over the potholes in the road.
Twenty minutes later, Liang parked the truck at the back of a huge apartment complex. He pocketed the keys and locked the doors, then fished another set of keys from his pocket.
“We’re home.”
No matter how he craned his neck, Alex couldn’t seem to see the top of the building. “I have just two questions—what floor do you live on?
And do you have an elevator?”
“Twenty-second and yes.”
“Thank God,” Alex said, sighing with relief despite himself. The idea of climbing all those stairs had sent chills down his spine.
Alex let Liang lead the way, some of the road weariness sloughing off as he stepped into the air-conditioned back lobby. They rode the elevator to the twenty-second floor, stepped out and walked a short distance down the hall to Liang’s apartment.
The key wasn’t even in the lock before Liang’s wife threw open the door and launched herself into his arms. Liang caught her, looking slightly embar-rassed.
“I missed you,” she cooed, kissing him hard.
Her face paled as she spotted Alex, standing off to one side and watching his shoes.
“This is Soo Lin, my wife. Soo Lin, this is Mr.
Vance, an associate of mine.”
Soo Lin half bowed and pressed her hand into his, the best of both worlds. “So pleased to meet you, Mr. Vance. Please, come inside.”
“A pleasure to meet you, too. Liang brags about you constantly.” He noticed her blush and smiled back at her. “He says you’re quite the amazing chef.”
“Well, I suppose I have a reputation to live up to, then.” She shut the door behind them and stepped off to the side. “I will make tea. Dinner will be ready in half an hour. You should rest for a while.”
Alex noticed the pile of shoes on the mat by the door and added his own to the collection. Liang was already in his stocking feet, padding quickly across the carpet toward the hallway.
“We’ll take tea in a moment. First, I have something to show Mr. Vance. Come this way, please.”
Alex followed him to the back bedroom, one of only two in the apartment. It was all very sparse, but clean and neat. Alex felt comfortable at once.
Liang stooped down, lifted a bit of the carpet and pulled it back. Beneath the carpet lay a wood floor panel, and once that was lifted, Alex could see Liang’s small cache of tools.
“Whatever you don’t have in that bag of yours, I have in here or can get at a moment’s notice. I’ve taken the liberty of contacting a few of my associates, sources for those items that are harder to come by.” He smiled at that, his eyes twinkling with a hint of menace.
“Good to know. We can better decide what we need to take that place out once we’ve had a look at it,” Alex said.
“No need to worry here. I have security measures in place and, despite their appearance, these walls are quite soundproof. You can talk freely unless my wife is in the room.”
“You’re very thorough, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“You have the explosives covered?”
“Yes. They aren’t here, of course. I have access to what we need. We could start a war, if that was our desire.”
Soo Lin called from the living room and Liang tugged at Alex’s arm. “Time for tea and dinner. We have about two hours before the sun sets. The building usually clears out about an hour after that, so there’s less traffic on the roads around it and less chance of us being seen.”
“Two hours until we leave, then.”
“Until then, we can stuff ourselves.” Liang poked him in the stomach with his elbow and laughed.
ALL THE HYPE over Soo Lin’s cooking had not been exaggerated. Not only did she also lay out a five course meal, but she did so as if the president of China himself were coming to dinner. They ate until they could hold no more and then they retired to the living room to rest while Soo Lin cleared away the mess.
Fifteen minutes after the sun was completely down and the darkness had stolen the shadows, Alex gathered his gear, changed into darker, more appropriate clothes and followed Liang back to the parking lot. This time, they took a small hybrid car out into the countryside. It was quieter and faster than Alex had anticipated. Like the plane he’d flown in from South Korea, it just wasn’t much on legroom.
Liang drove them to the top of a hill just south of the lab building. The view from there was good and the woods offered cover. Alex lay flat on the ground, Liang at his side, and pulled the night-vision goggles from his duffel bag. The building was heavily guarded, more so than might be expected of a mere medical-research company.
The entire compound was ringed with razor wire, and guards with large dogs at their sides patrolled the parking lot and surrounding landscape. Alex supposed that, somewhere inside that compound, there were more than a few men staring at the woods beyond that fence.
“There are cameras on each corner of the fence and the building itself,” Liang whispered. “There are three sets of doors—front, back and a set with the loading-bay doors in the rear—and each has a camera and coded lock. All but the door cameras are programmed to sweep the entire area.”
Alex nodded but did not speak. He was watching the cameras do their sweep and using the timer built into the goggles. “Every forty-five seconds,” he said. “It’s safe to assume those are being fed to recording devices, as well as monitors.”
He did another visual sweep. “At least the advance reports I read were correct. The guards are heavily armed—rifles, pistols and Tasers.”
“I did the advance report,” Liang said, “so if it was incorrect, I would be to blame. But yes, they are well equipped and there are a great number more inside.
They work in shifts, changing one third every twelve hours. These aren’t the usual sort of guards we see out here. They are well trained and professional.”
“PMC,” Alex grunted, as he watched several groups of men and women move in and out of the building. He scanned the parking lot, making mental notes of makes and models, checking the height of those he saw, hairstyles, manner of dress.
Most of the workers he saw seemed to be Chinese, but there were a sprinkling of others.
“The staff-demographics report made it sound like a much broader range of ethnic backgrounds,”
he said. “Any Europeans? Latinos? Arabs? There have to be a lot of research-and-program development positions in there. I assume the Pakistanis and Indians have a presence?”
“It’s an eclectic group,” Liang replied. “The night crew is more heavily Chinese—for security purposes. During the day you’ll see that they have brought in scientists, researchers and doctors from all over the world.”
Liang glanced at Alex and grinned. “You won’t stand out unless you don’t know anything about drugs, research or biochemistry.”
“My wife is in biomedical research,” Alex said.
“I can get through that part of it. If it’s anything like the lab where she works, there will be plenty of drones— research assistants working on their own degrees and doing the drudge work. No one will care what they think or say.”
Liang nodded. “Well, then, all that remains is finding the best way to get you in there—and a way to get the explosives in with you.”
“I still have some reading to do,” Alex said, handing back the night-vision goggles. “I need to be more familiar with the layout and with the particular project we’re after.”
“I have some files we managed to recover,”
Liang told him. “They’re supposed to be shredded, but sometimes people get lazy, and if you’re in the right place at the right time, you can find things.”
“Like the loading dock?” Alex asked, grinning.
“Maybe so.” Liang chuckled. “Let’s go. We need to have a couple of drinks so Soo Lin will know we’ve been out
