Hong Kong

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The Cross-Harbor Tunnel was jammed when Rip Buckingham picked his way through it. People by the hundreds lounged against the wall and sat in the traffic lanes. Most were armed with weapons taken from the police barracks armory or soldiers who had surrendered in the afternoon, but there weren’t enough weapons to go around.

Appointed officers were busy trying to organize the crowd into military units. To facilitate this process members of each unit were issued distinctive badges that attached to their clothes with Velcro. The plastic badges were in a variety of solid colors and simple shapes, such as circles, squares, triangles, and the like. The rebel organizers, Rip noted, stood in front of their groups and emphasized that everyone in the group must wear the group’s badge, although they never told the volunteers why.

Rip knew. The badges allowed the York units to quickly recognize the wearer as a good guy, thereby freeing up York processing capability for other things.

The enemy would eventually catch on, of course, but by then the recognition patterns would have been routinely changed.

The tension in the air was palpable; it was impossible not to feel it. As Rip walked and listened to the excited conversations, which were echoed and magnified into an infinite chorus by the walls of the tunnel, the power of the moment almost overwhelmed him.

There was nothing these people could not do. They would pound at the rocks and shoals of the tyrant’s forces like an angry sea and sweep them away, winning in the end, as inevitably as the spinning of the earth.

He reached the mouth of the tunnel and walked into the black night. The rebels had killed all electrical power in Kowloon. Looking north one could see the occasional glow of lantern light in a window, but that was all. The Kowloon skyline had completely disappeared. Members of the Scarlet Team were here at the mouth of the tunnel, working by flashlight with items on a long table.

Rip walked over for a closer look. Michael Gao was preparing a tiny radio-controlled airplane, a “bat,” for flight. He held it in his hand, a black toylike thing with a wingspan of eight inches. With a two-bladed prop driven by a minuscule electric motor, the four-ounce bat could fly at about thirty miles per hour for several hours.

Gao nodded at a colleague in front of a control panel, who pushed a button, starting the bat’s engine.

The controller waggled a stick; the ailerons, elevators, and rudder of the plane wriggled in sync. As Gao held the bat at arm’s length, both men studied a monitor on the control panel.

Inside the bat was a miniature infrared television camera that continuously broadcast its signal. This signal gave the controller a real-time look at what lay beneath the bat. The signal was also processed by the York network, increasing the situation awareness of the York units.

When all was ready, Gao tossed the bat upward into the air at a thirty-degree angle. In seconds it disappeared into the darkness, and he reached for another one of the dozen that sat on the table.

“How close is the enemy?” Rip asked.

“They have a few scouts within a couple hundred yards,” Gao told him, “but their combat units are about a mile back. They are building fortified positions in depth across the peninsula. We are trying to learn what is behind the leading edge of their forces. Are they or are they not going to attack us?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. The bats should tell us soon, then the brain trust will make some decisions.”

“Okay.”

“Have you heard? Wu Tai Kwong is back!”

Rip Buckingham hadn’t heard. Relief flooded through him. His legs felt weak. He grinned and slapped Gao on the back.

“Did Sonny Wong release him?”

“No. He was rescued. I don’t know much more than that. He landed in a helicopter moments ago.”

“My mother-in-law is out there,” Rip said, gesturing beyond the perimeter. “I am going to go find her.”

“The PLA is out there, too. Do you want a weapon?”

“Have they started shooting civilians yet?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Good luck,” Michael Gao said, and held out his hand.

Rip Buckingham shook it, then walked away into the darkness.

“Losing the main monitor is no big deal,” one of the controllers told Virgil Cole. “We’ll just use another monitor for the primary display. I can’t understand why she wasted a bullet on it.”

Cole took a deep breath and exhaled carefully. He consciously tried to think like Jake Grafton. “She just wanted us to keep our heads down while she got the hell out of here, that’s all.”

“She might have caused real trouble if she’d taken the time to empty a clip into the CPU.”

“And someone would have shot her,” Cole muttered. “She ain’t sacrificing any goddamn skin for the cause. Sonny Wong doesn’t have enough money to buy that epidermis.”

Wu Tai Kwong stood in the corner surrounded by his lieutenants, the Scarlet Team. He listened as they all tried to talk at once, smiled and said a few words now and then, then finally sent them back to their posts. Then he came over to Virgil Cole. A few minutes sufficed to tell the American of his adventures. The cuts on his arm had been stitched and bandaged, and he had been given an antibiotic for the infection. The stump of his finger seemed to be healing properly.

“We couldn’t stop the revolution to turn Hong Kong upside down trying to find you,” Cole explained.

Wu waved it away. “You did precisely the right thing, the same thing I would have done in your place.”

“Your return saved me fifty million dollars.”

“And I know you need the money,” Wu said with a grin.

“Is Callie Grafton okay?”

“She is bruised but intact. Her spirit is unbroken. She is a warrior’s wife. They wanted her to sign statements implicating you in many crimes, and she refused.”

Cole didn’t understand. “Why did she refuse?”

“She thought she was protecting you, doing the honorable thing. She would not have signed to save her life.” Wu Tai Kwong’s head bobbed as he thought of Callie. “With a thousand like her I could conquer the world.”

“Jake Grafton and Carmellini?”

“Bloody but still on their feet.”

Cole passed a hand across his forehead, then moved on. He gestured toward the monitors. “We are intercepting PLA radio traffic. Beijing has approved the use of heavy artillery. Governor Sun wanted a barrage laid on the tunnel entrance. We think the PLA is now positioning the guns at the army base preparatory to a barrage. We have launched bats to see where the guns are and estimate when they might open fire, but the question is: Should we keep our forces in the Cross-Harbor Tunnel while the barrage is underway or move them out now?”

