Beyond All Limits

1

Jake Navarone looked around the sewer tunnel, nodding at each member of the Force One rescue team.

‘It’s time,’ he said simply, his heavily-modified H&K 416 assault rifle held across his armored body.

Barrington nodded in return, performed one more check on her instruments — the area above them clear, positions of friendlies and hostiles noted by everyone — and gave the ‘go’ signal to Collins and Davis.

As one, they reached up and yanked away at the cords securing the ballistic nylon mesh that had been strung tight across that portion of the sewer tunnel’s ceiling, supporting the colossal weight above them.

Barrington had filled the drilled holes with military grade non-explosive demolition gel, which had been gradually hardening and thickening over the past few hours, cracking through the concrete and earth above them, silently destabilizing a portion of the structure.

The nylon mesh had kept the entire thing in place, seemingly intact; but now that it had been removed, the weight no longer supported, the cracks had weakened it so much that it collapsed in on itself, tons of rubble tumbling down into the tunnel below.

Navarone watched as a perfect hole appeared in the ceiling above them, the concrete and earth falling onto a specially-prepared inflatable mattress they’d brought along to help absorb the sound.

Whoever was in the immediate vicinity of the collapse would know what had happened, but those outside the hall would — hopefully — not have heard a thing.

Navarone’s hand chopped forward, and Grayson, Barrington and Collins leapt forward with ladders, placing them at the edges of the hole which had been created above them.

Navarone and Davis followed, feet on the rungs as soon as the ladders touched the sides, sprinting upwards into the Hall of Imperial Supremacy, weapons up and aimed, the other three team members hot on their heels.

Navarone made it up first, just a quarter of a second before Davis, and his eyes took in everything around him in an instant, confirming the layout he’d committed to memory, and the positions of the people they had studied from below.

He turned to his left flank, his suppressed H&K barking four times. He didn’t even wait to see the Chinese guards’ dead bodies hit the floor, racing through the hall to the next position, the sound of Davis’ own weapon spitting to his right.

He didn’t have to look for Davis to know what he was doing, nor the others — he had supreme confidence in them.

From the imagery, they had identified eight armed hostiles located within the hall itself; the plan was for Navarone and Davis to take these men out, while the other three started rounding up the members of the Politburo who — Navarone noted subconsciously — were stood around open-mouthed, incredulous at the speed and ferocity of what was happening around them.

Navarone swept west through the hall, his weapon firing again, and again, and again, his movement so swift and sure that the guards had hardly had the chance to place their fingers on their triggers.

In seconds, it was over, and Navarone made the call, surrounded by scared, bewildered politicians. ‘Clear!’

‘Clear!’ came back Davis’ reply from the other end of the hall.

Navarone nodded to himself. Eight men down in under four seconds, no enemy shots fired. Textbook stuff.

He looked around, saw that Barrington had taken charge of the extraction effort, cajoling the Politburo members down the ladders and back into the sewers, speaking to them in Mandarin as Collins rushed around the building, urging the slower men and women on towards the hole while checking for hidden weapons and covert enemy personnel.

Grayson was back down in the sewer, helping the Politburo members down and counting them off as they came into the tunnel, also ensuring that they didn’t simply run off in a stress-induced panic. Despite their elevated rank, they were made to sit on the wet concrete floor, legs crossed and hands folded behind their heads.

Navarone and Davis checked out of the windows of the hall, checking the courtyard for the six other Politburo members whose body heat hadn’t registered on the images taken from below. From their hours of monitoring, Navarone knew that there was a regular movement of people from inside to outside, and vice versa, although the military personnel had tended to stay where they were.

He spotted two members to the north, strolling in front of the Palace of Peace and Longevity, and called to Davis. ‘Two to the north, three guards that I can see.’

‘Other four are right here,’ Davis whispered back, ‘in the southern courtyard. Five guards.’

Navarone nodded. Eight guards inside, eight outside.

‘Come here,’ he said to Davis, who raced over, past the descending, frightened members of the Politburo.

‘I’ll take two, you take one,’ Navarone said, and Davis nodded, aiming his suppressed muzzle out of the window towards the northern courtyard. ‘Now,’ Navarone said, shooting his own weapon once, twice, two men’s heads exploding in a shower of blood and tissue within half a second of one another; and at the same time, the third guard’s head also disappeared in a fine red mist.

They burst out of the doors together, grabbing the Politburo members before they could scream in surprise, ushering them back inside, pushing them into the queue which waited to go down the ladders.

They raced south to the other end of the hall, lining their weapons back up along that side, guards in their sights.

‘You take the two on the left, I’ll take the two on the right.’

‘Yes sir,’ Davis agreed, knowing it would be a race to see which of them could take out the fifth guard first.

‘Now,’ Navarone said, and again, five heads exploded within two seconds, the fifth man hit by two bullets almost simultaneously.

‘That was me,’ Davis said as they opened the doors, racing to the politicians who stood there open-mouthed.

‘I don’t think so,’ Navarone replied, grabbing two of the men by their suited arms and pulling them back inside the hall while Davis manhandled the other two. ‘I’m pretty sure it was me.’

Despite the stress and pressure of the situation, Davis chuckled.

By the time they made it inside, Barrington had cleared the hall and Collins had followed the politicians back down below to help Grayson handle them.

Navarone pushed the remaining six members over to her, then started moving quickly around the complex with his bag of tricks, Davis doing the same on the opposite side with his own.

With every second counting — they had no way of knowing when the courtyard doors would open and their activity would be discovered — they rushed outside, connecting their devices to the walls of the palace compound.

And then finally, everything in its place as planned, they dragged the dead soldiers back inside the Hall of Imperial Supremacy and sealed the doors behind them.

Navarone looked down at his watch, noting the time with satisfaction; from the collapse of the tunnel ceiling to making it back to the ladders, just four minutes had elapsed. Perfect.

‘Come on,’ Barrington called impatiently from the hole, ‘hurry up you two, we don’t have all day!’

Navarone smiled; trust Barrington to rain on their parade.

But she was right too; they could always go a little faster, and Navarone tried to do as she suggested and hurried up some more.

‘What the hell is going on?’ hissed Vice Premier Chang Wubei, careful not to catch the eyes of the commandos who watched them with fearsome guns scanning continually.

‘It is a rescue,’ Kang Xing explained patiently, wondering how Chang hadn’t realized.

‘A rescue?’ Chang said excitedly, and Kang understood that his protégé must have thought they were to be assassinated. Chang really was weaker in the head than he’d ever thought. But that was also the beauty of the man; it meant he was easy to manipulate.

‘Yes, a rescue,’ Kang said, looking around him as the other members of the Politburo started to shift around, some beginning to argue loudly, demanding answers from the commandos — who Kang was sure must be Americans. Others shouted at them to be quiet, and then two rose to their feet, swinging punches at one another.

They were jerked back down by one of the soldiers and quickly lost their spirit, but tempers continued to flare throughout the chamber.

What’s going on? Who are these people? Let’s get out of here! Do what? Are you crazy, they’ll kill us!

‘Sit down!’ the female commando shouted at them in Mandarin. ‘Right now! If you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re here to rescue you, and if you don’t stop messing around you’re going to get us all killed!’ She scanned the crowd with her assault rifle, face stern. ‘And I am not going to let that happen, do you understand me?’

There were murmurs of acquiescence, but Kang could feel the mood was sour; so many days cooped up within the Forbidden City, rubbing each other up the wrong way, cliques developing and friendships deteriorating, had made them less than they once were. At once more fearful, and yet at the same time perversely more confrontational.

Kang leaned into Chang’s ear. ‘This is it,’ he said quietly. ‘Look at them.’ He paused, allowing Chang to take in the sight of the fragmented communist leadership, rudderless and broken into factions. ‘They need a leader, now more than ever. I suggest that you step up and get everyone organized. This is the start of your big chance, right here.’

Kang watched the greedy ambition flash across the man’s face, flare brightly in his eyes, and he knew that Chang was ready.

Without another word to his mentor, Chang merely nodded and stood; the uncertainty gone now, all his inner fears replaced by an entirely convincing façade of iron leadership.

All eyes turned to him, including those of the American commandos, whose guns tracked instantly towards him. ‘Please,’ he said to the soldiers in English, ‘let me talk to them. I think I can help.’

The female soldier nodded, and Chang turned to his colleagues.

‘My brothers and sisters,’ he began, ‘this is hardly the time for fighting among ourselves. These people are here to rescue us, and I for one intend to go with them. What have we managed to achieve trapped up there?’ He pointed to the hole above them, and shook his head sadly. ‘Nothing — we’ve achieved nothing. But out there, back in the real world, we can really do something, work — together — to take back this country for the people. So let’s stop fighting and arguing, and help them’ — he pointed to the commandos — ‘to help us get the hell out of here.’

Kang was impressed; not so much with the man’s words, as with his manner and delivery — truly the performance of a future world leader. The other members of the Politburo merely sat there and observed him, perhaps finally seeing the man in a new light; the light that Kang had designed for him.

Two more men dropped down into the tunnel from the chamber above, one of them huge and strong, the other lighter, more agile.

The lighter one nodded his head, and the woman spoke to them again in their native language. ‘Okay,’ she said, glad that they had been placated by Chang, ‘let’s move. It’s time to go, come on.’

And with that, the entire Politburo of the Chinese communist party were marched off down the sewer tunnels in stony silence.

Kang was pleased with Chang, and more than pleased to be finally leaving; but in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but wonder exactly how they were going to get out of Beijing.

2

The thought of death was in Cole’s mind for only an instant, and then it was gone — all thought gone now, his body instead reacting and responding instinctively, as it had been trained and honed to do over the years, the decades; a lifetime of violence.

His right hand pulled away from General Wu’s fleshy palm, coming across his own body to chop down hard on the forearm of the terrifying monk beside him.

The blow was hard and the man’s grip wavered — it didn’t break, the man was too strong for that — but it weakened momentarily, giving Cole the chance to pull it free, kicking out as he fell back and catching Zhou across the knee with his hardened shin.

The kick just bounced off the big man’s leg and then Cole sensed him moving in, hands outstretched to grab him. Cole knew if the man got his hands on him, he was as good as dead.

There were eight armed men in the room, but Cole knew they wouldn’t fire with General Wu so close to them. But as Zhou tried to grab Cole, two of the guards raced forward to pull Wu back, drag him to safety.

Cole kicked out again at Zhou, but again the blow just bounced off the man’s incredibly hard body, the external fat a mere curtain for its iron core.

But Cole had used the kick not to attack, but to help propel himself to the side, and as he bounced off Zhou’s body, he followed the momentum, turning to grab a gilded trestle table.

In the blink of an eye he was moving back in, his circle taking him back towards Wu, and he connected hard to the man’s head with the table, making him fall to his knees.

