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She nodded then turned to check her children. “Zhou, put that away. I need you to pay attention to me now.” To Carstairs’s surprise, the girl tucked her game into her backpack and regarded her mother and him steadily.
“All right, here’s what’s going to happen.” Turning to the portal, Carstairs cracked it open enough to see up and down the block. His car, idling at the curb, was still the only one outside. “I’ll go out first. You give me three steps, then take the children’s hands and follow me. If anything happens, get them inside the car. The driver will take you to the embassy. Understand?” She nodded tightly. “All right, let’s go.”
Slipping his right hand into his pocket as he opened the door, Carstairs swept his practiced gaze left then right as he strode confidently outside and down the walk. Even while sending a brief, coded text to the embassy telling them he’d made the pickup, every sense was on overwatch, searching their surroundings for the slightest hint of a threat. Carstairs was aware of the woman and her children two steps behind him as they walked toward the idling car. Five steps away, four, three—
Headlights bloomed down the street as a large sedan with government plates rounded the corner and headed toward them.
“Keep moving,” he said as he stood at the rear of the car, shielding her and the kids with his body. “Get inside.”
Mrs. Liao did exactly that, efficiently shuttling her two children into the backseat, then sliding in after them. The sedan pulled to a stop in front of Carstairs’s vehicle, and a man got out of the passenger’s side. He was dressed in a simple black suit with a white shirt and black tie, and screamed government intelligence to the American. Not local police—probably someone from the Ministry of State Security.
Carstairs casually slipped his hand out of his pocket and held it at his side, fingers loosely curled to conceal what he was holding.
The man had no doubt spotted the diplomatic plates on the embassy car—and Carstairs knew that if they wanted Liao’s family that badly, the plates wouldn’t mean dick. Even so, he tried feigning innocence; it was possible, although improbable, that these guys had spotted the diplomatic plates and were just out for an evening shakedown.
“Can I help you?” he asked as the man walked up to him.
The man didn’t answer for long seconds, his gaze raking the sedan as a tendril of smoke curled up from his crooked butt. Carstairs waited patiently, already aware that the men knew who he was and why he was there. “You are from the US Embassy.” He didn’t even try to make it a question.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing in this neighborhood at this hour?”
Carstairs had had more than enough time to come up with a plausible cover story for this trip—as long as his accuser didn’t know what was really going on. The problem was that in China, even one wrong word could be misconstrued as an insult, or even worse, evidence of something improper or illegal occurring. “I’m helping a friend of mine—Mr. Liao. He asked me to look in on his family while he’s away. We’re going to dinner.” It was about as simple as he could make it, and reasonably plausible. The fact that he was an American might raise an eyebrow or two, but usually the weight of his being with the embassy silenced any questions.
Not, however, this time.
The man shook his head curtly. “These three are wanted for questioning by the Ministry of State Security. They will have to come with us.” He turned to the car door even as Carstairs interposed himself between the man and the vehicle.
“I’m afraid that I cannot allow you to do that, sir. These people are now in a United States Embassy vehicle, and as such, are under the protection of my country.”
It was a major gamble Carstairs was trying, and he knew it. He’d seen the “diplomatic protection” gambit used in a movie when he was a child, and he knew that US Navy ships were considered sovereign territory, but he wasn’t aware of any official laws rendering a car to be defined as sovereign US territory. However, he was determined to play as many cards as he could before resorting to any kind of violence.
His words actually stopped the man for a moment and he regarded Carstairs with a quizzical expression. “Do not make this into trouble for yourself and your country. Surrender the three people inside to me and go home.” He pushed back his rumpled coat to reveal a matte-black pistol Carstairs didn’t recognize on his hip.
The novice diplomat sighed and turned to the car door. “Very well. However, I want your name and identification number, as my superiors—” Instead of reaching for the door, however, he whirled and sprayed the man in the face with his pocket pepper spray canister. The man stumbled away, coughing and clutching his face with both hands, unable to even think about drawing his gun.
Carstairs yanked open the front passenger door and got in as the driver’s side door of the MSS car opened.
“Go! Get us out of here!” He turned to the woman and children in the backseat. “Get down and stay down!”
