by Ted Bell
Kat didn’t like this birthday, with its early hints of mortality, one bit. He was determined to make it a happy evening for her and their family. He’d always had a sense of occasion and he wasn’t about to let this one go to waste.
And he’d loved the shine in her lively brown eyes when he gave her the birthday present. She opened the slender black velvet case, took a quick peek, and smiled across the table at him, her eyes sparkling in the candlelight.
A diamond necklace.
“It’s lovely, Bill. Really, you shouldn’t have. Way too extravagant.”
“Do you like it?”
“What girl wouldn’t, darling?”
“It’s the one Audrey Hepburn wore in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“Bill Chase, stop it. I know when you’re teasing.”
“No, Kat, really. There was an auction at Sotheby’s when I was in New York last week.”
“You’re serious. Audrey’s necklace. The one in the movie.”
“Double pinkie swear, crossies don’t count.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“Dad?” Milo said.
“Yes, Milo?”
“You’re funny.”
Milo and Sarah looked at each other and laughed. Double pinkie swear? They’d never heard their brainy dad speak like that before.
“Audrey Hepburn?” Kat said again, still not quite believing it. “Really?”
“Hmm,” he said, “Audrey Hepburn.”
It was perfect. For that one fleeting moment, it was all just perfect.
Her favorite actress. Her favorite movie. His favorite girl. The happy smiles on the faces of his two beautiful children.
He was a very, very lucky man, and he knew it.
THE FOG WAS thick when the Chase family stepped outside the flickering gas-lit restaurant entrance. You could barely make out the haloed glow of streetlamps on the far side of the narrow cobblestone Georgetown street.
Bill held his daughter’s hand; pausing at the top of the steps, he pulled his grey raincoat closer round his torso. It must have dropped twenty degrees while they were inside, and the fog made everything a little spooky.
They descended the few steps to the sidewalk and turned toward the river.
He could hear that melody in his head, the theme song from his favorite horror movie, The Exorcist. What was it called? “Tubular Bells.” They’d shot part of that movie on this very same street, on a very foggy night just like this one, and maybe that’s why walking back from the Tombs at night sometimes gave him the creeps.
“Let’s go, kids, hurry up,” Chase said, edgy for some nameless reason as they plunged into the mist.
The street was deserted, for one thing, all the curtains in the town houses drawn tight against the stormy night. He took a look over his shoulder, half expecting to see a deranged zombie dragging one leg behind him.
Nothing, of course.
He felt like an idiot. The last thing he wanted after a perfect evening was to look like a fool and alarm Kat about nothing. She and Sarah were singing “A Foggy Day in London Town” off-key, Kat loving to sing when she’d had a glass or two of her favorite sauvignon blanc.
“Damn it!” Bill cried, bending to grab his kneecap. Looking over his shoulder, he’d walked right into a fireplug, slammed his knee and upper shin against the hard iron rim. He could feel a warm dampness inside his trouser leg. The cut probably wasn’t deep, but it hurt like hell.
“What is it, darling?” Kat said, taking his arm.
“Banged my damn knee, that’s all. Let’s just keep walking, okay? The corner is just around the corner up there somewhere, I think.”
“The corner is just around the corner!” Sarah mimicked and her mother laughed.
What the hell was wrong with him? She was happy. The Big Four-Oh was officially history. And she had loved his present.
“Let’s skip. All the way home,” he said. “Except for Dad. For Dad, you see, has a very bum knee.” Inexplicably, he felt better. Some second sense had warned him that some bad thing was waiting in the fog.
And it was just a damn fireplug.
CHAPTER 3
IN THE NEXT block he saw a chocolate brown Mercedes-Benz 600 “Pullman” limo pulled over and stopped. It was parked at the curb about twenty feet ahead of them. The 1967 Mercedes Pullman was a classic, the most highly desired limo of the 1960s. He’d been thinking about bidding on one at auction, for Lightstorm’s corporate driver.
