Chapter 78
Beijing
The last injection was always the worst. When the needle sank into his cheek, destined for a raw nerve bundle, Zhang let out a long, low groan.
Seconds later, although it seemed far longer, the procedure was complete.
He had tried the botulinum toxin before to ease his suffering, and although it had never seemed particularly effective, he was desperate for any relief.
The spikes of pain had become too intense, too distracting. He had to do something.
The doctor was a quack whose medical license had been rescinded.
Zhang, of course, hadn’t chosen the man for his medical expertise.
He had made two things clear at the outset of their relationship.
When Zhang wanted relief, he would pay cash and was not to be kept waiting.
Even more important, his treatments could never be mentioned to anyone.
To the best of his knowledge—which, as the head of the Seventh Bureau of the MSS, was unrivaled—the doctor had never deviated from their arrangement.
The man pushed his wire-framed glasses higher on his nose, packed up his kit, and, with nothing more than an obsequious bow, retreated into the hallway.
Zhang heaved a sigh, hoping the injections would work better than last time.
It irked him to put his ongoing Arctic disaster on hold, but he simply hadn’t been able to think straight.
He had set up a private viewing area in a side room to follow the events in the Arctic.
Wu and the operations center chief had joined him for a time, but he’d sent them to the hallway when the doctor arrived.
He knew they were waiting outside, but he didn’t summon them just yet.
He needed a moment alone to ruminate about what had become of the Ice Wolves.
For as long as he could bear it, Zhang had followed the engagement in real time.
There was no God’s-eye view of the battle because they had no reliable imaging satellite coverage.
Yet he had watched it unfold. The commander of the Ice Wolves had been wearing a body camera, and it clearly streamed the opening minutes of the fight.
The system was something new—according to Wu, the video uplinked via a low-earth-orbit communications relay.
The scene had been brutal. Zhang had never been a soldier, and seeing the frenetic action from the captain’s point of view made him glad he’d ducked that career.
He had watched one man get shot straight through the throat, specks of blood splattering the camera lens.
He’d heard the captain’s desperate commands as he tried to rally his troops to victory.
Then, a few minutes into the battle, the video had been rendered useless.
He’d heard a loud clang and a grunt, and soon Zhang was left staring at an opaque blackness.
If he wasn’t mistaken, it was the dark sky above the Ice Wolves’ commander.
The stillness of that scene, of the camera itself, told him all he needed to know.
Yet the audio kept coming. Zhang heard the clatter of battle rifles firing, and the occasional distant explosion.
Once or twice, he heard breathless words as men ran past. Eventually, the face of a man in full combat rig filled the screen as he knelt above his commander.
“The captain is dead,” the man said, pulling his microphone closer to his mouth. “I am now in command.” And then he was gone.
And so it went. Ten minutes, fifteen, until the distant gunfire went sporadic.
At that point, the ops center chief had tried to raise the team on the tactical network. There was no reply, even though every man was tied to the comm link. The implication could not have been clearer.
Zhang sat dumbfounded. When it came to winter warfare, there was no better fighting unit in the People’s Liberation Army than the Ice Wolves.
Yet by all evidence, they had suffered a colossal defeat.
He recalled one of the last overhead images they’d been able to capture—the four men standing next to the Cheyenne, rigged in skis and winter gear.
Evidently they were not ordinary sailors after all.
He shut his eyes reflexively, and another electric bolt of pain zinged across his face. It was just as before: The Botox was useless for immediate relief. He waited and prayed for the agony to pass.
As it did, Zhang began to think more broadly.
Not all the news was bad. At the outset of the battle, the Ice Wolves had scored one significant victory.
An American transport, some version of the C-130 that was actually configured to land on skis, had been destroyed.
That, surely, would knock the Americans back.
He recalled the track they had built using Sky Fire’s position data.
Chen, and probably his CIA minders, had trekked out into the icy wilderness from the crash site.
It had to have been more than simply escaping the Snow Dragon 2.
There had been a purpose to their movement, an objective.
Now Zhang knew what it was—a rendezvous with an aircraft on skis.
That was something he had never foreseen.
Yet he had dealt with it. The CIA was unpredictable, but he sensed they were running out of options.
And he was not.
Zhang weighed what would come next. The Snow Dragon 1 was battering toward the area, expected to arrive sometime the next day.
More important, the three Y-20s carrying a formidable airborne force were nearing the drop point.
The Americans had put up a good fight, but they would also have taken casualties and expended much of their ammunition.
The next altercation could have only one outcome.
He called Wu and the ops center chief into the room.
Zhang asked for an update on the situation—the interlude with the doctor had only lasted ten minutes, but that could be an eternity in battle.
“There are no significant changes,” the chief replied. “Our second wave of airborne troops will be overhead in twenty-nine minutes.”
Zhang stifled a smile, not wanting to suffer the pain it would incur. “Excellent. Sky Fire will soon be back in our hands.”
“Do you have anything you wish me to relay to the commander of the unit?”
Zhang thought about it, recalling the video footage of the first battle. “Yes. Tell them Sky Fire and Dr. Chen are to be found and repatriated. As for the Americans—no prisoners are to be taken.”