China Strike

by Matt Rees

  ALSO AVAILABLE BY MATT REES

  FICTION

  The Damascus Threat

  A Name in Blood

  Mozart’s Last Aria

  The Fourth Assassin

  The Samaritan’s Secret

  A Grave in Gaza

  The Collaborator of Bethlehem

  The Ambassador (with Yehuda Avner)

  NONFICTION

  Cain’s Field: Faith, Fratricide, and Fear in the Middle East

  CHINA STRIKE

  AN ICE THRILLER

  MATT REES

  NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Matt Rees.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-68331-134-8

  ISBN (ePub): 978-1-68331-136-2

  ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-68331-137-9

  ISBN (ePDF): 978-1-68331-138-6

  Cover design by Craig Polizzotto

  www.crookedlanebooks.com

  Crooked Lane Books

  34 West 27th St., 10th Floor

  New York, NY 10001

  First edition: July 2017

  TO MATTHEW KALMAN

  AND

  HANS-JÜRGEN JANSEN AND MONIKA TRAPP

  The obstacle is the path.

  —Zen proverb

  CONTENTS

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 2

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Part 3

  Chapter 29

  PART 1

  CHAPTER 1

  The bastards fired him at the end of the graveyard shift, after he loaded the last pallet of blank paper and ink cartridges onto the truck and waved it into the night. Gibson pulled on his Knicks jacket and shivered out into the parking lot. On the overhead line, the A-train carried the first comatose office workers toward a tense new day of bitching around the water cooler and fielding calls from people who were almost as mad as they were. He laid his hands flat on the cold roof of his car and squeezed out a pinch-mouthed whine of frustration that seemed to match the squealing wheels of the subway train on its elevated tracks. Those people were heading into a new day, but day wasn’t coming. Gibson dropped into the driver’s seat of his Darien Focal and tried to slam the door. It shut almost noiselessly, as if it could handle all the pressure he couldn’t. He pulled through the gate in the chain link fence onto Atlantic Avenue, turning on the wipers against the drizzling rain.

  The plastic freshness of the carpets in the car taunted him. It was the clean scent of the indulgent life he would never have. He pulled up at a red light. If he hadn’t bought this car, he’d only be halfway screwed now that he had lost his job. He had taken out a loan to finance the new car instead of picking up a used vehicle at a price he could afford. He got the new car because he deserved it. He deserved to sit in a cabin infused with the smell of success. Not the dusty scent of the old Saturn he remembered his father driving when he was a kid. The pristine odor of this car was part of a picture he had of himself in which he would drive it home each day to a nice house out on Long Island with spotless rooms and the bouquet of fresh paint. He would come through the front door to greet his wife and their new child. Sure, he had figured he deserved it. Now he knew what he really deserved. To be all the way screwed. Yeah, what he deserved.

  He took out his phone and thumbed through to his wife’s number.

  “Hey, asshole.” A man in a tan trench coat hammered the hood of the Darien. He opened his arms wide in outrage and glared at Gibson.

  Gibson dropped his eyes back to his phone and shoved his foot down on the brake. He had been creeping into the crosswalk. Don’t kid yourself, he told himself. You’re not moving forward, no way. Not even that slow.

  The man came around to the side window. He thumped it. His cheeks were red with the morning cold and a recent shave. The belt of his trench coat was cinched tight over the kind of bulk that signifies an athlete gone to midlife seed. Gibson was accustomed to this shit. Heading home from the night shift, and everyone else grumpy on their way to work, half asleep and ready to rumble. It didn’t matter to most of them that they were mixing it with a six-five African American in his twenties. They were supposed to be scared of him. But when a New Yorker was pissed, he got pissed beyond all reason and all fear.

  Gibson dropped the window. “I’m sorry, sir. I apologize.”

  The man had his fingers over the rim of the window, holding tight, knuckles pale. “You could’ve damned well killed me.”

  Only if you’re one of those guys who bleeds to death after a gentle poke, Gibson thought. Trench Coat didn’t look like a hemophiliac and Gibson had been moving slower than the guy was walking. The light changed. Half of New York leaned on their horns behind him. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

  The man in the trench coat stepped back. He kicked the rear door of Gibson’s Darien. Gibson heard the metal dent. The man walked away quickly toward the Ralph Avenue Station. Gibson knew he was looking at about two hundred dollars of damage to the car. He could work that off in two days. Except that now he had no work. For an instant, he imagined everyone on the street dead by his hand. Then he remembered Miranda, and he shut the window.

  He eased onto the gas. He put Miranda on speakerphone.

  “Hi, honey. You on the way?” She was still sleepy. She never let him come home and find her in bed, though. She would wake up and brush her teeth and take a shower and dress for work, and she would welcome him and feed him and tuck him in between the sheets before she went off to the Pioneer Supermarket and ten hours of standing behind the meat counter for eight dollars an hour.

  “I got fired.” He watched the cars and trucks overtake him on the inside, weaving around him. He drove carefully in his new car.

