The air phone next to Tom rang. He ignored David’s question and answered the phone.

“Connolly here, go.”

David turned to Brooke and whispered, “Okay, can you tell me what’s going on?”

She said, “Sure can. First, I just want to say how sorry I am about how they took you. I had nothing to do with that. I just found out about all of this yesterday—“

Tom hung up the phone and got up, walking to the front of the plane. Brooke and David watched as he opened the door to the cockpit, spoke to the pilots, then walked back and sat down. The plane banked to the right and David felt his stomach flutter. Whatever Tom had said, it seemed like the pilots had made some course corrections.

David said, “Changing our destination?”

Tom said, “We didn’t really have a destination prior to takeoff. The pilots had to file in flight. We’re good now. We’ll be in California in six hours.”

Had they really just taken off without knowing where they were going? What kind of mess was David in?

David said, “Alright. I’m all ears.”

Tom’s voice was gruff. He said, “We lost someone. Actually, I just confirmed that on the phone a few minutes ago. He had been missing for about a week. But now it seems they’ve identified the body. An agent stationed in China. He was the one who sent us the warning a few weeks ago. Stumbled on to something big. Bigger than any of us imagined. Turns out all those rumors had some legs.”

“I’m sorry about the agent. What rumors?”

Tom said, “Dave, how much have you been following the news about China’s economy?”

David said, “I mean, I’ve seen the news. It’s tanking, right? Our stock market is getting pretty bad too.”

“Right. The stock markets are tanking. But more important than that is that China’s unemployment is starting to rise. And their median income is starting to drop. What you probably haven’t seen on the news is that there have been several workers strikes. And some protests. The government over there is putting the kibosh on that for now. They’re good at censorship. But sooner or later, 60 Minutes or CNN will pick it up.”

“Got it. I’m still not following how this gets me on this airplane and probably scares the hell out of my wife when I don’t show up tonight.”

Tom replied, “David, we have reason to believe that China is planning to invade the United States. There are leaders in their government that have set plans in motion. Our agent was there to investigate some inner circle that was supposed to deal with the ‘economic problem.’ We thought it was going to be more censorship or maybe some sort of monetary policy that pisses off the Fed. Were we ever wrong.”

David just sat there, numb and confused. He had been kidnapped, thrown into a trunk, and then put on a jet going to God-knows-where. Now he was being told that World War Three was going to start.