by Sean Parnell
“He wants to see you,” Lansky said.
Tell him I’m busy, banged through Steele’s head. Tell him he’s twenty-five fucking years too late. But he didn’t say anything like that. He said nothing.
And then he felt the president’s gloved hand on the back of his neck, and he was walking Steele away from everyone else, another ten meters out on the tarmac, so they could be alone. The only sound on the wind was the low rumble of the Harleys and the distant turbines of Air Force One somewhere down the field. The president turned him around. His thick blond hair was fluttering in the breeze and his blue eyes were gleaming.
“Listen, son,” he said. “There’s a shitstorm brewing between us and Beijing, and I’ve got to know if it’s real. I need you to go get that Chinese colonel and keep her alive. And then I need you to get her to Taiwan while I figure out if I have to crank up the entire Pacific Fleet and throw the toggles on a bunch of nuclear Tomahawks from safe to armed. . . . Now I know this is all kind of hard, but it’s a to-be-or-not-to-be moment, slings and arrows and all that Will Shakespeare shit. Comprendé?”
“Yes, Mr. President.” There was no hesitation in Steele’s voice. Presidents had that effect on him.
“Good. Now go get her, and bring her down to their special ops base at Pingtung. And if your dad actually shows up, try not to be an asshole. You’re gonna be a father yourself soon.”
Steele stared at his commander in chief, and blinked.
“Yeah, I’m the president.” Rockford smirked. “I know stuff. And besides, everyone’s kid thinks their dad’s a moron at one time or another. Trust me, yours will too.” The president looked at his watch. “Now let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve got a midnight rally in Tucson, and you’ve got serious business.”
“Safe travels, sir,” Steele said.
“Good luck,” said Rockford.
They shook hands, hard, and held it for a moment. Then they both about-faced and walked off in opposite directions, like duelers, except they didn’t turn around at ten paces and shoot.
Chapter 29
Vladivostok, Russia
The Crystal Tiger casino was the last place Eric Steele wanted to be after a thirteen-hour flight, a refueling stop in Anchorage, a fifteen-hour time differential, head-banging turbulence, no decent food, and no sleep. But Steele wasn’t calling the shots. The man doing that was Oren Belmont, an arms dealer whose services Steele had engaged in various global hotspots, and who he also suspected of being more than eccentric, perhaps even nuts.
Belmont was somewhere in his early thirties—no one really knew because he had four different passports with conflicting dates of birth—and was half French, half Israeli, and had gained his firearms expertise from service first in the French Foreign Legion and then the Israel Defense Forces paratroops. He spoke French, Hebrew, English, German, and Russian, all with near native accents. He had girlfriends in multiple countries, dressed like a metrosexual magazine editor from Manhattan, wore outrageously expensive watches, and could tell you when the temperature of a Château Latour claret wasn’t quite right, or kill you at twenty meters with a throwing knife.
His sole proprietor firm, Triple-S (Special Services Solutions), supplied much more than guns and ammunition. He seemed able to get his hands on just about anything, from Ducati motorcycles to Draeger SCUBA gear, from miniature Dry Combat Submersible submarines to DJI surveillance drones and Little Bird helicopters. Once, when Steele had found himself pursued and outnumbered in Mali by a murder squad from Islamic State, he’d called Belmont, who’d somehow made an Arava special operations aircraft land in a field and perform a rapid exfil turnaround.
Belmont’s services were pricey, but he’d never gouged Steele or failed to deliver. He also had few qualms about selling to anyone, except for the ISIS types.
“I know I’m a death dealer, mon ami,” Belmont had once said to Steele over drinks in Sarajevo, “but I’ll betcha the dude who sold spears and shields to the Spartans was stocking the Persians with the very same shit. Anyway, I don’t sell to those motherfucking haji beheaders. Man’s gotta sleep at night, right?”
Belmont knew Steele was arriving in Vladivostok with a crew, but he didn’t ask why and he didn’t ask who. He’d sent Steele a text in French via WhatsApp.
“Casino Tigre De Cristal. Viens seul. Et essaye de ne pas t’habiller comme un clochard.” Crystal Tiger Casino. Come alone. And try not to dress like a bum.
