But when he opened the left front door, he was confronted by an empty seat. Where the hell was the steering wheel? Then he remembered: Hong Kong had spent most of the last hundred and fifty years under British management, which meant people drove on the wrong side of the road around here. For the right amount of money, American car manufacturers were willing to take that idiosyncrasy into account.
Sighing, Tombstone slid into an atmosphere of leather and cigar smoke.
On the opposite side of the vast bench seat, Martin Lee perched like a tiny porcelain doll, the steering wheel rising almost to the level of his eyes. “Seat belt, please,” he said gravely.
Tombstone had just clicked the buckle home when something hard and quite cold ground into his head just behind the bend of his jaw. “Please do not move,” a voice said in his ear. The accent resembled Martin Lee’s, but it was a man’s voice. “Or you will die.”
Tombstone glanced at Lee. He was staring at the dashboard, head lowered.
“What is this?” Tombstone asked.
“I am sorry,” Lee told the dashboard. “They have my wife. I am very sorry, sir.”
“No more talk,” the man behind Tombstone said, and a moment later, Tombstone winced as a coarse bag was hauled over his head.
TEN
Wednesday, 6 August
1300 local (-5 GMT)
Lincoln Memorial
Washington, D.C.
“This is very irregular, to say the least,” Sarah Wexler said as she mounted the last step to the top of the Lincoln Memorial. T’ing was standing in the shadow of one of the columns. Wexler found herself glancing around for bodyguards — or assassins — or something. She had no idea; she was functioning entirely on instinct.
“No one knows you came?” T’ing asked. He was wearing his usual charcoal suit and white shirt.
“No. You?”
He shook his head once. “As you say, this is very irregular.”
“It had better be good, Ambassador.”
“We do not want war,” T’ing said in a low voice.
“Ah.” Wexler felt the tension leave her shoulders, and her stomach start to smolder. “You disappoint me. After all this cloak-and-dagger stuff, I at least expected to hear some new lie instead of the same one you keep repeating at the UN”
“It is not a lie. I am telling you the truth from Beijing.”
“Really? Well, I’m afraid ‘the truth from Beijing’ pretty much equals a lie from my perspective.” God, it was liberating to speak openly for once.
T’ing did not seem offended. “I am not here to bicker, Ambassador. Bickering is for the United Nations. I am here to be blunt.”
She raised an eyebrow. Blunt? An ambassador? A Chinese ambassador? That was like the Iranian representative claiming to extol freedom of religion.
Still, she was more intrigued every minute. “Be blunt, then,” she said.
“Beijing believes America began the trouble in Hong Kong.”
“Oh, please, not the drug war nonsense again. There’s absolutely no evidence Phillip McIntyre was involved in — ”
“I am not referring to the drug war story. No one in Beijing believes that. This is blunt speaking. However, they do in fact believe American began this trouble. That is also blunt speaking. You understand, Ambassador? They truly believe it.”
“But… that’s absurd. Sink a boat belonging to one of our own citizens? Shoot down our own airplane?”
T’ing shrugged. Wexler understood, and felt a little chill: He was telling her that his masters wouldn’t think twice about doing such a thing; destroying Chinese citizens if it would further some strategic purpose. They expected it from other governments, as well.
She glanced to the foot of the steps outside the monument, where a family was gathering: three children scrambling around a pair of adults and an infant. With part of her mind, Wexler heard the kids’ shouting voices, and thought, Dutch.
“Ambassador T’ing,” she said, “you’ve lived in the United States long enough to know that even if our government was into murdering its citizens for political gain, they would never get away with it. It’s not the way we do things here.”
Again, T’ing shrugged. The Dutch family was coming up the steps, and T’ing moved farther behind the pillar. “Nevertheless, my government, like your own, bases its conclusions on the evidence at hand. They look at events in Hong Kong and think, ‘America is doing this.’ My point is simple: Until more evidence surfaces to explain what is happening in Hong Kong, the wise ruler exercises caution. And the rash ruler causes disaster.”
