American traitor, p.33
American Traitor, page 33
part #15 of Pike Logan Series
Wolffe nodded and said, “I think you’re right. But what if it wasn’t a cold-start invasion?”
President Hannister said, “What’s that mean? They can’t invade the country invisibly.”
Wolffe turned to the only man in the room who mattered and said, “What if Taiwan attacked China first?”
Chapter 72
Entering the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial square just down the street from the presidential palace, Paul couldn’t believe the numbers of protestors, amazed at their fury. It was something he watched on the news of other countries, not of his own. The air was full of smoke and the whiff of tear gas, with armored police vehicles ringing the park and police officers unsure of their orders, but still shouting into loudspeakers in an attempt to quell the unrest, the cacophony of noise overwhelming.
The protestors had come looking for a reason to fight, but were unsure of what they were fighting about, energized by nothing more than a few social media posts—and the Bamboo Triad. It was a tinderbox waiting on a match. The last thing he wanted was to be arrested along with the protestors, but it was looking like that would happen if he lingered.
He threaded through the crowd, hearing them chant hatred against the government and seeing multiple people holding up the videos that had been released on their tablets and phones. He had no ability to control the end state, but he did have the ability to control the why.
He tried to reach his surveillance position outside of the Mainland Affairs Council, where his target was located, but realized it was a waste of time. His target wouldn’t show in this mess of chaos.
And then he did.
Paul saw Colonel Rae “Ryan” Won exit the building in civilian clothes, darting among the crowd, wanting to remain invisible. He flashed his credentials at the police barricade and slipped through, sticking close to the wall and moving away from the protestors.
Paul followed on the far side of the street, opposite the screaming demonstrators.
Ryan walked two blocks past the presidential palace to the main Taipei train station. He crossed the street and entered, Paul following close behind.
The interior was congested with people, the tension thick, most of the travelers wanting to just get home, but the protests making them fear their ability to do so. The government had threatened to shut down the rail system to prevent outsiders from traveling to Taipei for mischief, and Paul could feel the anxiety in the air, people rushing to their trains before such a thing happened.
Ryan walked away from the long-distance train platforms, going down a tunnel toward the city metro, and Paul stayed behind him. He stopped at a rack of lockers, pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket, read the numbers, then punched in a code on a keypad. A locker on the top row opened.
Ryan went to it, withdrew a small satchel, then continued on.
Paul was intrigued.
His target stopped at a kiosk outside the metro terminal and bought a fare on the red line. Paul let him leave, then did the same. Because the metro worked on an RFID token system, where each fare was embedded with the cost for the length of the transit, Paul was forced to pay for the entire line, having no idea where Ryan would stop.
The kiosk spit out his token, and he went down the stairs, seeing Ryan at the front of the platform. Paul stood in the back of the crowd, watching Ryan’s crew-cut head.
The train arrived and disgorged more protestors, all of them shouting and chanting about betrayal. The crowd let them pass and they boarded, Ryan taking a seat and Paul remaining near the door, holding a handrail.
Twenty minutes later, Paul saw Ryan stand up, the Taipei World Trade Center station approaching. Paul faded to the back of the crowd, allowing the doors to open, disgorging the passengers. Ryan exited, and Paul followed.
This section, the financial heart of Taipei, held no protestors. As with every other spontaneous uprising, the locality was a self-generating phenomenon, and apparently they’d decided to focus their attention on the government areas and the presidential palace.
Ryan broke out onto the street, Paul right behind him, the sun setting in the sky, the twilight allowing the lights of the buildings to begin to dominate.
Paul followed Ryan two blocks, until he reached a structure towering above everything around it, its architecture like that of a modern-day temple, with metal outcroppings every tenth floor or so, but stabbing into the sky higher than any temple had ever dreamed, almost as if it were trying to reach the stars above it.
Known as Taipei 101, it was, for a short time—until the Burj Khalifa opened in Dubai—the tallest building in the world.
What is he doing here?
Ryan entered the lobby and took an escalator to the second floor, weaving through an opulent mall full of storefronts that only the rich would dare step inside, Paul staying far enough behind to keep from being burned. He switched escalators, heading ever higher, the patrons in the mall not reflecting the chaos just down the road, all shopping for diamonds and outrageously expensive handbags as if the world wasn’t coming apart next door.
Ryan reached a bank of elevators on the fourth floor and ignored them, moving down a hallway to a private one. He scanned a directory on the wall, running his finger down it, then tapped.
Standing near the bank of public elevators, Paul memorized the tap as best he could. Ryan reached into the satchel he’d taken from the train station and withdrew a badge, placing it on the controls for the elevator. The door opened, and he disappeared inside.
Paul waited a bit, then approached, tracing his own finger down the directory until he reached the business Ryan had tapped.
Ju-Long Import/Export Limited.
It was on the seventy-seventh floor, the space only accessed by this elevator. As such, the destination was out of reach of Paul’s limited abilities, but it gave him something to work with.