Zhou forgot about Cole for an instant, checking on the man he was sworn to protect, and Cole used the opportunity to leap-frog the general’s wide back, lashing out at the two guards behind with his feet.

He caught both men in the chest and landed, grabbing the first man’s rifle from his hands as he fell back, spinning the gun around into the right position and firing off three-round bursts around the room while using Wu as a barricade.

Four armed guards were down before Zhou grabbed the barrel of the weapon and wrenched it out of Cole’s hands, but — the purpose of his mission still uppermost in his mind — he used the distraction to launch himself for another attempt at Wu, his hand firing out towards the fallen general, the man’s neck wide open.

But he was too slow, or Zhou was too fast; for before his hand could connect with the general’s neck, the butt end of the rifle came crashing down, batting Cole’s arm out of the way. Cole tried to move, but couldn’t make it in time — the Shaolin monk’s foot came at him so fast he never had a chance, the kick landing heavy in his gut, propelling him backwards towards the balcony.

Zhou grabbed the fallen general, pulling him across the room, towards the door at the other side, in the opposite direction to Cole.

Cole knew from Zhou’s face that the man wanted desperately to kill him, but — to his credit — he knew his job was to protect the general. ‘Kill him!’ Zhou called over his shoulder in Mandarin as he led the general from the room at top speed. ‘Now!’

Cole didn’t have to see the two remaining men of the Hong Kong Special Operations Unit to know that — with a free target now Wu was safe — their guns would be tracking his way. He also knew that more security from the balcony would undoubtedly be making its way inside the pavilion at any second.

And so Cole did the only thing he could possibly do at that moment, and sprinted as fast as he could towards the exterior balcony and the generals beyond.

Again, the SOU soldiers became unable to fire, professional enough to realize that their shots might well penetrate the pavilion wall and kill the other high-ranking members of the military government who sat beyond.

It took Cole only seconds to reach the pavilion entrance, but the door was already opening as he arrived, more security guards entering to see what the noise was, to answer the calls of their colleagues inside. And Cole knew that it was only the start; within the next minute, every member of the onsite security force would be after him.

The men entering the pavilion were too slow to react to the charging form of Cole, and he knocked them aside before they could shoot, blasting outside onto the balcony, leaping over Wu’s golden throne to looks of absolute bewilderment from the generals and their guards, and carrying on forwards to the balcony’s railings.

He vaulted them in one smooth action, barely noticing how dark it was now, the sun obscured by storm clouds, and landed on the lower roof of the corridor below, soaking wet in the torrential summer downpour; but rather than stop to assess his position, he carried on, using his momentum, compressing his legs into a deep squat before exploding forwards in a flying leap.

Cole heard gasps of surprise, screams from the far side of the lake, shots fired at him as he jumped, his body sailing across the concrete dock steps below him, heading for the waters of Beihai Lake.

And then he hit the water in a perfect dive, hands leading the way, body slipping underneath the lake.

Even underwater, he could hear the sounds of gunfire as the soldiers opened up from the balcony, peppering the lake on full-auto.

His legs pumped, taking him deeper and deeper, bullets passing by his body in slow motion, stopped from achieving killing velocity by the density of the water around him.

His legs pumped harder, his heart beating fast as he swam further and further into the lake, looking up towards the surface, looking for what he needed.

He spotted it soon after, having known in which direction to head from his brief glance from the roof of the lower corridor, and started to swim upwards, angling his body toward the boat whose hull was casting the shadow above him.

He burst out of the water, up into the thundering rain, reaching up to grab the rear of the wooden racing craft, pulling himself clear of the water.

In the same action, he reached out and grabbed the life jacket of the steersman, pulling him off his seat and into the lake, Cole taking his place at the back of the boat.

The steersman, also known as the sweep, sat at the very back of the boat, opposite the drummer at the stern who kept the rhythm for the two dozen paddlers who sat down the length of the boat. His job was to steer the dragon boat by using the sweep oar, rigged to the left-hand side of the craft’s rear.

‘Paddle!’ yelled Cole when the race team stopped moving, fear and confusion in their eyes. ‘Paddle!’ he yelled again, this time in Mandarin. ‘I have a gun!’

However untrue, his last comment did the job, and suddenly galvanized the crew into action. The drummer started beating faster, and the oarsmen responded by pulling harder. Soon the dragon boat was going at quite a speed, and Cole used the sweep oar to direct the craft away from the Jade Flower Islet, heading northeast across the stormy surface of Beihai Lake.

General Wu pulled free from Zhou’s grasp, unable to believe what had happened.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ he demanded, surrounded now by an entire entourage of soldiers. ‘What was he doing?’

‘Death touch,’ Zhou responded. ‘If he had touched your arm again, you would have been killed.’ The look in Zhou’s eyes left Wu in no doubt that he was serious.

‘Death touch?’ Wu said in disbelief. ‘But what manner of man was this?’

‘An assassin, General. A very highly skilled one.’

An assassin? Wu could scarcely believe it. And yet when Zhou had interrupted, the man had fought back like a caged tiger.

‘Sent by who?’ he asked, mostly to himself.

Zhou shrugged, and Wu realized that his bodyguard neither knew nor cared; it was irrelevant to the present circumstances.

‘Well, we’ll know when we check his body,’ Wu said, striding back towards the pavilion. But then he saw the soldiers’ hands going to their ear, listening to the messages coming in through their earpieces.

Zhou had no earpiece, despite being in charge of security; he despised technology, and let those under his command worry about such things. Wu never mentioned it; Zhou was good at his job without the need of such things, so why interfere? And he had proven it again today; all the technology in the world hadn’t helped identify Dietrich Hoffmeyer for what he was, or helped to stop him. Zhou Shihuang had done it with his bare hands.

‘What is it?’ Zhou asked Major Wang Lijun, his chief aide, who looked like he didn’t want to give an answer.

‘Our men failed to kill him in the pavilion,’ Wang said.

Wu’s eyes opened wide. ‘What? So where is he now?’

‘He jumped from the balcony into Beihai Lake, he’s now on a dragon boat heading away from the island.’

Wu and Zhou were already running for the pavilion, bursting through the door, through the gilt-edged room and out the other side onto the rain-soaked balcony, straining their eyes to see the escaped assassin.

The soldiers were firing out across the lake, but Wu could see they were wasting their time; wherever he was, he was too far gone to hit now, and visibility in the storm was nearly zero.

‘There!’ one of the generals said to Wu, pointing out across the dark waters. He followed the man’s outstretched finger and located the escaping dragon boat, amazed at how far it had gone.

‘Give the order for the rooftop sharpshooters,’ Wu heard Zhou informing Wang. ‘Make sure that man is dead.’

Wu nodded his agreement, then stopped. If they killed the man, they might never learn who he was, who had sent him. And how, Wu considered thoughtfully, would he then know who to take his revenge against?

‘No,’ Wu said to Major Wang. ‘Rescind that order. The man is not to be killed. Harmed, yes, but killed, no. Not if we can help it. I want to question him.’

Zhou nodded in agreement, half a smile on his scarred face, and Wu knew why; it would be Zhou doing the questioning, a job he never grew tired of and one which was eminently suited to his sadistic personality.

‘Very good,’ Zhou said. ‘But now, if I may say so, I think we should return to the security of the Zhongnonhai. You are too exposed here, and the races will be cancelled now anyway. Look,’ he said, pointing to the lake, boats all across the water; dragon boats heading away from the one with the assassin onboard, security craft heading out at top speed towards it, weapons at the ready.

And if the waterways were in chaos, that was nothing compared to the park itself; at the sound of gunshots, the sedate and happy festivalgoers had degenerated into panicked anarchy. The security forces were struggling to contain the escalating unrest, even at the same time as they tried to track the dragon boat as it sped across the lake.

And all about them, the rain fell heavily, clouds darkening the sky.

Wu frowned; this was supposed to be a chance to show himself as one of the people, a man the crowds could get behind; it would have made great propaganda, both here and abroad. He considered forcing the people to stay, for the races to go ahead, but realized that it was already too far gone for that to happen.

No, he eventually accepted, the event was ruined. And all because of that bastard Dietrich Hoffmeyer, or whoever the hell he really was.

Well, Wu thought, that man was going to be sorry when he was brought into the bowels of the Zhongnonhai, strung up naked and helpless in those dark, bloody basements.

Yes, that scum was going to be sorry he’d ever been born by the time Zhou Shihuang was through with him.

‘Okay,’ Wu said, conceding temporary defeat. ‘Cancel the races, evacuate the park, and bring that man to me.’ There were nods all around the room. ‘And be alert — we don’t know who else is out there.’

And that was quite true, Wu realized — there might well be other forces out there, aligned against him. Other attempts on his life.

Wu sighed, not used to having to accept any kind of defeat; but then as he was led from the pavilion towards a secret corridor which would enable him to leave the island unmolested, he suddenly realized he could turn the situation to his advantage.

He’d had to arrange the sinking of one of his own navy’s ships in order to create a pretext for the invasion of Taiwan.

Now he considered what he could do with a real, genuine assassination attempt, and smiled as the possibilities played out across his vivid imagination.

3

Lieutenant Sun Shen was unsure what to do; there was some sort of trouble at the park, and he’d been instructed to check on the prisoners being held in the central compound of the Outer Eastern Palace.

He’d tried radioing through to the guards there, but had received no answer. It wasn’t a surprise though, chaos running all through Beihai, the Zhongnonhai and the Forbidden City, the radio channels all jammed from too much traffic.

But now, accompanied by four men, he entered the compound itself and found himself even more confused.

It was empty; no sign of life anywhere.

His eyes saw it then — not a sign of life, but one of death.

Blood stains across the polished stone of the courtyard.

He tried to radio through for backup, but the lines were still blocked. He considered using his cell phone, but didn’t want to be accused of cowardice, and so gestured with hand, ordering his men to carry on.

They reached the door to the Hall of Imperial Supremacy and his men spread out down the wall trying to peer into the building from the outside. The reports all came back the same; it was empty.

Summoning up all his courage, he ordered his men to move in close to him, weapons at the ready.

His hand moved to the ceremonial brass door handle slowly, carefully.

They were going in.

Captain Liu Yingchau wasn’t entirely sure what was going on.

The rain was coming down in full fury now, thunderclaps echoing through the park, across the wide lake. And all around him, chaos had broken out.

Families were running screaming from the park, pushing past the armed soldiers who raced the other way, towards the lakeside.

Liu had seen the man leaping from the roof of the Long Corridor, the guards racing out after him, churning up the waters with automatic gunfire.

Even with his binoculars, Liu could hardly make out the man through the driving rain; but he knew it was the leader of the US commando group, he could recognize him by the smooth, fluid way he moved. Like a jungle cat, Liu thought.

