by Sean Parnell
Steele looked at him and called, “Nice throw.”
“U of Maryland baseball,” Miles called back.
Then a horse exploded from behind a hill and was on top of Steele before he could fire. Its rider, dressed in full black like a ninja, thrust his rifle down at him and pulled the trigger as Steele jerked hard to the left, grabbed the exploding barrel, and yanked so hard it pulled the rider right off the saddle and into the snow. The ninja rolled, came up and charged him with some sort of long wicked blade. Steele butted his helmet into the man’s skull, trapped the knife arm with his left elbow, snapped it as the man screamed, yanked his Glock blade from his scabbard, drove it hilt deep into his sternum, and dropped him dead on his back.
He took a breath, brought his rifle back up, and scanned the carnage. Eight riderless horses were charging around as if they’d burst from a barn fire. Black-clad corpses, a couple skewered by Gengi’s arrows, lay grotesquely twisted where they’d fallen, but the rest had retreated back toward the hills and dismounted. They were battling it out with Gengi, Ganbaatar, and Tenzin, who had nothing but bolt-action rifles. Gunfire flashed the snow and banged off the hills. He had to finish those people off or Allie wouldn’t be able to land the plane—or worse, they might shoot her down.
At that moment the Antonov showed up, roaring in from the right at a hundred feet high. He saw the open cargo door, with Goodhill kneeling right there, and the lumbering beast strafed the remaining killers as his keeper tossed grenades like he was emptying a basket of apples. Allie yanked the Russian biplane up to the right, Goodhill crashed back inside, and a line of white explosions ripped through the Chinese squad and he heard men moaning while their horses galloped off and disappeared.
Silence. The biplane receded beyond the hills. Slick and Miles started checking corpses to prevent any sudden surprises. Steele heard something behind him and spun around. It was Colonel Liang, led by Tenzin holding her elbow, with Steele’s pistol still gripped in her trembling hand. Steele pried it from her gently and jammed it into his holster. Gengi appeared on his horse, and then Ganbaatar. The father’s left arm was torn through with a bullet hole, and the son’s face was smeared with the blood of a man he’d slain, but they were smiling at each other as if they’d just won a lottery. Steele jammed a fresh mag in his 416, just in case, then Slick and Miles pulled back in, but they kept their weapons trained outboard at the hills.
“Slick,” Steele said, and she turned. He pointed to a large flat field off to the left that looked long enough for a landing strip. “Over there. Signal Allie. She’ll wag her wings when she sees the flash.”
“You bet, boss.” Slick pulled a small flashlight from her vest and took off.
Steele looked up at Gengi and said in Russian, “Do you wish to come with us? You, and this young man and your wife.”
“Never,” Gengi said. “But we are thankful. We will have many horses and rifles now.”
“I’m coming with you,” Tenzin said to Steele. “I’m a fucking dead man here.”
“Wise choice,” Steele said.
He looked up to see Allie circling the big bird in from the south. She didn’t wag her wings but instead turned hard, set up her final leg at the far end of the field, cut the engine, and let it pound down into the snow as Slick sprinted out of the way. The fat Antonov stopped as its big prop tossed up white clouds. Slick called Steele through his headset and suggested he might want to hustle.
Steele reached up to shake Gengi Phon’s hand. The man’s grip was like a commercial vise.
“We owe you,” Steele said. “We will not forget.”
“The righteous owe nothing.” Gengi grinned.
Steele cocked his head, and they all headed for the airplane. Colonel Liang was struggling through the snow and looked paper white pale. She’d been close to her own death too many times to believe she’d survive this too.
When they reached the plane, Goodhill leaned from the door and said to Colonel Liang, “Nice to meet you.” He grabbed her by the front of her uniform and hauled her inside. “Now let’s get the fuck outta here,” he said to Steele. “Not sure we got ’em all.”
Tenzin climbed in with his rifle. Goodhill took it from him and hurled it back out in the snow. Allie opened her side cockpit window and yelled back to Steele over the rumbling engine, “Honey, can we please go?”
