Beyond all Limits (20 page)

But even if they could physically rescue the all-important politicians from their prison within the Forbidden City, they then had to extract them from the Forbidden City itself; and then from Beijing; and then from China.

They had a plan, of course, and Navarone knew it was a good one; but he also knew that the odds really were against them on this one.

‘Finished,’ Grayson called down, and Navarone watched as Barrington stood, approaching the collapsible ladders with a bag of specially mixed slurry and a pump.

‘Keep that MRE warm for me, will you?’ she asked Navarone, who nodded as she started filling the drill holes with the slurry mixture.

Navarone checked his watch –
1012 hours
. That was good; it meant that the mixture would have at least four hours to set.

He turned back to his cooking, reminding himself as he watched the flames of his burner flickering on the ancient stone walls of the sewer tunnel, that the ramifications of failure were too great to consider it even as an option.

They would succeed; it was what Force One did.

They succeeded in situations where all others would fail.

Banishing all thought of failure from his mind, he decided that this was the image he would pursue, and no other.

And as he pulled the MRE bag out of the boiling water, in his mind failure was gone altogether; success was the only option.

2

Captain Liu Yingchau was back at work, helping to protect the Zhongnonhai compound. It was simple guard work and not something that needed a special forces officer, but Liu had happened to be near Beijing at the time of the coup and had been pulled in to help. Wu had wanted the best to protect him and the compound, and a spare ‘Hunting Leopard’ was too good to let go.

It was Wu’s own desire for full protection that led Liu to his commander’s office door that morning, rapping his knuckles on the thin wood.

‘Come in,’ barked Lieutenant Colonel Chen Chanming. A motorized infantry officer from the Beijing Military Region’s 65
th
Group Army, he was – despite having no special forces background – Liu’s commanding officer at the Zhongnonhai due purely to his rank.

Liu marched in and saluted smartly. ‘Captain Liu Yingchau, sir,’ he announced.

Chen shook his head. ‘Is this about General Wu again?’ he asked with irritation. Liu had already called the colonel the night before, demanding – as much as he could demand anything of a superior officer – why he hadn’t been told of Wu’s visit to Taiwan. He’d been told in no uncertain terms that he didn’t need to know, and should keep his nose out of the general’s business.

‘Yes sir,’ Liu confirmed. ‘If I am to have a role in protecting him, I need to know where he is.’

‘Captain,’ Chen said sternly, ‘I would personally like to see you court-martialed for calling me at home to ask me about army business –
restricted
army business, I might well add. You want me to reveal information over the telephone? I thought you knew better than that. But then again,’ he said, peering over his spectacles at Liu with barely restrained disgust, ‘I should know to expect that of you
special
officers, shouldn’t I? Loose cannons, always thinking you’re better than the rest of the army. Well, do you know what? You’re not special at all.
I
am special, because
I
am in command here. I know where the general is, and when he will be back, because I am authorized to know. And you are not.’

‘But – ’

‘But nothing,’ Chen said, cutting Liu off. ‘I understand that you feel entitled to such information, but I assure you that you are not. How can you protect the general, you ask? I’ll tell you – you don’t. You help protect the Zhongnonhai compound. The general’s security is looked after entirely independently, and you have nothing to do with it.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Liu responded, struggling to hide his contempt for the man in front of him. He knew Chen’s record, knew that he had never seen a day of real combat in his life; but he’d impressed the right people and greased the right palms, and now here he was, a blown-up lieutenant colonel making things hard for the real soldiers. Chen was also typical of senior officers within the ‘regular’ army, who intensely distrusted the men of the special operations command, often seeing them as a threat rather than the useful force-multiplier that they were.

