disorienting seconds, it seemed as if he had floated out of the room.
When his vision cleared, and the pain receded, two men he had not seen were lifting his chair back onto its legs. Feng Dun’s face was inches away, staring at him. His eyes were such a pale brown they appeared to be empty sockets.
Feng said, “That gentle tap was to focus your attention, Colonel. You’ve been skilled and intelligent. Don’t be stupid now. We won’t waste time discussing who and what you are. The question that interests me now is who do you work for?”
Jon swallowed. “Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M. D., United States Army Medical Research Institute … ”
The blow was little more than a slap this time, snapping his head sideways, but drawing blood again, and leaving his ears ringing.
“You appear on no American intelligence roster we’ve found. Why is that?
Some secret section of the CIA? NSA? Maybe the NRO?”
His lips were swelling, making his speech thick. “Take your pick.”
The hand crushed the other side of his face, the room disappeared again, but the chair did not move. Dimly he realized the job of the two other men was to keep him upright as Feng beat him.
“You’re not a conventional agent,” Feng told him. “Who do you report to?”
He could not feel his lips move and did not recognize his voice. “Who are you? You’re not Public Security Bureau. Who thinks I’m not CIA, NSA?
Mcdermid? Someone inside …?”
The two fists struck seconds apart, a perfect combination, and as searing, crushing, swelling pain overwhelmed him and merciful blackness washed toward him, his brain told him the man had been a prizefighter, a professional, and he hit much too hard … hit too hard … hit too… hard … Ralph Mcdermid stood behind Feng Dun. “Damnation, Feng. He’s not going to tell us anything if he’s unconscious, now is he?”
“He’s strong. A big man. If we don’t hurt him, make him afraid not only of pain and death, but of me, he’ll tell us nothing.”
“He’ll tell us nothing if he’s dead.” Feng smiled his wooden smile. “That’s the fine print, Taipan. If he doesn’t believe we’ll kill him, he’ll say nothing. But if he’s dead, he can’t say anything. One must find the balance. My job is to convince him I’m so savage and reckless that I’ll kill him by accident, not realize my own brutality, and get carried away on a euphoria of inflicting pain.
Yes?”
Mcdermid flinched, as if suddenly afraid of Feng himself. “You’re the expert.” Feng noted the fear and smiled again. “You see? That’s the reaction I need from him. We’ll find out nothing until he can hardly move his mouth to talk. Just enough pain so he can barely think, but not so much that he can’t think.”
“Possibly less physical methods?” Mcdermid said uneasily.
“Oh, there’ll be those, too. Don’t worry. I won’t kill him yet, and he’ll tell us whatever you want to know.”
Mcdermid nodded. Besides being a shade afraid of Feng’s unpredictability, he was concerned about Feng in other ways. He had a feeling the big ex-soldier was sneering at him the same way he had sneered at his other employer — Yu Yongfu. At the time, Feng’s insults had not been noteworthy, since he was reporting on Yu to Mcdermid. But later, when Feng demonstrated the clout necessary to have a submarine sent to shadow the USS John Crowe, Mcdermid started to worry.
At that point, what had been murky became clear: Feng had serious military or national government connections far above what appeared to be his station in life. As long as those resources were doing Mcdermid’s bidding, Mcdermid was more than happy to pay Feng a fortune and overlook his rudeness. Still, Mcdermid had not risen to be one of the most powerful money men in the world by missing the obvious. Feng was connected. Feng was dangerous. Mcdermid still had him under control, but for how long, and what would be the price to keep him there?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The cabinet meeting was behind him, and Congress had been alerted to the brewing crisis with China. Carrying a mug of coffee, the president again sat at the head of the long table in the windowless situation room. The joint chiefs and his top civilian advisers had found their chairs, shuffling papers and conversing in hushed voices with their aides.
The president barely registered their presence. Instead, he was thinking about the millions across the country innocently going about their business who, if the new situation leaked, would hear about a possible war with China. Not a sportsmanlike excursion watched on TV, like Monday Night Football. Not an undercover battle against terrorists or a small conflict in a small country where fewer Americans would die fighting than died in traffic accidents on a holiday weekend. Not just any war. A real war … a big war … one that would detonate like a volcano and continue night and day, day in and day out. The dead would be their sons and daughters, or their neighbors or themselves, all returning home in body bags. China.
“Sir?” It was Charlie Ouray.
The president blinked and noted all the solemn and stern, or angry and anxious faces on both sides of the long table. They were watching him.
“Sorry,” he told the room. “I was seeing the ghosts of war past and war future. I didn’t see war present. Can any of you?”
The river of faces reacted each according to who and what he and she was. Shock that he, their commander in chief, would be defeatist. Fear of what could be coming. Resolve … neither afraid nor fierce but quietly determined. Solemnity at the magnitude of the unknown, near and far. A few with the gleam of “great” things in their eyes, of honor and awards and a place in history.
“No, sir, not really,” Admiral Brose said quietly. “No one can, and I hope no one ever has to.”
“Amen,” Secretary of Defense Stanton intoned. Then his eyes glittered.
“That said, now we prepare. War with China, people. Are we ready?”
The deafening silence was an answer no one in the hushed room could mistake. The president looked at his coffee and had no taste for it.
“If I may speak for my colleagues with the navy and air force,” Army Chief-of-Staff Lieutenant General Tomas Guerrero declared, “the answer is, not really. We’ve been planning, training, and preparing for the exact opposite. We need?”
Air Force General Bruce Kelly broke in, “With all respect, I disagree.
With some exceptions, the bomber force is prepared for any war. We do need to rethink our advanced fighter force, but for the immediate future, I see little problem.”
“Well, dammit, we’re not ready,” Guerrero countered. “I’ve said it before, and I say it now, the army’s been stripped of the bone and muscle it needs for a long, tough, nose-to-nose war over a vast area against a giant population, a mammoth army, and a national will to fight.”
“The navy?” Admiral Brose began.
“Gentlemen!” National Security Adviser Powell-Hill protested from her seat at the opposite end of the table, facing the president. “This isn’t the time to bicker about details. The first action we have to take is to prepare the complete readiness of what we do have. The second is to get cracking on what we need.”
“The first action,” the grave voice of the president brought instant silence, “is to prevent this confrontation from happening at all.” He moved his adamant glare from face to face, one by one, until he had circled the table.
“There will be no war. Period. None. That’s the bottom line. We do not fight China. I’m convinced that cooler heads over there don’t want war.
I know we don’t, and we have to give those cooler heads a chance.” His gaze arced around the table in the