Steele shoved Miles up into the plane from behind. Miles turned and dragged Slick after him. Then Goodhill suddenly jerked his face up over Steele’s head and said, “Fuck, I told ya.”
Steele spun around. A horseman had appeared out of nowhere and was charging them hell-bent for leather. He was screaming something and had his Chinese bullpup up, and as the barrel exploded, Goodhill ducked, the round wanged as it pierced the fuselage an inch from his ear, and Steele drew his father’s 1911 and shot the rider twice in the chest. The dead man flew off the horse, somersaulted, and flopped on his back ten feet from Steele’s boots. His horse went galloping off around the plane’s tail.
Steele exhaled and leaned back against the doorway. Tenzin’s face appeared next to his from inside, and then the monk climbed out, walked over to the corpse, peered down at his lifeless eyes and turned him over. He pulled off the man’s balaclava and stared at the back of his bare neck. He took off his glove, touched the cold skin, looked up at Steele, and pointed down at a large tattoo.
“These are not Chinese Communists, my friend,” he said. “These are the Swords of Qing.”
Act III
Chapter 32
The White House, Washington, D.C.
“Who the hell are the Swords of Qing?”
President John Rockford slapped a top secret file on the conference table in the Situation Room’s main tank. It was early evening, he hadn’t had dinner yet, and a growling stomach on top of a global emergency was a recipe for a foul mood. He’d tossed his suit jacket over the chair and rolled up his sleeves, and his blond hair looked like he’d combed it with a salad fork.
“Somebody buy me a freaking clue,” Rockford snapped to the sixteen pinched faces surrounding the polished oak slab. “Sounds like one of my kid’s Xbox games.”
“Mr. President,” Tina Harcourt said, unfazed by the boss’s bite. “We have one source in Hong Kong, with a secondary in Laos, pegging them as a Chinese dissident group. However, they’re essentially dormant, and certainly not kinetic.” The CIA director glanced at Rockford’s file and wondered where his intel was coming from, but she wasn’t going to ask in open forum.
“Well they’re sure as hell kinetic now,” Rockford growled. “A whole squad of them just went full Mike Tyson on some of our SpecOps people in Mongolia.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Maxwell Wheeler raised a bushy gray eyebrow. He’d just arrived from the Pentagon and a secure briefing call with the JSOC commander at Bragg. No Delta, SEALs, ISA, or any other top-tier units were currently operating in Mongolia, and if the CIA had any Special Activities Division folks down there, Harcourt would at least have flinched. Or maybe not, Wheeler thought. She’s as cold as Kim Jong-un’s little sister.
Wheeler, his four stars gleaming from the army’s “new” World War II–style dress uniform, was seated to the president’s right, next to National Security Advisor Katie Garland. Beside him sat the chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold McCormack, then General Milt Efron, director of the NSA. To the left of the president was his chief of staff, Tony Hinds, then Tina Harcourt, Air Force Chief of Staff General Jennifer Myberg, and finally Homeland Security chief Raphael Gonzalez. At the table’s far end sat Dr. Seymour Pressfield, director of the National Reconnaissance Office. The rows of “guest” chairs behind the heavy hitters were occupied by support staff—some uniformed, some not.
Rockford’s secretary of defense was away in Riyadh, and on the flat screen behind the president’s head the image of Vice President Elmore Carson was being piped in from the cave. He was a slim handsome black man with graying curls and a boyish smile, which gave the weird impre
ssion of them all being observed by Barack Obama.
“Mr. President,” Admiral McCormack said as he plucked a handkerchief from his black naval blazer and cleaned his gold-rimmed glasses, “unless NAVSPECWARCOM is keeping something from me, we don’t currently have any teams in that AOR.” He meant SEALs operating in the area that included Mongolia, and he was fishing for more details, which he sensed he wasn’t going to get.
“Nothing green there either, Mr. President,” General Wheeler said, meaning army units of any kind.