Chen held his gaze, looked down at some paperwork on his desk, then looked back at Liu. ‘The general returns at oh-nine-hundred hours today,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But I am not telling you because you demanded that I do so – I am telling you this because his presence at the Dragon Boat festival this afternoon will mean extending the security perimeter of the Zhongnonhai past the White Dagoba on Jade Island to the other side of Beihai Park. We need to clear the roads on the northern perimeter and check possible sniper positions. The general will be out in the open, and you need to make sure your people secure the entirety of the compound. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Liu understood perfectly. He was being ordered to secure an area with almost no time left in which to do so; an area which – if Wu’s schedule had been confirmed earlier – should have already been cordoned off and checked. Essentially, Chen was making sure that if anything should go wrong, it would be Captain Liu Yingchau that would be blamed for it – probably his punishment for rousing the colonel on the telephone the night before.

But despite his misgivings – he would now be held responsible if the American operation to kill the general was successful – he nevertheless saluted and marched from the office with a smile on his face.

He had discovered what he needed; Wu was on his way back, and would be at the festival as promised.

He would let the American unit’s team leader know immediately.

‘How are preparations coming?’ General Wu asked from the secure satellite telephone onboard the private jet which was carrying him back towards Beijing.

‘Good,’ came the voice of Admiral Meng Linxian. ‘With the Americans unable to fly over our expanded territorial waters with their drones and surveillance aircraft, they are forced to rely on their satellites – and we know where they are, and how to avoid them.’

Wu was immensely pleased – he had managed to shut down the surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities of his enemies almost entirely, making them blind to the East and South China Seas. The Americans didn’t dare send any aircraft over China’s waters for fear that the USS
Ford
would be destroyed in retaliation; and other nations knew that their aircraft would almost certainly be shot down if they tried it – the improvements in anti-aircraft capabilities his country had made in the last decade would almost guarantee it.

He congratulated himself again on his crippling of the
Ford
and his handling of the situation since then. It was perfect; simply perfect.

‘Our carrier?’ Wu asked next.

‘En route with the battle group,’ Meng announced, ‘and as far as we can tell, entirely undetected.’

‘It will only be a matter of time before they realize that it has left the Taiwanese coast,’ Wu said thoughtfully, stroking one end of his large mustache. ‘And then they will ask themselves where it is headed.’

‘Yes,’ the admiral agreed, ‘but by that time, it will be too late. The battle group will be in position, and – with the situation how it is – who will dare try and stop us?’

Wu smiled again, pleased with the admiral’s confidence. And the man was right, too – who
would
dare stop them?

Wu had killed the Chinese president, instigated a military coup and taken over control of the country, crippled an American aircraft carrier, retaken the Diaoyu Islands
and
invaded Taiwan – and so far the international community had hardly batted an eyelid.

Yes, Admiral Meng was quite right – nobody was going to stop him this time, either.

Cole was eating breakfast at the Grand Café buffet, following the routine explained to the CIA by Hoffmeyer the night before and included with an information packet that had been left for Cole with the dry clothes and ID in the sewer.

It was important that he continued to act as the real Hoffmeyer would – eat the same foods, drink the same beverages, go to breakfast at the same time – because as a foreigner it was possible that he was under surveillance. In fact, due to his meeting with Wu later that day, that possibility was almost a certainty.

As he ate his cereal and melon and took a sip of his creamed coffee, he casually surveilled the café and the surrounding area.

Sure enough, a man in his early twenties over in a corner booth who had been nursing a single coffee for far too long was looking furtively over at him from time to time, and an older man in the foyer beyond was almost staring at him in between unconvincing glances at his newspaper.

The presence of the men – at this stage Cole couldn’t spot any more, but assumed they would swap over with colleagues once Cole left the café – didn’t disturb him in the slightest. Indeed, their presence almost reassured him – it was merely business as usual.

His secure cell phone beeped, and Cole looked casually at it, hiding his pleasure at the message. Despite the encrypted software, Liu had sent the message in code anyway, but Cole understood it quickly enough – General Wu
was
on his way to Beijing.

Cole was glad – the meeting that had been set up gave him his best chance at eliminating the man safely and without detection.

He had called a number given in the information pack earlier that morning, the contact number of the assistant who had helped arrange the meeting. He’d said that he’d seen Wu on the news in Taiwan and had wanted to confirm that their meeting was still going ahead.

