The clock ticked into twenty seconds.
There were four Taiwanese sitting at computer terminals, looking at me like I was crazy. I went to the first man and put my barrel against his skull, saying, “You’re all going to die today unless someone does what I ask. Fuck China. You’ll be dead anyway.”
A man on the other side leapt up. “I can do it. I can do it.”
The clock ticked past ten seconds.
I said, “Do it. Right fucking now.”
He sat back down and began typing, the others following his lead. I watched the clock go down to zero, and then impact.
I looked at Jennifer and said, “Probably a good time to get back to the Rock Star bird.”
The man from the far side of the room said, “Self-destruct actuated. There was no impact.”
He looked at me, then hung his head, saying, “I just destroyed our chances at defending Taiwan.”
I exhaled and said, “Nope. You just saved your country.”
Chapter 91
Jennifer came back into the bar looking grim. I said, “What’s up? Is Amena okay?”
“She is, but her roommate is not. Her father is dead, and she’s headed back to China.”
I said, “Well, we knew that.”
Her eyes flashed and she said, “Yes, we knew that, but it doesn’t make it any easier on Amena. She thinks she killed the guy by talking to you. And she’s grown fond of her roommate. She feels guilty.”
I said, “At the end of the day, she sort of did kill him.”
I was sitting at a high-top table with the rest of the team. Jennifer took a seat on the barstool next to me and said, “Don’t you ever tell her that. She followed your commands, and now her roommate’s dad is dead. You can’t let her think she’s responsible for that.”
I held up my hands. “Okay, okay. It’ll be a natural event. He had a heart attack as far as I know.”
She squinted at me, then said, “You have to take this parenting thing seriously. You can’t treat her like your teammates. She looks up to you, and she’s young. Impressionable.”
I said, “I get it. I get it. Sorry.”
Jennifer said, “Well, I hope so, because I told her she could come on the honeymoon. Which will happen as soon as we get home.”
I said, “What?” and the table began laughing. Knuckles said, “Can I come too? Someone needs to record that shitshow.”
I ignored him, saying to Jennifer, “Are you serious? I was just making a joke.”
To my left, Knuckles said, “Not very funny.”
I turned to him. “Sort of like the joke you did by leaving Jennifer and me in the wind? While we were fighting a bunch of Chinese assassins?”
“Wasn’t me who gave that call. That was you.”
Veep said, “Or maybe like sort of leaving me in the wind while you went to find a bunch of Chinese assassins.”
Which made me smile. He had a lump on his cheek, and both of his eyes were black because he’d been tuned up by the military police after we’d entered the base, so I guess he had a point.
I said, “Okay, okay. We’re not all perfect here.”
Brett raised his glass and said, “A toast to that.”
I said, “Do I really have to drink this?”
Knuckles said, “Oh yeah, you do. I’m sick of the pirate rum and Coke thing. I’m a bourbon man.”
It had been two and a half days since our actions in Tainan, and things in Taiwan had calmed down considerably. The enormous attack against the island state hadn’t occurred, and the protests had dwindled to nothing—mainly because the United States had shown through forensic evidence that the videos produced were deep fakes created by China.
What they hadn’t said was that the man who’d produced them—an asshole named Jerry Tribble—was a U.S. citizen in league with the devil, but that was okay. After the attack had imploded, he’d fled Beijing and had landed at New York City’s JFK Airport, where he was met by two federal agents with a host of questions.
I wish I’d been there, because the interrogation wouldn’t have been as gentle as he received. Either way, he was done, because his company basically sold him down the river to protect themselves—and then the FBI had found forensic evidence that connected him to Jake Shu. He was going to burn in a bonfire.
We’d fled Tainan after the attack, getting out with the chaos of the ongoing protests, and had returned to our hotel, where I’d slept for ten hours straight after taking care of my wound. I had a through-and-through gunshot to my shoulder, which Brett had treated in the hotel, and I considered going to a hospital, because Brett might be a great medic, but he wasn’t a doctor. But I hadn’t, because Paul had worked some magic and brought a doctor to me.
I don’t know what contacts he had, but somehow he’d managed to get an actual man of science to see me instead of some witch doctor from a temple waving incense. The bullet wound was clean, and hadn’t impacted any bones or tendons, and because of it, I had to endure a ration of shit about being a crybaby—but I didn’t mind. I’d seen gunshot wounds plenty of times, and if it was just flesh, I was very, very lucky. Jennifer’s wound was much cleaner, a simple stab through the palm. She got a stitch or two and was good to go. I’d be wearing a sling for a while.
We’d spent a couple days hiding out, wondering if we were going to get arrested by the security establishment of Taiwan, and then Paul had showed up again, telling us he’d regained his status as a full-fledged member of the National Security Bureau.
To celebrate, he’d taken us back to the same shopping area where we’d rescued him. Originally he was intending to go to the specific restaurant where we’d found him, but as we walked, Knuckles had seen a bar on the way—an eclectic place that sold only whiskey, no rum.
He’d demanded we stop, and so we had, and he’d ordered us a round of bourbon—something called The Prisoner, made by a place called Bardstown Bourbon, from a region known as the bourbon capital of the world. I’d learned two things: One, Knuckles was really into bourbon, and two, even as I complained, it was pretty good stuff. And the name was about perfect for what we’d gotten away with.
We raised our glasses and I said, “What’s the toast?”
Paul said, “To my country. May it remain peaceful.”
I said, “I’ll definitely drink to that.”
After we’d stopped the attack, we’d fled the base on the run, heading back to Taipei, and I’d called George Wolffe in the Situation Room, telling him what we’d done. He couldn’t believe it. In fact, he didn’t believe it at first.
When the phone had connected, he’d said, “Get out. Get the team out now. We’re going to war. Get on the Rock Star bird and get the hell out of there. I have to go. Things are a little crazy here.”
I’d said, “Hey, sir, calm down. The missiles didn’t impact.”
“We saw the impact from satellites. China is about to go nuts. We have a carrier strike group launching.”
I said, “You need to stop that. The missiles didn’t impact. What you saw was the self-destruct. There is no damage to China, other than a debris field of missile parts.”