“But meanwhile, of course, you’re suggesting that the stupid United States just sit back and let the PLA kill its citizens in Hong Kong, right? I don’t think that’s going to work out, do you?”
“Many leaders in Beijing speak the same way about dealing with the American military near Hong Kong. This is the pity. And never forget, we have the largest army in the world.” With that, T’ing gave a short bow, turned, and walked away down the steps.
Wexler stared after him, wondering if she’d just been given delicate inside information, or a red herring, or a dire warning… or nothing but an insult.
With the Chinese, it was impossible to tell.
Thursday, 7 August
1200 local (+8 GMT)
Mess Hall
USS Jefferson
“Heard Robinson’s been bad-mouthing you, brother.”
Jackson Ord looked up at his friend Skinny Washburn. “What?”
Skinny squeezed his 250 pounds behind the table and put his tray down. “Bird Dog Robinson, Mr. Hotshot. He’s been bad-mouthing you all over the hangar bay. You ain’t heard that?”
Franklin’s stomach gave a sour lurch. He scowled. “He can’t bad-mouth me. I didn’t do nothin’ wrong. I tightened that connector, and there ain’t nobody can prove different.”
Skinny raised one massive shoulder; his other arm was busy shoveling food into he mouth. “Don’t matter if they can prove it; once you on an officer’s shit list, you got nowhere to run.”
Franklin’s scowl deepened. “Who you hear talking about that pilot bad-mouthin’ me?”
“I don’t know. Everybody.”
“Shit.” Franklin threw down his fork. “This ain’t fair.”
This time Skinny raised both shoulders. “It’s the navy.”
1400 local (+8 GMT)
Headquarters, PLA Air Force
Hong Kong Garrison
In his dream, Tombstone could not escape from the UAV. It stayed glued to his tail, banking when he banked, rolling when he rolled, looping when he looped, refusing to be evaded or tricked. And yet it didn’t come in and hit the Pitts, come and blow the little plane out of the sky, either. It just stayed there, not a foot behind the Pitts’ rudder, as if connected with a tow bar. Showing him that it was a better flier than he was. That it could take him out whenever it wanted. That it was the wave of the future…
Tombstone opened his eyes, but the darkness remained. There was a sour odor in his nostrils. His head pounded, and he had to fight the desire to vomit. He remembered the hood being yanked over his head. After that, nothing… but judging by the smell and his symptoms, the bag must have been soaked in chloroform or some other knockout chemical.
He felt a sense of movement. He was stretched out on something, on his back, moving along at a fair clip. His wrists were tied together in front of him; his ankles were tightly bound. He breathed shallowly, and waited.
At last the rolling motion stopped. Someone spoke a few clipped words of Chinese, and Tombstone felt hands clutching his armpits and the backs of his knees. He was lifted, turned vertically so his feet touched the floor, and supported there. Try to fight now? No, not blind.
He heard the sound of a lock turning, followed by the squeal of rusty hinges. The same voice that had spoken before now shouted in English, “Back! Get back!”
Then, without warning, Tombstone found himself hurtling forward. He threw his bound hands ou
t just in time to catch his weight against a floor of hard, cold stone. He skidded and rolled to a stop, then brought his hands up and yanked the hood off his head.
He was in a small, gloomy room. The walls and floor were made of stone, the low ceiling of wooden planks. The only light leaked through a narrow slit window of pebbled glass, mounted up near the ceiling. The glass was translucent, and barricaded behind metal bars.
The heavy thump of a bolt sliding home echoed across the room. Tombstone rolled over. The door was narrow and solid-looking, made of riveted metal. There was no window in it.
Tombstone’s wrists were tied with hemp rope. As he tugged the knots loose his teeth, he looked around more carefully. There wasn’t much to see — a pair of buckets standing in one gloomy corner, a pile of blankets piled in another. No furniture, no cot, no nothing. The air smelled damp and salty.
