Their own situation was not as pleasant as it could have been, Navarone admitted, but it was far from the worst possibilities. It might be stinking and dirty down there in the sewers, but at least they were alone and unmolested. Grayson and Collins were busy drilling into the sewer tunnel ceiling above them, using specialist tools which — although far from silent — would at least remain undetectable to anyone above. Despite the area being at the thinnest part between the tunnel and the palace complex above, there was still two meters of stone and rock separating them.
The team had moved from its laying up point where they’d separated from Cole, following their blueprints of the Beijing sewer network, with assistance from their GPS systems, until they’d reached their insertion point directly underneath the Forbidden City. With several hours to go, they had all the preparation time they needed.
Navarone sipped hot chocolate from his metal mug and looked at his MRE options; as well as rest, food was always welcome when there was a lull in the action. He had the usual butterflies in his stomach, the knot that pulled away at his gut, and although he wasn’t hungry, he knew he had to eat. Food equaled energy, and he was going to need some for the hours ahead.
He finally decided on the meatloaf — conservative and safe — and turned on his tiny propane cooker. MREs were often heated on operations by the ‘flameless ration heater’, but Navarone preferred the boil-in-the-bag method whenever he could get away with it. And in a deserted sewer, he reckoned he could get away with a flame or too. The psychological effect of an open fire — however small — was also something that Navarone believed should never be overlooked.
Two more bags sailed over to him, and Navarone caught them reactively — Davis’s and Barrington’s own MRE packets.
‘Put those on too, will you?’ Davis asked. ‘I’ll get hungry watching you stuff your face.’
Navarone nodded, smiling to himself. With lesser operators he would have to remind them to rest, to eat, to open their bowels while they had the chance. But not with these people; they were the best of the best, and if Navarone had any misgivings about their chances of success, it wasn’t in any way due to the guys he was working with.
Their five-person team had to work their way inside the Forbidden City — preferably undetected, despite the presence of a two-hundred man security force — and then rescue nearly two dozen people; people, Navarone reminded himself, who might not necessarily want to be rescued. But Cole had told him that he could use his discretion with those people, and that was exactly what Navarone intended to do. He was good at discretion.
But even if they could physically rescue the all-important politicians from their prison within the Forbidden City, they then had to extract them from the Forbidden City itself; and then from Beijing; and then from China.
They had a plan, of course, and Navarone knew it was a good one; but he also knew that the odds really were against them on this one.
‘Finished,’ Grayson called down, and Navarone watched as Barrington stood, approaching the collapsible ladders with a bag of specially mixed slurry and a pump.
‘Keep that MRE warm for me, will you?’ she asked Navarone, who nodded as she started filling the drill holes with the slurry mixture.
Navarone checked his watch — 1012 hours. That was good; it meant that the mixture would have at least four hours to set.
He turned back to his cooking, reminding himself as he watched the flames of his burner flickering on the ancient stone walls of the sewer tunnel, that the ramifications of failure were too great to consider it even as an option.
They would succeed; it was what Force One did.
They succeeded in situations where all others would fail.
Banishing all thought of failure from his mind, he decided that this was the image he would pursue, and no other.
And as he pulled the MRE bag out of the boiling water, in his mind failure was gone altogether; success was the only option.
2
Captain Liu Yingchau was back at work, helping to protect the Zhongnonhai compound. It was simple guard work and not something that needed a special forces officer, but Liu had happened to be near Beijing at the time of the coup and had been pulled in to help. Wu had wanted the best to protect him and the compound, and a spare ‘Hunting Leopard’ was too good to let go.
It was Wu’s own desire for full protection that led Liu to his commander’s office door that morning, rapping his knuckles on the thin wood.
‘Come in,’ barked Lieutenant Colonel Chen Chanming. A motorized infantry officer from the Beijing Military Region’s 65th Group Army, he was — despite having no special forces background — Liu’s commanding officer at the Zhongnonhai due purely to his rank.
Liu marched in and saluted smartly. ‘Captain Liu Yingchau, sir,’ he announced.
Chen shook his head. ‘Is this about General Wu again?’ he asked with irritation. Liu had already called the colonel the night before, demanding — as much as he could demand anything of a superior officer — why he hadn’t been told of Wu’s visit to Taiwan. He’d been told in no uncertain terms that he didn’t need to know, and should keep his nose out of the general’s business.
‘Yes sir,’ Liu confirmed. ‘If I am to have a role in protecting him, I need to know where he is.’
‘Captain,’ Chen said sternly, ‘I would personally like to see you court-martialed for calling me at home to ask me about army business — restricted army business, I might well add. You want me to reveal information over the telephone? I thought you knew better than that. But then again,’ he said, peering over his spectacles at Liu with barely restrained disgust, ‘I should know to expect that of you special officers, shouldn’t I? Loose cannons, always thinking you’re better than the rest of the army. Well, do you know what? You’re not special at all. I am special, because I am in command here. I know where the general is, and when he will be back, because I am authorized to know. And you are not.’
‘But—’
‘But nothing,’ Chen said, cutting Liu off. ‘I understand that you feel entitled to such information, but I assure you that you are not. How can you protect the general, you ask? I’ll tell you — you don’t. You help protect the Zhongnonhai compound. The general’s security is looked after entirely independently, and you have nothing to do with it.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Liu responded, struggling to hide his contempt for the man in front of him. He knew Chen’s record, knew that he had never seen a day of real combat in his life; but he’d impressed the right people and greased the right palms, and now here he was, a blown-up lieutenant colonel making things hard for the real soldiers. Chen was also typical of senior officers within the ‘regular’ army, who intensely distrusted the men of the special operations command, often seeing them as a threat rather than the useful force-multiplier that they were.
Chen held his gaze, looked down at some paperwork on his desk, then looked back at Liu. ‘The general returns at oh-nine-hundred hours today,’ he said with a sigh. ‘But I am not telling you because you demanded that I do so — I am telling you this because his presence at the Dragon Boat festival this afternoon will mean extending the security perimeter of the Zhongnonhai past the White Dagoba on Jade Island to the other side of Beihai Park. We need to clear the roads on the northern perimeter and check possible sniper positions. The general will be out in the open, and you need to make sure your people secure the entirety of the compound. Understood?’