Checkmate

by Tom Clancy

  In the pulsing blue field, each camera was surrounded by a swirling halo—its own unique electromagnetic signature. Just as a radiologist learns to decipher seemingly obscure X-rays, Fisher had over time learned to read EM patterns. He could tell these cameras were night-vision-equipped.

  This was going to be dicey. His timing would have to be perfect.

  He watched and waited.

  FOUR minutes later, a roving guard appeared around the corner of the outbuilding. He stopped, flipped open a small recessed panel, and punched a code into a keypad. This was the first Fisher had seen of a panel, but he immediately understood its purpose.

  The guard shut the cover and strolled along the fence, moving right to left. None of the motion floodlights came on. Halfway along the fence, the guard stopped before the inward-facing camera for a count of three, then walked on and disappeared around the opposite corner of the building.

  Watching the process told Fisher much: The guard’s failure to stop at a second control panel meant the alarm override for the floodlights was on a delay; the inward-facing camera was a checkpoint; and the guard’s lack of NV goggles meant his stroll along the fence was to check for breaches. The lawn, the hedges, and the edge of the cutback weren’t his zone of responsibility.

  The motion lights were the easiest to disable. Fisher pulled the SC-20 from his back holster, settled it into the crook of his arm, and took aim. He fingered the ZOOM toggle once, then twice, centering the reticle on the light. He fired. With a tinkle of glass, the light shattered. He adjusted aim, fired again, and killed the next light. He reholstered the SC-20.

  Next he pulled a scopelike object from his belt, attached it to the pistol, and flipped on the power switch. With a faint hum, the camera jammer powered up. Despite the jammer’s obvious benefits, Fisher tried to avoid using it for two reasons: One, it consumed a lot of power, and he wasn’t fond of carrying any more battery weight than necessary. And two, using it required precise and unwavering aim. One tremble of the hand or misstep of the foot and you risked dropping the interference. He checked his OPSAT, watching the fence cameras go through their rotation, watching their cones overlap and separate . . . overlap and separate. . . .

  From behind the hedge came a twig snap as Stumpy passed by.

  Overlap and separate . . . overlap and separate . . .

  Now.

  He rose into a crouch, took aim on the camera nearest him, pulled the jammer’s trigger, and started walking forward. He kept his pace steady, his aim level. The camera made a rapid tick-tick-tick sound as the jammer scrambled the circuits.

  When he was three feet from the camera, he released the jammer’s trigger and flattened himself against the fence. Safe. For now. Surveillance cameras didn’t cover close-in, horizontal surfaces very well; the mechanics of their motion usually left a blind spot along a wall or fence.

  He waited for the cameras to complete a rotation, then mounted the fence and climbed to the top, where he flipped onto his back and shimmied over the razor wire until he was lying spread-eagle, back arched. He said a silent thank-you to Kevlar and RhinoPlate: handy against bullets and razor wire alike.

  In one fluid motion, he pushed off with his feet and swung his arms up and over. The sudden momentum, combined with the spring of the wire, vaulted him backward. He did a full reverse somersault and landed on the grass in a crouch, then stepped to the fence and froze beneath the inward-facing camera. He waited until it panned away, then sprinted to the building, around the corner, and down the wall to the next corner, where he stopped and peeked around.

  He was at the edge of a short dirt road. To his left, fifty feet away, was more hurricane fence; to his right, an open-fronted twelve-stall garage; the first six stalls were empty, the last six filled with jeeps like the ones he’d encountered on the beach road.

  He felt the OPSAT vibrate on his wrist. He checked the screen:

  INCOMING VOICE TRANSMISSION . . . RECEIVE ON ENCRYPED BUTTON FOUR.

  Button Four was reserved for heavily scrambled and encrypted voice comms. What could be important enough to break radio silence? He keyed his subdermal. “Up on secure button four.”

  43

  THERE was a five-second delay; then Lambert said, “Sam, we’ve picked up a stray radio signal from inside Shek’s compound. It’s coming from somewhere in the main house. Tell him, Grim.”

