Springboard (43 page)

A third of a billion dollars, at least.

It could not have gone any better. Locke was ecstatic.

But, of course, this was the easy part. The hard part— getting away with the loot? That was where Locke was going to earn his money. And his cut, a mere twenty percent, would be enough to let him buy first-class accommodations in a number of countries around the world by the time they did figure it out.

The plan was pure genius, if he did say so himself.

The only small beetle left in the pudding was Net Force. Leigh was recently buried in a shallow grave in a local park, and would aid no one. But Net Force did have a faint trail, and Locke wasn’t sure how far along it they actually were.

They almost certainly had Shing, who knew that Wu was behind the military computer attacks, but Shing
didn’t
know about this part of it. Locke didn’t think they were that close—and what could they do against Wu’s trained troops anyhow?—but he couldn’t be sure—he’d been more than a little busy here, setting up the score.

Well. He’d worry about Net Force later. Even if they knew more than he thought, knowing it and
proving
it were two different beasts. By the time they might be in position to cause any problems, the party would be long over.

Locke’s com button chirped. He tapped the tiny button on the device, which was small enough to fit entirely in his left ear. It operated on one of the very few frequencies not blanketed by the jammers.

“Here.”

“Stage Two?” came Wu’s voice.

“Yes.”

Locke tapped the com device’s control again. He went and found the casino’s manager.

“Ah, Colonel,” the man said, his face full of relief. “We are forever in your debt. Is everything okay?”

“Actually, no, sir,” Locke said. “We have uncovered a major problem. The terrorists claim they have set dirty bombs in several of the casinos.”

“Set what?”

“Explosive devices rigged with small amounts of radioactive material.”

“An atomic bomb?
Here?
”

Locke thought the man might bolt in a dead run for the doors.

“No, sir, not an atomic bomb—it’s a conventional explosive, probably C-4, could even be dynamite. Low-yield. It probably wouldn’t begin to knock your building down, or even cause major damage by itself. But around the explosive core is something radioactive—medical-grade material, or low-level uranium, most likely. If those go off, they will contaminate the buildings—everything—and everybody—in them. Nobody will be able to come back into any of the casinos for a long time, and nothing in them will be salvageable.”

Locke didn’t know if dirty bombs worked exactly that way or not, but the story sounded both plausible and dramatic, and that was all that mattered. Besides, it was highly unlikely that the casino manager was any kind of expert in radiation poisoning and contamination.

Locke let the manager get there ahead of him, and it didn’t take him long. “Our money! We’ve got to get it out, to a safe place!”

The idea of sixty million dollars that nobody could touch, much less spend? What a horrible idea to a casino manager!

“Yes, sir. Get your guards to help my men. We’ll move all the cash and credit tabs to a secure location and come back to find the bomb. We’ll force the terrorists to tell us eventually, but we might not have much time—”

“Yes, yes, of course. Wong!”

The head of the casino’s security hurried to where Locke and the manager stood. “Go with the colonel—there’s a radioactive bomb here, we need to get our money out, now!”

“And have your people evacuate the building,” Locke said. “If that bomb goes off, everybody in here could be contaminated.”

Wong pulled his walkie-talkie and began speaking rapidly into it.

Pure genius, Locke thought. The best plan he’d ever come up with.

“Where will you take the funds?” the manager asked.

Locke pretended to think. “There is a small steamship in the harbor that belongs to the People, a cargo freighter used for Army supplies. It will be easier to guard with water all around it, and the river is upwind from the casinos. If there is an explosion at one of the casinos, the money will be safer there than anywhere else. We’ll take it to that ship. Your security chief will stay with it.”

“Yes, yes. Hurry!”

Hurry and steal all our money!
Locke had to hold his smile in check. Indeed, he would hurry.

The freighter was a red-herring—the money would indeed go up a ladder on the starboard side—but without pause, it would go down another ramp on the port side, where a trio of fast boats would be waiting. These in turn would go but a short distance to a makeshift airfield where much faster airplanes were standing by.

Wong the security man would be clouted on the head and dumped into the bay, as would the other security people invited along to allay even the most remote suspicion. The boats would be roaring away as soon as they were unloaded, and the freighter rigged with explosives—nothing radioactive, just enough to make a very large bang and to sink it—and when eventually someone came looking for their money, the freighter would blow up.

After transferring the money to the aircraft, the empty boats would head for Taiwan. These might or might not escape detection, and too bad for the men running them if they did not.

The money by then would be flying along just over the sea, in stealth-gear-ensheathed airplanes painted to match the sky from below and the water from above.

All of this had been put together like a fine Swiss watch, every cog in place, jewels at every friction point, as slick as a film of oil on glass.

Wu had a hundred men in the operation, hand-picked and trained, and loyal to him, most of whom believed they would receive a quarter of a million U.S. dollars each for their help in the heist. In truth, ninety of them—including the twenty or so who played the role of terrorists—would get jacketed metal machine-gun bullets instead of money. Of the ten survivors, most thought
they
would get a million each. Eight of those would eventually join their fallen comrades, leaving only two who expected to receive
five
million apiece.

Greed was a wonderful motivator.

Wu would dispatch those last two, and then there would be none.

Well, save for Locke, and he had no intention of turning his back on anybody. He had his own plan. He would divert a portion of the money for himself—for there would be
four
fast boats opposite the freighter, instead of three, as well as a helicopter hidden elsewhere with a range sufficient to reach Taiwan or maybe even India—and Locke would be gone before anybody knew it, including Wu.

Especially
Wu.

By the time whichever authority in charge got it all sorted out, Wu would be in Taipei, and Locke halfway to somewhere far, far away, the first leg of several flights and passport changes to leave a cold trail behind him.

