‘Okay,’ Davis sighed, holding up his big hands, ‘okay. You asked for it.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Now here’s a little number that reminds me of my childhood, growing up on the—’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Grayson said with mock impatience, ‘get on with it, why don’cha?’
Davis raised his hand to swat at Grayson’s head, the Air Force combat medic flinching away in response. Everyone laughed, even Grayson.
‘Almost Heaven, West Virginia,’ Davis began, his voice soft, controlled, ‘Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River… ’
The words poured out, sung quietly, beautifully, and Cole wondered if even the late, great John Denver would have done a better job if he’d been there with them in the back of the truck. He doubted it; most people headed into the lion’s den would have been terrified, unable to keep the stress out of their voice; big Chad Davis sounded as if he was singing in church with his family on a Sunday morning.
But that was how the people he had picked for Force One were made, Cole understood.
They had to be, for the things they had to do.
7
In the end, the Baijiu didn’t help Captain Liu Yingchau sleep at all.
It was probably just as well; he had an early start, and it wouldn’t do to be late. He peered from the windows of his concrete apartment block, part of the decrepit tenement in which he had been stationed for the duration of his stay in Beijing, and checked the streets outside. Everything was quiet; the calm before the storm.
His apartment was small, but mercifully above the average worker’s assigned dormitory housing, which was just a shade over six square meters in total. It wasn’t luxurious by any stretch of the imagination, but it was better than a lot of places Liu had been, and he was grateful for small mercies.
Timing was crucial this morning, he knew; he had to be in position as promised or he would risk damaging everything. But Liu knew he wouldn’t be late.
He was still wired on adrenalin, using the previous night to try and find out where General Wu was, and when he would be back. He had contacted everyone he knew, tried every trick in the book, but still didn’t have the answer. Would Wu be back in time?
He left his apartment, locking the door behind him and descending the concrete steps of his tenement to the muggy streets below. He could feel the humidity in the atmosphere, knew it would rain today, and rain hard. It had to; the air was already too hot, too heavy, not to — even at this early hour. Strange, Liu thought, that the weather forecast hadn’t mentioned rain. Still, that was state control for you; you were only told what the government wanted you to hear.
Liu walked past his motorcycle, watching the glowing disk of the sun as it finally reared its head over the roofs of the apartment buildings which surrounded him, and continued along onto another street.
Two more turns — careful to check if anyone was following him — and he was there, the vehicle parked as promised; a favor he would one day have to return.
He checked his cellphone, hoping for an answer about Wu, but there was nothing.
He wondered how to break the news to the people he would be meeting.
Davis was halfway through a moody rendition of Hey Good Looking when Cole stopped him with a raised hand, the driver’s voice coming through his earpiece intercom from the front cab.
‘Sir,’ the voice said in broken English, distorted in Cole’s ear but just about understandable, ‘I think there is a problem.’
Cole signaled the team, who immediately took up their weapons, moving to defensive positions within the rear compartment. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.
‘Roadblock up ahead,’ the driver said nervously. ‘And I think they will stop us. They got me before, stole TVs right out of back.’
The boxes in the back of the truck were gone now — offloaded to the fake CIA delivery site — but there was packaging and debris strewn around the floor, and the Force One members had used it to disguise themselves, blending into the scattered mess perfectly. It wouldn’t fool anyone who actually set foot in the back, but if someone were only to open the doors and look in — especially as the sun was still not yet fully up — then they were unlikely to be discovered.
But if they were, then they would open fire and run; hardly an ideal scenario, but one that had to be faced. Everyone’s safety catches were off, ready to go.
‘What shall I do?’ the driver’s nervous voice came back. ‘Shall I turn around? Or accelerate? Ram them?’
The man was getting more and more excitable, and Cole had to calm him down; the last thing they needed was for the truck to do something suspicious, and turning around so close to a roadblock might be almost as bad as ramming it. Almost.
‘No,’ Cole said as calmly as he could. ‘Just keep going. Trust me.’
Trust him?
It was easy for him to say — whoever he was.
He had five friends with guns to help back him up. What did Yuan Ziyang have? A revolver and a knife! He was going to end up as road kill.
‘Listen,’ the voice came through again, cool and professional, its tone demanding that Yuan do just that. ‘Don’t worry. Keep driving normally. Be confident. Do not turn around, and do not accelerate.’
‘What if they stop me?’ he asked, getting closer now, seeing them through his windshield; the same men he’d seen earlier that morning, who’d cheated him, robbed him. A part of him wanted them to stop him again, to see what the people in the back of the truck would do to them.
But the other part, the one that wanted to live, didn’t want to see that at all.
And so he did as the voice told him and just kept on driving, right towards the corrupt cops.
Would they recognize the van? Would they stop it? They’d stolen from him once, why not again?
And then he was next to them, and within the next few seconds he was past them, waved on with nothing more than a nod of the head and a sly, knowing grin from the man who’d taken his address.
They hadn’t been stopped! The voice had been right!
‘Yes!’ he called down the intercom. ‘We’re through! We’re through!’
Cole had to pull the earpiece out, the man’s shouts threatening to deafen him.
Cole was pleased, but not surprised; if this team had stolen TVs from the truck on the way to a delivery, they would know it would be empty on the way back. So why try and stop it?
But stranger things had happened, and Cole’s finger had been on the trigger of his M4, ready to depress at the first target that came into his sightline.
Gratefully, gladly, he relaxed the finger slightly, allowing it to switch the safety back on. But the carbine still rested in his arms, ready to be used at a moment’s notice.
They were getting close now, Cole noted as he stared at his GPS monitor.
And things were only going to get more difficult.
‘Take the S303 east,’ the voice said just twenty minutes after passing the roadblock.
‘What?’ Yuan said, confused. ‘I am taking you into Beijing, no?’
‘Not anymore. Take the S303 east.’
‘What is this?’
Yuan was unsure of what to do; the CIA had given him orders, but now the team was here, did that mean that they were in charge?
He considered things for a few moments, and made an obvious conclusion; if nothing else, the people in the back of his truck were the ones with the guns.