Springboard

43

Wu’s car rolled through the streets, heading for the docks. It was incredible, he still couldn’t quite believe it, but it was all going exactly as they had intended. This was something new: a battle plan that survived first contact with the enemy!

Things could not have gone any better. Here he was, riding behind a heavy Daewoo truck made in Guangxi — and wasn’t that amusing? A Korean/Chinese venture — and that truck was full of money, a rich man’s fortune, all of which was his.

Locke expected one-fifth of the haul, and deserved as much for his excellent work in setting up and executing the plan. And Locke’s cut was not so much, not when such a vast sum was at hand. But even so, Locke was yet another loose end that had to be tied off, and besides, an extra fifty or sixty million dollars U.S. would go a long way to making sure Wu’s rise to power went smoothly.

Wu cared nothing for the money itself, nor the toys it could buy him, only the power that would allow him to do big things. It was but a tool. A very large hammer with which he could bludgeon any who stood in his way.

Wu’s terrible dog the Mongol would deal with Locke, and then Wu himself would deal with his dog. Hard, but necessary. A man sometimes had to do things for the greater good that were… distasteful.

Eventually, he would rule Taiwan. Eventually, he would have an army at his back. Eventually, he would find the precise place upon which to stand and insert his lever, and with it, he could topple the base government that ran his homeland. And then? Well, then, eventually, it would perhaps be time to test the Achilles’ heel of the Americans’ technological superiority in ways that really mattered.

Lofty goals, to be sure, but possible, possible—

Ahead, he could see the bay. Not long now—

The streets weren’t crowded — he’d had his men mostly clear this one, shoving pedestrians away from the street and moving vehicular traffic aside. But standing on the corner ahead and to his right were two Westerners, a man and a woman, tourists wearing cameras and those silly shorts and loud shirts and stupid, vacant expressions that marked them as such. Fools! Did they not see there were important things being done here?

One of the tourists, the woman, bent down and made a motion as if rolling a ball.

What was she doing—?

Just ahead of his car, the Daewoo truck lurched to one side. There was an orange flash, a loud explosion, and the truck skidded and stopped.

Wu’s driver slammed on his brakes, and Wu’s car also slewed to a halt, centimeters short of hitting the truck’s back bumper.

The two tourists ran off.

Yet another man in loud Western clothes came from around the corner of a building, and what he had on his shoulder was not something any tourist should have — it was a rocket launcher, looked like an old PF-89, an 80mm light antitank weapon—

Wu had time to frown, and then the tourist fired the launcher.

The money truck exploded.

The air was suddenly filled with colorful graffiti.

The most expensive graffiti the world had ever seen. Wu reached for his pistol—

Yet another pair of tourists appeared from nowhere and stood next to his car, submachine guns pointed at him.

“Don’t try it, General,” one of the tourists said, in English.

Wu’s driver pulled his own submachine gun from the seat, but before he could fire it, the man who had spoken fired his own weapon, a quick, three-round burst, 9mm.

The empty cartridges sparkled and fell in slow motion in the afternoon sunshine…

Wu’s driver jerked and slumped against the driver’s-side window, blood oozing from his shattered head.

This couldn’t be happening! Not in the middle of the street in Macao! Not in Wu’s own command territory! Not this close to victory!

“Step out of the car, sir. Now!”

Stunned, Wu obeyed.

Around him, various paper currencies fluttered like a flock of wounded birds, flying and wafting and settling upon the street and sidewalk.

There was no stopping people from rushing out to gather it in now.