‘ — needs their ass kicked,’ Kilkenny continued for him, ‘it pays to send the very best.’
They tapped bottles, drained another inch of beer, and let out a howling ‘Hoo-yah.’
‘We’ve had some good times, my friend,’ Gates said.
‘That we have, which is why I thought of you when this came up. I know you’re pulling the pin pretty soon.’
‘Yeah, I got my twenty-five in and as many stripes as the arms on my dress uniform can hold. Any more, and I’ll have to stitch ’em on my pants.’
‘Not quite up to Navy regs. Any thoughts on what you might do next?’
‘I did a little technical consulting on a movie last year, so I’m kicking around marketing myself as a personal trainer to the stars. I think it might be fun to stomp the snot out of some action hero who doesn’t even know how to hold a weapon. Of course, I’d probably have to pay the studios to train Halle Berry or Jennifer Garner.’
‘You’d have to control that libido of yours first.’
‘Hey, I’m a perfect gentleman around the ladies. They always have to ask, and they usually do.’
Kilkenny laughed at how quickly their repartee degenerated into machismo.
‘Of course,’ Gates continued, ‘I could take a clue from our cover as prospective franchisees and go into the restaurant business. Maybe take a slot in your buddy’s fast-spreading empire.’
‘Billy’s a gustatory Genghis Khan all right. He could definitely hook you up.’
‘I’d have to be Stateside, though — the one he’s got in Ulaanbaatar is bit off the beaten path for me. Hard to believe I have enough time in to retire, it went by so fast, but I guess all good things come to an end.’
‘Some before their time,’ Kilkenny added.
It took a second, but Gates quickly realized that Kilkenny was referring to his abbreviated tenure as husband and father. The SEAL had attended the funeral of Kilkenny’s wife and child along with Kilkenny’s former commanding officer, Rear Admiral Jack Dawson. As the senior officer present, Dawson presented Kilkenny with the flag that draped the coffin, and he extended a grateful nation’s thanks for Kelsey’s brave service as an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.
‘I’m oh-for-three when it comes to marriage,’ Gates admitted. ‘All my blessed unions tragically lasted longer than yours, but not one had a hope in heaven of going the distance. I can’t pretend to understand what kind of knots this must have tied in your craw, but I sure envy you for the time you had with Kelsey Being from the Bible Belt, I can just hear the preacher saying your tragedy is part of God’s unknowable master plan. Sounds like a load to me, but if that’s the case, then the Almighty’s got some explaining to do.’
‘Yeah,’ Kilkenny agreed.
As Kilkenny took a long pull on his beer, he heard the dull rumble of approaching hooves. Within a few minutes, eight riders appeared from the north. They split into two groups, rounded the crescent of yurts, and rode into the semicircular area where Gates and Kilkenny sat. In addition to the riders, there were several horses carrying loads or pulling small carts. The eight men glared down at them, and Kilkenny wondered if they had trespassed on the wrong pasturelands.
There was a brief conversation among the riders, none of which Kilkenny or Gates understood. Then the apparent leader of the horsemen dismounted and walked toward them. Kilkenny and Gates rose and stood their ground. The man barked out a question and Kilkenny shrugged his shoulders, the universal sign that he did not understand.
‘Speak English?’ the man demanded, his words thickly accented.
‘Yes,’ Kilkenny replied.
‘Are you well?’ he asked.
Kilkenny shot a glance at Gates who looked just as confused.
‘Yes,’ Kilkenny replied.
‘Is your family well?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are your sheep fat?’
At this question, Gates could barely contain his laughter. Kilkenny grew suspicious.
‘Very fat.’
‘Is the grass good?’
‘If it were any better,’ Gates jumped in, ‘it would be illegal. You want a beer?’
‘The traditional answer to each of the four questions is yes’, the Asian replied, his accent now flawless middle-American, ‘after which the guest is offered a cup of tea.’
‘All we got is Baadog, but I gotta say it ain’t bad for cutting the dust out of your throat.’
‘Then Baadog it is.’ The Asian turned to Kilkenny. ‘Lieutenant Gene Chun, SEAL Team One.’
Kilkenny shook Chun’s hand and introduced himself. ‘Nice outfits, very authentic.’
‘Thanks. We didn’t want to stick out like American tourists.’
As the other riders dismounted, Chun introduced the team Gates had recruited from U.S. Special Forces. Chun and a petty officer named Jim Chow represented the Navy SEALs. Paul Sung and David Tsui volunteered out of the elite Marine Recon, and medic Chuck Jing jokingly referred to himself as the lone Army Ranger. Rounding out the team were Bob Shen, Terry Han, and Ed Xaio of the Army’s Night Stalkers.
As Kilkenny had requested, each volunteer recruit brought with him both the lethal skills of his chosen profession and the cultural and linguistic training necessary to pass easily for native Han Chinese. Some of the warriors were first-generation Americans; others counted laborers on the Union Pacific Railroad among their ancestors.
‘You guys have any problems getting into the country?’ Kilkenny asked.
‘Naw. Our documents were rock solid. Nice touch with that National Geographic cover story. Thanks to that and a little creative packaging, our gear breezed through customs, which is a good thing considering what we’re packing.’
‘Nine-Eleven definitely has made traveling with nuclear material more challenging,’ Kilkenny agreed. He turned to Gates. ‘Help these fellas get set up while I make dinner.’
Kilkenny stoked the fire inside his yurt and began cooking a mix of steak and vegetables in a shallow wok as the team unloaded equipment and tended to the horses. By the time he finished cooking his version of Mongolian beef, the operators were stepping inside the yurt, cold beers in hand.
‘Grab a bowl and find some floor,’ Kilkenny announced as he doled out the evening meal. ‘And make sure you have a clear view of that blank patch of wall.’
‘Why?’ Chun asked. ‘We getting a movie with dinner?’
‘Something like that.’
When everyone was seated, Kilkenny perched himself on a low wooden stool. Beside him stood a small table atop which lay a device that looked like an iPod mated to a medium-sized Maglite.
‘Gentlemen, I want to start by thanking you for volunteering for this,’ Kilkenny said. ‘That you all responded to Max’s pitch so quickly illustrates the high moral character that I believe exists in the members of our elite profession — either that or you all lost big at one of the chief’s legendary poker weekends.’
‘Mission?’ Han blurted out. ‘I thought this was one of those poker weekends.’
The men shared a laugh, especially when Gates tossed a pack of cards to Kilkenny. The chief never traveled without a deck. Kilkenny opened the box and began cutting and shuffling the cards.
‘If you’ll pardon the expression, here’s the deaclass="underline" mission first, cards later.’ Kilkenny boxed the deck and tossed it back to Gates. Then he switched on the small projector to display on the wall a grainy black-and-white image of an Asian man in his early thirties. ‘This is Bishop Yin Daoming, or at least this is what he looked like before he was imprisoned in the seventies.’ Kilkenny moved to the next image. ‘This is what a computer thinks Yin might look like today, but there’s no way we can predict what three decades in a Chinese prison have done to the man.’