The insistent ring of the satellite phone shattered Zheng’s thoughts. “Let it ring,” he ordered Han, without opening his eyes. “I’m in no mood to take calls.”
“General, the number is from our contact in Kuwait.”
Muttering, Zheng walked over and grabbed the phone from Han’s waiting hand. “I’m secure on this end. Give me good news, Wulóng.”
“Your men are dead, General,” replied the smooth, cold voice.
Zheng pounded the hood of his car. He took the phone away from his ear and stopped himself just short of smashing it against the tree. “I assume,” he said, struggling to control his voice, “that this was not your doing.”
The question did not faze the caller in the slightest. “No, it was not. I believe that your men failed to account for all of the variables. Either that, or your source has turned.”
Zheng considered the possibility for a moment and then let out a short sigh. “No, I don’t believe that is possible. Hei Ying is reliable, if not perpetually ineffective in this one mission.”
“Perhaps the general will consider trusting such work to me in the future.” For the first time, Zheng detected a change in Wulóng’s tone, the tiniest rise in the tenor of his icy voice, an anticipation of pleasure in the work he suggested.
“Yes, Wulóng, I will,” Zheng replied. “In fact, I have something for you here. I am going to Beijing. I will need you to meet me there at your earliest convenience, at the usual place.”
“Of course, General.”
PART TWO
DRAGONS
CHAPTER 15
Ethan Quinn hefted the camouflage backpack on his shoulder and looked forlornly at the Human Resources Training Center. He had just arrived and he already hated this place.
Randolph Air Force Base would become his home for the next four years. After HR training, he would disappear into the massive black hole that was the Air Force Personnel Center. Then he would get out of the military at his allotted time with zero career prospects. He chuckled. Petrovsky probably intended this irony. Thanks to the captain’s beautifully crafted Article 15, the only Air Force job that Quinn could get was to find jobs for other airmen.
The brown sign on the curb said it all. Not the lettering—HUMAN RESOURCES TRAINING CENTER—but the neglected condition. It said so much more. Forgotten. Ignoble. Unimportant.
When he lifted his eyes from the depressing sign, Quinn noticed an Army colonel seated on the bench outside the training center’s glass double doors. He stopped and saluted.
The colonel leaned over to set his foam cup down next to the bench and then stood and saluted back. “Try not to look so happy to be here,” he said with a thin smile.
Quinn dropped his salute. Clearly, the officer wanted to engage him in conversation. Why couldn’t this Army meathead just let him pass and get on with his misery? “I’m sorry to rush by, sir. I have to report in for training.”
The colonel smiled. “Perhaps I misjudged, Mr. Quinn. A moment ago you didn’t look like you were in any hurry to be a Human Resources specialist.”
Quinn paused. The colonel had called him by name. For a fraction of a second, he thought there might be more to this meeting than chance. Then he realized that the meathead had just read his name tag; senior officers were adept at that. He smiled congenially. “No, sir. This wasn’t my first career choice. I’m sorry. I really have to get in there.”
Quinn tried to step around him, but the big man deftly stepped back into his path. Quinn lowered his head and bit his lip. On the first day of his personal purgatory, he was going to have to punch a colonel. He wondered how many years he would spend behind bars at Leavenworth. Looking up, he forced another smile. “Sir, I don’t want to be late. The first sergeant is expecting me.”
Colonel Richard Walker smiled and shook his head. “No, Ethan. He’s not.”
Quinn’s eyes grew wide. His name tag didn’t include his first name. A number of detailed questions rose in his mind, but “Sir?” was all that he managed to spit out.
“Let’s have a seat,” said Walker, indicating the bench he’d occupied a few moments before. “You are Senior Airman Ethan Quinn, are you not?”
“Affirmative, sir.” Quinn’s mind reeled, still trying to catch up to the situation.
Walker picked up his coffee. He took a sip and then looked Quinn in the eye. “I run a small Air Force unit that operates out of the Andrews Joint Base in Washington, DC.”
“But you’re Army,” interrupted Quinn.
Walker held up a hand. “Yes, I know. Try to get past that. It’ll be a lot easier for all of us. As I was saying, I run this small Air Force outfit. We conduct small unit special missions at the request of the Joint Chiefs or higher authorities.”
“Higher authorities? You mean, like, the president?”
“Very good. Your file says you’re sharp,” said Walker, taking another drink of coffee to punctuate his sarcasm. He set the cup down beside the bench. “Our missions have grown in scope over the years, and my team lead has requested that I expand the field team. Getting down to the point, I’m offering you a job.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Quinn, leaning back against the arm of the bench. “You run a clandestine Special Forces unit that deploys on the orders of the Joint Chiefs and the president of the United States, and you’re trying to recruit me—the guy who got kicked out of Special Forces training?”
“No, I run the best clandestine unit this country has ever seen, and I’m offering you a job because you got kicked out of training.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Wow, kid, maybe you do need that HR training. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to look so thick at a job interview?”
Blood rushed to Quinn’s cheeks. He opened his mouth to say something insubordinate, but he suddenly felt pain radiating from the scar left by the accident with Haugen. He bit back his response.