  “Aw, damn, baby.”

  “I didn’t do nothing. It’s just cutbacks, you know?”

  “Sure, sweetheart.”

  He listened to the silence. He was a man, and a man was supposed to have a solution. But he had nothing to say. How about this? “Don’t worry. I’ll get a new job, and we’ll make the down payment on the house in Freeport anyhow.” Yeah, how about it? He could no more fill the silence than he could buy that house, now.

  “We’ll be okay.” The streetlights went out. Look at that, the world didn’t end. The day was starting anyway. “I guess.”

  “No guessing. We will be okay. Little Anthony is not going to grow up in a rental right here next to the sewage treatment plant and the airport.”

  “Don’t forget the expressway.” He smiled.

  “Not next to that, neither. The only way is u
p. Hey, you didn’t complain about the name. I called him Little Anthony, and I didn’t hear you say a thing.”

  “I’m going to let you call him Anthony. It’s okay. I give.”

  She laughed low. “Deshawn is a dumbass name. You think I’m going to let you give our son a dumbass name?”

  He smiled. “Okay. I said I give. I love your name, Anthony. I want our baby to have your name too.”

  He teared up. Every time he failed, she reminded him that he hadn’t failed her. He turned south onto Rockaway Boulevard. A Lufthansa jet lifted off at JFK. Briefly it seemed to be heading directly at him. Then it canted its wings toward the ocean.

  “We still got the payments on the car to make,” he said.

  “Sell the car. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a car.”

  “But in Freeport—”

  “In Freeport they’ve got busses and the Long Island Rail Road. I know you loved getting that car. But we’re okay without it.”

  “If we even get to Freeport.”

  “We are going to Freeport.”

  He crossed Woodhaven Boulevard. “You know what? I’m going to sell the car right now.”

  “Anthony, come home and let me make you breakfast.”

  He knew she had heard the fakery in his voice, the fragile enthusiasm cloaking a desperation that could only lead to disaster. “I’m going to drive it right back to the dealership and sell it to them. Whatever they’ll give me.”

  “It’s six AM. The dealership won’t be open.”

  “I’ll wait in the lot for them to open. Soon as they do, I’ll sell the car, and I’ll go out to find a job. Not on no night shift, neither.”

  “Just come home.”

  “You go on ahead to work now. I’m going to take care of this.”

  “Anthony—”

  “I said go to work.” He was driving too fast. He lightened his foot on the gas. He made his voice soothing. “Miranda, hell, I just—”

  “It’s all right. You do what needs doing, Anthony, and you do it your way. I trust you.”

  “Okay. I’ll come by the market later.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  He hung up. He turned south to skirt around Aqueduct. Amid the concrete of Queens, the grass of the racetrack and the bright white rail gleamed between the stands, a sliver of another richer world. The Darien was a simple family sedan, but when he drove it, Gibson was a jockey on a sleek thoroughbred, pounding around the track. He bought the car from a dealership in Ozone Park, barely five minutes away. He’d have an hour or two to enjoy just sitting in the car before he gave it up.

  He inhaled that scent. It was never going to last. Soon enough he’d have a baby, and the car would smell of diapers and discarded morsels of food. Well, he’d have enjoyed that too.

  The sound system. That was sweet. He turned on the radio. An orotund Midwestern baritone boomed out at him, telling him the news like the world was about to be over. “Secretary of State William Kurtz faces off against Chinese trade negotiators at a new round of talks in Vienna this week. Kurtz says Beijing is pushing the talks to the brink with demands for big concessions on Chinese imports to the United States.” The secretary of state’s patrician lockjaw tones cut through the clicking of a photojournalist scrum. “We’re prepared to negotiate in good faith, and we’re hopeful that the Chinese delegation will approach the talks in a similar manner. We all have to walk a careful line here. Threats are not constructive. When you issue a threat to get the upper hand in negotiations, you never know when someone’s going to hear you out there and misunderstand and take irreversible action that’s harmful to both sides of the issue.” The newsman came back in. “Trade talks are expected to conclude in early July. Next up, traffic from—”

  Gibson tapped the control on the steering wheel, and the radio zipped through to a jazz station. “The Sidewinder” hit the riff twice, and then Lee Morgan went into his solo, the triplets fast and just enough off the beat to be irresistible. Gibson reached his right arm over the top of the passenger seat and spread himself out in his fine automobile. Lee Morgan was a phenomenally talented trumpeter who died young because of his heroin addiction. Anthony Gibson lost his job in a warehouse and was giving up his car, but he had his health and his life and another life that was growing inside a wife whom he loved. Maybe the people riding the subway into Manhattan had it right. It was a new day, after all.

  The sole of his right sneaker suddenly dropped. He frowned. The resistance in the accelerator pedal had disappeared. The engine revved. The pedal was stuck, flush to the floor. The car jolted ahead, picking up speed.

