Gunmetal Gray

PROLOGUE

The two bodyguards lay unconscious on the floor, arms and legs splayed, an empty bottle of imported whiskey on the table between them. They’d both lost consciousness within seconds of each other, and then they slid out of their chairs and down to the carpet, wholly unaware they’d been drugged, utterly clueless to the fact that the man they were paid to watch over had spiked their booze with a week’s supply of nighttime cold medicine.

And now the culprit sat on the couch across from them in the darkened hotel room, and he stared at the big men on the floor. His hands trembled as he rubbed his knees; bile from his stomach churned up and scorched his esophagus. He forced himself to swallow it back down so he could breathe.

Twenty-six-year-old Fan Jiang made no noise, but his brain screamed, Go, Fan! Get up and run, now!

But he could not make himself stand.

When the two men on the floor finally woke, it would take them some time to come to their senses and realize their protectee had fled. Fan Jiang knew they would be slow to comprehend the situation, because it was clear to him Sergeant Liu and Sergeant Chen didn’t think that a little shit like him had the balls to make a break for it.

The jury was still out on whether they were right or wrong, because fifteen minutes after the two men dropped, Fan still sat there paralyzed in the dark.

The two Chinese army sergeants were close-protection security officers — bodyguards in the parlance of the trade. But the term had a double meaning when applied to these men watching Fan Jiang. True, it was the job of Sergeants Liu and Chen to protect Fan with their lives, throwing their own bodies between any threat and their protectee, if necessary.

But it was also their job to bring back Fan Jiang’s dead body if he ever tried to run.

And now it was time for him to run… but he just could not fucking get up and go.

It was a rare occurrence when Fan Jiang was allowed to leave the military compound in Shanghai where he worked, but he’d been flown over here to Shenzhen along with his minders so he could attend the annual China Information Technology Expo. Fan was a sergeant in the People’s Liberation Army, a computer programmer, and one of the most highly placed cyber intrusion specialists in the nation. From time to time he or others in his unit were sent to see advances in computer tech from international vendors, to ask questions of foreign engineers, and to get a feel for how strong private industry’s encryption advances would be three, five, ten years out.

So when he needed to travel, Chief Sergeant Class 3 Fan Jiang traded his uniform for civilian clothes and flew on Air China, with Senior Sergeant Chen and Chief Sergeant Class 4 Liu flanking him at all times, themselves in business suits.

On the flight over, the security protocol called for the two security officers to take the window and aisle seats while Fan got the middle, and one of the protectors even followed Fan to the bathroom, standing just outside the door to make certain he had no unauthorized contacts.

The three men stayed in a suite together at the Sheraton Shenzhen Futian Hotel, a few blocks from the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center, which meant that keeping tabs on Fan was a breeze for Liu and Chen in the off-hours. Each night when the trade show ended they all just went back up to the suite and ordered room service; Fan sat on his bed and ate while his two bodyguards dined on their rollaway beds between Fan and the door, their pistols on or next to their bodies at all times.

But during the exhibition itself, it was all work for the bodyguards; the event lasted three days and for eight to ten hours each of these days Fan walked the huge exhibition center floor, posing as an engineer for a Chinese computer firm. Liu and Chen acted as Fan’s colleagues, but they said nothing while Fan did all the talking, taking business cards and promotional material and asking techie questions of techie types from all over the world. The two quiet men with him were well trained to keep him safe and to keep him in line, competing roles that could both be best managed only by close physical proximity and constant vigilance.

The three days on the conference floor passed without incident, but the last evening in Shenzhen was critical, because Liu and Chen knew that anyone who attempted to go AWOL while traveling would likely do it either the moment they arrived at their destination, or on the last night. The last night was prime time for a man to do a runner, true, but meek little Fan had given them no trouble, nor could either of them envision a scenario that had him acting counter to his orders. He was a tiny, frail, bespectacled, fragile little geek, and when it came down to following commands, he was nothing if not a good soldier.

Liu and Chen celebrated the end of the stress of walking the floors of a busy conference full of potential threats for three days, having to guard a man in the presence of literally thousands of foreign actors, by picking up a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in a market across the street from the hotel.

Neither of them recognized it at the time, but the Jack Daniel’s was the kid’s idea in the first place. He said he needed to get some cold medicine, so the three men entered the market. Fan and Chen walked over to the health aisles and the younger man picked out what he needed while Chen looked on and Liu stood at the front counter. Fan stopped at a liquor display, looked it up and down, and commented on how inexpensive the booze was here as compared to the prices he’d seen on the room service card by his bed. With a shrug he suggested to Chen that if they wanted to order a drink tonight with their meal they’d save the Ministry of Defense a lot of yuan by just picking up a bottle here.

Liu and Chen were not allowed to drink on the job; Fan knew this, and he also knew they would see this as a perfect opportunity to subvert their orders and enjoy themselves, without anyone in their command being the wiser.

A minute later the men walked out the door of the market with a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of Coke. Their plan had morphed from a quick room-service meal and then bed before the early flight the next day back to the locked-down compound in Shanghai, to a long evening of drinking and watching television.

Now it was two thirty in the morning and the bottle of Jack was empty, as was the box of cold medicine. Liu and Chen were incapacitated, true, but Fan was positively frozen himself — worried they’d wake tomorrow and he’d still be right here, staring back at them like a stone statue of a terrified and guilt-ridden little man.

Fan took another long look at the two men in the dark. He had nothing against Liu and Chen; they were not nice to him in any respect but they were government security men — Fan had been around the type since university, and he’d yet to meet one who’d treated a protectee of his low rank with any sort of deference or even kindness. But he knew that they had their job to do and he had his, and if Fan got away he knew they’d probably be placed in front of a firing squad for their failure.

But Fan rationalized this away — this wasn’t his fault. He didn’t want to run.

He had to run.

Finally he forced himself to stand, to collect his things, and to heave his backpack over his shoulder. With this newfound momentum he moved as softly as he could across the room and opened the hallway door. He shut it behind him with even more care, then tiptoed away from the hotel room and up the carpeted hall, heading for the stairs.

On the way there he did one last thing. With his heart pounding so hard he felt certain he could hear it echo off the walls around him, he reached out, put his hand on the fire alarm… and pulled it down.

Alarm bells screamed in the still hall, and Fan ran for his life.

It was on; there was no turning back.

Three hours before the first light of day, Chief Sergeant Class 3 Fan Jiang of the People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, 2nd Bureau, General Staff Department (3rd Department), one of the most talented computer hackers on Earth and one of only a few entrusted with the virtual keys to China’s digital kingdom, left through the side entrance of the Sheraton in the middle of a large group of guests that overwhelmed hotel security: a fast-moving mass of humanity reacting to the fire alarm. When Fan was clear of the crowd on the street, he turned to the south and then headed off through the city, in the general direction of mainland China’s border with Hong Kong.