The robot’s weapon fired, and Loo Ping felt the impact of the bullet as it hit him dead center in the heart. His blood pressure dropped to zero, and he was dead seconds after he hit the floor.
The robot swung its weapon and fired one bullet at the nearest soldier, then the next, and the next. Four individual aimed shots in less than a second.
The four empty cartridges ejected from the minigun’s breech rattled like hail against the window glass, then fell to the carpeted office floor while the barrels of the minigun freewheeled to a stop.
The soldier Loo Ping had sent to search the basement walked through the door just as the minigun fired. As the reports echoed through the room, he dove back through the door and scrambled down the staircase.
“Someone is escaping,” Kerry Kent said. She was watching the monitor intently, listening to Charlie York’s audio in her headset.
“Let him go,” Cole said. “He’s no threat.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Four uneducated kids dead in a heartbeat. His mouth was watering badly, like he was going to puke.
Charlie York turned back to the window. The turret on his right camera clicked to another lens, bringing the video of the plaza below into focus on Kent’s monitor.
She checked with the other units. All okay, all ready.
Jimmy Lee, the King of Cool, was still babbling incoherently about Wu Tai Kwong and treason and not wanting to be executed. Lee’s producer and the government censor stood wringing their hands.
Governor Sun hadn’t called and in truth the producer doubted if he would. Still, Jimmy Lee was a celebrity of sorts, so he might.
The censor tried to place a call to Beijing but the operator said the lines were down. “This is a government emergency,” the censor shouted, then wished he hadn’t. The possibility that Jimmy Lee had gone off his nut and was babbling nonsense crossed his mind for the first time. He wondered just how hard he should press to get though to someone important.
He didn’t have to worry. The operator told him that government business or not, the telephone lines out of Hong Kong were still out of order.
“Call army headquarters,” the producer suggested.
“Why don’t we just broadcast the news?” the censor replied. “Everyone will hear. What better way is there to warn the authorities of the plot?”
“What if Jimmy is crazy? Huh? Have you considered that? Maybe he’s on drugs. The fool has used them before, remember?”
“All the telephone lines out of Hong Kong are down,” the censor retorted. “The banks are closed, the subway isn’t running, the airport is closed … Jimmy says the rebels are attacking the computers. There is going to be an attack on the troops in the Bank of the Orient square. That sounds like truth to me.”
“Okay, okay,” the producer said. He eyed Jimmy, tried to decide if he was up to talking coherently. No.
He went into the studio and sat on the stool in front of Jimmy’s mike. As he waited for the current song to end, he thought about what he was going to say. Tell it straight, he decided. Don’t try to jazz it up like Jimmy would. Just act like a man with all his marbles.
Don’t panic, people, but this is a rumor that may have some truth to it. Authorities, take action. You heard it first, folks, right here on the Jimmy Lee show.
The song came to an end. The producer flipped the switch to make his microphone hot and began speaking.
The people in the mobile museum trailer parked three blocks from the Bank of the Orient had a radio tuned to the Jimmy Lee show and a television showing the only station left on the air. Popular music had been coming from the radio and a Chinese soap opera from the television.
Someone called Kerry Kent’s attention to the voice that came over the radio. A male voice, talking about the revolution that was just beginning, a revolution to overthrow the People’s Republic. Troops were going to be attacked this morning in the Central District by armed rebels, who were trying to cause a major riot, a riot that was supposed to engulf City Hall and lead to the arrest of the authorities there.
“That isn’t Jimmy Lee’s voice,” the man told Kerry ominously.
She looked at her watch. This wasn’t supposed to be happening now.
“Have the people who are to guard the radio and television stations reached there yet?” These people could not be armed until the weapons came through the Cross-Harbor Tunnel.
“They are on their way. They haven’t called in.”
“What is going on at the radio station?”
No one could answer that.
Virgil Cole was watching now. Kerry Kent called Hu Chiang, who was still circling over the Central District in a helicopter. The feed from the chopper’s television camera was displayed on a monitor in the trailer.
“You’re over the bank square?” Kerry asked.
“Yes. I’m ready when you are.”
Kerry turned to Cole. “The television and radio station guards are not yet in position, but a premature announcement is coming over the radio.”
“Anything on television?”
“No.”
“Are we ready?”
“We are waiting for the television and radio guards. When the hammer falls, we have to deny the government use of the media and keep it for ourselves.”
“Is the army listening to Jimmy Lee?”
Kerry Kent stared at the monitors, which showed her what each of the Sergeant York units was seeing. Then she checked the computer-generated composite. “If they are, they haven’t taken alarm yet,” she said.
“Call the people on the way to the TV and radio stations. Get an estimated time of arrival. All they have to do is get there before the PLA does.”
Kerry Kent nodded at one of the computer technicians, who picked up a WB phone and began dialing.
“Two hours,” the radio operator told Moon Hok. That was how long the colonel at the barracks in the New Territories estimated it would take for the troops Moon requested to be loaded on trucks and transported to the Bank of the Orient square. Neither the barracks colonel nor Moon Hok yet knew that the Cross-Harbor Tunnel no longer belonged to the army, nor were they factoring in the gridlock conditions that prevailed in the streets of southern Kowloon. Still, Moon Hok knew the estimate was optimistic.
From where he stood he could hear the crowd chanting an antigovernment slogan, something about no more stealing.
Once again, Moon Hok thought bitterly, Tang and the governor had placed the army in an impossible situation. The crowd was definitely hostile and growing with each passing minute. In the streets leading to the square the people were packed to standing-room-only density.
Should they be allowed to remain where they were, or should he push them back and expand his perimeter?
While he was mulling his options, the radio traffic continued about the helicopter in which General Tang had been riding. It had crashed, according to an army officer who said he had witnessed the disaster from a vehicle a half-mile away. The helicopter had fallen near the Kowloon entrance to the Cross-Harbor Tunnel. Another officer chimed in, claiming he saw the missile that downed the chopper.
“It was shot down,” he said on the radio net.
Shot down!
If the hostile population was now shooting at PLA helicopters, the entire situation had changed. This bank square was militarily indefensible. Perhaps he should load the troops in the trucks and get them out of here. Of course, that move would have political repercussions.
He decided to dump the whole mess in the governor’s lap. He directed the radio operator to get Governor Sun on the radio.
But time had run out. Some of the civilians in the crowd outside the military perimeter were listening to the only radio station in Hong Kong that was on the air. These people were being entertained by Jimmy Lee’s producer, who was describing the horrible, treasonous uprising that was about to take place in the Bank of the Orient square.