Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  Satisfied, he backed away and leveled his gun, placing the end of the silencer a yard from the magnetic bolt mechanism by which the security cipher locked the door. Then he carefully triggered three rounds into it.

  WRITING SOFTWARE was one thing, but seizing control of billions of dollars worth of hardware was entirely another. Both of the software experts realized that their application of theory was not transmuting physically as smoothly as they had hoped.

  Thackeray pried worried eyes away from the timer. “You do realize there’s bound to be inaccuracy in that orbit calculation of mine.”

  “I heard you the first time,” Emily snapped. “I’m going as fast as I can. Are you sure we got that file past the Hughes?” How can either of us be sure of anything now?

  Thackeray double-checked the confirmation protocol. He shook his head. “I still can’t find the problem.”

  “Keep checking. We only have one shot at this.”

  “You don’t say!”

  “Time?”

  “Fifty-five seconds!”

  Emily closed her eyes and took a deep breath. We can do this. She opened her eyes and scanned the lines of text filling her screen. “Thack, is that—”

  “I see it—good catch. I’ll fix it, I’ll fix it...”

  BANG—BANG—BANG. The repeated hammer blows behind them sprayed clinking metal debris onto the floor.

  STUART TRIED THE DOOR he thought would lead beyond the well’s clean air zone—it was locked. Confused, he stood back and leveled the muzzle of the gun at the doorknob. A sliver of light on the floor nearby caught his eye and he realized he was about to blast his way into a storage closet.

  Stuart cursed the precious seconds wasted. He slammed open the proper door, rounded the corner, and ran flat-out twenty-five yards toward the revolving doors that demarcated the clean zone. Sliding on the soles of his shoes to a stop, he eased himself through the doors as quietly as possible. Ten feet further, chest heaving, Stuart briskly rounded the final bend in the corridor.

  His sudden appearance clearly startled another man, who also wielded a gun. Stuart was nearly thrown by the thick crop of reddish blond hair but it was definitely Devinn, and he had somehow opened the door to the supercomputer facility. From his left hand, Devinn’s silenced gun pointed up at the ceiling; with his right he gripped the doorjamb, his foot at the ready to push open the door.

  “Stuart,” said Devinn.

  Stuart’s outstretched arms gripped the dead agent’s Glock. His focus was Paul Devinn’s eyes. “Don’t.”

  Devinn held his stare.

  He’s going to shoot Emily—he wants to do it—he’s going to do it. Stuart gritted his teeth. He felt the trigger harden against his finger. Devinn’s legs appeared to become ever slightly more taut, the muscles in his forearm twitched, the fist gripping the gun lowered a fraction—

  Stuart squeezed against the trigger and the gun jumped in his hand. The slug went wide, striking the doorjamb inches above Devinn’s hand. Devinn’s legs began the drive that would launch him forward and Stuart’s second round struck him in the arm—Devinn howled in pain. Stuart moved toward him, restoring the target zone, his third round plowing into Devinn’s shoulder. Devinn sagged toward the door while firing wide past Stuart’s ear. A final phutt as he disappeared through the doorway caused a burning sensation in Stuart’s thigh.

  Stuart fired again and again, finally realizing he was pulling the trigger without firing a shot.

  Emily’s shriek penetrated the ringing in his ears.

  * * *

  RONG DROPPED THE CIGARETTE butt to the floor beside the other two and snubbed it beneath his toe. The situation demanded he at least appear in charge of the process, such as it was. He strolled toward the computer consoles and the nearest technician. This happened to be the same young woman wearing a headphone and mic set who assisted Deng with his demonstration, now dutifully engrossed in her work. She glanced up only as Rong stood close beside her.

  Rong caught the annoyance before it fled from her eyes. Perhaps she would enjoy not being able to sit for awhile, a prospect Rong found appealing. “Forgive my interruption.” He gestured toward the video screen. “Is the satellite malfunctioning?”

  “No, Vice-Chairman Rong,” she replied in a courteous tone. “To conserve power the satellite transmits imagery only in the final stages of target acquisition.”