The two men studied the computer presentations of enemy positions and the locations of the York units, then referred to the map on the wall. They were joined by a half dozen of the key lieutenants, who listened silently to the discussion.

“The PLA will probably attack after die barrage,” Wu said after he had looked at everything. “Let’s get the people out of the tunnel and position them in front of the PLA strong points. If we can do it without the PLA learning of the movement, they will think we are in the tunnel entrance rubble when they attack.”

The orders went out immediately on the WB cell phones, and the volunteers in the tunnel began walking forward, into Kowloon.

Wu continued to study the map. “The winner of this battle,” he said, “will be the side that controls the subway tunnel.”

Cole looked at Wu with raised eyebrows. “That’s very perceptive. I couldn’t agree more. Your colleagues have been arguing with me about it.”

“What do they say?”

“That the tunnel is too narrow and dark to get many people through, that the PLA won’t bother with it.”

“It will be difficult, certainly, but it is key. Most of the PLA officers are good soldiers — they will think of the subway. That is why I want them on our side.”

Cole nodded vigorously. “We put a York in the tunnel at the Central Station. It’s got four or five dozen men with it, which was about all that can follow efficiently. I was afraid to give them rocket-propelled grenades or antitank weapons for fear they might hit the York.”

“You have done well, Cole,” Wu said and bowed a millimeter. “I will go through the subway tunnel behind the York. I will have a WB cell phone, so keep me advised.”

The artillery barrage, when it came an hour later, fell like Thor’s hammer on the area around the entrance to the Cross-Harbor Tunnel, which was east of the Tsim Sha Tsui East reclamation project, a district of luxury hotels, restaurants, entertainment, and shopping complexes designed to profit from the tourist trade.

Nearby buildings absorbed direct hits from major-caliber shells, which began reducing them to rubble. Shells tore at concrete streets and abutments and gouged huge chunks from the levee. What the shells didn’t do, however, was kill anyone. The rebels were no longer there.

Everyone in Kowloon heard the guns and felt the earth tremble from the impact of the shells. Windows rattled and broke, crockery fell from shelves, dust sifted from every nook and cranny.

Lin Pe was sitting in the entrance to an alleyway on Waterloo Road, a block west of the three-tank strong point at the Nathan Road intersection. Parked cars lined the side streets, including the one Lin Pe was on.

Ten minutes into the barrage a long column of troops marched south on Nathan Road and came to a halt behind the tank that sat in the intersection. The soldiers were eight abreast, all wearing steel helmets and carrying assault rifles and magazine containers.

The men stood nervously in line, peering about them in the darkness at the storefronts, looking up at the blank windows looking down on them, looking at each other and the tanks and the officers, who huddled together for a moment as they gestured and pointed at the buildings around them. The officers broke up their meeting in about a minute and began pulling squads of troops out of line and pointing to various buildings. The troops trailed off under NCOs. Then at least a hundred men peeled off and trooped down the steps into the Yau Ma Tei subway station, which was dark, without power.

Lin Pe removed her WB cell phone from her bag. When it synched up, she dialed the number she had memorized.

Whispering, she told the person who answered of the troops, where they were and what they were doing, how many she estimated there were. “They are going into the buildings, up on the rooftops, and down into the subway,” she told the woman on the other end of the line.

Then she hung up.

An officer was staring at her.

She palmed the cell phone, pretended not to notice him.

He was wearing a pistol. Continuing to stare at her, he began toying with the holster flap as artillery shells rumbled overhead and the earth shook from their impact.

The man couldn’t hold his feet still. All that dancing brought him a few steps closer, and he continued to toy with the holster. Now he pulled the pistol, took his eyes off her long enough to check it over.

When he looked again at Lin Pe, the officer still had the pistol in his hand. He seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something.

Would he search her? Shoot her?

She stood, turned to the nearest garbage can, took off the lid, and began rummaging through it as the artillery continued to pound.

Several minutes later she half turned so she could see him. His pistol was in his holster and he had his back to her as he talked to another officer.

Lin Pe bent over the next garbage can.

As the barrage hammered the entrance to the Cross-Harbor Tunnel, Bob York led Wu Tai Kwong and fifty other men through the subway tunnel under the strait. They had entered at the Central District Station; now they walked as quickly as they could given the unevenness of the rails and ties and the fact that the only light came from flashlights.

The third rail was not hot, which was a blessing since people occasionally stumbled against it. Wu had almost refused to let them use the flashlight, but with the York leading the way, no PLA soldier was going to surprise this little band.

The impact of the artillery shells could be felt rather than heard, a series of thuds that made the rails vibrate.

“What will we do if the electric power comes back on?” one soldier asked Wu.

“We have it turned off. It will not come on.”

“But if it does, a train might come through here.”

“You must trust me,” Wu told the nervous man, “as I trust you. We hold our lives in each other’s hands.”

Ironically, no one mentioned what Wu knew to be the worst aspect of the small, narrow tunnel: Any bullets fired in here would ricochet viciously. With its concrete sides and dearth of hiding places, this tunnel was a horrible place to fight.

Moving along, carrying two machine guns and a half dozen antitank rocket launchers, the rebels made good time. Still, Wu breathed easier when he felt the floor of the tunnel tilt upward and they began the climb to Kowloon.

They passed the southernmost subway station on Kowloon, Tsim Sha Tsui, and kept going. The next station was Jordan Road, and there they would stop. Beyond that was the station at the intersection of Nathan and Waterloo roads, Yau Ma Tei. Wu thought that PLA troops were somewhere between those two stations.

