Act of War

CHAPTER 51

Boston’s Chinatown was on Beach Street and near Boston Common. It was the only authentically historic Chinese area left in all of New England and it had been the perfect place for the Second Department to establish a safe house.

With more than thirty thousand people per square mile, Chinatown was one of Boston’s most densely packed residential areas, and 70 percent of the people living there were Asian. If you were Chinese and wanted to disappear, this was the place in which to do it.

The five princelings Cheng had been sent to retrieve were scattered among three schools. One was at Princeton in New Jersey. Another was at Yale in Connecticut. And the remaining three were at Harvard, here in Boston.

Because of who they were, they had all received highly specialized training in China. It focused on escape and evasion, more commonly referred to as E&E. They learned not only how to detect surveillance, but how, when necessary, to escape it. They learned how to avoid kidnapping and what to do if in fact they ever were taken. They trained with the best and were expected to take their lessons seriously.

An emergency bug-out plan had been established for each princeling. When a certain phrase was transmitted to them, it would trigger the plan.

Each had been given a specific destination in Boston’s Chinatown. They were to leave their cell phones plugged in, turned on, and in their dorm rooms. Their laptops and any other electronic items were also to be left behind. That would make it much more difficult to track them.

Upon leaving their dormitories, they were to assume they were being followed and to take appropriate countermeasures. They were taught to stay calm and to not appear aware of any surveillance whatsoever.

After conducting their surveillance detection route, or SDR, each had been assigned a variety of options for how to reach their destination. The princelings at Harvard had it the easiest as Chinatown was right in their backyard. The students from Princeton and Yale had a greater distance to travel and Cheng had transmitted the activation message to them first.

He had done so using Facebook, tapping into established accounts of “friends” they had back in China, who were nothing more than Second Department operatives who kept the accounts active for just such an eventuality. Once the codes had been transmitted, it was up to them.

For the moment, Cheng tried to remain optimistic that their training and common sense would prevail. Princelings, though, tended to be spoiled. As a result, they often developed an overinflated sense of self-worth and entitlement. In short, they were wholly unreliable. They were also a pain in the ass.

Cheng had been very clear with Colonel Shi that he would not stand for anything less than complete obedience from them. He didn’t care who their parents were, or in the case of the youngest princeling from Harvard, who her grandfather was. His job was to get them all safely out of the United States. For that to happen, they would need to follow his instructions, every instruction, to the letter.

The colonel agreed and trusted Cheng to do what he thought was best. He did caution him, though, that today’s princeling could be tomorrow’s Politburo Standing Committee member.

Shi was correct, but that did little to lessen Cheng’s loathing for China’s politicians. He tried to put it out of his mind. As long as the princelings obeyed his commands, everything would be fine.

With the van secured in the safe house garage, Cheng cleaned his weapon, replenished his funds from a cache hidden beneath the kitchen floor, and prepared a medical kit, just in case any of his charges became ill or was injured during their trip.

The next thing he had to do was reconnoiter the nearby locations where each of the princelings would be arriving. The Second Department referred to them as “entry points.” In an optimal scenario, he would be moving the princelings into the safe house at a rate of one every twelve to forty-eight hours. Tonight, though, he would have to move much quicker. He didn’t like having to do things quickly. So much could go wrong.

Even though the entry points were only a handful of blocks from the safe house, it was still a highly complicated process. Having to move one princeling every hour would only add to the difficulty.

If their tradecraft had failed and any of them were being followed, that added a whole additional layer. Using Chinatown, especially on a busy night, put the odds in his favor. But nothing was a sure thing, especially when the FBI was involved. He was alone and had no backup. Everything would have to be executed flawlessly.

Unit 61398 had tapped into security cameras around Chinatown, creating an overwatch grid he could monitor from his laptop. It wasn’t perfect. There were numerous blind spots. But it was better than nothing.

With his safe house checklist complete, he exited the building and began to explore the neighborhood.

As he walked, he mentally mapped every face, every parked car, and every location for a potential ambush. Within two hours, he knew the area as well as if he had lived there for two years.

It was a surreal sensation knowing that all of the life around him was about to come to an abrupt and painful halt.