And now the orders were coming through his earpiece, one after the other in rapid-fire staccato. Kill him! Shoot him! Cancel that last! Bring him in alive! He is not to be killed! Capture him alive!

Liu watched as the man steered the dragon boat northeast across the lake, heading… where?

In his mind’s eye, Liu conjured up an aerial image of Beihai Park, assessing what the commando’s plan might possibly be. He had failed to kill General Wu, that much was certain — Liu had seen the paramount leader, still alive and well, on the balcony after the man had jumped into the lake. Liu knew that it was only escape that was now on the American’s mind.

But how could Liu help him?

The irony, which was certainly not lost on him, was that it was his official responsibility to protect the general, and now to capture his attacker, whereas his moral duty was to help that same man escape.

But whatever happened to the America, the sad fact was that General Wu was still alive; and if he was still alive, then the threat was still in place. Desperate, he knew he had to do something before Wu performed an act that would jeopardize his country and his people for the rest of time.

He sighed, pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number of his superior. The phone was answered immediately, and Liu wasted no time in making his request.

‘Lieutenant Colonel Chen,’ he said quickly, ‘the situation here is deteriorating fast, we’ve been told to get anyone we can to Beijing to help out, in case anything else happens.’

‘And?’ the crusty old officer asked on the other end of the line.

‘And I would like to formally request my Hunting Leopards troop to be recalled from their home base in Chengdu and posted to me here.’

There was a pause on the other end of the line as Chen weighed his options, and Liu knew he was balancing his mistrust of special operations teams against his need to fully secure the city.

‘Okay,’ came the answer at last. ‘I will clear the paperwork immediately.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Liu said, before hanging up and dialing a number in Chengdu. ‘Lieutenant Fang,’ he said in greeting, ‘it’s Captain Liu. How fast can you and the men get to Beijing?’

‘How much further?’ moaned Liang Huanjia, First Vice Premier and the only person left still ranked above Chang Wubei in the Politburo. ‘These sewers are making me sick.The stench is foul, I’m covered in water, and —’

Kang Xing was pleased to see that he didn’t even have to prompt Chang into challenging this weakness on Liang’s part; he intercepted the ball immediately on his own.

‘We are all in the same situation as you,’ Chang said calmly, politely. ‘So what do you suggest? Perhaps that we all just sit down here and wait to be beamed up?’

Kang was pleased that the comment elicited some smiles, and even a couple of chuckles, from the marching politicians. Chang was increasing in stature in their eyes with every passing moment.

Liang was about to respond, but Chang beat him to the punch. ‘We have been rescued, we are being taken to safety, and we should all be damned thankful for that. What good could we do our beloved republic while held under lock and key? None at all. So I suggest we all just put our heads down and let them get us to wherever it is we are going. And then when we get there, I think we should cooperate in any way we can.’ Chang looked around the group, trudging through the slimy, noxious waters of Beijing’s sewer system. ‘Are we agreed?’

Twenty people nodded their heads and murmured acquiescence; even Liang Huanjia, to Kang’s surprise and delight, a man who seemed to no longer have the energy to protest.

Kang also noted the American woman listening in as they marched along, the way she looked at Chang with gratitude, perhaps even admiration. He was pleased; the reports would be going back to the US government that here was a man to watch, perhaps even suitable material for China’s next paramount leader. He smiled, seeing his plans coming to fruition, and started to wonder what –

The explosion stopped Kang’s thoughts in their tracks, a colossal blast from way behind them, back down the tunnel from where they’d traveled, a soul-shuddering boom which shook the very foundations of the tunnel.

The politicians around him went to their knees, hands over their ears; Chang was halfway down too, before Kang stopped him, shook his head almost imperceptibly at the younger man, his meaning clear — this is not the time to show weakness.

Kang saw how the American commandos were not disturbed in the slightest; they had been expecting it, a booby-trap left behind in the Hall of Imperial Supremacy, no doubt.

As the staggered, shocked members of the PRC jabbered among themselves helplessly, Kang overheard the big American soldier say something to the leader — I guess that means they opened the door, Kang thought it might have been, confirming his suspicions about it being a trap left behind by the commandos.

He saw that Chang had heard it too, and he nodded at the man, urging him to capitalize on the information.

Chang nodded back, and spoke. ‘It is okay, it is okay,’ he said, silencing the others, encouraging them to get back steadily to their feet. ‘It was a trap left by the Americans for the soldiers. It cannot hurt us.’

The woman shouted across to them in Mandarin, nodding her head. ‘Yes,’ she confirmed, validating Chang completely, ‘he is right. It was just a booby trap; now the tunnel will be blocked, and they won’t even be able to follow us. With any luck, they may even think you’re all dead, for a while at least.’

There were hushed whisperings, but everyone was okay, mollified by the explanation.

And, to Kang Xing’s great delight, Chang Wubei’s stock had just risen yet again, both with the other members of the Politburo, and with the Americans.

It was perfect.

The C4 plastic explosive had been rigged all around the Hall of Imperial Supremacy, with extra quantities at key structural points, all linked to triggers on the doors.

When Lieutenant Sun Shen had opened the front door, it had sent an electrical charge along the detonating wires which caused every explosive charge in the building to go off simultaneously.

The result was immediate, and utterly devastating.

The two thousand year old edifice, one which had seen so much, survived for so long despite the wars which had raged around it, was wiped off the face of the earth in seconds.

First the stone work imploded, structural joins ruptured and mangled, and then — when the building could no longer support itself, only moments later — the ancient hall collapsed in on itself, reduced to nothing more than rubble, debris and clouds of thick, dense dust.

Lieutenant Sun Shen and his colleagues were killed instantly, their bodies vaporized by the blast, and the shockwave rippled across the courtyard until it impacted the high walls around it. They shook and cracked, and the easternmost wall then collapsed completely.

The shockwaves also spread to the smaller buildings to the north and south, rocking them to their very foundations. Stonework was damaged, roofing tiles fell, shattering to the displaced courtyard floor below, but the buildings themselves carried on standing — for the time being, at least.

The scene was one of total devastation, as if the few acres of the Outer Eastern Palace had been singled out for a brutal, targeted earthquake.

And furthermore, within the ruins of the Hall of Imperial Supremacy, the hole leading to the escape route through the sewer tunnels was gone altogether, along with all evidence of the Politburo’s rescue at the hands of Force One.

Jake Navarone breathed a silent sigh of relief.

He’d been worried that the hall would be visited before they’d had a chance to get far enough away down the tunnel. To ensure that they didn’t all die in the blast, he’d set a contingency timer on the devices to ensure they wouldn’t blow too early. If anyone had entered earlier than the timer had been set for, the explosives wouldn’t have gone off, and the escape route would have been discovered. That would have been bad, but not as bad as being taken out by his own booby trap.

The good news, however, was that everything had gone as planned; the door had been opened, the C4 had gone off, and the Hall of Imperial Supremacy — hell, maybe even the entire Outer Eastern Palace — was no more.

For the time being, the authorities would have no idea what had caused it; their first thought would probably be that it was the result of some sort of precision-guided munition, perhaps dropped by a stealth aircraft.

Without any evidence to suggest otherwise, they would assume that the entire membership of the Politburo had been killed by the blast too.

It would take days — weeks, probably more likely — to sort through the rubble and debris, even longer to account for the bodies and figure out what must have really happened.

And by then, Navarone hoped, they would be far, far away.

Now the only thing he had to do was make sure that the next part of the plan worked out just as well.

4

The explosion from the southeast stopped Cole for less than a second; he merely registered it, recognized that it meant Navarone and the rest of Force One must now be on the first leg of their escape, and then turned his attention back to his current problem — the 130-ton Type 218 patrol boat which had drawn alongside his dragon boat, its twin 14.5mm machine guns pointed straight at him.

The boat had finally caught up to them, and its crew had been trying to throw grappling hooks onto the dragon boat to stop and secure it, pull it across so that Cole could be captured. And he was sure that this was what was happening now — an operation to capture him rather than to kill him, no doubt so that he could be interrogated. If they wanted to kill him, the twin machine guns would have made short work of the wooden dragon boat.

But now he saw that the explosion — although expected by Cole, somewhere within his own subconscious — had come as a complete shock to the crew of the patrol boat.

The pilot, the machine gunners, the grappling hook gang, even the captain — who had until now been screaming at Cole through his loudspeaker — were all utterly distracted, their gazes drawn to the huge plumes of smoke rising high above the terracotta roofs of the Forbidden City, muted only slightly by the heavy rainfall.

The crew of his own boat had started to slow too, everyone looking the same way; even the drummer had stopped keeping the beat.

Cole, however, acted instantly, injecting himself into this gap in the patrol boat crew’s attention with perfect timing.

He stood up and wrenched the steering oar from the back, reaching up for the hull of the patrol boat beyond and launching himself towards the guard rail.

He was on the side of the larger vessel before its crew had looked away from the burning flames of the Forbidden City, up and over the guard rail by the time they’d realized he’d even moved.

He targeted the machine gunners first, swiping at their heads with vicious blows of the oar, knocking them unconscious across the deck.

The men with the grappling hooks turned to him then, retrieving their ropes from the water, sharp hooks gleaming at the ends.

As they approached, Cole also saw the captain throw down his loudspeaker and go for the pistol held in the holster at his waist, and quickly sidestepped the oncoming sailors, smashing the steering oar down onto the man’s gun arm. Cole heard the bones in the forearm break, the captain’s screams heard even over the roaring thunder of the continuing storm.

Cole turned back just in time to see the first hook sailing towards him, thrown forcefully by one of the sailors. He blocked it with the wooden oar, letting the sharp metal embed itself into the surface. He then yanked backwards on the oar, ripping the other end of the rope from the sailor’s hands.

Cole caught it in midair as it came back to him, ducking as another grappling hook slashed through the air above him. As the same time as he ducked, Cole pulled the hook from the oar and swung his own rope back towards the sailors, the hook lashing out across the deck, the attached rope wrapping round the legs of two of the men.

Cole pulled back instantly, the taut rope toppling the two sailors to the deck. Cole leapt forward, stamping down on one of the bodies and using it as a platform to kick off, his leather-soled shoe catching another man flush in the face.

He sensed movement from the side and turned as another sailor rushed at him, holding the sharp hook in his hand and using it as a slashing weapon, swinging it wildly at Cole in a rapid figure-eight pattern.

Cole swiftly dodged the incoming strikes, reading the pattern as he moved and throwing a counterpunch straight into the man’s face as he reached the downward portion of his swing, the hook momentarily at a safe distance.

The blow rendered the sailor unconscious immediately, and Cole immediately skipped over the deck to one of the men he’d knocked down before; he was getting back to his feet, reaching for a grappling hook, and Cole knocked him back down with the oar.

The sailors were all down now, the captain still moaning in agony on the deck, but Cole could see other boats moving in to help, and the sound of feet heading his way from the other side of the patrol boat — other sailors, coming to help.

