False Flag Read online

  “I’ll be right back,” she whispered, leaving the dead man panting.

  Ikeda almost stumbled to the bathroom, closing the sliding door and locking it behind her. Her heart was thundering in her chest. She felt as though her ribs might explode at any second. She was unsteady on her feet as she crossed the distance to the basin. She turned the tap on, gripping the porcelain with both hands as water bubbled down the drain.

  You just killed him.

  Irrationally, since no one would suspect her of anything, an overwhelming desire to get rid of the evidence overcame her. She grabbed a tissue from the box in front of the mirror in front of her, and wiped furiously until her lips were clean. She tossed it into the toilet, then took another and washed her face until every last trace of the nerve agent—and her lipstick—was gone.

  “Are you okay in there?” Alstyne called.

  Ikeda took a deep breath, steadied herself as much as possible, and replied, her voice low and seductive, “I’ll be out in a second.”

  She steadied herself in the mirror, her steely gray eyes seeming almost to tear up before she blinked them away. She exhaled deeply. She had done what she came to do. Emmanuel Alstyne deserved to die, and now it was only a matter of time.

  But she wasn’t out of the woods yet. She still had a role to play. She quickly flushed the toilet, and the red-stained tissue paper swirled away, taking with it all evidence of her crime. A second later, she turned off the faucet and returned to the suite. Alstyne was holding two champagne glasses, and the bottle sat on the dresser behind him. Bubbles danced in the pale amber liquid, and Ikeda accepted her glass gratefully—she’d never needed a drink more in her life.

  “What happened to your lipstick?”

  “I wiped it off,” she replied. “Didn’t want to make a mess of your lovely white shirt.”

  A look of childish petulance crossed Alstyne’s face. “I liked it,” he grumbled.

  Ikeda took a sip of her champagne, knowing without needing to check the bottle that it would be more expensive than anything she’d ever drunk in her life. Half the glass was gone before she realized what she was doing.

  “I’ll put it back on.” She smiled. “Whatever you want, baby.”

  The word sickened her. But looking at Alstyne, Ikeda got the sense she wouldn’t be talking with him much longer. He frowned, and a haze seemed to cross his eyes, then he stumbled. The champagne glass went flying, and Ikeda moved faster than most people would think possible, catching it seconds before it hit the lush floral carpeting. It probably wouldn’t have made a sound, but she knew she couldn’t take the risk.

  “How’d you do that?” Alstyne slurred.

  Ikeda set both glasses onto the floor. She straightened and looked at the traitor with exaggerated concern. “Do what, baby? Hey—are you okay?”

  “I don’t… I don’t feel so good,” he mumbled.

  “Why don’t you lie down?” Ikeda replied. “I’ll get some help.”

  Alstyne nodded and stumbled backward, collapsing onto the bed. “Help,” he repeated, his eyes closing. Within seconds, he drifted into an incoherent sleep.

  Ikeda stared at him for a short while, a mixture of revulsion at what she’d done fighting with a detached professional satisfaction at the nerve agent’s fearsome efficiency. But the paralysis didn’t last long. She sprang into action. She knew that she had to get out of here while Alstyne still looked unconscious—and not dead.

  Otherwise things would get very messy, very fast.

  She found the control unit for the overhead speakers and cranked up the volume until the room was almost reverberating. She wondered what Chubby and Xi would be thinking on the other side of that door. Next, she opened the minibar and removed a large bottle of Grey Goose vodka. She opened the cap and spilled a little onto Alstyne’s upper body — just enough that he would stink of alcohol if anyone checked.

  Ikeda went to the bathroom and emptied half of the vodka and most of the champagne down the drain, and then returned each bottle to the suite. She spent a few seconds adding to the effect, filling shot glasses with just the merest hint of vodka so it looked as though they had been knocked back.

  Finally, she removed the chain from around Alstyne’s neck and prepared to make the switch. As she did, several things happened at once. First, the lights went out, leaving the lavish suite bathed only in the glow of Macau’s vibrant skyline. The hum of the air conditioner and the minibar died in unison, leaving a chilling, empty silence in their wake. Ikeda was alone, with only Alstyne’s increasingly labored breath for company. She froze, every sense on high alert, and tendrils of anxiety winding like searching vines into her brain. And that was when she heard a sound that sent ice through her veins.

  The distinct sound of suppressed gunfire. Right outside the door to the suite.

  9

  Deep in the bowels of the Macau Ritz-Carlton, far from the glitz of the two thousand dollar per night suites and the two hundred dollar afternoon tea, complete with English scones, or foie gras on muesli toast, a small explosive charge packed with Semtex plastic explosive and topped with a radio-controlled detonator was attached to the main electricity junction box that fed the hotel.

  A separate, secondary charge was attached to the backup generator, a half ton piece of metal painted firetruck red, but far enough away from the large tanks of diesel that there was no chance of the hotel going up like a firecracker before the sprinklers kicked in.

  Six men stood ready in a hotel room located on the floor below Alstyne’s suite. Though they did not know it, it was the same floor on which a CIA asset attached to the Special Operations Group was waiting in support for Eliza Ikeda’s mission. The men wore black paramilitary gear, complete with Kevlar helmets, ballistic vests complete with plates and steel-toed leather boots. Though they were emblazoned with no markings to designate a unit, they looked like SWAT team members.

