Beyond All Limits

1

Mark Cole flinched as the pigs sniffed around his bare feet, their feral snouts brushing his sweat-slicked skin.

The temperature in the barn was intense, the air dusty and cloying, and sweat also rolled down Cole’s cleanly shaved head; and Cole knew that it wasn’t just from the heat.

The fact was that — despite his years of training, a lifetime of covert operations — he was scared.

The pigs that sniffed around his feet had been specially bred by the farm’s owner to have a taste for human flesh, and they had already eaten several people over the years, bones included; it was the owner’s way of disposing of people who had offended him. There weren’t many things that Cole was truly frightened of, but being eaten alive was high up on that short list.

It wasn’t too long ago, Cole thought unhappily, that it had been alligators trying their best to eat him; and again, the lunatic who’d organized that one had wanted the beasts to start with his feet. It was getting to be a habit; a bad one.

He scanned his surroundings, controlling his breathing and doing his best to ignore the pigs that gathered beneath him. He knew they wouldn’t start eating yet anyway; from the dried blood on their snouts, it looked like they’d had a decent meal recently, and they hopefully still weren’t hungry enough to eat another body.

But time, Cole knew, would change that.

The trouble with pigs was that they ate anything; and they were big enough, and powerful enough, to take on the big-ticket items.

Like people.

They could digest bones and tendons as well as the softer parts of the human body, which made them a perennial favorite of crime families everywhere. The really big bones such as the skull and the femurs were often too much for them in the end, but as body disposal units, pigs were a good deal overall.

Cole had first heard of such practices back when he was just seventeen years old, before he’d even joined the military, and then the intelligence underworld.

He’d been a bouncer at a local biker bar back in his home town of Hamtramck, Michigan; he’d had to lie about his age to get the job, but he’d looked old enough and the owner hadn’t asked too many questions. He’d just wanted someone who could handle themselves, and even at that age, Cole had fit the bill.

He remembered getting a regular lift to the bar from a neighbor called Jonny, a big man in his forties who’d done the job for longer than Cole had been alive. He was friendly but taciturn, and it wasn’t until he’d known the man for months that he started to hear the rumours.

Jonny’s day job was as a pig farmer, and it turned out that a lucrative side earner was feeding people to the pigs at the request of several Detroit drug gangs.

Cole had never known if the stories were true, but he had looked at Jonny in a new light for ever after.

He’d never seen pigs in quite the same way either, and now he was going to get firsthand experience of why.

But, he reminded himself as he had done so many times in the past, it wasn’t over yet. Despite the seriousness of his situation, there was always a chance. The day he stopped believing that would be the day he gave up this line of work forever.

For all the beatings the guards had heaped upon him, he was still capable of functioning. Nothing was broken and, although bruised and cut up, Cole could tell he’d suffered no real internal damage. It was all superficial, and nothing he hadn’t experienced before.

It was Jim Groves that had beaten him the worst, but Cole could understand that — it was Groves who had brought him here to the ranch that served as headquarters to the home-grown terrorist group known as Aryan Ultra, Groves who had introduced him to the AU’s secretive leader, Clive Haynes. Groves had vouched for him, promised Haynes that Cole was genuine. Cole could see why the man would take it personally.

But how had they found out?

Cole still didn’t understand what he was doing here in the first place, hanging with aching shoulders from the rafters of the big barn, waiting for the pigs to start their feast.

His cover had been perfect. How had Clive Haynes found out who he really was?

The irony of the situation was that Cole had already achieved his mission — he had discovered who was behind next week’s suspected terrorist attack on Washington, learnt the plans, who was involved, he’d learnt everything President Ellen Abrams had wanted him to learn; but he had never had a chance to tell anybody.

Which meant that — unless he managed to escape from this pit of death before the pigs started chewing away on his feet, ankles and legs — the information would go to the grave with him, and Aryan Ultra would be free to blow the US Capitol Building off the face of the earth, along with a hefty portion of the American government.

He looked across the barn, past the skin-headed, scruffy guards who stared at him with hatred, to the big man himself, Clive Haynes.

Haynes was a sadistic killer who had joined the Aryan Brotherhood in San Quentin prison before deciding to go it alone and create his own, far more political movement. He believed that the Brotherhood was nothing more than a criminal gang, and wanted to pursue his own, more ideological purpose.

He’d established the AU several years ago, and it had already grown in size and strength at an unprecedented rate — Haynes’ willingness to indulge in the same criminal activities of narcotics, extortion and homicide as his old gang brought him in the money-minded side of the membership, while his neo-Nazi puritanism also engaged the more strictly white supremacist vote.

The result was a criminal gang which used its proceeds to attack the American government whenever it could — from the slayings of black politicians to the bombings of federal courts, the AU was a dangerous homegrown terrorist group that was now threatening Washington itself.

Despite his ideological ravings, drug money had made Haynes a rich man — this thousand acre ranch outside Tucson, Arizona, was proof enough of that. It was ideally placed between the Aryan criminal heartlands around San Quentin, and the lucrative narcotics routes from Mexico.

Up until four days ago, Cole had been incarcerated in San Quentin himself — leads from the intelligence agencies had linked a man called Jim Groves to the highly secretive AU, and he was serving a twenty-to-life sentence for a range of charges including robbery, rape, assault and homicide.

Cole had therefore entered the prison — complete with shaven head and a maze of bodily tattoos — in order to make friends with the man, distasteful though such an idea was, in the hopes that he could learn more about the AU’s organization and future plans.

It had been easy enough — such men respected strength and violence, and so Cole had wasted no time in establishing himself as someone to be wary of. His first night there, Cole had stabbed a man through the neck with a sharpened toothbrush, bringing him quickly to Groves’ attention. Cole hadn’t felt too bad about it; the man he’d almost killed had been serving life imprisonment for serial rape.

More acts of violence brought Cole closer and closer to the AU lieutenant, and soon they were on first name terms, Groves wanting to use Cole as his personal enforcer. Groves still hadn’t trusted Cole enough to tell him who the leader of the AU was, nor what they had planned in terms of future operations, but that had changed when Cole broke out of the prison, taking Groves with him.

Deeply indebted to Cole, Groves had taken him straight to the ranch in Tucson, where he’d introduced him to Clive Haynes, a fanatic in the Hitler mold. Haynes hadn’t been sure about Cole, but Groves was his second in command, and he eventually let himself be worn down by the man’s praise.

What Cole had then found out was frightening in the extreme; the AU was far better funded, organized and motivated than anyone in US intelligence or law enforcement could possibly have imagined. And their next order of business was to detonate enough explosives underneath the US Capitol to bring it crashing down around the gathered members of congress.

It would have seemed farfetched, except for the fact that the AU had infiltrated several government organizations, and already had the explosives within the city limits.

Cole sighed internally. What was he doing? There was no point wasting time thinking about the past; what was needed now was action, not mental distractions.

Without moving his head, careful that he appeared only semi-conscious and a lot more injured than he actually was, Cole took in his surroundings.

The barn was large, made of cedar wood with a long central track running past wood and steel-gated pens to large double doors at one end. Cole could see daylight beyond, and knew that outside was the main farm compound which consisted of several outbuildings, Haynes’ sprawling single-story home further up a spruce-covered hill on the western edge of the complex. There was a large, ten-vehicle garage near the house, but one of the other barns in the farm compound held tractors and other machinery. Cole remembered that there were quad bikes and trucks in there too.

Letting his eyes drift upwards, he saw a line of open windows running the length of the barn, below the beamed roof on either side of the central track.

Opposite the double doors at one end was a smaller door which Cole knew from a previous visit led to a small equipment room. Between both ends of the building was a dirt floor, already starting to become further covered in pig feces.

Behind the safety of the pen doors stood five members of Aryan Ultra, their tattooed, muscular bodies tense and ready. They held various weapons, from Magnum revolvers to shotguns, but Cole noticed they were more intent on defending themselves from the pigs than they were on making sure Cole didn’t go anywhere.

Cole himself was two thirds of the way through the barn, his wrists tied together with a length of twine, which had been passed over one of the ceiling beams. He had been hauled up, and the end of the rope had been tied off on one of the pillars which separated the pens.

Hanging from his wrists, the pain throughout his hands, wrists, arms and shoulders was intense, but Cole cut off the pain as best he could, using it instead to keep his mind sharp and focused.

The pigs continued to sniff around his feet, and Cole could see that their curiosity was getting stronger and stronger with each passing second. He knew that it wouldn’t be long before they took their first bite, their tusks brushing against his legs.

Just as Cole was considering his options, the double doors burst open and Clive Haynes himself walked in, Jim Groves right by his side. From the bruises on Groves’ face and the man’s busted nose, Cole could see that the AU lieutenant had received his own punishment for bringing him here.

‘Hi,’ Haynes said with a big smile, two other men entering with him, keeping the pigs at bay. ‘Glad to see I’m not too late. Wouldn’t want the hogs to get started without me, would we, Mark?’

Cole twitched involuntarily. How did Haynes know his name?

Haynes smiled. ‘Mark Cole, covert government operative. Working directly for the president.’ The grin spread across his face. ‘I wonder what she’ll say when we mail her the pieces that the pigs don’t want?’

Cole didn’t respond, his mind racing furiously. How did Haynes know so much? Cole’s identity was more than a secret; only a handful of men and women in the entire world knew who he was.

‘Or,’ Haynes continued, stalking steadily closer towards Cole, ‘should I call you Mark Kowalski?’

Cole’s blood ran cold; if only a handful of people knew him as Cole, even less knew him by his real name.

He shuddered. Mark Kowalski had been a Navy SEAL, seconded to the covert Systems Research Group before being declared Killed in Action after a disastrous mission in Pakistan. But he hadn’t been killed; instead, he had been found alive, and subsequently been asked to leave behind his previous life. To become a ‘contract laborer’ for the government, with a new life, a new identity. Mark Cole: codenamed ‘the Asset’, a deniable, highly-trained, unstoppable first-strike weapon against America’s enemies.

How the hell did Haynes know?

