by Gregg Loomis
At first Lang was conscious only of a sound, a noise he could neither place nor identify as it beat like a bird’s wing against the mountainsides. It was alien to the call of the birds from the forest or the whinny of horses back in the Citadelle, impatient for their morning feed. Slowly the rhythmic whop-whop of rotor blades became distinguishable. As though from a magician’s hat, a black object seemed to pop out of the very ground beneath their feet as a helicopter rose from the gorge below. Someone had been skimming the uneven Haitian terrain to evade radar.
Though it had no markings, Lang recognized the machine as an old Russian Mi-8 “Hip,” an aircraft that had served both as a civilian airborne office and military command post. Over ten thousand had been manufactured, enough sold abroad to make the aircraft’s nationality neutral.
“As you suggested, Colonel, from the sky.” Lang raised his voice to be heard over the racket as he spoke to Gurt. “Keep our friend here covered while I make sure they see us.”
Lang walked away from the sheltering walls of the Citadelle, waving his arms until the helicopter hovered directly above him. The moment it stopped, the crack of a rifle, then another, echoed from mountaintop to gorge and back again. Dow’s troops were not going to stand idly by.
Lang ducked behind a boulder as some sort of heavy weapon from the chopper chattered a reply. His guess was a. 50-caliber mounted along the open port in the ship’s fuselage. Toward the forest, he could see puffs of dust as the gun traced the tree line with lead and rock chips, deadly as bullets, flying through the air. The rifle fire went quiet.
Above him, a rope ladder unfurled to within a foot or so of the ground. The saddle between forest and Citadelle was too narrow for a landing. He turned to motion Gurt. She had already seen what was happening and was prodding Dow toward the hovering aircraft. Rifle at the ready, Lang kept behind a trio of rock protrusions until she and her prisoner disappeared into the helicopter.
As the aircraft dipped its nose preparatory to moving off, Lang dashed for the ladder. He had reached the second rung when he felt it being reeled in.
Once he was inside, a man in a uniform without insignia handed him a headset, which he put on. A nudge at his shoulder caused him to turn. He was standing less than a foot from a smiling Miles.
The grin vanished as he saw Lang’s face. “Shit, Reilly,” the words crackled through the earphones. “What did you shave with this morning, a meat grinder?”
Dominican airspace
Fourteen minutes later
Coffee had never tasted better, even though it was out of a thermos. Thermals, already building in the day’s increasing heat, made a bumpy road of the air at an altitude of only three hundred feet just off a ribbon of golden sand, shaking the helicopter like a terrier with a rat. Gurt, indifferent to the turbulence, was dozing, leaning against the leather restraints that kept her from being thrown from the canvas seat. Dow, securely handcuffed, glared at Lang and Miles, who were seated across from each other.
“Those pictures you sent me along with your GPS position indicators, you have any idea what they were?” Miles asked through Lang’s headset.
“Packing containers of some sort. I figured someone might be able to read the Chinese characters.”
Miles bobbed his head. “The containers themselves told us all we needed to know.”
“Which was?”
“Warheads, most likely for DF-15, Dong Feng, or East Wind missiles.”
“Like, guided missiles?”
“Like. Chemical, nuclear or conventional, solid propellant, and MARV.”
Lang’s eyebrows rose in an unasked question.
“Maneuverable reentry vehicle. The warheads themselves can be guided as to speed and alter course to evade defensive weapons.”
Lang had almost forgotten the Agency’s love of technical jargon. “All of which means what?”
“Which means, once installed on a launch base, usually an eight-wheeled truck, anything within three hundred and seventy miles is a potential target.”
Lang mentally called up a map of the Caribbean. “We, the U.S., is out of range, then.”
“The Chinese are in the process of modifying a lot of their hardware. Wouldn’t surprise me if south Florida was within range in the not-too-distant future.”
“And Puerto Rico, where we still have a few military installations.”
Lang thought for a moment. “You think the Chinese are preparing to attack, what, a naval refueling base and former gunnery range?”
“Not my call. The higher-ups will make that decision.” He nodded toward Dow. “Along with the help of your friend there.”
Lang snorted. “Over tea and crumpets with his lawyer at his side? I doubt the Agency’ll get more than an ass reaming by some congressional oversight committee after a presidential apology for inconveniencing the peace-loving People’s Republic of China by interrupting a perfectly innocent trade mission. Hell, if you yell at him and make him cry, you’ll be regarded as a criminal.”
Miles smirked, the self- satisfied grin of a man who has been dealt the fourth ace in the hole. “Were he going to be turned over to the Agency, the newer, kinder, warm and fuzzy Agency, which is obligated to share its secrets with notoriously loose-lipped politicians, what you say would be true. As it is, I am merely a private citizen doing my civic duty for one of my country’s firmest allies.”
Lang leaned forward in his seat. “This I got to hear.”
“Very simple: I am vacationing in the Dominican Republic like hundreds of thousands of sun-loving Americans do every year. An official who happens to be a golf-playing and fishing buddy of mine mentions that Haiti, a country less than friendly to the DR, is harboring a fugitive…”
“But this guy, this Chinese, is no fugitive from the Dominicans,” Lang protested. “He’s probably never even been there.”
