Springboard

“Exactly!”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Yes. It makes perfect sense.”

Fernandez frowned. “It seems like an awful lot of trouble just to knock off a few casinos.”

“We’re not talking about lunch money, are we? Got to be tens, maybe hundreds of millions involved.”

Kent could see as it sank in.

After a moment, Fernandez said, “He can’t get away with it.”

“Who is going to stop him, Captain?” Kent asked. “He’s the Army! He can outgun anybody who’d try — at least in the short run. Damn, why didn’t I see this before?”

Fernandez didn’t say anything.

“Get the teams ready,” Kent said. “He’ll have to move the money somehow. If we follow that, we can get him.”

Fernandez hesitated, then asked, “Do we really need to get him?”

Kent looked at him. “What are you talking about, Julio?”

“Well, Colonel, if all the computer attacks were to set up a robbery, we know what he’s up to now, don’t we? It’s not our money.”

“True. But he still pulled off those attacks, which means he could do it again, if he had a reason to. And a man this complicated has to have more on his agenda. What is he going to do with all this money?”

Fernandez shrugged. “Buy a new car?”

“Not around here, he won’t. And if he’s the guy trying to get hold of surplus Soviet nukes? We sure need to know about that. No, Captain, it was a good thought, but we continue with the operation. We have questions, and this is the man with the answers.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go!”

“Gone, sir.”

Once Julio was in the wind, Kent considered his next move. He could make a secure uplink with a Marine comsat and put in a call to General Hadden, though he knew what the man would tell him. You don’t stop in the middle of a battle because you think you know what the enemy is planning. Yes, it would be wise to apprise the commander of the situation, but Kent was the man on the ground and he had the best picture. What the general didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. No point in stirring up those waters just yet.

39

House of Good Fortune Casino

Macao, China

The House of Good Fortune — now there was an appropriate name. The question was, of course, who enjoyed the good fortune. At the moment, it wasn’t the House — and they had no idea how bad it was yet to become.

Locke grinned. So far, his plan had worked like a fine Swiss watch. So simple, when you knew how. Almost an anticlimax.

When the heavily armed paramilitary “terrorists” had started their assaults on two casinos, firing submachine guns into the ceilings and throwing flash-bangs all around, it had been bedlam. The two casino security heads, who had been carefully primed earlier by Locke in his colonel’s disguise, warning of this very thing, had taken one look and done just as they had been told — they called the People’s Army antiterrorist hotline. They believed that the local police would be outgunned, just as Locke had told them. And even if they had called the police, Locke had that covered as well.

Everything was covered.

A few guards were killed or wounded, but then the People’s Army charged in and saved the day, shooting, spraying tear gas, capturing the dozen terrorists in the House of Good Fortune, and being ever so heroic in the process. And how fortunate, no tourists had been slain!

When the second casino — the Palace of Jade — was hit, Wu had declared a state of emergency, then quickly surrounded and occupied the Jade and three more of the major casinos with his troops. The second “terrorist” team was captured as easily as the first. Then Wu had explained to the casino managers that such a large-scale raid indicated a major threat, and that it was better to be safe than sorry. Nobody argued with him.

The owners and managers had been more than grateful. It never occurred to them that Comrade General Wu was the one about whom they should be worried — that the “terrorists” were no more than a sham.

With the cooperation of the security people and the blessings of the owners, Wu temporarily shut down all casino and hotel communications from the gambling palaces, so, he said, any hidden confederates inside could not aid the robbers. Massive and powerful jammers blanketed each place so that not even cell phones would work.

Time was critical. A few hours was all they would have, and then higher powers would want to know what the devil was going on.

For now, Wu had control of the buildings, and even if those inside had worried and thought to call for help — which they would not — they couldn’t make that call.

So they held five casinos, with an average of over sixty million dollars U.S. each on hand: yen, dollars, euros, pesos, pataca, pounds, dinars, rupees, rubles… Most of the money was used and unmarked, some of it in computer-accessible draw-upon accounts or certified flashmem deposited in the casinos’ computers.

A third of a billion dollars, at least.

It could not have gone any better. Locke was ecstatic.

But, of course, this was the easy part. The hard part— getting away with the loot? That was where Locke was going to earn his money. And his cut, a mere twenty percent, would be enough to let him buy first-class accommodations in a number of countries around the world by the time they did figure it out.

The plan was pure genius, if he did say so himself.

The only small beetle left in the pudding was Net Force. Leigh was recently buried in a shallow grave in a local park, and would aid no one. But Net Force did have a faint trail, and Locke wasn’t sure how far along it they actually were.

They almost certainly had Shing, who knew that Wu was behind the military computer attacks, but Shing didn’t know about this part of it. Locke didn’t think they were that close — and what could they do against Wu’s trained troops anyhow? — but he couldn’t be sure — he’d been more than a little busy here, setting up the score.

Well. He’d worry about Net Force later. Even if they knew more than he thought, knowing it and proving it were two different beasts. By the time they might be in position to cause any problems, the party would be long over.

Locke’s com button chirped. He tapped the tiny button on the device, which was small enough to fit entirely in his left ear. It operated on one of the very few frequencies not blanketed by the jammers.

“Here.”

“Stage Two?” came Wu’s voice.

“Yes.”

Locke tapped the com device’s control again. He went and found the casino’s manager.

“Ah, Colonel,” the man said, his face full of relief. “We are forever in your debt. Is everything okay?”

“Actually, no, sir,” Locke said. “We have uncovered a major problem. The terrorists claim they have set dirty bombs in several of the casinos.”

“Set what?”

“Explosive devices rigged with small amounts of radioactive material.”

“An atomic bomb? Here?”

Locke thought the man might bolt in a dead run for the doors.

“No, sir, not an atomic bomb — it’s a conventional explosive, probably C-4, could even be dynamite. Low-