‘Surprised?’ Haynes asked with a grin, and Cole did his best to keep his face calm, impassive. Haynes nodded sagely. ‘You can try that tough guy act, but I know you must be just dyin’ to find out how I know about you, right?’ Still Cole refused to respond. ‘Right, Kowalski?’ Haynes’ grin turned to a frown. ‘So you’re not talkin’. That ain’t no problem.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘You know what, I don’t think you’ll even talk when I set the hogs on ya. And I’ve got so many questions,’ he said almost wistfully, still shaking his head. ‘So many. What you know. Who you’ve told. What other spies you’ve got out there, who else we might need to pick up and… talk to. You know?’

Haynes stared across the barn at Cole, saw the resolve in the captured man’s eyes and seemed to come to a decision. ‘Nah, you’re not gonna give me shit, right?’ He laughed. ‘I’m gonna let the hogs have you anyway though. But before they have you, I might let them have an appetizer.’

Cole worked hard to keep his face impassive. An appetizer? That must mean that Haynes had captured someone else. But who? Nobody else was working on this; Cole was in it alone. But someone had tipped off Haynes, and Cole wondered if it was this same person.

Haynes nodded to Groves, who left the barn, returning moments later with a woman. A girl really, Cole saw with disgust; she couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.

She was gagged and had her wrists and ankles bound with duct tape, and Cole could see that she had been badly beaten; her skin was covered with welts and bruises. Her puffy eyes were so swollen that Cole wondered if she could see anything at all.

The girl was Japanese, or so it seemed; with the gag and the damage to her face it was hard to tell.

And then Cole realized that he recognized her; he didn’t know who she was, but he recognized her.

He had been in San Quentin penitentiary, and the guards had come to tell him he had a visitor. He had been surprised; nobody knew he was there. He had been escorted to the visitor’s room, but on his arrival there had been nobody on the other side of the Plexiglas partition. He had scanned the other side of the glass, seen a woman retreating rapidly from the room; she had never looked back, but from her profile Cole had seen she was Japanese.

Cole had assumed it was a mistake; maybe the girl had thought he was somebody else, and when she’d realized, had fled. He’d thought nothing else about it, his mind on other things.

But now here she was again, the same girl, beaten and broken, another captive of Haynes and Aryan Ultra.

Who was she?

Another grin spread across Haynes’ face. ‘Surprised?’ he asked. ‘Little Michiko here is how we found out about you. How’s that for betrayal, eh? But she did have some encouragement,’ he laughed. ‘Amazing what a little pain will do to someone’s loyalty, ain’t it?’

Haynes saw the pigs approaching Cole’s feet more aggressively, and motioned for his men to pull them back before he continued. ‘We saw her come visit you in San Quentin, wondered why a fuckin’ nip would come visitin’ a true-blooded Aryan like you. So we followed her, finally picked her up. Questioned her.’ He smiled that sick, black smile. ‘You’d have been proud of her. Really. She held out for a long time. But everyone talks in the end.’

Cole looked at the girl, barely strong enough to stand, upright only because Groves was holding her.

Confusion flooded Cole’s mind.

He had no idea who the girl was, how she knew anything about him at all, never mind the deepest, darkest secrets of his identity. So she had resisted as much as she could before telling them, and Cole was grateful. But who was she, and why did she know so much about him in the first place?

It was clear that Haynes believed that they were connected in some close way; Cole knew that she would be tortured in front of him, to get him to talk. Haynes must have thought that the sight of the girl being eaten by the pigs would cause him to give in, to tell everything he knew.

But Haynes was wrong; it wasn’t going to encourage him to talk.

On the contrary, it was enough to give him the adrenalin boost he needed, the savage impetus to act.

2

The pain that wracked Aoki ‘Yamaguchi’ Michiko was intense; she had been beaten black and blue over the course of several days.

And now she was going to be fed to the pigs to encourage Mark Cole to talk.

Like she had talked.

Her head hung limply on her chest in shame.

As a member — disgraced and estranged, but still a member — of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest and most feared Yakuza crime family, Aoki knew that informing was the worst possible sin, one that often resulted in the informer’s murder or forced ritual suicide.

The fact that she’d had no choice made no difference; she had failed, and it was as simple as that.

She still couldn’t believe that she had not sat down in that visitor’s room in San Quentin; after all these years of tracking Cole, delving into his past, thinking he was dead, then tracking him again, she had at last gained the chance to sit down with him and confront him once and for all.

She knew everything there was to know about Mark Cole, the ex-Navy SEAL originally called Mark Antoni Kowalski who hailed from the Polish enclave of Hamtramck, near Detroit. His early background and life with his third-generation immigrant family, his years in SEAL Team Two, then SEAL Team Six, his engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, and on secret wars around the world, his recruitment into the highly covert Systems Research Group, his capture and imprisonment in Pakistan, his subsequent release and change of identity to Mark Cole, his years of service to the US government as a paid assassin, his betrayal by his controller Charles Hansard, the Director of National Intelligence, the brutal deaths of his wife and two small children, his reappearance months later after being presumed dead.

Aoki, having stood and watched the fires still burning at the hamlet of Kreith in Austria where his family died, where he was supposed to have died, had been shocked to her core when she’d seen him alive two years later on the streets of Paris.

She had resumed her search, used her formidable computer hacking skills to discover his new role in the US government as the leader of a special unit known as Force One.

She had discovered details of his latest mission, infiltrating Aryan Ultra through the US prison system, and had finally tracked him to San Quentin penitentiary.

And then — after all these years, so many false leads, so many missed opportunities — she had finally come so close to meeting him face to face; she could have sat down and finally confronted him, demanded answers from him for what he’d done.

But at the last minute she’d backed out, suddenly afraid to meet him, to look into his face, into his eyes; what would she see there? What would he see in her face?

It had been too much for her, and the whole thing had abruptly threatened to crush her, overwhelm her, drown her.

And instead of confronting him as she had dreamed of for so many years, instead she had run.

Just one more reason, she decided, to be disgusted with herself. As a Yamaguchi, the shame was intolerable.

But, she reminded herself, she wasn’t a true Yamaguchi; she was no more a part of the criminal underworld than she was of the world of secret intelligence. She was an imposter in both arenas, forever searching for… what?

She didn’t know, and as she watched the pigs turn from Cole and come scuttling across the barn floor to her, she wondered if she ever would.

It had been stupid of her to be caught, she knew that now; she should have been aware of the people around her, attuned to people that might be watching her.

But she had been so focused on Cole, and then so confused after fleeing from the prison without even speaking to him, that she never noticed the men who had followed her, stalked her every move.

When they had moved in she had fought back — just as she had been trained — and had even damaged several of the hardened men; but in the end there had been too many, and she had been bound and bundled and crated off to this ranch in the Arizona desert.

The ensuing days had been the worst of her young life; beaten, burnt, drugged and abused. She had held out for as long as any human being could hope to do under such conditions, but finally she had broken and told them everything.

Logically she knew she had been left with no choice, but she couldn’t help hating herself for what she had done.

And now?

She looked across to Mark Cole, aware that this might constitute their first real meeting, almost smiling with the irony of it all.

Now? she thought sadly.

Now they were both going to die.

The pigs were moving over towards the girl now, encouraged by Haynes’ thugs; but against all of his instincts, Cole began to wriggle his toes, trying to attract the attention of the animals, to get at least one to stay close to him. All he needed was one.

He turned his head sharply, his eyes darting over the girl’s shoulder, past Haynes and Groves to beyond the big barn doors behind them.

Everyone in the room instinctively followed his gaze; it was the oldest trick in the book, but Cole was a master and could play the game as well as anyone.

In the moment when everyone’s attention was distracted, Cole hauled up hard on the rope that held him, curling his body up high in the air until he could fasten his bare feet on the rope above his hands. Pushing with his powerful leg muscles, he jerked his bound hands upwards off the hook, turned around and landed on the barn floor, ankles, knees and hips flexing to reduce the impact.

Cole saw the men turning back to him, mouths open as they realized what he had done; weapons were already coming round towards him.

Cole immediately launched himself onto the pig which had stayed near him, jumping crab-like into its back, riding it as it reared and bucked, his hands going around its head, the rope sliding around its neck; and then Cole slipped back, his feet touching the floor, and he pulled the wildly bucking animal up in front of him, using its huge mass as a shield as he backed away.

Cole heard the pig squeal, felt it writhe and convulse in his arms as it was hit by handgun rounds; felt it shudder, push him back further as it was hit by a blast of the shotgun.

Cole was level with one of the guards now, the man’s handgun empty. As he frantically tried to reload, Cole turned and pushed the pig towards him, the huge, bloodied animal crashing through the pen door; the screaming guard was crushed beneath the pig’s broken, eviscerated body, and Cole jumped in after it.

Cole looked down, saw the handgun and the magazine lying on the floor next to the man who, barely conscious, still struggled to escape from under the crushing weight of the dead pig. Cole reached for it but then turned as if with a sixth sense, the guard with the Magnum revolver racing into the stall, gun aimed right at him.

Cole moved in a blur, leaving the handgun on the floor as his hand snaked out and grabbed a pitchfork from the wall, burying it straight through the man’s chest before he’d managed to fire even once. Blood spurted from the multiple stab wounds as the man fell helplessly to the floor.

Cole knelt down quickly, inserting the new magazine into the handgun and racking the slide, picking up the heavy revolver in the same motion before he came to his feet and opened fire at the remaining guards, both guns blasting as one.

Aoki couldn’t believe what she was seeing; it was one thing to have read about the man, another altogether to see him in action. His speed and coordination were unreal; even the Japanese masters she had trained with weren’t capable of moving like that.

But her amazement lasted only moments; she knew there were still two men with guns behind her.

Taking Cole’s cue and wasting not one more second, she stamped down hard with the heel of her shoe onto the top of Groves’ foot, digging it into the small bones with a sharp twisting action that brought a cry of pain to his lips.

At the same time, she swung her bound hands in a tight arc to her right, knocking Haynes’ arms upwards just as he fired his own weapon, the bullet hitting the roof instead of its target.

Aoki knew that it wouldn’t take long for Groves and Haynes to recover and — feeling Groves’ grip on her weaken from the unexpected blow to his foot — she launched herself forward into the barn.

She felt a whistle of warm air above her as she leapt towards the frightened pigs, heard a grunt, felt blood spattering over her back; knew that Cole had hit Groves.

She felt, rather than saw, Haynes return fire towards Cole, before he turned and ran, the barn doors banging closed behind him. She heard him screaming as he ran; not shouts of fear or pain, she realized, but orders.