  Rong nodded his understanding—he already knew this, of course. He noted she had addressed him by name, respectfully so. Rong examined the fine, smooth skin at the base of her throat. “A bit earlier we noticed the possibility that weather in the vicinity of the target might be overcast. Will that not affect things?”

  “To a certain extent,” the young woman acknowledged.

  “Oh?”

  “It is my understanding that the orbiting computer adjusts parameters, or in extreme conditions it aborts the attack. So far as the ability to transmit an image, if the attack takes place at night, or even in mild overcast, then the images we see will be radar-enhanced infra-red. These wavelengths are relatively unimpeded by cloud layer. But we understand the morning overcast in the target area has diminished.”

  The woman had managed to allay his worries in a manner not to portray him as stupid in front of the others. Rong was impressed suitably enough to inquire her name...

  The video monitor suddenly flickered to life. Snowy static on the screen slowly receded and sharp, geometric features normally associated with those of a city appeared, receded into snow again, then returned. After several seconds the image began holding steady. Superimposed across the bottom quarter of the image—Rong presumed this to be infrared—were vertical black-and-white lines that appeared to march left to right.

  The technicians, already on edge, recognized the imagery as anything but normal. One by one, they rose from their respective terminals to consult with their colleagues, or to examine another instrument, all the while with no attempt whatsoever to conceal their confusion—this created for Rong the disturbing impression that his recruits were inadequately skilled. The escalating pace of their movement about the control room, and the speed exhibited by some as they repeatedly entered keyboard commands, created the appearance of frantic improvisation. By now the commotion had attracted the attention of other members of the committee.

  “Certainly look’s like an image to me,” Rong said to his own curious colleagues while tossing a nonchalant wave. But—what are the lines?

  * * *

  STUART CHARGED INTO THE ROOM to find Emily’s hands clapped over her mouth.

  “Where’s Devinn?”

  “That way!” Emily pointed toward the stairs leading down into the well. They heard the sound of a slamming door.

  “He pointed his gun at us but I think it was empty,” Thackeray said.

  Stuart realized how badly his hands were shaking while he noted the open breech of his own semiautomatic. Relief swept over him that neither Emily nor Thack appeared to have any serious wounds.

  “Stu, you’re bleeding!”

  Stuart glanced from the smear of Devinn’s blood on the floor to his own bloody pant leg. He looked at Emily. “Devinn wasn’t acting alone.”

  “But we’re in!”

  “What...you’re in control?”

  Thackeray thrust a fist in the air. “We got a transmission!”

  Stuart joined Emily behind Thackeray. Vertical black-and-white lines that appeared to be a calibration signal of some sort marched left to right across the bottom of Thack’s screen. All he could make out otherwise was a shifting monochromatic image. Catching his breath, Stuart asked, “That’s a transmission?”

  * * *

  “THOSE ARE TIME BAR CODES,” Chen Ruihan suggested nervously from beside Comrade Rong.

  The female technician seemed put out by the distraction. Even Rong seemed about to take umbrage when the lines disappeared to reveal the typical aerial view of an urban center.

  The woman glanced up at Rong. “Stand by, please, Com
rade,” she tersely advised.

  “Has something gone wrong?” asked Rong.

  Fear of that very question had haunted Chen Ruihan for the entire afternoon. However self-assured the engineers seemed with their hastily concocted Virginia target parameters, he had continued to harbor doubt. There could be no doubt as to the consequences of failure.

  But the technician didn’t even respond to Rong’s inquiry. She and her colleagues instead continued altering settings through an assortment of dials and switches. They scurried between consoles in an uncoordinated effort to arrest what now had become obvious to all in the room was some sort of loss of control.

  A discordant murmur rose from the Standing Committee members drawing closer for a better look. To them, the hologram certainly appeared to be operating normally. The tiny gold sphere depicted the satellite weapon progressing toward the eastern border of China and the Yellow Sea.

