Springboard (44 page)

But the Mongol was a big and strong man, and the bullets were small. Locke took careful aim at Khasar as he came unsteadily to his feet, and squeezed off one more round—into the man’s head.

It didn’t matter how strong he was, Khasar wasn’t going to shake that one off.

The Mongol fell again, going boneless in that way only the dead can achieve.

Locke lowered the pistol. He would descend the ramp now, shove the body into the bay, and be gone. Ten minutes away, his helicopter awaited, and once he got there, he would be essentially home free.

“Don’t turn around, Colonel,” came an unfamiliar man’s voice from behind him.

Locke froze. The speaker spoke badly intoned Chinese, and Locke guessed that whoever it was was probably British or American.

Another small boat churned into view then, and upon the craft, five men, dressed as tourists!—but armed with pistols and submachine guns—approached Locke’s getaway craft.

Locke’s heart fell.

Nobody down there but a dead man to stop them.

Who were they? They weren’t Chinese, he could see that.

And he had just murdered a man in plain view of whoever was behind him. This was bad.

He’d never be able to get down the ramp and outshoot those men below, who, even as he thought it, reached Locke’s boat and pulled alongside to board it.

Locke sighed.

It wasn’t the money so much. It stung, of course, knowing he’d had it in his grasp and now would not be able to collect on it, but then he hadn’t joined Wu for the money. Locke had enough—more than enough—for his own needs.

No, he had joined Wu for the challenge, for the thrill, for the knowledge that he had been able to stand up to the United States and to CyberNation, and to win.

But to do that he had to get off this boat alive.

This all ran through his mind very fast. He had to leave.

But first he had to deal with the problem behind him.

“Down put the gun,” came the voice, again in fractured Chinese.

“You’re CIA?” he asked, in English.

“Close enough,” the voice said in that same language. “Put your gun down, please. Slowly and carefully.”

An American. They weren’t ruthless, the Americans, they believed in fair play. The man wouldn’t shoot him in the back.

He had a chance.

Locke began to lower the pistol, slowly, as instructed. He marked the voice, guessed the speaker was no more than five or six meters directly behind him. The man would be aiming his weapon at Locke’s back. If he dropped and spun fast enough, it would take the American a second to adjust his aim. Locke knew how to shoot. He hadn’t done much of it in a long time, but it was like riding a bicycle, you never forgot how. Especially when your life depended on it.

“Take it easy,” Locke said. “Don’t shoot, I give up—”

With that, he dropped and turned at the same time, ending up in a tripod on the deck, on his knees, stretched out and supported on his left hand. He brought his right hand up and around fast, thrust the pistol out and fired—one-two—!

But even as he fired, he knew it was wrong—the man behind him wasn’t standing—he was prone!

Locke’s shots missed by a meter, too high, too
high
—!

The American was on his belly, his own handgun extended in front of him. Locke had time to see that the man was also dressed like a tourist—a bright orange and yellow shirt, shorts—and that he was old and gray-haired.

He tried to adjust his aim downward—

An icy hammer smashed into his chest, just below his neck. The shock was so unexpected that Locke’s supporting arm collapsed and he fell on his face. He had to let go of his pistol to push himself up, but halfway there, his strength failed, and he sprawled again.

The wooden grate over the metal deck felt very cold against his face.

This couldn’t be happening. Everything had been going so
well
!

He saw the man’s feet—he wore sandals, no socks—as he approached. Saw the shooter kick the fallen handgun away, then squat down.

Locke’s vision went gray, then faded. And it was suddenly so very, very cold. . . . “All . . . wrong . . .” he managed.

“Colonel Abraham Kent of Net Force and the United States Marines,” he heard the man say.

And that was the last thing Jack Locke heard as the spirit fled his body.

Wu’s car rolled through the streets, heading for the docks. It was incredible, he still couldn’t quite believe it, but it was all going exactly as they had intended. This was something new: a battle plan that survived first contact with the enemy!