Air Force General Myberg didn’t bother echoing her colleagues. None of her special tactics people, including PJs or JTACs, would be anywhere near Mongolia unless tasked with supporting the army, navy, or marines.
“So, if I might, Mr. President,” Tina Harcourt ventured. “Which SpecOps people are we talking about?”
Rockford shot her a look that could have withered a Utah cactus. “Contractors,” he snarled. “And it’s not relevant right now.”
He stalled for a moment by rubbing his jaw and perusing the TS file. This was going to take some finesse. The Program was still just a rumor inside the intelligence community, and he wanted it kept that way. There were other black budget units operating outside the Department of Defense’s formal structure, but he couldn’t pretend it was one of those spook crews without Wheeler nosing around. In order for the Program to remain viable and effective, he had to keep it under wraps while simultaneously revealing its concerns and targets.
Not easy to do, and events were transpiring superfast downrange, in real time.
Mongolia’s time zone was EST plus thirteen hours. Eric Steele had pulled off the rescue of this Chinese colonel, but apparently he hadn’t felt secure about flashing Q Street until he was out of Mongolian airspace. It had taken some hours for the QRF to get back to Ulaanbaatar, reboard the Gulfstream, and get out over open water en route to Taiwan. Then Lansky, breathless and practically biting through his pipe stem, had shown up at the White House’s back door and personally handed the flash file to the president, who’d then called an emergency meeting of relevant stakeholders.
Shoulda stayed in the army . . . I’d be retired and fly-fishing right now.
Rockford jotted something on a presidential notepad, tore off the page, and handed it to Katie Garland. She glanced at the message.
Brief them, but blind.
Garland folded the note and stuck it in the pocket of her Ann Taylor suit.
“Gentlemen and ladies,” she began, then turned to Tina Harcourt. “With your permission, Director.”
Harcourt nodded, though she hated being upstaged by political appointees, and Tony Hinds sat back and crossed his arms. He wasn’t a fan of Garland, whom he thought had too much of the president’s ear, and he looked like a dubious Morgan Freeman.
“As most of you already know,” Garland continued, “over the past two weeks, we’ve had a series of anomalous incidents occurring in that part of the world. First, a Level Five biological research laboratory in northwest China, near the Mongolian border, was destroyed in what appeared to be an accident.” She looked at the National Reconnaissance Office director. “Dr. Pressfield?”
“Confirmed, ma’am,” said the NRO chief. He was a rumpled bald man who looked like George from the Jerry Seinfeld show.
“Well,” Garland said, “it now appears that the accident was in fact an assault by heliborne troops. The only survivor was the laboratory director, a PLA colonel, who escaped on foot across the border.”
“How do we know that?” Admiral McCormack asked. “And who were the assaulters?”
“Patience, Harold,” the president said. “The plot thickens.” He circled a finger at Katie to continue.
“In the interim,” Garland went on, “an apparently unrelated incident occurred in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Mozambique. An African cargo vessel ran ashore, with its entire crew of eighty-two personnel missing and presumed deceased.”
“Been tracking that,” the chief of Homeland Security muttered. “Thought it was hype.”
“That’s the drama CNN’s been flacking all week, like the Flight 370 thing,” General Wheeler said, referencing the 2014 disappearance of a Malaysian airliner that had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
“You need to start watching Newsmax, General,” the president said, “instead of that cartoon network.”
“Noted, Mr. President.” The Joint Chiefs chairman smiled, though he also flushed a bit.
Rockland nodded at Katie Garland, and she carried on.
“Further, the aforementioned contractors have now rescued our Chinese colonel, while being opposed by these anti-Communist Swords of Qing. We now believe the destroyed laboratory was developing a gain-of-function biowarfare agent, and that weapon may now be in the hands of the insurgents, with nefarious intent.”
“Excuse me, Kate.” Air Force chief Myberg raised a finger. She was a former C-17 pilot with dark red hair and silver wings on her blue dress uniform. “Define gain of function.”