Twenty minutes after the barrage began, it was over. The rubble around the tunnel entrance was covered by a dense cloud of dirt and concrete particles, and there had been one casualty: a woman near the Tsim Sha Tsui East shopping development who went outside to watch and was hit by a sliver of flying metal. None of the other spectators was even scratched.

Breaking the silence following the barrage was the sound of running feet pounding the pavement. Four thousand troops of the People’s Liberation Army charged through the streets toward the tunnel as fast as they could run.

The Alvin York robot stood behind the curtain in the shoe shop where it had been placed. In its hands it held a water-cooled machine gun. Belt after belt of ammo was draped over its shoulders. All of its sensors were in operation at the moment, but only three were feeding data to the network: the UWB radar in its chest and the infrared sensor in its face, both of which looked through the curtain that obscured him and the glass of the shop window, and the audio sensor. The main York processing unit used data from all the Yorks to update the tactical situation. In addition, the net was receiving data from the ten reconnaissance bats that were still circling unseen over Kowloon and feeding real-time infrared video into the system.

All this information was displayed in two- and three-dimensional form on the master control monitors. Cole and the York technicians watched intently and waited. The waiting was growing more difficult by the second. Cole wanted to hit the troops after the leading edge of the assault was well past in the hope that the Yorks could disrupt the rear, which would panic the people in the lead.

“They are coming down Nathan and the Wylie-Chatham roads,” one technician said. “No doubt they will push down Austin, aiming for the tunnel.”

“We’ve got the Yorks positioned well enough,” Cole said. “They can’t win the battle for us, though they will help. We’re going to have to win it for ourselves.” He turned to the man at another panel and said, “Call the field commanders and tell them where the enemy is.”

Finally he touched the York operator on the shoulder. “Okay,” he said. “Do it.”

The operator slid the mouse over the Alvin York icon and clicked once.

Alvin reached out its left hand and tore the curtain down that hid it from people in the street. Only when the curtain was completely out of the way did it put its left hand back on the machine gun. Then it pulled the trigger, sweeping the gun back and forth, hosing bullets at the soldiers in the street, shattering window glass and knocking them down.

Alvin moved forward, right through the remains of the window to the street.

When it hit the sidewalk it turned north, away from the southern tip of the peninsula, and broke into a run. Alvin ran like a halfback. In seconds the York’s erratic, shifting pace was up to twenty miles per hour, a terrific dash against the bulk of the running soldiers, who were still flowing down the street toward it.

The York fired the machine gun as it ran, a shot for each target, its titanium claw working the gun so quickly that many of the soldiers thought the York was firing a continuous burst. In addition, the 5.56-millimeter weapon in the chest turret was engaging targets, different targets, in aimed single-shot rapid fire.

Several times the robot shot at soldiers that were too close to fall by the time it got to them, so it ran over them, hitting them like a speeding truck, causing their bodies to bounce away.

Here and there soldiers managed to fire shots at Alvin. A bounding York running erratically at twenty miles per hour along a totally dark street packed with humanity was an extremely difficult target, so most of the shots missed. The few full-metal-jacket bullets that hit the York spanged away after striking titanium or Kevlar.

Fred York’s nearest major threat was a machine gun nest in the third floor of a building on the corner of Nathan and Jordan roads. It left the apartment where it had been stationed and climbed the stairs to the roof of the building. In addition to the built-in weapon, Fred carried two antitank rocket launchers.

Children and householders stuck their heads out of their apartments to silently watch the robot pass, its machinery softly whining and the minigun barrel on the chest mount spinning ominously. Instinctively the civilians knew to say nothing, to make no noise, and to refrain from touching, but they could not resist the opportunity to see a York up close and personal.

Fred kept its legs flexed, so by bending its head it could get through the doors. When it straightened its head, the stalk on top dragged along the ceiling.

Once on the dark roof the robot moved quickly. It crossed the roof in three strides, saw that the next roof was only one story lower, and jumped.

An alley barred the way to the next building, which was two stories taller than the one the York unit was on. Without breaking stride Fred leaped the alley and went through a window of the taller building. Shards of glass cascaded to the street below.

Without electricity or the glow of city lights outside, the office building the York had leaped into was Stygian. This mattered not a whit to the York, which went through the nearest door and made its way along the hall, looking for the stairs.

Down the stairs, whining ever so gently, the hulking machine moved along the hallway toward the office suite that held the machine gun nest.

It found the people and the gun with its UWB radar. There were four men behind an office wall. One man was leaning out the window, looking at the street below, and the others were loading the gun. Fred detected the metallic sounds of the ammo belt being inserted in the gun and the chamber being charged.

“How thick is that wall?” Cole asked the operator who was monitoring Fred’s progress. Cole was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder.

“A few inches, I think. Typical commercial construction.”

“Have him shoot through it. If that doesn’t work, have him punch a hole in it and shoot through the hole.”

The robot’s minigun moved to slave itself to the aiming point, then fired. The soldier leaning out the window fell forward until he was lying across the sill.

Three more shots followed in less than a second. The other men around the machine gun fell to the floor.

“We’re going to need that gun,” Cole said. “Have Fred bring it along.”

“It won’t be able to maneuver very well carrying the launchers, the machine gun, and some ammo belts,” the operator objected.

“If it needs to move quickly, it can drop anything that hinders it.”

Dog and Easy York fought their way along the tops of the buildings toward the tank strongpoint at the Nathan-Waterloo roads intersection, one on each side of Nathan Road. On top of the buildings the fighting machines were at peak efficiency — there were no civilian spectators and no friendly soldiers, so everyone they saw they shot.

Running, leaping from roof to roof, scrambling up or down, shooting at — and hitting — every target that the sensors detected, the Yorks covered six blocks quickly.

