by Kyle Mills
Smith eased himself back into the pillows, letting the pain play out on his face to provide an excuse not to volunteer information.
“You’re very interesting to me,” the man said, also declining to contribute an introduction. “My doctor says it would be virtually impossible for someone with a crossbow bolt in his back to swim as far out into the ocean as you did. And yet there you were.”
“High school breaststroke champion,” Smith managed to get out and then let out a weak cough. The pain that action unleashed would have been truly breathtaking if he could actually breathe.
“Indeed.”
Smith pointed to the cup and the man examined him for a moment before holding it up so he could get another drink. Likely less an act of kindness than an effort to get his guest’s voice working again.
“Even more fascinating to me were the men chasing you. They were quite motivated. Not a single one of them gave up the search until he drowned.”
Smith tried to get his hazy mind to focus. Could that be true? And if this man was making these kinds of observations, did it suggest that he wasn’t involved in the attack? The fancy house, the men floating off remote beaches in quiet boats. Some kind of smuggler? A simple drug runner?
“You’ll understand that I like to keep abreast of things that happen in my waters.”
Smith knew that he wasn’t in any condition to play cat and mouse with this man and was getting ready to fake losing consciousness, but it was a piece of theater that turned out to be unnecessary. His vision began to swim and his eyes fluttered uncontrollably. There was no reason to fight it so he just let the darkness come.
When the man spoke again, his voice sounded a thousand miles away. “Of course. You rest. We have all the time in the world to talk.”
4
Cairo
Egypt
Randi Russell ran her fingers through her short hair, moving closer to the showerhead and watching the black dye swirl down the drain. The fake tanner darkening the skin visible from beneath her hijab would just have to wear off on its own.
When the water turned clear, she shut off the faucet and stepped out onto the tile floor. The mirror was fogged, displaying only a hazy image of her thin, toned body and dark eyes beneath a shock of blonde hair. Her athletic beauty had always been an asset—opening doors, keeping men off balance, causing people to dismiss her as a piece of arm candy.
The last few years had been a solid run, gaining her the gratitude of multiple heads of state and generating a serious legend at the CIA, MI6, and a few other acronyms. The problem was that the dead enemies and friends, the blur of missions, and the constant moving were starting to get a little depressing. It was something she once again promised herself that she’d work on when she got back to the States. And with Charles Hashem finally rotting in hell, maybe she’d actually do it this time.
She pulled on a pair of old sweats and a T-shirt with a giant smiley face and the slogan “Have a Nice Day.” A gift from a Mossad operative with a sense of humor.
All she needed now was a drink, a comfortable bed, and ten solid hours of unconsciousness. Tomorrow she’d mix in with the tourists and businesspeople for a midmorning flight to Reagan and then a hysterical reaming for killing an American who everyone agreed needed to be dead. In the end, though, it would be little more than a bunch of bureaucratic ass covering. Nothing she needed to worry about any more than last time or the time before that.
Sure, one day they’d throw her under the bus, but not yet. They’d wait until she slowed down and wasn’t as useful anymore. For now, though, she had the comfort of knowing they needed her to do the things that they didn’t have the skills for, or that they thought could come back to bite them at a confirmation hearing. People with her talents and track record were hard to replace.
Randi rubbed the towel over her head a few more times and then pushed through the bathroom door into her hotel suite.
One of the things that had kept her alive for so long was the fact that there was no loss in translation between what her mind commanded and what her body did. By the time the man sitting in the leather chair next to the bar looked up, she’d pulled a knife from the pocket in her sweats and drawn her hand back to throw it.
He just frowned disapprovingly and looked at her over his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Mr. Klein,” Randi said, not yet lowering the knife. “What are you doing here?”
Fred Klein was the mastermind behind a loose confederation of independent operators that went by the intentionally vague designation Covert-One. The president of the United States—a childhood friend of Klein’s—had quietly authorized the formation of the organization years ago in the face of the government’s increasing paralysis. Covert-One had become an organization of last resort, brought into play only when time had run out and the consequences of failure were too dire to contemplate.
Randi had been recruited only recently based on the recommendation of Jon Smith, but she still didn’t have a strong sense of what she’d gotten herself into. What she did know, though, was that when Fred Klein showed up unexpectedly in your hotel room, something hadn’t gone to plan. And that brought her own survival into question.
“I needed to talk to you,” Klein responded simply.
“That’s why they invented phones.” She moved subtly away from the windows. The curtains were drawn, but there were other ways for a sniper to line up a shot.
Klein wasn’t particularly impressive to look at. Thinning hair, mediocre suit, slightly jutting brow. But in the short time she’d known him, she’d developed a healthy respect for the man. He had a disconcerting way of thinking ten steps ahead and rarely made mistakes. Great if he was on your team, but in her business team affiliation tended to be hazy and subject to sudden changes.
“This is something I felt we should discuss face-to-face.” He wiped away some imaginary sweat from his upper lip. “We’ve lost contact with Jon.”
