Perilous Skies (Stony Man)

by Don Pendleton

  “Maybe,” Kurtzman said.

  Schwarz said nothing. He was staring at the screen. Shin Zed Specialty Fiber Materials used a tiny animated roll of material, with bug eyes and a big smile, as its logo. It danced in place, hopped up and down, and danced in place again. Schwarz was trying to reconcile the cute animated GIF with the production of materials making unbelievably dangerous weapons.

  He’d been convinced this was the right place a minute ago. Now, like Kurtzman, he had his doubts.

  Something didn’t fit.

  He looked again at the notepad beside his keyboard. He had checked thirty-three websites. He had scratched off four of them. Out of business.

  “Wait,” he said.

  He began a new search, quick and brief, this time looking not at live websites but at the archives of dead sites.

  He hit pay dirt.

  “Here it is,” Schwarz said. “I realized just now that Zordun would not risk having his material made at a contract manufacturing plant. He would want a proprietary facility. And he would have the money to pay for it. I’m betting that he went out and bought one of these companies, and shut it down, or maybe even found one that was already shut down—just so long as it had the equipment he needed. And here it is. QS Materials. The last website archive was taken four months ago, and the capabilities page includes one of the world’s largest fiber stitching and firing centrifuges. More capacity than any of the other plants. Now the website is down. The industrial register lists QS Materials as OOB.”

  Price nodded. “Out of business.” Already fully up to speed, she conceded, “I know this is pure guesswork, but we can’t ignore it. I am getting Phoenix on the ground in Taiwan and I am sending them to that location.”

  “We do have other avenues of investigation under way here,” Kurtzman said.

  “And if you come up with a more likely target, we will change our focus,” Price said.

  “Personally,” Schwarz said, “my gut is telling me we’re on the right track.”

  Over the South China Sea

  THE STEALTH AIRCRAFT never made it to Taiwan.

  Minutes before it entered Taiwanese airspace, the long-range surveillance aircraft that had been shadowing it all the way from Malaysia was suddenly joined by a Chinese air force fighter.

  The fighter pulled up to within a hundred meters of the stealth jet and the pilot fired manually. The stealth jet became just burning scrap, and most of it burned to ash before it hit the ground.

  Then the two Chinese aircraft veered off, returning to Chinese soil.

  But on their way, passing underneath them, was the amassing Chinese naval fleet, heading due west, to Taiwan.

  Hsiaogang Airport

  “HI,” SAID THE GIRL in the trench coat. “You Mr. M.?”

  McCarter found himself looking down at a very attractive and young-looking Chinese girl.

  “I’m your ride, Mr. M.”

  “You even old enough to have a driver’s license?”

  “Sure, I am. Driver’s license, hunting license, even one of these.” She thrust her Langley ID in his face.

  “Fine. Let’s go,” McCarter said unhappily.

  The Chinese girl led them through the terminal and turned to regard her followers. Five extremely fit and somewhat battered men.

  “Can’t remember the last time I had an entourage like this,” she announced.

  They quickly exited the secure airport gate and stepped into a big Mercedes G-Class SUV. She took the wheel. As soon as the doors closed McCarter turned on her. “We’re not your entourage.”

  “But I know Taiwan, Mr. M.,” she shot back. “Xiaoliao Jiahua,” she announced to all of them. “Call me Cello. CIA, although I’m officially off the clock on this one. I’m here to help you guys get the job done. I’ve been in Pingtung for a few years and I can get you around town in a big hurry.”

  “Fine,” McCarter said.

  “Old friend of Barb and Bear, by the way.”

  The interior of the Mercedes was silent.

  “Okay, so I talked to them on the phone a time or two. But I did fieldwork with another guy you know. Belasko.”

  She floored the SUV into Reverse and tore out of the lot.

  “Did you know that?” she prodded.

  “We knew,” McCarter said. They had received a very brief report on this CIA operative before landing. Cello had indeed done fieldwork with Mack Bolan when he was going under the alias Mike Belasko. She had impressed Barbara Price. Her CIA activities in China had been successful, much to the chagrin of the People’s Republic of China—and she was no longer welcome in mainland China.

  “I guess Barb’s been keeping an eye on me since then. Thinks I’m doing an okay job and that you could use somebody to make your visit to Taiwan very efficient. Can you tell me something?”

  “No,” McCarter said.

  “Belasko. Is he, you know, still alive?”

  McCarter regarded the young woman behind the wheel. She looked like a kid despite being in her thirties. And she glanced across at him with concern in her eyes. She had liked Bolan and all she wanted was some reassurance.

  “He’s still alive,” McCarter said.

  She smiled broadly. “Wow. That’s good to hear. Because that son of a bitch lives on the edge.”

  * * *

  ZORDUN GLIMPSED THE NEWS from his bed. There was a buildup of Chinese naval forces in the South China Sea. This happened every few years. He wasn’t worried about it. In a few days the Chinese would dissolve their attack formations and pass the buildup off as simply “maneuvers.”

  China was too financially vested in Taiwan to go to war with Taiwan.