He looked across the bow towards the northeast, seeing the edge of Beihai Lake in the distance, dark and murky through the rain.

A speedboat was coming in fast on the other side, two more dragon boats travelling in opposite directions between them, caught in the middle of something they had never expected.

He saw the shadowy images of the sailors as they approached, saw they held assault rifles, and burst once more into action, his eyes on the far side of the deck and the guard rail which led back to the water.

He dropped the oar as he sprinted, jumping over the discarded bodies of the crew as he went, increasing speed, accelerating toward the guard rail.

He saw the look of surprise on the faces of the crew of the first dragon boat as he sailed high over the rail in a flying leap, his body arcing out across the water towards them.

He landed on the side of the dragon boat, its lightweight frame bucking wildly as he regained his balance, arms out wide to steady himself, and then he stepped between the legs of one of the terrified rowers, balancing once again on the other side of the hull.

The second dragon boat was approaching now, their paths crossing over each other, and Cole stepped off from the first, shaky legs taking him across the dark waters of the lake to rest precariously on the side of the second ship’s hull; with both boats going in different directions, he felt his legs being pulled dangerously apart, feet slipping. But he kept his momentum going, body tilting wildly before he regained his balance and stepped fully into the boat.

He heard warning shots being fired from the patrol boat behind him, but ignored them; they wanted to capture him, not kill him. Besides which, he doubted their marksmanship would be good enough to hit a small moving target in a cloudy storm, while stood on top of a moving ship.

He again kept his forward momentum going, stepping onto the far side of the second boat, the speedboat now in his sights as it cut through the water towards him.

It curved away from the dragon boat, but Cole was already in the air, legs exploding underneath him to propel him once more through the damp, wet air.

For a moment he feared he wouldn’t make it, would end up helpless in the lake, but then his hands made contact with the front of the speedboat, then his knees and feet, his body going flat, clinging to the long front-end as the pilots screamed at him and accelerated away, cutting across the bow of the patrol boat.

Cole knew they were trying to swing the craft around as fast as they could in a desperate attempt to throw him off, but it was no good; he had a secure grip, and slowly started to edge up the boat toward the cabin.

One of the three men in the open cabin leant out of the boat, pointing a pistol at him, but didn’t shoot. Frustrated, the man cried out, then fired two shots into the air as a warning, before pointing the weapon back at Cole once more.

But Cole was too fast, having worked his way up the long bow section to the windshield; and when the gun came down towards him again, he reached out and plucked it straight from the hands of the shocked man.

He knelt up on the bow, pointing the gun through the windshield at the men inside, their faces registering total fear.

Cole moved ahead even further, one hand going to the rim of the windshield, one leg stepping over, coming down on top of the controls inside. Keeping the gun aimed at the men, he stepped over with his other leg, now inside the cabin.

He gestured with the gun to the lake beyond. ‘Out,’ he said in Mandarin. ‘Now.’

The men didn’t have to be told twice, and jumped for their lives. They knew they’d probably get picked up by the patrol boat; and if not, they could always swim to the shore anyway. But either way, it was better than facing a bullet, and the look Cole had given them was enough to convince them that he was prepared to kill if pushed.

Once they were clear, Cole gunned the engines and pulled the boat around, once more headed towards the northeastern corner of the lake, and at a much faster speed than he’d been getting out of the dragon boat crew.

He just hoped his research of the area had been accurate; if it was not, he would be heading straight for a dead end, and a premature conclusion to his desperate escape attempt.

President Ellen Abrams sat in the corner wing chair of her private sitting room, which lay sandwiched between her bedroom on one side and the Yellow Oval Room on the other, looking at the telephone as it rang on the credenza by her side.

It was obscenely early, but she was already up and dressed, not having been able to go back to sleep since Eckhart’s earlier call, and she was now drinking strong black coffee as she mentally prepared herself for the day ahead.

The White House was a big place to live in alone, but it was something she had long grown accustomed to. Besides which, there was always plenty of staff milling around so she wasn’t exactly ever truly alone. But sometimes, she reflected, it would have been nice to have someone to talk to outside of her official circle of advisors and aides.

She’d had someone once, long ago; married him right out of law school, a wonderful man named Lance Tully. They had lived in perfect happiness for a time, her husband happy to support her fledgling political career. They’d even had a child, a little girl called Jessica. They were times that Abrams looked back on fondly, perhaps the happiest of her life.

But then Jessica had died mysteriously in her sleep, a tragedy the doctors assigned to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or crib death; there had never been any real explanation, and Abrams had never really recovered from it.

Certainly her marriage hadn’t made it through intact, the distress forcing both of them into one argument after another until divorce became the only option. The space she had after the divorce gave her the room she needed in which to grieve properly, until finally she reemerged — back with her maiden name of Abrams — into public life with a vengeance, charged up and aiming for the top. She had never had the time — or, she admitted now, the inclination — to find a second husband, despite the widely held consensus that the American public wouldn’t elect an unmarried president.

But she had proven them wrong — not only was she the first woman to be elected to the highest office in the land, but also the only president except for Reagan who had been divorced. She wasn’t the first to be elected without a spouse by her side; there had been six others over the years. However, the last one had been Grover Cleveland back in 1885, so it wasn’t hard to understand the media’s doubts about her nomination.

But she had proven everyone wrong, and been elected — and not just once, but twice. And the same media commentators now decided that perhaps part of her appeal was her tragic family background.

Abrams couldn’t have said whether it added to her appeal, but she knew that the death of her infant daughter had definitely changed her as a person — made her more driven, more single-minded, more absolutely determined to succeed.

Had it been worth it?

She finally picked up the ringing telephone, looking around her sitting room as she did so, taking in its luxurious fittings and beautifully organized décor; considered the power she held, as commander in chief of the world’s premier superpower; and knew that she would happily trade it all in, every single last bit of it, if it meant that her daughter was still alive today. She would make the decision in the blink of an eye, with no regrets.

But it was too late for that; what had happened was in the past now, and nothing could be done to change it. Her daughter was dead, and she was the president of the United States of America. She had a duty to discharge, and she knew she would do it to the best of her ability.

She reflected briefly on whether the death of her daughter was why she placed so much trust in Mark Cole, why she felt such an affinity for him; for he too had been touched by tragedy. It was a link they shared, known but never spoken about.

The thought left her as the voice on the other end of the telephone came through. ‘Madam President,’ James Dorrell said, ‘sorry to trouble you so early but I thought I would call you first; we’ve had word from our CIA station in Beijing about some developments there.’

Abrams’ heart started beating faster as she thought about what Dorrell could possibly be about to tell her. Like the commander of JSOC, Dorrell didn’t officially know about Force One, but he was smart enough to put two and two together, especially as his assets were often used during the group’s missions. He knew that a US team was operating in Beijing — his people there were assisting them, after all — but he didn’t know who they were. There was a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in operation, and the Director of Central Intelligence was happy enough to play along; he didn’t need to know who they were, only what they were up to.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked.

‘Well, apparently the radio networks are going crazy, our station there can’t even begin to process the information. But eyewitness reports indicate that there’s been an explosion of some kind within the Forbidden City, and there’s talk of some sort of assassination attempt being made against General Wu.’

‘What is the status of the general?’

‘Alive, as far as we can tell. But the operator who was assigned to the job is on the run, he’s got the whole of Beijing after him.’

Abrams heart sank, unable to believe what had happened. Mark Cole, the infallible ‘Asset’, must have finally failed. Failed, and been identified as an assassin.

She found it hard to process — one of the things which made Cole so effective was his means of assassination, supposedly untraceable and undetectable. The plan was for him to get in there, do the job and get out without anyone even realizing an assassination had taken place.

But then again, Cole had been planning on performing a ‘delayed’ assassination; it could be that Wu had already been killed, but just didn’t know it yet.

‘Keep me updated on Wu,’ Abrams told Dorrell. ‘If we can monitor his health in some way, then do it. He might have some sort of… illness at some stage later today.’

She knew Dorrell would understand; would perhaps even work out who the American assassin was. After all, Cole had assassinated Dorrell’s own deputy — Bill Crozier, Director of the National Clandestine Service — just two and a half years before, using the same method.

‘Yes ma’am,’ he confirmed, the message understood.

‘The explosion?’ Abrams asked next.

‘We don’t have details yet — as I said, this thing has literally just broken out, within the last hour, and we’re just starting to get a handle on it. I’ve called you first because… well, obviously due to the nature of our involvement.’

Abrams understood; he knew Abrams was using a covert group, and he didn’t want to alert anyone who might not know about it. She felt her faith in Dorrell confirmed once more, happy that she had kept him on as DCI for a second term.

‘Okay,’ Abrams said, checking her watch — 3.21am. With the twelve hour time difference, mid-afternoon in Beijing. She wondered how the rest of Force One was doing, what the status of the Politburo members was. ‘Please keep me informed directly. You were right to call me first, and thank you for that.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ Dorrell said. ‘I’ll let you know what we develop.’

He clicked off the line, and Abrams sipped at her coffee, deep in thought.

The discovery of Mark Cole was bad — perhaps disastrous. If General Wu knew he had been targeted, there was no telling what he would do in retaliation. How had Cole been intercepted? Had he managed to hit Wu before he was identified? Was Wu even now on his hands and knees, heart giving up?

Abrams hoped so, for everyone’s sake; because if it became public knowledge that the United States had sent an assassin to kill Wu, the comebacks would be monumentally disastrous.

5

Jake Navarone watched as the members of the PRC’s esteemed Politburo examined their new disguises.

‘What is this?’ Liang Huanjia asked in obvious disgust. ‘You’ve got to be joking.’

The First Vice Premier had spoken in English for the benefit of the Americans, and Navarone responded in turn.

‘I’m afraid we’re not joking,’ he said, eyes unwavering. ‘We’re deadly serious. And if it makes you feel a little bit embarrassed, don’t forget how bad things will be if you get caught. A lifetime in prison, maybe a visit to the special basement torture cells you’ve got rigged up down there. That’s if they don’t just shoot you on sight; then your very manly suit will be full of holes, and your pants will be full of shit when your bowels relax just a bit too much — being shot does that to you, you know. How are you going to look then?’

Liang tried to hold Navarone’s stare for a moment, but soon looked away, embarrassed not only by the commando’s words, but because several of his own colleagues were laughing at them.

Navarone watched as another Vice Premier — Chang Wubei, wasn’t it? — put a friendly hand on Liang’s shoulder.

‘Come on,’ Chang said in his native tongue, a smile on his handsome face, ‘lighten up. It’s not as if you’ve not worn these things before — I remember that party in Shanghai three years ago, even if you don’t!’