He was getting back-up, calling to the other shaven-headed Aryan Ultra soldiers who lived on the ranch; and Aoki knew that reinforcements would be at the barn within minutes, all guns blazing.

3

Whoever the girl was, Cole was impressed; she’d used the distraction to take out the two men holding her and had thrown herself clear, giving him a clear shot at Haynes and Groves.

He’d managed to put a .357 Magnum slug right through Groves’ chest, but Haynes had been quicker off the mark, keeping Cole pinned down behind the stall with fire of his own, giving him the few seconds he needed to escape.

The other men in the barn were down from Cole’s well-placed shots, and the pigs were going wild; attracted to the sight and smell of blood, excited by the sounds of gunfire and screams, they were attacking the downed AU soldiers, tusks and teeth going to work with frightening savagery.

Cole put the horrendous noise of the disemboweled victims out of his mind, assessing the situation.

Haynes was gone. Cole already had the information he needed, but if Haynes managed to escape, he would still be in a position to plan yet more atrocities against the American people, and Cole couldn’t let that happen. If there was any chance at all that he could get to Haynes, he would take it.

He turned and saw Aoki struggling to get to her feet from the dirt floor of the barn’s central aisle, worried that her wounds would make her a target for the pigs.

He spotted a saw on the wall of the stall, used it to cut the rope that secured his wrists, and ran towards the girl, taking the saw with him.

He still had no idea who she was, but he knew she had taken a beating to try and help him; the fact that she had told them about him wasn’t important, Cole knew that people couldn’t resist forever. But she had tried, and that was the main thing; he owed her for that, whoever she was.

Cole got to her, sidestepping the ravenous, feasting pigs, glad to see that they were leaving the girl alone; there were better pickings elsewhere, he supposed.

He hauled her to her feet, pulled the gag from her mouth and used the saw to separate her hands, the sharp jagged teeth cutting through the rope easily. Without a word he handed her the saw, pointed at her ankles; and without a word of her own, the girl bent down and started cutting.

Cole used the time to scout the bodies, picking up the weapons of the dead and dying men, careful to avoid the bloodied tusks of the wild pigs. He found a cell phone on one of the men and dialed 911. He would have liked more back-up, but due to the nature of Force One, he was on his own and had to rely on conventional law enforcement.

He quickly explained the situation, and knew that the local PD would send units immediately, but would also pass it up the line; an FBI SWAT team would probably be on its way within minutes, scrambled from the Phoenix field office.

But SWAT would take time to get here, which meant that Cole would have to stop Haynes himself.

Cole saw that the girl had freed herself, standing shakily, eyes watching him warily.

Ignoring the strange look on her face, he held up a submachine gun with a questioning eye. ‘You know how to use one of these?’ he asked, pleased when she nodded her head.

He threw the weapon to her, was pleased again when she caught it, opened the slide and checked for a round in the breach before slamming it home again.

He nodded at her in satisfaction. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now stay here and shoot anyone who comes in here without a police badge.’

For a moment — a long, terrible moment — Aoki was at a loss to know what to do.

It was the moment she had been waiting for — dreaming about — for years. Here she was with a loaded gun, aimed directly at the man she hated, the man she had tracked and stalked, the man she wanted with all her heart to kill.

But now?

Now, the urge was still there, beating wildly in her heart. But hadn’t the man just saved her? He could have left her where she was, thought only about himself, tried to save only himself. And yet he had untied her, given her the gun.

Could she now shoot the man in the back?

Her hands trembled as her finger caressed the trigger, a fraction of an inch from pumping a high-velocity stream of 9mm rounds into Cole’s unprotected spine.

The only reason she had managed to hold out so long against her barbarous torture was her desire to kill the man herself, to not let the AU thugs get to him first, so that she could at last exact her sweet revenge — both for her mother, and for herself.

But now he had saved her, and the thought of revenge no longer seemed so sweet; instead it now seemed… dishonorable?

Damn him!

Aoki knew she was now obligated to the man by the immutable Japanese concept of giri, and although she tried to banish the thought from her mind, she couldn’t ignore a lifetime of mental conditioning.

But what of her obligation to her mother? Did one cancel out the other?

She was at an impasse, unsure what to do; and then Cole was gone, charging through the barn’s double doors into the unknown beyond.

She cursed inwardly at her bad karma and, with gritted teeth, let the gun fall to her side.

Disgusted with herself, she started to consider her options.

Cole didn’t know what was going on, but for a second back in the barn he’d thought that the girl was going to shoot him in the back. There was a tingling on the back of his neck, a feeling he’d had many times before; the feeling that precipitated immediate violence, a sense honed by many years of such work. He had literally felt the girl’s sakki, a Japanese term meaning ‘killing intent’, leaking from her body, dripping from every pore.

And then it had been gone.

It concerned him, but there were more important things to worry about now.

As if to confirm this thought, Cole’s peripheral vision caught sight of an AU thug raising a shotgun towards him, body half-hidden behind a huge Saguaro cactus.

Cole pivoted towards the man and unleashed a blast from his own shotgun before the man had even pulled the trigger. The spray of pellets destroyed half of the cactus along with a good part of the man’s hidden torso, a gruesome plume of green and red exploding into the air around them.

Drawn by instinct alone, Cole pivoted in the opposite direction and pressed the trigger again, the blast hitting two men running towards him with pistols, shredding their bodies in an instant.

He heard the sound of an engine, saw a Dodge pick-up bursting out of the nearby garage, Haynes in the passenger seat, one of his men driving. Three more men clutched onto the rear deck, bodies bouncing as the vehicle accelerated off up the rough terrain, heading for the road. They tried to fire back at him, keep him pinned down as they helped their boss escape, but the movement of the pick-up made their shots go wild, nowhere near Cole.

Cole stopped still, shotgun to his shoulder, taking careful aim. He squeezed the trigger gently once more, the shotgun erupting; then pumped the action and shot again, then again.

The tires of the Hi Lux were hit, obliterated, and the truck started to wobble, to veer off course. The driver tried his best to control it, but it was too late; the men in the back dropped their weapons, one of the men flying out towards a stand of thirty-foot cactus plants, no longer able to hold on.

And then the truck span completely out of control and smashed straight into one of the giant cacti, which wavered only slightly with the impact. Steam rose from the crumpled front end of the car and Cole could see no movement inside. Slowly, he edged forwards.

The burst of automatic gunfire singed the air across Cole’s shoulder and he turned and knelt reflexively, stabilizing his fire base as he dropped the empty shotgun and unslung his Uzi submachine gun, returning fire instantly.

He saw a man drop to the ground to the side of the barn he’d left earlier, a trail of 9mm rounds running across his torn body.

It had been careless of him to leave his back exposed, Cole knew; but with Haynes on the run and nobody to help, what other options did he have? He scanned the area, eyes quartering the scene, watching for any hint of movement. He had a rough idea of how many people were here on the ranch, and he didn’t think there could be many left, if any at all. But he looked again to be sure, weapon at the ready.

Satisfied at last, he turned back to the truck, smoldering under the giant cactus.

Haynes’ ranch was right on the border of the Saguaro National Park, an expanse of the arid Sonoran Desert filled with the Saguaro cactus plants which gave the park its name. Cole knew it was one of the reasons Haynes had bought the ranch here; Groves had told him Haynes was crazy about them.

The men on the back of the truck had all been thrown clear; one lay with his neck broken, another trying to claw himself along the ground, legs twisted.

Cole stepped over him, peering around the sides into the driver’s compartment. The man who had been driving was still there, his bloodied body crushed between the steering wheel and the broken seat, the shattered windscreen bent in over his torn head.

At first Cole couldn’t see Haynes at all, but then he noticed that the passenger side of the windscreen was smashed from the inside and followed the trajectory through the window, coming round the truck to the hood.

The sight was enough to make a man sick; Haynes’ legs lay on the hood, twisted and bloodied, while his head was half-buried, half flattened, against the Saguaro cactus. It had been reduced to a bloody stump, pushed halfway backwards through his shoulders into his own body so that it looked like his body was merely an extension of the cactus itself.

Well, Cole thought, at least it was his favorite plant.

It was just a shame that the man could no longer be questioned. But, Cole reminded himself, at least he was no longer a threat; and his death was exactly in line with Force One protocol. Rehabilitation wasn’t Cole’s idea of an effective strategy for people like Haynes.

Shots came at him again, and Cole cursed himself, unable to believe he had missed another one of Haynes’ thugs. How many were there?

The 9mm rounds sprayed off the Hi-Lux right next to him and he turned, Uzi up and aimed towards the source of the gunfire.

He was about to squeeze the trigger when he stopped, seeing who it was.

The girl.

The girl was firing at him; stopping now, going to one knee to aim better, eye lined down along the top of the barrel, leveling the iron sights towards him.

And for the first time since his baptism of fire as a nineteen year old SEAL in Iran, Mark Cole froze, not knowing what he should do.

Damn! Aoki cursed herself, her shots having missed him completely.

She had been too keen — too nervous? — and had fired on the move, shooting as she closed the distance towards him, anxious to get it over with now the decision had been made.

He had saved her, yes; but that was only part of the story. And Aoki had finally decided that the other part far outweighed the obligation she had towards him, and reverted to her original plan, her ultimate desire — to kill the man.

And yet she had rushed, and missed.

She wondered, idly, if she had missed on purpose.

Do you really want to kill him?

Yes! Yes! More than anything!

Then get a grip, get stable, aim properly.

Yes.

On one knee now, she saw her target in her sights and began to control her breathing, ready to place the kill shot.

You’re hesitating. Why?

No! I am not! I will fire, I —

And then the pain ripped through her body, and she was lying on the dirt floor, eyes looking up towards the clear blue skies of the Arizonan desert above her.

Cole approached her carefully. The gun was several feet away now, having fallen there when he had shot her in the shoulder, but he knew he couldn’t be too careful.

The girl had hesitated. Cole didn’t know why, but she didn’t fire when she could have; and that was enough for Cole to minutely adjust his own aim, going for the shoulder rather than the head or heart.

He wasn’t a man who aimed to injure; killing was a lot safer and more certain.

But there was something about the girl, and he couldn’t have brought himself to kill her. Not without knowing more.

