It was early morning in Washington, and the president had been preparing for bed when he had been summoned. He was dressed in gray sweatpants and a blue T-shirt. He was drinking a glass of orange juice.
He stared at Overholt, then grinned. “You must know I stay up late and watch Saturday Night Live.”
“Don’t all politicians, sir?” Overholt asked.
“Probably,” the president said. “It was always the rumor that it cost Gerald Ford the election.”
“How did it go, sir?” Overholt asked.
“Qatar was a gimme,” he said easily. “Me and Mr. al Thani are old friends. Brunei was not such a pushover. The sultan needed a few concessions—I gave them, and he agreed.”
“I’m sorry we needed to involve you, sir,” Overholt said. “But the contractors were short of both men and time.”
“Have you got the last vote?” the president asked. “Is Laos in the bag?”
Overholt glanced at his watch before answering. “Not yet, sir,” he said, “but we will have it in about fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll instruct the ambassador to the United Nations to call for a special vote in the morning,” the president said. “If your guys can hold down the fort for six hours or so, we’re home free.”
“I’ll notify them immediately, sir,” Overholt said, rising.
“Good,” the president said. “Then I’m going to catch a few hours of shut-eye.”
A Secret Service agent led Overholt down the elevator and into the secret tunnel. Twenty minutes later he was in his car and on his way back to Langley.
THE white 747 cargo plane slowed to a stop at the end of the runway in Vientiane, then taxied over to a parking area and shut down the engines. Once everything was shut down, the pilot began the process of raising the entire nose cone in the air, opening up the immense cargo area. Once the nose was in the air, cargo ramps were attached to a slot in the open front of the fuselage.
Then, one by one, cars were driven out onto the tarmac.
The first was a lime-green Plymouth Superbird with a hemi-engine. The second, a 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302 in yellow with the shaker hood, rear slats over the window and the quarter-mile clock in the dashboard. The third was a 1967 Pontiac GTO convertible, red with a black interior, red-line tires and air conditioning. The last was a 1967 Corvette in Greenwood green, with the factory speed package and locking rear differential.
The man who carefully removed the cars from inside the 747 was of medium height with thick brown hair. As soon as the last car, the Corvette, was on the runway, he reached into the glove box, removed a letter, then climbed out and lit up a Camel filter.
“You must be the general,” he said to a man approaching followed by a dozen soldiers.
“Yes,” the general said.
“I’m Keith Lowden,” the man said. “I was told to give you this.”
The general scanned the letter, folded it and placed it in his rear pants pocket. “These all original?”
“They are,” Lowden said. “The serial numbers all match.”
Lowden then motioned to the general to walk over to the Superbird and started explaining the car, the documentation and the rare options. By the time Lowden had finished with the second car, the Boss 302, the general stopped him.
“You want—” he started to say just as Lowden’s cell phone rang.
“Sorry,” Lowden said as he answered. He listened for a minute, then turned to the general.
“They want to know if it’s a deal,” he said, placing his hand over the telephone.
The general nodded his head in the affirmative.
“He said okay,” Lowden said.
A second later he hung up the telephone and turned back to the general. “Now, what were you about to ask me?”
“I was wondering if you had time to spend the night here in my country,” the general said, “so we might talk about the cars.”
“I don’t know,” Lowden said, smiling. “This country have any beer?”
“Some of the best,” the general said, smiling back.
“Good,” Lowden said. “’Cause you can’t talk cars when you’re thirsty.”
PO and his team were searching throughout Lhasa, but they had yet to turn up a single U.S. or European citizen. The six members of his team were all Tibetan, and Po didn’t care for them much. First of all, like most people, he hated traitors—and any way you sliced it, Tibetans that worked for the PSB had sold out to the Chinese. In the second part, the men appeared lazy; they did the questioning in a haphazard fashion and didn’t seem to be committed to finding the people Po was seeking. Thirdly, for being members of the country’s crack police service, they didn’t seem to have much training in police procedures.
Po, for his part, had little choice, so he doubled his own efforts and hoped for the best.
“THE son-of-a-bitches,” Cabrillo said angrily, “it’s like putting an atomic bomb in the Vatican.”
Zhuren had just given them the site of the poison gas. It was in Potala, the home of the Dalai Lama, and one of the most sacred of structures in all of Tibet. The Chinese plan was evil, but ingenious. Potala sat on a hill outside of town; if one waited until the winds were right, you could blanket Lhasa in a matter of minutes.
Seng nodded, then reached for his beeping radio. “Go ahead, Oregon,” he said.
“Is Cabrillo there with you?”
“Hold on,” Seng said, handing him the radio.
“Juan,” Hanley said quickly, “we have the votes. All you need to do is keep it together for another few hours and help will be on the way.”
“What’s the latest on the Russians?” Cabrillo asked.
“They’re five hours from the Mongolian-Tibetan border,” Hanley said, staring at the large monitor on the wall, “give or take.”
“Call and have them slow the tank column down,” Cabrillo said. “If they reach the border before the vote, we could have World War Three on our hands.”
“I’ll do it,” Hanley said. “Now, what’s happening on the ground?”
“I just found out the Chinese have one last trick up their sleeve,” Cabrillo said. “A doomsday gas.”
“Do you know the location and type?” Hanley said.
Cabrillo rattled off the chemical composition.
“We’ll get to work here figuring out how to render the gas inert,” Hanley said.
“Good,” Cabrillo said. “That frees me up to pinpoint the exact location.”
“Somehow,” Hanley said, “I knew you were going to say that.”
45
THEOregon was surging into the Bay of Bengal in preparation for the team’s extraction. Word of the street fighting in Lhasa had reached the news media. Television crews, newspaper and magazine reporters, and radio teams were making final preparations to enter the country. To maintain the veil of secrecy necessary for the Corporation to conduct business, they needed to be away from Tibet before the reporters appeared.
So far the plan had worked like clockwork, but there was still a wild card to contend with.
The Russian ruse had successfully tied up the Chinese army far to the north, but the risk now was from the Chinese air force. If Beijing ordered squadrons of bombers and fighter planes to attack the country, the results would be catastrophic. The Dungkar forces had limited means to wage ground-to-air warfare. Carpet bombing of Lhasa would result in heavy losses.
The only hope was if the news media could shine the beacon of truth on China.
If the world could be shown via television that the Tibetans had overthrown their oppressors on their own and that the control of Tibet was in the hands of the people and their divine leader the Dalai Lama, then any bombing by China would be taken for what it was—a senseless act of brutality. The ensuing worldwide condemnation would be a burden even China could not bear.