False Flag Read online

  They were not, of course. At least to no god other than their Supreme Leader. And given that the colonel held the power of life and death over all of them, at all times, that might as well be Kim himself. As he surveyed his men, the thought gave him great satisfaction.

  “We’re two minutes out, Colonel,” the pilot reported.

  Kim nodded in the darkness of the helicopter’s cabin. All interior and exterior lights were turned off, in order to minimize their chances of being discovered. Before long, the whole world would learn what had happened here. But these last few minutes of secrecy were vital.

  “Make the call,” he grunted into a mic attached to his protective headphones.

  Though he could not hear it over the roar of the helicopter’s engines, Kim knew that the pilot was at this very moment following his orders and contacting the communications officer at the Xishang Satellite Control Center. He sensed the whine of the engines change as the two aircraft made their final descent toward the facility. As the change in momentum pushed him back against his jump seat, Kim allowed a smile of satisfaction to crawl across his disfigured face. Tonight’s events would remake the world. And he was responsible for all of it.

  The two helicopters touched down in unison, and Kim’s heavily-armed men spilled out of the aircraft. The rotors did not slow, and would not do so until this mission was complete.

  Kim’s leather-soled dress shoes clipped against the helipad’s asphalt, though he suspected that the sound was audible to him alone.

  “What is the meaning of this?” an irate young officer growled.

  His shirt was untucked as he ran toward the two helicopters, and it billowed in the downwash from their rotors. He looked up at the last second, and his face blanched. “My apologies, General. I was not informed there was to be an inspection.”

  “If it were an inspection,” Kim spat, assuming an air of supreme confidence, “you would have failed, Captain.”

  The officer, his face pale, his shirt now hastily tucked into the uniform pants, stood in a rigid posture, his eyes straight forward. He knew better than to argue with a man so senior to him. That was what Kim was counting on. “Yes, sir.”

  “If you follow my orders to the letter,” Kim snarled, “I will not write your dereliction of duty into my report.”

  The captain, Kim knew from reading the surveillance reports he had had compiled on the Xishang facility, was in command of the small security detachment. His head bobbed nervously up and down, seemingly unwilling to trust his faculties of speech.

  “The General Staff has been made aware of a threat to this facility. My men and I are to secure it until reinforcements arrive.”

  “A threat?” the officer croaked. “Why wasn’t I informed?”

  Kim cut the man’s whimpers off with a snarl, baring his teeth and letting the jagged scar across his cheek do the talking. “You have been. Gather your men,” he said. “All of them, and bring them here. The scientists, too. And Captain?”

  The man nodded, his legs shaking so hard Kim wondered idly whether they might give way.

  “Move fast. Don’t give me another opportunity to doubt your loyalty.”

  Trapp sprinted through the darkened hallway. The only illumination was a dim green LED sign over the entrance to the stairwell, but otherwise the hotel was black. There were no windows to the hallway, no emergency lighting, so Trapp clicked a flashlight on as he ran.

  The illumination flared like the rising sun, but not in time to avoid a collision with a terrified-looking tourist, who he shoulder-barged into the wall. Trapp barely felt the impact, his mind consumed by anger at himself for putting Ikeda into this position. He should have situated himself closer, not two floors away. But the time for recrimination would come later. Right now, he needed to focus on getting Ikeda out of this mess.

  Alive.

  Trapp didn’t stop to apologize. He burst into the stairwell and hissed into the encrypted radio in his other hand as he moved. He wished he’d had the time to get set up with an earpiece, but knew he needed to move fast. “Bravo One, Bravo Two, report.”

  He took the stairs three at a time, then four, not slowing until an entire flight disappeared in his rearview. The radio in his left hand crackled, and he instinctively lowered the volume and pressed it to his ear.