“Lost contact?”
“In a fishing village northeast of Toyama, Japan.”
“I know that area,” she said, finally lowering the knife. “I’ll go find him.”
Klein rose suddenly enough that her grip on the blade tightened involuntarily, but he just went to the bar and poured two scotches. After handing one to her, he returned to the chair.
“He was hit in the back with a crossbow bolt and was last seen swimming out to sea with at least three men pursuing. I’ve had people out there for two days looking for him and we’re continuing the effort…” His voice trailed off.
The implication was clear. She made her way a bit unsteadily to a small sofa across from him.
“I wanted to tell you before you heard somewhere else,” he said as she sat. “The story we’re going with is that he was cave diving off the coast of Okinawa. That there was an accident and he’s missing.”
Typically clever, Randi thought numbly. No one would expect to recover a body under those circumstances.
“My understanding is that your mission in Egypt is finished and you’re flying back to DC tomorrow.” He seemed a bit bowed when he stood again and started for the door. “We need to talk when you get back. About what Jon was working on.”
She watched him leave in silence and then just stared at the closed door. For a moment she thought she was going to throw up but then it passed, replaced by an unexpected sense of loneliness that was even worse.
No. Jon had been in tough scrapes before and he always made it out. Klein’s people just hadn’t found him yet. Or for that matter, the man could be lying. What did she really know about him?
Randi forced herself to her feet and picked up the phone on the nightstand. Scrolling through an encrypted list of contacts with a shaking finger, she finally came to the one she was looking for—an unattributed number with a Japanese prefix.
5
Off the Senkaku Islands
East China Sea
Being chosen as XO of Japan’s new state-of-the-art battleship had been the proudest moment in
a life that Gaku Akiyama had always considered charmed. He’d been an exceptional athlete, earned a master’s in history from Oxford, and then joined Japan’s naval defense forces as his father had before him. His efforts to honor his family for everything they’d done for him had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
Like so many dreams, though, this one had finally revealed its dark side.
He was standing at the edge of the deck watching the setting sun backlight a Chinese missile cruiser sailing at an intentionally provocative and impossibly dangerous half-kilometer distance. Beyond were the deep-orange silhouettes of eight more Chinese warships showcasing that country’s resolve and the superiority of its arsenal. Finally, at the very edge of his vision were the jagged outlines of a group of useless rocks known to the Japanese as the Senkaku Islands and to the Chinese as the Diaoyus.
Akiyama looked behind him at the men going about their duties, at the helicopters lined up on the deck awaiting orders, and at the 250-meter flat deck that had caused so much anger on the part of China.
Despite considering himself a great patriot—perhaps even a nationalist—he found himself in the rare and uncomfortable position of sympathizing with his opponent’s position on this topic. Retrofitting the Izumo to launch offensive weapons would be a relatively trivial task that could be carried out in a matter of months.
On the other hand, his own country’s leadership was correct when it pointed out that there would be no point to such an operation. While it was true that Japan had overwhelmed China in World War II, those days were long past. Their increasingly belligerent neighbor to the west now had a standing army of over two million men, a budget three times that of Japan, and a navy boasting more than seven hundred vessels. In fact, credible rumors were circulating that the Chinese were sending their new aircraft carrier into the area in an effort to humiliate the Japanese further by physically dwarfing the crown jewel of their fleet.
And for what? A few rocks sticking out of the ocean? Some oil beneath the ocean floor? Fishing rights?
No, in truth none of those things really mattered. This dispute was entirely about the past: The atrocities perpetrated by his own grandfathers on the Chinese people so many decades ago. The humiliation felt by the Japanese people at their eventual surrender. The newfound conviction of his own generation that they should not be damned to a life of penitence for things that occurred years before they were even born.
The Americans felt understandably justified at having fashioned the Japanese constitution in a way that forbade military force and limited the country to defensive troops. His ancestors had been a warlike and often even brutal people. But that world existed now only in the books he’d studied in school. Japan had become an incredibly wealthy country built on a fragile foundation of stability and economic cooperation. It had become one of humanity’s great innovators and a responsible world citizen that spent billions aiding its less fortunate neighbors.
Despite this transformation, though, the threats from China and the Koreas were real and growing. Could the United States be trusted to protect them in the current world order? And even more important, should this even be America’s responsibility any longer? In Akiyama’s mind, the answer was a resounding no. It was time for Japan to stand on its own feet.
This was, however, a seismic shift that would have to be handled with the utmost political skill and cultural sensitivity. The events unfolding around him were anything but the careful first steps that he’d imagined. No, this was a senseless escalation engineered by politicians concerned only with retaining their power. It had played out in history so many times but no one ever learned. Once the nationalist flame rose to a certain height, it could only be quenched with blood.
The breeze picked up and Akiyama raised the collar on his jacket, continuing to watch the sun sink into the ocean to the west. He was about to head belowdecks when the deceptive peace was broken by a high-pitched wail. The executive officer spun and saw the men on deck behind him freeze for a split second and then begin sprinting in every direction.
