Cameron, Marc - Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

Yao half turned, binoculars still up and trained on the second boat over. “Freedom fighters,” he said again. “Not terrorists.”

“Tomato, tomahto,” Chavez said. “The mujahideen were freedom fighters when we were helping them fight the Russians in Afghanistan. Then they were terrorists when they linked up with al-Qaeda and the Taliban to fight us. Same guys, doing the same thing, just to different people.”

“Preach on, brother,” Yao said. “And right now, we’re dealing with freedom fighters. So far, the Wuming haven’t hit a single civilian target, only military and government targets we would dub as enemy combatants, were we at war with China.”

“But we’re not,” Chavez said.

“Depends on how well we behave ourselves,” Yao said. “Anyway, the fact that there’s no freedom-fighting going on around here is another indicator that our guys could be using this as a home base. Bigwigs from the Central Committee, the XPCC, and even the military love to come here and play. Judging from the people who’ve been on the Wuming hit list, this would be an extremely target-rich environment. Not a single hit has occurred within three hundred miles. That tells me they’re not shitting in their own backyard.”

“It was enough to get us here,” Chavez said. “But it’s still too thin to get my hopes up. We can separate and go for a couple of tours tomorrow. Compare the ticket stubs to the ones you got from your Kazakh friend. That will narrow down the boat. Looks like five or six crew members on each vessel. That gives us a lot of people to follow in a small resort with just a few of us. We’ll get burned in a matter of minutes.”

“Right,” Yao said. “That’s what I’m saying. You guys start to spread the word that my family is big in Beijing politics. Make me out to be a nationalist, anti-Uyghur prick, too big a target for them to pass up—”

“We’re not using you as bait, Adam,” Chavez said. “That. Is. All.”

“It could take weeks,” Yao said. “And I don’t feel like getting to be buds with those two cops from the hotel.”

Lisanne Robertson cleared her throat. She was humble, polite, and generally soft-spoken, but as a former Marine and police officer, she had no problem with speaking up.

“Can the newbie make a suggestion?”

“Go for it,” Chavez said.

“Okay,” she said. “There are cameras at the end of the docks and at various points in the parking lot and lakeshore. I’ve counted and, like you said, Jack, surveillance is spotty here. There are quite a few blind spots.”

Chavez made a nonchalant pass along the shoreline with his binoculars. “And that benefits us how?”

“I’m willing to bet,” Lisanne said, “that members of any organization as secretive as the Wuming will have each and every camera mapped and tagged. They will want to avoid as much notoriety as possible.”

She nodded to the last gaggle of tourists that were, at that moment, stepping off the wooden piers and returning to hotels and tour buses. “See how they walk in straight lines? They couldn’t care less about security cameras. The boat crews will get off work in the next few minutes. All we have to do is figure out where the lapses in security coverage are, and then wait and see who takes a more varied route in order to avoid cameras.” She shrugged, looking at Adara. “I mean, I do the same thing at work. Don’t you?”

Ryan dabbed away a mock tear. “Look at how she’s all grown up.”

“That might actually work,” Chavez said. He checked his watch. It had taken them just under twenty minutes to get there from the hotel in Jiadengyu. They’d grabbed a bite and scouted the area, burning another two hours. “Let’s spread out a little and focus on the people getting off Eternal Peach for the time being. We should start seeing movement off the boats anytime.”

Lisanne tucked her chin deeper into her jacket, shivering. She nodded to a line of taxis, waiting to pick up the last few tourists. “Somebody has to go get our passports from the Keystone Kops. Gonna be harder to get a cab all the way out here by the lake after all the boats are empty. Should be easy to find one in town, though. I can be back in less than an hour.”

“We can all go back in the van,” Chavez said. “When it’s time.”

“He’s right,” Jack said. “Not a good idea for any of us to go off on our own.”

Lisanne laughed out loud. “That is the most hilarious thing I’ve heard all day, coming from you, Mr. Lone Wolf. Seriously, have you guys forgotten what my primary title is? Director of transportation. This is literally what I do.” She looked accusingly at Chavez. “Tell me you wouldn’t assign me exactly this task if John hadn’t been brought into ops.”

“The kid’s right,” Adara said. “Somebody has to do the grunt work. We can’t all have the exhilarating task of shivering our asses off in the cold and staring at the end of a pier for two hours.”

“I still don’t like it,” Ryan said. He treated Lisanne like she was his kid sister most of the time. It had been clear to everyone on the team for some time that he harbored some unresolved feelings.

Chavez hooked a thumb toward the taxis. “Go,” he said. “But be back in an hour. And keep your phone on.”

“I should go with her,” Ryan said.

Adara put an arm around his shoulders. “You’re with me, Jackie boy. Let’s go check out the other end of the pier before you embarrass yourself.”

Lisanne mouthed Thanks to Adara after Ryan’s back was turned, and then started for the cabs. “Just a quick trip to town,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”

44

Fu Bohai took five men on Admiral Zheng’s “company” Cessna Citation CJ3 from Tirana, Albania, to Burqin/Kanas Airport. With a maximum cruise speed of over seven hundred kilometers per hour, the pilots made the trip in just over eight hours, including a lightning-fast fuel stop in Baku, Azerbaijan, that would have put a Le Mans pit crew to shame. It did not hurt that everyone on board had seen Fu Bohai at work and endeavored to do everything in their power to be certain they never had cause to see him take out his knife with them in mind.

Pretty Leigh Murphy, the CIA officer with the fierce eyes, had proven more difficult to break than he’d imagined. Oh, he knew from the outset that she would be tough. Women customarily held out much longer than their male counterparts. One of his men once suggested that their resilience under torture was because of their threshold for pain. Fu suspected it had more to do with the sheer stubbornness it took to push a child from one’s body. Pain had little to do with the process, in any case. Anticipation of pain was what turned the tide, caused people to give him the information he needed to know.

Fu had not even opened his blade, let alone cut the other CIA officer, before he started blubbering. Joey was his name. He didn’t know much anyway, which had proven fortunate for him. A quick death was in his cards, not torture and questioning. According to the information Fu had received through the admiral from SURVEYOR, the girl was the one with the answers. Joey had simply presented himself as an opportunity. He’d been following Murphy, which put him in the right spot for Fu to take advantage of his presence. As the proverb said, sometimes it was necessary to kill a chicken to scare the monkey and make him dance.

The sight of her dead coworker had added an air of gravity to the situation that no threat could have. From that moment, Leigh Murphy had no doubt that Fu was serious. Even so, she’d held her secrets for almost four hours. Finally, the well-tested combination of drugs and anticipation of pain had broken her, as Fu had known it would.