The Americans felt incredibly exposed here. Their vehicles were loaded up with two dozen Chinese rebels, guns, ammunition, incriminating maps, and radios and other gear.
Not to mention two men tied up hand and foot and gagged with electrical tape.
If a single policeman pulled up on their little roadside get-together they would have to neutralize him somehow, which sounded clean and efficient, but which easily could get ugly in a hurry.
Though this particular road was secluded enough, dozens of high-rise apartments were just to the southeast of their location. As soon as the morning traffic got going, there were going to be a lot of eyes on Gongchen North.
Eight o’clock came and went, and then eight-thirty. The rain had picked up under dark gray clouds, and occasional lightning flashes to the north of the city preceded claps of thunder.
Twice Chavez ordered the two buses to relocate to other parts of the neighborhood. This would slow down their deployment at the ambush sites, but Ding was more concerned with being compromised before they even got the chance to hit the motorcade.
At eight forty-five Caruso stood by the rebel translator on the sidewalk next to the van. He said, “Yin Yin. We really need to hear from your motorcycle cop friend.”
“Yes, I know.”
“One if by land, two if by sea,” Dom added.
Yin Yin cocked her head. “It is land. It is definitely land. There is no sea here in Beijing.”
“Never mind.”
She held a radio, and he heard near-constant transmissions, but he’d given up on trying to pick even a single comprehensible word out of all the chatter.
A short, barking call from a male voice came through, and Yin Yin turned so quickly she startled Dom. “Jingzhou Road!” she shouted.
Dom was on his radio within one second. “Jingzhou! Everybody move out!”
Chavez broadcast to the unit as all the vehicles began heading to their objectives. “We do it just like we talked about last night. Remember, the map is not the territory. When we get there it’s not going to look like it did in the dark, and it’s not going to look like it does on the map. You will have just minutes to set up. Don’t look for the perfect situation, just the best situation you can make for yourselves in the time we have.”
Sam, John, and Dom said “Roger,” and Ding went back to worrying about his own end of the operation.
Chavez drove in one of the minibuses with three rebels, none of whom spoke a word of English. Still, they had their instructions from Yin Yin, even if no ability to communicate with the American. They parked in front of a six-story apartment building and ran inside. Two men stayed downstairs to guard the entrance, while Ding and the last man carried long plastic bags and headed for the stairs.
They made it up the stairs to the fourth floor of the building and arrived at an apartment door on the northwest corner. The young Chinese man knocked on the door, and he pulled a small Makarov pistol from his jacket as he waited for it to be answered. After thirty seconds he knocked again. Chavez listened to the radio on his chest and shifted his weight nervously from foot to foot.
The rest of his ambush force was rushing to get into place before the target passed, and he was standing in a hallway, politely waiting for a door to be answered.
Finally Chavez gently moved the Chinese man out of the way and kicked in the door.
The apartment was furnished and lived in, but no one was home.
The Chinese man’s job now was to protect Chavez from anyone coming into the apartment. He stayed in the living room and watched the door with his rifle at the ready while Chavez found a suitable sniper’s nest.
He ran to a window in a corner bedroom and opened it, moved back deep into the dimly lit room, slid a heavy wood table against a back wall, and then lay down on the table, resting the sniper rifle on his backpack.
Through his eight-power scope he scanned the road, some two hundred fifty meters away, a very makeable distance.
“Ding is in position.”
He scanned across the road to the low grassy hillside and saw the minibus there. The doors were open, and it was empty.
Dom Caruso crawled in the tall brown grass, wet from the morning storm, and hoped like hell everyone was still with him. He raised his head and picked his spot, fifty meters or so from the southbound lanes, and about sixty-five yards from the northbound lanes where the motorcade would pass in just moments. He positioned Yin Yin on his right and had her tell the other fifteen rebels with them to space themselves about two meters apart.
From here they could shoot down across southbound traffic and into the motorcade when it appeared.
“Dom, in position.”
Chavez spoke into his radio from his sniper perch southeast of the road. “Dom, the rest of that gang over there with you is going to be spraying and praying. I want you firing that RPG carefully. You’re going to make yourself a target each time you launch, so find some cover and move to a different part of the hill before firing again.”
“Roger that.”
Sam Driscoll was two kilometers south of the ambush point, parked alongside the road in a concrete block — laden four-door pickup truck. Crane and Snipe were hooded and bound next to him. The motorcade passed him in the morning traffic; it was seven black four-door sedans and SUVs, and two large green military trucks. Sam knew there could be fifteen to twenty troops in each of the trucks, and another twenty-five or so security in the other vehicles. He reported this over the radio, then drew a Makarov out of his waistband, got out of the truck, and then, by the side of the road, calmly shot both Crane and Snipe in the chest and head.
He pulled off their hoods and ripped off the tape binding them, and then tossed a pair of old Type 81 rifles onto the floorboards in front of them.
Seconds later he pulled his truck into traffic and raced to catch up to the convoy. Behind him a sedan with four more Pathway men followed.
John Clark wore a paper mask over his face and sunglasses that did not make much sense in this thunderstorm. He and his Chinese rebel minder walked with two large wooden crates between them, one stacked on the other. They entered the covered pedestrian overpass that crossed the eight-lane road two hundred fifty yards northeast of the ambush site. A single motorcycle policeman had dismounted and was walking well ahead of them. Dozens of men and women heading to work or public transportation pickup points on both sides of the road also were entering and exiting the walkway.
Clark’s Pathway of Liberty man was tasked with holding a gun to the policeman and disarming him before Clark attacked the convoy. John hoped the frightened-looking young rebel would have the guts and the skill to pull this off, or the stomach to shoot the cop dead if he did not comply. But John had enough problems of his own to take care of, so when they arrived at their point directly above the northbound lanes, he put the cop out of his mind and prepared himself for what was about to happen. He lowered the cases to the ground by the overpass railing, motioned for the young rebel to go handle the cop, and then John knelt down, opened both cases with his left hand, and reached into the top case to flip the safety off the first weapon.
He spoke into his radio at the same time.
“Clark in position.”
All around him, men and women walked by unaware.
“’Bout thirty seconds out,” Driscoll said.
The chairman of the Central Military Commission of the People’s Republic of China, Su Ke Qiang, was in the fourth vehicle of his nine-vehicle motorcade, surrounded by fifty-four men armed with rifles, machine guns, and grenade launchers. As always, he paid no attention to his protectors. His complete focus was on his work, and this morning that work consisted chiefly of the papers in his lap, the latest reports from the Taiwan Strait and the Guangzhou Military District.