Threat Vector

chair.

“Why not?” asked the Russian.

“You guys aren’t going to do anything to us. You’re just bluffing.”

“Bluffing?” The man was confused. The American in front of him just spent several minutes trying to talk him into letting him use his computer. Now he was saying he would not. “I am not bluffing.”

“What, are you going to have your little buddies beat me up?”

The leader shook his head and smiled. “No, they will shoot you.”

“Oh, I see. You have these guys with you to do the shit you are too scared to do yourself.” Jack shook his head. “Typical Russian pussy.”

Draw your gun! Jack’s inner voice screamed it. It was the only chance he and Dom had to survive the next few seconds.

The man’s face reddened with fury, and he reached under his red silk shirt to his appendix area.

Bingo, thought Jack, and he launched up from his knees, both of his hands going for the weapon that was just now coming out from under the silk.

The man tried to take a step back and away, but Ryan had spent many hours working on weapon takeaways, and he knew what he was doing. As he used his body to slam into the Russian, knocking him back, he pushed the pistol’s muzzle down and to his left to get out of the line of fire in case the Russian got a shot off. With the same motion he both pulled on the Russian’s gun and twisted it against his trigger finger, snapping the appendage. As the man screamed, Jack got his own finger in the trigger guard and twisted the gun back nearly a hundred eighty degrees, with the Russian’s hand still holding it. Jack pressed the Russian’s broken finger against the trigger.

Both rounds slammed into the armed Russian on the far side of the bed. The man spun on his heel and fell to the floor.

As the closest Russian fell back toward the bed, Jack pulled the gun all the way free, found a combat grip on it, and shot the man twice in the stomach at a distance of less than three feet. The Russian mob goon was dead before he hit the bed.

He spun toward the man standing near Dom on his right, but before he could line the gun up for a snap shot he knew he was in trouble. As he came out of his turn he saw the man’s hand arcing over his head, and Jack realized the guy was throwing his knife right at him.

Jack dropped to the floor without firing; he did not want to risk shooting his bound cousin by squeezing off indiscriminate rounds while dodging a knife.

The spinning steel whirled over his head and buried itself into the wall.

The Russian drew his handgun from his pants as Jack looked up. The man was fast… a faster draw than Jack.

But Ryan already had his Glock in his hand. He fired two rounds into the man’s chest, and the Russian slammed back against the wall, then fell onto the floor between Dom’s chair and the bed.

Caruso fought his bindings while Ryan took a moment to make sure all the men were dead.

Dom said, “Good thinking, great shooting.”

Jack cut Dom free quickly. “We need to be out the door in sixty seconds.”

“Got it,” Dom said, and he leapt across the bed, grabbing his carry-on and slinging personal items into it.

Ryan pulled mobile phones and wallets from the dead men, then grabbed his own bag, stuffed his laptop into it, and ran into the bathroom, where he grabbed a towel. He took ten seconds to wipe down any surfaces he may have touched, and then another ten seconds to check the room for anything left behind.

As they hustled through the dark parking lot, Jack said, “Security cam?”

“Yep, the box is behind the counter, I’ve got it.”

“I’ve got the car.”

Caruso entered the lobby. There was just one man on duty, and he looked up from the telephone as Dom approached the counter with purpose.

The man hung up the phone. Nervously he said, “I just called the cops. They are on the way.”

“I am the cops,” replied Caruso, then he vaulted over the counter, pushed by the clerk, and punched the eject button for the hotel’s security camera recording equipment. “And I’m going to need to take this into evidence.”

The clerk clearly did not believe him, but he made no move to stop him.

Jack pulled the Toyota up to the front door of the lobby, and Dom climbed in quickly. They headed out of the parking lot well in advance of the police.

“What now?” asked Ryan.

Caruso slammed his head back against the headrest in frustration. “We call Granger, tell him what happened, and then we go home and get yelled at.”

Ryan groaned and squeezed the wheel, the adrenaline still coursing through him as he drove.

Yeah. That sounded exactly like the way it would go down.

FIFTY-FOUR

The call between President of the United States Jack Ryan and President of the People’s Republic of China Wei Zhen Lin had been Ryan’s initiative originally; he wanted to attempt a dialogue with Wei, because, regardless of what Wei had been saying publicly, Ryan and most of his top advisers felt that Su was pushing the conflict in the strait and the SCS way past what Wei was comfortable with.

Ryan felt he could reach out to Wei and stress the perilous path his country was traveling down. It might not make a difference, but Ryan felt like he should at least try.

Wei’s staff had contacted Ambassador Ken Li the day before, and arranged a time the following evening, China time, for the two presidents to talk.

Jack found himself in the Oval Office before the call, meeting with Mary Pat Foley and CIA Director Jay Canfield, trying to decide if he should bring up the Georgetown killings with the Chinese president.

Zha had been killed, both Foley and Canfield were certain, to silence him before he revealed China’s involvement in the cyberattacks going on in the West, especially in America.

Little was known about Dr. K. K. Tong and his scheme, but the deeper the NSA dug into the operation, the more certain they were that this was Chinese-run, and not some Triad/cybercrime nexus run out of Hong Kong. Zha’s involvement with the UAV hacking seemed clear, the Iranian misdirection in the code had been discounted by the geeks at NSA, and more and more attacks against critical U.S. government networks bore the hallmark of Zha’s code.

Their evidence was circumstantial but persuasive. Ryan believed China was behind the network attacks and the UAV attacks, and he also felt the Georgetown killing was a government operation, meaning China.

On top of this, Canfield and Foley wanted blood for the death of the five intelligence officers, and this Jack understood very well, but now he found himself playing the role of devil’s advocate. He told them he needed more concrete proof that the PLA and/or the MSS were directing the Center network before he could publicly accuse the Chinese of anything.

He decided he would not bring up the Georgetown killings in this morning’s phone call. Instead he would keep the focus on actions China could not deny, which meant everything that had happened in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

Both Ryan and Wei would be using their own translators. Jack’s Mandarin speaker was located in the Situation Room, and his voice was piped into one of Jack’s ears via an earpiece while Jack could listen to Wei’s own voice through the telephone. This would make for a slow conversation without much spark, Ryan thought, but that did not bother him at all.

He would be doing his best to choose his words carefully; a little extra time to think through what he would say next might just keep him from challenging President Wei to a fistfight.

The conversation started out as all high-level diplomatic conversations do. It was polite and stilted, made even more so by the others in the chain of communication. But soon enough Ryan treaded into the main topic of