“Battle stations!” Akiyama shouted, dodging the men rushing by. “Battle stations!”
Over his headset he could hear a nearly unintelligible patchwork of voices. For the moment he ignored the calm drone of the captain’s orders and instead focused on the more panicked voice of a junior officer stating the reason for the alarm. A Chinese Luzhou-class guided missile destroyer had locked on their targeting radar.
Akiyama started to run the length of the deck, checking his men’s positions, offering words of encouragement, and shouting harsh criticisms when warranted. Above all, though, he did everything in his power to encourage calm.
“No one lifts a finger without direct orders!” he yelled repeatedly. “Is that clear? I don’t care what the circumstances are. No one acts without specific instructions from an officer!”
He clamped a hand on the shoulder of a terrified-looking boy who couldn’t have been more than nineteen. “You’re going to be all right. Do you understand? You’ve trained for this and you wouldn’t be on the Izumo if you weren’t one of Japan’s finest.”
The boy nodded weakly and Akiyama continued on. He felt a great sense of pride at the efficiency and speed with which his men were carrying out their duties, but much more than that he felt fear. The irony of a peaceful Asia was that neither player in this conflict had access to battle-hardened troops. The best he could do was stagger the younger sailors with those who had years in the defense forces. That meant very little, though, if those older men had never been in a combat situation.
There was simply no way to turn away from the fact that there were hundreds of terrified young people precariously balanced on opposite sides of a razor blade.
6
President’s Private Residence
The White House
Washington, DC, USA
Good to see you, Mr. Klein,” the head of the president’s protection detail said.
“Dave,” Klein said, returning the greeting.
He’d known David McClellan since the man had joined the Secret Service almost twenty years ago, and there was no more tight-lipped operative in the entire government. The perfect man for the job.
President Sam Adams Castilla was alone—it was nearly midnight and his wife, Cassie, would have gone to bed hours ago. He didn’t rise, instead watching his old friend approach with a cold Coors in his hand.
In the past, they’d been more open about their meetings, casting themselves as two childhood friends getting together to talk about old times. Lately, though, Klein had become concerned that the intelligence background that had made him an ideal choice to head Covert-One would raise suspicion. Now he flew as far beneath the radar as possible.
Castilla took a sip of his beer before speaking. “It hasn’t hit the papers yet but yesterday a Chinese missile cruiser targeted Japan’s new battleship with attack radar.”
“The Senkakus, I assume?”
The president nodded. “I’ve already got Russia, North Korea, the economy, and the entire Middle East to deal with. Now this.”
“It’s a lot of ships and a lot of bad blood in a very small area.”
“It’s World War Three in the making is what it is,” Castilla said, his voice rising in volume.
Klein pointed to the door behind which Castilla’s wife was sleeping, and the president lowered his voice. “It’s a lot worse than most people know. Look, I like Prime Minister Sanetomi and I’m sympathetic to the fact that what happened during the war is ancient history. But it frankly doesn’t matter what I think. It matters what the Chinese think. And to those assholes, the Rape of Nanking might as well have been last Tuesday.”
It was yet another of those impossibly complicated problems, this time made worse by both countries handling it in the most destructive way possible. Nationalism was on the rise in Asia, and every day it seemed to grow in pitch. Politicians who until recently had been calling for calm were now seeing the writing on the wall
and allowing themselves to be swept up in the fervor. The question was, where would it end?
“Did you know that almost half of Chinese television shows revolve around the killing of enormous numbers of Japanese?” Castilla asked.
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“Seven hundred million people just last season, Fred. That’s what? Six times the population of the whole country? I think the CIA told me it pencils out to twenty-two Japanese people per second, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. You take that kind of hate, add a faltering economy, an oversize military-industrial complex, and some rocks sticking out of the ocean, and you’ve written the recipe for disaster.”
“What did Takahashi do?”
Masao Takahashi was the chief of staff in command of Japan’s defense forces. A brilliant military man but not exactly a dove.
“About the television shows? I doubt he watches them.”
Klein frowned. “I was referring to the attack radar, Sam.”
“To his credit, nothing. The Izumo went to battle stations and then backed the hell away.”
“He defused the situation, then? I’m honestly surprised. Maybe he’s getting a little perspective in his old age.”
“Yeah. Just enough perspective that now I have to worry that the son of a bitch is thinking about getting into politics. You know he’s one of the richest men in Japan, right?”
Klein nodded. “Technology, energy, defense contracting, gaming, and I don’t even know what else. His family’s built quite an empire since the war.”
“And make no mistake, he’s the patriarch. People will tell you that his siblings run the companies, but take it from me, they don’t take a piss without asking Masao first.”
Klein leaned back and looked at his old friend thoughtfully. The United States was not a country accustomed to being caught up in the current, but this might be one of those rare occasions. Tensions between Japan and China went back to well before America was even a twinkle in Thomas Jefferson’s eye.