Once his hands were free, Tombstone untied his ankles, then got unsteadily to his feet. The nausea rose with him, and he bent over and waited for it to either do its job or go away. He was relieved when it chose to fade without emptying his stomach first.
He was furious with himself. Okay, so he’d never been trained as a spy. That didn’t excuse his climbing right into the trap of the enemy. So now he was a prisoner of the Red Chinese — and nobody on the outside knew it. At least, he assumed they didn’t, unless his captors had chosen to reveal their hand. If not, then it would be at least a couple of days before any of his friends or contacts began to worry about him.
“Idiot,” he wheezed at the floor. “Moron.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw one of the blankets in the corner move. He whirled. “Admiral Magruder?” a voice said, and a figure rose up, pale in the gloom. The blankets fell away, and the figure staggered toward him.
Tombstone’s eyes widened. “Lobo?”
1438 local (+8 GMT)
Admiral’s Conference Room
USS Jefferson
“ — so Washington would like me to get a look at this new bogey, if at all possible,” Tomboy concluded. “Based on our radar data, the attacking unit could have been a Combat UAV with its own warhead, A Combat UAV, or CUAV, possibly carrying multiple missiles, has really got the Pentagon sweating. They want to know more about it, and they want to know now.”
She looked around the table. Besides her, the meeting was attended by Batman, Coyote, Lab Rat and Bird Dog. She found comfort in their familiar faces. She also felt the slight buzz in her head that accompanies west-to-east jetlag, and struggled to remain focused.
Batman drummed his fingers once across the top of the table. “I take it you were impressed by Dr. George’s story, then.”
“I’d call him a credible witness.”
“So would I. The question is, what do you want to do about it? What exactly is your plan?”
She took a seat and leaned across the top of the table. “I need to fly as near the coast as possible, in an unescorted Tomcat, to see if it’s possible to lure this bogey out. If it engages, fine. If we get the chance to shoot it down, even better. But the main goal is to gather as much data on it as we can. If the Chinese have one of these things, they probably have more, and we need to know how to face them in the future.”
“Oh, that’s all you want to do?” Batman said sardonically, one eyebrow raised. “Fly around and play bait for a basically unknown enemy aircraft?” The eye beneath the peaked brow was socketed in bruised-looking flesh. Tomboy wondered when was the last time Batman had gotten more than a couple hours of sleep. “Plus,” he said, “I assume you want to use one of my aircraft.”
“Those are my orders,” Tomboy said. She knew Batman was already aware of this, but let him have his say. He deserved the opportunity to vent.
“Well, I don’t like it,” he snapped. “At best, it’s likely to be a wild-goose chase, or should I say a wild Tomcat chase? At worst, it could cost me a pilot, and a certain RIO on loan from the Pentagon, not to mention a perfectly good F-14.”
“The Pentagon considers this worth a try, Admiral,” Tomboy said quietly.
“Well, what about the storm? There’s no sign of the typhoon Dr. George keeps talking about, but the barometer is falling, and the weather definitely is picking up. Tell me, how do you expect to go bogey-baiting if visibility goes to hell?”
“That’s what radar’s for, Batman.”
“Not with this thing; this thing is stealthy.”
“The Pentagon considers this worth a try,” Tomboy repeated, in exactly the same tone of voice as the previous time.
Batman sighed. “Wouldn’t want to argue with them, would we?”
1740 local (+8 GMT)
PLA prison cell
Dinner was dried-out white rice with a few pieces of fatty pork in it, and water. This was passed into the cell by an unarmed PLA soldier while another PLA soldier, this one carrying an AK-47, stood guard behind him. Lobo understood the logic: Jumping the inner guard would do no good; he had no weapons to steal.
