At the far side of the tarmac, he saw a black Toyota Land Cruiser, its lights still on, a door open. He heard a low grumble from down the tarmac, then recognized the oncoming lights of a jet. It was moving down the runway, directly at him. The engine roared.
Dewey dumped the bike, climbed off, then pulled the Glock from his shoulder holster.
* * *
“Raul!” yelled one of the pilots from the cockpit.
Chang was seated in the cabin of the Gulfstream. He looked across the aisle at Raul, who lay on his side across two of the leather cabin chairs. The mercenary held his hand against his stomach, where the bullet from Andreas had hit him.
“They’re trying to stop the plane,” yelled the pilot.
Raul’s dull eyes met Chang’s. He tried to say something. Blood seeped over his lips as his mouth moved.
“Take off,” he coughed. “Get off the ground.”
At that moment, Chang thought about killing Raul, but he wouldn’t need to. The Mexican would be dead within the hour. Blood oozed out over his fingers as he clutched his stomach.
The plane’s engines roared. The jet started moving down the tarmac.
“You need to remove the bullet,” said Raul, blood dribbling out the sides of his mouth.
Chang said nothing. He stood and walked to the cabin. He stood behind the two pilots as the Gulfstream barreled down the runway.
“
He has a gun!
” yelled one of the pilots, pointing out the window.
* * *
The jet came faster now, down the runway, directly at Dewey. He raised his right arm and stepped into the path of the oncoming jet. He trained the muzzle of the Glock at the front of the plane. Then he started firing. The slugs hit the cockpit glass in front of the pilot. One, two, three, then the rest of the magazine: Dewey emptied all his ammunition into the glass. As the front wheel lifted off just feet from where he stood, he realized the glass was bulletproof.
“
Stop!
” screamed a police officer behind him.
The blue-and-white jet lifted off. As Dewey was tackled from behind, he watched as Jessica’s killers escaped into the dark sky.
* * *
Chang leaned forward, looking out the cockpit window. At the end of the runway, a shirtless man was walking down the middle of the tarmac. The jet sped closer to him. The engines roared. The man’s arm was raised. He had his gun trained up at the plane. Above the din, Chang heard the faint sound of gunfire, then the chink of the slug hitting the plane. Reflexively, he flinched.
They came closer and closer to the figure. Chang knew it was Andreas. Even without looking, he knew it was him. A slug hit the glass of the window, pockmarking it. Andreas kept firing as the jet moved closer, dotting the glass with small indents.
The jet’s wheels began to lift off as they came right upon Andreas, who didn’t move. Chang craned his neck to see him. He was big, wearing only jeans, his expression angry and unflinching. Then the Gulfstream climbed fully off the tarmac.
Chang’s heart raced as he felt the smooth embrace of liftoff. He stood at the edge of the cabin for several moments.
In one day, his life had changed entirely, and not for the better. He couldn’t begin to imagine how he could fix it. Andreas was alive. The woman was dead. Hu-Shao was back at the ranch with a pair of holes in his head. He had no friends or allies. Whatever money he had was being monitored by the ministry. He had nothing.
He knew he should report in and tell the truth. After all, he wasn’t the one who killed the woman. He wasn’t the one who shot Hu-Shao. It was Raul.
But none of that mattered. The ministry didn’t tolerate failure. He was a dead man.
Chang returned to the cabin.
Raul lay still, his eyes wide open, staring permanently into oblivion.
Chang ransacked his pockets for cash, finding nearly four thousand dollars in cash.
He sat down and looked out the window, trying to think. From his pocket, he removed his ministry-issued SAT phone. He was at a crossroads. He could call in to Beijing and confess to everything that had happened. Or he could run.
He’d seen firsthand how Bhang treated people who failed him.
He smashed the SAT phone against the floor. He removed the tracking device from the phone and stomped on it until it was pulverized.
He went to the cabin.
“Give me a map,” he said.
Both pilots turned. Their eyes drifted down to the handgun that Chang now clutched, moving it back and forth between the two men.
The pilot on the left pulled a navigational chart from a pocket on the side of the cockpit. Chang flipped through it, then studied the area.