  Rong held his eyes on the digital timer in the lower right corner of the video screen, which even he understood to be tracking the time remaining for the device to unleash its fury on the designated target. A Newtonian physicist he admittedly was not, but here there was something seriously wrong. Moments earlier the timer indicated some 61 minutes, a duration consistent with his impressions of what to expect, and what Deng’s explanations had indicated, for the satellite’s trek across the Pacific and the continental United States beyond. But now he watched the timer tick down through 12 seconds...

  Even for those not acquainted with infrared imagery, the transmitted image on the screen grew steadily distinct. To Rong the image was eerily familiar and it delivered a chill of unease. He knew he had seen it before. Had he not scrutinized this very scenery, many times in fact, from inside his helicopter? Rong turned and managed a confident smile for his baffled colleagues before being drawn back to the screen.

  The outline of two small bodies of water acquired a striking resemblance to Zhongnanhai’s twin lakes. The televised image showed objects now recognizable as buildings, looming ever larger, as the extraterrestrial lens smoothly zoomed in on its acquired target. With increasing definition the roof of one building—cluttered with communications gear—dominated the screen. The digital counter ticked to zero.

  Rong cast a horrified stare at his state security man.

  Inside a room where interior lighting was kept deliberately low for the reading of electronic displays, everything now effervesced with an angry blue glow. All of the occupants reacted with instinctive alarm. Some were struck in their final seconds by the light’s peculiar absence of any corresponding sensation of heat.

  TWENTY-NINE MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT, the streets of Beijing were silent. After leaving the Old Defense Building, Deng had walked across Iron Lion Lane to a small park consisting of twisted oaks and dogwoods, which grew by virtue of some irrepressible force out of the hard-packed earth. There he found a bench and tried to relax as much as the pain in his hip allowed. The onset of cataracts meant the best he could say about the moonless sky was that it looked exceptionally clear. During the thirty-odd minutes that he had sat there, he was able to conjure a list of dozens of individuals who would have given anything to accompany him, but whose witness history had chosen to deny. Perhaps, he thought with a sigh, that was as it should be.

  Deng shielded his eyes from the sudden intensity of light. The sporadic sounds of small detonations, one after another, briefly transported him to his days as an infantryman on the Vietnamese border.

  As abruptly as it began, the sound and light vanished; Deng lowered his arm. The entire upper half of the building, and everything it contained, appeared to be gone. While his mind struggled to accept what his senses delivered, the lights in the remaining structure flickered and went out. The weapon had expended the last of its energy stripping the interior core of plaster and furniture and anything else it could parcel away. The lobby security detail had escaped this fate and they dashed into the street, looked up in confusion at where the building had been, and ran. Severed pipes now stood as geysers spewing water up into the air—rather like a fanciful fountain, Deng thought as he listened to the water splashing down to pool in the street. Soon the sirens he heard approaching from the distance would quell the pleasant sound.

  An explanation was due the General Secretary, and Deng began the task of assembling his thoughts on how to go about providing one. With Kang Long out of the picture, winning his rebellious son’s release from prison should not be too difficult.

  Deng winced in pain as he rose from the bench. He started toward the building’s basement to see if the tunnel tram could still whisk him to Zhongnanhai. With each step his hip actually felt a little bit better. He paused for a deep breath of cool, night air. Glancing up at the sky, he could not help but share the Standing Committee’s curiosity as to their final place among the stars. He took great solace in knowing that the answer was probably painful in coming—and, recalling his father’s fate, more so than having one’s feet battered into pulp. With that thought, Deng decided a walk outdoors was more in keeping with these invigorating times.

  .

  EPILOGUE

  GLANCING AROUND THE OVAL OFFICE, McBurney had to resist the temptation to gloat. The Attorney General tried to ignore him under the guise of perusing her document for last minute errors, while for his part Tom Herman simply pretended to have a lot on his mind. Whatever their expressions were meant to convey, there was nothing suggesting remorse; not that he had arrived at the Oval Office expecting to find contrition in the air. The administration had managed to prove again that inside the Washington Beltway, what one knew carried more weight than how one performed—here the Information Age had nothing to do with computers. What both he and Herman knew of the inner circle would guarantee their professional survival.