Each York carried an antitank rocket, so when they were in range they stepped to the edge of the buildings and brought the launch tubes to firing position. The Yorks fired their rockets simultaneously.

Flames jetted from the open hatches of the tanks as the rockets penetrated the relatively thin upper deck armor and exploded inside.

The one tank that survived was half buried inside a corner store, with its gun punched through the store and pointing down Nathan Road. When the other two tanks were hit, the commander of this tank screamed at his driver, “Go, go, go!”

The driver popped the clutch and the tank leaped forward, collapsing the corner of the building that sheltered it. It accelerated across the sidewalk and bulled through a line of parked cars.

The tank crossed Nathan at an angle and rode up on the cars parked on the left side of the road, crushing them, as the driver struggled to turn the tank to the right to keep it in the road. The turn kept his left tread on top of the parked cars, which were squashed and ejected backward as the tread fought for purchase. PLA soldiers hiding in shop doorways and behind cars ran for their lives.

Into this bedlam the Yorks began tossing grenades. One of the grenades ignited fuel trickling from a crushed gasoline tank, and soon the car was burning in the street and casting an eerie glow on the storefronts and the wreckage.

Dog York was throwing its last grenade when it was hit in the back by two bursts of rifle bullets. It spun and found two PLA soldiers running toward it, shooting. They probably intended to push or throw it over the edge of the building, but they had no chance. With bullets bouncing off its torso, the robot leaped and grabbed each by the neck with its powerful titanium claws, killing them instantly. Then it tossed the bodies off the roof.

Easy and Dog descended the stairs in their respective buildings, hunting for PLA soldiers. There was a machine gun nest in a third-floor apartment of Easy’s building. It tore its way through walls, killed the soldiers, and picked up the gun. With ammo belts draped over its shoulders, the York unit went into the hallway and descended the stairs.

Someone dropped a grenade down the staircase. The thing exploded a few feet from Easy, showering it with shrapnel, but it kept going.

Out in the street it attacked the soldiers there with the machine gun and the few rounds remaining in the minigun. The tank was long gone, careening south on Nathan Road, leaving a trail of crushed and damaged vehicles in its wake.

Dog came out of a building on the other side and began working in tandem with Easy, killing every enemy soldier they detected.

One soldier huddled behind a car heard a running York coming at him and threw down his rifle. He stood with his hands in the air.

The Yorks ignored him.

Seeing this, more and more soldiers threw down their weapons and stood, almost two hundred of them.

The shooting stopped. The two Yorks came to a halt in the center of the intersection back-to-back, one holding a machine gun, their heads turning back and forth, the barrels of their miniguns spinning silently.

In the control room, Virgil Cole looked the situation over, then ordered the operator to stop the spinning miniguns to save battery power.

The runaway tank tore south on Nathan Road, forcing the PLA soldiers in the street to scurry for cover or get run over. The panicked tank commander kept the hatch open so he could look up at the buildings, spot enemies with antitank weapons.

Alvin York, running north up the street, saw the tank coming and got between two parked vehicles, out of the way. As the tank passed, Alvin chased it.

The York was capable of a sustained pace of twenty miles per hour and even higher speeds in short, battery-draining bursts. Alvin used that speed now to catch the tank.

The tanker must have sensed the York coming, for he turned and looked back just as Alvin leaped onto the back of the machine and aimed the minigun at the tanker’s head. One shot in the head killed the man.

Alvin pulled the body from the hatch and threw it backward into the street.

Then the robot climbed up on the turret and descended into the tank.

The driver pulled a pistol and emptied it at Alvin. Bullets ricocheting inside the steel compartment killed the gunner, who slumped in his seat.

The out-of-control tank smashed over a line of cars, crossed a sidewalk, and buried itself inside a shop selling electronic gadgets. With the treads still spinning, the tank tore out the building’s supports, causing it to collapse.

Inside the tank Alvin York reached for the screaming driver and tore his head from his body.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Virgil Cole exclaimed as he witnessed the gruesome scene on the computer monitor, two miles away. “Couldn’t you just have the York shoot the guy?”

“He’s on full automatic, sir,” the controller responded. “The program is designed to allow him to conserve as much ammunition as possible.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Cole said, then turned away so he wouldn’t have to look.

The Bob York robot saw the PLA soldiers advancing south in the subway tunnel toward the Jordan Road station and opened fire. It was standing in total darkness, partially hidden behind a pillar between the two train tracks. Wu had his men on the platforms on each side where they could not be hit by ricocheting bullets.

When the York opened fire, Wu shoved the muzzle of the machine gun he was manning around the edge of the platform and triggered a long burst. On the other platform another rebel did the same. The muzzle flashes lit the scene in a ghastly flickering light.

Wu waggled the barrel of the weapon, hosing the bullets into the tunnel. Up tunnel he glimpsed showers of sparks where the bullets bounced off concrete.

In that dark, closed space the din of the hammering machine guns and the strobing muzzle flashes were almost psychedelic.

Wu stopped firing when he saw Bob York leave its hiding place and begin advancing. He would like to know what the York was seeing, but the only way to find out would be by calling the command center — and the wide-band cell phones did not work in this tunnel. Wu knew because he had already tried it.

The York fired several more individual shots, then ceased. With his eyes closed, waiting for them to adjust to the darkness, Wu listened to the York until he could hear it no more. As the seconds passed he thought he could hear someone sobbing.

Well, there was no way around it. He was going to have to put his men on the track and advance.

“Let’s go,” he whispered and lowered himself over the edge of the platform. Two other rebels passed down the machine gun.