“Look,” Walker continued, “you’re not the only man for the job, but you are readily available. You have all the Special Tactics skills that I need, all the pipeline badges that I require. There are lots of guys who fit that bill. The difference is those other guys are all spoken for.”
Walker lifted a file out of a leather portfolio sitting next to him. He waved it in front of Quinn. “You, on the other hand, did not technically graduate. Thus, you don’t meet anyone’s quotas. You’re a free agent. Are you starting to catch on, genius?”
Quinn nodded. He finally understood. Despite the obnoxious and abusive comments, this old grunt was offering him a job doing what he loved. But the glorious image of jumping out of V-22s again did not fill his mind; instead, he saw the grotesque vision of Haugen dying next to the road.
The last vestige of blood and anger drained from Quinn’s expression. He dropped his gaze to the concrete. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m your man.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m not right for the job, sir.” Ethan stood up and raised his hand in salute. “I have to report in to the first sergeant.”
Walker nodded. “I see.” He picked up the leather portfolio and removed a small bundle wrapped in black cloth. “Either way, I think this is yours. Petrovsky had no right to withhold it from you. You earned it.” He put the bundle in Quinn’s left hand and returned the younger man’s salute. Then he picked up his coffee and walked into the parking lot.
Quinn stared down at the black cloth in his hands. Without a conscious thought, he began to unwrap it, revealing a maroon beret with the pararescueman’s badge pinned to the front. He smiled despite himself.
Then a cloth patch slipped out of the black wrapping and fell onto the ground. Quinn picked it up and turned it over to dust it off. The design on the triangular patch looked muted, stealthy. The colors were so dark that he had to hold it closer to his eyes to break them out from the black background. A bronze dagger with
a deep green handle stood blade down toward the base of the triangle. On the blade, scarlet lettering proclaimed THIRD TIME LUCKY, and beneath the tip, emblazoned in the same color, the number 777 was written with thick, elegant script.
Quinn felt a surge of electricity pulse through his body, the sensation of a thousand pinpricks assaulting his skin all at once. He felt as if his nervous system had suddenly woken up after days of sleep. He looked up at the entrance to the training center. Suddenly, the double doors, the sign, the whole center, looked as two dimensional as a Hollywood cutout thrown up in his path, a poorly conceived April Fool’s joke that was never funny in the first place. He turned around in time to see the colonel getting into a blue Air Force sedan. “Wait!” he shouted, pulling off his camouflage cap and putting on the beret. “I changed my mind!”
CHAPTER 16
Chen looked down at the tin plate of slop that he carried and immediately recoiled at the smell. He held it away from his body as if it were a glass vial full of infectious disease. Spoiled rice, covered with pungent brown gravy that had already begun to congeal; this meal was not even fit for the mangy dogs that haunted the forest beyond the fence. “Hong Mo,” he yelled, banging on the cell door with his nightstick. “Yidong, Hong Mo! Get back! Your breakfast is here.”
Chen gave the door a final whack with his stick and then opened it just wide enough to toss the plate into the cell, spilling most of its contents onto the concrete floor. He shut the door quickly, listening for the satisfying sound of the foreign devil scrambling forward to scrape his daily meal from the floor. But he heard nothing.
“Hong Mo!” he shouted, banging on the door even harder. “Wake up, you lazy American dog! Come and get your slop!” He waited again, but still there was no sound. Was the American finally dead? Unlikely. Hong Mo had been in the prison for years, and he’d never complained of anything worse than a common cold or a toothache.
Chen felt his pulse accelerating. He hesitated a moment more and then burst into the cell. In his haste, he slipped in the spilled gravy and fell flat on his back, knocking the air from his lungs. It took a few moments for him to recover from the fall and regain control of his limbs. When he finally struggled to his feet, he let fly a tirade of Chinese curses and turned toward the cot in the corner, raising his nightstick to vent his anger on the American. But the cot was empty. Hong Mo was gone.
Chen cursed again. Disgusting brown goo covered his uniform, and his back ached. How had the devil escaped? There was no way to open the door from inside the cell, no window to the outside. His mind reeled, replaying the last few moments. Then fear gripped him. He remembered a flash of gray as he fell. Was it the prison wall or the prisoner himself?
He knew he should sound the alarm, but the commandant would surely ask what had happened to his uniform. The punishment for being so easily fooled would be severe. He kept a spare uniform in his locker. He could change quickly. Hong Mo would not get far.
Several minutes later, Chen stood in the cell with the commandant, unconsciously running a hand along the back of his new shirt, as if he might still find the telltale slop stuck to its fabric. The prison’s small contingent of guards searched the hallways and the yard for any sign of the lost prisoner.
The older man, a colonel, eyed the smeared brown goo on the floor. “Tell me again how it happened,” he prompted.
“I . . . I do not know,” stammered Chen. “He made no sound when I brought his morning meal. I thought he might be dead, so I entered the cell to investigate. I found it empty, just as it is now.”
“I see.” The commandant nodded. He gave a final look around the cell and then walked out into the hallway. Chen followed close behind.
“Sir, you must call the Fujian Provincial Command. The prisoner may already be in the forest. We need more manpower for a search of this magnitude.”
