Edge of War - [Red Dragon Rising 02]

by Larry Bond

  A nice irony there.

  He found a door to the basement in the hall and went downstairs. A door at the far end led to a small backyard, fenced off from the alley behind by a tall, solid fence. The yard was only a few feet deep, and covered with old cement.

  The basement was mostly empty, with a small metal kitchen table near the outside door. A set of old flower pots sat in the middle of the table. Closer to the stairs were a washing machine, a dryer, and the boiler. Next to the boiler was an old room used to store coal when the building was new. The door had a padlock, with a key still inserted in it.

  Metal shelves lined the walls. On the shelves to his right were four pistols, in varying sizes, from a two-shot derringer to a Magnum. There were submachine guns—an FN-P90 bullpup-style gun, a mini-Uzi, and an MP-5N. And there was a Remington bolt rifle, outfitted with sniper scope and small bipod, in a black case that looked as if it were for an electric guitar.

  Strongboxes filled with ammunition were stacked on the opposite shelves. At the base was a kit for an RPG-29V rocket-propelled-grenade launcher, with four thermobaric antipersonnel rounds and four rounds designed to pierce a main battle tank’s armor.

  Jing Yo took only the Glock 9 mm pistol and the small derringer, locking the door and taking the key with him back upstairs.

  The second bedroom had been converted to a study. The desk was an old secretary, packed with books and dictionaries, the sort of thing a scholar might have had in his house before the Internet.

  A briefcase sat next to the desk. Jing Yo opened it, and found a custom-built laptop inside. When he booted it up, it asked for a password.

  His name in pinyin unlocked it.

  There were several programs installed, including a Web browser that connected via a satellite modem card. Jing Yo clicked on an icon for Google Earth. The program zoomed on the house he was sitting in.

  The detail was extremely fine—much better than he would have seen with Google. As he moved the cursor, he saw a time stamp at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. The image had been taken earlier in the day.

  He opened the Web browser and examined the bookmarks. One led to Senator Grasso’s calendar, apparently posted on an internal Web site used by the senator’s staff. Others led to pages with information about the places where the senator was due to appear the following day: a Catholic school on Long Island, a science museum in Queens, and the UN.

  As he examined the links, Jing Yo’s stomach began to growl. He’d skipped lunch and forgotten dinner.

  He got up and went to the refrigerator. It was stocked with a variety of food. He took out a frozen pizza and began to preheat the oven. As he waited for it to reach temperature, he noticed a coffee cup with two sets of keys on the counter beneath the cabinet. One set said Ford on it; the other was blank, but looked to him as if it went to a motorbike.

  He placed the pizza in the oven, then went out to the front stoop and looked up and down the block. There was a Ford Taurus parked across the street. He walked over slowly and, after making sure no one was around, placed the key in the lock.

  It didn’t fit.

  He spotted a pickup truck near the corner, but decided not to try it when he saw some people approaching.

  Jing Yo turned the corner and continued walking. He’d have to wait until it was much darker to check the truck. He spotted an alley up on his left and, realizing it must be the one behind the house, turned down it.

  Cars were parked along the backs of the property, with just enough room to back out without scraping one another or the tall fences on the other side.

  There was a van parked at the back edge of the house where he was staying. The key opened it.

  The scooter was in the back. The registration documents were in the van’s glove compartment, as was the key for the storage case between the front seats. Jing Yo opened the case and discovered a pair of boxes. One had a hand-held GPS unit. The other looked similar, but when activated flashed only a single-word message:

  Searching. . .

  It was a locator unit, used to track shipments. In this case, Jing Yo suspected, it would help lead him to the senator.

  “If I fail at this,” Jing Yo thought as he returned to rescue his burnt pizza from the oven, “the fault will be only mine.”

  ~ * ~

  22

  Hainan Island

  Now that they had the Chinese patrol boat, it was easy to scout the harbor area, though Zeus was careful to keep the ship well away from other military vessels. They moved east slowly, Zeus and Christian both scanning carefully with their binoculars.

  There were so many landing craft jumbled together that it was impossible to get a precise count. The preparations seemed far more ad hoc than an American or NATO operation would have been. They were using much smaller boats, more like what would have been seen during World War II than those favored by current NATO planners. The support craft that the U.S. would have used—most notably the large amphibious-warfare ships that were essentially helicopter carriers— were nonexistent. Then again, the Chinese already had a substantial fleet out in the water to the south, where presumably they were going to invade. They would be able to use the airports on Hainan and the mainland for support.