He had advanced fewer than fifty yards before he stumbled over the first body. He stumbled over six more bodies before he came to his first live man, who was moaning softly, begging not to be shot. Wu flipped on his flashlight. In the beam he found a PLA soldier on his knees with his hands in the air. The man’s eyes were shut and he had blood flowing from a gash on his forehead.

One of the men with Wu Tai Kwong picked up the soldier’s weapon and told him to follow along behind the rebels.

On the streets above the subway tunnel the PLA had ceased to be a fighting force. The soldiers were no longer under military control; they were either running for their lives, trying to find a place to hide, or surrendering.

After conferring with Virgil Cole on the WB cell phone, Michael Gao ordered the rebel assault force to advance northward up the avenues.

The firing was sporadic and dying down. Soon each rebel was carrying an armful of rifles and being trailed by a half dozen PLA soldiers.

Gao met Wu Tai Kwong at the street entrance to the Yau Ma Tei subway station near the Nathan-Waterloo intersection. They conferred briefly, decided to hold the prisoners in the center of the intersection with a few guards while the main force advanced with the Yorks up Waterloo Road toward the army base. Wu called Cole on the cell phone and told him what they wanted to do.

While the leaders conferred, people began coming out of the apartment buildings on the side streets and avenues. They were in a festive mood and proved hard to handle.

When Wu finally got his men moving toward the army base, the civilians followed. Indeed, they mixed freely with his troops, as if everyone were out for an evening stroll.

Another force of two hundred rebels, accompanied by Charlie York, advanced northeastward toward the entrance to the naval base. The rebels advanced cautiously. The command center had informed them that the naval base personnel had dug a trench near the gate to the base and were in it with machine guns, grenade launchers, and antitank rockets.

After consultation, the rebels decided to appear in front of the position and threaten it while Charlie York worked its way over the buildings to a flanking position. When it was in position, it could pin the enemy with a machine gun while the rebels made an assault.

Charlie York had no trouble getting into position. The building contained enemy soldiers, but fighting in a dark building was the forte of the Yorks. Using infrared sensors and UWB radar, the Charlie robot quickly found the enemy and exterminated them.

Standing in a fourth-floor window looking the length of the trench, Charlie opened fire with the machine gun that it held cradled in its arms. Each round was aimed, each round found a target.

The people in the trench saw only the muzzle flashes on the side of the building. With people dying all around him, one man pointed an antitank rocket launcher at the muzzle flashes and squeezed it off.

The rocket hit Charlie in the right arm. The impact ripped the arm from its socket and knocked the robot off its feet. Shrapnel from the shaped charge in the warhead damaged the minigun, rendering it useless.

“Damn!” said an exasperated Virgil Cole. “That’s what happens when we sacrifice mobility, put a York in a fixed position and let people whale away at him. Damnation! We’re going to lose a bunch of our guys carrying this trench if we don’t get with the program, people! Don’t let a York stand there like a statue until someone blows it into a thousand pieces! Now have Charlie jump down into the trench and get on with it.”

Charlie leaped… forty feet into soft earth. It fell when it landed, its left hand ending up six inches under the ground.

The robot scrambled to its feet and charged the nearest live man with a weapon. Fortunately it didn’t have far to go, because without the right arm to assist in balancing it lurched badly.

The melee that followed was short and vicious. Using only its left claws, Charlie York tore at living human flesh. One man had an arm ripped off at the shoulder and began screaming, a high-pitched wail that lasted until Charlie hit him in the head, fatally fracturing his skull.

The darkness, the screaming, the maniacal superhuman thing that killed by hitting, ripping, or tearing — the nerve of many of the sailors broke. They dropped their weapons and ran, either back onto the naval base or over the lip of the trench toward the rebels.

In less than a minute it was over.

The man leading the assault group didn’t learn that for another thirty seconds, when his WB cell phone rang. “You can advance now,” the controller said.

Governor Sun Siu Ki listened to the radioed reports from the units in the field and watched the headquarters staff mark the positions on a table map of Hong Kong. The senior officer was Colonel Soong, a practical, down-to-earth military professional who had spent forty years in the army. He had tried to advise Sun of the reality of the military situation earlier in the evening but the governor refused to listen, replied with bombast and party slogans and quotes from Chairman Mao about being one with the people.

As the Yorks cut a swath through his combat forces and demoralized the rest, Soong suggested that Sun confer with Beijing, which he did via the radiotelephone.

The fall of the naval base was the turning point for Colonel Soong. It was then that he realized that he could not defeat the rebels with the forces he had at his disposal. He made this statement to Sun, who turned deadly pale.

After one more hurried conversation with Beijing, Sun got out his cell phone and made a local call.

“Sonny Wong.”

“Governor Sun here, Wong.” He took the time to exchange the usual pleasantries, perhaps as a way of composing himself.

With that over, he said, “I am calling to inform you that Beijing has decided to accept your offer. They are wiring one hundred million American dollars to your account in Switzerland.”

“Rather late in the game, don’t you think, Sun?”

“Governments are not like businesses — some things take time.”

“I understand.” Sonny let the silence build, then said, “I should wait until the money is in my account before I act, but since the hour is so late, I’ll trust the government’s good faith and move ahead expeditiously.”

“Good! Good!” Sun said, genuinely grateful. “The government has committed to pay; it will honor its commitment, as it does all its obligations.”

“Of course,” said Sonny, a bit underwhelmed. “I’ll let you get back to your pressing duties while I get on with mine.”

When he severed the connection, for some reason Sun Siu Ki felt better.

Sonny Wong tossed the cell phone on his desk and broke into a roaring belly laugh.

Kerry Kent was sitting across from Wong. Her broken nose had been set, filled with packing, and taped into position. If she could have frowned, she would have.