  “Hangman, this is Bravo One,” the man whispered. “I’m exiting the stairwell. I think Bravo Two’s down. I’ve got at least two shooters, heavily armed—”

  Trapp didn’t need the broadcast to hear what happened next. The sound of suppressed gunfire punctuated the silent stairwell, and as he took the last few steps down to Alstyne’s floor, he saw Bravo One’s bullet-ridden body slump backward into the darkened space.

  Immediately, Trapp killed the flashlight and froze, sliding the device into the pocket of his jeans and noiselessly placing the radio on the floor. He needed both hands, and the only remaining CIA operative on-site was the surveillance technician in the suite he had just vacated. With the power out, the man was less than useless. In place of the radio, Trapp retrieved the Beretta from his waistband and ensured he had a chambered round.

  He cursed.

  What the hell was going on? Whoever the shooters were, they were packing some serious heat. Somehow they’d known exactly where Alstyne was and what he was carrying, and they weren’t worried about using force to acquire it. Trapp’s mind raced as he tried to work out who he was up against. The Russians? The Iranians?

  It had to be a nation state, and one that didn’t have a problem poking the Chinese tiger. That was a very short list. But even so, Trapp didn’t have time to examine all its possible permutations. For now, his only focus needed to be on saving Ikeda.

  He moved silently, taking the last few concrete steps heel-toe in order to minimize the sound of his footsteps. He didn’t so much walk as prowl, entirely at home in the darkness. Making it to Bravo One’s body, he knelt, pistol steady as he crouched, every sense on high alert. With his left hand, he checked the man’s pulse.

  Dead.

  Trapp’s fingers came away sticky with hot blood. He grimaced, but forced the sorrow from his mind. The operator’s body was half-in, half-out of the entrance to the stairwell, blocking the door half-open. That was good. Trapp was six foot three and two hundred pounds of lean muscle, but he figured there was just enough space to make it through without arousing attention.

  He paused, listening. He knew from Bravo One’s dying words that there were at least two shooters, but he sensed there would be more than that. The volume of fire that had cut the former CIA operator to bits had been intense. Trapp knew that if he burst through the stairwell’s exit, he might well suffer the same fate.

  In the hallway beyond, Trapp heard voices. He stopped breathing, straining his ears in an attempt to listen in. He spoke a little Mandarin, but not much. But one thing became instantly clear—whatever language these killers were speaking, it wasn’t one of the Chinese dialects. That meant the state security goons must already be dead.

  But if they were, and the newcomers weren’t Chinese—then who the hell were they?

  Trapp pressed his body against the distressed concrete wall of the stairwell, extending the side of his face almost like an antenna as he strained to listen in to the conversation. He couldn’t understand a word of the strange language, but he immediately recognized what was going on.

  The new players were coordinating something. But what it was—or whether that something involved him, Trapp had no idea…

  11

  As Eliza Ikeda uncoiled, driving all of her not inconsiderable muscular power through the balls of her feet, and then sprung into the air, she looked more like a comic book character than a flesh and blood human being.

  Dark shapes moved like wraiths in the inky blackness all around her, but she only had eyes for the man standing five feet in front of her. She closed the distance in the blink of an eye, grabbing the back of his neck and driving the sharpened point of the shattered champagne flute t
hrough the man’s carotid artery—the pipe that supplies blood to the brain.

  The second the pipe was cut, hot liquid spurted out and painted Eliza’s face, soaking her shimmering silk dress. She kept moving as the man fell to the ground like a broken puppet, briefly, spasmodically jerking before the life drained from his body. She crouched down, going for the pistol holstered at his hip rather than the rifle slung around his shoulders. She knew she didn’t have time to free it from the canvas strap.

  The second the weapon was in her hands, she spun toward the man hoisting Emmanuel Alstyne into a fireman’s carry, and fired three rounds into center mass. The soldier grunted, and then slumped forward into the bed.

  “Get that fucking bitch,” someone screamed.

  Ikeda turned to face the source of the voice, the muzzle of the pistol searching unerringly for its next target. But before she got the chance to the press the trigger, something thick and heavy and metal collided with the back of her skull.