Things could not have gone any better. Here he was, riding behind a heavy Daewoo truck made in Guangxi—and wasn’t that amusing? A Korean/Chinese venture—and that truck was full of money, a rich man’s fortune, all of which was his.

Locke expected one-fifth of the haul, and deserved as much for his excellent work in setting up and executing the plan. And Locke’s cut was not so much, not when such a vast sum was at hand. But even so, Locke was yet another loose end that had to be tied off, and besides, an extra fifty or sixty million dollars U.S. would go a long way to making sure Wu’s rise to power went smoothly.

Wu cared nothing for the money itself, nor the toys it could buy him, only the power that would allow him to do big things. It was but a tool. A very large hammer with which he could bludgeon any who stood in his way.

Wu’s terrible dog the Mongol would deal with Locke, and then Wu himself would deal with his dog. Hard, but necessary. A man sometimes had to do things for the greater good that were . . . distasteful.

Eventually, he would rule Taiwan. Eventually, he would have an army at his back. Eventually, he would find the precise place upon which to stand and insert his lever, and with it, he could topple the base government that ran his homeland. And then? Well, then, eventually, it would perhaps be time to test the Achilles’ heel of the Americans’ technological superiority in ways that really mattered.

Lofty goals, to be sure, but possible, possible—

Ahead, he could see the bay. Not long now—

The streets weren’t crowded—he’d had his men mostly clear this one, shoving pedestrians away from the street and moving vehicular traffic aside. But standing on the corner ahead and to his right were two Westerners, a man and a woman, tourists wearing cameras and those silly shorts and loud shirts and stupid, vacant expressions that marked them as such. Fools! Did they not see there were important things being done here?

One of the tourists, the woman, bent down and made a motion as if rolling a ball.

What was she doing—?

Just ahead of his car, the Daewoo truck lurched to one side. There was an orange flash, a loud explosion, and the truck skidded and stopped.

Wu’s driver slammed on his brakes, and Wu’s car also slewed to a halt, centimeters short of hitting the truck’s back bumper.

The two tourists ran off.

Yet another man in loud Western clothes came from around the corner of a building, and what he had on his shoulder was not something any tourist should have—it was a rocket launcher, looked like an old PF-89, an 80mm light antitank weapon—

Wu had time to frown, and then the tourist fired the launcher.

The money truck exploded.

The air was suddenly filled with colorful graffiti.

The most expensive graffiti the world had ever seen. Wu reached for his pistol—

Yet
another
pair of tourists appeared from nowhere and stood next to his car, submachine guns pointed at him.

“Don’t try it, General,” one of the tourists said, in English.

Wu’s driver pulled his own submachine gun from the seat, but before he could fire it, the man who had spoken fired his own weapon, a quick, three-round burst, 9mm.

The empty cartridges sparkled and fell in slow motion in the afternoon sunshine. . . .

Wu’s driver jerked and slumped against the driver’s-side window, blood oozing from his shattered head.

This couldn’t be happening! Not in the middle of the street in Macao! Not in Wu’s own command territory! Not this close to victory!

“Step out of the car, sir. Now!”

Stunned, Wu obeyed.

Around him, various paper currencies fluttered like a flock of wounded birds, flying and wafting and settling upon the street and sidewalk.

There was no stopping people from rushing out to gather it in now.

The pilot said, “Boy, it sure hit the fan back there. The Chinese Air Traffic Control guys are going nuts on the air. They want everybody on the ground to stay there, and nobody is going to be landing any time soon.”

Kent, who stood next to him in the cockpit, said, “Can we get away?”

“If I can get us another couple of klicks away from shore before we take off, yeah,” the pilot said. “Their Navy hasn’t checked in yet, and I don’t think they have anything close enough to run us down.”

The Japanese seaplane’s engines were rumbling loudly, and the craft was bouncing along, jarring Kent’s teeth with every hit.

“Kinda choppy,” Kent observed.

“We can take off in three-foot waves, no problem,” the pilot said. “Better go sit down, though, it might get a little rough.”

