Chapter 40
Beijing
A distant rattling noise startled Zhang awake.
He bolted upright, his arms shooting out as if he were falling.
One by one, his senses came back online.
The light at the doorway to the main room seemed stunningly bright.
He was drenched in sweat and gasping for air.
His heart felt like it might burst out of his chest.
He took a moment to gather his bearings. He’d been in an unusually deep sleep. It could have been because he hadn’t gotten any real sleep in two days. More likely it was the drugs and bourbon. His breathing slowed and his eyes adjusted.
Another rattle. Hard and insistent.
Someone knocking on the front door.
The executive suites in the Yidongyuan complex were located directly across the street from MSS headquarters.
They had been built as a convenient and exclusive getaway for the agency’s top brass, and no expense had been spared.
The furnishings were opulent, the staff indulging, and delicious food could be ordered from a private kitchen where the finest chefs in the city were on call 24/7.
As was always the case in the supposedly classless People’s Republic, these extravagances had to be concealed.
In Yidongyuan it was simple. The entire MSS complex was sealed off from greater Beijing, meaning that what happened behind its bastion walls remained a mystery to the masses.
The executive tower went even further, being off-limits to the 10,000 intelligence officers, analysts, and support staff who worked at the ministry.
For senior leaders it was the ultimate safe haven and reflected a zeal for personal security that bordered on paranoia.
Yet there was a flip side to having such a privileged sanctuary.
An unexpected knock on the door, particularly in the middle of the night, was nothing less than a harbinger of doom.
Zhang checked the clock on the bedside table: 4:20 a.m. Next to the clock he saw a pharmaceutical train wreck, toppled pill bottles and capsules spilled across the polished mahogany.
He rose unsteadily and trundled to the door.
Looking through the peephole, he saw long black hair, a slender body beneath.
It was a young woman, her head canted down toward a phone or a purse.
He was confused at first, trying to recall if he’d arranged to have a girl sent up.
Then the woman looked up and he recognized Wu Mei.
Zhang opened the door. Wu immediately did a double take. In his sleep-addled state, it hadn’t occurred to him that he was wearing only boxers and a wrinkled undershirt.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said a flustered Wu. “I had hoped I wouldn’t wake you.”
Zhang looked at her curiously. As far as he could remember, it was the first time she had called him “sir.” His state of undress clearly had the woman rattled. Good, he thought. Rattled people are always easier to control.
He turned and walked inside, leaving the door open as an invitation.
Wu entered and, after a brief hesitation, shut the door.
Zhang saw his bathrobe discarded on the plush sofa—how it had gotten there, he couldn’t remember.
It was tempting to remain in a partial state of undress to keep Wu off-balance.
He could offer her a drink or tell her how pretty she looked.
Zhang reveled in making others uncomfortable, but this was not the time.
The researcher would not put herself in such an awkward position without good reason.
He retrieved the robe, shrugged it on, and sank heavily onto the couch.
“Tell me what’s happened,” he said.
“There are two developments.”
“I hope one of them is that Snow Dragon 2 has succeeded in locating Sky Fire?”
“No, sir. And she will not… at least, not where she is looking.”
Zhang’s stomach knotted. “What are you talking about?”
“Something very unexpected. I knew that the search our icebreaker is undertaking would proceed slowly, so I considered ways to help them. I remembered that the crew had requested additional information regarding where Dr. Chen was sitting on the airplane. The staff at headquarters have been working with airport officials in Macau to determine this, but I approached it from a different angle. I went back and looked at Sky Fire’s position logs. ”
“Position logs?”
“Each time the system is turned on, it connects to at least one satellite and transmits its position.”
“But you said Chen had destroyed our access to Sky Fire.”
“He corrupted the design records and databases, yes. But I installed a backup locator packet a few months ago. It was a small project Chen assigned to me, and he might have forgotten about it. Sky Fire’s position data is highly accurate, so I thought if we had gotten pings from the airport in Macau, it would be a quicker way to determine where he was sitting than sorting through passenger manifests. ”
“Not the worst idea you’ve had. And did you have any success?”
“With his seat assignment, no… I never got that far.”
Zhang sensed something in Wu’s demeanor he had not seen before. Something approaching fear. He had thought her anxiety was a reaction to his state of undress, but now he knew otherwise. She had come bearing bad news. No, catastrophic news.
“Spit it out, woman!”
“Thirty minutes ago, I ran a backlog of Star Fire’s third-level cache—”
“Spare me the technical rubbish!” he shouted. “Why did you wake me in the middle of the night?”