Paul went back to the elevator banks overlooking the mall area—the ones used for the observation decks and other public spaces—bought a cup of coffee from a kiosk, and took a seat on a bench, waiting for Ryan to appear again. If Ryan had gone up that elevator, he might return the same way.
Paul failed to notice that he wasn’t the only one doing the watching.
Chapter 73
Jennifer leaned over the edge of the observation platform and said, “Okay, this is crazy—even for you.”
Kneeling next to a backpack at my feet, I looked up, seeing the stars starting to blink in the night sky, the expanse of the Taipei cityscape spreading out into the distance. We were so far up in the air that any feelings of acrophobia were absent, like I was looking out the window of an airplane.
I said, “You got a better idea? We don’t have time to mess around here, and you’re good at this shit.”
Miffed, she knelt next to me, opening the backpack and pulling out a harness. She stood, slipping her feet through the loops, then adjusted the webbing on her shoulders. She held her arms out like she was allowing a police search and said, “Why’s it always me that has to climb?”
I stood and began checking her harness like a jumpmaster on a parachutist, trying to find a point of failure. I traced the webbing underneath her legs and said, “Because none of us knuckle-draggers are monkeys like you. And you’re the only one who’s used the Hollywood Rig and not died. No way am I going to give it a go.”
She snapped her head to me and said, “Someone’s died using this thing?”
What we called the Hollywood Rig was invented by a stuntman named Dar Robinson in—of course—Hollywood so he could leap off a building with the camera above him, not worrying about an airbag appearing in the scene below. It was basically a type of bungee jump, but instead of a thick rope, it used a very thin cable attached to a harness that wouldn’t be seen by the camera, the clamps on the descender slowing the fall at a pace where it didn’t break bones. We stole the idea because we also needed something that wouldn’t be seen by a camera. The system didn’t use a bulky rope or huge setup, having only a thin steel cable and a descender that could be clamped anywhere—all of it small enough to fit in a backpack the size of a book bag for a university student.
Jennifer had used it once on an operation in Singapore. At the time, I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that—outside of testing—nobody on the teams had enough balls to deploy it operationally.
I said, “No, no. Nobody’s died.”
“Then why did you say that?”
I held up my hands. “Truth?”
Her eyes flashed and she said, “Yeah, damn it. What’s the truth?”
“You’re the only one who’s used it on an operation. Everyone else is too chickenshit. It worked in Singapore, and it’ll work here.”
She couldn’t believe the words that had come out of my mouth. She said, “You threw me off the roof of the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore knowing that nobody else had the guts to trust it?”
I said, “Guilty, but it worked in testing. I trusted it. Like I’m going to do now.”
She shook her head, saying, “Seems like your trust is limited to using it with me in the harness. It’s not your ass going into the wind.”
She leaned over the edge again, getting a reference point on the overhang at the seventieth floor. “You’re going to pay for this.”
I grinned and said, “I know, I know.”
We were on the outside observation deck of the ninety-first floor of Taipei 101, one of the tallest buildings in the world. The wind was strong enough to cause her hair to billow out. Honestly, the climb she was about to attempt wasn’t something even I would want to do—but that was why I had Jennifer.
We’d been midway from Australia to Taiwan on the Rock Star bird when I got the word from Wolffe that we had Alpha authority in Taiwan, which meant the business card had panned out.
While we knew Ju-Long Import/Export LLC was a front company for the People’s Liberation Army, they still had to do some legitimate business to maintain the façade, and the Taskforce had leveraged that weakness.
They’d found an American who had a current contract with them, then had stolen that man’s identity, conducting a little social engineering with the company. In the end, it had been pretty simple: They’d called the company, said the CEO of the American firm was going to be in Taiwan on business and wanted to set up a meeting with Chen Ju-Long. They’d been told he was out of the country, but would return in two days.
Which matched what we’d found on the card.
What we didn’t know at the time was that the damn office was on the seventy-seventh floor of one of the tallest buildings in the world.
We’d done the research on the nine-hour flight to Taipei and had learned that the building had been built with earthquakes and typhoons in mind, with blocks of floors used solely for stability and support separating the actual square footage occupied by renters.
We determined that there were three blocks of office spaces: the first—the low zone—from the fifth to the eighteenth floor, then the mid-zone from the twenty-second to the fifty-eighth, ending finally with the high zone at the upper level, each of the blocks separated by maintenance floors.
Of course, given our luck, Ju-Long Limited was in the high zone, with a private elevator that whisked approved visitors to the selected floor by use of a special badge. We didn’t have the time to crack all of the systems to gain access to the elevator, and so had looked for another way to get inside his office.
On the plus side, as it turned out, most of the available space at the higher levels was empty, the builder still trying to find renters for the enormous price they were asking, meaning if we could get in we wouldn’t have to worry about a bunch of different offices asking us who we were. The downside was we couldn’t figure out a way to get that high in the building because of the private elevator. But we could by using another one.
