“So they could be torturing him?”

  Fang nodded, her chest tightening at the prospect. Every time he went out on a mission, this was a possibility, and she had accepted that fact. She had always known what he was from the day she met him, long before the day she fell in love. Yet it didn’t make it any easier, for she knew what her country was capable of. There were no laws that were followed behind the walls of the Ministry of State Security.

  Mai leaned forward and took her hand. “Are you all right?”

  Fang smiled at her then gave her hand a squeeze. “Yes, I just wish I knew what was going on. My guess is he’s in custody and being interrogated. He’ll hold out as long as he can to make sure the Chans get away and that the intel gets into CIA hands, but he’ll eventually break. Unfortunately, what he doesn’t realize is that the intel is already in CIA hands and the Chans are safe, so any suffering is now pointless.”

  “Can we signal him? Maybe through his watch?” asked Tommy.

  “No. He couldn’t risk looking at it. It’ll be on camera.”

  “I thought it was some fancy thing that could send pulses into his wrist in different patterns.”

  Fang groaned. “I forgot about that. You’re right. Send him the all-clear signal. He should know what that means.” Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she fished it out, her eyes narrowing at the unknown number.

  “What is it?” asked Tommy, noticing her hesitation.

  “Unknown caller. I’m not sure I should take it.”

  Tommy waved a hand at their surroundings. “Don’t worry, we’re shielded. All cellphone signals here are actually transmitted over a secure Internet connection via satellite, then bounced off a random tower in another part of the country. They might trace you, but they’ll find you in Wyoming or somewhere.”

  She took the call. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Fang, it’s me.”

  Her shoulders slumped in relief at Leroux’s voice. “You had me nervous. What’s going on?”

  “Are you where I think you are?”

  “Wyoming?” There was a pause and she decided humor was probably not appropriate at this time, considering the circumstances. “Yes.”

  “Is anyone with you?”

  “Tommy and Mai.”

  Leroux cursed. “All right, here’s the situation. I visited Sonya. She handed me the intel. I was attacked in the parking garage of the hospital but managed to get away and get back to HQ.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I was shot, but it was just a graze. We think everything was staged. The suicide, Sonya getting shot, Sierra Protocol, everything. If they knew to jump me, they knew that Sonya had the intel, which means they know you gave it to them. Is there any chance you were followed?”

  Fang shot out of her seat, snapping her fingers at Tommy as she spun toward the rear wall with the array of monitors. “Security cameras, now.” She pointed at Mai. “Pack our stuff. We’re leaving. I took all the usual precautions, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t followed. They could have put a tracker on my car. I swept it as soon as I was out of the city, but if it was passive, I could have missed it.”

  “They’ve been using burst transmitters here, and we know they’re using passive technology and only activating it when they need to. What are the cameras showing?”

  Fang’s eyes flitted between the various views. “Nothing, but that doesn’t mean anything. They could still be getting into position.”

  “All right. Echo Team is inbound.”

  “Fifteen minutes out,” said a voice in the background.

  Leroux repeated what the other man had said. “Echo Team’s fifteen minutes out. What do you want to do?”

  She continued to monitor the cameras, her trained mind reasoning out the problem. She had to assume Echo Team would be a crack unit from the CIA, as capable as any Chinese unit sent against them. She also had to assume that if they got in her car, the only one available to them, they would be tracked. She could go over the thing bumper to bumper and never find it. But if she didn’t, the Chinese could hit them on the road, and there would be nothing they could do about it. She could see only one option. “We’re going to hole up here. Tell your people to hurry up because I don’t know how long we can hold out.”

  “All right, good luck.”

  “Good luck to us all.” Fang ended the call.

  “What’s going on?” asked Tommy, his voice fear-laden.

  “Our location might be compromised. There was an attempt made on Chris’ life at the hospital. He’s fine, don’t worry. They’re sending something called Echo Team here. They’re less than fifteen minutes out. There’s a chance I was followed here, or they put a tracker on my car after they saw me meet with Sonya. Either way, the Chinese could be here before Echo Team.”

  Mai shot to her feet. “We need to get out of here, now!”

  Fang shut that down. “No. If there’s a tracker on my car, they’re just going to follow us. At least in here, we have some protection.”

  Tommy’s face was ashen. “But once they breach, we’re screwed, aren’t we?”

  “Yes.” Fang headed for the weapons locker. She tossed body armor to the two civilians and fit her own into place. She held up two Glocks. “Do you want them?” Both shook their heads. “Too bad.” She handed them over. “You know how to use them?”

  They both nodded. “Unfortunately,” said Mai.

  “Good. We’re going to be up against four, possibly eight people. That’s it. Watch on the monitors for a count. If they breach, just keep shooting. But if it looks like you’re going to be taken, drop your weapons and lie down on the ground. They might still kill you, but they might let you live. Just tell them whatever they want to know. All they care about is that intel, and it’s already in the CIA’s hands.”

  “Are we sure?” asked Mai.

