Threat Vector

SIXTY-FOUR

Dom, Sam, and Ding met their minder in the lobby of their hotel at seven a.m. for what the government media office termed a “cultural excursion.”

The minder introduced himself as George. He was a jovial man, as well as, all three Americans knew, a trained informant for Chinese intelligence. George would be taking these “journalists” on the day’s tour.

They were heading to the Mutianyu section of the wall, some fifty miles north of Beijing. Even before the minder ushered the men out to the covered drive of the hotel and into the van waiting to take them there, he explained in his halting English that they were wise to choose this portion of the wall to see, as the rest of the media contingent had opted for a closer site that had, unfortunately, changed much in the last years because of renovation.

Chavez nodded and smiled as he climbed into the van, and in a Spanish accent that he thought was neither Argentine-sounding nor terribly necessary, he told his minder he was glad his producers had been so wise as to suggest this portion of the Great Wall for their feature story.

In truth, Chavez did not give a shit about the Great Wall of China. Not the Mutianyu section, not any section. Sure, if this had been a vacation and he’d been over here with his wife and son, it would have been amazing to see. But at the moment he was operational, and this operation was not taking him to the Great Wall.

The Red Hand contact had directed him to request a trip to this location.

Ding assumed Red Hand had some plan to get himself and his two colleagues away from their minder and the driver. He did not have any details from the organization; he was putting his faith in a band of criminals that he neither trusted nor held much respect for, but this mission was of such great stakes that he, Dom, and Sam had decided to roll the dice and hope like hell Red Hand could orchestrate something that would get them away from government watchers, while at the same time not get them killed.

Sam Driscoll nudged Ding on the knee while they rode in the back of the van. Ding looked over at Sam and then followed his eyes to a point on the vehicle’s dashboard near the windscreen. He had to squint to make it out, but there he saw a tiny microphone positioned. There was likely a camera somewhere in the van as well. The Chinese would be watching them — if not now, then they would be able to view a recording of whatever incident Red Hand had in store.

Ding nudged Caruso and leaned into his ear. He whispered, “Cams and mics, ’mano. Whatever goes down… stay in character.”

Dom did not react to the instructions. Instead he just looked out the window at the brown hills and gray sky.

While their chatty government minder from the Propaganda Department droned on and on about everything from the quality of the highway upon which the van drove, to the bumper crop of wheat harvested from the fields they passed, to the amazing feat of engineering that was the Great Wall’s construction, Chavez looked back over his shoulder nonchalantly. Some fifty yards behind the van he saw a black two-door following them. In the front seats were two men who were dressed similarly to the government minder.

These would be armed guys from the ministry here to make sure the foreign media were not harassed by protests or highway thieves or any other local difficulties.

They surely thought they were in for a boring day.

Chavez was pretty sure that they were wrong in that assumption.

About forty minutes outside Beijing’s city limits, they came to the first traffic light they had seen in some time. The van’s driver stopped his vehicle at the red light, and a black truck that had pulled onto the road from a gas station a block back pulled up alongside the government van.

With no warning the driver’s-side door of the van opened, just next to where the minder was sitting in the passenger seat, continuing to proclaim to the foreign journalists in the back that China was the worldwide leading supplier of wheat and cotton.

Ding saw the barrel of a rifle an instant before it fired. He yelled to Dom and Sam, “Get down!” The window next to George’s head shattered, and then his head slumped down, his seat belt holding his body in place.

The driver next to him slumped over dead, as well.

All three men did their best to get their heads as low as possible, shoving their faces between their knees and their hands over their heads just as another burst of automatic fire shattered glass in the front of the vehicle.

“Shit!” yelled Dominic.

None of the three were going to find it necessary to put on much of an act to appear terrified and helpless. Unknown assholes firing automatic rifles into their minivan helped them stay in character. The camera and the mic were going to record this event, and the three men in the backseat looked legit.

Ding heard shouting outside the broken windows now. The frenzy of barking Chinese, rushed footfalls of men running around in the street. More cyclic rifle fire close to the van.

Someone tried to open the sliding back door, but it was locked. None of the Americans moved to help, they just kept their heads down between their knees.