The interior light was on in the limo, filling the car with soft yellow light. His senses were on high alert, but as he drew near he saw that the occupants were harmless. There was a liveried chauffeur leaning against the rear fender smoking a cigarette; a tiny, elderly couple was seated on the broad leather bench seat in the rear. And there was a diplomatic plate on the big car.
The Chinese delegation.
“Probably that new Chinese ambassador and his wife,” he whispered to Kat. “Looks like they need help.”
The passenger door was slightly ajar, and as he drew abreast of them he could see that they were plainly lost in the fogbound streets of old Georgetown. The wife, snow white hair held back in a chignon, wearing a mink stole over a black cashmere turtleneck with a strand of pearls, had a well-creased road map of D.C. spread across her lap.
Her husband was peering over her shoulder, pointing his finger at an intersection and asking the chauffeur something about the Estonian embassy.
“May I help you?” Chase asked in English, never trusting his always rusty Mandarin. He bent down to speak to the ambassador’s wife.
She looked up in surprise; apparently she hadn’t seen his approach in the fog.
“Oh,” the elegant woman said sweetly in English, “aren’t you kind, dear? We’re embarrassed to say it, but we’re late for a reception and completely lost. My husband, the ambassador, and I are new to Washington, you see, and haven’t yet got a clue, as you Americans say. We’re looking for the Estonian embassy . . . even our poor driver cannot find it.”
Chase leaned down to get a closer look at her map.
“Well,” he said, reaching inside to point out their location on the map. “Here you are. And here’s Wisconsin Street over here and the embassy is right—”
The woman clamped her small but incredibly powerful hand around his wrist. In an instant, she had pulled him forward, off his feet, halfway into the car. The husband had something in his hand, a hypo, and he plunged it into the side of Chase’s neck. He could feel a wave of nausea instantly sweep over him, tried to pull away but had no muscle power at all.
“Try to relax, Dr. Chase,” the woman cooed softly. “It will all be over in a second or two.”
She knew his name.
“Kat, grab Milo! Sarah! Run! Run!” Bill Chase cried over his shoulder. Kat looked at him for a second in astonishment, saw he was serious, and gathered Milo and Sarah up into her arms. And started running. He saw them run, then lost them, folding into the swirling fog.
It was the last time, he truly believed at that moment, that he would ever see them alive.
He was vaguely aware of a white van passing the limo, headed in the direction of his family. Next he was being manhandled by the chauffeur around to the rear of the Mercedes. The big man popped the massive trunk, lifted him easily, and dropped him inside.
The lid of the trunk slammed down.
All was blackness then.
KAT, WHO WAS losing her mind to terror, tried to run. But the fog, two children in her arms, and her damn Jimmy Choo heels made it all but impossible. All she wanted to do was speed-dial 911 on her cell, get the police, and—
A van swerved up to the curb just beside her. The rear doors flew open, and four large men all in black leaped to the pavement right in front of them. They were wearin
g ski masks, Kat saw, as one of them, his body enwreathed with fog, stepped under the hazy streetlamp to snatch Milo from her arms.
She cried out, ripping Milo away again, clutching her son’s frail little body to her chest, and that’s when something unbelievably hard, a ball of pain encased in steel, struck the back of her head. It made a dull, sickening noise and sent her sprawling to the ground, her pulse roaring in her ears, her face half submerged in a large puddle with fat raindrops dancing upon it.
She knew she was close to blacking out.
“Milo!” she cried out, raising her head to search for her children. “Sarah!”
But they had disappeared into the turning wisps and wraiths of fog that hovered around the white van. And one of the four thugs had taken them from her. The one who had hit her now had her by the ankles, dragging her toward the van, her head bouncing over the cobblestones.
Just before she slipped into blackness she saw one of the men pulling her limp son up into the rear of the van. The man who was yanking Milo and Sarah inside by the arm, his face hidden by the black balaclava, was screaming at her son. Unintelligible threats in some guttural foreign language . . . Chinese, perhaps.