  “It’s a burst transmission on a dedicated CIA operations carrier frequency. Don’t ask me how or what—I’m working on it—but it looks like there’s a good guy on the inside.”

  “The CIA is running an op on Bai Kang Shek? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Maybe not,” Lambert agreed, “but that’s not our worry. Bottom line, if we’ve got an asset on the inside, let’s see if we can use it.”

  “Langley may not like that.”

  “I’ll worry about Langley. You worry about finding that agent. Grim’s updating your OPSAT.”

  Fisher checked his screen. He waited for the rotating DATA UPDATING circle to stop, then scrolled and zoomed the island map until the pagoda filled the sreen. In the northeastern corner of the building wasaaflashing yellow dot.

  “I see it,” Fisher said.

  “Since we don’t have interior blueprints, there’s no way to tell where exactly that is—upstairs, downstairs. . . .”

  “I’ll figure it out. We don’t know if this is an informant, a case officer, an agent—nothing?”

  “Nope,” said Lambert. “Use your discretion. Whoever it is, if they’ve got the inside scoop on Shek, get it. Whatever it takes.”

  Curveball, Fisher thought. He loved surprises as much as the next guy, but preferred his at Christmas and on birthdays, not in the middle of a mission. Then again, as the saying went, covert ops were about expecting—and handling—the unexpected.

  HE ducked into the garage. The dirt floor smelled of oil and gas. He picked his way along the back wall and stopped behind the third jeep. He lay down on his back and squirmed under the chasis. From his pouch he pulled a quarter-sized plastic disk. Inside it was a six-gram wafer of WP, or white phosphorus, which when ignited burns at five thousand degrees Farenheit. If necessary, this would provide a spectacular diversion as the WP ignited the fuel tank and the rest of the jeeps exploded in domino fashion. He peeled back the adhesive and stuck the disk to the gas tank, then punched the correct screen on the OPSAT and checked the disk’s signal.

  He wriggled out and trotted to the garage wall and peeked around the corner. The road was bordered on both sides by outbuildings and ended at a circular driveway before the pagoda. All the outbuildings were dark, save for the third one on his left, where a light showed in a curtained window. From inside Fisher could hear strains of Chinese guoyue music and male laughter.

  Off-duty guards or compound staff? he wondered. If the former, it would be good to know where reinforcements would be coming from in an emergency.

  He creeped across the road until he could see through the curtain. He pulled out his binoculars and zoomed in on what looked like a card table. A hand moved into view and slapped down a mah-jongg tile. There was laughter and clapping. The owner of the hand stood up. Fisher saw a hip holster with the butt of a pistol jutting from it. That answered the question: guards.

  Fisher considered his options, and quickly dismissed his impulse to plant wall mines. One on the door and one on the window would almost certainly wipe out everyone inside, but it would also draw down on him the remainder of the security force. As usual, less was more. No footprints.

  He moved along the back of the guard quarters, paralleling the road until he reached another line of hibiscus hedges that bordered the turnaround. He dropped flat and peered through the hedge. Here he had a unobstructed view of the pagoda.

  The overhead surveillance photos hadn’t done it justice. Like a wedding cake with successively smaller layers, the pagoda’s six stories formed a sixty-foot-tall truncated pyramid. Seeing it up close, Fisher now had a sense of its grand scale. The lowe
r level measured hundred feet to a side, or ten thousand square feet; the next level was half that, and so on to the top level, the tip of the pyramid, which was no larger than an average-sized bedroom.

  The pagoda’s exterior was two-toned red and black, the paint so thick with lacquer it shone in the moonlight. The sloping roofs, each shorter than its predecessor by a few feet, were covered in terra-cotta tiles and supported by massive wooden crossbeams. Paper lanterns dotted the lower eaves, casting pale yellow light on the front steps and the wraparound porch.

  Insane or not, Bai Kang Shek’s taste in architecture was exquisite.