“What’s so funny?”

“We’ve won! That idiot Sun has talked Beijing into paying me a hundred million American.”

“I told you Cole took the bombs out of the Yorks,” Kent said. “We can’t sabotage them. There is nothing we can do even to slow the rebels.”

Sonny grinned pleasantly. “I know that and you know that,” he said, “but the ministers in Beijing don’t. By the time they figure out that we have done nothing to earn the money it will be too late. The money will be in my bank and they will be unable to reverse the transaction.”

Sonny Wong laughed awhile, then poured himself a drink of good single-malt Scotch whiskey and lit a cigarette.

Damn, he felt good.

Too bad about Yuri. Too bad about the restaurant and the yacht. Grafton and Cole had screwed everything up and cost him some serious money. Before he left Hong Kong tomorrow he should probably settle that score.

But tonight, a drink. A laugh. One hundred million from the Communists in Beijing and ten million from their archenemy, Rip Buckingham’s old man down under.

A good score, any way you looked at it.

Ha ha ha!

“Here’s to revolution, wherever and whenever,” Sonny Wong said and lifted his glass.

Rip Buckingham accompanied the rebels following the Yorks north on Nathan Road. He stopped to watch technicians service the Yorks, replace batteries, replenish ammo, oil and lubricate them. He looked over the herd of prisoners sitting in the center of the street — they didn’t seem unhappy — then he went looking for Lin Pe.

He found his mother-in-law just where the controller said she was, in the entrance to the alley a block west of the Nathan-Waterloo intersection. The street was filled with a happy, joyous crowd, everyone talking at once. The glare of numerous small fires that the celebrants had built in the center of the streets lit the scene.

Rip sat down beside her. The old woman looked exhausted.

“We have won,” he told her. “The PLA soldiers are surrendering by the hundreds, by the thousands.”

“They really did not want to fight,” Lin Pe said. “I could see that in their faces. Their officers made them fight.”

They sat together watching the rebels stream up Nathan Road and turn east, heading for the army base. From where they sat they could see one of the still-smoking tank hulks. When the breeze gave them a whiff, the smoke smelled of burning diesel fuel and rubber, a nauseating combination.

“Why are you here?” Lin Pe demanded. “Why are you not writing this story for the world? That is your job.”

“Sue Lin was worried. She wanted me to come. Since I love you both, I could not refuse.”

After a moment to collect his thoughts, Rip said, “Wu was rescued earlier this evening. He is leading the rebels now. He was just here a little while ago, organizing the rebel forces. He led them up Waterloo Road toward the army base.”

Lin Pe nodded. She had heard the news that Wu was alive and with the rebels earlier this evening from the girl taking cell phone calls. She didn’t say that to Rip, though; she was so tired. And content.

In the midst of this raucous, happy crowd she could feel the common thread of humanity that ran down the long centuries of Chinese history from the unknowable past, through the present, into the unknowable future. Dynasties, wars, famines, babies born, and old people buried — these living people surrounding her now, filling the streets, were the sum of all that had ever been, and in their spirits and bodies they carried the future, all that would ever be.

She rested her head on her knees. With her eyes closed she could see her parents’ faces as they were when she was very young, could remember the wonder she felt when she saw the sun rise on a misty morning, with the earth pungent and fresh after a night’s rain. She remembered her husband, his face, the way he touched her, the feeling she had that their children were life the way it should be — these memories washed over her now, swept her along.

Lin Pe got out her notebook and wrote, “You are mankind.”

She stared at the words, trying to decide if she had captured the nub of it.

Beside the first sentence she wrote, “You are the past and the future.”

She gave it one last try: “Do not despair — life is happening as it should.”

Sun Siu Ki’s mood was just the opposite of Lin Pe’s. His world was crashing in on him. The rebels owned Hong Kong Island. They had the only television and radio stations still operating in the S.A.R. and were filling the airways with their capitalist, imperialist filth. Rebels were in control at the airfield on Lantau and at the naval base. With six robots and an armed mob, they defeated the trained troops Colonel Soong had put in the field. In fact, the only real estate the government still controlled in the Hong Kong S.A.R. was the army base.

All this, Sun reflected, was a local disaster, like a fire or an earthquake. It was just his bad fortune to be here when it happened. Certainly his friends in Beijing would understand.

The only ray of sunshine in this miasma of doom was the certain knowledge that the huge Chinese army, armed with weapons featuring the latest technology — some of it purchased from the Russians and the rest stolen from the Americans — would in the fullness of time crush these rebels like a tidal wave coming ashore, overwhelming all in its path.

Six robots? Untrained civilians with captured rifles and limited ammunition? Amateur officers? They didn’t stand a chance.

The sky to the east was pink with the coming dawn when Colonel Soong faced the brooding governor.

“The base is surrounded,” the colonel said. “The rebels have completely encircled the perimeter of the base.”

Sun got out of his chair and made his way to the map table. Grease marks on the map told the story.

“I have been begging Beijing to launch an air strike,” Sun said. “Perhaps our comrades will deliver us.”

The colonel didn’t reply. He was fed up with wishful thinking.

“Will they attack?” Sun asked, referring to the rebels. “Unless we surrender.”

“Surrender?”

“They have not yet demanded our surrender, but we must consider it. They may attack without asking, or they ask and attack if we refuse.”

“Why not use your artillery? You know where they are — hammer them into the earth.”

“While we are hammering they will attack. There are too many people out there, Governor, for us to stop them.”

Sun was incredulous. “What? A few thousand armed civilians against your trained soldiers?”

“We have about three thousand fighting men left on the base, counting every able-bodied man. My officers estimate there are more than two hundred thousand people outside the fence just now. Even if we set about slaughtering them with machine guns and artillery, they can push the fence down and overwhelm us before we kill them all.”