What in God’s name was going on?
CHAPTER 4
South China Sea
Present Day
MIDNIGHT. NO MOON, no stars, the sea a flat black void a few feet beneath his wingtips. For a man streaking through the night over hostile waters approaching the speed of sound, at an altitude no sane man would even dare consider, Commander Alex Hawke was remarkably comfortable. He was piloting an F-35C Lightning. The new matte-black American-built fighter jet was one of many purchased and heavily modified by Britain’s Royal Navy for under-the-radar special ops just like this one.
Lord Alexander Hawke, a former Royal Navy fighter pilot and decorated combat veteran of the latest Gulf War, now a seasoned British intelligence officer with MI6, had to smile.
The F-35C’s single seat reclined at an angle of exactly thirty degrees, transforming the deadly Lightning, Hawke thought, into something along the lines of a chaise longue. Leave it to the bloody Americans to worry about fighter pilot “comfort” during a dogfight. Still, it was comfy enough, he had to admit, smiling to himself. Rather like a supersonic Barcalounger!
His eyes flicked over the dimly lit instrument array and found nothing remotely exciting going on. Even the hazy reddish glow inside the cockpit somehow reassured him. He was less than six hundred nautical miles from his designated speck on the map, the tiny island of Xiachuan, and closing fast.
Every mile he put behind him lessened the chance of a Chinese Suchoi 33 jet interceptor or a surface-to-air missile blasting him out of the sky. Although the Lightning was equipped with the very latest antimissile defense systems, the Lightning was no stealth fighter.
He was vulnerable and he knew it.
Should he be forced to eject and be captured by the Red Chinese, he’d be tortured mercilessly before he was executed. A British intelligence officer flying an unmarked American fighter jet had no business entering Chinese airspace. But he did have business in China, very serious business, and his success might well help avert impending hostilities that could lead to regional war. At that point the chances of it expanding into a global conflict were nearly one hundred percent.
Preventing that was his mission.
IN LONDON, ONE week earlier, “C,” as the chief of MI6 was traditionally called, had summoned Hawke to join him for lunch at his men’s club, Boodle’s. Lord Hawke had thought it was a purely social invitation. Usually the old man conducted serious SIS business only within the sanctum sanctorum of his private offices at 85 Albert Embankment, the headquarters for Six.
So it was that a very relaxed Alex Hawke presented himself promptly at the appointed hour of noon.
“Well, here you are at last,” C said, amiably enough. The “at last” was the old boy’s way of letting you know who was boss. Sir David Trulove, a gruff old party thirty years Hawke’s senior, had his customary corner table at the third-floor Grill Room. Shafts of dusty sunlight pouring down from the tall leaded windows set the table crystal and silver afire, all sparkle and gleam. Above C’s table, ragged tendrils of his tobacco smoke hung in wreaths and coils, turning and twisting slowly in the sunlit space.
The dining and drinking at Boodle’s was, by any standard, done in one of the poshest man caves in all London.
C took a spartan sip of his gin and bitters, looked his young subordinate up and down in cursory fashion, and said, “I must say, Alex, a bit of time in the down mode becomes you. You’re looking rather fit and ready for the fray. ‘Steel true, blade straight,’ as Conan Doyle’s memorable epitaph would have it. Sit, sit.”
Hawke sat. He paid scant attention to C’s flattery, knowing the old man used it sparingly and only to his own advantage, usually as some prelude to another more important subject. Whatever was on his mind, he seemed jovial enough.
“Most kind of you, sir. I’ve been looking forward to this luncheon all week. I get bored silly sometimes, up in the country. Good being back in town. This is a much-needed interlude, I must say.”
“Let’s see if you still feel that way at the conclusion. What are you drinking? My club, my treat, of course,” Trulove said, catching a roving waiter’s eye.
“Gosling’s, please. The Black Seal, neat.”