He stood above her, watching the blood dripping from her shoulder, eyes pale and cloudy; they tried to focus on him but didn’t seem able to do so.

The hatred Cole had seen in them was gone now, replaced by… what?

It was something that Cole couldn’t place, and as he heard the sound of approaching sirens, he knew he had only moments left to get the answers he needed.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, careful to keep his gun levelled at her.

She coughed and spluttered, and Cole saw flecks of blood at her lips. ‘You bastard,’ she spat, eyes rolling in pain. ‘You shot me.’ She coughed again, then laughed, the pain causing her to cough once more. ‘I can’t believe it… You shot me.’ She laughed again, her eyes clearing as they bored into Cole’s. ‘You shot your own daughter.’

‘My —!’

Cole choked on his own words, confusion and disbelief swimming through his head, threatening to overwhelm him.

‘My daughter?’ Cole finally managed, going to one knee, hand to her face. ‘But how —?’

But it was too late; the girl had slipped into unconsciousness and the sound of sirens roared louder, followed by doors slamming, guns cocking.

Cole looked up to face the Tucson police department, dropped his weapon and raised his hands in surrender, mouth still open in wonder and bewilderment.

As the cops raced forward to arrest him, Cole knew only one thing; answers were going to have to wait.

4

Mark Cole waited patiently for his turn to pass through the metal detector in the White House foyer, comfortable in his tailored suit despite his recent injuries. He’d already placed his keys and his cell phone in the tray, and then he was walking through the magnetic archway, pulled to one side by a security guard for a quick once over with the portable wand.

He was clean, as he always was when he entered the White House. There was no threat here, and no need to carry weapons. Besides which, if he wanted to kill anyone, he was more than capable of doing so with his bare hands, a fact exercised many times by some of the very people that worked here.

His mind was still reeling from what he had learned back at the ranch. Could the girl have been his daughter?

The thought of a daughter — any daughter — dredged up painful, horrifying memories for him. It was still only a little more than two years ago that his entire family — his wife, son and daughter — had been slaughtered in front of him. He was starting to adjust to the loss now, but it was a long process and he was not yet fully healed — indeed, might never be, he realized.

He had only had two children — Ben and Amy, killed at the tender ages of just six and four. The girl in Tucson must have been at least sixteen, perhaps as old as twenty, though certainly no more.

So who was she?

Was she telling the truth? Was it even possible?

Cole had to admit that such a thing was always possible; during his time in the SEALs, he’d been involved with women all over the world.

The girl was of oriental appearance — perhaps Japanese, Cole thought — which should narrow it down somewhat; and somewhere in the back of Cole’s mind, if did just that, although he did his best to ignore what his subconscious was trying to tell him.

Cole had never even had time to confirm the girl’s name — after being hauled off to the Tucson jail cells, he’d been identified as the escaped convict Samuel Keatson. This identification — his cover story when infiltrating San Quentin — had set off alarm bells back at the Force One headquarters in DC, and a presidential order for his release was issued immediately, with no questions allowed.

An FBI vehicle — driven by men who had no idea who he was, and why they were driving him — turned up outside the police station as Cole descended the steps, to take him immediately to the airport where a private jet was being fuelled and readied to fly him to Washington.

Normally Cole just made his own way back — all the better to avoid suspicion — and Cole had known this meant that something heavy was going on.

He had still been trying to remember where he’d been sixteen to twenty years ago, what he’d been doing, when he’d seen the newspapers in the private lounge of the airport, the news on the television. He’d been out circulation for so long that he’d not even heard about what had been going on in China, and he instantly knew why Abrams had summoned him so urgently.

Reluctantly, he had driven the thoughts of the Japanese girl — his daughter? — that had helped him, then tried to kill him, and then been shot by him — out of his mind completely, his professional instincts taking over as he gathered up all the newspapers and magazines he could, taking them on board the private jet so that he could devour every article he could read about the Chinese situation.

The thoughts of the girl still nagged at him, pulling at his attention as his leather soled shoes click-clacked over the White House marble, but he was able to compartmentalize — she would just have to wait. She was in hospital anyway, under police guard, and wouldn’t be going anywhere for now.

As Cole passed through the corridors towards the West Wing, he noticed that the staff was even more thorough than normal; indeed, there was an air of unease in the place that only normally occurred at times of extreme threat to the United States. But Cole could understand that — a military coup in China was enough to worry even the most laidback observer.

An aide greeted him with a well-practiced smile. ‘Doctor Sandbourne,’ he said congenially, ‘how lovely to see you again. President Abrams is ready for you now, please follow me.’ Cole returned the smile and did as he was asked, following the aide towards the first floor Oval Office.

Cole had been here several times now as ‘Doctor Sandbourne’, an expert in international affairs working for the Paradigm Group, a new and influential Washington think tank. It was a role that explained his regular visits to the White House without raising too many eyebrows.

The real reason for his meeting with Abrams was, of course, to receive his orders as the commander of Force One, America’s most secretive covert ops unit

His office actually was in the headquarters of the Paradigm Group, which — although purchased the year before merely as a front for Force One — was a genuine think-tank, staffed by many of the most capable minds in the business, none of whom had any idea what really went on there.

Cole remembered his first time at the White House; he’d crash-landed a hijacked C-130 military transport airplane on Constitution Avenue and had been dragged inside by the Secret Service’s Emergency Response Team. And within the next hour, he had saved the president from being assassinated by her own bodyguard.

With a wry smile, he realized that things never changed; people back then had had no idea who he really was, and they still didn’t.

To cover his shaven head — too many questions would be asked if he turned up to a meeting without hair — Cole was wearing a professional hair-piece, one that was itching constantly. Cole ignored the desire to scratch it, not wanting to bring undue attention on himself. He had had to use make-up to cover the bruises on his face, and hoped that it wasn’t too noticeable.

Force One itself was still something of an experiment, despite several months of successful operations. Previous covert ops units had been too well publicized — books had been written about the supposedly secret Intelligence Support Activity, for example, and Cole knew that it wouldn’t be long before his old unit, the Systems Research Group, received the same treatment.

Such public outings had ensured that such units were harder and harder to organize, often branded as being government ‘kill squads’. The disgraced ex-Director of National Intelligence, Charles Hansard, had therefore come up with a new system — take men and women who were ‘off the books’ ex-military personnel and use them as so-called ‘contract laborers’ with no connection back to the US government. Cole himself had been such an operative, until Hansard had turned rogue and tried to have him killed.

Cole recognized the two problems — an official group was too open to be truly effective, while a more independent operation was wide open for abuse. And this was where Force One came in, what Cole hoped would be a happy compromise between the two — an official group, but sanctioned only by a select few government insiders. The only people outside of Force One who knew of its existence were President Abrams, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Peter Olsen, and the Director of National Intelligence, Catalina dos Santos. Olsen was able to mobilize military assets on Force One’s behalf, while dos Santos could provide intelligence from every US agency for the unit’s use. And although the president ultimately decided on how the unit was going to be used, all three had to approve its missions, in order to avoid the scandals that had followed Hansard’s use of his own private army.

Lieutenant General Miley Cooper, Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, also had a pretty good idea of what was going on due to the nature of his involvement as head of the special operations community, but he was not part of the ‘official’ group. He knew to authorize whatever Olsen requested, and was happy not knowing anything else; it was safer that way.

Briefings were given by the three people together, to make sure that one of them wasn’t going off solo, and the existence of the unit was enshrined in a secret presidential directive — the successors of Abrams, Olsen and dos Santos wouldn’t be able to disband it unless there was another presidential directive made to do so. They wouldn’t have to use the unit, but at least its existence was secure. In any case, it would be nearly four years until another election, and Cole was sure he’d be able to do some useful work in that time, no matter what happened next.

Perhaps it wasn’t perfect, Cole reflected as the polished mahogany door to the Oval Office was opened by a uniformed Marine, but it was definitely the best solution anyone had come up with so far.

Cole had handpicked a team that would stack up against anyone else in the world, he had full presidential approval, he had the backing of the military and the intelligence underworld, and to top it all off he had the combined benefits of government back-up with full anonymity.

Yes, Cole thought to himself as he entered the Oval Office, it just didn’t get any better than that.

‘So what’s the situation?’ Cole asked, accepting the coffee cup from the Navy steward with a nod of thanks.

They were in the president’s private study, the four of them occupying the easy chairs which had been crammed into the small space, a room off the short corridor that led to Abrams’ private dining room.

President Ellen Abrams waited until they were alone before she answered. ‘It’s not good, Mark. It’s not good at all.’

Cole wasn’t surprised; he wasn’t called in unless something was very badly wrong.

‘Thank you for your work with Haynes and the AU, by the way,’ Abrams said. ‘Noah tells me that the bureau will be able to wrap up the entire organization before Christmas.’ Noah Graham was the Director of the FBI, and the man directly responsible for countering homegrown terrorist groups such as the AU.

Cole nodded. ‘A nice present for someone.’

Abrams smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A very nice present indeed.’ She tapped a manila folder on the large desk between them. ‘But we now have something far more serious to deal with, I’m afraid.’

Cole knew the basic outline of the situation after reading the papers and magazines on the flight from Tucson, and in his experience such media outlets could often be more reliable than professional intelligence reports.

There had been some sort of coup in the People’s Republic of China, a general named Wu De was now proclaiming himself Paramount Leader, both Tsang Feng and Fang Zemin were presumed dead — probably by Wu’s own hand — and the entire Tsang government was now imprisoned in an unknown location while Wu’s own men took control of the country.

Cole had been horrified to find out what had been going on over the past couple of days; it was truly a nightmare scenario, made all the worse by what had happened in the East China Sea.

The Gerald R. Ford had been incapacitated by a missile strike from China, and was now listing, helpless, off her coastline. The papers had been unclear about rescue attempts.

‘What’s going on with the Ford?’ Cole asked.

Olsen shook his head sadly. He was a big man, cramped by the small room, and Cole felt sorry for him — as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he was directly responsible for the US military, which included the Ford. He knew the man would be dying to lash out and strike at something, but couldn’t; not yet anyway. The waiting must be killing him, Cole guessed, and the lines etched over Olsen’s craggy face just confirmed it.

