“When I get home,” he said sharply. Margaret could hear the background noise of the Humvee and knew he must be with a driver. “I’ll send get-well cards and condolences to all the Utah’s boys and their families. And to Alicia Payne—”
“Mayne, with an M.”
“Yes,” said Margaret. “I’ll try to see her. What a dreadful time it is, Walter. All those families.”
“Admiral!” the Humvee’s radio blared. “Bravo One Charlie One.” It was an incoming message from the first of the twenty outriders assigned to protect the NR-1B on its way to the Keystone launch ramp. “We have a bogey five klicks from you.”
“Describe,” cut in the convoy’s Marine commander.
“Keep moving,” Jensen told his Humvee driver.
“Refugee column,” said the Bravo One. “ ’Bout two hundred meters long on the road. Estimate ten to fifteen vehicles. Looks like mostly families. Fifty, sixty people.”
“Admiral?” said the Marine major. Jensen knew the major was asking him who he wanted to exercise tactical command.
“It’s your call, Major,” Jensen told him.
“Yessir.” The major instructed, “Bravo One, get all those people out of the vehicles and off the road — hundred yards away at least. Make sure no one — repeat, no one — remains in the vehicles. Dogs, cats — nothing. I’ll send replacement riders from Bravo Three to scout ahead of you while you take care of this.”
“Roger that!” confirmed the Bravo One leader, who had already begun telling his men to move the refugees out of their cars and pickups into the adjacent field.
“What?” bellowed one of the refugees, an elderly man. “That’s a damned cranberry bog in there — under two, three, feet o’ water. We got kids here!”
“Move off the road now!”
“Come on, Ralph,” a woman told the man. “Do as they say.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said the cop, one of the local policemen with knowledge of the area who’d been seconded to assist the Marines guarding the convoy. “There’s a good reason for it.”
“Damn well better be!” growled Ralph, but the cop and his other four comrades in Bravo One were relieved. Everyone’s nerves were on edge. Some of the police riders’ own families were leaving the island. “American refugees,” one of the cops had said. “It breaks your heart.”
“How long we got to wait?” asked Ralph.
“No more’n an hour, chief.”
“Jesus Christ — you know how cold it is in those damn cranberry bogs?”
“Ralph, c’mon! No sense in arguin’. They got the guns.”
It was 1:00 P.M., and Charles Riser, who’d been unsuccessful in attempts to get through to General Chang, whom he hoped might have learned something more about Li Kuan’s whereabouts, had caught the red-eye flight to Nanjing. He’d been waiting impatiently outside Nanjing Military District HQ since 9:00 A.M. Once more he pressed the button. General Chang’s aide-de-camp, a smartly turned out young captain in sharply creased field greens, appeared, and again Riser asked politely to see the general.
The response was in immaculate Mandarin: “The general is in conference and cannot be—”
“For four hours?” pressed Riser. “You did tell him it was urgent?”
“Yes,” Mr. Riser,” came the reply, this time in perfect English, the sudden switch from Mandarin calculated, Riser thought, to surprise him.
It did. By the time he’d thought of a follow-up question, Chang’s aide had closed the door. Again Riser heard the slide of the dead bolt. “Damn!” Now he was absolutely sure Chang wasn’t in Nanjing. Had they arrested him?
Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy in Beijing was receiving complaints about Riser’s persistence. Military affairs, Nanjing reminded Bill Heinz, were not Mr. Riser’s concern. Finally, Bill Heinz asked to see the ambassador, and told him, straight out, “Mr. Ambassador, I like Charlie Riser as much as anybody else, and I realize the death of young Mandy has undone him. But we all have our problems, and we have to move on. He’s making a damn nuisance of himself with the PLA.”
“Thought that was your job, Bill?” said the ambassador flippantly.
Bill Heinz flashed his diplomatic smile. “This time he took off to Nanjing to see General Chang.”
“On our time or his?”
“Ah … his. Took two days’ leave, but—”
“Our money or his, Bill?”
“Haven’t checked, sir. But the point is, if we don’t rein him in, State’s going to get a formal complaint from Beijing and we’ll be in deep shit, pardon my English. And we need all the help we can get from China in this war against terrorism.”
“You’re right, Bill. I’ll have a word with him.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll call him, tell him it’s official. He’s to come back immediately.”
Charlie’s exasperation at not being able to see Chang, the only Chinese official who’d really tried to help him after Mandy’s death, got worse with China Air’s delayed departure to Beijing.
Typically, there was only one attendant at the China Air counter to calm the throng of impatient travelers. “What’s the problem?” asked an Australian backpacker. “Where’s the bloody plane?”
The girl threw up her hands. “China Air all in a mess.”
“You’re right there, sweetheart,” said the Australian. “How ’bout some tucker — you know, food? We’ve been waitin’ here for bloody hours. You owe us a meal, I reckon.”
Other backpackers joined in, most of them trying to leave China as quickly as possible, before the war with Taiwan trapped them. Taiwanese missiles could hit all of China’s mainland coastal airports and Beijing. Riser stayed out of the counter squabble. The U.S. cultural attaché wasn’t hungry. The only reason he ate at all was to keep his strength up for his mission to track down Li Kuan and the thugs who’d murdered his daughter.
The crowd closing in on China Air’s lone clerk was so dense, a wave of claustrophobia passed over him.
“Mr. Riser?” The voice came from somewhere deep within the increasingly angry mob. Charles couldn’t see her but knew immediately it was Wu Ling, Chang’s mistress, who had also been Mandy’s closest friend in China. Then he spotted her. There was fear in her eyes, but he sensed it wasn’t from the threat of the mob getting out of control, a fear every “long-stay” foreigner in China had experienced at least once in China.
Suddenly, the crowd withdrew from the counter, like a wave sucked back into the sea, taking Wu Ling with it. A half-dozen or so airport staff had arrived behind the crowd and were carrying precariously stacked boxes of dinners. Several people were trampled underfoot and there was screaming and general mayhem. It took Wu Ling several minutes to get free. She told Charles she didn’t have much time — that the Gong An Bu were following her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. As her perfume washed over him, he could see Mandy. They had both worn — what was it? — Guilin Mist.
“The General,” she began, buffeted to and fro in an eddy of the mutton-and-rice-crazed crowd. “He has been arrested and put in—” Her English suddenly deserted her.
“Prison,” Charles said.
“Yes. In prison. It is very bad.”
“Why was he—”
“The army in Kazakhstan is being pushed back by the terrorists.”
“So he’s the scapegoat?” said Charles. “He’s being held responsible?”
“Yes. Responsible. I must go,” she said, and disappeared into the throng.
No doubt, Charles thought, the Gong An Bu had been following her.