The Gulfstream had landed in Vladivostok, a port city at the southeastern tip of Russia, and Steele’s “new” face made it through passport control without ringing alarms, so he stopped inwardly cursing McHugh. Comparisons are often made between Vladivostok and San Francisco, both of which border on oceans, have impressive suspension bridges, high hills of quaint stone flats, great fishing wharfs, and crowds of Chinese tourists. But Steele and his team were too spent to appreciate anything touristic. They locked their guns in the jet’s cargo hold, took their backpacks, and headed for the Lotte Hotel, and hopefully, a nap.
After everyone had gone to their rooms, Steele searched the lobby for a bellhop his size, handed him four hundred euros, and said, in fluent Russian, “Tovarich, I don’t have time to go shopping. Would you be so kind as to find me some appropriate clothes for a nightclub? Same fit as you, and keep the change.”
An hour later, he was dressed to kill.
The Crystal Tiger was located on a remote patch of property twenty kilometers from the city. It was a sprawling entertainment and gambling complex, with upscale nightclubs, gaming rooms, an outdoor IMAX-size video screen across which beautiful Russian girls pranced in bikinis, and towering crystal columns bracing the high entrance doors. He walked in wearing a black velvet jacket over a cream silk shirt, charcoal twill slacks, and black loafers. The lobby was as large as the MGM Grand’s in Las Vegas, and the pulsating music shivering the chandeliers was Grace singing “You Don’t Own Me.”
He knew where he’d find Oren Belmont, so he headed straight for the baccarat room. Sure enough, Belmont was perched, alone, at a kidney-shaped table, smoking a Balkan Sobranie and ogling the busty blond dealer instead of his mountain of chips. He had jelled brown hair, long sharp eyebrows, wily dark eyes, a square jaw, and a paratrooper’s lithe physique. He was wearing a buttery black leather blazer over a chartreuse silk shirt and black trousers. He looked like a panther toying with a lamb.
“Nice threads, dude.” Belmont smirked as Steele took a seat.
“Glad you approve.”
Belmont peered at Steele’s face. “But that beard and the scab make you look like a fucked-up kibbutznik. Are we calling you Shlomo now?”
“Matthew will be fine.”
“Way too New Testament, but whatever.” Belmont took a drag off his Sobranie, which Steele realized was camouflaged weed, filled his pockets with chips, and pushed a tip stack across to the dealer. Then he squeezed her fingers and said, in Russian, “I’ll pick you up Saturday night, baby. Wear something that’d make mama faint.”
The blond girl giggled, Belmont leaned across the table, tongue kissed her, and said to Steele, “Allons-y.”
They walked into the Crystal Tiger’s main nightclub. The decor was red and black, and it was packed to the gills with patrons and bar girls weaving among the tables. At the close end was a stage with gleaming stripper poles around which tall Russian beauties snaked and twitched, their seminude bodies painted in purple tiger stripes. As they made their way to the bar at the back, Belmont slung an arm around Steele’s shoulder and whispered close to his ear.
“How many are you, dude, and what’s on the menu?” He had marijuana breath.
“Three kinetics, including me. I need water for the squirt guns, firecrackers, vests, radios, static line chutes, and a plane.”
“That’s all?” Belmont laughed. “And you’re flush for that?”
Steele opened his jacket and showed him a thick stack of euros. They were all five hundreds.
“That’s the deposit,” he said.
“I’ll wire the rest.”
“You’re my moneyball, bay-bee.” Belmont slapped Steele’s butt. “If I wasn’t straight, I’d do you.”
“You’d do me anyway, ass hat, if the price was right.”
“True.” Belmont snickered.
“So why’d you drag me all the way out here?” Steele said.
“To make sure you’re clean, no tail.” Belmont winked at a young man sitting at the bar, who Steele recognized as his taxi driver.
“You’re such a trusting soul,” he said.
“Toi aussi. That’s why we’re both still alive.”
Belmont pushed into the bar and ordered two large vodkas, neat. Steele waved his off, so the arms dealer shrugged, downed both drinks, saw Steele’s expression, and said, “Dude, I always drink and drive!”