The driver put his car in Reverse and backed down the street as Carstairs turned back in time to see the MSS driver with his pistol out and aimed at them. He hunched in his seat as the flat cracks of the firing pistol were heard over the racing car engine. The front windshield starred as a bullet hit it, but it didn’t penetrate, ricocheting off into the night.
Carstairs’s driver backed onto a side street and slammed the car to a stop, then put it into gear and rocketed them forward as he turned toward the highway. Carstairs glanced behind them to see the headlights of the MSS sedan in the distance, gaining rapidly.
If we can just make the highway, we can probably lose them… But even as the thought materialized, the sedan caught up with them, looming even larger in their rear windshield. Underneath it huddled Mrs. Liao and her children, all staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. Carstairs noted that they all had their seat belts on, which was good, since the possibility of an accident was high now.
The sedan rammed them from behind, making the embassy car shake and lurch forward. The Chinese sedan accelerated, pulling alongside the car on Carstairs’s side. Now, unfortunately, the driver could shoot at them if he wished, but instead he jerked his steering wheel sharply, slamming his car into theirs and making his driver fight for control.
“Ram him back!” Carstairs ordered. His driver slowed a bit, allowing the MSS car to pull ahead. But just when Carstairs thought the enemy car was going to cut them off, his driver flicked the wheel, sending their car into the other’s rear quarter panel. The expertly executed pit maneuver made the MSS car skid and swerve wildly out of control. It crossed in front of Carstairs’s car, close enough that he could see the driver’s furious face as he struggled to avoid crashing. Then they were past, and his car was accelerating up the entrance ramp to merge with the busy but flowing evening traffic.
Still breathing hard, Carstairs checked behind them for any signs of pursuit, but no battered black sedan came flying up from an off-ramp after them. He took a deep breath, aware that his pounding heartbeat was starting to slow, and checked on Mrs. Liao and her children. They all seemed to be all right, although the boy had tears running down his face, even though he had never made a sound.
“It’s all right. We’re taking you back to the US Embassy, where you’ll be safe—” Even as he said that, Edward felt the car swerve suddenly. He turned to find them taking an unfamiliar off-ramp.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Accident ahead. Taking detour,” his driver answered.
Carstairs blinked at that answer, even as he pulled out his smartphone. A hand covering it made him look up in surprise.
“Do not use. Ministry agents track you through it,” the driver said.
“Oh. Okay. Just get us back to the embassy as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, of course.”
But as they drove on, Carstairs’s instincts alerted him that something was wrong. He glanced at the driver, who navigated the cramped side streets with ease. There was nothing outwardly remarkable about him—just another Chinese national who had gotten a job driving for one of the many embassies in Beijing, a highly prized position in the city. And yet… Carstairs began reviewing the events of the evening.
He hadn’t seemed surprised by the two men at Liao’s house, he thought. However, as the ambassador had said, the government had its hand in most everything here, so perhaps it just wasn’t that surprising to see them following a US Embassy car with diplomatic plates.
But what about that pit maneuver? That was more uncommon, as was the way he had handled the chase in general.
Glancing at the man again, Carstairs was surprised to see part of a tattoo, consisting of Chinese characters, on his forearm. “That’s a nice tattoo. What does it mean?”
His driver glanced down, then sidelong at the American before replying. “‘Loyalty to the nation.’”
His words sent a chill through Carstairs. While that could have been any loyal young Chinese’s man’s symbol of dedication to his country, he knew that particular tattoo had special meaning for those in the Chinese military.
The phrase had become famous since the twelfth century when a Chinese army general named Yue Fei had quit his post and returned home, only to be scolded by his mother for leaving his post and abandoning his duty to his country. According to legend, she had tattooed that exact same phrase on his back, and he had returned to duty, becoming one of China’s most celebrated warriors. To this day, many lifelong military recruits, especially among the younger generations, got the same tattoo as a symbol of their fidelity to the military and the People’s Liberation Army in particular. Carstairs had become aware of it during his studies of Chinese military history.
Shit, he’s military intelligence!
Carstairs slid his hand around the pepper spray again and waited for the opportunity to strike. He had one shot at surprising the man, who was probably equally trained in hand-to-hand combat as he was, maybe better.