  President Denis strode into the Oval Office with not a word to acknowledge the three who rose to greet him. The Attorney General met the President at his desk and presented her boss with a manila folder. Denis sat and began studying its contents.

  McBurney fiddled with his wristwatch as they waited for the President to finish. Congressional hearings were scheduled to begin in only a few weeks. He could not help but wonder who it was they would blame for misconstruing intelligence in the case for attacking Iran. His best guess was someone in the Pentagon, but other than maybe the President, who actually knew? One thing for certain was that it wouldn’t be him. McBurney watched the President’s face gradually redden.

  Denis looked up from his desk. “You’ve reviewed and are satisfied with this?” Denis asked, wielding a pen in preparation to sign it.

  “Yes, sir.” McBurney felt a smidgen of guilt and he chided himself for it. The presidential signature scratched audibly over both copies of the document. The AG turned from the desk with a scowl and, consistent with their agreement, she handed one to McBurney.

  REALIZING THAT HE RISKED running aground, Stuart eased the helm to starboard and Mystic’s bow returned to the center of the channel. There was no reason to tempt fate by cutting corners only to shave off a few minutes.

  Following their many afternoons on the water in recent weeks, no longer did Emily consider herself the sailing neophyte. She understood Stuart’s impatient maneuvering for what it was and caught his eye with her smile. “I doubt you’ll be satisfied by whatever it is he has to say,” Emily said.

  Stuart found it hard to be positive while a federal grand jury was convening to consider his indictment, on evidence endorsed by the President of the United States. He watched wisps of Emily’s hair dance about her face in the breeze. “Can you think of anything more to ask on behalf of your parents?”

  “Actually, my father thinks Deng has finally cleared the way for my mother’s trip to Johns Hopkins.” Already her name was in the queue to receive a liver transplant. None of this would be true were it not for Samuel McBurney. “What we really could use is more help from the FBI. Every day it seems they come up with some new reason to delay the Thanatech investigation.”


  Ashley was in step with the twists and turns of recent events, as her knowing glance between the adults confirmed. “So, will we be going to China?” she asked.

  Stuart shared a smile with Emily. He pointed overhead at the sails luffing as they motored up the channel. “I suspect we may not be all that welcome in China. Let’s worry about making it to shore.”

  Ashley rolled her eyes and disappeared below to retrieve her windbreaker—Emily turned to Stuart and smiled. She rose from the bench, wrapped her arms around his neck, and they embraced in a long kiss.

  Emily helped Ashley furl the jib and dump the main. They had just begun tying Mystic to the dock when Gordon’s bark announced the arrival of their guest. Stuart placed two fingers between his teeth and whistled loudly to signal their presence there on the dock. A few minutes later, Sam McBurney made his way down the sloping lawn toward the river clutching a large envelope. To Stuart’s surprise, he had not come alone.

  “How’s that leg doing?” Special Agent Ed Hildebrandt awkwardly extended his left hand.

  Stuart had all but forgotten the flesh wound in his thigh. Hildebrandt’s injuries were more difficult to ignore given the ungainly contraption that supported his arm in front of his chest. He gripped Hildebrandt’s hand. “Good to see you’re up and around. Emily and I really cannot thank you enough.”

  “The flowers you all sent to my room were plenty for someone only doing his job. We’re the ones who should be thanking you. Sam told me he was coming down, so we figured it was a chance to do just that.”

  Stuart turned to see what was keeping Emily. She brushed past him and threw her arms around McBurney. Eyes wide, the hulking CIA officer patted her lightly on the back.

  “Thank you.” Emily withdrew and wiped away her tears. “I was certain my father had died.”

  Stuart broke the momentary silence. “Any word on Devinn?”

  Hildebrandt’s expression turned grim. “We found him once. We’ll find him again.”