Ten minutes later they were doing 140 kilometers per hour in a green-and-black Audi R8 V10 Spyder convertible, which would have made Steele long for his GTO, except Belmont had the top down and it was midnight and freezing. Belmont had pulled on a leather Snoopy helmet and goggles, and with the unbuckled earflaps whipping in the wind and his white teeth lit by the dashboard, he looked completely insane, while Steele was hatless and felt like he was freefalling in Antarctica. The car’s speakers were blasting out Lil Pump’s “Gucci Gang,” the Lazurnaya Ulitsa coastal “highway” was no wider than a Virginia driveway, and the only good things about the ride were that it would be short, they couldn’t make vapid small talk over the wind, and if Belmont flipped it, Steele wouldn’t feel a damned thing.
Traffic thickened at the eastern outskirts of the city, so Belmont had to slow down, and as they cruised through the winding streets toward Milionka he pushed up his goggles and said, “You dig her?”
“It’s a very fine car, Oren.”
“She’s the shit!” Belmont banged the steering wheel.
Steele had taken out his cell and texted Goodhill at the hotel, telling him to roust Miles and Allie, leave Shane and Slick behind as emergency backup, track him on his locator app, and meet at his end point. Milionka was a crusty old neighborhood of crooked red brick buildings that had once been Vladivostok’s most dangerous district, replete with whorehouses, drug dens, and ruthless Chinese gang lords. Now it was a trendy cluster of cafés, hip clothing shops, and street minstrels, but at night it seemed to revert to its former sleazy status, like a municipal vampire. Belmont parked the Spyder in front of a brownstone with an iron-barred cigar shop at the bottom under a big sign in Russian that said Dim-i-Zerkala—Smoke and Mirrors.
Goodhill, Miles, and Allie were standing in front of the shop, their breaths making blue clouds in the air. Belmont lit up another joint as he and Steele got out of the car, and he smirked at the new arrivals and said, “Is that all you got, Bro? An old dude, a brutha, and a barrista?”
Steele rolled his eyes and said to his crew, “This is our friend Oren.”
“Can I kill him now?” Goodhill growled.
“Can I hold him while you kill him?” Miles said to Goodhill.
“I’m a pilot, asshole,” Allie said to Belmont.
Belmont laughed and said to Steele, “I like them. Let’s go.”
He clicked a button on his car keys, disabling the shop’s alarms, and they went inside. It looked like the kind of smoke bar you’d find on Newbury Street in Boston, with puffy leather couches, ceramic ashtrays, and pistol-size butane lighters. All the walls were lined with glass cigar cases. Belmont walked to the one at the back, pressed another button, and the case split open in the middle and both halves rolled away to reveal an old-style European elevator with an iron grate door.
He waved everyone in, but the lift didn’t go up, or down. The whole thing spun around 180 degrees, and they were facing an armory four times the size of the cigar store.
“So, Steely? Is this cool, or what?” Belmont cooed as he pirouetted into his secret stash. “Oops, my bad . . . I mean Matthew.”
Steele was staring at wall racks of firearms, stacks of ammunition, RPGs, grenades, metal shelves full of load-bearing equipment, helmets, uniforms, parachute rigs, MBITR radios, drones, and electronic gear even he couldn’t identify. It would have been highly unusual to find such a thing in the States, unless it was a prop house in Hollywood, but the firearms laws in Russia made it nearly impossible to buy a BB gun.
He whistled and said, “How the hell . . . ?”
“Hey, dude, I know people,” Belmont said. Strangely, there was an old-fashioned leather barber’s chair in the middle of the space, and he plopped down into it, kicked the footstool up, flipped down an armrest panel with a smart tablet on it, and said, “Yallah, let’s shop!” He came up with a laser pointer, spun the chair like a naval antiaircraft gunner, and started firing it at pieces of equipment.
“Drei Schützen.” Three shooters, he sang out in German and swung to the left. “Let’s go for the Marom Dolphin load-bearing vests, right over there. And the helmets. Don’t forget the helmets!” He spun to the right. “NVD PVS-14 night-vision goggles, monocular, right up there. Nice and light, right? And you can grab those T-10 chutes over there. The T-11s suck.”
Goodhill, Turner, and Allie tried to keep up as they yanked items from shelves and made a pile on the floor.