“What’s the nearest city?” he asked.
“Santiago.”
“Head for Valparaiso,” said Chang, pointing, “on the coast.”
21
UNITED STATES TREASURY DEPARTMENT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
From outside the closed office door of U.S. Treasury Secretary Woodrow Uhlrich, a passerby could, on occasion, hear a mysterious thumping sound.
Those who were close to Wood Uhlrich knew that it only happened toward the end of the day, a stressful day, a day in which Uhlrich, sometime past eight or nine in the evening, would venture to the sideboard in his office and fill a highball glass a quarter full with Pappy Van Winkle’s. The dull thuds that echoed in the entrance foyer, through Uhlrich’s closed door, were the sounds of darts striking the cork of the dartboard that hung on the back of the door.
To say that Uhlrich’s staff loved him would have been an understatement. In fact, each and every one of them would have gone to war for Uhlrich. Joanna Traaten, his beautiful executive assistant; Bobby Grace, his overweight but capable chief of staff, and all of the others who’d come along on Uhlrich’s wild ride, from mayor of Lexington, to governor of Kentucky, to United States senator, and, upon the election of his best friend Rob Allaire to the presidency, to his appointment as treasury secretary, they had all been there, through thick and thin.
It was Grace who kept the bourbon in ample supply. It was Traaten who made sure his schedule was wiped clean by 6:00
P.M.
And both knew that when the darts started hitting, to leave Uhlrich alone.
None of them had ever seen him angry. Even his wife, Daisy, couldn’t remember a time when Uhlrich had raised his voice. He was laid-back to the point of being taciturn. He simply couldn’t be fazed, didn’t like to talk, and yet somehow lured people in with a quiet sort of charisma.
Hitting the dartboard was Uhlrich at his most emotional. Everyone knew that when he started throwing darts, he had something on his mind. After a half hour or so, it was Grace’s job to politely knock on the door and see what was going on.
“Wood?” Grace asked as he pushed the door in, a few minutes after eight. “Hold your fire, Mr. Secretary.”
Grace stepped inside, then closed the large door behind him.
“Hi, Bobby.”
Uhlrich’s tie was off. He was standing halfway between his desk and the door, where the dartboard hung. In his left hand was a glass of bourbon. In his right, a green-and-red-tailed dart. Grace glanced at the dartboard. One of the darts was in the center.
“Nice shot.”
“I did that one yesterday. Left it there. It reminds me that every once in a while I do something right.”
Grace walked to one of the two large black leather sofas, next to where Uhlrich stood, and sat down.
“What’s on your mind?” asked Grace.
Uhlrich was quiet. He tossed the dart toward the board, where it stuck into the cork a few inches from the center.
“You want a drink?” Uhlrich asked.
“Certainly.” Grace started to get up.
“You sit,” said Uhlrich. “I’ll get it.”
Uhlrich went to the sideboard and pulled out a glass, then poured it a quarter full with bourbon. He walked to the sofas and sat down across from Grace.
“Baum?” asked Grace, referring to Richard Baum, the chairman of the Federal Reserve.
“Yes.”
“How much do we need to borrow?”
“Five hundred billion.”
“
Mamma mia,
” said Grace. “That would be the largest bond sale ever, if memory serves.”
Uhlrich took a sip from his glass, then brushed his hand back through his mop of curly blond hair.
“The strategy of trying to force Congress to cut spending has backfired,” said Uhlrich. “Frankly, Richard is right about one thing. As long as Congress refuses to cut spending, we need to borrow more money. He doesn’t spend the money. Congress is playing chicken with the Fed and with the president. They know Dellenbaugh won’t raise taxes. So what they’re going to do is keep spending and force us to borrow more money from China.”
“China will buy whatever bonds we put into the market.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” said Uhlrich. “We owe the People’s Bank of China nearly two trillion dollars. Trillion with a
T.
That’s a lot of money. Soon we’ll be at two five, then three. It’s not sustainable. What happens when we have to choose between whether your grandma gets her heart medication or China gets their interest payment? What happens when we have to choose between some Marine unit getting a better kind of flak jacket or paying off Beijing? And what happens when we do choose your grandma? What do the Chinese do? Scares me to even think about it.”