  What truly unsettled Zordun was the rising tide that seem to be turning against him outside of Taiwan—and that was exacerbated by the events in Malaysia.

  He had never dreamed the Chinese would be so determined to get access to his technology. The resources they had put into their Malaysian attack were huge.

  But this came on the heels of other worrisome events. He rolled out of bed. It was early evening. The manufacturing shift started soon and he was too worried to sleep.

  He wanted to watch his most recent collections of videos. He felt as if they had something to tell him—something he had yet to discern.

  It was the video from Argentina that began to give Zordun serious cause for concern. It was the recording of a stream from an airstrike in a desert, with piles of rock neatly arranged on the desert floor. Zordun was mystified until some research revealed that it was in fact salt in those orderly rows, scraped up and piled for quick loading and transport to market.

  Why one of his customers was attacking a rival at this specific locale was unknown to Zordun.

  This was the same customer who had used the aircraft to attack a high-rise hotel in a mountain city in Bolivia. That had been dramatic and exciting video. It had been all the more exciting when he read about the attack in the web news. The news was full of unanswered questions, but Zordun had the answers. He alone knew the full story of the technology. He had a ringside seat to this great news show that was staging itself all over the world. He should have been delighted by it all.

  This buyer had used his aircraft next at the salt desert. The video was exhilarating for several moments, as the aircraft chased down a fleeing vehicle and hammered it with machine-gun fire. Then the end of the salt field had come up, and the fleeing vehicle finally seemed to have been stopped, and there was a man climbing on one of the nearby salt piles, activating something. At that moment the salt piles in front of the aircraft had risen into the air, pelting the aircraft. The video pickup on the interior of the aircraft showed the pilot in a panic—until the aircraft hit the desert floor and all video ceased to function.

  All very exciting, but Zordun could not enjoy it. He thought he recognized the image of the man on the salt pile. He did what he could to enhance the video, but the camera was too far away and the image was too blurred. The hair color didn’t match the man he had seen
in the Mayan ruins. But the more he looked at the video, the more the man on the salt pile seemed to be of the same type. His clothing was different, but his self-confident manner was like that of the British soldier from Mexico.

  And now Zordun wondered if he was detecting a pattern. Over three days, three videos had shown soldiers tracking down and destroying three of his aircraft.

  But this was to be expected, he told himself. Soldiers and police and drug enforcement agencies were perpetually on the trail of the kinds of people who bought Zordun’s stealth jet. Invisible on radar or not, his buyers were mostly stupid gangsters making stupid mistakes that would get them apprehended.

  Stealth aircraft could make their jobs easier, but it would not cure their stupidity.

  And so they would still find themselves being tracked down and arrested, and of course the law enforcement agencies would be eager to track down a stealth aircraft and destroy it on sight.

  And it was out of the question to believe that it was the same group of British soldiers in all these cases. In Mexico and Argentina and in Florida.

  And yet, Zordun could not stop thinking about it.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The global crisis deepened.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was somehow bewildering to Barbara Price that this had come so far so quickly. How could an imbalance of power lead to a near declaration of war in a matter of hours? And indeed, that was happening now. It was the promise of war. It was the stoking of flames. It was the inevitability of conflagration.

  Price’s glance was drawn to the rear of the War Room. A man was there and then he was gone.

  “I’m taking five, Aaron,” she said.

  When she entered her private room there was a man waiting for her, silent and dark. He was unshaved, and there was a bruise on his jaw and there was a wound on his hairline. He had the eyes of a killer. And when she saw him, standing in the shadows in her room, she felt a deep well of relief. She crossed the room and took him in her arms.

  He said nothing, held on to her, giving her a rare moment of protection. Usually she was the one protecting the world; right now, he was her shield against everything that was bad.

  Finally she released him and went to the sink to wash her face. She pulled a fresh blouse out of the closet and changed into it. He looked at her, waiting for her to speak.

  “It’s getting bad,” she said. “Have you seen what’s going on?”

  “Yeah. Nobody seems to know what got the Chinese going,” Mack Bolan said. “It’s like all of a sudden they decided it was time to go to war.”

  “They will go to war,” Price said. “They’ve wanted to for years. Now their pride and ambition may force them to finally do it.”

  Briefly she explained the events leading up to this point.

  Mack Bolan, the man that some called the Executioner, listened without interrupting her.

  “They go to war to save face,” Bolan said finally.

  Price shook her head. “No, they go because they want that technology, and want it exclusively. For all their power and money, China simply has not found a way to foster innovation domestically. They can’t stimulate their own technological breakthroughs, so they have to get it from the outside world. It’s shameful to them, and yet it’s the only way they can maintain their status as a superpower. They need this technology to keep them at the forefront of military state of the art.”

  “But it’s more important to them that they save face. For the very reasons that you said, Barb,” Bolan said. He was sitting on the bed now, looking tired, but somehow still powerful.

  She considered his words.

  “For decades, China has struggled with this humiliation of being unable to create leading technology. With all their people and all their money and all their industry, they still can’t innovate themselves to the forefront. And now, to have Taiwan, the bastard child whose very existence is an embarrassment to them, create a leading military technology—it’s unacceptable.”

