Golden Buddha

“They will need to be operated from within three hundred miles,” she noted. “Thimbu or inside Tibet itself.”

Kasim nodded.

She scanned a sheet of paper that listed crew qualifications. “Four of us are trained in the operation. You, me, Lincoln and Jones.”

“Lincoln would stand out in Tibet like a debutante at a tractor pull,” Kasim noted. “If he operates the drone, at least he’ll be hidden inside a tent. If I were you, I’d recommend to Hanley he get the job.”

Ross nodded her head in agreement. “He’s good,” she said, “and the drones are critical—they will be our only eyes in the sky. If Lincoln can keep them over station above Lhasa Airport, the control room here can watch the action unfolding.”

“What have the Chinese got in Tibet to shoot them down?” Kasim asked.

Ross glanced at the sheet listing Chinese defenses that had been recently smuggled out of Tibet by the underground freedom movement. “Some old antiaircraft guns and one ten-year-old missile defense battery. Around Gonggar Airport near Lhasa there’s not much,” she said. “Looks like a couple of cargo planes, some helicopters, and rifles carried by the troops.”

“I’d make a note to Hanley to target the antiaircraft guns for early destruction,” Kasim said, “then have Lincoln fly only one drone at a time.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Ross said. “If he flies high, he can scan the entire city, plus keep the bird out of sight of riflemen.”

“Makes sense,” Kasim said.

“What do you find for radio and television transmitters?”

“There is one television,” Kasim said, “and a pair of radios. We need quickly to gain control of both so we can keep the Tibetan people alerted.”

“What’s the report say?” Ross said. “Will they rally against the Chinese when the time comes?”

“We think so,” Kasim said, “and God help the Chinese when they do.”

“The Dungkar?” Ross said.

“Tibetan for blackbirds with red beaks,” Kasim said. “The fighting arm of the Tibetan underground.”

Ross glanced at the sheet holding the assembled intelligence. “When it is time, we will feed on the carcasses of the oppressors and the beaks will be red with blood and the day will be black with death.”

“Brings a chill to my spine,” Kasim said.

“And I thought,” Ross said, “we had the air conditioning too cold.”

ONE floor below where Ross and Kasim were planning, Mark Murphy was in the armory. Munitions and crates were piled to one side, and Sam Pryor and Cliff Hornsby were slowly moving them toward the elevator to be taken to an upper storage area where they would be off-loaded in Da Nang. On each crate to be used, Murphy attached a red-taped sticker. Then the contents were labeled with a felt-tipped pen. He was singing a ditty while he worked.

“I’m a gonna blow some stuff up tomorrow,” he said. “Gonna blow me up some stuff.”

Pryor wiped his forehead with a handkerchief before bending down to lift another crate to carry to the elevator. “Shoot, Murph,” he said, “you packing enough C-6?”

“You can’t have too much,” Murphy said, smiling, “at least in my opinion. Heck, it doesn’t spoil and you never know what might come up.”

“You got enough here to blow up an Egyptian pyramid,” Hornsby said, walking into the room after placing his crate in the elevator, “and enough mines to register shock waves on a seismograph.”

“Those are for the airport,” Murphy said. “You don’t want the Chinese to be able to land troops, do you?”

“Land?” Pryor said. “You use all these, there won’t be an airport.”

“I have other plans for some of them,” Murphy said.

“I’ve got the feeling you’re looking forward to this,” Hornsby said.

Murphy started singing again as he walked over to crates of Stinger missiles and began to attach the red tags. Letting loose a long whistle, he finished with the sound of a blast.

Hornsby and Pryor carried crates out the door and headed for the elevator.

“I’d sure hate to have him mad at me,” Pryor said.

37

THE Antonov was less than a hundred miles from Da Nang, heading due west. At its current speed, the plane would touch down in about forty minutes, or just around 4:30 P.M. local time. The biplane, although slow, had performed flawlessly. Gunderson balanced the yoke with his knees and reached into the air and stretched.

“This baby’s a peach,” he said to Cabrillo.

“After this mission is completed, you can check into buying one for the company, if you think we’ll use it enough,” Cabrillo said.

“Take the wings off and we could probably fit it into a forty-foot shipping container,” Gunderson said. “If we had Murphy mount a fire cannon out the door, we’d have a hell of a gunship.”

For the last hour Cabrillo had been checking arrangements with the Oregon over his