“We restructure. What can they do? Invade?”
“You’re missing my point,” said Uhlrich. “The Chinese already invaded. They’re here; instead of weapons, they fired money. If they stop buying our bonds, the U.S. economy will collapse.”
“So we start paying it back.”
Uhlrich smiled.
“I’m going back to Kentucky,” he said. “When Rob Allaire asked me to be treasury secretary, I thought it would be an honor, and it has been. But I’m not big enough for this job. We need someone sitting in this room who can figure this all out.”
“You’re a great treasury secretary.”
“No, I’m not. It’s gotten beyond me, Bobby.”
Grace stood up. He leaned forward and picked up Uhlrich’s glass.
“Let’s have another one,” said Grace, “and talk about that fishing trip we’re going on next summer. You’re not leaving, Wood. I have too much dirt on you.”
Uhlrich leaned back, laughing heartily.
“I’m going to be remembered as the treasury secretary who sold America to the Chinese.”
“No you’re not,” said Grace, standing at the sideboard and pouring two more bourbons. “You’re going to be remembered as the guy who fucked up the door playing darts.”
22
MINISTRY OF STATE SECURITY
INTELLIGENCE BUREAU
SHANGHAI
In Shanghai, it was dinnertime. But none of the approximately one thousand employees within the ministry’s vast intelligence-gathering unit appeared to be hungry.
The desks were lined up in long rows; fifty rows in all, twenty desks per row, most of the desks occupied. The floor was an almost unfathomable collage of visual media. There were television screens one after another for as far as the eye could see, patient onlookers sitting and watching every media from every outlet imaginable in the entire world; earphones plugged in, listening and watching every news channel, television show, and movie released throughout the world, in every country, in every language, looking for information that had anything of intelligence value to China. This meant all geopolitical or economic issues affecting China as well as its allies and adversaries. They were to transcribe all mentions of China onto electronic tablets, which were then forwarded to human ciphers to examine further.
To the left, the job was to listen: radio shows, podcasts, music; again, any and every audio media introduced into the known world, if possible, in every country, in every language. To the right, the job was to pore over domestic and foreign print media, from every country, in every language: newspapers, magazines, blogs, books.
For a room filled with so many people and so much media, it was amazingly quiet.
Under Fao Bhang, the ministry had spent more than five billion dollars upgrading the technological might of the ministry’s electronic eavesdropping. This money went into trying to replicate America’s National Security Agency. This sophisticated eavesdropping apparatus—computers, satellites, satellite dishes, and software—produced massive amounts of information, which then needed to be analyzed by human beings. This was the room where that work was done.
Near the front of the room, a middle-aged man in a light yellow sweater and glasses stared at his computer screen.
11:50:01
PM
ARG 6/Córdoba
Gunfire reported
Location: Airport Córdoba
The analyst’s job was to monitor activity in Argentina, including dispatches originating at Argentine Federal Police—the country’s top law-enforcement agency—relevant to China. Normally, a generic crime report wouldn’t have drawn his attention. But some piece of software or algorithm within the bowels of the ministry had flagged it. He waited for another update. It came half an hour later.
12:18:36
AM
ARG 6/Córdoba
Multiple deaths reported
Location unknown
He went quickly into a bypass of AFP’s servers, going behind the AFP firewall through a backdoor Chinese hackers had built.
Locale: Estancia el Colibri
Mara Road 5’77”
AFP at scene
Multiple deaths confirmed
The analyst opened a separate program and typed “Estancia el Colibri.” When he hit “enter,” a satellite photograph appeared on the screen. The frame zeroed down in, focusing on the location of the ranch.
12:51:09
AM
Three confirmed homicides
**USSS at scene
He typed “USSS” into the ministry code manual.
United States Secret Service
The analyst sat upright. Suddenly, his computer screen went red and locked.
ACCESS DENIED
999999999999999
The number 9 replicated across his computer screen in flashing red until the screen was nothing but line after line of the numbers. He attempted to type, but it was useless.
He stood up from his cubicle and walked to the front of the room, went through a door, then walked down the hallway to the small, glass-walled office in the corner.