Miles held up a hand, dismissing an irrelevant point. “So, the DR has made a terrible mistake. You know how these Caribbean bureaucracies can be. Now, this friend also knows I have another friend, one who was kind enough to place a helicopter at my disposal, saving me the time of driving from one golf resort to the next fishing charter. This Dominican official friend of mine asks if I would have any objection to his government using said helicopter during the three or four hours I will be on the golf course.
“What am I to do, spoil the relationship between his country and mine? Of course not. I lend him the chopper.”
“But he”-Lang pointed at Dow-“is not a fugitive. He is an officer in the fucking Chinese army.”
“I’m sure a full apology will be forthcoming.”
“So…” Lang took up where he knew Miles had left off. “The Dominican security forces or army or whoever treat the man to the old-fashioned third degree until they get what they want, by which time the proverbial horse has departed the barn. In the meantime, you continue your golfing-fishing vacation unaware of what has happened.”
“Wasn’t it Thomas Gray who observed, ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise’?”
“How do you guys keep your noses from growing so long you can’t get through a door?”
Beijing Olympic Tower
Two days later
Wan Ng watched the chubby general of the People’s Liberation Army use a thick thumb to turn the pages of the file. In a silence loud enough to have an echo, he wondered which was worse: the disapproval of Undersecretary Diem or somehow falling under the jurisdiction of this porcine military man. Either way, his sudden recall from the States and the state of affairs with this man Reilly had less than optimistic overtones.
One thing he did know: the disaster in Haiti was somehow going to become his fault. That was the Party way, having shit run downhill. The higher ups, such as the undersecretary, blamed the fiasco on the military. Since the officer in charge of the garrison in Haiti, a Colonel Dow, was conveniently unavailable to accept blame-no one was certain where he was at the moment-the army brass had turned to the Guoanbu, state security.
That made the problem Ng’s. His position was not high enough to pass the blame farther down the line.
The nameless general looked up, his eyes hooded by heavy lids. “This American, Reilly, why has he not been disposed of?”
“My orders, Comrade General, were from the undersecretary himself. I was to observe him and the woman.”
The general sniffed unappreciatively. “It says here you were to eliminate them should you determine they worked for the American intelligence services.”
“I have not so determined, Comrade General.”
The corpulent officer sighed, the intake and expulsion of breath shaking multiple chins. “After what took place in Venice and in Haiti, you still believe they are ordinary American citizens instead of threats to the policy of the People’s Republic?”
Ng could have explained that his orders did not authorize terminal action upon supposition or guess.
He could have, but he didn’t.
The orders would say whatever the general chose to remake them to say.
Few government workers in the People’s Republic were punished for failure to properly carry out directives from above. Clerks misfiled things on computers, tasks went undone or were done poorly. That was expected in a massive bureaucracy. Problems occurred when someone of rank in the government, say, this general, felt their position threatened, whether by incompetence or just plain rotten luck.
The culprit, almost always with no one below him onto whom to pass the failure, would be accused of some heinous crime, harboring unpatriotic sentiments, stealing from the state or bribery (both of which went unnoticed without some additional offense), or the ever-popular but rarely clearly defined “counterrevolutionary activities.” The accused could receive, at the whim of a revolutionary tribunal (usually influenced by the official instigating the action), anything from a term in a labor camp up to a large-bore bullet into the back of the head and an unmarked grave where his family would be unable to honor his spirit, the spirit officially disavowed by the state but very real to the people of Ng’s province nonetheless.
Ng was more than painfully aware of how the justice system in the People’s Republic functioned.
“How may I atone for my failure, Comrade General?”
The beefy officer took his time replying, no doubt aware of Ng’s thoughts. “You will return to the United States just as you departed, by way of the Mexico-California border, so there will be no record of your entry. You will keep watch on this man, Reilly, and his family until you have the opportunity to eliminate them both, the man and the woman.”
Ng nodded. “And if they leave the country again as they did when they went to Haiti?”
The general leaned back in his chair, the casters groaning under his weight. “Like most Americans, the man has a cell phone, a BlackBerry. We have ascertained that as well as the number. It is amazing what puny security measures American companies take with their information. When you return, there will be a handheld tracking device that will tell you the latitude and longitude of the location of that particular BlackBerry anywhere on the face of the earth, give or take thirty meters. See that you use it well.”
The meeting was over. Ng felt a weight lift from his shoulders, a reprieve he was lucky to receive. “I will not fail, Comrade General.”
The general was already looking at another file. He dismissed Ng with the wave of a hand. “See that you don’t.”
From the diary of Louis Etienne Saint Denis No. 6 rue Victoire, ^ 1 Paris January 2, 1803 Leclerc is dead of the Siamese fever! ^ 2 There was no means by which we could have known of the tragedy until the news arrived via a fast packet from the Indies to Cherbourg and then by horse courier to Paris. It was not until December 28 the frigate Swiftsure arrived at the Hyeres Islands carrying Pauline, her and Leclerc’s four-year-old son, Dermide, and the lead coffin encased in cedar bearing the general’s body. ^ 3 Pauline, distraught and clad in the dreariest of widow’s garb, appeared here three days later. With sobs, she fell into the arms of her brother, the First Consul. He greeted her affectionately but within seconds escorted her into the house’s library, closing the door behind them. The last words I heard before the doors were pulled to were not those of consolation, but query as to the location of a certain box with which Leclerc had been entrusted. I could not but wonder if this was the selfsame box that my employer had taken from Egypt.