“See those radios up there?” Belmont spun to the left and tipped back. “Tadiran PNR-1000 UHFs and headsets, and right under those you got Glock combat knives in wicked black.” He spun fully around, making Steele jump back, and squealed, “Weee! Let’s go with a couple dozen Dutch V40 mini-frags, right there in that box, and you can grab those Sig Sauer P226s, thigh rigs, and mags.” He spun once again full circle while he sucked a long drag off his blunt. “Take the generic water bladders. Why splurge? And there’s some cold weather shit over there. It’s Salewa, Italian stuff, alpine boots and jackets and gloves. Oh!” He spun one last time and said, “And a thousand rounds of ammo, cool? On the house, whatever mix gets you off.”
Belmont was high as a kite and bubbly with joy. He stopped the chair, hammered on his tablet for half a minute, threw his hands up high, and said, “Forty thousand euros. But for you, Matthew, the family discount. Thirty-five thousand, a steal! That doesn’t include the airplane, though. You did say you needed one, n’est pas?”
“Right,” Steele said, though he was thinking about the costs and how Mrs. Darnstein was going to take his head off. “A jump plane, long range, low altitude.”
“Where’s the X, dude?”
“Southern Mongolia.”
“Merde, it’s still fucking freezing down there. Okay, I’ll have my boys stuff all this shit on your jet, and get you a humanitarian assistance clearance through to Irkutsk and Ulaanbaatar. Meanwhile, I’ll see what the Mongols have.” He spun to Allie Whirly. “Can you fly a Russian cargo plane, hot stuff?”
“I can fly a bathtub if it’s got propellers,” she said.
“I’ll bet you can, baby.” He grinned at her.
Steele’s cell buzzed in his jacket pocket. He walked away to a corner of the armory while his crew started packing up the gear. It was Ralphy, calling through an encrypted app hidden under a Tetris icon.
“Speak,” Steele said.
“Mr. Schneider, we just got a real time overhead from sky eyes. Your unfriendlies just crossed the border. Good news is, they’re on horseback, but you still might wanna hustle up.”
“How many?”
“Um, that’s the bad news . . . Sixteen.”
“Thanks.”
Steele clicked off. He walked back over to Belmont, where Goodhill, Turner, and Allie had gathered around the barber chair and were all looking at him.
“We’re going to need more ammo,” he said. “And rockets.”
Chapter 30
Manchuria, China
In the Dazheng Hall of the Swords of Qing, Zaifeng was down on his knees.
He had just completed an hour of Tao Lu practice with his bo, spinning, whirling, and catching the Chinese rattan staff in dizzying blurs, then blocking, lunging,
and stabbing at imaginary enemies, all of whom fell and were slain with a driving blow. He wore only cuffed black Shaolin pantaloons and quilted shoes, and his muscular back gleamed with sweat, a sprawling tattoo of crossed swords over a golden dragon, and the pink welts of scars from a life of knives.
Now he was resting in a meditative pose, his calves folded beneath his thighs, his buttocks resting on his upturned soles. In the frigid air of his zŏng bù, steam from his skin fogged the air as he knelt, eyes closed, before a small golden Buddha embraced by a ring of flickering candles. He was not a religious man, but he believed in karma, the blood of his forefathers, and dynastic destiny.
Zaifeng’s lieutenant, Po, had entered the headquarters hall and stood there in silence, waiting. He knew his commander would speak when he sensed his presence.
“What do you have for me, Po?” Zaifeng’s voice was like a cougar’s breath.
“The squadron has crossed the border, Xian Sheng. They are five hours from the target.”
“Good. What else?”
“A transmission from Scarlet.”
Zaifeng opened his eyes. The Swords of Qing had a female agent in the United States, a Chinese American working as an analyst for the CIA at Langley. She had a top secret clearance and always passed her polygraphs because she claimed, quite honestly, that she had no affinity for the Communist Chinese.
“What did she say?”
“The ship was found and inspected, as well as the helicopter,” said Po. “The Americans believe the Central Committee is involved, and that Taiwan may be their target. The Roosevelt strike group is being dispatched from Pearl.”
The granite expression on Zaifeng’s face didn’t change.
“And what does this mean to you, Po?”
“That the false flag is working.”
“Precisely. And?”
“That I suppose . . . we no longer need Casino.”
Zaifeng nodded, then raised a hand and flicked his fingers through the mist of his own excretions, which Po understood meant he should go. The lieutenant turned and left, quietly closing the thick entrance door.