hallway back inside the compartment. He slid the door shut behind him as he padded quickly to the vacant roomette, reaching it just as they exited the Moffat Tunnel back into the light of day. He knew one thing: If there were people coming after Peter and his family—there would now be one less.
John Clark could live with that.
73
General Song went in first, without knocking. He never ventured into the north wing so Bai’s people were astonished to see him standing there alone so brazenly.
“What can I do for you, General Song?” an officious captain who served as Bai’s secretary said from behind his highly polished wooden desk.
“I am here to see General Bai.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“I do not,” Song said, starting toward the office door. The captain shot to his feet. “The general is in a meeting!”
“He’ll see me,” Song said, brushing past. Lackey or not, no captain wanted to physically bar the movement of a general.
Song pushed open the door to find Bai and Major Chang huddled around a computer screen, perusing what looked like ledger sheets.
“Ready to make some withdrawals?” Song asked.
Bai spun in his chair. The major stood, releasing a nervous fart.
“What do you mean barging into my office unannounced?” He leaned sideways, looking past Song and out the door. “Captain Feng! Call security forces at once—”
Bai’s face fell when four sullen-looking men wearing dark business suits filed in behind General Song.
“General Bai Min,” Song said. “I have come with the authority of Chairman Zhao, paramount leader. You and Major Chang are under arrest for acts of sedition, murder, and treason against the people of China.”
Chang shifted on his feet.
“This is nonsense,” Bai said. “I am under arrest because the plan failed.”
Song shrugged. “Nonetheless,” he said. “You are under arrest.” He leaned in closer. “And I have been assured your punishment will not be pretend.”
* * *
—
At approximately the same moment, but six thousand miles away from Beijing, where General Bai and his bagman were being led away in shame and shackles, a Blue-Bird bus came to a stop in front of Marine Corps Recruit Depot San
Diego, packed full of stunned-looking young men.
It was dark, but the glaring lights above the entrance to MCRD illuminated the yellow footprints the young men had all heard so much about. No one spoke. Most held their breath in anticipation—and a unique sense of self-imposed dread. They’d all done their research. They’d watched YouTube videos. They thought they knew what was about to happen. Every one of them had volunteered, so there was no one to blame but themselves.
The bus doors hissed open. A barrel-chested drill instructor sauntered up the steps, campaign hat settled low on his forehead, and began to bark almost unintelligible instructions. His voice was hoarse and raspy, as if he’d been screaming for hours at a concert or football game. Each instruction was met with a resounding “Aye-aye, sir!” or “Yes, sir!” jumbled at first, until the group got their act together and began to answer in unison. Each order came tight on the heels of the previous one, on and on and on. It was understandable—and intended—that all the young men would become disoriented.
Asking the recruits if they understood, over and over again, the drill instructor continued to bark orders. When he told them to, and only when he told them to, he wanted them to get off his bus.
“Do you understand!!?”
“Yes, sir!” Their reply rattled the windows.
“Get your disgusting bodies off my bus!”
A third of the way back, a tall recruit with wavy dark hair and green eyes did exactly as he was told and moved down the aisle at a pace “one step faster than a walk and one step slower than a run” off the bus to the yellow footprints.
The barking continued into the night, with constant correction for stance, posture, and the slightest wrong answers. A kid standing to the left of the green-eyed recruit began to sniff, drawing the immediate ire of one of the drill instructors. The green-eyed recruit stared at the back of the recruit in front of him, arms crossed over his chest. He’d discussed military discipline many times over his short lifetime with his father and grandfather. He could do this.
More instruction happened on the footprints, along with a lot of kneeling, standing—while being instructed with copious yelling and barking from what felt like one drill instructor for every recruit. No movement was fast enough. No reply loud enough. No infraction or slip went unnoticed.
The recruits were power-walked with “speed and intensity” inside to the contraband room, where they dumped the contents of their pockets into red wooden cubicles for inspection and eventual storage. The Marine Corps would supply them with everything they needed during boot camp.
Eventually, the stunned recruits were ordered to “cover-down” on one of the white phones along the wall. There they would have two attempts to contact a family member or, if they had no family, their recruiter.
The green-eyed recruit had known all along he would have to make the phone call, and of all the events since getting on the bus at the San Diego airport, he dreaded this the most.
Fortunately, his mother did not answer. Other recruits covering down in line directly behind him screamed in response to commands from the drill instructors, making it impossible to think clearly. Then, to his relief, the second number he called went straight to voicemail, so he read the message from the printed script that was posted above the phone. He hung up, relieved to return to the world of screaming drill instructors.
They weren’t half as terrifying as his mom.
74
John Clark stepped off the California Zephyr in Fraser/Winter Park, Colorado, the next station west of the Moffat Tunnel. The scenery was spectacular, so several people exited even for the short duration of the stop, allowing Clark to slip away unnoticed before the train pulled away. He’d cleaned up the glass in the corridor and pulled the curtain to Kang’s compartment, so, with any luck, the train would be a few stops down the line before anyone found the body.