  Fisher counted four guards, two on the front steps and two along the side closest to him. Unable to see the other two sides, he had to assume another four guards, for a total of eight.

  His study of the surveillance package had revealed a chink in the pagoda’s armor—and as with the hibiscus hedges all over the compound, it involved landscaping. The pagoda was enclosed on three sides by acacia trees. With thick, gnarled trunks and sturdy limbs, the acacia reminded Fisher of a slightly flattened broccoli floret. These trees had been allowed to overgrow the third-floor roofline.

  Twenty minutes later, having crawled inch by inch across the driveway and into the grove, Fisher stood up behind an acacia trunk and let out a relieved breath. He peeked around the tree to confirm the guards hadn’t moved. He grabbed a branch above his head and chinned himself up.

  The branch he’d scouted earlier extended horizontally from the trunk, over the heads of the guards, and ended a few feet over the roof. Here again, patience would be the key. If he hurried or panicked, he was finished. The guards would blast him out of the tree.

  He started moving. The branch quickly tapered to the diameter of a fence post. With his every step it bowed slightly, forcing him to freeze and listen. A breeze had picked up, so the rest of the trees were moving, but he wasn’t about to push his luck.

  Step . . . freeze. Step . . . freeze. Step . . . freeze.

  It took five minutes to cover the last ten feet, but finally he reached the end. He transferred one foot to the tiled roof, made sure he was balanced, then brought his other foot down.

  He crouch-walked up the slope to the open-faced balcony, then snaked his flexi-cam up and over the railing and did a quick scan with NV, infrared, and EM. Nothing.

  He grabbed the railing and pulled himself inside.

  44

  HE found himself in an empty room. Judging from the thick layer of dust and windblown silt on the teakwood floor, it had been empty for years. He padded to the door, pressed his ear to it. Hearing nothing, he slid the flexi-cam under the door. The lens revealed an empty hallway. Unsettled by the camera’s passing, a dust bunny drifted past the lens like a fuzzy tumbleweed.

  Fisher opened the door. Here, too, the floor was covered with an even layer of dust. There were no footprints, no marks. It was like freshly fallen snow. The rattan walls were bare, but he could see faint rectangular outlines where artwork had once hung.

  What was going on here? Beyond the obvious lack of furnishings and the layer of dust, there was an odd feeling to the place. Abandonment. Neglect.

  He looked around and found three other rooms like the first, each of those also empty. The hallway was laid out like a plus sign, with one room on each of the four quadrants. At the end of the north hallway he found a spiral staircase. He climbed to the next level.

  Though half the size of the floor below, it was identical in layout. He checked each of the rooms with the same result: empty. He climbed the stairs to the fifth level and found the same empty quad of rooms. He moved on. At the top of stairs, he found a locked door.

  He picked the lock and eased open the door. Its movement stirred up a cloud of dust that swirled in his headlamp. The dust was where the similarity to the previous levels ended. Measuring roughly ten feet to a wall, the space was stacked high with dozens of cardboard boxes. The open-faced windows were covered with plywood that had been painted black.

  Fisher opened the nearest box. Inside, he found empty picture frames, wadded-up clothing, a hairbrush. . . . Personal detritus. He checked another box: more of the same. He was turning to leave when something caught his eye. Behind one of the boxes, he saw the corner of a wooden footlocker.

  Curious now, Fisher carefully moved boxes until he could reach the footlocker. He flipped the latches and lifted the lid. Inside was a thick, clear plastic bag, shrunken as though all the air had been sucked from it. Through the plastic he could see a gnarled brown . . . something. He leaned in for a closer look.

  It took a few seconds for him to register what he was seeing.

  Staring back at him was a human face.

  He recoiled a few inches. Then leaned in again. Sealed in the bag’s airless environment, the face and body had turned leathery with dessication, skin stretched taut over sharp edges of bone. Still, Fisher recognized the face.

  Bai Kang Shek.

  HE punched up the OPSAT’s comm screen, set the encryption buffers, and keyed his subdermal.

  “Good news, bad news,” Fisher told Lambert.