She glanced at Admiral Magruder. Tombstone. He stood in the middle of the room with his arms crossed and his scowling face as unyielding as a granite carving. Although she hated to admit it even to herself, especially since in the final analysis result he was just as powerless as she, nevertheless she felt almost desperately happy he was here. Before his arrival, every time the door opened she had pressed herself against the back wall or burrowed into the pile of musty blankets in a pathetic attempt to hide. She had expected, each time, to see a long file of PLA soldiers waiting outside while the first one came in, smiling, laughing, reaching for her in the darkness….
She knew there would be nothing Tombstone could do if the soldiers came for her in that way — nothing any one person could do — but still, his presence was welcome.
At least she had someone to talk to.
He’d already told her how he ended up here, and she had described being picked up by the PLA boat after punching out of her Tomcat and floating around for a while. She’d told him about Handyman, and saw the pain cross the admiral’s face.
Now, rice bowl in hand, she asked the one thing she hadn’t dared bring up yet. “What do you think they’re going to do with us, Admiral?”
“Tombstone,” he said absently, squatting on his heels and eating the rice with his fingers. They had been given no utensils, not even chopsticks. “I have no idea. Most likely they’ll questions us, then use us for propaganda or bargaining chips.”
“And what are we supposed to do?”
“You know the drill from SERE school. We hold out as long as we can with name, rank and serial number. When it gets too bad, do as little damage as possible. Make them work for every bit of information. If they force you to read a confession, do it in a way that makes it clear you’re reciting a speech someone else wrote for you.”
She nodded, remembering the wooden, almost comically insincere “confessions” given by the few allied pilots who had been shot down over Baghdad and subsequently captured.
She ate some rice. Her throat was so tight she could barely swallow it, even with a chaser of water. She didn’t want to ask the next question, but felt she had no choice: “Do you think they’ll question us?”
He turned toward her, his eyes unexpectedly kind in the hard face. “I expect so. But if it’s torture you’re worried about, I can’t say what they’ll do. It’s best not to dwell on it.”
The dirty hands ripping at her flight suit, at her breasts, tearing away her underwear…
She swallowed, lowered her head. She would not give in to this fear. Not ever.
“They’ll come get us, Lobo. You can count on it.”
Lobo looked up at him, despair in her eyes. “Like they got your father out?”
Just then, the door clunked open, and a grinning Chinese soldier walked in. “All finish eating?” he asked. “Good, good. We have question for you. You first, lady. You come with us now.”
1800 local (+8 GMT)
Sick Bay
USS Jefferson
Hot Rock sat on a chair beside Catwoman’s bed and stared down at her. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“Okay.” Her voice was soft and dopey, her face as purple and mottled as an overripe plum. “I’ll be NPQ for a few days, then I’ll be back on the flight schedule.”
“Yeah, I know. Busting my ass again.” He started to reach for her hand, then changed his mind. She looked like one huge wound, and that was only the parts not covered by sheets. The worst stuff was hidden. From what he’d heard, it was amazing she was alive at all. And fly again? Maybe. Probably not.
No thanks to you, a voice snorted in his mind.
He licked his lips. “Catwoman, I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry I wasn’t more help out there. They had me boxed in. There was nothing I could do.”
Her eyes rotated toward him. “I’m sure everybody did their best.”
He nodded. “That’s right. Bird Dog did a hell of a job flying back in. Half his wing was shot off, but he refused to dump the plane for fear of losing you. Did you know that?”
Her lips curved up briefly. “I always said he was too stupid to be a pilot.”
“I just wish I could have done more to help, that’s all,” he said again. He sounded so sincere he startled himself.
She gave a brief nod. Her eyelids fluttered. “Maybe next time.”
“Sure. Next time.” He watched her eyes close, her breathing slow down and deepen. “Next time it will be different, you’ll see.”
There was no reaction. Hot Rock rose to his feet and walked quietly around the privacy curtain. As he was passing the only other occupied bed in the hospital, a voice cried cheerfully, “Excuse me, young man, but could you tell me what the weather’s like this morning?”
2100 local (+8 GMT)
Tomcat 307
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