‘Damage report isn’t promising,’ he said. ‘The missile did major damage to the rear portion of the ship, completely taking out the propellers. She can’t move, and she can’t fly her aircraft. Watertight compartments were sealed off immediately, but we’ve lost two hundred and fifty-six men and women — so far. Medical personnel are struggling to cope with the nearly six hundred other casualties that have resulted from the impact. Wu and the new Chinese government have refused to allow us to unload the casualties, so onboard medical personnel have to deal with the problem alone for now. And then there’s the desalination plant.’

Cole raised an eyebrow — as an ex-Navy SEAL, he knew about ships, and how important the desalination plant was, especially to one the size of the Ford. Without it, there would be no useable drinking water, a threat almost as serious as another hit by the Dong Feng.

‘The plant should be producing four hundred thousand gallons a day,’ Olsen said. ‘That’s what’s needed for a crew the size of the Ford’s. But it appears to have been damaged by the blast, and even with repairs is now incapable of treating more than fifty thousand gallons, eight times less than she needs. Captain Meadows has everyone rationed, showers are banned, they’re doing everything they can to conserve water, but — well, the bottom line is that things aren’t good.’

‘The members of the crew are hostages, in effect,’ Abrams said. ‘Wu denies that the missile was fired on purpose, claiming that it was a training error, and at the moment we can’t prove otherwise. But at the same time, Wu has issued notice that we are invading his territorial waters, and has told the rest of the Ford carrier group to back off, or else.’

Abrams sighed. ‘What can we do? The threat is clear — back off, or he kills the Ford for real, and we lose more than four thousand of our people; there’s no way we could get to it in time, repair it, offload the personnel, before he could blow it clean out of the water.’

‘Added to which,’ Olsen said, ‘he seems to have gained effective control over the entire military — China has naval and air superiority in the area, and we daren’t make a move just yet. The risks are too great, and we’d stand to lose a great deal more besides.’

‘Could we offload the crew via sub?’ Cole asked. The US Navy was still the world leader in silent, stealthy submarine technology.

Olsen shook his head. ‘Not a chance,’ he said. ‘From surveillance footage and the Ford’s own eyeball reports, the Chinese navy’s got those waters sealed up tight as a drum. There’s no way we’d get a sub anywhere close to the Ford.’

‘Have we targeted their missile units on the mainland?’

Again, Olsen answered the question. ‘We’ve got the coordinates typed in and ready to go,’ he said. ‘But the trouble with the DF is that most of the missiles are mobile — we have no way of knowing where they are, moment to moment. We just can’t risk attacking the mainland without better intel — and maybe not even then.’

Cole could tell it grated the general to talk this way, defeatism not being in his nature; but facts were facts, and had to be faced.

‘There’s also the additional factor of China’s ex-pat population,’ said dos Santos. ‘China’s last census claimed well over seventy thousand Americans are currently living in China, many of them in and around Beijing. And Wu has temporarily suspended all flights out of the country.’

‘So they’re all trapped there?’ Cole asked.

Abrams nodded. ‘Except for the few who got out early, and those who have travelled overland or by boat; not many, at any rate. And the figures are probably conservative anyway — our own numbers suggest over one hundred thousand, and that’s not taking into consideration all the other people who live there — vast numbers of Koreans and Europeans for starters.’

‘Wu claims that air travel will resume soon,’ dos Santos said, ‘he claims nobody is being held hostage, anyone is free to leave overland if they wish, but outbound flights have been cancelled due to what he calls ‘security issues’ during the transfer of power to the new government.’

‘But they’re being held hostage, just the same as the crew of the Ford,’ Cole said, the severity of the situation becoming clear to him. ‘Wu knows we’ll never attack the mainland while we’ve got so many of our own people there.’

‘Exactly. So what can we do?’ Abrams said with a shrug of her shoulders. ‘We can’t target Beijing, and we’ve had to pull back from the East China Sea, leave the Ford stranded. The only other option would lead to war, and the ramifications of war with China would be enormous. Besides which, we have no idea how strong the Wu government is — does it have the support necessary to govern long-term? Or will it crumble of its own accord? If it does that, then we might not need to do anything at all. We need time.’

‘What’s his game plan?’ Cole wondered aloud. ‘His end-game? What’s he after?’

‘In the first instance, we think it’s the Senkaku Islands,’ dos Santos said, opening the manila file and sliding across the latest satellite images of the area. As the Director of National Intelligence, dos Santos had access to information developed by every agency in the US government. She was young for the job at forty, but had already proven herself more than capable and — perhaps even more importantly — loyal.

Cole looked down, although he didn’t really need to; he knew what the Senkaukus looked like, they had been a major bone of contention between China and Japan for decades. Known as the Diaoyu Islands by the Chinese, they consisted of less than three square miles of uninhabited islands lying between China, Taiwan, and the larger Ryukyu Islands of Japan. And Cole also knew that they had been of no interest to anybody until oil was discovered in the surrounding seas in the late 1960s; it was the same old story.

‘NRO analysis shows that after our forces withdrew from the area,’ dos Santos continued, ‘China’s navy headed out towards the Senkakus.’

‘This makes things even more awkward for us, of course,’ Abrams said, ‘and Prime Minister Toshikatsu has already been on the phone asking for our support.’

Cole nodded in understanding. The US was pledged to assisting Japan defend its territory, and had acknowledged Japan’s claim to ownership of the islands; therefore, if China reclaimed them by force, America would have to intervene. But with four thousand sailors held hostage off the Chinese coast, how could she?

‘What do you want me to do?’ Cole asked the president, although he could already guess what it might be.

‘A military coup is only as effective as the man who leads it,’ Abrams said evenly, spreading out the papers from the manila folder across the desk, showing images of a large, uniformed Chinese man, half of his face obscured by a huge, drooping mustache. ‘Cut off the head, and the body will fall.’

Cole looked up from the photographs and saw that Abrams was staring directly at him, unafraid to give the order. ‘I want you to kill General Wu,’ she said. ‘As soon as you possibly can.’

5

The order to kill didn’t faze Cole in the slightest — years of doing such work had dulled his sense of horror at such actions until it was almost nonexistent.

It hadn’t always been that way, Cole remembered — the first time he’d killed a man, out on patrol with SEAL Team Two back when he’d been only nineteen years old, it had been hard. But, he could admit now, completely at peace with his nature, it hadn’t been as hard for him as it had for many others. And it hadn’t even been the killing that he had felt bad about; it was the fact that he hadn’t reacted quickly enough, had almost let his buddies down.

But he hadn’t let them down. He had killed, and had carried on killing ever since. He truly no longer had any idea how many lives he had taken over the years; he had tried to count once, when his nightmares had threatened to return, but the numbers had just run together into a jumbled mess, hundreds of faces swimming in and out of his consciousness, merging into one another, then drifting slowly one by one, and then altogether again.

For many years, he had lived in denial of a sort; he had truly thought that he had only done what he had done due to his orders, his training, his conditioning. He had been sacrificing his eternal salvation for the benefit of the American people.

And that was still true, of course, although he now understood that there was something else underneath the surface of his psyche. He had been forced to confront it when he had been betrayed by Hansard, when his family had been brutally killed right in front of him, when he had exacted his revenge and then escaped into a life of isolated self-abuse in Thailand.

The awful truth was that he enjoyed the killing; it was what he had been born for, what he had been created to do. He was glad that he had a worthwhile cause to fight for. He often wondered what he would have done had he not been in the military, how his life would have turned out. Would he still have been a killer?

It was an unpleasant question, and one he was reluctant to answer. And at the end of the day, he supposed, it didn’t even matter — he did have a cause, a profession, a worthwhile channel for his urges, and — mercifully — that made it all okay.

‘What do we know about General Wu?’ Cole asked, finishing the cup of coffee and reaching for one of the finger sandwiches on the small table beside him. He had eaten on the plane, but his adrenalin had still been racing and he hadn’t managed to keep much down; now his hunger was appearing with a vengeance.

Catalina dos Santos looked down at her files, though it was hardly necessary; she had already memorized everything there was to know about him.

‘To a certain extent, he’s an unknown quantity,’ she admitted, ‘which is one of the reasons he was able to take everyone by surprise. All we have at the moment is his military file, although we’re working hard to get more data. Fifty-six years old, born June fourth, nineteen sixty-four in Chengdu, Sichuan province. No information on parents or siblings. Joined the People’s Liberation Army at seventeen, reportedly fought well during several border clashes with Vietnam, which stemmed from the Sino-Vietnamese War in seventy-nine. Eventually led units as a captain against the Vietnamese in the late eighties before transferring to the Second Artillery Corps. You’ve heard of the Great Wall Project?’

Cole nodded. ‘I’ve heard about it, although I’m not sure if the rumors have ever been verified. Supposedly the Chinese have built a system of tunnels, thousands of miles long, underneath the Taihang Mountains, named after the Great Wall due to its size and the amount of work that’s gone into it. They’re apparently using the tunnel network to hide their nuclear stockpile — which is again rumored to be several thousand rather than the mere hundreds they claim to have.’

Olsen nodded. ‘That’s the rumor,’ he confirmed, ‘and that’s all it is really. But enough people seem to be telling the same story for us to at least give it some credibility. I know we’ve been defensive partners of the Chinese for over a year now, but that doesn’t mean they trust us any more than we trust them, and they’re not likely to have let us know about such a system, even if it exists.’

Dos Santos also nodded in agreement. ‘General Olsen’s right,’ she said, ‘it is just a rumor. But General Wu was posted to the Taihang region for several years, along with several battalions of engineers, thousands of men. A lot of tunneling could have gone on in that time, and Wu’s record indicates his elevation to general rank occurred about the same time the stories about the network being completed started to leak out. It’s been suggested by some of our analysts that it was a reward for his work on the Great Wall Project.’

Cole thought, grabbing his third sandwich. ‘I guess it explains how he could organize the use of the Dong Feng mobile units before he’d gone through with the coup itself — he would know all of the officers from the Second Artillery Corps, they’d all be loyal to him. If those stories about the Great Wall are true though, I guess that makes things even worse.’

‘Yes,’ Abrams agreed. ‘The possibility is that we now have a madman in control of the only country in the world whose military could give ours a run for its money — and he’s possibly the very man who helped design and engineer a nuclear missile network that could vaporize our own in an instant.’

‘Resources?’ Cole asked.