  “But Taiwan didn’t develop it. In fact, it came from an American researcher.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bolan said. “It comes from Taiwan now. That’s bad enough. But China would stand down if the source of the embarrassment was removed.”

  Price looked at him, crinkled her brow and considered his words.

  And then she was leaving her room, and leaving Bolan, and buttoning her fresh shirt as she ran back to the War Room.

  “Aaron,” she said, “I think I know how we can defuse the situation.

  Kurtzman rolled over to the conference table, curious. “Tell me.”

  “China wants this technology. Taiwan has this technology. If the technology becomes worthless, there’s no reason to go to war.”

  “How can you render this technology worthless?” Kurtzman asked.

  “By telling the world. Right now, Stony Man Farm is the only entity on the planet that knows how to track those stealth aircraft.”

  “Which is exactly why the U.S. military wants it. And you know that no one is going to want us to give it to them. We have Brezius, which means we know how to create this technology. As of right now, the Chinese do not. Even in Taiwan, they know how to formulate the CMC, but only Zordun’s learned the process. If he’s gone, there’s a very good chance they won’t be able to re-create his processes. At least not in the near term. That will give the United States a huge head start on the exploitation of this technology.”

  “All well and good,” Price said. “But far better to defuse a war between China and Taiwan. If it starts, what will happen when Russia becomes involved? When the United States does, how will we respond? Which side will we engage and which side will we ally ourselves with?”

  “You know I can’t answer that question,” Kurtzman said.

  “Most importantly,” Price said, “what will the toll be? Will the people of Taiwan merely be decimated? Or will they be defeated, and then face punishment for their years of rebellion against Chinese rule? There is no good outcome here. If we can stop this war before it starts, it’s a far better thing than handing over some new technology to the U.S. military.”

  “The U.S. military might not see it that way,” Kurtzman said.

  “Yes, they will,” Price said. “When they see how easily this technology can be turned against itself.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Cello Jiahua was all business as she steered the SUV through one of Taiwan’s sprawling industrial districts.

  “I did a drive-by on QS Materials before you guys landed,” she reported. “There’s a lot of activity for a place that has supposedly closed up shop. Coming up on the right.”

  She slowed only slightly as they drove by QS. There were lights on, and several trucks and cars were parked in the lots. A truck was backed into the loading bay.

  “The trucks are all labeled as engineering and construction firms,” she said. “They’re not. I’ve checked them out.” She indicated a truck with bright blue characters painted on the body panels. “That says Dea Contract Structural Engineering. The firm exists but it’s not at that address, and the vehicle is not registered to the company. It was purchased used by an individual three months ago. That individual used fake identification. So the owner is unknown. The truck at the loading bay—same story, different fake ID.”

  “What about the building itself?”

  “Ask Barb. She was looking into that.”

  McCarter contacted Price. “Ms. Jiahua’s got our clearance to participate in this exchange,” Price said. “She’s already gathered time-saving intelligence.”

  Jiahua grinned smugly at McCarter.

  “The building and all the equipment was purchased by a shell company two months ago. We’re still trying to backtrack the names of the individuals behind the shell. They overpaid by as much as two hundred percent. Looks like they had to convince the former owner to sell and finally offered him so much cash he couldn’t say no.”

  “So we can’t find a
single real name tied to this operation?” Manning said from the middle seat.

  “The good news,” Price responded, “is that it’s looking more and more like Zordun’s CMC plant—and not a wild-goose chase.”

  “So what are we waiting for?” McCarter said.

  * * *

  MCCARTER, ENCIZO AND Manning left the Mercedes and approached on foot, moving through the darkness to a cold truck parked near the loading bay. James and Hawkins were using the other entrance.

  “We are in position,” Calvin James relayed.

  “Make your entrance in fifteen,” McCarter replied.

  “Understood.”

  With a hand signal, McCarter indicated the approach. The three of them emerged from behind the cold truck and spread out, with Encizo and Manning moving quickly to stacks of pallets as McCarter marched boldly up an empty loading ramp and into the open loading bay.

  Two Chinese men were moving large, long wooden crates, but the forklift came to an abrupt halt. Without hesitation, the driver was out of the forklift, and he and his companion stalked toward McCarter. They were shouting at him, and he shook his head, indicating he didn’t understand. This only increased their agitation, and one of them got in his face.

  McCarter cold cocked him. The shouting stopped, and the man flopped onto his back, while McCarter snatched the second man by the collar.

  The man reacted with a quick sweep of his arms designed to dislodge McCarter’s grip. McCarter allowed his grip to be moved, but in the same instant snatched the collar with his other hand and used the first to bash the man across the face. The man made a pained sound in his throat, went momentarily limp and then lashed out viciously. The Phoenix Force warrior ducked the high blow and put his fist low under the man’s rib cage, making good use of the man’s forceful leg jab. The figure bent double, coughing viciously, and McCarter walked him headfirst into the closest wooden crate.