That comment — translated quickly for Navarone by Julie Barrington — elicited even more laughter from the politicians, and Navarone made a mental note to report back on Chang’s leadership potential when they returned home. Cole had told him that part of the mission was to monitor the behavior of the men and women of the Politburo during the stress of their escape; see who was weak, who was strong, who could be useful to the US, and who was a liability.

Chang was obviously ahead on points at this stage — still smiling as he encouraged everyone to get changed as the American commandos had asked — but Navarone wondered which category he would eventually fit into.

A useful ally, or a future liability.

Cole eased off on the throttles as he rounded the northeast corner of the lake, but only enough to identify his target. He was too close to the banks now, the northern perimeter of the lake lined by trees which separated the park from the busy Di’anmen West Street beyond; and even through the heavy rain, Cole could see soldiers lined up in the trees, weapons aimed at him across the lake.

He knew that the longer he ran, the more likely it was that the order would go from ‘capture’ to ‘kill’, and he didn’t want to find out firsthand what the current status of those orders was.

He spotted what he had hoped would be there and felt the relief momentarily come in before he consciously stopped it, knowing it could interfere with his performance. He opened up the throttles again, accelerating towards the opening that led underneath a wide concrete overpass to a smaller pool beyond.

It was part of the network of linked waterways in this area that Cole had researched when making his plans, and he piloted the fast vessel through the small gap at high speed, just in case the soldiers opened fire.

He didn’t hear gunfire behind him, but wasn’t sure if he’d just missed it due to the combined sounds of the high-power engine and the raging storm. But he hadn’t been hit, and came out from underneath the overpass into the circular pool.

He knew orders would be being given to track him, to follow him, and fully expected other boats to enter the pool soon after, soldiers to run over and surround it, guns all around him, demands for his surrender shouted from the four winds.

But as he circled the pool, examining the northern side, he knew he wouldn’t be there for long; the pool linked further north, running into a narrow water-filled tunnel that led underneath the bridged road networks to Qianhai Lake beyond.

As he maneuvered the craft round in a circle, he took in the entrance to the tunnel, analyzing his approach. It was only ten feet wide, compared to the approximate eight-foot width of the speedboat; a tiny margin of error, but one which Cole had to risk.

What was more disturbing was the sudden dip, the waters cascading down a sharp drop into the rapids of the tunnel, swollen now with rainwater.

He didn’t know how deep it was, if the drop would cause the speedboat to hit the bottom and break apart, leaving him stranded there, ready for capture.

But at the same time, he knew he had to take the risk; he could hear other boats approaching, the sounds of soldiers as they chased across from the tree line.

He moved the speedboat to the southernmost extreme of the pool, gunned the engine and sped north as fast as he could go, attacking the tunnel entrance, hoping his momentum would carry him forwards and negate the gravitational effect of the drop.

He was picking up speed, traveling faster, faster, faster, the narrow entrance coming up now, even smaller than he’d thought at this speed; but he kept the craft steady, not looking even as he heard another speedboat enter the pool from the west, gunfire echoing around the enclosed area.

In his subconscious, he immediately understood that the shots weren’t meant to kill him; instead, they were designed to disable his boat, hit the engine or the fuel tank and bring his break for freedom to a decisive end.

But he was traveling too fast, and the bullets all hit the wake he left behind him, and then he was there, blasting through the concrete pillars of the tunnel, the speedboat almost soaring in midair off the ledge, still accelerating as it jumped; then crashing down but still moving forward, the hull avoiding the bottom of the rainwater-swelled tunnel.

Cole aimed the boat in a straight line, passing directly under Di’anmen West Street, feeling the weight of concrete and traffic above him.

Spotting dull, grey daylight ahead of him, he kept his boat pointed towards this target and risked a glance behind, alerted by the loud, echoing sounds of a second engine entering the tunnel.

But as he looked, he saw how the pilot of the second speedboat hadn’t entered straight, had clipped the base of the ledge and then the right-hand wall, the momentum and impact trying to spin the craft around, its passage stopped by the narrow confines of the tunnel; instead it hit back and forth, battered from one wall to the other before rearing upwards, its long bow hitting the concrete tunnel ceiling and slamming back down, spinning again. But this time it was too much and the speedboat started to break apart, smashed to pieces, engine destroyed, sparking onto the leaking fuel.

Cole turned back to the front, not needing to see more, and opened the throttles even further, the entrance to Qianhai so close now, so tantalizingly close as he heard the blast behind him, the raging inferno from the exploding speedboat racing through the tunnel towards him, flames shooting through the enclosed concrete space at phenomenal speed.

He could feel the heat on his back, started to worry that his own fuel lines might catch and blow up.

But then he was out, out in the blessed open and the life-giving rain, propelled out of the tunnel into Qianhai Lake by a column of red-hot flame.

Cole breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that no more boats would be following from Beihai Park.

But it wasn’t over yet, not by a longshot. There were still the soldiers, the guards, the police; hundreds, perhaps thousands of people searching for him. And he also knew it wouldn’t be long before the helicopters were put up to help with the search effort.

He knew he didn’t have long, and determined to put what little time he did have to good use, he accelerated north up the near-empty expanse of Qianhai Lake.

6

Twenty minutes had passed, what seemed like a lifetime to Cole.

He had raced the speedboat on a direct line north, past the marina to the west and the small island to the east, finally abandoning the craft on the northern shore of Qianhai Lake.

He had jammed the throttles wide open and sent the boat further on into the lake, probably to run out of fuel or to crash into the shoreline at some random point, and had jumped into the lake, swimming with powerful strokes to the woods which lined the northern banks.

He knew that — given the cloud cover and lack of sunlight — any witnesses would have had their attention drawn to the rapidly moving speedboat rather than the much smaller, slower body which had propelled itself into the lake.

He had pulled himself onto the shore soon after and headed off into the trees, all too aware that — as a Caucasian — he would stand out wherever he went in Beijing. There might have been thousands of foreigners in the city, but it was a far cry from the eight million Chinese who lived here. His physical appearance would make him a target wherever he went.

But he accepted that — at this stage — there was nothing very much he could do about that, and so decided to rely on the fact that not enough time had passed since this whole thing started for the vast majority of the Beijing population to know anything about it.

He therefore had a window of opportunity — before every citizen in the area was ordered to report the movements of Westerners — to make good his escape.

His plan consisted of finding an entryway into the sewer system; if unobserved, he might still be able to link up with the rest of Force One and extract with them. But he knew this would put the secondary mission at risk, and so decided there and then not to link up with them; he would make his own way back.

He could still use the sewers though, and so broke out of the tree-line and entered the ancient alleyways of the Houhai district, its crisscrossed maze of small alleys between traditional courtyard houses a small reminder of what Beijing had used to look like — before the communist love of grey concrete had made its unfortunate presence felt.

He walked casually now, careful not to seem out of place; just a tourist taking in the sights of the old city. At least his soaking wet clothes could easily be accounted for by the rain.

On the sparsely populated streets — most people having retreated inside until the worst of the storm was over — he noticed that many people carried umbrellas, others using newspaper as a makeshift barrier.

Cole followed suit, buying a paper from a street vendor and putting it up over his head; not only would it make him blend in better, it would also mask his identity from aerial surveillance.

His vision continually swept the area, ever vigilant against the security forces who might even now be searching for him; the boat would have been found by now, and there was no way they would accept that he had simply drowned.

As he wove in and out of the quaint, stone alleyways, passing street vendors and washing lines, food carts and playing children, he also scanned the ground for manhole covers, or any indication that there was some way of accessing the sewer system.

It would have been an impossible task to locate and memorize every entrance to the sewer network, and back in America, Cole had just learned the locations of several major entry points.

He was headed toward the nearest of these points, within the basement of the Fushan Temple, sandwiched between the small museum of Prince Kung’s Mansion and the campus of Beijing Normal University North. But if he found another way in while making his way there, he would definitely take it.

Cole heard sirens blaring in the background, but they came and went; none were headed his way, not yet at least.

He was being eyed with suspicion by the locals, but no more than was normal in Beijing; the people here had a tendency to stare, and Cole didn’t know if he was being recognized or not. But nobody made any move toward him, and nobody tried to stop him. He was just another crazy tourist trying to find his way back to his hotel in the storm.

He was halfway to Fushan Temple when he saw the grate, hidden down a small alleyway to the east, empty except for a single washing line and a hastily abandoned football.

Checking carefully around him, he decided that nobody was paying attention and casually turned the corner into the alleyway.

He increased his pace now, anxious to get underground before he was seen.

He got to the grate quickly, hands going down, pulling up on the ancient, rusted metal.

At first the grate barely moved at all, but after a fourth gut-wrenching heave, it slipped out of its place and came partially up from the stone alley floor.

He breathed deeply, knowing that the next heave would do it, steeling himself for the effort.

But he was stopped in his tracks by the police whistle being blasted at the end of the alleyway, and turned to look, watching in horror as a pair of municipal policemen came charging towards him, guns drawn as their colleague continued to whistle for immediate back-up.

Cole knew that the boat must have been found, they must have figured he was headed into the mazelike streets of Houhai and sent in patrols to scour the area. The fact that the man wasn’t using a radio told Cole that such long-range communication was unnecessary — back-up was close enough to hear the whistle, and could be here at any moment.

He knew he could never open the grate before the policemen shot him, and so put his hands up in the air in surrender, noting the premature smiles on the faces of the approaching cops.

He let them get close to him, one keeping him covered with a pistol while the other went for his handcuffs.

He waited as they moved ever closer, patiently assessing everything about them.

Just a little closer… a little more…

Cole burst into action, slamming the callused edge of one hand down onto the pistol, chopping it from the man’s grip. As it dropped to the floor, Cole chopped forwards with his other hand, hitting the cop straight in the throat.

The man dropped to the floor, clutching his windpipe, and Cole reached out for the handcuffs held by the other man, using them to pull him forward onto a solid head butt which broke his nose and left him unconscious on the rain-slicked alley floor.

The man with the whistle, aghast at what he had witnessed, was screaming now — orders or curses, Cole couldn’t be sure — and went for his own pistol.

In the blink of an eye, Cole bent at the knees and snatched the first cop’s gun from the floor, aiming and firing from his kneeling position in one smooth, precise movement.

The round hit the cop in the shoulder, spinning him round and dropping him to the floor in a shocked, silent heap.

Cole looked down at the grate, wondering what to do; it was possible he had time to remove the grate and get down there, but if the authorities knew he was in the sewers they would order a full search to be made — something that would potentially jeopardize the other Force One operation.

He moved as soon as he thought, vice-like fingers digging into the rough stone work of the alleyway as he hauled himself upwards, heading for the roof instead.

Using ledges, pointing, breaks and small holes in the wall, Cole climbed fast up the wet, slippery surface, eventually hooking his fingers onto the grey-tiled roof and pulling himself all the way up — just moments before the edge erupted under a hail of gunfire, stone and tile blasted away just inches from his feet by small-arms fire.