‘Anything you need,’ Abrams replied. ‘Pete and Cat have already opened up the channels, you’ve got full military and intel back-up. You come up with the plan, and let them know what you need.’

Cole nodded. ‘I’ll need a full intel dump,’ he said, turning to dos Santos.

The Director of National Intelligence nodded, smiling. ‘I’m already working on it, I’ll send you over everything we have to your office.’

Abrams sipped her coffee, then looked back over at Cole. ‘There is another aspect to the mission,’ she said.

‘The government officials?’ Cole asked.

Abrams nodded. ‘We suspect that Tsang Feng is dead already, and it’s a possibility that other government ministers might be next. We need to get them out before they’re targeted, or else we’ll have nobody left to run the country when Wu’s gone.’

‘Do we know where they’re being held?’

Dos Santos nodded. ‘We’ve got a contact in Beijing, he contacted us as soon as this thing broke out. Liu Yingchau, a captain in the Chinese Special Operations Command. Navarone knows him, I believe.’

Cole nodded. Jake Navarone was one of Force One’s best operatives, Cole having recruited him from SEAL Team Six after an operation at a North Korean prison camp the year before. Liu Yingchau had been one of two Chinese special forces officers seconded to JSOC for the mission, and had been the only one of the two to survive. Navarone had spoken very highly of him, and that was good enough for Cole.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘We can trust him. How’s his cover?’

‘Well, as part of the military, he’s supposedly behind Wu and the other generals. Luckily he was in Beijing to help train their armed police, and he’s been pulled in, ordered to help guard the government compound. He’s safe for now, as far as we know.’

‘Is that where they’re being held?’ Cole asked. ‘The Forbidden City?’

Abrams nodded. ‘Yes, although Liu is not inside and doesn’t know the exact location.’

Cole sighed. Beijing’s Forbidden City was enormous, an incredible architectural marvel that harkened back to the heady days of Chinese power, a vast imperial palace used as the center of the Chinese empire from the Ming to Qing dynasties. It covered one hundred and eighty acres, and housed nearly eight hundred separate buildings containing nine thousand rooms. Cole was going to need much more specific information before he could arrange any sort of rescue mission.

‘Will he be able to find out their exact location?’ he asked.

‘CIA’s handling him for now,’ dos Santos said. ‘I’ll try and find out, get you in the loop.’

‘I don’t want him to get caught, but we need more solid info.’ He paused, frowning, and finished his coffee. ‘And although I trust him, we can’t discount the possibility that he’s being played, and whatever he says is disinformation planted by Wu. We’ll need secondary corroboration at the very least.’

‘I know,’ Abrams said uneasily. ‘I know. But we need to act quickly, and you might have to act at a stage where other agencies wouldn’t.’

Cole shrugged. She was right, at the end of the day; if it wasn’t an emergency, if time wasn’t a factor, if there weren’t a hundred other issues, then other more conventional units could be used.

But in a situation like this, with next to no useful intelligence and the threat of four thousand US servicemen being killed, then Force One was the only option left.

‘How long do we have?’ Cole asked, his mind already going through plans and scenarios.

Abrams was about to speak when her phone rang. She held up a finger, asking Cole to wait, and answered; not many people were put straight through to the President of the United States.

Ellen Abrams listened to the frantic voice on the other end of the line, and felt her own pulse racing. Japanese Prime Minister Toshikatsu Endo was not given to overstatement or the crowd-pleasing boisterousness of many of his political rivals. He was a refined, quiet, thoughtful man who was a professional in every sense of the word. But the impression Abrams had now was different, and chilled her to the core; he was outraged, frightened, angry and uncertain all at the same time.

‘Madam President,’ she heard him say breathlessly, ‘it has already begun; Wu’s done it, he’s already done it!’

‘What?’ Abrams asked as calmly as she could. ‘What has he done?’

‘Invaded the Senkaku Islands!’ Toshikatsu exclaimed. ‘The Chinese Navy has blown one of our coast guard vessels out of the water, and then landed on the island. When challenged by the Okinawan prefectural police, our officers were shot dead! Dead!’

Abrams’ blood ran cold. It was happening fast, just too damned fast. She knew that the Japanese government had posted extra officers on the uninhabited islands, in case uninvited visitors should want to land there. But they had expected small recon vessels, not the entire Chinese Navy.

It was tantamount to a declaration of war on Japan, and Abrams was all too aware that the United States was a defensive partner of that nation.

She sighed, reaching for her coffee; saw her fingers trembling, and withdrew the hand.

Could she risk thousands of US servicemen and women on a promise made to a foreign country over a string of uninhabited rocks? China hadn’t invaded the mainland itself; and it wasn’t even China, not really. It was just one lone madman who’d bullied and intimated enough other people to follow him that he was now in charge — temporarily at least.

But then what message would non-action send to the world at large, both to America’s allies, and her enemies? She would be seen as a nation that welched on her commitments, it would cause her allies to mistrust her and her enemies to grow bolder.

But was it worth going to war over?

She realized that Toshikatsu had been talking all this time, and began to listen once more.

‘So what is your answer?’ the fearful voice demanded. ‘Are you behind us? Are you with us?’

But now she had heard him, she still couldn’t answer; she just didn’t know what to say.

Cole watched as President Abrams struggled to come to terms with what she was hearing. He knew what it was; Wu had decided to take the Senkakus early. It was a good strategy, to act while everyone was still reeling from the change in government, before other nations could regroup and start to plan their own counter-strategies.

But Cole had an unshakeable faith in Ellen Abrams’ leadership, ever since he had first met her as a senator on a fact-finding tour of Iraq. She was straight-talking, conscientious and passionate, with a huge set of figurative brass balls. She’d given the green light for Force One, after all.

‘Yes,’ he heard his president say to Toshikatsu, ‘you have my word that we will do our best.’ With that, she put down the telephone and looked straight at Cole.

‘You asked me how long we have,’ she said. ‘Well, there’s your answer — Wu is already going into action. And that means that you have to, too.’

6

General — now Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China — Wu De stood at the banks of computer monitors and electronic surveillance equipment, his huge smile almost hidden beneath his drooping mustache.

It’s working, he thought happily. It’s really working.

His glorious nation — the cradle of civilization, the bringer of culture to the barbarous outside world — had finally re-taken the Diaoyu Islands, land that should never have been taken away in the first place. A wrong had been corrected, and he was pleased with the results of his first actions.

It wasn’t that re-taking the islands was a major military triumph; they were poorly protected, and resistance was near nonexistent. But his country had never before had the will to take back what was rightfully hers. China — or at least the cowards and soft-bellied worms of the Communist Party — had for too many years been content to be bullied by other nations, holding their hands out for scraps to be tossed their way, never free to assert their rightful dominance over their own domains.

But that was about to change; in fact, it already was changing, under his own leadership. He watched the drone surveillance footage of the East China Sea on the monitors in front of him, deep in the bowels of the communist party’s ‘war room’ hidden beneath the traditional architecture of the government buildings of the Zhongnonhai, and was gratified by what he saw.

Chinese ships patrolling the waters of the Diaoyu Islands, just as it should be. He already had companies — many of which he had a controlling stake in — ready and waiting to exploit the waters for their untapped oil reserves.

On another monitor, he could see the stricken US aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, listing helplessly in the water. Unable to move; unable to escape. Over four thousand US servicemen and women, held hostage.

At the start, he feared he had been wrong about President Abrams, and about Americans in general. He had thought them to be soft, unwilling to risk the lives of their fellow citizens for any reason. But when this thing had begun, he’d worried that perhaps he had misjudged the situation — what if Abrams retaliated instantly? What if she launched missile strikes? What if she was willing to sacrifice the Ford, and sent in the rest of the navy and air force in an immediate counter-attack? He hadn’t been sure he could have responded effectively so soon; his control over the mechanics of government had still not been entirely in place, and America might just have had a chance.

But in the end, Abrams had not acted, and the United States had lost its chance.

Now all they could do was stand by and watch in mute witness as China reasserted herself fully onto the world stage, to take her rightful position as the supreme nation of earth.

The US Navy had pulled back out of the East China Sea, just as Wu had ordered; the loss of face suffered by America would be enormous. Would it be enough to encourage Abrams to strike back?

Wu realized it would be a possibility; but Abrams hadn’t acted before, and she would probably fail to do so now. She probably just hoped that nature would take its course, and Wu’s new government would fall of its own accord. But Wu was going to make sure that this didn’t happen, and was confident that he had enough resources, enough support across the country’s vast provinces, that he would stay in power indefinitely.

Wu wondered if Abrams or her many advisors had any inkling that the re-taking of the Diaoyu Islands was only the start. His grin spread ever wider as he realized that they probably had no idea — no idea whatsoever — what his ultimate plans were.

And he was looking forward very much to the next phase.

‘But why the hell aren’t they doing anything?’ asked Jean Archambault, Petty Officer 3rd Class. ‘Are they just going to leave us here forever?’

Captain Sam Meadows had called the meeting, and almost the entire crew of the USS Gerald R. Ford was now gathered together on the mess deck, crammed in shoulder to shoulder, every man and woman wanting answers.

Meadows was just as angry as the rest of the crew, but knew that he had to handle the situation wisely — it would do no good whatsoever if there was a mutiny on board the ship. And although the US Navy prided itself on its discipline, and had never experienced such a mutiny aboard one of its vessels, Meadows knew that there was always a first time for everything, and he would be damned if he was going to let it happen on a ship under his command.

And so when the first signs of discontent had emerged, reported to him by his junior officers — and caused in large part by the loss of fresh water — he had decided to stamp it out immediately by calling a meeting and getting everybody’s heads screwed on right.

While it was true that Admiral Charles Decker was the man in overall command of the Ford carrier group, Meadows was in the driver’s seat of the lead ship, and the men and women who worked here were his men and women. Meadows had therefore taken point on this meeting, wanting the crew to see a familiar face before them, willing to answer their questions. Or at least try to, anyway.

The only trouble was, he didn’t really have any answers. The questions he was being asked were the same ones he, Decker, and the rest of the senior officers had discussed, and the same ones Decker had asked of the Chief of Naval Operations, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the president of the United States herself. And the answers had been less than satisfactory.

But still, he would try.

