The First End (14 page)

Yes, it had been quite the accomplishment. His
murder of Chen had allowed him to rise to the United States
equivalent rank of Colonel, and he had been given the honor of
providing security for the technology. Too bad they couldn’t
recreate it. Chinese scientists were working on it, now that they
got the basis and knew, more or less, what it could do. They were
trying to come up with their own version. They were still many
years away, but they would persist. In the meantime, they needed to
get rid of the one they had. He had suggested that they simply
throw it back into the ocean, but that suggestion had been
universally laughed at.

“The Americans will never believe that we just
threw it away,” one general had replied, chuckling at Lee’s
naivety. “No, we need to get rid of it in such a way that the
Americans know we got rid of it.”

That didn’t make much sense to Lee. “Are you
saying that they know we have it?”

“Of course they know! They’ve undoubtedly known
for some time.”

“Why haven’t they done anything about it?”

“Because all we’ve done is study it and run some
tests with the one we got. If we put it into actual combat or found
a way to reproduce it, then you can expect the Americans to act.
No, we will sell it and let some other country worry about the
Americans.”

Politics had never been Lee’s strong suit, so he
just snapped his mouth shut and pretended like he understood.
Nevertheless, it had been made very clear to him that he needed to
protect the technology while it was still in Chinese hands. They
stood to make a lot of money from this one sale, as well as
strengthen their influence in several regions. If the Americans
could steal back the technology or destroy it, all of that would be
wasted.

With all that in mind, he didn’t trust this Bill
Gardner. It seemed too much of a coincidence that an American would
pick his aircraft to look at above all the other ones. No,
something didn’t feel right. He would have to have the man
followed…perhaps even killed, if the opportunity arose.

Lee nodded to himself. Yes, he might just have
to kill Bill Gardner. The prospect didn’t bother him in the
least.

His pleasant musings were interrupted by an
Iranian and another one of Lee’s aides. They walked up together.
“Colonel, this is General Najib. He won the bid, he is buying.”

Lee bowed to the general. “It is a pleasure to
meet you, sir. I hope you will be pleased with your new
acquisition.”

Najib was a short man with a beard that had gone
grey. He wore a military ball cap that hid his head, but Lee
suspected the man had started to go bald. He seemed fit enough,
looking trim and healthy. The Iranian wore a number of decorations
on the front of his uniform, informing Lee that he was dealing with
a combat veteran.

“We shall know once we put it through its
paces,” he said. “It is one of the conditions of our purchase.”

“Of course,” Lee agreed. “As you have no doubt
been told, our government won’t turn over possession until all
funds have been delivered…including any trade concessions that were
included in your bid.” Lee knew that Beijing had been monitoring
the sale of the aircraft carefully. They had made the final
decision as to who would purchase it.

“I quite understand. My government will be in
contact with yours in the next couple of days to arrange a live
demonstration as well as making arrangements to transport the
aircraft to Iran.”

“You have made a wise decision. This one plane
will give you dominance in the region for many years, that I can
promise.”

“It had better,” the general muttered darkly.
“You only have one of them. We would pay handsomely for more.”

“Alas, General, we decided to sell only the one.
We figure that once the superiority of the aircraft become
generally known, we wouldn’t have to use them ourselves. Just
knowing that we have them should serve as adequate deterrent.” The
lie flowed smoothly from Lee’s lips. He had rehearsed it until he
nearly believed it himself.

Despite that, General Najib looked doubtful.
“Either way, Colonel, we will be in touch.”

“Thank you, sir.”

With a parting salute, Najib departed. Lee
sighed. He would be too busy in the coming days to give much
thought to the American.
Too bad,
he thought to himself.
I really wanted to kill him.

Bill’s flight from the UAE got rerouted in
midair. No explanation was given except that information would be
forthcoming once he landed in Kuwait. The plane landed on an
American military base, a left over from the first gulf war and now
used as a staging area for operations in Afghanistan. The moment
his plane touched ground, a slack-jawed, gangly corporal stuck his
head inside and yelled, “Is there a Bill Gardner on board?”