“Sky Fire was active twenty minutes ago. And also on two other occasions in the last few hours.”
Zhang took a moment to process these words. “You are telling me that Sky Fire is up and running? From the bottom of the ocean?”
“The system is up and running, yes. But not from underwater. Its position is twenty-four kilometers north of where Snow Dragon 2 is now searching. And precisely two point three meters above sea level.”
Zhang sat stupefied.
Wu, having had more time to consider the bombshell, gave the only rational explanation. “There is only one person who could do this. Dr. Chen is alive, and he is in possession of Sky Fire—operating it.”
Zhang’s lips pulsed soundlessly, like a fish hauled into a boat. A dozen questions flooded his mind all at once.
“But… how could that be?” he finally managed.
“Snow Dragon 2 has located wreckage from our crashed airliner. But possibly not all of the wreckage. Maybe the airplane broke apart, or perhaps Chen was thrown clear. Whatever the details, my traitorous colleague appears to have survived.”
“Why would Chen be using Sky Fire?”
“I can only see his position, so we are left to speculate. But one thing comes to mind.”
Zhang was wide awake now, his deep-seated instinct for self-preservation having injected a surge of adrenaline. He completed the shocking thought. “He is trying to contact the Americans to coordinate a rescue.”
Wu nodded.
Zhang nearly vaulted off the couch. He headed for the bedroom, tore off his robe, and began searching for his pants. “What has been done so far to address this situation?” he shouted through the open door.
“I have told no one else, so no action has been taken. I thought you should be the first to know.”
“You did the right thing,” Zhang said. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on it, but he realized how closely tied his fate and Wu’s had become.
Two minutes later, he was dressed and on the move. As he rushed to the door, it occurred to him that one phone call could not wait.
He pulled out his secure handset and placed a call to the People’s Liberation Army, Northern Theater Command.
Before falling asleep, he’d put one particular unit on alert.
Now it was time to activate that contingency plan.
The order he gave was within the bounds of his authority, but only just. Zhang was sticking his thick neck out further than he ever had, yet there seemed to be no alternative.
If what Wu was telling him was true, this might be his last chance at survival.
Thirty seconds later, he was out the door, Wu trailing in his wake as they hurried in a cold drizzle toward the operations center.
ZHANG’S PHONE CALL initiated a torrent of follow-ons.
They ended four hundred miles northeast of Beijing, at Shenyang Beiling Air Base, China.
There, twenty-four commandos from the PLA’s 78th Special Forces Brigade, the Ice Wolves, began double-timing toward a waiting Y-20 aircraft.
The four-engine transport was fully fueled, and its crew were running through the last of their preflight checks.
The unit’s tactical gear had been loaded an hour earlier, including parachutes for a free-fall jump.
The Ice Wolves had been on alert for three hours, and while they still didn’t have specific orders, there were hints as to where they were going.
The unit specialized in cold-weather operations, and they had been briefed to prepare for the “harshest conditions.” In Ice Wolves lexicon, that translated to somewhere above the Arctic Circle.
The officer in charge, a captain, had served twelve years in the Army. That being the case, he’d seen his share of short-notice call-ups. In his experience, most such deployments were mere training exercises. This one, however, felt different.
He’d sensed it in his colonel’s voice when he had issued the assignment.
In the speed with which their weaponry had appeared from the armory.
The pilots told him they’d taken on a maximum fuel load, giving a range of over 5,000 miles.
This was unheard-of for a training mission.
And if that weren’t enough, he’d been told that elements of the 134th Airborne Brigade had also been called up and would be deploying behind them on three more Y-20s.
Soon the last man was on board, and everyone belted into the webbed troop seats along the sidewall.
The jet’s big aft ramp motored upward, locking into the hull with the finality of a sealing tomb.
At the last moment, a man the captain had never seen boarded using the forward stairs near the flight deck.
He wore thick glasses and was dressed in civilian clothes, a dark overcoat, and a fur hat.
In the crook of one arm, he cradled a thick manila envelope, as if it held the secrets of the universe.
The stranger glanced back once, as if to make sure the Ice Wolves were on board, then turned away and disappeared into the cockpit. The captain didn’t know precisely who this man was. But, like most Chinese military officers, he knew a cocksure goon from MSS when he saw one.
The thought came again. Yes, this one feels very different.
The big, slate-gray Y-20 began to taxi.
Moments later, it was thundering down the runway and lifting up into the night.