‘It’s not a question of being abandoned,’ Meadows said evenly. ‘It is true that the rest of our carrier group has had to retreat out of the East China Sea, but we are being constantly monitored by satellite and we have air support ready to come to our assistance if we should need it.’

‘But we’re not allowed to be moved?’ another voice called out, one that Meadows couldn’t identify. ‘We’re not allowed to be rescued?’

‘Are we hostages?’ said another voice, and this one Meadows did recognize — it was Leanne Harker, a seasoned and reliable Chief Petty Officer.

There was loud debate at this last question, and Meadows moved quickly to cut it off, stepping forward on his dais at the front of the huge hall and raising his hands. ‘Okay,’ he said loudly, sternly, ‘okay. Enough. You’ve asked a question, now let me answer. You might be expecting me to bullshit you, but I can’t do that to you. I’m gonna give it to you straight. The answer is yes.’ He saw Admiral Decker, watching the proceedings off to one side, squirm in his chair as he said this. ‘To all intents and purposes, we are being held hostage.’

There were more murmurs and arguments, but Meadows again quickly cut them off. ‘Let me finish,’ he said sharply in a tone that brooked no argument. ‘Let me explain exactly what the situation is. We are stuck in the middle of the East China Sea. Our propellers are damaged beyond hope of repair, our entire rear end is destroyed, and we have no immediate in-theater back-up. Many of our aircraft survived the hit, but without the ability to move the carrier, those planes aren’t going anywhere — we just can’t launch them. And even if we could, remember that we are within range of Chinese missiles, any of which could destroy us totally. And I know that we are all ready to risk our lives for our country, but at the moment, we just don’t have enough intelligence to warrant any action on our part — we have no idea what good it would do, if any at all. And although it is painful to all of us, the unfortunate fact is that the White House also doesn’t have enough useable intelligence to act. And so we are going to have to wait — like all good military forces — until we are given our orders. Is that understood?’

There were grumblings of agreement throughout the mess hall, and Meadows knew that although nobody was happy, everyone would keep toeing the line — for now, at least.

Just before the meeting was about to break up, another voice sparked up. ‘Is it true that China have just taken the Senkaku Islands?’ asked Casey O’Neil, another Chief Petty Officer.

Meadows frowned; it was not just the question itself, but the fact that it had been asked by a man of O’Neil’s rank. While not a commissioned officer, O’Neil was an important man on the ship, personally responsible for a large number of sailors. He should be trying to keep a lid on things, not stirring the situation up more.

Meadows wondered where he had heard about the invasion; the news had only come through secure channels from the White House an hour before the meeting. But, he knew, an hour aboard an aircraft carrier was more than enough time for word to leak out. What was more surprising, he decided, was that more people didn’t already know.

He would have to answer the question honestly, he realized; the crew would see right through him if he tried to flannel things like a politician. Damn that Casey O’Neil, he thought, before realizing that perhaps the CPO had actually done him a favor; it wouldn’t be long before the rumor would be all over the ship anyway, so it was probably better if it was dealt with right now.

‘Although that is privileged information Chief O’Neil,’ Meadows said with an icy stare, ‘I can confirm that yes, this is true.’ There were gasps from the crew members. ‘It seems that part of the Chinese plan may have been to take us out of action so that we were unable to help defend the Senkakus.’

‘Are we going to help get them back?’ a voice called out, one of many asking the same thing, shouts and hollers from all around quickly swamping the huge room.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Meadows said calmly, maintaining his control, ‘those questions are being dealt with as we speak. And when I know, I’ll let you know.’ Meadows knew he couldn’t leave it at this; the men and women under his command were trained professionals, people who needed a job, a mission; they were not used to just sitting around aimlessly. They needed a task, and Meadows decided to give them one.

‘Please remember, we are all still a part of the United States Navy, and although our ship is down, she is not out. There is a lot of work to be done aboard this ship, and the desalination plant is only part of it. Our back end is shot to hell, sure. But we don’t employ the best engineers in the business for nothing, and now that we’ve got everything sealed off nice and tight and we’re sure we’re not going to be sinking, it’s time to get proactive. We’ll be setting up working groups to tackle getting the Ford mobile again, and we’ll need all hands on deck.’ Meadows could sense the excitement building throughout the mess deck. Yes, he knew, the military mind just loved a mission. ‘But remember, we’re being monitored by Chinese surveillance, and we’ve been warned to not effect repairs. But screw them, right?’ There were cheers from around the mess hall, and Meadows grinned. ‘Yeah. Screw ‘em. We’re gonna get this ship fixed up without them knowing a damn thing about it and then when those Washington politicos get their fingers out of their asses and send us our orders, we’re gonna be ready to go. Am I right?’

The crowd erupted into chorus of cheers and hoo-ahs!, and as Meadows looked around, he saw that even Admiral Decker was smiling.

7

Clark Mason was having a good day. First there had been a morning roll in the sack with his most recent mistress, in the private suite at the Jefferson Hotel they’d checked into the night before. Then there’d been the leisurely breakfast at the Four Seasons before his conference with the Washington press corps.

He had fielded questions about the Chinese situation with his usual aplomb and panache, giving just enough to placate them while not revealing anything of real importance — a skill Abrams recognized, and which was why he’d been picked to give the conference in the first place.

Indeed, it was his skill as a politician which had earned him the Vice Presidency after his predecessor Glen Swain had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and taken early retirement to deal with it. Abrams needed someone with political acumen and a broad support base for the second ticket of her nomination, and Mason — who had done good work as Secretary of State through her first term — was the only person who had fit the bill.

He knew it helped that he was good looking too, a blessing for the cameras. His vast personal wealth didn’t hurt either.

And so while Abrams was hustling and bustling around the West Wing trying to get a grip of the situation, Mason was seducing young beauty contest winners, eating gourmet food, and charming an army of journalists.

Life just didn’t get any better.

He felt no guilt whatsoever for the mistress — wasn’t that what powerful men did? He felt entitled to his proclivities, and cared not at all whether his wife of thirty-one years knew about it; and if so, whether she was upset by it. At the end of the day, it was really none of her business. His relationships with beautiful young women kept him young, kept his mind fresh, his body eager.

His wife should be grateful if anything.

Mason was a man who had always had it all; wealth, adulation — he had played varsity basketball to much acclaim before going into politics — and now fame and power. He had come from a prosperous, rich family background and had never wanted for anything in his entire life.

Except one thing, and one thing alone — the presidency itself.

He had been worried last year, when he had still been serving Abrams as Sec State, that everything he had been working towards might all come crashing down. He had leant his subtle support to Jeb Richards, the Secretary of Homeland Security, during the terrorist crisis; and when it had turned out that Richards was a traitor, in bed with the man who’d plotted America’s annihilation by bioweapon, he had been terrified that he would be tarred with the same brush.

But luckily, his political instincts had caused him to cut his ties with Richards even before his role in the affair was known, and he had thus avoided the stigma of association — his elevation to Vice Presidential nominee was proof enough of that.

However, Mason sometimes wondered whether Abrams’ seemingly generous gesture towards him was entirely what it seemed; for as Vice President, the truth was that he actually had rather less work to do than he’d had as Sec State. There was no truth to the oft-heard accusation of the office being mere window dressing — as Vice President, he did have a lot of work to do — but it was also true that the work was a little more public relations-based than what he had become used to.

Still, it was work he enjoyed, and put him one step closer to his dream — Clark Mason, President of the United States of America.

He was in the White House now, on his way to a meeting with Abrams and wondering idly what it would be like to live here as Commander in Chief, when he almost bumped into the man leaving the Oval Office.

Mason did not recognize him, but saw that he was well-dressed, sharp, smart. His face looked a little strange though, almost as if he’d been wearing make-up.

‘Oh, excuse me,’ said the man apologetically, stepping to one side with a smile. ‘I was just leaving.’

‘That’s quite alright,’ Mason said with a patrician smile of his own to the younger man, ‘I must have been daydreaming, not paying attention to where I was going. A sign of my age, I’m afraid.’

‘It was my fault, really,’ the other man said, extending a hand. ‘I’m Alan Sandbourne,’ he said by way of introduction.

Mason took the man’s hand and shook it warmly, although his mind was already turning circles. Although he knew the name, he had never met him before; and yet there was something undeniably familiar about Alan Sandbourne’s voice, something which raised the hackles on the back of Mason’s neck.

‘Doctor Sandbourne,’ Mason said amiably, ‘of course. Of the Paradigm Group. I’ve read your work, it’s very good.’

‘Thank you,’ came the reply, seemingly pleased with the flattery. Or was he? There was something about the doctor that seemed not quite right, something off-key, something undeniably familiar, and not in a good way.

The president’s secretary arrived at the door to the Oval Office, ushering Mason inside. With a shrug, he turned. ‘Well Doctor Sandbourne,’ he said, ‘it was a pleasure meeting you, but duty calls.’

‘Of course,’ the doctor said with a smile, and then the door was closed, and Mason was alone with the president.

Doctor Sandbourne, however, was still the only thing on his mind.

Why was his voice so damn familiar?

It was, Mason decided, something that he would have to find out.

Cole relaxed into his studded leather wing-back chair, tucked into a corner of the mahogany-paneled study which looked out over the affluent neighborhood of Woodland-Normanstone Terrace.

He was almost close enough to see the Vice President’s residence at Number One Observatory Circle, just on the other side of the park, and the thought of the VP gave Cole pause. It had been the first time he’d met Clark Mason today, and yet Cole had sensed some sense of familiarity in the eyes of the man.

Cole knew that Mason had been in the National Security Council meetings when he’d been providing verbal radio communications to them during the bioweapon crisis; had he recognized Cole’s voice? Would that be possible?

And if so, would it be a problem?

Cole sighed and sank back even further into his chair, his body weary from lack of proper rest after his ordeal with Aryan Ultra, and surveyed the room in which he sat, the home in which he now lived, letting his mind wander.

The leafy suburban terrace in which Cole’s Georgian townhouse apartment was situated was as far removed from the beach house he’d occupied with his family in Cayman Brac as that palatial home had been from the trailer parks of Hamtramck where he’d been born; but it suited his current needs, and his current position.

He sipped at a glass of thirty-year old Macallan, all too aware that he was engaged in all the trappings of his former mentor, Charles Hansard. The whisky, the colonial-era luxury, heading his own intelligence unit right here in Washington — it was all Hansard.