  Gibson stamped on the brake. He felt only slackness and the speed of the car forcing him back into his chair. He glanced at the speedometer. He was doing sixty on a narrow suburban street.

  Ahead of him, the street met the feeder road for the expressway. He yanked on the hand brake. The Darien fishtailed a little, but the acceleration continued. Gibson cursed and jammed down on the foot brake again.

  As he sped toward the end of the road, a blue car came across the junction at high speed, blaring its horn so loud Gibson couldn’t hear the sax solo on the radio. The driver shimmied around a Ryder truck and went right into the back of a Toyota sedan.

  “What the—?” Gibson howled. He couldn’t see what was entering the junction from the south, and he couldn’t stop to find out. He might make it across the feeder road and come to a halt in the long grass on the other side. But he might just plough straight into another car.

  A silver Darien Cayuse flew into the junction. The driver tried to cut left. He was going too fast. The SUV flipped onto its side and rolled into the back of the Ryder truck.

  “Oh, shit.” Gibson entered the junction. The speedometer said 110.

  The cab of a massive semi rolled in front of him.

  He wrenched the wheel to the right. He almost passed the semi. Then a red Darien Venturan came out on the other side of the truck, fast as the jet taking off from JFK. It struck Gibson’s car right where he sat.

  He lifted out of his seat and felt the entire universe break over him at once. He landed in the long grass and tumbled with the sense that some parts of his body were detaching, snapping away. When he was still, he looked up at the sky. It was dark and then darker.

  He couldn’t see the road. But he heard the crashes, one after the other. On the expressway beyond the grass too. Engines whining, racing too fast. Cars tumbling, bouncing, and crushing with the sound of a plastic food container in the hands of a petulant child. Everyone was crashing.

  A tall man ran over to Gibson and knelt beside him. “Sir, do you hear me?”

  Gibson squinted. Hard to see anything, but he picked out the blue eyes and the black hair, and then he saw the pistol in the shoulder holster. “Don’t shoot.” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “I’m here to help you, sir. What’s your name?”

  He couldn’t think of his name. His brain was shutting off. The only names he remembered came to him. He wanted to say Miranda. Then he said, “Little Anthony.”

  “Anthony, I’m going to help you. My name is Dominic Verrazzano. I’m a federal agent. I’m going to get you help.”

  Federal agent? What happened to me? Gibson stared and blinked. What’d I do?

  The agent made a call on his cell phone. He yelled above the chaos of the pileup, the screaming people, and the keening car alarms and wheezing radiators. “Not all of them. It looks to be only Dariens. But they’re crashing. Every one that I can see. I need an ambulance. I have a guy here who’s—”

  A guy who’s good as gone, Gibson thought.

  “I’m going to get you an ambulance, Anthony.” The agent leaned close. “It may take some time, though. The roads are going to be jammed. Can you hang in there with me?”

  The ejection from the car and the fall had shredded Gibson’s Knicks jacket. His phone slipped from the jacket pocket. The agent grabbed it. “Is there someone I can call who can talk to you while we wait for th
e ambulance, Anthony?”

  Gibson snorted like a horse running out of steam on the track at Aqueduct.

  The agent worked the screen of the phone. “Miranda?” He had found the last incoming call. “Who’s Miranda? I’m calling Miranda. Anthony, you’re going to talk to Miranda for me. Stay with me, now.”

  He leaned in close as he spoke into the phone. “Miranda? I don’t have time to explain. I need you to talk to Anthony. He’s been in an accident. I just need him to hear your voice now, okay?”

  The phone was at his ear, but Gibson heard nothing. The agent’s face was inches away. He saw compassion in it.

  “Say something to Miranda, Anthony. What do you want to tell her, Anthony?”

  Tell Miranda, he thought, that car killed me.

  CHAPTER 2

  After Verrazzano closed Anthony Gibson’s eyes, he surveyed the highways and boulevards, jammed with totaled vehicles wrecked in impacts with Dariens. People gathered in small groups around the victims they pulled from the chaos. Others stood about hopelessly, peering through crushed bodywork at someone trapped or dead. It was curious, Verrazzano thought, the perplexity these onlookers displayed. So many people died on the roads that these New Yorkers ought to have sauntered blithely on to their destinations, stepping over the corpses on the blacktop. Their shock was less at the carnage than at the realization that this had been going on every moment of their lives and that they had never once paused to sense the pain that they could inflict with one moment of inattention or aggression behind the wheel. The pain that could end them in the split second it took to glance at a cell phone or to fumble for a better radio station.

  Unlike them, Verrazzano understood. He was a former Special Forces guy, “special” because he was trained to survive in an environment so hostile it would fry the average soldier in a matter of minutes. He could track and neutralize a target anywhere in the world. Most of all, he had inflicted death so often that he had learned to look beyond it. For him, a body on the road was nothing to gawk at. He had long ago considered where the soul went and concluded that it was free and clean and that it left all its suffering on the one who had been the instrument of its death.