  The airport at Sanya remained open to civilian flights, with a steady stream of airliners coming in and going out. But it was also being used for military sorties—Zeus saw two flights of J-8 fighters land in the hour or so it took for them to sail leisurely across the outer harbor.

  Leisurely being a relative term.

  Their pass complete, they moved the ship farther offshore, reasoning that the farther away it was, the less likely it was to attract attention. They moored the fishing boats nearby. The marines took turns sleeping, trying to get some rest for the operation later that night.

  Wiping out the radio had been necessary to avoid being detected, but now it was needed to monitor broadcasts and figure out if the Chinese authorities were concerned about the missing ship. Christian went to work rigging up a substitute antenna. It worked well enough to pick up transmissions on the standard Chinese navy frequencies, as well as some other chatter on the general maritime bands.

  The main com handset had also been damaged in the battle. Christian also rigged a substitute that seemed workable, though Zeus put off testing it until absolutely necessary—no sense taking the risk of drawing more attention to themselves than they had to.

  If he weren’t so obnoxious—or maybe obnoxious in a different way—Christian might be a decent officer, Zeus thought. But he seemed always to be doing something to rub Zeus the wrong way.

  After covering the damage done to the superstructure with a tarp, one of the marines found some gray paint to make it less noticeable from a distance. Christian complained about the smell as if it were the most putrid scent he’d ever taken a whiff of.

  Worse, as Zeus finished sketching out the basic layout of the Chinese ships, trying to figure what their easiest target would be, Christian began beefing that technically, he, rather than Zeus, should be in command of the mission. Zeus gave him a dirty look, then went on with his work.

  “Seriously, Zeus. You think you’re better than me. I graduated at the top of the class. Not you.”

  Fortunately, they were alone. Zeus continued to ignore him.

  The most vulnerable parts of the force were located at the two extremes of the secondary harbor, away from a pair of gunboats that sat at its mouth. Striking some of the landing craft there would not be terribly difficult, and if they blew up the gunboat at roughly the same time, the effect would be dramatic.

  “So why does Perry like you better?” insisted Christian.

  “Maybe because I don’t whine about the smell of paint,” said Zeus. “Or brag about the grades I got in kindergarten.”

  “You’re calling the Point kindergarten?”

  “Want some coffee?” Zeus asked, putting his pencil down on the chart table where he’d been working.

  “You’re no
t going to answer?” Christian said. “It’s a serious question.”

  “I’m sure it is. Coffee or not?”

  Christian frowned. He was serious. He didn’t get it at all.

  “Stop acting like a jerk,” said Zeus.

  “I don’t think I am.”

  “You are.”

  “I just don’t get it.”

  Well maybe that was the first step toward recovery, Zeus thought: the admission of ignorance.

  “We’ll discuss it another time,” said Zeus. “Coffee or not?”

  ~ * ~

  If there was coffee in the galley, Zeus couldn’t find it. There was plenty of tea, though, and he settled for that. Solt came down while he was waiting for the water to boil.

  “Mr. Quach wants you,” she told him. “Ship nearby.”

  Zeus turned off the kettle and went up to the bridge. A Chinese destroyer, possibly the one they had seen earlier, had appeared on the horizon to the west.

  “They’re hailing us?” Zeus asked Quach.

  “We haven’t heard. But we don’t know whether to trust the radio.”

  “Let’s pretend we’re busy. Take us over to the fishing boats,” Zeus told the helmsman.

  The destroyer kept coming. The marines, dressed in sailor uniforms, made a show of boarding the fishing boat. Meanwhile, Christian and the marine captain manned the forward and rear gun turrets, ready to rake the larger ship if necessary.

  It would be a desperation move. Even though old, the destroyer was much larger than the patrol craft, and while they could shoot up the bridge easily enough, disabling all of the destroyer’s guns would be virtually impossible. Meanwhile, even if the destroyer’s complement had been reduced proportionately as the gunboat’s had, they would still be outnumbered four or five to one.

  Quach played with the radio, scanning the frequencies and trying to conquer the squelch, desperately trying to hear if they were being hailed. Finally, with the destroyer closing to fifty yards, he heard it hailing them.

  “This is patrol vessel 2328,” he said in Chinese. “We are conducting our patrol.”

  “Do you require assistance, 2328?” asked the radioman aboard the destroyer.

  “Negative. The fishermen are stupid and ignorant, but present no problems.”

  “Why didn’t you answer earlier?” asked a different voice, deeper and more scolding. Zeus gathered that it belonged to the destroyer’s first mate or captain.

  “The captain has ordered the mate to re-inspect the radio,” said Quach.