Sun didn’t believe it and said so. Soong took him to an observation tower to see for himself.

With the sun peeping over the earth’s rim, Sun forced his tired legs to climb the stairs. From three stories up on the open-air platform near the parade ground — a structure normally used to train paratroops and review military parades — one could see the main gate and the road beyond and several hundred yards of the base fence.

The situation was as the colonel had presented it. Sun found himself staring at a sea of humanity. The people weren’t under cover — they were standing and sitting almost shoulder-to-shoulder. People! In every direction, as far as he could see.

A soft moan of despair escaped the governor. He closed his eyes, swayed as he hung on to the railing.

He took time to compose himself, then said, “It would be a political and propaganda disaster if the rebels were to capture me. We mustn’t take that risk. Order a helicopter warmed up.”

“Governor, I don’t think you understand. The rebels have the base completely surrounded. Yesterday they fired missiles at the helicopter you were in. If you try to leave, Governor, they will shoot you down.”

A breathless messenger from the command center brought a ray of hope. “Bombers are inbound, sir. They have radioed for instructions. What targets do you wish them to attack?”

“The rebels around the army base?” The pilot of the leading Sian H-6 bomber asked this question of his radio operator.

“Yes, sir. That is the order. Here is the chart.” The radio operator passed it forward to the copilot, who held it so the pilot could see.

The Sian H-6 was a twin-engine subsonic medium bomber, an unlicensed Chinese version of the Russian Tupolev Tu-16 Badger. First flown in 1952, the Badger was used only as a target drone or engine test bed in Russia these days. However, in China the H-6 was still a front-line aircraft in the air force of the PLA. This morning four of them were on their way to Hong Kong.

“The rebels are just outside the base perimeter,” the radio operator said.

As the implications of the target assignment sank in, the pilot and copilot looked at each other without enthusiasm. To ensure the bombs fell on the rebels and not inside the base, they would have to bomb from a very low altitude. Since the navigation-bombing radar was useless at low levels, the bombardier at his station in the glass nose would merely release the bombs as the plane flew over the enemy. As long as the rebels lacked antiaircraft missiles or radar-directed artillery, the bombers should be able to strike their target. If the weather was good enough.

“What did you tell the base commander?” the pilot asked the radio operator.

“That we would try for the assigned target, sir.”

“Tell the other airplanes to follow us in single file. We shall make a pass to locate the target, then bomb on the second pass.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We should be bombing on the first pass,” the copilot objected on the ICS.

“I want to see what’s there.”

“We have been ordered to bomb — a first pass without bombing will merely wake up the rebels.”

“When you are the pilot in command you can do it your way. Today we do it my way.”

After he squashed the copilot, the pilot reminded his gunners to keep a sharp lookout. Alas, the Sian H-6 lacked a radar-warning receiver. The plane contained a single forward-firing 23-millimeter cannon and three twin 23-millimeter mounts: a remote on the top of the fuselage, one on the belly, and a manned mount in the tail. Only the tail turret was aimed by a fire-control radar.

The bombers were three miles high when they flew across the city of Hong Kong and turned eastward, out to sea, still descending. No low clouds this morning, the pilot noted, visibility five or six miles. He and the bombardier stared down into the haze as the planes flew over the city.

“I see the base,” said the bombardier on the intercom.

“They should have sent fighters to escort us,” the copilot said nervously as he searched the wide, empty sky.

“They did!” the tail gunner sang out. “At four o’clock, high.” ‘

The pilot looked in the indicated direction with a sense of foreboding. The briefing officer had specifically said there would be no escorting fighters. Rumor had it that the fighter pilots were politically unreliable. A civil war, the pilot told himself, was mankind’s worst fear realized.

“Shengyang J-11s. Two of them.” The tail gunner again.

“Uh-oh,” said the copilot, who had also been told that the J-11 squadron at Hong Kong had joined the rebels. “What do we do now?”

“Those fighters may be hostile,” the pilot told the tail gunner. “If they shoot a missile or line us up for a gunshot, be ready.”

“Aye,” said the gunner, his voice rising in pitch. Like everyone in the bomber, he knew he had little chance of hitting an incoming missile with his gun. In fact, he had never been allowed to fire his gun with real ammunition.

Ensuring he was out of 23-millimeter range, Major Ma Chow turned to get behind the four bombers, which were strung out in trail. His wingman stayed in a loose cruise formation, several hundred feet behind Ma and slightly above the plane; of Ma’s turn.

Ma Chow was well aware of the fact that the bombers were defenseless against the two fighters, each of which was armed with four air-to-air missiles and one hundred and forty-nine 30-millimeter cannon shells. The fact that each plane was flown by a crew of his fellow countrymen also weighed heavily on him.

“What do we do?” his wingman asked over the radio.

“Let’s try the radio,” Ma Chow replied.

“Think they know we’re back here?”

“If they don’t, we’ll tell them.” The radios in Chinese warplanes could transmit and receive on only four frequencies, so it was a simple matter to try each of them.

Making a long, slow, descending turn in smooth air, the bombers dropped to a thousand feet above the water before they began their run westward toward the army base. Once in level flight the four bombers descended still farther, until they were only four hundred feet above the water.

Ma Chow locked up the trailing bomber with his radar and readied a missile.

“Bomber lead over Kowloon, this is fighter lead, over.” The pilot and copilot of the H-6 heard the call in their headphones.

“What do we do?” the copilot asked, panic evident in his voice. “If we talk to them the authorities will call it treason.”

“Bomber lead, this is fighter lead. If any of the bombers open your bomb bay doors, we will shoot you down. Please acknowledge.”