  “Leroux just called me, remember? Show them what they want. Let them destroy the system. This place is burned the moment they arrive. They’re probably going to want to destroy any copies of the intel before we can share it with anyone else.” She holstered two Glocks then grabbed an ammo belt, fitting it in place. She clipped on a knife then grabbed an MP5.

  “Where are you going?” asked Tommy as she headed down the corridor.

  “I’m not just going to wait here to die.” She pointed at Tommy. “Send that all-clear signal while we still have time. I don’t want Dylan suffering because we were too worried about ourselves.”

  45 |

  Ministry of State Security Headquarters Beijing, China

  Pan cursed as he stared at the footage for the third time, finding it as impossible to believe as he had the first time, yet there was no denying it. Two different traffic cameras had caught it. The footage clearly showed a man who appeared to be Dylan Kane removing a mask revealing an elderly Chinese man. “Is that who I think it is?”

  His subordinate nodded. “Yes, sir. That’s Chan Chao.”

  Pan pinched the bridge of his nose as he squeezed his eyes shut, processing this new bit of information. “Wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense. Kane’s far taller than Chan.”

  “Yes, sir, but the officers that found the abandoned vehicle said there were some type of prosthetic limbs that he could have worn to make himself appear taller.”

  Pan paced across the front of the room as everyone stared at him, waiting for instructions. This was his operation. This was his screw-up. When their mole had reported that Kane was being sent to Beijing on an emergency op to retrieve extremely valuable intel, he had taken immediate action. Kane was tailed from the airport, but the clever bastard had switched hotel rooms, defeating their prepared surveillance. A parabolic mic had picked him up telling his driver to head to the Forbidden Palace. With intelligence teams all across the city, he had tasked a team already nearby to set up before he arrived.

  His team in this building had used the cameras positioned throughout the tourist attraction to begin identifying everyone there, and they had quickly found Duan, a State Security employee who shouldn’t be there. He had dispatched a team to the man’s home, but also initiated a records search to review everything the man had seen in the several days before he had demanded to meet Kane. And they had found the transcript, a document so shocking, he had immediately isolated the analyst unfortunate enough to have made the discovery.

  A further search had found images in their database with Kane and Duan together, the backlog in their facial identification project years long, something he had been complaining about for some time.

  Now maybe they would listen and assign more resources. If he was still around to be listened to. If he had known what the intel was, he never would have allowed the exchange, yet how could he have known? Who would have ever believed it?

  He pursed his lips. “So, what we’re saying is that all this footage we have might actually be Chan and not Kane?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir. And it gets worse.”

  “What do you mean? How could it possibly get worse?”

  “It’s not just today’s footage. We don’t know how far back it goes. Kane may have never actually met with Duan. It could have been Chan the entire time.”

  Pan cursed. He was right. If Chan were wearing these prosthetics that gave him the same height as Kane and a mask that made him appear to be Kane, none of their footage could be trusted. Yet Kane had admitted to meeting with Duan on previous occasions. Could it have been innocent like he said, and the traitor Chan simply took advantage by using Kane’s likeness?

  He stopped his pacing, turning to the room. “All right, let’s entertain the possibility that everything we saw today was Chan and not Kane. Chan in disguise leaves the hotel. Kane’s driver said that his voice sounded different. If we believe the driver, then it fits. He’s dropped off at the Forbidden Palace. He meets with Duan. Duan hands over the stolen intel, then Chan goes to his shop, most likely to transmit the intel to his handlers at Langley. We take down the shop, he escapes. Meanwhile, the real Kane has gone clubbing. I’m willing to entertain that we could be wrong on this, but how did Chan get detailed enough scans of Kane, who just so happens to know Duan and is a suspected American agent?”

  “Maybe Chan’s not working for the Americans,” suggested his subordinate. “Maybe he’s working for someone else like the Russians or British. They frame an American operative, which distracts us while Chan’s able to make his escape.”

  Pan’s head slowly bobbed. “I could definitely see the Russians doing that, especially the French, not so much the British. So, Duan, who we know is a traitor, has an innocent friendship with an American that may or may not be an enemy agent. The real handler is Chan, working for someone other than the Americans, who provide him with everything he needs to impersonate Kane, Duan’s unwitting friend. They do the handover, which could explain why Duan appears so confused because he doesn’t recognize the voice, and we follow the wrong damn man, who ends up escaping because we’re looking for the wrong face.”

  “But we know Kane was here on a mission, don’t we?”

  “Do we? The recordings from the mole indicate that, yes. It’s why this entire operation was triggered. But were they referring to the real Kane or the fake Kane? Could they have been using code, just in case their security was compromised? And if Chan is working for someone else, Kane could be on a completely different mission.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Pan folded his arms and scratched his cheek. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do. Keep checking the security cameras and track down Duan and his family. They left the station on foot, so they can’t have gone far. He’s the leak. It’s now plugged, but he needs to be arrested and punished for what he did. Keep tracking Chan. When he and his accomplices abandoned the second vehicle, they must have taken a sewer line or storm drain somewhere, and they couldn’t have gone too far. Expand the search radius as far as you need to. Put his photo and all the photos we have out to our officers on the streets and at the airports and railway stations. Get them all loaded in the facial recognition system. If they move, we’ll catch them.”