  The world flashed white, and then it was her turn to drop to the ground.

  The something immediately became clear.

  An explosive charge detonated in the hallway, and a second later the vibrations reached Trapp’s feet as the partially carpeted thirteenth floor of the Macau Ritz-Carlton rumbled and groaned beneath him. There was no debris, which Trapp quickly figured meant the explosion was probably a breaching charge. The new assailants were targeting the three additional MSS babysitters in the suites next to Alstyne’s own.

  What the hell is going on? he thought. One of the most expensive hotels in the world had been turned into a veritable war zone. Both the Chinese and the Americans had taken casualties, and neither had any idea who the third player was.

  But he didn’t ponder the question for long. Barely a second had passed since the charge detonated. This might be the only chance he would get. The assailants would be focused on the Chinese targets, and he might be able to take them in the rear.

  Trapp pressed his boot against the half-open door, stepping over Bravo One’s already cooling body. He whispered a brief prayer as he passed over the man. There was nothing more he could do for the dead operator.

  But Ikeda was still alive.

  He pushed against the door, moving it just an inch at a time, holding his breath as he waited for a hailstorm of bullets to crack against the hardened fireproof entrance, possibly taking his foot with it.

  But none came.

  At least, none aimed at Jason Trapp. A deluge of suppressed rifle fire crackled in the hallway, and Trapp listen to the shouted commands of men in combat—so different, and yet so similar to the sounds he had known all his life.

  He was right. The new guys were focused on taking out the Chinese—and that meant he had an opportunity. He moved fast, slipping through the half-open doorway like a thief in the night, his pistol aimed high and steady. It wasn’t suppressed, but this situation had gone a long way past deniable. Unless Trapp was very much mistaken and the Chinese government cracked down, this would be front page news across the globe by the next morning.

  The hallway was empty, but it was lit by two streams of thin light, more like moonlight than anything electrical. Each emanated from a doorway. The farthest away, Trapp figured, was the one in which the sounds of an intense battle were currently taking place. Flashes of gunfire lit the hallway.

  That meant the first doorway must be Alstyne’s suite. Ikeda would be inside. He just hoped she was still alive. It was about twenty yards away, but Trapp had no idea what lay between him and his target. His eyes strained in the gloom, but it was no use. He couldn’t use his flashlight for fear of drawing down a stinging stream of bullets.

  Slowly, the gunfire in the farthest hotel suite began to peter out. Trapp gritted his teeth, knowing he was all out of time.

  Screw it.

  Trapp began charging forward, sprinting toward the doorway to Alstyne’s suite. And that’s when everything went to hell.

  Two men emerged from either suite, rifles nestled into their shoulders, but muzzles pointing loosely toward the ground. Trapp did the math in his head. There was no way he could take all of them out, not before one of them got off a shot. And he wasn’t wearing any body armor, whereas from what little he could see, the new guys were.

  “Freeze!” Trapp yelled. “You move, and you die.”

  The four men looked up in sync, and pretty much all that Trapp could see of their faces was the whites of their eyes. It would make as good a target as any. One man began bringing his rifle to bear, and Trapp fired a single round. The bullet pinged into the plaster of the wall beside his head.

  He quickly got the point. One of his comrades started shouting at Trapp, the melodious Asian language sounding harsh in his throat. But Trapp had no idea what the hell he was saying. It was a stalemate.

  The problem was—what the hell was he supposed to do now? The odds were still stacked against him. Trapp knew that the second he started shooting for real, all hell would break loose. This temporary truce would fall apart, and even if he managed to take one or two of the shooters down, the rest of them would quickly pump his body full of lead.

  “Any of you motherfuckers speak English?” he growled.

  The four sets of white eyes stared back at him uncomprehendingly. Trapp swore. “Didn’t think so.”