The ninety-first floor was an outside observation deck, with the two floors below it being an indoor observation area and restaurants, all open to the public, essentially giving us the ability to get above the Ju-Long office. The seventieth floor was a maintenance and stability level with a ledge shaped to appear from the outside like the jutting outcroppings of a traditional Chinese temple. The ledge itself had a walkway not unlike the observation deck we were on, and had door accesses for the maintenance men to utilize the window cleaning scaffolding or perform other utility work.
Which was just perfect for Jennifer.
A gymnast in an earlier life, she was like a gecko when it came to climbing stuff, and the drop was only about 250 feet. Okay, that “only” was me. I’m sure it was something a little different to Jennifer.
On the flight over, looking at the blueprints Creed had sent, Knuckles had seen the same thing I had—we could drop her over the edge, get her down to the seventieth floor, let her break in to the maintenance level, then have her go back up to the seventy-seventh floor using the stairs.
Once she was there, she could break into Ju-Long Limited. The electronic security was focused on the access at the ground level, through the keypad on the elevator, and not on the floor space itself. It had nothing but normal locksets, and Jennifer could crack those easily.
She’d heard us discussing the mission as if she wasn’t even there, and had brought out the obvious point—namely that if she got down to the seventieth floor and couldn’t get in, she was going to have a hell of a time getting back up. But that’s why she was paid the big bucks. We both knew she could climb plate glass with a little spit on her hands.
The entire mission was simply to access the Ju-Long office to see what she could find before he arrived tomorrow, using computer cloning devices, cameras, and good old-fashioned digging through file cabinets and desk drawers. It was a lot of work for such a potentially small payoff, but building a mission like this was always getting the little things to pay off, no matter the effort. Only in the movies were you handed the diabolical plot. The rest of the time, you had to work for it.
Jake Shu was doing something bad, and from what we’d seen with the protests since we landed, that ulterior motive was coming to a head sooner rather than later.
Jennifer held the cable against her chest and said, “What’s going to happen if they come out here looking? What are you going to do?”
I grinned and said, “Drop you.”
She scowled and I said, “Hey, we paid for the outdoor experience. They told us we had thirty minutes. Get over the edge. The clock is ticking.”
There was a price of admission to take the observation elevator to the ninety-first floor, whereupon one could circle the building taking in the views. Usually, there would be a line of people wanting the experience, with a controller not letting a tourist out until someone else came back in, but two things were working for us: One, it wasn’t a weekend, meaning there was naturally less interest from the public, and two, the current unrest in the city had depressed anyone wanting to do a tour of anything. Because of it, we were on our own, outside all by ourselves, the ticket guy two corners away and out of view.
Jennifer’s ledge was twenty floors below, and we’d analyzed which side of the building to use. The rent was incredibly expensive in the building—especially at the high zone—and because of it, most of the floor space was unoccupied on the south side, with Ju-Long being the only tenant, while the north had several working offices. We’d analyzed the risk and decided that sliding down the building with a single office in operation was better than sliding down the north side that had several—even if the one Jennifer was going by was also our target.
I tested the belay system, seeing it was functioning, and glanced back to the edge of the corner we were on. I saw nobody and said, “Time to go.”
Jennifer smiled. “You’re really going to owe me for this.”
I said, “I know . . . I know.”
She crawled out over the edge, and my radio came alive from Brett. “This is Blood. We have a man going up in the special elevator.”
Jennifer paused, and I said, “Okay? Why do we care? Jennifer is about to drop.”
“Because he’s got a man following him. The first guy had an access badge for the elevator. The second one did not.”
I took that in and said, “We’re executing. Probably just someone going up to the offices here.”
Brett said, “Yeah, but he’s being followed for a reason. And the guy tracking him is also being tracked.”
Crouched on the ledge, Jennifer looked at me. I nodded to her and took a position on the descender. She shook her head, pointing at her earpiece, wanting to listen. Off the net, I whispered, “No time for that. Get over the side.”
On the radio, I said, “Who’s tracking who here?”
“I don’t know, but the men tracking the guy who is following the man who went up are definitely thugs. Bad dudes.”
I said, “Okay. Keep eyes-on. Jennifer is going over.”
She scowled, then stood up on the edge, the sight alone scaring the hell out of me. Thank God it wasn’t me doing the work.
She turned around, facing me, her eyes boring into mine, and then stepped off the ledge, the cable racing out of the spool. It hit a predetermined length and then slowed, the descender doing its work.
Chapter 74
I looked over the side, seeing her two hundred feet below me, her feet on the wall. I said, “Koko, Koko, you okay?”
“Yes. Slack.”
She was curt, which told me she was feeling the fear of the drop, and I completely understood. I worked the descender, giving her some cable and she said, “Stop. Stop. Stop.”
I did so, and then she said, “I’m outside the window of Ju-Long Limited. I see Chen inside.”
Jesus Christ. He came home early. That’s not going to work for a break-in.
“Can he see you?”
“No. I’m on the outside edge of the window. He’s inside with a guy I don’t recognize. But if Chen Ju-Long is here, so is Jake Shu.”
