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

“Lots of chimney smoke hanging out above the treetops,” Adara said. “Good place to hunker down and hide if you were an anonymous freedom fighter.”

Ryan looked up from his binoculars long enough to catch Ding’s eye. “Still four people on the Eternal Peach . How do you want to play this? It’ll be too dark to see soon. Those guys could be spending the night on there, as far as we know.”

“Let’s keep an eye on the boat as long as we can,” Chavez said. “Just in case this Han guy doesn’t pan out as Wuming.” He looked around the parking lot, the plank viewing platform, and surrounding shoreline. Snow fell harder now, huge popcorn flakes, giving the entire valley the feeling of a snow globe. As tourists, the group had made no attempt to hide their curiosity at the sights. As soon as it got dark, people would start to wonder why they were still hanging around with binoculars and cameras. “You and Adara keep trying to reach Lisanne.”

“We could try the sat phone,” Adara said.

“No good,” Jack said. “I’m getting her voicemail, so I have a signal. Either she doesn’t have a signal or she’s not able to pick up.”

“Okay,” Chavez said, thinking over his options. “Maybe they’re giving her the runaround at the police station.” He pitched the extra set of van keys to Ryan. “Give her an hour. If you don’t hear something by then, go get her. Adam and I will head toward the hotel like we’re going to get a tea or something, and then cut into the woods, see where this Han character leads us.”

“Roger that,” Ryan said. “We—”

Adara cut him off. “Hey, guys,” she said, all business, a tense edge to her voice. “Uyghur female at the edge of the tree line. My two o’clock. White ski jacket. Fur ruff around her hood.” Adara paused, took her eyes off the binoculars, blinked to refocus, and then looked through them again, speaking into her hands. “I’m thinking this could be Medina.”

Chavez took a quick look. “Same nose. Dark brow … Only one way to find out.” He tucked the binoculars inside his jacket so they wouldn’t swing and started walking. “Adam,” he said. “You’re with me.” He shot a quick glance at Ryan and Adara as he passed them. “Belay that order about picking up Lisanne. Medina Tohti is the mission. Give us five minutes for spacing, then follow at a distance.” He tapped his cheek over the Molar Mic. “Keep trying Lisanne, though. Tell her to get her ass back here ASAP.”

49

Fu Bohai was seated in the back office of the Jiadengyu police station when his man Qiu told him about the woman.

The local police sergeant, a cadaverous fellow with eyes that sank deep in his skull, clicked a few buttons on his keyboard and brought up the lobby camera.

“Ah,” he said. “Yes. One of four Finnish tourists. She came to retrieve the passports for her group. I spoke to them earlier at their hotel. I believe their Chinese guide has taken the others to view the lake.”

“You say they are Finnish?” Fu watched the monitor as the woman exited the front door. He flicked his fingers at the sergeant, getting him to switch to an exterior camera. “Do you get many European visitors?”

“Oh, yes!” the sergeant said, brimming with pride. “Tourists from all over the world to view our magnificent park. Russians, Japanese, even Americans. Our scenery is quite pop—”

Fu held up his hand to shush the babbling fool and then leaned forward to get a better look at the woman. The sergeant switched from camera to camera, staying with her as she walked down the street, moving in and out of other tour groups, who were out for evening strolls. The footage was remarkably clear considering how dark it was, allowing Fu to see the flashing shift of the woman’s eyes as she studied her surroundings. Periodically, a flake of snow loomed large, almost obscuring the view as it fell inches from the lens.

Fu ignored the local sergeant and spoke directly to his man. “Notice how she stops periodically,” he said. “Turning to face a shop or café window as if to look inside, but … there, she casually steps into a shop, and then almost immediately back out again to see if she is being followed. What sort of tourist runs countersurveillance in a scenic park?”

Fu stood, retrieving his hat from the sergeant’s desk. “Follow her,” he said. “The rest of us will go check the tour boats.”

“Yes, Boss!” Qiu pulled down sharply on the hem of his skintight leather coat, making it pop—as he always did after he received an order. Fu had begun to think of it as a sort of salute—and liked it.

50

Hollywood depictions of military vs. CIA bad blood notwithstanding, Captain Alan Brock, team leader ODA-0312, actually got along well with Roy Grant, his counterpart from that Other Governmental Agency.

Stationed at Camp Vance, a stone’s throw from Bagram Air Base in eastern Afghanistan, Brock and his men made up a U.S. Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha, commonly called an A-team. The four-numeral ODA designator, 0312, signified Brock’s team was 0–10th Special Forces Group, 3–3rd Battalion, 1—first company in 3rd Battalion (A Company), 2—second team in the company, in this case, mountaineers and horse soldiers.

ODA-0312.

It was Grant who’d spun up this mission—less than an hour earlier, bursting into Brock’s team room with a contagious air of secret urgency. The guy knew how to get a team excited—without telling them a damn thing. All he’d said to this point was that they were going to “recon up the Wakhan” riffing on the rhyme as he said the words.

Since the Global War on Terror began, cable programs had made much of the notion that Afghanistan was this unconquerable graveyard where every army that set boots on its plains came to grief. Pundits observed that the Soviets became hopelessly embroiled. The British Empire had failed to conquer. Even Alexander the Great had failed.

Brock knew it wasn’t all that simple. Alexander’s Greeks had ruled the area for something like two hundred years—not too shabby, as empires go. The Russkies pulled up stakes and left for a number of reasons, chief among them because of the kickass work that CIA had done arming and advising the mujahideen (though U.S. forces would eventually fight these men’s sons and grandsons). The British Empire of the nineteenth century had suffered some horrific defeats in Afghanistan, but in the end they’d gotten exactly what they wanted, a thin strip of land to separate British India from the Russian Empire in Turkmenistan—the Wakhan Corridor, roughly two hundred and twenty miles long and forty miles wide, wedged between the high Pamirs to the north and the Karakoram Mountains to the south, and terminating at the border with China. The area was so far removed from the rest of Afghanistan that many of the tribes who lived there didn’t even know there was a war on. A portion of the ancient Silk Road, the far-flung paths and trails through the high Pamirs, was still used by the occasional opium smuggler—though there were much easier routes into and out of China than trudging over impossibly high mountain passes in a place locals called the Roof of the World. The battalion S2 had intel on some recent Chinese patrols in the corridor with the Afghan Border Police. The ABP brass denied it, but border guys were hanging way out there by themselves—and the Chi-Comms could be awfully persuasive if they showed up in force and wanted to “help hunt terrorists.”

Brock had inserted into the Wakhan half a dozen times, for recon and training with Afghan forces. It was a wild place—beautiful, and, like much of Afghanistan, something out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel.

Now Roy Grant wanted to go on recon for some yet-to-be-explained reason. He was worried about leaks, he said. Moles. He’d brief them on the chopper, he’d said, but pack for a three-day mission.