Locke’s plan was so bold, nobody had ever considered it before. And, as everyone knew, fortune favored the bold. . . .

Locke went to direct his team, who would be helped in the theft by the casino’s own guards and the blessing of its manager. In a few moments, Army trucks full of money were going to roll through the streets of Macao, with the enthusiastic assistance of those who were unknowingly being robbed.

Pure genius. No doubt about it. . . .

“Sir, it looks as if Wu’s men are clearing roads in the direction of the docks. Some from each casino. There also appears to be some kind of activity around a small freighter in the harbor.”

Kent frowned. “He’s planning to escape on a
boat
? That’s not very smart.”

“No, sir, it isn’t,” Fernandez said. “All this, just to get blown out of the water by the Chinese Navy? He’s got to have something else up his sleeve.”

“My guess is he does. Go get first squad on the way back to our aircraft and float it out where they can see what’s going on. Tell the CIA guy to get the cars here now, then load up second and third squads and get them rolling, radios on opchan alpha. Get us some other watercraft.”

“Yes, sir.” Fernandez started talking into his radio, issuing orders.

Kent considered his options. Julio was right, the money wasn’t important—let the Chinese worry about that. What they needed was Wu, and they needed to get him and get away before any of the locals figured out what was going on and who they were. They had to move quickly.

“Captain, which casino is Wu in?”

“The House of Good Fortune.”

“Get fourth squad and let’s go. Three cars. We are going to have to run and gun. No time for anything else.”

“Yes, sir.”

Kent grabbed a tactical radio unit and made sure it was tuned to the right opchan. He’d have to make it up as he went along. Sometimes that was the best battle plan you could manage. You had to make do with what you had.

“All squads, listen up. Here’s what we are going to do. . . .”

“I’ll see you at the airfield, comrade,” Wu said to Locke.

“Right.”

“Travel safe.” Wu clapped him on the shoulder, smiled, and turned to leave.

As soon as he was gone, Locke and his assistant loaded up the last six bags of loot into Locke’s Toyota Land Cruiser. That much money was heavy, even in large bills. About as much as what Locke was supposed to get for his part, he reckoned. Maybe a bit less, but he wasn’t going to get greedy about it. Stopping to pick up that last dime could get you caught or killed.

They climbed into the SUV and headed for the harbor. They’d beat Wu and the other trucks there—Locke would take the shortest route, do it at speed, and the official police light flashing on the vehicle’s dashboard would see that nobody stopped them. They’d be there ten minutes ahead of Wu. Plenty of time.

Locke’s assistant was actually Wu’s man—Locke knew this—but that didn’t matter. Not yet.

“Five minutes,” Locke said, looking at his watch. “We’ll be alone on the ship, first to get there. I want to be gone by the time the first truck arrives.”

The assistant was a muscular Mongolian named Khasar, which meant “terrible dog.” A tradition in that backward land, to name children for ugly things, to protect them from evil spirits. That trick wasn’t going to be enough keep him safe in this, though.

Khasar said, “Yes. We will hurry.”

He stepped on the gas pedal and the car surged forward.

Kent pulled his car—a Volkswagen beetle, of all things—next to Fernandez’s car, a Korean compact he didn’t recognize.

Kent said, “Set up here, Captain. You’ve got three, maybe four minutes. I’m going on to the freighter, just in case.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good luck, Julio.”

“You, too, sir.”

Kent revved the VW’s engine and took off. Despite the hurry, and the absolute lack of time to do things properly, he realized he was grinning as he drove. A battle joined, plans unfolding fast, the end not at all certain, and lives on the line—but he was doing what he knew how to do best.

It didn’t get any better than this, did it?

As part of his colonel’s uniform, Locke had a pistol. This was a QSZ-92, a no-nonsense black metal and plastic handgun made in a People’s Liberation Army arms factory outside Beijing, and chambered for the proprietary 5.8mm Chinese round, with the bottlenecked and pointed bullets. The gun held fifteen cartridges in the magazine, plus one in the chamber, and there was a spare magazine on his belt, so he had thirty-one shots. It was a semiautomatic double-action weapon, and all you needed to do was disengage the safety, aim, and pull the trigger each time you wanted it to go
bang!
A well-made military pistol, and if not the best in the world, certainly not the worst. Sufficient for his needs here, this gun.

Locke drew the side arm from its holster and clicked the safety off. He took a deep breath.

In front of him, Khasar, who was every centimeter Wu’s man, was not yet ready to begin his assigned task. The would-be assassin was halfway down the ramp from the freighter to Locke’s powerboat, with the last bags of cash in hand.

Wu would have told Khasar to hold off, to wait until they got the diverted money onto the getaway boat, to be sure of what Locke planned. To be certain the wily criminal did not have something nasty rigged to cover his escape. For Wu knew that Locke would try to sneak off, and well that he should—Locke had left plenty of clues lying around to make sure the general figured it out.

Locke shook his head. Did Wu really think he was that stupid? With Locke knowing that Wu would kill his own troops, that Locke would never think that
he
might be a target? Did Wu expect him to believe in honor among thieves?

Wu had his own kind of honor, but his goals did not include letting Locke—or anybody else—remain alive to be a potential problem. Wu was a burn-the-fields, salt-the-earth kind of general. If there was nobody left behind, there would be nobody to sneak up on you someday when you might not be expecting it.

Not that Locke himself had a problem with that. He just wasn’t about to be a victim of it.

Locke waited until Khasar had stepped onto the boat. It was twelve or fifteen meters from the deck of the freighter, at a steep downward angle, but an easy shot.

Locke lined up the sights square between the man’s shoulder blades and fired twice.

Khasar the Mongol fell, no doubt surprised, and the last bags of cash thumped down onto the power boat’s deck. Neat.