  None of this, however, could have been seen by the naked eye. The men waited in complete darkness. Even the blinking light of the coffee maker had been taped over to avoid ruining their night vision.

  Each man was, of course, equipped with night vision goggles that turned night into day, but best practice was to leave one eye attuned to the darkness at all times. The goggles were not to the standard American soldiers were used to. They were a cheap Chinese model, supplied to certain People’s Liberation Army units, and sold all over the world. In short, they were untraceable.

  “Ready the charge,” the leader said.

  He spoke in a clipped Asian dialect. His men would obey his command absolutely. No questions. No hesitation. That was the way they had been trained. They were the best of the best at this kind of work. Not because millions of dollars was spent on their training, for it was not, nor because they were equipped with the best weaponry, which they were not, but because they were utterly ruthless. Each man was a killer. Each man had been plucked from a place of violence, cruelty and destitution like no other, and given a way out.

  They knew only that way.

  “Both charges are reading green, Captain,” his subordinate replied.

  The captain checked his wristwatch one last time. The order came decisively and crisply. “Detonate.”

  This far up, they could neither hear nor feel the impact of the explosions far beneath their feet. Outside, the lights flickered, then died. It was as though the entire building sighed in unison, as hundreds of televisions, thousands of lightbulbs, entire floors of catering equipment and minibars died in sync.

  The men waited for fifteen long seconds to ensure all the lights were dead. The only sounds they could hear was a symphony of their own ragged breaths, raucous in the darkness as the adrenaline pumped into their systems, anticipation building for the violence that would soon be upon them.

  “Execute,” the captain growled. “You know your roles. We must take the American alive.”

  They stormed out of the hotel room, moving in pairs, both robotic and graceful in the darkness. To them,
the world was green and light. The first thing they saw was completely unexpected. A man emerged from a hotel room several doors down. He was armed with a pistol.

  But they were prepared for all eventualities.

  Suppressed rifle fire lit the dark hallway, tongues of flame burning the shadows away. The man danced and fell.

  The second the lights in the hotel suite died, Trapp’s stomach clenched. He spun on his heel, went to the drawn curtains and swept them open. Below, the streetlights of Macau twinkled, and the iridescent blue of the Ritz-Carlton’s riverine swimming pool glowed at the base of the structure.

  The power outage isn’t citywide, he thought, adrenaline dumping into his system and super-charging his brain. Ikeda’s life might well be on the line, her survival resting on the decisions he made in the next few seconds.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he growled at the CIA technician, who was frantically checking his equipment. The man tapped his keyboard several times, to no end. Trapp could only just make out his silhouette in the darkness.

  “I don’t know, sir,” the man replied.

  Trapp forced himself to concentrate. It had been perhaps six seconds since the power died. By now, the hotel’s backup generators should have fired up, and emergency lighting should be blinking on across the building.

  None of that was happening.

  This could just be a coincidence, a localized power fault that happened to affect the very hotel Trapp was operating in. The Ministry of State Security grunts upstairs were probably equally confused, even now contacting their handlers for instructions.

  But Jason Trapp did not believe in coincidences. Not when they occurred during a mission whose successful completion was vital to America’s national security.

  Behind Trapp, the technician’s surveillance monitors began booting up. The light caught Trapp’s attention, but he quickly lost interest. The equipment was fed by an uninterruptible power supply that had just kicked in.

  And that was exactly what should have happened in the Ritz-Carlton. When guests were paying thousands of dollars a night to live in luxury, they didn’t appreciate the lights going out. Which meant this could not be an accident. And even if it was, Trapp would rather beg forgiveness than ask permission. The rules of engagement from Washington had been clear: try not to start a war. But kill Alstyne, and return with the stolen secrets.

  No matter the cost.

  None of this makes sense, Trapp thought anxiously. Several seconds ticked by. He forced himself to stop, to think. To consider the situation from first principles. He knew that he himself had not killed the lights. There was no reason for Chinese state security to have done so either.

  Which meant that either this was an accident, or there was only one other rational piece that could complete this puzzle.

  A third player had entered the game.

  Trapp strode back toward the technician, grabbed an encrypted Motorola from the table, and spoke curtly into it. “Bravo One, Bravo Two, this is Hangman. Close on Ikeda. You are weapons free.”

  This is not good.

  That might have been the understatement of the year, Ikeda thought. She was swallowed up by darkness, the only lighting in Alstyne’s luxurious hotel suite coming from the billboards and casinos of the Macau strip.

  She was unarmed. But she still had a job to do. She yanked the chain from around Alstyne’s neck, fumbled with her purse in the darkness, finding the minute lever that opened the hidden compartment, and switched the real for the fake.

  Ikeda looked around desperately, searching for a hiding spot. Adrenaline flooded her system, making it difficult to think, difficult even to function. But that was where all those years of training paid off. She breathed deeply, squashed her fear, and forced herself to think through the panic that was clenching her mind.

