The Prisoner's Gold

49

McNutt stared in horror as a line of Chinese ZBL-09s advanced toward the Potala Palace through a light mist. He knew the kind of damage that could be done by such vehicles, and he knew the peaceful monks in their red robes had no way of stopping it.

With four oversized wheels on each side, the 21-ton armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) were offensively minded personnel carriers. The AFVs could move at sixty mph on a flat road, were fully amphibious, and their heavy exterior was capable of repelling 7.62 mm armor-piercing rounds. In typical Chinese fashion, these four were painted in a high-gloss black, forest green, and white camouflage pattern that failed miserably to blend with the local terrain.

The AFVs had room for three crew members and an additional seven passengers. McNutt knew that they typically had a 30 mm cannon mounted on the front of the gun turret, but for reasons he couldn’t explain the weapon had been removed from the first AFV in the four-vehicle convoy. The defanged turret was still menacing though, with a heavy machine gun mounted on a post and a gunner at the ready.

To McNutt, the AFVs resembled sharks on wheels. He quickly noted that while the first vehicle was missing its main gun, the other three sharks had their cannons intact. Worse still, their top hatches were battened down for business.

McNutt was seated at the foot of the main palace structure at the highest point on the eastern side of the building’s base. He’d slipped out of the guesthouse hours before the others. On this mission, he’d be without a sniper rifle. They were too tough to acquire in Tibet. Instead, he’d come out with just an automatic pistol and his wits. He figured if he couldn’t keep an eye on things through a scope, the least he could do was get in position before dawn.

He had been on site when the first tourists began to wander around the property, and he’d been in place when Cobb, Maggie, and Sarah had made their long ascent up the steps to the front door. He’d already learned his way around, finding the blind corners — the perfect places for an ambush — and scoping out the points of ingress and egress. But what he was mostly looking for were more phony cops coming to mess with his team.

The last thing he’d expected was a military convoy.

That is, if these men were actually soldiers.

The guards in Loulan had been heavily armored, too.

McNutt watched as the first AFV turned off the mostly empty Beijing Middle Road onto a side road that ran parallel to the hillside and ended at the Potala’s rear parking lot. He knew he would have to relocate if he wanted eyes on the winding route that led to the palace’s back door.

He whispered into his microphone. ‘Hey, Sanchez. You hear me?’

‘Loud and clear,’ Garcia said.

Before they had arrived in Tibet, McNutt had asked Garcia to check on local police and military personnel in the area. He knew the physical presence of soldiers on the ground was minimal in Lhasa — mostly to mollify protesters and civil rights groups in the international community, not to administer martial law — but he needed details on their positioning. Garcia had learned there was a small handful of men stationed inside the Potala and more in the eastern part of the city at a barracks not far from the team’s guesthouse. Based on the direction from which the AFVs were arriving, McNutt figured that whole reserve group was headed their way. The next largest contingent of the People’s Liberation Army was a garrison out at the airport.

McNutt continued to whisper. ‘Just wondering if you can do your computer thingy and tell me if the army is mobilizing its troops out at the airport.’

‘That’s a negative. They haven’t moved.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’m staring at them.’

Shortly after Cobb, Sarah, and Maggie had left the guesthouse, Papineau and Garcia had slipped out the back to a waiting vehicle that whisked them out of town. Cobb had decided that it would be a good thing to have them both ready to go in case the team was attacked again. Garcia was in a private hangar at the airport keeping an eye on the PLA and the arriving flights while Papineau made arrangements with the jet’s pilot to be ready at a moment’s notice.

‘Okay,’ McNutt said, barely relieved. ‘If they move at all, let me know ASAP. I have a bad feeling that this place is about to get rocked.’

McNutt left his post and ran along the base of the building, hoping to slip around the back where he could shadow the lone AFV if it started the ascent up the back road. There wasn’t anything he could do against an armored vehicle with just a handgun, but if he stayed hidden long enough he could confront the soldiers when they climbed out of the personnel carrier.

He crouched low and raced along the rocky soil, keeping an eye on the AFV as it slowly trundled along the road toward the parking area. The idea had occurred to him that this was simply the vehicle used to ferry soldiers up and down from their living quarters at the palace, which would explain the missing cannon on the turret.

Then again, it wouldn’t explain the other three AFVs out on the main road.

Just as he reached the end of the building, McNutt watched as the AFV turned away from the parking lot and up toward the winding road that led to the palace. His determination growing, he climbed over a low wall and dropped seven feet to the dirt on the other side before rushing around the edge of a curved tower to the back of the building. Staying in the shadows of the palace wall and partly cloaked by the morning mist, McNutt moved like a ghost nearer the AFV, which didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry. It trudged along at a slow pace, getting closer and closer to the rear entrance of the palace, showing no signs of hostility.

For a brief moment, McNutt began to doubt his feelings of dread.

Are they merely transporting supplies to the palace?

Maybe the other three AFVs are simply running drills.

But those thoughts vanished when he heard the first shot.

McNutt instinctively dove to the rocky ground. With a gun in his hand, he looked up and couldn’t believe what he saw. The gunner on the AFV was slumped forward, half-extended out of one of the twin hatches atop the vehicle. He was missing a sizeable chunk of his head.

A second later, automatic fire erupted from the hillside below and the armored sides of the AFV began sparking so much it looked like a fireworks display.

In a flash, McNutt realized he had gotten it all wrong.

The soldiers weren’t firing at him or anything else.

Someone was shooting at the goddamned army.