A rifle butt shattered the rest of the window glass of the door. Ding imagined someone reaching in to unlock the door, but he did not look up to confirm this. When the door slid open a moment later he did look up quickly, and he caught a glimpse of three or four masked men in the street, their weapons held high and their movements fast and nervous. Ding saw one man place a white cotton bag over Caruso’s head and then jerk him out of the van.

A second hood was shoved over Chavez’s head, and now he was pulled into the street. He kept his hands up as he was pushed around roughly to the back of the other vehicle.

Crazed-sounding shouts of Mandarin came from all around him. Instructions from the Red Hand team leader to his men, or barking arguments between them, Domingo could not tell, but he felt a hand shove him forward, and a second hand grabbed his jacket and pulled him up and into the back of the black truck.

He did not know if the journalists in the vans behind were watching or perhaps even filming all this action. But if they were getting this, he felt it was a sure bet this would look just like a brutal third-world roadside kidnapping.

This was about as realistic as anyone could make it. Likely because, it occurred to Chavez, Red Hand had done this sort of thing before.

The truck lurched forward on squealing tires. Domingo fell over with the momentum, and only then did he feel two men sitting next to him.

“Who’s that?”

“Sam.”

“And Dom.”

“You guys okay?”

They both said they were, though Dom complained his ears would be ringing for a while because one of the Red Hand jackasses had let loose a full magazine dump just a couple of feet from Caruso’s ear.

The hoods stayed on the men as the truck continued. Chavez tried to talk to the Chinese men in the back with them, but they clearly did not speak English. He heard at least two men speaking back and forth, and they ignored the Americans.

Fifteen minutes after they left the scene of the fake kidnapping, the truck stopped. Dom, Ding, and Sam were led out the back, their hoods still in place, and they immediately found themselves pushed into the back of what seemed to be a small four-door sedan.

They were moving again in seconds, pressed tightly against one another as they took tight turns and went up and down steep roads.

It was a long, nausea-inducing drive. The blacktop underneath them turned to gravel, and the sedan slowed and then stopped. The three Americans were led out the back and inside a building. Ding smelled the unmistakable scent of livestock, and he felt the cold damp of a barn.

There were a few minutes of conversation around him as he stood there with his teammates. Several men were in conversation, and then Ding was surprised by a woman’s voice. An argument erupted, he could not fathom what it was about, but he just stood there, silently waiting to be addressed by someone in the room.

Finally the barn door shut behind him, his hood was removed, and he looked around.

Dom and Sam were with him; they had also just had their hoods removed. Together the three of them looked across the dark barn interior at about two dozen men and women. They were all armed with rifles.

A young woman walked up to the three Americans. “I am Yin Yin. I will be your translator.”

Chavez was confused. The people in front of him looked like college kids. They did not look like criminals. Not one of them had an ounce of muscle on their bodies, and they looked scared.

It was pretty much the opposite of what Ding had hoped to find.

“You are Red Hand?” he asked.

She made an expression of distaste and shook her head vigorously. “No, we are not Red Hand. We are Pathway of Liberty.”

Ding, Sam, and Dom looked at one another.

Sam said what was on the other men’s minds: “This is our rebel force?”

Dom just shook his head in disgust. “We do any direct action with this gang, and we are condemning the entire movement to slaughter. Look at them. These folks couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag.”

Yin Yin heard this, and she stormed over to the three Americans. “We have been training.”

“On Xbox?” asked Driscoll, coolly.

“No! We have a farm where we have practiced with our rifles.”

“Awesome,” muttered Dom. He looked to Chavez.

Chavez smiled at the woman, doing his best to be the diplomat in the room. He excused himself and his colleagues, took Dom and Sam to a corner of the barn, and said, “Looks like Red Hand sold CIA a bill of goods. They passed us off to some coffee-shop student movement.”

“Son of a bitch,” said Caruso. “These guys aren’t ready for prime time. That didn’t take long to figure out.”

Chavez sighed. “I don’t really see how we can just walk out of here at this point. Let’s keep an open mind and spend some time with them to learn what they have accomplished. They may be just a gaggle of kids, but they sure as shit are brave to be standing up to the Chicom government in Beijing. We owe them some respect, guys.”

“Roger that,” said Dom, and Driscoll just nodded.