  “Your mast has been damaged?”

  “We have been due for repair for three weeks,” said Quach. “Since our accident. Our captain has low priority with the fleet.”

  “Be more alert next time,” scolded the radioman.

  The destroyer passed so close to one of the fishing boats that from Zeus’s angle it looked as if it were going to collide.

  “Did they buy it?” Zeus asked Quach as it cleared.

  “For now. It’s not rare for maintenance to go a long time, especially if the vessel’s captain is held in low esteem.”

  Zeus watched the destroyer turn off, making a wide wake as it headed back to the southwest. It was funny—in the computer simulations, he tended to think of the destroyers as relatively small assets, of little use. Here it loomed huge.

  “You are a good gambler,” Quach told Zeus after the destroyer disappeared behind them. “You would make an excellent spy.”

  “Gambling’s easy when you’re desperate,” said Zeus. “Problem is, sooner or later the odds nail you right between the eyes.”

  ~ * ~

  Around three in the afternoon, Zeus began planning where to set demolition charges on the patrol boat to make it look as if it had been hit by a torpedo. The marine captain, realizing what he was doing, began arguing that they shouldn’t blow it up at all.

  The patrol boat represented a large prize—if it was brought back to Vietnam, it would be a substantial addition to the fleet. He also thought it would make getting back much easier—the Chinese wouldn’t stop one of their own ships. By the time they realized it was missing, the raiding party would be in Hai Phong.

  “Our job isn’t to steal their ships,” Zeus told him. “We have to make them believe they’re vulnerable to attack. If they think the patrol boat was blown up by submarines, they’ll believe every one of those landing craft over there, and the troopships around them, are vulnerable. Even better, they’ll worry about their aircraft carriers. They’ll hesitate. They may even call off the invasion. That’s our goal. That’s why we’re here.”

  The captain began pressing his case with Quach in Vietnamese. The spy listened a little more intently than Zeus would have liked.

  “The fishing vessels are a better way to escape,” Zeus told them. “They’ll be looking for military ships. Even the Zodiacs. They’ll have every asset out. You don’t think they’ll notice a patrol boat that’s not where it belongs?”

  “They have not stopped us so far,” said the captain.

  “That’s because they see us patrolling. We just came pretty damn close. Eventually, we’ll miss something and they’ll come over to see what the hell is going on. We may have missed it already. We’re pressing our luck, believe me. Mr. Quach, tell him.”

  “The ship would be a big prize,” said Quach.

  “What good will it be against a Chinese aircraft carrier?”

  That logic seemed to settle it, though the marine captain clearly wasn’t happy.

  “They’re getting greedy,” said Christian a little while later, as they stood on the fantail eying a pleasure boat passing about a half mile away. “That can be fatal.”

  “Yeah.”

  Zeus knelt down and opened the box with the timers. They were primitive, though undoubtedly reliable. Their fuses could only be set an hour in advance. That made getting off the ship a little tight, but it wasn’t an insurmountable problem.

  “What do you think of this boat?” asked Christian.

  Zeus rose. Still holding one of the timers in his left hand, he took the binoculars in his right. There were two men in the boat. The men seemed a little too intent to be just taking a pleasure cruise, but they weren’t headed in their direction.

  “I thought the Asian mind always followed orders,” said Christian. “Does it apply across the board, or is it because we’re white?”

  Zeus focused on the men. They seemed to be looking in his direction, but that might just be curiosity.

  “You listening?” Christian asked.

  “Vaguely.” He handed the binoculars back and turned around just in time to see the marine captain and three of his men emerge from the cabin with rifles. “Shit.”

  “You will not plant the explosives on the ship,” said the captain. “You cannot do it.”

  “You’re being foolish,” said Zeus.

  “If you were to die, it would be easily explained,” answered the captain.

  “Hey, relax,” said Christian. “This isn’t that big a deal.”

  “What do you mean, big deal?” asked the marine captain.

  “I mean it’s not a problem.”

  Christian reached over to the timer Zeus had in his hand. “Put it down, dude. Come on.”

  Zeus let Christian take it.

  “It ain’t worth your life,” said Christian. “Or mine.”

  “We will take the timers and the explosives,” said the captain. “I am sorry, Major. But this ship is too important to lose. I hope you understand.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Zeus.

  “I am very sorry.”

  ~ * ~

  23

  New York City

  Josh slept for nearly ten hours, without dreams that he remembered this time. It was a deep sleep, but it didn’t leave him relaxed or at ease. Instead, his body ached when he woke up, his muscles cramped and twisted.