Threat Vector

He drove through Georgetown for a few minutes before he went to his target location, just to make certain he had not acquired a tail. It was good tradecraft, of course, but Valentin was not just looking for enemy surveillance. He spent as much time keeping his eyes peeled for Center, or someone from the organization he worked for, as he did for the local police or American counterintelligence operatives.

He turned off Wisconsin and onto Prosper Street, a quiet two-lane row of big Federal and early Victorian homes with tiny front yards, as well as an elementary school and some small retail shops. Kovalenko kept just slightly below the speed limit as he scanned for the address he was looking for.

3333.

He found it on the right. It was a two-centuries-old two-story home on a small piece of hilly land hemmed in tight on both sides by a redbrick school and a two-story duplex. A black wrought-iron fence surrounded it, and the front of the house was covered in leafy trees and bushes. It looked like a zero-lot haunted mansion. There was a garage down at street level, and winding stone steps led from the gate at the sidewalk in the front of the property to the home above.

Valentin drove around the corner, pulled into the small parking lot of a dry cleaner’s, and here he used a digital audio recorder to help him remember as many details about the property as possible. When finished, he drove around back and looked at the street to the north of 3333 Prosper. Here he found that a back alley went behind the property, between the two streets.

For his third pass he went by on foot, parking his car on Wisconsin and doing a full circle of the block, taking time to look over many different properties, not just his target location.

He walked down the back alleyway, past the school grounds, and he found there was a small gate that provided access to the target location.

In all his passes on all sides he did not see any hint of movement in or around the home, and he noted there were dry autumn leaves on the steps leading to the front door that looked like they had been there for a while. While he could not see inside the garage, and he had no idea if there was direct access to the house from inside the garage, it was his best estimate that the property was not occupied at the moment.

He could not possibly fathom what Center wanted with this location. Maybe he was looking for some local real estate. As vague as his handler had been about what he needed to know about the place, Valentin wondered if all his subterfuge was unnecessary.

Maybe he should have just walked up to the front door and knocked and asked for a tour of the place.

No. That was not Kovalenko’s style. He knew the best thing for him personally was to keep his interactions with others to a minimum.

He returned to his car on Wisconsin and headed back to the airport to return the rental. He’d go home, report his findings to Center via Cryptogram, and then get good and drunk.

* * *

John Clark stood still as a stone on his back pasture, and a cold autumn wind blew oak leaves across his field of vision, but he did not focus on them as they passed.

Suddenly he moved; his left hand whipped across the front of his body, to his waistband under the right side of his leather bomber jacket, and then it drew back out, pulling with it a black SIG Sauer.45-caliber pistol with a short, stubby silencer attached. The pistol rose to John’s eye level, centered on a steel disk the width of a grapefruit that hung from a metal chain at chest level ten yards off, just in front of a backstop of hay bales.

John Clark fired one-handed at the small target, a double tap that cracked the cold air despite the suppressor.

A pair of satisfyingly loud metal “pings” echoed across the pasture as the bullets exploded against the steel.

All this took place in under two seconds.

John Clark used his right hand to move his jacket aside, and then he resecured the pistol back in his cross- draw appendix holster.

Clark had come a long way in a week of daily handgun drills, but he was not satisfied with his performance. He’d like to cut his time in half. And he’d like to achieve his hits from twice this distance.

But that would take both time and commitment, and though John had the time — he had nothing but time these days — for the first time in his adult life he wondered whether he really had the commitment he needed to achieve an objective.

As disciplined an individual as he was, there was something about a strong likelihood that you would need your gunfighting skills to save your own life in the future that tended to focus your energies into being an excellent student.

And John knew he would not be shooting his gun in anger anymore.

Still, he had to admit, the movements and the gun smoke and the feel of the weapon in his hand — even in his left hand — felt damn good.

John reloaded a magazine on the small wooden table next to him, told himself he’d run through a few more boxes of ammo before lunch.

He had nowhere else to be today.

FORTY-NINE

President Ryan felt like he was spending as much time in the Situation Room as he was in the Oval Office.

The usual suspects were there. Mary Pat Foley and Scott Adler on his right. Bob Burgess and Colleen Hurst on his left. Filling the rest of the table were Arnie van Damm, Vice President Pollan, Ambassador Ken Li, and various high-ranking generals and admirals from the Pentagon.

On the monitor at the far end of the room, Admiral Mark Jorgensen, commander of the Pacific Fleet, sat at a conference table with a laptop open in front of him.

Ambassador Li’s visit to Washington was the main reason for the meeting. The day before, he had been summoned by China’s foreign minister and given a message to be hand-delivered to the President of the United States.

Li had flown through the night, arrived the next day, and done as China asked.

The message had been succinct. China was directly warning the United States to move its Ronald Reagan carrier group three hundred nautical miles from the coast of China or risk “accidental and regrettable incidents.”

At present the Reagan was ninety nautical miles northeast of Taipei, meaning it could easily send its aircraft into the strait on patrols. Pushing it back to three hundred miles meant that the strait would be out of range for most regular flight operations.

Ryan did not want to do it, he wanted to show support to Taiwan, but he also recognized the Reagan was in the line of fire of virtually hundreds of missiles as powerful as, or more powerful than, those that had hit the Viraat in the South China Sea.

Secretary of Defense Burgess started the meeting by first updating everyone on Chinese aggression in the South China Sea in the days since the attack on the INS Viraat. PLAN warships had been seen as far south as Indonesian waters, and small landing parties had come ashore on several unoccupied islands in the Philippines. China’s one aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, set sail from Hainan into the South China Sea, surrounded by a full complement of missile frigates, destroyers, refuelers, and other support ships.

The secretary of defense said, “This is a flexing of muscle, but it is a pretty pathetic show.”

“What’s pathetic about it?” asked Ryan.

Burgess said, “The carrier doesn’t have any airplanes.”

“What?” Jack asked in astonishment.

“It’s carrying about twenty-five attack and transport helicopters, but the Chinese don’t have even one squadron of jets that are carrier-qualified. This cruise by the Liaoning is…” He hesitated. “I was going to say it was just for show, but I can’t say that. They will likely go out and attack some things and kill