Hawke sat back and smiled. It really was good to be here, a place where a man could act like a man wants to act, and do just what he pleased without encountering approbation from bloody anybody.
“So,” Hawke said after C had ordered another drink and his rum, “trouble, I take it.”
“No end of it, sadly.”
“Spill the beans, sir. I can take it.”
“The bloody Chinese again.”
“Ah, my dear friends in the Forbidden City. Something new? I thought I was fairly well up to speed.”
“Well, Alex, you know those inscrutable Mandarins in Beijing as well as I do. Always some new wrinkle up their embroidered red silk sleeves. It’s that abominable situation in the South China Sea, I’m afraid.”
“Heating up?”
“Boiling over.”
Hawke’s rum arrived. He took a sip of it and said, “What now, sir? Don’t tell me the Reds have blockaded one of the world’s busiest trade routes?”
“No, no, not yet anyway. It may come to that. Still, simply outrageous behavior. First, they unilaterally extend their territorial claims in the South China Sea hundreds of miles south and east from their most southerly province of Hainan. All done with zero regard for international maritime law, of course. And now they have established a no-fly zone over a huge U-shaped sea area that overlaps parts of Vietnam, the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Brunei.”
“Good Lord. And with what possible justification?”
“Beijing says its right to the area comes from two thousand years of history, when the Paracel and Spratly island chains were regarded as integral parts of the Chinese nation. Vietnam says, rightly, that both island chains lie entirely within its territory. That it has actively ruled over both chains since the seventeenth century and has the documents to prove it.”
A flash of anger flared in Hawke’s eyes.
“Bastards have created a flashpoint as dangerous as the Iranians and the Strait of Hormuz, haven’t they? Clearly global conflict implications.”
“Spot-on. And now they’ve begun insisting that every aircraft transiting these formerly wide-open routes must first ask permission of the Chinese government. Including U.S. and Royal Navy flights. Outrageous. We will not, bloody hell, ask them permission for any such thing! Nor will anyone else, I can guarantee you that.”
“The result?”
“It’s all a ruse to provoke a reaction. The new-generation Chinese warrior is a fervent nationalist, with militaristic veins b
ulging with pride. And, the Chinese are, as we speak, using their North Korean stooges to probe and prod at our will to prevail in this region, both at sea and in the air. I mean, you’ve got NK coastal patrols ‘bumping’ into the Yank’s Seventh Fleet in the night, near collisions with Royal Navy vessels, that sort of thing, spoiling for a fight. The North Koreans, of course, know China will back them up in a showdown.”
“An extremely dangerous game.”
“To say the very least.”
“And the Western countermove?”
“It gets tricky. Under President Tom McCloskey’s strong leadership, the United States is taking a very hard line with China. The U.S. Navy is dramatically increasing its naval presence in the region, of course. The Seventh Fleet is en route to the Straits of Taiwan. And they’ve deployed U.S. Marines to Darwin, on the western coast of Australia. Meanwhile, our own PM, in a weak moment, actually had an extraordinary idea.”
“He did?”
“I know, I know, no one believes it was actually his original notion, but that’s the official story coming out of Number Ten Downing.”
“What’s his extraordinary thought?”
“He suggests the allies consider a massive convoy, Alex. Warships from the Royal Navy, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Yanks with an entire carrier battle group, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, along with seven or eight other countries. Full steam ahead right up their bloody arses and we’ll see what they bloody do about it, won’t we?”
C laughed and drained his drink.
“Well, for starters,” Hawke said, “the Chinese may elect to take out a massive U.S. carrier with one of their new advanced killer satellites the CIA was describing to our deputy directors and section heads just last week. It’s not beyond the realm of plausibility.”
“Hmm, the life of a country squire has not completely numbed your frontal lobe capacity. But you’re right. That is a consideration, Alex. At any rate, right now, the prime minister’s notion is only a good idea. Hardly a done deal, as they say.”