The bomber pilot didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. He led the bombers around an island, then they straightened on course for the army base.

They crossed the waterline at about two hundred fifty knots, four hundred feet high.

There was no flak, of course, and no missiles. The planes flew in and out of splotchy sunshine over an immense, sprawling city. Ma Chow and the bomber pilots each wondered what the other would do as the tension ratcheted tighter and tighter.

“Target one mile,” the bombardier of the lead bomber sang out on the ICS. He readied the bombsight so that he could designate his aim point as he passed over it; the sight would track that location mechanically and give him steering back to it.

Crossing rooftops, racing along a few hundred feet up with the rising sun behind them and the buildings casting long shadows ahead, the string of planes thundered toward the army base. Automatically the pilot retarded the throttles slightly, causing the speed to bleed off still more.

Then they saw the people. A horde of people, an endless sea of humanity extending for miles completely surrounded the base.

“Those must be the rebels,” the bombardier said disgustedly as the lead plane swept overhead. “They aren’t even armed.”

“A few of them are,” the copilot offered.

The pilot, also looking, said nothing. He had never seen so many people in one place at one time in his life.

When they were past the base the pilot trimmed the nose a bit higher and pushed the power levers forward. With the two engines developing ninety-five percent r.p.m., he stabilized in a cruise climb. Passing three thousand feet, he said to the copilot, “I think it’s time we went home.”

“They will shoot us for disobeying orders,” the copilot objected.

“I saw no rebels, merely civilians.”

“Those were the rebels,” the copilot said obstinately. He was something of a fool, the pilot thought.

“You would bomb them, would you?”

“I have a wife and son at Quangzou,” the copilot replied, naming the town near the airbase they left before dawn.

“Life is full of shitty choices,” the pilot shot back. “Are you suicidal? If we open the bomb bay doors those fighters will swat us out of the sky.”

Before the copilot could think of an answer to that verity, the tail gunner sang out on the ICS, “Number two has dropped his landing gear! He’s turning out of formation. And there goes number four! They must be going to land at Lantau.”

There it is! the pilot told himself. Make up your mind.

He retarded the throttles; with the nose in a climb attitude, the speed bled off sharply. Now he reached for the gear handle and moved it to die down position. As the hydraulics hummed and the gear extended, the pilot said to the copilot, “Better hope it’s a short war.”

Three of the bombers dropped their landing gear and turned for the airfield at Lantau. Only one continued to climb away to the northeast. Ma Chow’s wingman went with the landing bombers while Ma Chow followed the one climbing out. As it passed twenty thousand feet he broke away.

He did a large 360-degree turn while he watched the lone H-6 disappear into the haze. When it was completely gone, he checked his compass, then dropped the fighter’s nose.

Down he went toward the city below, accelerating rapidly. In seconds the plane was supersonic. He kept the nose down, let it accelerate.

Passing five thousand feet, Ma Chow engaged his after-burners. The airspeed slid past Mach two.

The tail of the fighter was hidden by a moisture disk condensing in the supersonic shock wave as Ma Chow flew across the PLA base below a thousand feet. Then he lifted his fighter’s nose and rode his afterburner plumes straight up into the gauzy June morning.

Wu Tai Kwong and the members of the Scarlet Team were standing outside the closed main gate in plain sight of the PLA troops behind the gate and perimeter fence and in the observation tower when the shock wave of the racing fighter hit them like an explosion. When the crowd realized what it was, they cheered lustily.

Every person in the crowd looked up to watch the fighter disappear into the haze over their heads.

Wu listened to the fading roar of the engines and glanced at the hands of his watch, which were creeping toward seven o’clock.

At two minutes before the appointed hour, Wu nodded at Virgil Cole, who had a portable York control unit hanging from a strap around his neck. He used the unit to walk Alvin York forward and stop it next to Wu, who examined the robot with interest. This was the first time he had seen a York up close in the daylight.

When the Scarlet Team had looked it over, they stood aside, giving the soldiers on the other side of the fence their first good look. Cole walked the York to the closed metal gate, stopping it just a few feet short.

As the seconds ticked away, the crowd gradually fell silent. All that could be heard was the buzzing of the television helicopter overhead. Looking around, Cole tried to guess how many people were there. A quarter million, he thought, more or less. Most were unarmed, of course, but that was not the point. In human affairs numbers matter.

At precisely seven o’clock, Wu Tai Kwong nodded at Cole and he clicked on an icon.

Alvin York stepped forward, seized the gate, and tore it from its hinges. The robot threw the gate off to one side, then walked through the opening with its head scanning and minigun barrel spinning. Behind it walked the Scarlet Team, and behind them, all the people in the world.

The waiting soldiers threw down their rifles and stood aside. Alvin York and the Scarlet Team walked on by.

The Scarlet Team was not around when the crowd found Governor Sun hiding in a storage closet in a barracks. They dragged him outside and stripped him naked.

By the time Wu and Cole fought their way through the packed humanity, it was too late for Sun. The crowd used their fingernails to rip the flesh from his bones, then they pulled his limbs from their sockets and wrenched them from his body. He screamed some, then succumbed. Even if Wu could have reached Sun’s person, it is doubtful that anyone could have stopped the mob.

The blood riot was captured by the television camera a few hundred feet overhead. Fortunately the human wave that swarmed over the base was fairly well-behaved and Wu’s armed men were able to prevent wholesale looting of the military stores.

By noon the crowd had thinned considerably, and by mid-afternoon Wu’s lieutenants began herding civilians off the base so they could see what was left.

Wu and Cole departed soon after Sun’s death. They had much to accomplish and very little time.