The voice on the other end of the line had said gruffly that it was none of his business, and that the meeting would be going ahead; if General Wu wasn’t there, then somebody else would meet Hoffmeyer in his place.

Cole had wanted to argue, to demand that he would only deal with General Wu, but didn’t want to arouse suspicions too much and had in the end acquiesced gracefully.

The security around Wu’s movements was incredible, but Cole could easily see why. Leaving Beijing – and the security of the Zhongnonhai – had been a risk. If the US had discovered when he was travelling, they might have been able to pinpoint his aircraft which could then have been taken out by a missile, an aircraft, or a predator drone.

But it seemed that Wu was a man who liked taking risks, especially if it involved ‘winning over the people’, which must have been the reason for his visit to Taiwan in the first place. To show himself as unafraid, to create the image of a battlefield commander.

Norma Valente’s report for the Paradigm Group on General Wu had indicated that this was indeed how he saw himself – the Genghis Khan of the 21
st
century.

His presence in Beihai Park that coming afternoon was also a calculated risk; outside of the security of the Zhongnonhai he was exposed, vulnerable. But in Wu’s mind, presenting himself to his people as a victorious, returning general fresh from the frontlines of Taiwan – his ‘gift’ to the Chinese mainland – was worth it.

Cole sighed, leaning back in his seat and sipping his coffee as he thought about the general. Was the man capable of launching nuclear missiles?

He already had no doubt in his mind that Wu would destroy the
Ford
as threatened, if pushed too far, and Cole wondered about what would happen if he was unsuccessful in this afternoon’s operation.

If Wu lived, and Navarone’s operation
was
successful, how would Wu react? Would he blame America? Would he kill over four thousand US servicemen and women in revenge?

And if he did, what would President Abrams do? A full-scale invasion was something that would be a truly horrific prospect – for both sides.

Nuclear reprisal would be another option, but Cole didn’t believe that Abrams would be the one to launch first.

No, Cole decided, she would order the troops to go in; there would be a full naval bombardment, Japan would be used as a base to launch bombing raids, and then – when the Chinese coast had been sufficiently softened – the ground troops would invade.

It would be tough – the Chinese military was vast – but it was achievable. The only question would be how many young men and women the US government would be prepared to lose.

And the other question, of course, was – if Wu thought he was going to lose a conventional war – if he would retreat to the Taihang Mountains and instigate global annihilation.

The thought itself was almost too much to consider, and Cole turned his mind off to such second-guessing.

The general would be in Beihai Park as promised, Cole would meet with him, shake his hand, touch a couple more pressure points and then leave the area.

And an hour later, General Wu – Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China – would be dead.

3

Vice President Clark Mason was drunk. He’d shared the Montrachet with Lansing – although he wasn’t sure she could tell the difference between that and the cheap stuff – and had followed it up with a few too many glasses of bourbon.

He was lying naked on his marriage bed now, silk sheets strewn across the floor, his arm wrapped round the slim, sweat-slicked body of Lansing. He was spent and exhausted from their marathon session together, but he could feel her touching him again, encouraging him to go again; and what was more – despite his drowsiness – he felt himself respond to her ministrations.

‘You know,’ he said with a slight slur, ‘you never did show me that surprise you were telling me about.’

And it was true – after dinner and drinks, they had wanted each other too much and had started making love on the couch, and then the rug by the fire, before taking it upstairs to the bedroom; he had forgotten all about Lansing’s earlier teasing.

‘Mmmm,’ Lansing moaned as Mason nuzzled her ear, ‘you’re right.’ She pulled her head away, patting him gently on the chest. ‘Wait there.’

She pulled herself out of the bed and Mason watched her dark, perfectly curved body as she left the room, hearing her feet as they retreated back downstairs.

Mason wasn’t sure how long she was gone, but felt himself drifting off to sleep, waking when she returned.

‘What do you think?’ she asked him coquettishly, displaying her newly-clothed figure for him to admire.

Mason felt his pulse racing. ‘I think you look . . . different,’ he said.

‘Different?’ Lansing asked, pretending offense.