Cole wasn’t surprised — despite orders to the contrary, any policeman seeing a fallen colleague would open fire and hang the consequences. His shot might not have killed the cop — like the strike to the other man’s throat, it was aimed carefully, intended to be non-lethal — but the other cops would hardly thank him for his kindness, and their hearts would be filled with revenge. Filled enough to follow him up here?

He wondered about that as he turned and — crouched low to aid his balance — started to move swiftly across the rooftops, the alleys so narrow that he could easily hop from one to another.

If they didn’t follow him up, he could be away from the area very rapidly and — trapped in the maze below — they would be unable to track him.

Only a few precious moments of hope passed after having this thought before the sounds of the renewed whistle blasts from below were completely overwhelmed by a much louder noise from above.

The all-too-familiar sound of rotor blades.

The helicopters had arrived.

And — exposed now on the open rooftops — Cole realized that he had turned himself into a sitting duck.

7

‘Where is he?’ asked General Wu, two assistants offering him towels to rub down his rain-soaked skin as he paced furiously around the operations center underneath the Zhongnonhai compound.

‘We don’t know,’ answered Zhou’s aide, Major Wang Lijun. ‘He managed to get a boat up into Qianhai Lake, which we found abandoned. We’re tracking him into the streets around Houhai, and we’ve got the choppers up now, so it shouldn’t be long.’

‘It better not be,’ Wu growled, his anger having grown with every passing minute. Yes, he could use the incident to his benefit; but he also hungered for revenge, his perfect afternoon ruined. And it wasn’t just the assassin; there was the explosion at the Forbidden City to consider too.

‘What about the Politburo?’ Wu asked next.

Again, Wang was forced to shake his head in sorrow. ‘The entire area is a no-go zone for now,’ he explained. ‘Most of the Outer Eastern Palace has been damaged, and the Hall of Imperial Supremacy has been completely destroyed, we have teams there now, still trying to put out the fires.’

‘Is it contained?’

‘For now,’ Wang said, ‘and we should be grateful for the rain, it’s helping to stop the fires from spreading. But I’m afraid we won’t know the fate of the people who were being kept there for quite some time. However, given the extent of the damage, it is highly unlikely that anyone survived.’

Wu bowed his head, considering the matter. What could have caused such an event? His immediate thought was that it was an American attack. Despite Beijing’s near-impenetrable anti-aircraft capabilities, an American stealth bomber had an outside chance of beating it, getting in close enough to drop a precision-guided bomb, and getting out again undetected.

‘I want air surveillance increased immediately, all personnel to be working on it,’ Wu demanded, ‘pull everyone you can off whatever else they’re working on and concentrate on radar coverage of this area.’ He gestured to another uniformed officer. ‘Get all of our surveillance aircraft up in the air,’ he said, ‘and do it immediately. Any other aircraft we have, get them looking too.’ He turned to a naval officer. ‘Put the word out to the fleet, we have a possible enemy aircraft in the area, possibly a US stealth plane, get them all looking.’

The officers snapped at the commands and rushed away to implement them. It made Wu feel better, but only slightly. What if the Americans had some new weapon of which he was not even aware? He had heard rumors about space-based weapons, which — depending on who you talked to — relied upon laser, radar or electromagnetic pulse technology for their effects.

But if President Abrams had use of such a weapon, why target the Hall of Imperial Supremacy? If the attack had been carried out by the Americans — and only the Americans had the technology that could have beaten his country’s defenses like that — then why would they have wanted to kill the entire Politburo? What was in it for them? Surely it would have made more sense to target the Zhongnonhai?

Unless it was a simple error — either US intelligence had suggested that a different set of people were in the target building, or else the bomb had been aimed at the Zhongnonhai, and had hit the Forbidden City by mistake?

None of it made any sense whatsoever.

The chaos of the basement control room — dozens, maybe hundreds of personnel, both military and civilian rushing around, updating maps, monitoring computer screens, barking orders, checking satellite feeds, observing radar and sonar systems, everyone in a frantic rush to combat the threat to China’s national territory while at the same time preparing for the incredibly complex operation to invade Japan — faded out of General Wu’s consciousness as he thought hard about what had happened that day.

Dietrich Hoffmeyer — who had he been, really? Supposedly a Dutch businessman, a negotiator for the firm TransNat Drilling; a man who had already been in Beijing when Wu had assumed power. Could it be that he was a sleeper agent? A member of the CIA? Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service? Or else the real Hoffmeyer was somewhere else, replaced after the coup by a lookalike, a Western assassin in disguise. Photographic analysis would be used to help answer that question, and right now Wu also had teams going through Hoffmeyer’s hotel room, searching for evidence of the man’s real identity.

Capturing the man, of course, would be the perfect outcome; under ‘tactical interrogation’, Wu was sure the assassin would break, and he could learn everything there was to know about him, including the most important question of all — who did he work for?

Of course, Wu could claim the assassin worked for any nation in the world — the real national culprit would only deny it anyway.

Wu was just beginning to chart out his future actions — deciding when and how to go public with his accusations — when he noticed Wang gesturing towards him excitedly, talking on his radio to someone.

Wu rushed across the busy control room. ‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘You have news?’

Wang nodded his head, signing off the radio and turning to his general. ‘Yes sir,’ he said breathlessly. ‘One of our helicopters has seen him.’

‘Where?’

‘On the rooftops in Houhai,’ Wang responded. ‘He is exposed, and we have police moving in on foot and more choppers on the way.’

Wu nodded his head. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Alert all local units, military as well as police, secure the area, cordon it all off. We’ll make sure the bastard doesn’t get away again.’

‘Yes sir,’ Wang acknowledged, getting back on his radio to relay the orders.

For the first time since the incident began, Wu allowed himself to smile.

Soon he would be able to ask all of his questions to the man himself.

Navarone moved as casually as he could along the underground subway tunnel, headed towards Qianmen Station, the nearest to the group’s exit point from the sewers.

He was aware that — as a Westerner — he would be under greater scrutiny than the other commuters who flowed through the busy tunnel corridors, but he was trained to blend in no matter what the circumstances. And he knew that — if stopped — his ID should stand up to scrutiny.

He couldn’t even see the other members of Force One, who were spread out throughout the tunnel, and took this to be a good sign — if he couldn’t see them, then it was unlikely that a poorly trained subway security guard would notice them either.

The only member of his team that he could see was Julie Barrington, and that was only because she was supposed to be visible.

Dressed in a conservative grey suit with glasses, hair tied back in severe style — they had all washed and changed back in the sewers before emerging through an abandoned staff locker room — Barrington looked exactly as she should in her new role as professional tour guide.

Her tour group was following dutifully behind her as she led them with an identifying flag held high — the sign for the Shanghai League of Women in Business and Industry.

Navarone watched the group, twenty-one middle-aged ‘women’ in business suits marching purposefully along towards Qianmen Station.

He almost smiled. The Politburo members — despite their earlier protestations — were pulling off their disguises pretty well. In fact, the men didn’t look all that different from the three genuine women in the group. Even Liang Huanjia was getting into the swing of it, and Navarone couldn’t help but wonder what had happened at that party three years ago that Chang had mentioned.

But on second thoughts, he decided, perhaps he was better off not knowing.

There had been discussions about breaking up the members of the Politburo into smaller, more discrete groups — less of an obvious target, pairs and threesomes would draw a lot less attention. But there had been the issue of security to consider — Navarone couldn’t be sure of each member’s loyalty, or how they would react in such circumstances. If they were too broken up, it was inevitable that the five members of Force One would lose track of some of them, and then who knew what they might do. It was possible they would try and escape on their own, and then — if captured — everyone else would be put at risk.

By keeping everyone together as a single group, it allowed Force One to keep an eye on them, group pressure also helping to make sure they followed the plan.

Posing as women helped too — it was clear that nobody wanted to stop a league of presumably high-powered businesswomen; it just wasn’t worth the trouble.

As they broke through onto the subway platform, Navarone instantly took in all of the security, noticing that it had been increased from previous CIA reports. But he remained cool and relaxed, just one of hundreds of people boarding the subway train west to Xianwumen.

He watched as Barrington boarded with the ‘women’s league’, entirely unmolested by security — noticed that the armed guards even moved respectfully to one side as they passed — and then he was there at the train doors too.

He saw how the guards moved their eyes left and right, scanning the crowds, felt himself tensing, willed himself to relax; and then he too was onboard, just seconds before the train moved off silently to the next destination on their journey home.

8

The helicopter — a Harbin Z-9 utility chopper, a Chinese-licensed version of the French Eurocopter Dauphin — hovered close by Cole, the pilot getting it down low near the rooftops.

The helicopter itself wasn’t armed, but the soldier hanging out of the open side doorway certainly was — the man aimed an automatic shotgun at Cole, its spread of pellets almost guaranteed to hit him at this range.

Cole calculated his options. Down below, he knew the streets were crawling with police. There had been the initial surge from the whistle blasts, and then surely more from subsequent radio communications. There would be soldiers there soon too, he was sure — he still wasn’t far from Beihai Park, and the whole complement of security forces would soon be on him.

It struck him as lucky in a way — at least his escape was diverting attention from the Forbidden City and the escaping Politburo.

Descending to the streets directly below was obviously out of the question; but as he looked across the roofs, he wondered if he could make it further across, lose both the helicopter and the security forces, and then make his way down to the streets in relative safety?

But as soon as he’d had the thought, he discounted it; two more helicopters were sweeping in, rotors spinning loudly against the continued background noise of the storm. If he moved across the rooftops, he would only be followed — and either shot, or monitored until the police and military could finally move in.

He could see the man with the shotgun shouting toward him, but the rain was too loud, the rotors almost deafening, and he couldn’t hear a word. But, straining to hear the man, he began to pick up sounds from behind him — the police had started moving up the walls. They would be on him soon, and then he would be completely without options.

As it was, there was only one left available to him, and he took it before he lost the opportunity forever.

He stood on desperately shaky legs, the leather-soles shoes of a successful businessman woefully inadequate for balancing on an angled roof in the middle of a blinding storm, and put his hands in the air.

The man with the shotgun beckoned him forward, no doubt wanting to be the one to perform the arrest, hoping it would garner him the gratitude of the entire military government, and Cole complied, edging steadily closer to the hovering helicopter — and further away from the approaching police as they scaled the walls behind him.

Cole was in arms’ reach of the soldier now, his body language designed to put the man at ease, relax him into making a mistake — just a fraction of a second was all Cole needed.

It happened just moments later, a slight relaxation in the man’s shoulders which indicated a shift in mental readiness, the sense that he’d already won, and Cole capitalized on it instantaneously, his hand shooting out to deflect the barrel of the shotgun.

But Cole could never have anticipated the sudden updraft, which came out of nowhere and bumped the helicopter upwards, the soldier recoiling back inside the aircraft as the pilot struggled to control the bucking chopper.