Kent nodded and worked his way back to his seat.

Next to him, General Wu sat, staring out through the window.

He turned to look as Kent sat.

“You are in the American Army?”

“Marines, sir, working for Net Force’s military unit.”

Wu nodded. “Net Force. Shing. The idiot and his computers. They gave us away. Such things are not to be trusted.”

“Between you and me, yes, sir.”

Wu nodded again. “I was so close.”

Kent didn’t reply.

Wu frowned. “What now?”

“We have people who want to talk to you.”

“I won’t tell them anything.”

Kent shrugged. “If I were in your place, I’d consider it, sir. Your government will eventually sort out what happened in Macao. They’ll want to talk to you worse than we do. Probably more, uh, harshly.”

“And if I cooperate with the U.S. authorities, I’ll be allowed to stay in your country? Is that what you are saying? People died during this operation, and I am responsible—you would excuse that?”

“No, sir, I can’t make that promise. A Chinese general would have a lot to give us, and I’d expect that somebody from the State Department will eventually get around to making an offer to you, but that’s politics, and not my area of expertise.”

Wu smiled. “I have seen your area of expertise, ah . . . I did not get your name and rank . . . ?”

“Abraham Kent, sir, Colonel.”

“A well-played operation, Colonel.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“One must admire skill wherever one sees it, even in an opponent. How long did you take to set up your operation?”

Kent was embarrassed to tell him, but there was no point in lying. “We got to Macao today, sir. We didn’t know you were going to hit the casinos until we got there, so we had to develop our options on the fly, as it were.”

Wu’s face showed his surprise. “No! Our plan was many months in the making, and you just swept in and destroyed it with no preparation?”

“Better to be lucky than good, sir.”

Wu smiled, but it was bitter. “Your gods must be stronger than mine. I had dreams, Colonel. A new and better China. I would have gotten rid of the Communists. I might have done it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well. Sometimes the dragon flies, sometimes the dragon dies.”

Kent thought he was speaking metaphorically. He didn’t have a chance to move before Wu pulled his uniform shirt up and bit off the top button—

“General, don’t—!”

Wu smiled. Kent heard the crunch as Wu’s teeth crushed the poison tablet disguised as a shirt button.

“Medic!” Kent yelled. He grabbed at Wu, tried to open his mouth, but he knew it was already too late.

Comrade General Wu had been right. He wasn’t going to be telling anybody anything. Wu was on a one-way voyage to . . . elsewhere.

Damn.

General Hadden sat at one end of the conference table, Thorn at the other, and along the sides were Jay Gridley, Abe Kent, General Roger Ellis, and a couple of Hadden’s men from the Pentagon, along with the Director of the CIA.

Kent finished his recitation. It had been clean, crisp, and to the point. He ended it with an apology for allowing Wu to commit suicide.

“Not at all, Colonel,” Hadden said. General Ellis nodded. “That old poisoned-button trick went out before Mao, nobody does that kind of thing anymore. No reason to expect it. Besides, whatever grand schemes Wu had died with him. That’s what we were really after.”

Kent nodded. “Yes, sir.”

The CIA Director, who had held the job less than a year, said, “The Chinese recovered most of the money from the thefts. Some of it was, ah, destroyed in an explosion, and a few hundred thousand dollars grabbed by looters at that location, but apparently somebody tipped off Beijing as to the whereabouts of the transport planes and they were stopped before they could take off.”

He looked around the table, his eyes coming to rest on Colonel Kent. “Although it seems at least one of the gang might have managed to escape,” he went on, “for there is an estimated six and a half million dollars that has been unaccounted for. There was a leased Chinese helicopter discovered on a beach in Taiwan only a day or so after the heist. No sign of the pilot or any passengers was found, but a local farmer says he saw a beautiful woman he didn’t know in the area shortly before the helicopter came to light. Taiwanese authorities have not been able to locate this woman—if she actually exists. Could be the farmer conked the pilot over the head and stole the money.”