Bill was the only one on board other than the
pilots. “I’m Gardner, son,” he said to the young man.

“Your presence is requested at the CP.”

Sighing, Gardner got out of his seat and
followed the corporal to the Command Post. Inside, a thin faced
man, wearing a moustache too large for him, glanced up from a
computer. “Gardner? I’m Colonel Robbie Bush. Everyone just calls me
CR. I have General Hynes standing by. He wishes to speak to
you.”

“Of course he does,” Bill muttered. CR got up
from the chair and left without any further conversation. Sitting
down, Bill saw the face of General Hynes as he talked to someone
just out of camera view. “I’m here, General.”

Hynes looked into the camera and grunted. “So
you are. Look, Captain. We have reasonable intel that Iran has
purchased the Chinese fighter. Did you place the tracker.”

“Yes, sir. Besides getting cancer, we should be
able to track it, if we get close enough.”

“You won’t die, son.”

That’s debatable,
he said to himself.
“You want me to go to Iran?”

“No. You wouldn’t last long there. We want you
to go to China and blow the thing up before it can be delivered to
the Iranians.”

“China!”

“That’s correct Captain. China.”

“I thought you said that it would be guarded too
closely for a saboteur to be of any good.”

“That was when it was a small component and
hidden in one of their top secret facilities. Now it is in a
fighter plane. There are only so many places they can conceal that.
Besides, all you have to do is blow it up in transit. That should
be much easier.”

“Yeah, I can see how easy it will be,” Gardner
said, rolling his eyes. “Do I get back up?”

“Sorry, we still can’t afford to pull any
regular military units out for this. We cannot afford to have
anything traced back to our government. Destroying the component on
Chinese soil could be construed as an act of war. No, you will go
in as an independent agent, working for Wastend to clean up their
mess. Is that clear?”

“I don’t like this, General. I don’t calculate
my odds of surviving to be going up much. It wasn’t my fault that
the part went missing. Why take it out on me?”

“Sorry, son. I’m not. You just happen to be the
only asset in place to get the job done.”

Something felt off about the entire explanation.
Bill didn’t understand the politics involved or necessarily how
decisions were made at the top, but he still felt like an undue
amount of pressure was being put on him to accomplish this mission
alone. Surely they had top secret units who specialized in what
they were asking a retired military captain to do.
So why
me?
he asked himself silently. Despite his reservations, he
still knew that he would go. His own patriotism and sense of duty
demanded nothing less from him.

“I’ll go, General. But I still don’t like it. I
wasn’t trained for this type of mission—at least not alone. I
haven’t been active in years. Isn’t this a job for the CIA or
something?”

“It’s your job now, Captain. And going isn’t a
request. It is an order.”

“Yes, sir!” Inside, Bill heaved a silent sigh.
This would be a much more dangerous mission than the other two he
had already taken. A lot more dangerous. He felt apprehension begin
to intrude on the fringes of his mind. He had gotten out!
Why
couldn’t they just leave me alone!
“Anything else, sir?”

“You will be ferried about to confuse anyone
watching, but eventually you’ll be taken to Hanoi, Vietnam. From
there, travel to Haiphong and look for a man by the name of Nao Hu.
You will be equipped there and assisted across the border into
China.”

“Why there?”

“It is the best place to smuggle someone into
China.”

That seemed rather unlikely, but he wasn’t about
to tell the General that. “What then?”

“You need to make your way to Beijing. We
believe the plane will be transported over land somehow, through
Afghanistan to Iran. You need to take it out before they get to
Afghanistan.”

“Why not just fly the plane there and then ship
the pilot home?”

“They fear it would be our best chance to shoot
it down. We still have troops in Afghanistan. If they fly it over,
we can ‘accidentally’ shoot it down. But if a large Chinese convoy
travels across the country with diplomatic immunity granted by the
Afghan government, anything we do to it will be construed as an act
of war.”

Although the explanation made sense—at least on
the surface—Gardner still had an uneasy feeling that he wasn’t
being told everything. “Very well, General.”