Ahead, a small traffic jam made the driver slow the vehicle as a motorcycle rickshaw had collided with a panel truck. The accident blocked the entire street and traffic was at a standstill. The moment the car pulled to a stop, Carstairs made his move.
Flipping up the safety cover, he brought the container out of his pocket and blasted the driver in the face. But instead of screaming and trying to protect himself, the Chinese man shoved his arm up, deflecting the tear gas spray into the roof. Quicker than Carstairs could react, he brought his left arm over, grabbed the wrist of Carstairs’s canister-holding hand and twisted it toward the windshield. The chemical was having some effect—his eyes were red and watering, and his nose was dripping, as well—but the man didn’t seem incapacitated in the least.
He’s had chemical desensitizing, Carstairs realized before a fist streaked toward his face. The blow was off balance and startled him more than doing any real damage. His head bounced off the door window, and he managed to throw his left arm up to block the second punch coming his way.
The pain in his wrist was increasing, but Carstairs managed to turn the canister toward the man’s face and blast him again. Although the chemicals didn’t faze him, the buffeting spray did make him instinctively turn his face away, which was what Carstairs had wanted.
Plucking the canister out of his pinned hand, he smashed it into the driver’s face, feeling the man’s cheekbone break with a palpable snap. Carstairs didn’t let up; driving the end of the plastic-and-metal device into the side of the man’s face, ignoring his weakening attempts to fend him off.
Finally, when the driver was bloody and semiconscious, and no longer an immediate threat, Carstairs reached across, opened the driver’s door and shoved him into the street.
Sliding into the driver’s seat and trying not to cough at the lingering wisps of gas, he put the car in Reverse and began backing up to the nearest intersection. Fortunately there was no one behind him.
“What was all that? Why did you do that to him?” Mrs. Liao asked.
“He was Chinese military,” Carstairs said between coughs. “Whatever your husband has done, a lot of people want him really bad—”
As he said that, they reached the intersection and were immediately flooded with bright white floodlights. Carstairs had just enough time to look over when the car was broadsided by a huge truck. The impact sent them flying across the intersection and into the side street, where the car landed on its roof.
Flung around by the crash, Carstairs found himself lying on the ceiling of the overturned car, a heavy tightness compressing his chest. He tasted blood. One eye was swelling shut and a dull pain bloomed in his ribs. Even so, he knew he had to get Mrs. Liao and her children out and away before more soldiers came. He tried to move, but found himself pinned by the seat. He looked around for his phone but couldn’t see it nearby.
Footsteps crunched on the shattered glass from the window and Carstairs looked out to see a pair of wing tips standing next to the wrecked sedan.
Sets of combat boots appeared next to the shoes and a face leaned down to look in at him in surprise. “The American is still alive.”
“Kill him and collect the others,” came a curt reply. “Make it look like the car accident did it.”
The man looking in on him produced a pistol and turned it around so he was holding it by the barrel. Trapped and unable to move, Edward Carstairs watched as, without a word, the Chinese soldier began crawling toward him, pistol held at the ready to bash his skull in.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_b2b7c462-a2e7-55f7-a09e-d2d2c4fe34bd)
“Well, it just goes to show that you can always trust the State Department to take what should be a simple extraction job and screw up the entire thing.”
Mission controller Barbara Price stared at Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, for a long moment before shaking her head. “Coming down a bit hard on State, aren’t you, Hal? It’s one thing to dodge the local police, or even the ministry. It’s another thing to go up against the Chinese military—”
The gruff man sitting across from her snatched the chewed-to-death cigar from his mouth and used it like a big, brown exclamation point as he interrupted her. “Whenever an officer of the United States government is performing his duty in what is perceived as a foreign environment, which by nature should be considered potentially hostile, all necessary precautions must be taken to ensure his safety as well as the safety of those he comes into contact with.”
Brognola stuck the remains of the unlit cigar back into a corner of his mouth. “Above all, the embassy should not send out just one man to collect the family of the biggest potential defector since Tretyakov! Now it’s turned into the largest screwup since Wang Lijun!”