1 When Napoleon first lived in the house in 1797, the street was rue Chanterine. After his victory in Italy, the departement de la Seine, Paris’s municipal governing body, changed the name.
2 Yellow fever. It killed more French military than did the rebels. The slaves had an immunity derived from their origins in Africa.
3 As was the contemporary custom, a separate lead box contained an urn with his heart and brain.
CHAPTER FOUR
Law offices of Langford Reilly
Two days later
Sara made a less than subtle effort not to stare at Lang’s face. If possible, it looked worse than it had when he and Gurt boarded the private charter from Santo Domingo to Atlanta. His nose, broken, was a peak of white bandage between the two black valleys under his all-but-swollen-shut eyes. The bruising had turned a grotesque green and yellow. Lang was grateful she could not see the angry red sores on his chest that just today had ceased suppurating and begun to scab over.
He hoped waterboarding was the most gentle of the enhanced interrogation techniques Dow experienced at the hands of the Dominican security people.
He sat behind his desk gingerly. His legs and groin ached from muscles still protesting his time on horseback. Sinking gratefully into the embracing confines of his Relax the Back desk chair, he looked sourly at the stack of pink call-back slips. There had to be some way to respond using the computer. His nose, packed with gauze, gave his voice a tone too close to a cartoon character’s to be taken seriously by anyone above the age of ten.
The phone on his desk buzzed.
“Yeah?”
“The Reverend Bishop Groom on two. You in?”
Lang sighed. Even that had a nasal sound. “I’ll take it.”
He picked up the receiver. “Good morning, Reverend. What might I do for you today?”
“Mr. Reilly? Is this Mr. Reilly?”
It sure as hell isn’t Donald Duck, no matter how it sounds.
“I, er, had an accident, broke my nose. It affects my voice.”
“You should be more careful,” the reverend reproached. “I’ll pray for your speedy recovery.”
“Any intervention of friends in high places greatly appreciated.”
There was a pause. Among his client’s multitude of failings was a lack of a sense of humor.
“I called two days ago, hadn’t heard back…” There was a note of rebuke.
Lang thumbed the call-back slips. “Yeah, I see you did. I’ve been out of the office. What’s up?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. I mean, have we heard anything?”
Lang drew a momentary blank before he realized to what Groom referred. “The feds? No, not a peep.”
“I was hoping perhaps you were negotiating with them, maybe a suspended sentence or something.”
Fat chance. Lang couldn’t remember the last time he had even heard of a suspended sentence in a federal case. Unlike the states, the U.S. government had endless resources to build prisons as needed. Overcrowding was not a problem. There was no need to make bargains in which the perpetrator did no time. Reduced sentences in exchange for guilty pleas saving the time and expense of a trial, yes. No time at all, unlikely. But there was no reason to screw up the reverend’s day with this factoid just yet.
“Initiating negotiations is frequently viewed as having a weak defense.”
“Perhaps, but I need to know what to expect, have time to get my affairs in order.”
Read: before the government seized all assets it could find for restitution to the man’s victims, get as much cash as possible offshore in banks whose dep
ositors received secrecy rather than interest.
Groom continued. “Why don’t you give the U.S. attorney a call just to see what’s on his mind?”
“It’s a her. ” Lang knew what was probably on her mind: ten to twenty. But he said, “If that’s what you want.”
Minutes later, Lang was dialing a number he was surprised he remembered. It had been two or three years since he had called it. Tactical considerations had not been the only reason he had been hesitant to contact the assistant U.S. attorney assigned to the case.
“Ms. Warner’s office,” announced a disembodied voice.
“Er, is she in? Langford Reilly calling.”
The line went temporarily dead, leaving Lang with his thoughts. In one of Gurt’s several premarital absences from his life, he had briefly dated Alicia Warner. The relationship had never gotten serious and had peacefully wilted rather than died in the acrimony that frequently marks such endings.
“Well, Lang, long time no see,” Alicia’s voice chirped. “How’s married life treating you? I understand you’ve got a little boy.”
She could at least pretend not be so damn happy he was no longer eligible.
“Swell. And you?”
“Just fine, thanks. I must admit, though, nothing like the excitement you showed me. Haven’t been shot at or kidnapped lately.”
She referred to an abduction by a fanatical group of kibbutzniks who had taken her to Israel during what Lang thought of as the Sinai Affair.
“Well, yeah, I can see how that might make things a little dull.”
She tinkled a laugh. “Dull I’ll take.”
There was a brief, uncomfortable pause.
Lang wriggled in his desk chair, one of the few times in his life he wasn’t sure what to say. “Er, Alicia, I was calling about a case you have, the Reverend Bishop Groom…”
“Well, damn! And here I was hoping you were going to boost my ego by soliciting a sordid extramarital affair.”