And yet it was Cole too, he had to admit; over the years, his tastes had changed, and wasn’t that only natural? But sometimes the similarities grated on him; Hansard had been the man who betrayed him, ordered his death and the deaths of his wife and children. But Hansard had had taste too, and Cole supposed that years of exposure to the man and his ways had subconsciously rubbed off on him.

He could only hope that the influence only extended as far as drinks preference and interior décor; for despite his brilliance, Hansard had been sick and twisted in the worst of ways.

But he was being needlessly doleful; he’d chosen the area because it suited the background of Doctor Alan Sandbourne. It was close to Georgetown University, his alter-ego’s alma mater and the location of a long teaching stint, it was within easy commute of the White House, and the headquarters of the Paradigm Group — and Force One — was only a little further north in Forest Hills.

He’d been there for most of the day after his meeting with Abrams, collating and sifting through intelligence reports and media analysis, searching for the best way to approach the combined missions Force One would have to carry out.

He’d also spent time contacting his agents around the country, men selected for Force One missions by Cole himself. They were still — on paper at least — working for their units of origin. Delta Force, Marine Force Recon, Army Special Forces, SEAL Team Six, the CIA’s Special Activities Division, Air Force Special Tactics Teams, Army Rangers; Cole had selected only the best of the best. They stayed with their units and trained with them to keep sharp, but Cole made sure that — despite their operational and training commitments — he still had a core team available at any time, ready for action. They would be covertly seconded to Force One, often while on official leave, perform their missions, then return to their units with nobody being any the wiser. Some of the older, more seasoned members of those teams might have hazarded a guess as to where their colleagues were going, and what they were doing, but such professionals would remain forever silent — they knew the importance of such covert operations, and would never do anything to jeopardize them.

Cole was pleased that Jake Navarone was already on his way; he’d come to rely on the man over the past few months. He was resourceful, capable, and motivated — a winning combination.

Four other operators were en route to DC as well, to make up the six-man team that Cole had decided was going to infiltrate the Chinese mainland — Cole himself being the sixth.

But after their initial infiltration, the team would split up — Navarone would lead the other five on a rescue mission to the Forbidden City, while Cole would work alone, getting close enough to Wu so that he could kill the man without detection.

It was a skill he had learnt in the mountain prison of Pakistan, taught to him by an Indian freedom fighter — or a ‘cross-border terrorist’ according to the Pakistani authorities — named Panickar Thilak. The art of Marma Adi was a secret part of the ancient practice of Kalaripayattu, the world’s most ancient martial art, and consisted of striking various points of the human body in specific sequences that would have a range of different effects depending also on the time of day they were hit. A touch here, a press there, another gentle squeeze — disguised as a bump, a handshake, an embrace — could disrupt the internal organs to such a degree that death would result.

The highest part of the art was to target the points in such a way that death was delayed — sometimes by as much as several days — which ensured that the assassin could be long gone from the area, with nobody any the wiser; when the victim finally died, it would be put down to a heart attack, an embolism, a brain aneurysm. Perfectly natural, and perfectly normal.

It was this skill which had made Cole infamous as ‘the Asset’ — a man who could kill without leaving a trace; and it was a skill that his corrupt government controller, Charles Hansard, had ruthlessly exploited.

It was also a skill that had paid well — Hansard had paid over a million dollars per hit, allowing Cole and his family to enjoy a life of luxury in the Cayman Islands. When he had found out the truth about Hansard — and could no longer be sure of the justification for the jobs he had carried out for the man — he had liquidated his assets immediately, given the money away to a string of different charities. He was no longer able to countenance using the money for himself — it was tainted.

But he was once again earning a comfortable living — the Paradigm Group was a private business, and he was paid accordingly — and once more found himself in luxurious surroundings, the neighborhood of Woodland-Normanstone Terrace perhaps DC’s finest.

But it was no longer the same, he had to admit as he tasted the Macallan once again; nothing would ever be the same again.

He knew he had to stop himself before he was hit by the nightmarish images of his wife and children dying before his eyes, but the very thought reawakened different images — the Japanese girl, beaten, gun raised towards him, on the floor, blood foaming at her mouth.

Michiko.

The name came to his mind, unbidden.

That’s what Haynes had called her, wasn’t it? Michiko.

Strange that he hadn’t remembered it before. A Japanese name, sixteen to twenty years old… he felt his mind start to drift off, the cut glass heavy now in his hand.

A part of him knew that the girl might well be his daughter; knew even who the mother might be. It was why he’d been glad of a new mission, happy to have something to take his mind off it. For memories of the woman who might be the girl’s — Michiko’s — mother were shrouded in pain, terrible to remember.

But before he left for China, he had to know.

He put down the Macallan and reached for the telephone, dialing the number for the Tucson Police Department and asking for the lead investigator on the incident at the ‘Haynes’ ranch’.

He could have used his top security clearance to demand answers, but didn’t want to alarm anyone. Instead, he chose the route to information most police officers were familiar with — enquiries from the press.

Cole was used to posing as a journalist — it was a common cover for operatives, and one he’d used countless times over the years. Slipping into the persona was second nature.

He had to sweet-talk his way past several people until he found someone willing to talk, but that was only to be expected. It was still easy enough; if it wasn’t, newspapers would never get written.

After a few enquiries about the event itself, Cole changed the subject. ‘What can you tell me about the girl?’

‘The girl?’ Sergeant Lautner said. ‘How’d you hear about her?’

‘You’ll be pleased to hear that I never reveal my sources.’

Lautner grunted, a noise Cole took to be his version of laughter. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right. Better nobody knows, huh?’ He paused, breathed deeply, and Cole imagined he was smoking; on a cordless extension, hiding in a storeroom, smoking and selling secrets.

‘Japanese national,’ Lautner said finally. ‘Seventeen years old, found unconscious with a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Beaten badly too, cigarette burns on her body — tortured, looks like. A coupla days or more.’

‘How is she?’ Cole asked, feeling the first — unnecessary? — pangs of parental concern.

‘Oh, she’s fine,’ Lautner said. ‘Bullet wound’s not much more than a scratch really. We’re not getting much out of her though, she’s clammed up tight as a drum. Refuses to say what she was doing there, we figure she was brought in to entertain the boys, you know? A pro, maybe even imported specially from Japan.’ Lautner chuckled. ‘Despite their ideals of racial purity, they want all the colors of the rainbow when it comes to boom-boom time, you know?’

Cole held his tongue; he had to keep the police officer happy. ‘Ain’t that the truth?’ he said, chuckling himself despite his disgust. ‘Do you have a name?’

‘Sure we do — got it right off her passport, which we found in the ranch house. Let me think now, I’m not so good with these foreign names. Really confused us at first, they have their names the other way around to us, you know?’

Cole did know; it was common practice in the orient, with its strong sense of family and its patriarchal cultures, for the surname to come before the given name. In the more individualist west, given names always came first.

Cole didn’t doubt that Lautner had been confused. He was a man who felt he should be higher than he was — passed over for promotion time and time again, and Cole knew he wouldn’t be able to understand why. It wouldn’t be his fault, oh no — he had everything the department needed, he was just being stiffed because they didn’t like him. And now he would show them, by selling stories to the press. Cole had seen it before, too many times — such people were perfect recruits for men like Cole. Jilted, jealous, and desperate to get their own back.

Cole also knew that the real reason Lautner would have been passed over was because he wasn’t half as bright as he liked to think he was.

‘Yeah, those Jap names are weird, huh?’ Cole offered.

‘You’re damn straight there,’ the sergeant said with another grunting laugh.

‘Her name?’ Cole reminded him.

‘Yeah, right. First name is Michi something… ’

‘Michiko?’ Cole prompted.

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Lautner said gratefully. ‘Michiko. Surname — I don’t know if I’m pronouncing this right — Aoki.’

Aoki Michiko.

Cole’s blood ran cold at the name, and hearing it said aloud finally confirmed his secret thoughts, his private fears.

He did know the girl’s mother.

Aoki Asami.

Asami meant ‘morning beauty’, and she had been just that — a stunning woman.

They had met in Thailand, starting a romance which had ended in tragedy.

Violence.

Horror.

Aoki Michiko could be his daughter, and Cole suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to see her, to hold her, to hear what she had to say.

But there was China. Beijing. General Wu.

He calculated quickly. His men would all be in DC by tomorrow morning, there would be the initial briefings in Forest Hills, then they would move immediately to the SEAL facility at Coronado on the west coast to draw weapons and equipment before continuing on to a rendezvous in Guam the next day.

He would have to be here tomorrow morning. Could he get to Tucson and back before then?

‘Where’s the girl being held?’ Cole asked.

‘We’re not holding her anymore,’ Lautner answered to Cole’s surprise. ‘She was here on a tourist visa, which has expired. She’s an illegal alien, and ICE has taken custody, they’ve got her on a flight back to Tokyo.’

Cole felt his heart falling. ‘When does it leave?’ he asked breathlessly.

‘Leave?’ came the reply. ‘It’s already left, my friend. Doc cleared her as ready to fly this afternoon, they got her on the first flight out of here.’ There was a pause, and Cole thought the man might be checking his watch. ‘Must be halfway over the Pacific by now. And a good job too, if you ask me. Last thing Tucson needs is another whore running around, am I right?’

Cole clenched the receiver hard, enraged. ‘Your check will be in the post,’ he said through gritted teeth, and hung up on the man before he said something he would regret.

His daughter.

Gone.

If only he’d called Tucson PD before, he could have used his connections, had someone in the White House call ICE, get them to let her stay.

But he hadn’t, and now she was gone.

Cole downed the Scotch, mind clarifying.

In a way, it was a good thing; he needed his thoughts focused on the job at hand. Memories of Thailand, of Aoki Asami, would just hinder him. Meeting his daughter would cloud his judgment.

No, he decided, he had to forget about her for now. He had to perform his mission, do what he had to do.

When Wu was dead, the government rescued and ready to take back control of China, Cole could deal with personal issues then — and only then.

At least Michiko would be safe in Japan until he got there to search for her — her home was surely better than a prison cell in Arizona.

Cole could only hope that she was still there when he was finished with General Wu.

Because, after all he had been through, there was no way in hell he could face losing another daughter.