  “Good news first.”

  “I found Shek.”

  “Outstanding. Bad news?”

  “He’s a shrunken apple.” He explained, then said, “I’ve got the first and second floors to check, but so far there’s nothing here. My guess: This place hasn’t been lived in for five years or more.”

  “Well, someone or something’s there. Otherwise, why the security? Why the guards?”

  “Both good questions. Are we still getting the CIA frequency?”

  Grimsdottir answered. “No change. It looks like a beacon of some sort. Like an SOS.”

  FISHER went downstairs, passing the previous levels to the second floor. It was a mirror image of those above it, though on a much larger scale. At twelve hundred square feet, each of the four rooms had the square footage of a small house. He headed for the stairwell and started down.

  The main floor was different from those above in only two ways. Instead of four rooms, there was only one, so vast it felt like a warehouse. And there was no dust. There were no signs of furniture or furnishings. On each of the four walls was a set of massive wooden double doors leading outside.

  Fisher stood in the middle of the space, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

  He heard an echoing click.

  He drew his pistol, spun around.

  Behind him a rectangular outline of light appeared in the wall, and he immediately thought door. He sprinted to the staircase and up to the second floor, where he crouched down. He leaned forward until he could see the door.

  It opened. A uniformed guard stepped out, shut the door behind him, and walked toward the nearest exit. Fisher made a snap decision. He drew the SC-20, flipped the selector to Cottonball, took aim, and fired. With a thwump, the projectile hit the guard in the thigh. He staggered sideways, swayed on his feet, and then fell over.

  Time for some answers, Fisher thought.

  To ensure their chat would be private, he lugged the guard’s limp body up to the top level and laid him out on the floor beside Shek’s footlocker/tomb. He bound the guard’s hands and feet with flexi-cuffs, then sat down to wait.

  He’d used a thigh shot to dilute the tranquilizer. After twenty minutes, the guard started to come around. Fisher flipped on his headlamp and aimed it into the guard’s eyes.

  The guard squinted, tried to turn his head away. He mumbled in Chinese, which Fisher guessed was something along the lines of, What the hell’s going on?

  “Do you speak English?” Fisher asked.

  After a couple seconds, the guard said, “Yes, I speak English.” It was heavily accented, but clear enough.

  “If you make a sound or lie to me, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand?”

  All remnants of grogginess cleared from the guard’s face. “What is happening? Who are you?”

  Fisher ignored the question. “What’s your name?”

  �
��Lok.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “I do not know.”

  Truth. “How did you get here?”

  “I left the Army last year. A friend of mine was hired by a security company. They pay well. I joined. I was sent here.”

  Truth. “How long ago?”

  “Six months.”

  Truth. “Not counting guards, who’s here with you?”

  “No one.”

  Lie. Fisher moved the pistol in front of the headlamp so Lok could see it. “That was your one free lie. Let’s try again: Who is here with you?”

  Lok swallowed hard. “Six. They are down there, in the subbasement. I do not know who they are. They work in a room . . . we are not allowed in.”

  “And you don’t recognize any of them?”

  “No.”

  Fisher believed him. Private security firms were a dime a dozen and the quality of their work and personnel ranged from back-alley leg-breakers to professional soldiers protecting high-profile clients. Lok was one of the latter. Lok and his compatriots didn’t need to know anything but where to patrol and what to guard.

  Fisher asked. “Do you know the name Bai Kang Shek?”

  Lok nodded. “As I boy I heard stories. He disappeared, I believe.”

  “Disappeared to here.”

  “That was one of the stories, but I have never seen him here.”

  Yeah, well, you’re leaning against him, son, Fisher thought.

  Fisher could think of only one reason why anyone would freeze-dry Shek and take over his island: anonymity. Conversely, there were several good reasons to maintain this level of security: one, to nurture the legend that Shek the Recluse was alive and kicking on his island haven; two, because there was in fact something worth guarding here. Whatever that might be, Fisher had no doubt it was somewhere in the subbasement.