“The hero police chief of Chonqing City, who was also investigated for the organ transplant facility he founded—”
“Organ transplant facility, my ass,” Brognola interrupted again. “Those butchers are harvesting the insides of political prisoners like the Falun Gong and selling them to the highest bidder. They conveniently get rid of their ‘protestors’ once and for all, and make a tidy profit to boot. Wang tried to buy his way into the US with a trove of documents implicating several high-ranking Chinese officials. Supposedly, although we were never able to confirm this, those documents were instrumental in taking down power politician Bo Xilai. And when State gets the chance to pull in someone who’d make Wang’s knowledge look like peanuts, they bungle the whole thing from the start. Now he’s in the wind and nobody knows where the family went! Balcius will be lucky to keep his job after all this. Not to mention we have to go in and somehow clean up this unholy mess.”
“Well, we’re good at that,” Price reminded him.
“I know, I know. But Striker’s going to have to stay so far under the radar on this one he might as well tunnel into Beijing. We can’t afford to let this spiral into an international incident. We’re just lucky the Chinese also want to keep this as quiet as we do. The black eye on relations between the two countries would take years to fade.”
Price looked down at her tablet, hiding a smile. She didn’t blame Brognola for his irascible attitude. As the Farm’s liaison to the President and a head honcho at the Justice Department, the big Fed had to wade into the alphabet soup that was Washington, DC, on a daily basis to try to glean whatever useful intel he could from the multitude of often-bickering departments on the Hill.
“What’s Striker’s ETA?”
“We sent him the Priority One message—” Price consulted her watch “—nine minutes ago. I’m sure Cowboy and he are double-timing it back.” She referred to John “Cowboy” Kissinger, the Farm’s premier weaponsmith.
As if in confirmation of her statement, her tablet pinged with a message from Akira Tokaido, a top hacker and member of the Farm’s cyber team.
Striker inbound. Coming your way in 10 seconds.
“He’s on his way here right now,” she confirmed, making sure her presentation was ready.
They both looked up as Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, strode into the War Room carrying a ceramic mug. “Barbara. Hal,” he said, greeting each of them with a nod.
As he slid into a high-backed leather chair, Bolan blew on the mug of steaming coffee and sipped it cautiously, grimacing as he swallowed. “Just when I thought I was used to Bear’s brew, he changes it up on me.” He glanced at Brognola with a raised eyebrow. “Sure you don’t want a cup, Hal? It’ll take the edge off.”
“Bear” was Aaron Kurtzman, who was as good with making Stony Man’s computers do everything but sit up and dance as he was bad at brewing remotely drinkable coffee.
“Yeah, that and ten years off my life.” Brognola had already pulled out the other indispensable aid he was never without, a roll of antacid tablets, and thumbed a pair into his mouth. “Keep that damn cup as far away from me as possible. The smell’s bad enough. I’d hate to have to actually drink it.”
Despite the potentially top-secret materials they were about to discuss, Price watched the two men sparring with an internal grin. Between them, Bolan and Brognola had carried the fight for justice and freedom to all four corners of the globe, and knew each other better than any person alive. Even she wasn’t privy to all parts of their relationship, which was fine by her. Some things were best left alone.
“Barbara, why don’t you fill Striker in on the mess we’ve found ourselves in, courtesy of those jackasses over at State?”
Barely resisting rolling her eyes, Price exchanged an it’s-gonna-be-one-of-those-days glances with Bolan as she started her program deck.
On the large flat-screen monitor at the end of the room, a man’s face appeared in a candid shot taken as he was walking down a busy street. He was Chinese, dressed in an expensive suit, and had the look of someone who appeared at ease on the surface but carrying a heavy internal load.
“Three months ago, a midlevel employee at our US Embassy in Beijing was approached by a man claiming to work at the highest levels of the Chinese government,” Price began. “He wanted to defect to the United States with his family, and was willing to provide a vast amount of information on everything China is involved in, from their military plans for the rest of South Asia and beyond, to top-secret economic programs being executed around the world.”
Bolan frowned. “Almost seems too good to be true. Who is he?”
