Dale Brown - Strike Zone

‘All right. If we have to go there, we will,’ said Dog.

‘Listen, by the way, the Navy’s still kind of pissed at you. There’s a joke going around that an admiral has offered a reward for anyone who accidentally shoots down a Dreamland aircraft. At least I think it’s a joke.’

‘Look, Jed, I have a lot going on over here.’

‘I’m sorry. The, uh, the President authorized this ASAP, so he wants you there, uh, right away. The exercises actually start tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Well, the time difference, it’s like fifteen hours and that makes tomorrow today here –’

‘We’ll get there,’ said Dog, hanging up.

The phone no sooner hit the cradle than Rubeo walked in.

‘The entire situation is piffle,’ said the scientist between his teeth.

‘Which piffle?’

‘The Colonel Cortend show. Piffle. It’s a witch hunt. They hate scientists,’ continued Rubeo. ‘I’ve seen this before. They railroaded Oppenheimer on trumped-up charges that he was a communist.’ Rubeo snorted. ‘The man wins the war for them and they cashier him.’

Dog didn’t know the particulars about the Oppenheimer case, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask about them now.

‘No one’s getting railroaded,’ he said.

Rubeo shook his head, flustered by his anger. The scientist’s emotion had a strangely calming effect on Dog, as if Rubeo had somehow taken charge of being mad.

‘You know they’re questioning Jennifer Gleason,’ said Rubeo. ‘Questioning her. Her.’

‘I’d heard some scuttlebutt,’ said Dog.

‘You’re supposed to register when you attend a scientific conference where outside government agents may be. They’ve lost the paperwork, and they’re hanging her for it.’

‘They lost the paperwork, or it wasn’t done?’

‘What does it matter?’

‘It’ll make a difference,’ said Dog.

‘Then it was lost. Probably on purpose.’

Dog leaned back in his seat. Rubeo showed exactly how right Danny had been – going off half-cocked made the scientist look like a crazoid, and did nothing for Jennifer.

‘They questioned her for hours, and took away her clearance,’ said Rubeo.

Dog sighed. ‘I’m sure Captain Freah is just following procedure.’

‘Oh please.’

‘Did Jennifer answer their questions?’

‘Of course.’

‘Tell me about the conferences.’

Rubeo waved his hand in the air as if brushing away a fly. Then he sighed and began explaining in some detail the two scientific exchanges. One was on artificial intelligence and was rather broad; the other had to do with compression systems used in communications. The latter would have inevitably had applications for encryption and been subject to special scrutiny, though Rubeo thought it was more the fact that Jennifer might have come into contact with Chinese agents or spies that Cortend was focusing on.

‘Chinese?’ asked Dog.

‘She asked specifically about Chinese. There were five hundred people at one of the conferences – it’d be news if the Chinese weren’t there. It’s all piffle, Colonel. It’s a witch hunt.’

Mack Smith was headed toward his base quarters after a game of tennis when he spotted Colonel Cortend heading toward her SUV, trailed by her flock of lackeys. He’d had a good session, demolishing a maintenance officer in straight sets. While Mack had played masterfully, his victory had taken a few minutes too long – he’d just missed inviting the women on the court next to him to dinner.

Their loss, obviously.

Cortend turned in his direction as he approached. Ordinarily he liked his women a little shorter, but she was definitely worth the climb.

‘Hello, Colonel,’ he said. ‘How goes the hunt?’

Cortend stopped. Her brown eyes focused on him with all the intensity of a Sidewinder homing in on a hot tailpipe.

‘You are?’

‘Smith – Mack. Remember? Hey, my friends call me Knife.’

She’d do for dinner.

‘You like Vegas?’ he asked.

‘Las Vegas?’

‘City of sin. Listen, I’m just on my way to hit a shower, then I’m going to split for dinner in the capital of sin. Come on with me and I’ll show you around. I know some clubs that’ll blow you away. The food is fantastic. You like to gamble?’

‘Mack Smith,’ said Cortend. She pronounced each consonant in his name.

‘That’s me. Call me Knife. Kind of a nickname.’

She turned to one of her captains. ‘Is he on the list?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘In the truck, Smith. We have some questions for you.’

Mack laughed. Cortend didn’t.

‘Yeah, well, maybe another time,’ he said, shaking his head. But as he took a step toward the building, he found two of the lackeys blocking his way. At the same time, two of the security men got out of one of the SUVs.

‘What’s the story here, sugar?’ Mack said.

Cortend walked over to Mack. They were about the same height – but suddenly Cortend seemed to tower over him.

‘The story, sugar, is that I have some questions for you to answer, and you will answer them now. Got it?’

‘But I’m kind of busy.’

‘You’re refusing to cooperate on a purely voluntary basis?’

The way she said the words made it clear to Mack that talking with her was about as voluntary as income tax. Still, he wasn’t going to let some good-looking but hard-ass colonel screw up his night off.

‘I wanted to take a shower,’ he said.

‘I doubt it will make you smell any better,’ said Cortend, heading back toward her vehicle.

Chen Lo Fann waited on the bench in the antechamber, soothing his troubled mind by staring at his surroundings. He had spent considerable time here as a boy, racing through his grandfather Chen Lee’s house; under ordinary circumstances, those memories would soothe him.

They failed to now. In fact, the more he stared, the further those days became, faded pages from a discarded book.

Chen Lo Fann had failed in his mission to provoke a war between China and India. The weight of that failure sat heavily on him, blocks of iron pressing him from every direction. Fann might believe in the endless surging of the universe, but it offered little consolation, for he must now face the one man he loved and feared above all others, and admit his failure.

Time passed; he did not note it.

One of Chen Lee’s secretaries stood before him. Without saying anything, Chen Lo Fann rose and followed the man through the hallway to the office where Chen Lee waited.

The old man stood gazing out the window. Taipei sat in the distance, a dirty gem in the rough land the old man had helped make prosperous. The old clock in the corner of the office ticked, slowly counting to itself as Chen Lo Fann waited for his grandfather to speak.

‘Your mission failed,’ said Chen Lee finally.

‘Yes, Grandfather,’ said Fann.

‘History is a terrible force,’ said the older man, still looking through the window. ‘It cares for no individual. It is like the ocean wave in that way. And yet it can be turned.’

Chen Lo Fann gazed at the back of his grandfather’s white head. The old man had given him many lessons here, allowed him to watch and listen. Fann’s education in America was nothing compared to those lessons.

‘I have a second plan,’ said Chen Lo Fann. ‘The ASEAN exercises can be disrupted.’

Chen Lee had clearly thought of this already, because he answered without his usual pause to consider.

‘Simply disrupting them will not be enough. An attack must be provoked.’