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

Fu Bohai was less than two kilometers from the lake when Qiu called. Headlights through falling snow looked like a video-game spaceship jumping to light speed. Fu’s driver, a young fellow named Gao, hunched over the wheel, concentrating to negotiate sweeping mountain roads.

“She knows we are following,” Qiu said.

Fu, seated in front, stared out the passenger window at the darkness. “Then detain her,” he said. “She will only lead you in circles.”

“Yes, Boss,” Qiu said. Fu could envision him bracing at the other end of the call.

“Find out what she is doing here—”

“Boss,” Qiu said, his voice as sharp as the snap of his leather jacket. “I don’t speak Finnish.”

Fu groaned, rubbing his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. “I doubt very much that will be a problem. Find out if she is involved with the search for Medina Tohti. See how much she knows. Get the location of her friends … and then sink her body in the lake.”

“And if she is not involved?”

“Her fate remains the same,” Fu said, shrugging, though the man on the other end of the line could not see it. “The questions you ask will, by necessity, reveal the nature of our mission. If she is a professional, as I suspect she is, since she was alert for surveillance, then your interrogation may be messy. There will not be much left of her for you to release. As I said, sink her.”

Ryan and Adara briefed Chavez over the net as they drove.

“Got it,” Chavez said. “We’ll hold it down here. Watch your speed on the road. The weather’s turned to shit where we are. You won’t do her any good if you get yourself smeared over the Chinese countryside.”

“Roger that,” Ryan said, chattering the van’s tires against the pavement as he took a sweeping curve.

Adara grabbed a handful of seatbelt as he made the turn.

“Sorry about that,” Ryan said.

“I’m not,” Adara said. “Let’s see some of that fancy Jack Ryan, Jr., driving your Secret Service detail taught you. We won’t do Lisanne any good if we’re late, either.”

Approaching headlights glowed through the darts of driving snow. Ryan let off the gas momentarily in case it happened to be a police car. A white Toyota sedan passed them, going toward the docks. Adara turned in her seat and looked out the rear window, watching the taillights fade away in the distance.

“Time to haul ass,” she said. “You know what they say, faint heart never won fair maiden.”

Hands at nine and three o’clock, Ryan took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot a quizzical glance at Adara.

“Fair maiden?”

“I’m not one to judge,” Adara said. “Just saying, it’s obvious.”

“Whatever,” Ryan said, slowing just enough to keep control as he approached a turn and then accelerating through the sweep, using up the entire road, cutting corners when he could, shaving every second possible from the drive.

Service was spotty at best, and nonexistent in most places. They were still unable to reach Lisanne.

“Get me a location on the COP as soon as you get a signal,” Ryan said. The COP, or Common Operating Picture, gave the team the ability to see one another’s location—as long as they had cell or, with the right equipment, satellite service.

“Working on it,” Adara said. The dash lights bathed her face in a green glow. “She knows what she’s doing, Jack. Clark never would have brought her on board if she didn’t.”

“I know,” Ryan said. “But we shouldn’t have let her go alone. She’s too new.”

“She’s a decorated Marine,” Adara said. “And an experienced cop.”

“You’re right,” Ryan said. “It’s just …”

“I know,” Adara said. “Me, too.” She gave a little fist pump and then held up her phone to display a pulsing blue dot. “Got her. We’re eight minutes out.”

Ryan attempted to raise Lisanne on the net. No answer. “Try calling her through cell service instead of the radio,” he said.

Adara tapped her cheek over the Molar Mic and then held up the phone again. “Trying now …” At length, she turned to Ryan. “No joy. She’s not picking up.”

Ryan raised Chavez on the net, quickly bringing him up to speed. “I don’t know how you plan to convince Medina to come with us, but you’d better do it now. I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be coming your way at a run.”

56

Domingo Chavez was a smart man—and he knew it. Sure, he started off a little slow, barely getting out of East L.A. to enlist in the Army. He’d gone on to become the first male in his immediate family to attend college, and then later, under the mentorship of John Clark and the man’s brainiac daughter, he’d finished graduate school. Fluent in three languages, he was conversant in two more. He could hold his own in forensic accounting, had enough flight time to land a small plane if he had to, or rig a communications radio with little more than a few household items and a foil wrapper from a stick of Juicy Fruit.

He was good at a lot of things, but he was best at brute force. That was probably why he got along so well with his father-in-law.

Unfortunately, force was off the table for the moment. He had to appeal to his kinder, gentler angels, to sweet-talk a woman who had aligned herself with a bunch of terrorists … freedom fighters … convince her to come with him of her own free will. Now there was another team out there, poaching the leads Adam Yao had come up with. They were surely the ones following Lisanne—and they also wanted to talk to Medina Tohti. Judging from the body count they’d left behind in Huludao and Albania, their kinder, gentler angels had gone on terminal leave.

Chavez had to get to her first. Doing that without getting shot was going to be tricky.

The area in front of the cabin had been cleared of brush and trees, making a stealthy approach impossible. Chavez ruled out working their way around to the rear of the cabin. It had likely been cleared as well, and the time it took to check would be wasted.

“We’ll ride in on the horses,” Yao said. “They’ll think we’re tourists who got lost on the trail.”

“That could work,” Chavez said, though he didn’t relish climbing aboard the fuzzy little gray again. “If we try to creep up, they’d just shoot us for sure—”

The harsh voice from brush behind them caused both men to roll onto their backs. Chavez let the binoculars fall against their strap and reached for his Beretta.

He froze when he saw Medina Tohti and her Han friend, both with pistols aimed directly at them. Medina looked at Chavez’s gun hand and gave a tut-tut shake of her head. Her pistol remained rock-steady, finger on the trigger.

“You are correct,” the Han man said in perfect English. “Had you tried to creep up to the cabin, we certainly would have shot you. But that raises a question. What is to keep us from shooting you now?”

The Han man, whom Medina called Ma, obviously had some military or police experience. It took him only a few seconds to zip-tie both Chavez’s and Yao’s hands behind their backs, then pat them down for weapons. He was particularly interested in the Beretta, but said nothing. Satisfied for the moment, he dragged the men to their feet and gave a shrill whistle as he walked them none too gently out of the clearing.

The two men who’d arrived earlier in the Great Wall pickup came out of the cabin, each assuming control of one of the prisoners, shoving them through the door.

A woman sat at the back window, her eye to what looked like a Russian-made infrared scope.

“No movement,” she said when the men came in.

Though they were Uyghur, everyone spoke Mandarin, apparently in deference to Ma, who was clearly their leader.