“Zhang Liao. A career politician, his family’s made its fortune at the top of the Chinese government for the past four generations,” Price replied. “The Liao family has showed a particular aptitude for reading the political winds and shifting with them. No member has ever been caught in a scandal or punished as part of a change in the government. They even survived the incident in Tiananmen Square with their reputation intact, when most of the rest of the government suffered from the fallout.”
“So why the sudden change of heart?” Bolan asked.
“Liao said that he feared the course the current government was taking would lead inexorably to war, whether that be with Taiwan, or any of a half-dozen other countries, over the Spratly Islands, or the recent dustup with Vietnam over territorial waters, or even Japan, which has been flexing its military muscle recently, most likely to avoid the appearance of weakness. He even brought up the possibility of a military plan that could eventually bring in the other superpowers. He didn’t divulge any more details, but said he could provide proof that China was taking steps to expand its influence and power over the other countries in the region and beyond.”
“No kidding.” Brognola grunted. “The buildup of the Chinese military on the Indian border has the Indians alternately rattling sabers one minute while selling them trade goods the next. And the Chinese are practically buying Africa wholesale as it is, pouring billions into power grid and other infrastructure projects and dams in the interior. Those poor nations who think they’re getting a great deal right now don’t understand the bill that will come due afterward. The Chinese are masters of the long game—they don’t do anything without factoring in the ramifications years from now.”
While Bolan listened to Brognola, his eyes hadn’t left the picture of Liao’s face. “I assume standard verification and cross-referencing protocols were followed?”
“To the letter. Everything he starting feeding us to prove his bona-fides checked out,” Price said. “He gave us advance intel on troop movements for a buildup near Tibet pending a new crackdown on independence seekers there, and was also able to give us their previously unseen action plan for Taiwan, which involves them taking control of the country within the next decade.”
“Not much of a surprise there,” Bolan replied. “Any half-decent analyst could sift what we already know and come up with the same conclusion.”
“Yeah, but predicting’s one thing. Proof is something else entirely,” Brognola said. “This guy could give us enough intel to blunt or at least slow the intended Chi-Com advance across Asia for the next couple of decades.”
The corner of Bolan’s mouth quirked up at the old reference to the Chinese Communist Party. “Okay, so where is he?”
“He’s missing,” Price stated. “Although State claims they followed every protocol and procedure by the book—” Price couldn’t resist glancing at Brognola to see if he was going to chime in, but he held his peace “—the scheduled attempt to take him into US custody and begin the asylum process never got started. He was supposed to lose any government watchers and enter our embassy secretly three days ago. He never showed.”
“Are we sure that State didn’t just get cold feet again, like they did with Wang Lijun?” Bolan asked. “As I recall, the US turned down his asylum request because the government didn’t want to embarrass the Chinese so close to their VP’s visit to the States. Isn’t it possible this is along those same lines, and now State’s just covering its ass?”
“I could go along with that, if what I’m about to tell you hadn’t happened two nights ago,” Brognola said around his unlit cigar. “With typical State ham-fistedness, they sent one guy out to pick up his family.”
An American face appeared on the screen with vitals listed next to it. “Edward Carstairs. Good man, ex-Army, smart as hell, 99th percentile on his AFQT, but new to the region,” the big Fed continued. “The suits thought he’d be perfect, since he wasn’t known to anyone there yet. He made the pickup of Liao’s family—the embassy got a verified text from his phone, and also traced it to Liao’s home address two nights ago, but they never made it back.”
Price brought up the next slide, showing a totaled sedan that had been T-boned with a vengeance. “The official story is that the car was in an accident—which fits at first glance. Except the usual driver of the car was missing and hasn’t been seen anywhere since. Carstairs’s body was the only one found at the scene, although hairs and fiber samples showed there were at least two other people in the car with him.”
Bolan’s gaze had narrowed at the news. “How did he die?”
“Our embassy sent out a press release stating that he died in a car accident,” Price replied. “Forensic autopsy showed he suffered multiple blunt force traumas to the head, causing a cerebral edema that ultimately killed him.” She paused for a moment before continuing. “Bruises on his hands and arms showed that he attempted to defend himself during the assault.”
“The bastards beat him to death,” Bolan said.