Cole had already committed, and his leather soles lost their grip, causing him to fall forward. He teetered on the edge of the roof, his balance gone, but instinct took over and he reached suddenly upwards, his iron-like grip taking hold of the lower part of the open door, the helicopter taking him clear of the roof as it rose higher and higher into the air, the pilot not wanting to risk hitting the rooftop in the turbulent air.

The conventional door flapped about wildly in the stormy air, and as he was pulled off the rooftop, Cole was convinced he would lose his fingers when the door slammed finally shut.

But he felt the door stiffen and set into place, and when Cole looked up, he saw one soldier wedging it open while the other came back into the doorway with his shotgun, aiming it down at the helpless Cole.

In his peripheral vision, Cole saw men pulling themselves up onto the rooftop, behind and below him, and knew their own weapons would also be tracking towards him, although they would be reluctant to open fire for fear of hitting the helicopter crew.

Still fighting the winds, the pilot peeled away from the rooftop completely, Cole dangling below, both hands now clenched tight around the bottom of the metal door, gripping harder than he’d ever gripped before, until he felt that his knuckles were going to break through his skin.

But in the maelstrom of the storm, in the fear and confusion of the helicopter’s violent maneuvers, Cole knew he still had one chance.

And — in the blink of an eye, before anyone could have predicted what he would do — he pulled even harder on the bottom of the door, swinging his legs high towards the open doorway beyond.

His legs met the barrel of the automatic shotgun, wrapped tight around it, and pulled down with all his remaining strength.

The shotgun jerked forwards with the force of Cole’s pull and — unable to let go in time — the soldier was pulled right along with it, straight out of the aircraft. Cole let go instantly and — with a horrifying scream — the man plummeted to the rain-slicked alleyways below, the shotgun still in his hands.

In what he assumed was a fit of sudden, fear-induced panic, Cole felt the chopper lurch downwards, the pilot trying to smash him into the nearest building.

The second soldier also tried to solve the problem by slamming the door shut, obviously hoping to sever Cole’s fingers and send him falling to the streets below, just like the man before him.

But Cole acted even quicker, swinging up a leg into the cabin and blocking the door with his tucked-in body.

The pilot turned the chopper on its side, tilting over violently, and the door swung open again, Cole flying out with it, only just managing to keep his grip. The second solider wasn’t so lucky though, preoccupied with trying to get Cole and not having any warning of the pilot’s intentions, and Cole watched as he lost his balance and smashed his head off the metal airframe. His unconscious body collapsed into the doorway, held in position by the strap around his waist, and Cole recognized the gift for what it was — with the body in the way, the door could no longer close on his fingers.

But as Cole dangled from the door, his grip loosening now, pain ripping through his hands, his forearms, his shoulders, he could feel himself slipping, and knew he couldn’t hold on for much longer anyway.

The wind was rushing past him, the speed of the helicopter fast — so terribly fast — and Cole knew that the pilot was determined to kill him now, to strip him from the helicopter and send him plunging to his death.

As he hung on for dear life, he took in the sights around him, below him, his mind spinning as it tried to make its calculations. He was over water now, and he didn’t know whether they were over Qianhai Lake, or maybe even as far south now as Beihai, the speed incredible as one hand was finally wrenched free, the fingers of his other hand tortured as they clamped down even harder, until — mercifully — he was able to get both back on the door again.

He could see the familiar terracotta roofs of the Forbidden City now, and understood that the pilot must have lost it completely in his desire to kill him, plunged into a lunatic straight-line death flight, determined to shake Cole off once and for all.

Cole felt his hands going, knew it wouldn’t be long before the end; but then he saw it through his blurred, wind-damaged vision — the huge, curved structure coming fast towards him, its ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass resembling a gigantic black egg floating on the water of a huge man-made lake.

Cole recognized the National Center for Performing Arts immediately, perhaps Beijing’s most iconic building after the palaces of the Forbidden City; but what was more, when the chopper passed over it in the next few seconds, it would clear the apex of the structure by not more than a few feet at best.

But it would clear it — a single opportunity that was Cole’s best, his only, chance of survival.

Jake Navarone disguised his fear well; nobody looking his way would have any idea of the inner turmoil he was experiencing.

He was standing in a queue at Beijing South Station, his ticket for the ultra-fast, three hundred kilometer-per-hour Maglev train to Shanghai in his hand. The group had switched trains at Xianwumen and taken Line Four down to Beijing South, the huge, imposing modern structure which was the departure point for the world’s fastest train. The Maglev — even at restricted speed, well short of its maximum of five hundred kilometers per hour — would still demolish the eight hundred mile distance to Shanghai in just under five hours, with one stop at Nanjing South.

The tickets for the entire group had been pre-booked by the CIA, and left with the disguises in the sewer system, and Navarone reminded himself that — if he lived through this — he would have to send something very nice to the Beijing station. They’d certainly done an incredible job with the preparations, at such short notice.

But it wasn’t the authenticity or validity of the tickets which caused Navarone’s rapidly increasing heart rate, however; it was the heavily patrolled security checking line that all passengers had to go through in order to board the train.

He wasn’t so concerned for himself; he felt confident he could talk his way through anything, and they had no reason to suspect that he wasn’t who he said he was anyway.

No, what he was concerned about was the eighteen male Chinese politicians masquerading as women, the entire group of which was now approaching the security desk.

Would they give themselves away?

Their disguises — which had looked so good in the dim light of the sewer tunnels — now looked inadequate in the extreme, and for the first time, Navarone found himself questioning the very sanity of their plan. What if they had to respond to questions? Would their voices be convincing, or would they give the game away immediately? Would their awkward body language raise the suspicions of the guards?

Navarone, in a separate queue, inched steadily ahead towards his own checkpoint, all the while watching the passage of the Shanghai League of Women in Business and Industry as surreptitiously as he could.

He’d seen brief glances of Davis, Grayson and Collins during their journey here, but nothing too obvious. He could see them again now as they waited in line, but they didn’t stand out in any way at all; just three more passengers going about their business.

Navarone took a nervous gulp as he saw Barrington at the front of the line, the disguised members of the escaped Politburo behind her; he could see, even from where he stood two lines over, the unnatural, tense manner in which some of the politicians held themselves. Surely the guards couldn’t help but notice too?

But Barrington started chatting animatedly to the security personnel in her perfectly accented Mandarin, moving her hand around, motioning towards the women’s league behind her. Navarone couldn’t tell what she was saying, but her manner was authoritative, professional.

Someone else strode over to the group then, and Navarone could see it was a senior officer. What the hell was going on?

But then Barrington burst into her staccato Mandarin again, and after a few moments the senior officer nodded his head and — Navarone could barely believe it — actually smiled. He then gestured to the junior man, who ushered the entire party through the gate en masse, all of them permitted to board the train with no further checks.

Whatever Barrington said had obviously worked, and Navarone hoped he would get to work with her again; she was worth her weight in gold. Scratch that, he thought — she was worth Chad Davis’s weight in gold.

Relieved beyond measure, he watched as Barrington led the party through the gates and toward the Maglev train.

Now all he had to do was worry about himself.

9

Liu Yingchau heard the comments over his radio, barely able to decipher what was going on.

He had been angry with himself since watching the American commando exit Beihai Lake in the speedboat, completely at a loss to know how to help the fleeing man. No matter how good the agent was, the security network that would be heading north with him would be truly inescapable, and — despite his intentions to help the man — there was nothing that Liu could really do about it.

But the reports coming thick and fast through Liu’s communications system hinted that he was perhaps doing better than Liu had any right to hope; first there was the abandoned speedboat — the reason Liu was now hightailing it in a military squad car into the Houhai district — and then the sound of whistles, gun shots, and the garbled radio messages about the man climbing a wall. And then more messages as the helicopters found him on the rooftops.

Liu had assumed that this would be the end of it — the next thing he’d hear would be news of the man’s capture or death. But then — even before he heard the reports on the radio — his attention was drawn upward by the sound of a fast-moving helicopter, and he opened the squad car window and craned his neck out to see it.

And what he saw amazed him — one of the Harbin Z-9s blasting through the rain-filled skies above him, with what appeared to be a man dangling from an open door. It was as insane a sight as any Liu had ever seen, and the screams and shouts he heard over the airwaves soon after just confirmed the unreality of the situation.

But it seemed that the American had killed two of the soldiers onboard the chopper, and the pilot had then taken things into his own hands and was now doing his best to kill the man.

As Liu watched the helicopter accelerate off across Beijing, he already started to calculate his options should the man somehow miraculously survive.

Because it was now becoming a possibility that Liu had to seriously consider.

There were only twenty feet to go until the chopper passed over the curved roof of the performing arts center, and Cole knew he just had to hang on for a few moments longer, just a few short, painful moments…

But in those few moments, time seemed to distort, fractions of a second turning to minutes of pain and anguish, until Cole wondered if he could truly hang on long enough to see his plan through to the end, or if his grip would give up too soon, his body plummeting to the lake below, breaking apart when it hit water as hard as concrete.

His mind continued to play tricks on him in those moments, questioning the height of the chopper’s approach, its angle, where his own body truly was in space — too high, too low — and whether instead of clearing the roof, he would instead by dashed against it, legs and pelvis shattered by the impact; or else the entire helicopter itself would hit the structure in a suicide mission by the enraged pilot.

But then those fleeting instants were over, and the helicopter was over the roof, still accelerating onwards, and soon the roof would be gone, left far behind, and…

Cole released his grip without conscious thought as he let his instincts take over completely, guiding his body, taking advantage of the perfect time, the one and only opportunity he had left.

His body sailed down through the air and he felt the familiar lurch in his stomach as gravity pushed him savagely earthwards, and then the roof was there, right there at this feet, and he buckled at the ankles, the knees, the hips, his body rolling just as he’d been taught in jump school at Fort Bragg all those years before, the same way he had landed after his hundreds of parachute jumps; but this time the landing was on curved metal and glass, and — the breath knocked out of him — he was suddenly tumbling and spinning down the arched surface, falling uncontrollably down the elliptical building.

But then his instinct — hardwired and unassailable — prevailed again, and his hands, still weak from his grip in the helicopter door, had to go to work one more time, grasping out for the raised titanium frame which held the darkened glass in place, fingertips working to gain a hold of the rain-slicked metal.

They grasped, failed, and grasped again; and then again, and then again, his body all the while continuing its inexorable slide down the side of the building; but then his fingers grasped and held and his body finally, mercifully, came to a stop, a third of the way down the curved glass slope.

Cole breathed hard, gasping, almost unable to believe he had finally stopped his fatal descent.

But stop it he had, and now — with the sounds of the other choppers moving in towards him — all he had to do was find some way of getting inside the damned building.

