Springboard

38

The plane was an old PS-1 ASW Flying Boat, a Shin Meiwa, made in Japan forty or fifty years ago, but registered to a Chinese tourist-transport company owned by the CIA. It wasn’t the most spacious craft for a full platoon, but it worked well enough, and it was what was available.

The Chinese pilot landed the plane in the bay not three miles away from Macao, and did a slow taxi to a dock on the northeast side of the city. Macao was small geographically, even with something more than half a million locals living there — but the plane’s dock was out of the way, and Kent and his team were able to leave in plain sight, disguised as tourists. They were strung with cameras, they carried overnight bags or day packs, there were women and men, and they looked like any other group of Westerners on a charter flight, come to lose money at the casinos.

The officials at the dock who were to check passports belonged to the Company, Kent had been told, and a uniformed and armed guard smiled and waved at them as they walked along the dock to where a chartered bus awaited them, so that seemed to be true.

On the bus, which was not air-conditioned, and which had all the windows down to allow the semitropical heat and breeze in, Fernandez, dressed in a bright blue Hawaiian shirt and khaki shorts and sandals, said, “That seemed awful easy.”

Kent shrugged. “Who wants to sneak into China?”

“I guess.”

The CIA liaison, a tall and thin man with carroty red hair who called himself Rusty, dropped into the seat in front of Kent and turned to look at him. “We have your staging area set up, Colonel.”

“Any problems?”

“With the Chairman of JCS and the Director of the Company breathing down our necks? Not hardly. If I had a red carpet, I’d have rolled it out for you and saluted as you strolled by.”

Kent smiled. It was good to have a boss with clout when you needed it.

The ride didn’t take long, and ended at a small hotel, the Golden Road.

“Company owns this, too?”

“Enough of it so the co-owners don’t complain when we book conventions of rich tourists.”

“And we are…?”

“American dentists,” Rusty said.

“Dentists?”

“It was that or lawyers.”

Fernandez shook his head. “My mother wanted me to be a lawyer. She was afraid of dentists.”

“Everybody is afraid of dentists,” the CIA man said. “Given a choice, most people would rather sit on a hot stove than go to the dentist. People are less afraid of death than dentists. Makes good cover.”

“Any word on Wu?” Kent asked.

“The last we heard, he had left the base with his driver in his staff car. But we lost him in the warehouse district, and we don’t have electronics on his vehicle. He’ll turn up again pretty soon. It’s not that big a town.”

“Good.”

Kent and his troops went into the hotel and were assigned rooms. He arranged to meet backup with the unit in a meeting room reserved for them in an hour, which gave everybody time to settle in and drop off their gear.

An hour later, as Kent strolled toward the meeting room, he was stopped at the door by Fernandez.

“Sir, I just got word from the spooks. We, uh, have a… situation on the ground here.”

Kent looked at him. “Which is…?”

“Apparently there has been some kind of terrorist attack on several of the local casinos. The Army has moved in to deal with it.”

“And…?”

“Wu himself is leading the troops.”

Kent nodded. “I can understand that. Some men don’t like to be armchair commanders.”

“It appears they have the problem in hand, but we can’t tell for sure — all communications from the sites have been jammed.”

“That would be standard—” He stopped. “Oh, my God.”

“Sir?”

“I can’t believe it.”

“What is that, Colonel?” Fernandez looked puzzled. Kent himself was feeling more than a little stupid.

“Wu. That’s what it’s all about. The misdirection — the computer attacks, trying to buy bombs — those were cover.”

“To do what? Rob some casinos?”

“Exactly!”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes. It makes perfect sense.”

Fernandez frowned. “It seems like an awful lot of trouble just to knock off a few casinos.”

“We’re not talking about lunch money, are we? Got to be tens, maybe hundreds of millions involved.”

Kent could see as it sank in.

After a moment, Fernandez said, “He can’t get away with it.”

“Who is going to stop him, Captain?” Kent asked. “He’s the Army! He can outgun anybody who’d try — at least in the short run. Damn, why didn’t I see this before?”

Fernandez didn’t say anything.

“Get the teams ready,” Kent said. “He’ll have to move the money somehow. If we follow that, we can get him.”

Fernandez hesitated, then asked, “Do we really need to get him?”

Kent looked at him. “What are you talking about, Julio?”

“Well, Colonel, if all the computer attacks were to set up a robbery, we know what he’s up to now, don’t we? It’s not our money.”

“True. But he still pulled off those attacks, which means he could do it again, if he had a reason to. And a man this complicated has to have more on his agenda. What is he going to do with all this money?”

Fernandez shrugged. “Buy a new car?”

“Not around here, he won’t. And if he’s the guy trying to get hold of surplus Soviet nukes? We sure need to know about that. No, Captain, it was a good thought, but we continue with the operation. We have questions, and this is the man with the answers.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go!”

“Gone, sir.”

Once Julio was in the wind, Kent considered his next move. He could make a secure uplink with a Marine comsat and put in a call to General Hadden, though he knew what the man would tell him. You don’t stop in the middle of a battle because you think you know what the enemy is planning. Yes, it would be wise to apprise the commander of the situation, but Kent was the man on the ground and he had the best picture. What the general didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. No point in stirring up those waters just yet.