  “What about the data?”

  “Our agent reports that it’s likely in the hands of the Americans. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about that now, except tie up the loose ends. I want anyone who’s seen it dead before the sun rises.”

  “And Kane?”

  Pan chewed his cheek for a moment. “Cut him loose, but I want him followed. He was sent here for a reason, and if it wasn’t to meet Duan, it was to meet somebody else who’s betrayed our country.”

  “Isn’t it likely that’s what he was off doing while we were watching Duan and the fake Kane?”

  “Probably, but we might get lucky. And there’s still a chance that that actually was Kane and we’re being played. The two people that attacked the station and freed Chan’s wife physically match the description of Kane and Chan, only their faces don’t match. Since we know that at least Chan has access to the mask technology, the two of them could have pulled this off wearing disguises.”

  He growled. This was all so ridiculous. He had already failed in preventing the intel from reaching the Americans. His career was likely over, and the only thing saving his life was that no one but him and the isolated analyst knew what the intel was. He had to tidy things up as best he could by bringing those responsible to justice.

  “Get me a secure channel to our asset at Langley. We need to start cleaning things up.”

  46 |

  Langley, Virginia

  “Let me know when you’re done.”

  Nathan ended the call with a press of a button on the steering wheel. Things weren’t going according to plan at all. He had failed his adopted country. According to those who had saved him, he had been born in America. His corrupt biological parents had sold him, and a Chinese team had liberated him along with a group of children headed for sexual slavery. The other children had been returned to their parents where possible, but his saviors had thought it best he not return to those who had sold him, for they might just do it again.

  Instead, he had been adopted by the people he now thought of as his mother and father, and zealously jumped at the opportunity to serve his new country. He was Chinese in every way except blood, though in his early teens he was sent to a camp where others his age were trained to act American. For over ten years he had trained. He was indistinguishable from any American, but was also a deadly weapon.

  And apparently, he was drop-dead gorgeous. Honey traps worked both ways. Most people thought of the sexy female being sent in to seduce the male who had information they needed. But in his case, he was sent in to establish relationships with women within the CIA and pump them for information.

  It was the best job in the world.

  He was serving his adopted country, helping weaken the corrupt capitalist American regime, and constantly making love to women. All were beautiful to him in their own way. He’d been fortunate with Casey. She was gorgeous in all the traditional ways, and a fun companion, but extremely tight-lipped about her work.

  She hadn’t been the first, she was merely the latest. He never stayed with any one woman for too long. He always found that in fresh relationships at the infatuation stage, rather than the deep love stage, these women were more willing to keep their relationships private and extremely willing to accept his gifts, like the briefcase he had given Casey. With her position, he gathered extremely valuable intel, then through casual conversations over dinner or after a sexual encounter, he drew out names of other people she worked with.

  Sonya Tong was one of those names. Gentle prompting over several weeks revealed she was second-in-command of an ops center. And single. A beautiful, easy target to manipulate. Unfortunately, due to a traitor in Beijing, all of his hard work had been burned in less than two days.

  Two days ago, when he had reviewed the burst transmissions, he had heard reference to an emergency op where a suspected agent named Dylan Kane was being sent to Beijing ahead of schedule to meet with a contact who had valuable intel. When he had reported this to his handlers, he hadn’t thought much of it. Agents were always being sent in on both sides. Quite often, assets wanted to deliver intel personally rather than transmit it, feeling it was safer. But it was also a way to establish a bond that they thought might merit them special attention should they get in trouble.

  Within an hour, a senior investigator named Pan Shiying had contacted him, quite certain what piece of intel was about to be leaked. Nathan had no idea what that was, but apparently there was no way it could be allowed to fall into the American’s hands. After making love to Casey, he had sent her into the shower first and logged into her laptop using her password captured on a camera he had planted.

  He knew from the recordings that she was backup for the operation, so he had hoped she would have briefing notes. He’d found what he was looking for, but unfortunately, she had caught him. He had rendered her unconscious with a knockout spray, placed her naked in the tub, then slit her wrists, leaving her to die. He printed off the suicide note, making it just vague enough that her bosses would have suspicions that would trigger Sierra Protocol, leaving Kane stranded without help.

  Unfortunately, her briefcase had been locked in her safe and the woman always followed her security protocols, the camera he had hidden in the room unable to catch her entering her code, the keypad always shielded by her hand. The Americans would discover the transmitter, and the methods he had been using to get his information out, so he’d figure out a new way to use his women, probably blackmail, photos and video of them together doing unspeakable things.

  He had been looking forward to doing just those things with Tong. She would be fun. He loved Chinese women. To him, they were the sexiest, most desirable women he had ever encountered, though the Americanized versions of them weren’t as ideal. He preferred those who had spent their entire lives in China and understood the culture he loved. Tong was as American as they came, but she looked the part.

 

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