“Get going, son.”

The line went dead.

As if that singled his doom, the corporal
appeared as if by magic. “Your plane is waiting, Captain.”

Heaving a worried sigh, Bill got up and left
with the earnest young man.

The route taken to Hanoi was indeed convoluted.
To avoid Iranian airspace, they flew south to a remote British
Island known as Diego Garcia Island. He changed planes and flew
northeast to Singapore, and then on to Hanoi. Each time he switched
planes, but each time the airplane was a Wastend company jet. If
they were trying to keep a low profile, they failed miserably. He
suspected they just wanted to keep anything he did firmly attached
to the Wastend company. Bill idly wondered how many lives had been
lost all for the gain of plausible deniability. Way too many, he
decided.

Two days later, he touched down in the hot,
steamy city of Hanoi, Vietnam. The place had changed significantly
since the Vietnam War in the 1960’s and the border war with China
in the 1970’s. For the first time in decades, Hanoi was on friendly
terms with the United States. Recently, an exchange of information
as to the fate of many missing American soldiers had been released,
finally putting a period at the end of the lives of many
people.

The primary result for Bill was that he wasn’t
regarded with outright suspicion and hostility. His white skin,
brown hair, and height made him somewhat of a novelty to the
shorter, dark-haired, darker skinned Vietnamese. Unfortunately,
that didn’t bode well to stay incognito. He stuck out like a sore
thumb. He was so obviously American that he began to wonder what
General Hynes was thinking. No, he began wondering if the general
was even sane! This was an impossible mission!

With nothing more than a backpack meant to aid
in his survival of the jungle-like terrain, he wondered how he was
going to find a bus headed to Haiphong. His lack of knowledge of
the local languages seriously handicapped his endeavors in this
capacity.
Good grief!
He didn’t even know Chinese all that
well. How was he supposed to operate in China? He began to think
that Hynes was not crazy after all. The man was plainly
deranged.

Bill walked slowly off the tarmac, still
wondering how he was going to get to Haiphong. He heard that a
billion people in Asia were trying to learn English. Hopefully, one
of them worked at the ticket booth at the bus station.

It never came to that. A man in a matchbox
looking van slid to a stop in front of him and a man, looking more
Chinese than Vietnamese, stuck his head out. “You Bill
Gardner?”

Gardner’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s me.”

“Good. You get in. We go now.”

The man wore pajama like clothing, a light
colored fabric that held up well in the sweltering heat and
humidity. A pointy straw hat tied loosely under his chin seemed to
be more a part of him than a mere accessory. Bits of dark hair
stuck out from underneath the hat, and he wore the widest grin Bill
had ever seen.

“Uh…where?” he asked, taken back.

“Haiphong. You come with me. We friends.”

Bill didn’t know how true that last statement
might actually be, but he opened the driver side door—the handle
consisted of a rusty wire strung through the equally rusty sickly
green door panel—and sat down on a metal seat.
Great,
he
sighed to himself.
This is bound to be the bumpiest ride in
human history.

He wasn’t far wrong. Apparently the van had no
shocks or struts to speak of.

“I am Nao Hu,” the short Asian man said,
grinning ear to ear. “I your friend.”

“Yeah, friends…um, look, Nao Hu, you aren’t
Vietnamese are you?”

“No. Chinese. You American.”

“Yeah. What are you doing here in Hanoi?”

“I am…what you say…fugitive.”

That sounded ominous. “What happened?”

Nao Hu’s smile disappeared as if it had never
existed. “Two years ago, Chinese government took my mother.
Political. I try to get her out. I fail. Come here.” The man then
launched into a long dialogue in his native tongue. Bill had no
idea what he was saying and could only pick out a word here or
there. But it didn’t matter; he got the gist of the story from the
few English words that the man had spoken. Hu’s mother had been
kidnapped for political reasons and was being held in some
communist jail. His failure to free his mother meant he had to live
in exile. Bill understood immediately why this man had been
selected to help Bill get across the border. He had clearly done it
before, and Gardner suspected more than one time.