The colonel stopped short and slowly turned to face the young guard. “I must do nothing of the kind,” he said. “I will not bear the embarrassment of losing such a weakened ghost of a man. This is an internal prison matter, and we will keep it that way. Is that clear?”
The commandant’s response left Chen mystified. Surely a man of his station understood the political ramifications if Hong Mo escaped the country? Chen became angry. This fat, lazy has-been would sacrifice the honor of the whole country to save his own? He squared his shoulders. “But Colonel,” he began.
The commandant held up a finger, stopping Chen before he could continue. “Is that clear, Chen?” he asked again.
This time Chen heard distinct malice behind the question. His shoulders sagged, and he bowed. “Yes, sir.”
The commandant lowered his hand. “Good,” he said. “This is for everyone’s protection, you know. If the American’s escape becomes a public affair, someone will have to be held accountable. Someone will have to take the blame . . . and the punishment.” He paused and looked Chen up and down. “By the way, Guard Chen, I must compliment you on the pristine state of your uniform, particularly so late in the day. Although your shoes could use some polish.”
Chen looked down. There were splashes of brown muck across the top of his shoes, some of it already crusted and dry. Both men had just inspected the empty cell, but the colonel only had a slight smear of gravy on the sole of one boot. Chen bowed again, more fervently this time. “My men are very resourceful, most respected Commandant. We will find Hong Mo on our own.”
CHAPTER 17
Sergeant Will McBride sat alone in a small, darkened room. His only light came from the faint glow of the two LCD monitors at his workstation. On one of the screens, a series of black-and-white images flipped by at the precise rate of one per second, but they showed nothing of consequence, just dense forest and the occasional road. On the other, a tiny picture of an RQ-4B Global Hawk inched along the Chinese coast heading southeast, toward the Taiwan Strait.
The Global Hawk’s two-man crew controlled the aircraft from a ground station in California while McBride monitored the mission from an intelligence center in Maryland. The young, freckled sergeant stretched and adjusted his headset. He could hear the idle conversation between the pilot and the sensor operator, which meant they had their radio set on VOX. The discussion centered on the potential for good surfing weather during the upcoming weekend.
How nice for them.
McBride keyed his microphone. “Pegasus, this is Intel. Request update.”
“You can see everything we can, Intel,” replied the pilot, annoyed at the interruption. “Nothing to report.”
“Copy,” answered McBride. “Just trying to stay awake.”
With Seventh Fleet’s Task Force 77 steaming toward Pearl for reconstitution, the Global Hawks had been flying extra sorties, keeping an eye on Chinese military operations across the strait. But the Chinese weren’t doing much, and staying alert through long hours of staring at featureless pictures had become a real challenge.
McBride settled back in his chair and glanced over at the endless parade of forest. The Global Hawk’s synthetic aperture radar could scan through multiple layers of clouds and still create incredibly fine digital images. For McBride, the result was this slide show of black-and-white trees. He sighed. They were unbelievably detailed trees, but they were still trees.
Just as McBride’s eyelids began to fall, the forest cleared. The trees broke before a large fenced complex where low rectangular buildings stood at the center of a large open yard. McBride blinked hard and tried to focus. Through the slow progression of images, he could see the yard filling with troops.
“Pegasus, this is Intel. Please hold scan on these grids,” said McBride.
“Uh, yeah, Intel, we were just looking at that. Looks like a little exercise or something.”
McBride turned to his other monitor and opened his mission briefing. “Possibly,” he said, scanning the document, “but we don’t show any current exercises in our intelligence for this
sector.”
“Typical Intel,” said the pilot, his voice distant and tinny. “If it’s not on their calendar, it must not be happening.”
McBride closed his eyes and bit his tongue. “Be advised that you’re on VOX. I can still hear you.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” There was a digital click on the line, and the stifled laughter in the background abruptly went silent. “Okay, Intel,” the pilot continued, “What is this compound?”
“Stand by, Pegasus.” McBride ran a program to correlate the exact coordinates of the imagery with recent intelligence files. Three documents popped open on his screen. The second one had a small photo in the top-right corner that matched the buildings in the imagery.
“Pegasus, you are looking at Detention Center Twenty-six of the Fujian Ministry of Justice. Our intelligence says that this facility is hardly used, just a small troop of guards with no current prisoners.”
The pilot yawned. “Yep, it’s an exercise. They must be trying to keep the guards sharp. Look, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. If we hold the scan here much longer, we’ll have to reprogram the bird to compensate. We need to move on. Now.”
McBride stared hard at the advancing imagery. Several of the men in the pictures now appeared to have weapons drawn. Others were leaving the yard and fanning out into the forest. This looked like more than an exercise. “Hold here for another two minutes, Pegasus. I want my supervisor to have a look.” He picked up the hard-line receiver and began to dial the duty officer, but before he finished the compound disappeared and thick forest again filled the screen.
“Negative, Intel,” said the pilot. “It’s just an exercise. We’re moving on.”
McBride hesitated, his finger hovering over the telephone keypad. Finally, he placed the receiver back in its cradle. “Copy that, Pegasus. Moving on.”
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