  And then the rug was pulled out from beneath Trapp’s feet for about the third time that day. A voice spoke in English from inside the nearest open hotel suite. The speaker was from an Asian country, just like these shooters, but Trapp had no idea which. The English sounded strangely old-fashioned, like a fifties film.

  “The girl,” it said. “Is she yours?”

  Trapp’s veins froze like the Moscow River in winter. These men had Ikeda, and that was bad. Very bad. They were killers, that much was sure, and her life would mean nothing to them.

  Trapp thought fast. Only one move sprang to mind. It was a bad one, yet it was all he had. “What girl? I’m here for the American. Give him to me, and we can all get out of this alive.”

  “I don’t have time to play games,” the clipped voice said. “I have a gun to her head. If you try anything, I will put a bullet in her brain.”

  Trapp knew he was screwed. He couldn’t let Ikeda die. It just wasn’t the way he was made. Ever since he had failed his mother, allowing her to die at the hands of his own father, this very situation had been his blind spot. His weakness. The voice had him in check, and Trapp couldn’t foresee a single move that would get them out of it.

  “Hey—you okay in there?” he called out.

  “She is unconscious,” the voice said from inside the suite.

  “How the hell do I know she’s even still alive?”

  “You don’t. It’s a leap of faith. You either jump, or my men will kill you both.”

  Trapp ground his teeth together. The odds were clear—and they were stacked in his opponent’s favor. There were at least five of them, and only one of him. The math simply did not compute. Whether he liked it or not, he would be forced to play this man’s game. At least until he could figure out a way to change the rules.

  “Here is how this situation will play out,” the voice said. “My men and I are going to leave quietly. You are going to enter this hotel suite, and stay there until we do so. If you do exactly as I say, none of us have to die. If you try anything, both of you will.”

  “Why the hell would I agree to that?” Trapp growled.

  “Simple,” the voice replied. “You do what I say, or the bitch dies.”

  12

  The next few moments played out like a twisted ballet recital. Six men, weapons drawn, circled each other in the darkness, each knowing a single misstep might cost him his life. The shooters moved to a soundtrack of ragged breaths and hushed footsteps, swallowed up by the thick carpeting underfoot. Trapp’s boot knocked a bullet casing against the wall, and for a second every man froze, weapons shivering in the gloom.

  Trapp wondered whether this was how he would
go out, his body riddled by weapons far superior to his own. He was all too aware that his pistol was a poor cousin to the battlefield weapons these shooters carried. In the darkness, it was hard to make out the precise model, though Trapp noticed a cylindrical magazine slung underneath the barrel.

  The weapon was unusual. Perhaps of Russian design, and not used by any major country’s armed forces—at least none Trapp’s adrenaline-suffused mind could think of. But he couldn’t focus on the detail. He had to concentrate on not getting himself killed. And the calculus was simple. In the time it would take him to loose a single round, they could fire a dozen. He simply could not afford to turn this into a pissing contest, since it was most assuredly one he would lose.

  The moment passed.

  Trust was, if not regained, then at least not shattered. The dance resumed. The man Trapp had been talking to, the one he took to be the leader, stepped out of Alstyne’s hotel suite, cradling Ikeda’s body like it weighed nothing. She was slumped in a ragdoll fashion, head lolling against her chest. Trapp’s heart stopped pumping, and then a wave of adrenaline dumped into his system, corralling his rational brain, and unleashing a primal, predatory instinct to protect one of his own.

  But it was the Makarov pistol held tight against her temple that stopped Trapp from flinging his body into action right then and there. The man opposite him was a pro. That much was obvious. One wrong move, and a lead round would split her head like a watermelon hitting asphalt.

  So he froze. He was between a rock and a hard place, and he was all out of explosives with which to blow the rock apart.

  “Stay right where you are,” the man said, his accented English cutting through the darkness and sticking in Trapp’s ribs. He glanced backward and grunted a harsh command to his subordinate. The second man emerged from the hotel suite, Emmanuel Alstyne’s unconscious body carried like a sack of laundry over his shoulder.