Chapters (39)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Acknowledgements
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
Xu thumbed off the radio and thought of calling Major-General Chen to give him the news. Then again, Chen could already be asleep. Why alert him to something that he might never discover?
Xu rolled over and grabbed the girl, who giggled.
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-FIVE
HAKKA CASTLE
XIAMEN, CHINA
APRIL 2012
Master Sergeant Matt Beasley was ordinarily a patient man. All those years as a student of human nature had taught him to be still like a predator, always looking and listening.
But the lights had just gone out. And the captain had ordered them to do . . . nothing.
They were waiting ten more minutes to give the Tigers' security team time to check in with each other, time enough to give them all a false sense of security.
Hitting the castle directly after the power went down was much too conventional, and they would be tense, despite whatever story the CIA's inside man told them about the outage.
And that explained why Beasley, Brown, Jenkins, and Hume continued lying on their bellies within the ditch at the edge of the woodland. The pair of small, two-man civilian helicopters were less than a hundred meters away.
Images of those choppers had been captured by Beasley's camera and uploaded to the network. Within a minute the helicopters had been identified as Brantly B-2Bs manufactured by a Texas company that had been bought out by the Chinese. A detailed set of schematics and even a suggested sabotage point within the cockpit focusing on the bird's electronics systems accompanied the intel.
Parked near the choppers were a pair of jeeplike SUVs identified as the new Brave Warriors, and Beasley didn't need the geeks back home to tell him how to sabotage them.
Out there, a few hundred meters beyond the vehicles, lay the castle, growing even darker as swollen clouds descended like enormous zeppelins to blot out the stars. From one window came the faintest trace of a flashlight being switched on.
Beasley returned his gaze to the helicopters. He'd hoped that the Tigers would have chosen much larger birds so that the Ghosts could've revised their exfiltration plan to include a swift chopper ride back to the coast courtesy of a Chinese pilot held at gunpoint.
But as Murphy and logic would have it, the Tigers had chosen to be discreet and flown in via those smaller civilian birds.
A few drops of rain struck the ditch, followed by a few more. Beasley hoped the captain didn't wait much longer, because once the storm really kicked in, their targets would seek cover in their vehicles, making them even harder to pick off.
The two chopper pilots and two drivers had gathered near the open tailgates of the trucks and were drinking, smoking, while one was engrossed in a small, handheld computer game.