General Wu looked at the monitors which showed the progress of the East China Fleet towards the coast of Japan. The entire battle group was still undetected, still far enough away from the target so that their radar would be ineffective.

But soon, Wu knew, everyone in the entire world would be aware of his plans. Would America intervene?

He hadn’t previously thought so, but today’s events were causing him to reconsider; they had already tried to intervene in his affairs, hadn’t they? At the moment he had no proof, but he felt sure that the dual incidents that had occurred that afternoon — the foiled assassination attempt on his own life, and the destruction of the Hall of Imperial Supremacy and the Politburo within — must have been the work of the Americans. Who else, realistically, could it have been?

Did that indicate that their resolve was greater than he had anticipated? Would they risk the four thousand sailors and aircrew of the USS Ford, the tens of thousands of their citizens trapped inside China’s borders, to help their ally?

Wu still couldn’t believe they had the stomach for it; what had happened today was low-key, a covert operation which reflected a last-ditch, desperate attempt on the part of President Abrams to avoid an all-out war. But when that war reared its ugly head — as it would do any day now — Wu was in no doubt that Abrams would back down.

He had leaked enough information to US intelligence sources so that they would have a vague idea of the massive nuclear arsenal Wu had under his command, and he was sure that the psychological profile they had on him would suggest that he would be willing to use that arsenal if pushed.

Which, of course, he was. Why have it otherwise?

The tunnels under the Taihang Mountains were so deep, so well protected, that no military airstrike could have a chance of taking them out. The Americans would know this, just as they would know that China could easily target the pitifully small US stockpile that remained. It was a one-sided affair if ever there was one, and was the major reason for Wu’s unshakeable confidence in attacking Japan.

And attacking Japan was something he had always wanted to do, something he had felt compelled to do, something he had fantasized over and dreamed about ever since he’d heard stories as a child of the atrocities visited upon his people by Japan’s imperialist armies. His own grandmother had been brutalized during the 1937 massacre in Nanjing, his grandfather bayoneted to death after being forced to watch her gang raped. His uncle was later beaten to death by Japanese officials in occupied Shanghai, which was when his own parents had fled north to Chengdu. They had hated the Japanese with a hot, burning passion, and had instilled the same vehement hatred in their son.

Now Wu felt close to finally making that nation pay for its atrocities, to finally bring it under Chinese control, to make it yet one more province of the Chinese empire. He would subjugate its people and take over their industrial base, achieving a huge propaganda victory for his new regime while also vastly increasing the wealth of his own nation.

And, he thought with a smile, vastly increasing his own personal wealth in the process.

He thought momentarily of his old friend Kang Xing, Minister of National Defense and — Wu could now admit — perhaps the true mastermind behind recent events. He had certainly seeded the ideas in Wu’s mind, given him the confidence to go through with his plans, made suggestions for an overall strategic direction to follow.

But now Kang was dead, killed by the bomb — or space-based weapons attack, they still didn’t really know — which had destroyed much of the Outer Eastern Palace. His emotions were mixed — the man had proved to be a good friend over the years, and a valuable mentor. But at the end of the day, he knew too much, and if Wu was ever going to step out of Kang’s shadow and become his own man, he would have ultimately had to get rid of his old friend anyway.

He had to admit, in a way the Americans had actually done him a favor, and the thought made him smile.

His head snapped round at the call of one of the officers monitoring the situation with the assassin, a situation that Wu had stopped following when it became clear it was degenerating into chaos; he had instructed the officers to only tell him when it was sorted out, and the man was dead or in custody.

Wu strode over to the excited officer. ‘Has he been captured?’

‘Not yet,’ the officer replied, ‘but we have him trapped. He has managed to get inside the National Center for Performing Arts, but he’s trapped himself. We have air coverage blanketing the area and ground troops moving in right now. There is no chance for him to escape whatsoever.’

‘Good,’ said General Wu as he turned back to monitor the passage of the carrier battle group across the East China Sea, his keen eyes assessing everything. Catching the assassin was important, but he knew that the invasion of Japan was infinitely more so.

Minister of National Defense Kang Xing smiled at the attendant as he accepted his glass of wine, relaxing his body back into the comfortable seats of the Maglev train.

He saw his reflection in the window and thought with amusement that he made quite a passable lady. Yes, he thought with a smile, not bad at all.

He had no idea how — with all international travel routes closed — the Americans were going to get them out of the country, but their performance so far gave him the confidence that they would succeed.

And if they did not? Well then, he and the other members of the Politburo would just be returned to their prison in the Forbidden City. The US commandos would probably be killed, or else captured and tortured in the basement dungeons, but that was hardly Kang’s concern.

He reflected momentarily on the fact that General Wu might arrange for him personally to have a little ‘accident’, though. After all, it was Kang who had guided Wu’s hand throughout the build-up to the coup, and Wu wouldn’t want the competition. While he was still being useful — providing ‘information’ from the Politburo members — he was relatively safe, but he was under no illusions that when Wu had no more use for him, he would go the same way as Tsang Feng.

But Kang hoped it would not get to that stage; the Americans had rescued him and the rest of the Politburo, Chang was rising in everyone’s estimation, and Kang’s own personal plans — just a portion of which related to Wu’s takeover of China — were going exactly as he’d anticipated.

In a way, it didn’t even matter if he was killed now; everything was in place for his ultimate goals to be realized, goals far more grandiose and ambitious than that brutal thug Wu De could even comprehend.

But he wanted to live, to go on to see the fruits of his labors; he had worked so hard for it over the years, he felt he deserved that, at least.

He wanted to see the results of his plans, his machinations, his political maneuverings. Was that too much to ask? He wanted to see what he had created, his ultimate tribute to the history of China, and then he could die in peace, a happy man.

He sipped his wine as the train accelerated along its track, finally breaking free from Beijing now, and wondered deeply about what the next days would bring.

10

Mark Cole crouched down low within the incredibly complex lighting fixtures that hung high above the Theatre Hall, looking down at the scene below him.

His fall down the side of the building had stopped at a point where the glass panels gave way to pure titanium and — after scouring the area for frantic seconds, as the other helicopters moved closer in — he had eventually found a maintenance access point within one of the panels.

The hatch had taken him down a metal ladder leading to an internal roof which the dome was wrapped around, and he had soon found another hatch which led inside and further down.

He had worked his way through a network of ducts and service walkways, until he opened a small door and was immediately greeted by the cacophony of sounds coming from below.

He’d seen that he had found his way into the lighting service catwalk above the Theatre Hall, which had a performance of the fabled Beijing Opera in full flow. He had tried to turn back, but as he left the hall, he’d heard noises, the sounds of other people entering the maintenance access areas.

He didn’t know how they had found him so fast, but doubted that it was the police or military. More likely it was the center’s own security staff, alerted to his presence by the reports from the helicopter crews. Not particularly well trained perhaps, but they would be armed, and given the cramped confines of the roof space, they would have to be very unlucky to miss him.

He therefore turned back to the steel gantry, and started to thread himself through the metal struts, praying that the structure was strong enough to hold his weight, knowing the guards would think twice before following him out there.

He looked out in front of him, marveling at the thousand people sat there in rapt pleasure as they watched the show, completely unaware of the wanted assassin who was crawling across the roof above them.

Directly below him, he saw the retinue of highly trained performers with their painted faces and colorful robes as they acted out the larger-than-life roles of the traditional opera, a vibrant combination of instrumental music, vocal performances, mime, dance and acrobatics.

The high, shrill voice of the young male lead filled the theatre, drifting up to the rafters with haunting beauty, almost caused Cole to pause momentarily; but still he ploughed on, clambering over the metal lighting rig.

But where was he going?

He had to admit to himself that he didn’t know. He realized he was heading to the other side of the hall, but what was the point? More security guards would doubtless be heading that way too, with a much greater knowledge of the building’s layout than he had, and he would be cut off.

So where did that leave him?

He looked down again, knowing that he had to get there somehow, his decision reinforced as he saw a hatch opposite him opening, two men with pistols pushing through, their weapons pointed straight at him.

He looked over his shoulder, saw three more men waiting at the metal gantry, their own pistols also up and aimed.

Pushed into a corner, with nowhere else to go and nothing else left to do, he took hold of the metal strut in front of him, a steel bar which supported three large stage lights below it. He pulled furiously, bouncing his weight up and down on it, forcing it to bend, give way, to give up its grasp on the secondary bar it was attached to.

The Chinese guards whispered harsh warnings at him but Cole ignored them, bouncing harder and harder, until the bar snapped free of its attachment and swung down towards the stage in a pendulum-like arc, still attached at the other end.

Cole could hear the gasps of surprise from the audience, the cries of shock from the actors beneath him, the calls for help, for back-up, from the guards who were now above him.

The bar continued its swing, one of the lights coming loose and crashing to the stage below, the actors barely getting out of the way in time as the strut’s fifteen foot length continued to arc downwards.

Cole let go at the lowest point of its arc, dropping the remaining ten feet to the sprung wooden floor of the stage, his body absorbing the impact as it narrowly missed the smashed stage light next to him.

The light erupted in a shower of sparks, and Cole realized the guards were shooting at him. He dove to the left, the audience screaming now, leaping from their seats, clambering over each other in a desperate panic to leave, the scene turned into one of shocking, violent chaos.

At the same time, the main doors of the theatre burst open and armed soldiers rushed in, automatic rifles up and pointed at the stage; but the swarms of people trying desperately to leave the auditorium overwhelmed them, pushed them back, and Cole took the opportunity and made a dash for the stage exit.

As he moved, he sensed the passage of metal in the air and barely managed to avoid a traditional Chinese broadsword as it sliced towards him, held by a painted actor, the wusheng character whose role was always combative.

Cole ducked the blow and struck the man in the gut with a fast kick, knocking the man backwards across the stage, leaping towards the concealed exit door as more shots rained down on him from above, the bullets ripping up the wooden floor behind him.

But he was there, he’d made it, but as he accelerated towards the door it suddenly opened, four more armed men in front of him.

He turned to the other side of the stage, but the guards up above fired again, boxing him in; and then more soldiers appeared from the stage door opposite, and the retinue of armed men struggling to get in from the rear finally managed to break forth into the rapidly-emptying theatre, cutting off his escape completely.

He looked above him, in front of him, and to the sides, ready to make a move towards any opening that presented itself, but eventually, his heart dropping like a stone, he understood the need to accept the inevitable.

He had nowhere left to go.

As the soldiers rushed towards him from all sides, he raised his hands in the air in surrender, a gesture that was ignored as they clubbed him viciously to the floor with the butts of their rifles, laid into him with their fists and booted feet.

As a rifle caught him in his temple, the last thought that went through his mind before he blacked out was how he could turn this tragedy into some sort of opportunity.

And even as he slumped into unconsciousness, his mind knew that there might — just might — be a way.