He went back into the den of the main office and saw Zhi hang up the phone. “Get anything?”
“Yes. They’re on the main highway headed east. About a hundred miles away now, and growing.”
“Where are they headed?”
“No idea, all they can tell me is that it’s away from here. There are a hundred small towns and cities between us and the eastern coast. The biggest is Sydney.”
“So we clean up here, get on the road, and wait for him to bed down.”
“What about the men who helped him? The ones that killed Bao and Li Kang?”
“We deal with them when we have to. The main thing now is to eliminate Clifford. If I can do that without engaging the others, so be it. Chances are, they’ve already fled because of the men they’ve killed.”
Zhi put the phone in her pocket, saw the men struggling to roll up the body in a throw rug, and said, “I think those men are like us. We forced them to kill, and they did so.”
Chen watched the body leaving and said, “We might have forced them to kill, but they have never met anything like us. Now it’s our turn.”
Zhi said, “Don’t underestimate them. I don’t think they’re going to quit because of a little blood.”
Chapter 21
The aircraft wheels hit the runway and I immediately turned on my phone, looking for a contact from Dunkin. I saw a text saying they were pulling over for a little rest. I didn’t fault that, but it left him outside of my protective umbrella. Someone was trying to kill him, and he didn’t have the skills to prevent it. I wanted him with me, here in Sydney, not sleeping on the side of a highway.
Jennifer said, “Did you get anything?”
I said, “Yeah, they’ve stopped. Still heading here, but they’ve stopped for some chow and a rest break.”
We’d agreed that he wouldn’t contact me over the cell network with a verbal call, because that would be recorded on the cell network. He’d only use his girlfriend’s phone to contact me over iMessage—a feature of the iPhone that, when used over WiFi, was damn near impossible to trace. Something I’d learned tracking terrorists.
I texted him back, telling him we were on the ground in Sydney and to let me know when he showed up. The passengers started to stand up, waiting on the gate to open.
Jennifer said, “You think he’s going to be okay?”
I stood up, opened the overhead bin, and said, “I hope so, but I honestly don’t know. The people he’s up against are professionals. I don’t have any idea of the assets they’re using to target him.”
We’d never even made it to his girlfriend’s apartment, having peeled off when he told us he was on the run. I’d circled back around and staked out his own place, watching to see what happened. I’d half expected to find a slew of cop cars with the lights going, but instead saw nothing. We’d waited for three hours, and then had seen two vans pull up with plumbing signs on their sides. They’d closed right up to his staircase and exited looking like they were about to fight Ebola, complete with matching jumpsuits and cotton masks. They’d marched through the gate like they were about to clean up the biggest turd in toilet history. Nobody paid them the least bit of attention.
I’d perked up at the arrival, and we’d watched them come and go, taking in rolls of opaque plastic sheeting like they were doing extensive renovations. Eventually, they’d come back out, carrying the sheeting with them, but now it took two men per roll. There were plenty of people coming and going, but once again, nobody seemed to care.
They were good, no doubt. They most certainly weren’t some local thug force. There was some power behind them, and I was betting it wasn’t from Australia. Not the least because every single one of them was Asian.
After seeing that, I’d decided that the best course of action was to get to Sydney for local protection of Dunkin until we could sort it out. Initially, I’d toyed with interdicting the plumbers, but without a team that was asking for trouble. These guys clearly had assets that I did not, and odds were they couldn’t tell me anything that I couldn’t find out from Dunkin. The most I’d get was a fight and a sullen asshole who’d rather die than talk.
Make no mistake, I had no illusions that they didn’t know I existed—hell, they were pulling out bodies we’d left behind—but I didn’t want them to know I was still on the hunt.
Instead of driving, we’d caught the last flight out of Adelaide before they shut down the airport at 11 p.m., getting the last two seats on a cheap commuter bird at 2220, and had hit the ground in Sydney right after midnight. Even with all of that, we’d beat Dunkin and his girlfriend using the roads. Which was okay because we still needed to find a place to stay. I wasn’t going to ask to barge into his girlfriend’s sister’s house. Well, that had in fact crossed my mind, but it wasn’t good operational security.
I handed Jennifer her bag from the overhead bin and she whispered, “You know those two are scared out of their minds. Maybe we should let them go to the cops, since we’re in the clear now.”
I glanced left and right, saw everyone concerned with their own exit from the aircraft, and leaned over, saying, “Yeah, maybe you’re right. But we’re not the ones that are going to call the cops. We’ll let him do that. After I’ve talked to him.”
I could tell she knew that was coming, and decided to poke her a little bit. “It’s you. That’s what it is.”
She stood up and said, “Me? How is this my fault?”
“Amena said the bad man would come for you. And here we are, bad men and all.”
The line started moving and she grinned, punching me in the arm. “It’s not me. It’s you. It always has been.”
Which, really, was like a wife seeing a mess in the room and then asking the husband what had happened. It didn’t matter what I said, I was to blame. And now I was actually married to prove it.
I started walking up the aisle and she said, “You going to call George on this, or just wing it?”
I looked at my watch and said, “It’s morning there, so I guess I should. But after we’re off the plane.”
When I finally dialed the phone, even I was astonished at what I heard.
George Wolffe paced the marble foyer of the Old Executive Office Building, waiting on his escort to take him to the second-level SCIF, barely registering the officer manning the checkpoint that kept him from venturing farther. He had more important things on his mind. Alexander Palmer had asked for a team to start exploring Chinese activities against the United States or its allies, and now he was supposed to present what was in the art of the possible. That was the easy part. What he wasn’t sure of was whether he should tell them that the art of the possible was now in motion.
This morning, his encrypted cell phone had gone off before he’d even left his house, the tone causing a Pavlovian response in his brain; something important had occurred.
With shaving cream still on his face, he’d snatched the phone off his nightstand to avoid waking his wife and then had padded into the kitchen, wondering who on earth would be calling so early. It couldn’t be good news.
And it wasn’t.