  Outside, she heard a thump. Rationally, she knew it could only be one of Chubby or Xi dropping to the ground, a bullet through his forehead. None of it made sense. Trapp wouldn’t have started firing unless something had gone horribly wrong—and as far as she could tell, until this very moment, nothing had.

  At least, not in here.

  “Crap,” she whispered, paralyzed with indecision. Her fingers felt numb as she closed the purse’s hidden compartment. There was a sound at the door. Someone was opening it. She was out of time.

  As the door began to swing open, Ikeda dropped the purse. As it neared the floor, she kicked it as hard as she could, underneath the bed. She knelt, grabbed one of the champagne glasses she had placed at the foot of the bed a few minutes before, and sank to the floor.

  And that was when it struck her. She was still holding the necklace, the fake USB drive. She hadn’t had time to replace it around Alstyne’s neck. Her stomach clenched with fear.

  “Hands up!” she heard.

  Ikeda’s mind translated the words without any effort. Her father was American, her mother Japanese, she’d lived in Hong Kong for years, did business all across Asia, and had majored in Asian Languages at UCLA in Southern California. She spoke English, Japanese, Mandarin, passable French and a little Cantonese, amongst several others.

  But the language she heard in that moment made no sense at all.

  Korean.

  Ikeda let out a little whimper. But cold calculation had replaced fear in her mind. She knew she could neither flee nor fight. Not in that moment. She had no weapon, and there were an unknown number of assailants at the door. If she was going to survive the next few seconds, she needed complete and utter clarity. There was no time for terror.

  Just as she had done with Alstyne, she needed to play a role.

  “Who is it?” she said in a soft, tremulous voice, speaking in fluent Mandarin. “What do you want?”

  Several men flooded into the room. In the darkness, they were merely silhouettes, monsters in the gloom, like a child’s nightmare. The sound of their boots would ordinarily have been heavy, but was instead swallowed up by the thick carpeting. It made for a surreal sight.

  “Where is he?” a man asked, still in Korean.

  “What’s going on?” Ikeda whimpered. “Why did the lights go out?”

  Her mind was racing. There was something else going on here. It wasn’t just that these armed men were speaking Korean. The very words sounded strange. Almost old-fashioned.

  And then it hit her. They weren’t from the south. They were from North Korea.

  A hand closed on Ikeda’s shoulder, roughly yanking her up. A flashlight clicked on, bathing her in light, and she squinted, her eyes dazzled by the sudden flash. A man glowered at her, though with the light and her face in the darkness in the room, it was hard to make out his features. Still, Ikeda sensed that he was in command.

  Ikeda’s eyes flashed to her left. Another of the men was kneeling on the bed, shaking Alstyne. He was completely unresponsive.

  “He’s not breathing, Captain,” the Korean said.

  The slap came out of nowhere, but it almost knocked Ikeda over. Her mind stopped functioning for a few seconds.

  “What’s wrong with him?” the leader asked her in thickly accented Mandarin, his fingers biting viciously into her shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” Ikeda whimpered. “We were having fun. He drank too much… who are you people?”

  She hung from the man’s grip, attempting to present herself as unthreateningly as possible. She knew that these men would not leave this hotel room without killing her. Whatever they had come for, they could leave no witnesses to this crime. But if she could just make them believe she was exactly what she looked like—an escort—maybe she would buy herself a fraction of a second. It might mean the difference between life and death.

  And then she saw the flash of white in the man’s eyes as he glanced down, the flashlight tracking his gaze. It stopped at the necklace clutched in her fingers. He grabbed it from her, his nails scratching her palms. And then he spun, pushing Ikeda toward one of his men.

  “We don’t have time for this,” the leader
growled in Korean. “Take both of them.”

  In the hallway outside, Ikeda heard the sound of gunfire. Still suppressed, so it crackled rather than barked. Someone let out a bloodcurdling scream. She took stock of her surroundings as she stumbled with her momentum. She intentionally fell to the floor, knowing she had at most two seconds to make a decision.

  There were four men in the suite with her. One was occupied hoisting Alstyne onto his shoulder. Two had started toward the door, including their leader, reacting to this new threat.

  The only weapon in Ikeda’s hand was the champagne glass. She crunched it against the floor, leaving only the sharp stiletto-like point of the shattered stem, coiled her body, and sprang toward the man who was coming for her, plastic cuffs in his hand.

  10

  The two Mi-17 helicopters swept low over the mountainous terrain of Sichuan Province. Over twelve thousand such aircraft had been built, and many were operated by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, so a sighting would arouse no great suspicion. The choppers were flying low enough that neither military nor civilian radar could spot them. This far into the cavernous Chinese interior, most radar facilities were far from state-of-the-art. No errant detail related to the nighttime insertion, barring its very existence, would give them away.

  Colonel Kim was dressed in air force dress blues, complete with the single gold star on his epaulets that marked him out as a brigadier general in the Chinese military, and wore a pistol on his right hip. Besides the two pilots, five Unit 61 commandos occupied the helicopter’s cabin with him. Unlike their leader, they wore Kevlar helmets, ballistic vests and the dark blue digital camouflage fatigues issued to Chinese special forces. They cradled their weapons against their foreheads as though they were praying.