“It’s a biological warfare development technique,” the president broke in. “You take a naturally occurring virus and enhance its lethality, like we used to do with anthrax at Fort Detrick. It’s the same thing that happened with that lab in Wuhan and Covid-19.” He thanked Garland with a chin dip and turned to the CIA director. “Take it from here, Tina.”
“Our speculation—and that’s all it is at the moment,” Harcourt said, “is that the ghost ship in Africa was used as a test bed, but we’re still not sure by whom. Additionally, the president has received direct contact from a singleton source in China, claiming to be an informant inside the Central Committee. This man claims that the Chinese Communist Party is planning an assault on our warships in the South China Sea, which may or may not involve this biowarfare agent.”
“Holy Christ,” Admiral McCormack whispered.
The conference devolved into sputters as the president’s advisors regaled one another with I-told-you-so comments. Vice President Carson tapped on his remote microphone, which snapped heads around, and he said from his flat-screen perch, “Please, people. I can’t hear when you all do that.”
They settled back in their plush chairs, though a couple were loosening ties and pouring themselves water from crystal carafes. A young woman sitting behind Tina Harcourt tentatively touched the CIA director’s shoulder and whispered something. Harcourt tapped her CIA fountain pen on the table, making a pinging like sonar.
“If you all would indulge us, please,” she said. “My senior Chinese analyst has something to offer.”
“Go ahead, young lady,” the president said.
“This is Felicia Min.” Harcourt turned her chair aside to give her analyst the floor.
The young woman was trembling as she rose from her chair behind Harcourt. She was short and slim, in a pale gray suit and large glasses beneath drop-down black bangs. She clutched a thick file folder over her chest and only made eye contact with the table. Felicia Min was her name, but to Zaifeng and the Swords of Qing, she was “Scarlet.”
“Mr. President, and most honored guests,” she began in a slight Cantonese accent, “the Swords of Qing are a small group of Chinese nationalists, who believe that the Chinese Communist Party must be overthrown, and that the rule of China must be returned to the rightful descendants of the last emperor of China, Aisin Gioro Puyi.”
She was telling the truth about that part. The rest was a lie.
“However, this group of dissidents are, as you would say in English, wannabees. They have no power, no methods of effecting their aims. I have researched them thoroughly for years. It is my belief that this entire effort is in fact a false flag operation by the CCP. Beijing is using these activities, and the Swords of Qing claims, as a carefully designed smoke screen. Their true objective is to confuse us and take us off course.”
“All right, Ms. Min,” the president said. “So if that’s the case, then what do you think is Beijin
g’s plan?”
Felicia Min at last looked directly at someone, in this case the most powerful man in the world.
“Mr. President, they are going to invade Taiwan.”
The tank fell silent as a grave. Tina Harcourt nodded at Min, and the young woman bowed and sat down. The president took a long sip of water. He wished it was gin.
“Director,” he said to Harcourt, “do you support this theory?”
“Mr. President,” Tina said, “I have full faith in our subject matter experts. Her assessment should come as no surprise.”
Rockford folded his fingers on the table and stared into nothing as he thought about the implications. No one could deny the red Chinese lust for Taiwan, which they’d regarded as a renegade province ever since Chiang Kai-shek had declared its independence in 1950. Beijing’s hatred for Taipei was legendary—it was said that every time Taiwan held military exercises, or “sneezed,” the CCP caught a cold and became further enraged. Had the Reds decided to make their move? And if they did, who could stop them but the United States? He raised his head and looked at many pairs of geopolitically experienced eyes.
“All right, people. Better give me sitreps.” He jabbed his presidential pen at McCormack. “Admiral?”
“We’ve got the Roosevelt carrier strike group steaming that way. Her escorts include one guided missile cruiser and five guided missile destroyers, and she’s got a full air wing of F-18s and support aircraft aboard. I’ll have to check on the sub deployments.”
“All right. General Myberg?”