‘No, no – different in a
good
way,’ Mason said quickly. ‘I love it.’

Lansing smiled, and held up a bag that she had brought upstairs with her. Removing a set of clothes from inside, she placed the bag on the dressing table and threw the bundle over to him.

‘What’s this?’ Mason asked.

‘You’re going to love that even more,’ she said with a seductive smile. ‘It’s your costume.’ She slipped onto the bed, sliding her hand up Mason’s naked thigh. ‘Now go and put it on,’ she purred.

Mason looked from Lansing, to the clothes, then back again. So she wanted some role play, did she? He smiled; this girl was even better than he’d thought.

He opened the bundle of clothes, desperate to see what the costume was. He was surprised at what he found. ‘Really?’ he said with a raised eyebrow.

‘Oh yeah,’ Lansing said. ‘It’s always been one of my favorite fantasies.’

Mason pulled himself out of bed, kissed her cheek, and strode to the bathroom to get changed, still not believing his luck to have met a woman like Sarah Lansing.

And there was a very good chance, he decided, that after this night was finished, the fantasy was going to be one of
his
favorites too.

As Cole relaxed back in his room – Hoffmeyer rarely left, except for meals – he felt his mind veering upsettingly off-course.

Aoki Michiko – my daughter
.

He knew he shouldn’t be thinking about her, but found he couldn’t help himself. He had been through the upcoming mission in his mind so many times now that it was almost as if he’d been there and carried out the operation already. He knew everything about it – the area, the layout, the amounts of people who were supposed to be there, where they would be standing, what the security arrangements were like, the names of the dragon boat teams and their crews; he had even envisioned the smell of the street foods, the feel of the warm air on his skin.

All that was left was the job itself.

But now his mind was being pulled away from the mission, and he couldn’t get the image of his daughter out of his mind.

His daughter – the last time he’d thought about a daughter, it had been his little Amy, killed when she was only four. He still had nightmares about her being shot in the back of the head, her blood and brains flying out to cover his own face.

He’d failed; he had taken his revenge, for her and for Sarah and Ben, but he had failed them all.

But he no longer brooded over this failure; it was in the past, and there was nothing he could do about it anymore.

And yet he was still troubled, being here in Beijing when his own daughter was by herself, sent back to Japan by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He had decided to go ahead with the mission, leave her to fend for herself.

It was all too similar to what he had done to his last family, put the interests of the country, of the world, ahead of them. He might have saved the president and prevented a second Cold War, but he had lost the three people he loved the most in the world.

Was he making the same mistake twice?

But he knew he had to be realistic about things. He knew nothing about the girl, couldn’t even be sure that she was his. And she was returning home, wasn’t she? Surely she would be safe there. She might have to answer some questions from the Japanese authorities, but they were hardly going to kill her.

And the situation in China was
real
– it was happening right now, a nightmare scenario that could spell disaster for thousands or even millions of people. Cole knew what was at stake, and knew that he had a chance of stopping it.

On the other hand, Michiko would be quite safe in Japan; and what was he going to do about it anyway? He might not be able to find her there even if he looked; and if he found her, would she want to talk to him? Or would she still want to kill him?

The question of
why
she wanted to kill him still haunted him. What did she think he had done? She obviously blamed him for something, but what was it?

Cole shuddered as he considered the possibility that – whatever it was – she might be right. He had certainly done some horrific things in his life, any of which might have affected Michiko in some way without his ever realizing it.

But he knew he wasn’t being entirely honest with himself; if Michiko hated him enough to try and kill him, there were only a few things that he’d done that would have affected her. And as far as he knew, they all related to her mother, Aoki Asami.

He lay on the huge bed, willing himself not to think about it, knowing the memories would drag him down, make him doubt himself, jeopardize the mission. And yet he couldn’t help it, and in his mind’s eye the luxurious, brightly-lit hotel room gradually darkened, growing old and shabby until it had become a dingy little room at the Khao Sing Apartments in downtown Bangkok, eighteen years ago; a room he’d tried hard to forget; a room of nightmares.