He rented a car from a company in nearby Granby, and sat down to check his voicemail while he waited for it to be delivered at a Mexican restaurant a kilometer from the train station.
There’d been no cell service from shortly after Denver, so he had more than a dozen messages. Most were of no consequence, a few would require a call back, but the last one caught him by surprise. He listened to it three times, at first stunned, then proud, then, he had to admit, a little teary-eyed.
“Hello!” the message began, hoarse, but intense. “This is Recruit Chavez. I have arrived safely at MCRD San Diego. The next time I contact you will be by postal mail, so expect a letter from me in two to three weeks. I love you. Good-bye.”
Clark listened to the message two more times, then hit speed dial for Ding’s cell. He was too much of a coward to talk to his daughter at the moment.
“Mr. C!” Chavez said. “You okay? We’ve been—”
“Hey, Ding,” Clark said, cutting him off. He took a deep breath. “Listen, bud, I just got an interesting phone call from my grandson. I’m thinking he’s put Stanford on the back burner for a while . . .”
* * *
—
David Huang was pressing a shirt in the laundry room at the back of his house when he heard his wife scream. He smiled, turning off the iron, and started immediately up the hall. Michelle Chadwick had dropped off the face of the earth, but that was to be expected. She’d been under tremendous stress, and they could both use a break from each other. She’d be back. Her political career depended on it.
His cell phone rang, but he ignored it. His wife needed him to take care of whatever spider she’d happened to encounter. He’d just passed the hall closet when she screamed again.
Huang froze when he entered his kitchen and found six heavily armed men in green uniforms and body armor. FBI HRT was emblazoned across their uniforms. The apparent supervisor gave a nod. Two of the agents grabbed him by each arm, helping him none too gently to his kitchen floor, while a third secured his cell phone and slipped it into a Faraday envelope.
From the corner of his eye, he saw a female agent usher his wife and daughter out the front door.
“She doesn’t know anything!” he shouted, hoping his wife would hear.
“Do not speak,” the team leader said, his tone direct, matter-of-fact.
Hands secured behind his back with nylon restraints, Huang was set in one of his kitchen chairs while a team of plainclothes agents began to search every square inch of his house, including behind the faceplates of each light switch and electric outlet.
Ten minutes into the search, the kitchen door opened and Michelle Chadwick walked in.
“Senator,” he said, glaring. “This will not turn out well.”
“For you,” Chadwick said. “Oh, you mean that fake video you’re trying to frame me with. I told President Ryan about that about two minutes into our first meeting. Who do you think you’re dealing with here, sport? It’s Rule Thirty-Four, you know.”
“What does that even mean?” Huang asked, incredulous that this pitiful woman would be so forward with him.
“If it exists, there’s probably porn of it. Good Lord, David, there are so many deepfake videos going around nowadays, that shoddy piece of trash will only help my reputation.”
“You’re supporting Jack Ryan now?”
“Not at all,” Chadwick said. “But it turns out, if I’m going to have an enemy, I’d rather it be you than my own government.”
75
So,” Cathy said, her head resting against Ryan’s chest. “I still can’t get my mind around the fact that Michelle Chadwick was never a spy.” She smelled like peppermint and Dioressence. A good pairing, Jack thought.
“Nope,” he said. “A true-blue patriot . . . who still hates my guts.”
Cathy patted his stomach. “I love your guts.”
“Means a lot, Doc,” Ryan said.
“What’s Father Pat thinking, going back to Indonesia?”
“That’s the
way callings are, I guess,” Ryan said.
“Terrible about PFC Geddis,” Cathy whispered.
Ryan breathed deeply, feeling guilty for being in his comfortable bed while he spoke of such sacrifice. “I know. Sounds like he put himself in danger so the rest of his squad could get safely off the rope.”
“And now Ding’s son is joining the Marine Corps?”
“I know,” Ryan said again.
“I’ll bet Patsy’s freaked about it,” Cathy said.
“And proud,” Ryan said. “I talked to John on the phone. Apparently, JP has been talking to him a lot lately about becoming a SEAL. He thought the Marine Corps would get him ready.”
“How is Ding?”
“Concussed,” Ryan said. “But too hardheaded to have much damage.”
Cathy scoffed. “If that were the case, you’d be bulletproof. And the computer tech? How’s that going?”
“Cyber Com believes they have all the copies located,” Ryan said. “Or at least how to patch against it. China is sure to have extra copies on hand. Who knows . . . The damned thing could be hiding in my phone at this moment.”
“Don’t joke about that.”
“I wish I were joking,” Ryan said. “Even if we got it all, it’s only a matter of time before someone develops something better . . . or worse. AI is the future of . . . well, the future.”
He and Cathy got to talk like this so rarely, he enjoyed their back-and-forth volleys. It was like playing tennis in bed with a beautiful half-naked woman.
“What about that horrible man who came to the clinic with General Song’s family?”
“Tsai?” Ryan said. “No idea. Back in China, I suppose, being the same horrible man.”