Beaman?”
Franklin just kept wiping his hands.
“He said he was glad he was takin’ some other Tomcat up today. And he didn’t want you touching his plane again.”
“I didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” Franklin said, jaw clenched. He was getting
“Sure, of course,” Orell said. “Lots of you techies work on these planes, right? Coulda been anybody, doin’ anything. ’Course, they’re not all the same color as you. Shit brown. Wonder why Bird Dog is so sure
Tombstone was squatting on his heels next to the wall, face upturned to the intermittent sunlight, when he heard the blockhouse door open. He lowered his head and looked down. Two guards were escorting Lobo into the compound. Her legs looked wobbly, but she stood in place when the guards released her.
Refusing to acknowledge the screaming pain in his own muscles, Tombstone rose to his feet and walked toward her. The guards eyed him disdainfully for a moment, then turned and walked back inside the blockhouse. They closed the door behind them. That left only the armed guards on top of the wall. Two of them. More than enough.
“How are you?” Tombstone asked when he got close enough for Lobo to hear him.
She raised her head. Her face was unmarked but very pale. He was pleased to see that her eyes smoldered from their bruised sockets. “They beat me with a rubber hose. I thought the Chinese were supposed to be masters of subtlety.”
“Maybe that was back before the Revolution. Follow me.” He turned and led her toward the center of the compound, which wasn’t much larger than a good-sized patio. On one side was the blockhouse, a tall stone building with barred windows and a steeply-slanted roof of brown tiles. From either end of this extended the high stucco walls that formed the enclosure. Set in the wall opposite the blockhouse was a tall, arch-shaped doorway and a pair of solid wooden doors. Teak, Tombstone thought — one of the hardest woods in the world.
Above the walls, the occasional crown of a tree swept into view, tossed by a strong wind Tombstone could hear but not feel. Beyond that, the sky was crowded with towering thunderheads. Below, the ground was covered in crushed white limestone. There was no dirt, no trash. In fact, the surroundings were generally not all that grim. Throw around some lawn chairs, potted palms and maybe a Jacuzzi — and open the doors, of course — and this place could be almost pleasant.
Nothing like the underground rooms. Especially the one with the bolted-down chair fitted with leather restraints.
He halted in the middle of the compound and turned toward Lobo. “Turn your face up,” he said. “Get some sun while it’s still there.”
She looked at him strangely. He tilted his head back and spoke from the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t you remember your training? Make your face visible to spy satellites, just in case.”
Although he couldn’t see her now, he heard her speak softly: “I keep forgetting they can actually I.D. us that way.”
“Only if the timing is right. But it’s worth a try.” He paused. “Lobo, you said they beat you. What about…”
“No. I kept waiting for them to… but… no.” She sounded both relieved and surprised, but Tombstone detected no shakiness in her voice at all. This was one tough woman. Still, there was no point in dwelling on that aspect of her situation. It could always change.
“What questions did they ask you?” he asked.
“About the battle group’s plans. I told them I didn’t have a clue. That’s the truth, but of course they didn’t believe me.”
“They didn’t believe me, either. But I guess my being a rear admiral might have had something to do with it.” He paused. “This is going to seem like a weird question, but when they were working you over, did they seem… sincere?”
“I’m no expert on torture, but… I don’t know, I got the impression they were just going through the motions. Not really trying. I
She was silent for a long time. Overhead, the thunderheads were beginning to crowd together, shutting out the sky. Solid cloud cover would make things much more difficult for any spy satellite that happened to be parked over Hong Kong. Assuming, of course, that this prison was located anywhere near Hong Kong. For all he knew, it was on the outskirts of Beijing.
Then Lobo said, “You’re right. Things could have been worse. A
“Either that,” Tombstone said, “or like I said before, they have some other use for us. Did they take your photograph?”
“Just before the rubber hoses came out.”
“Mine, too. Yeah, I’m sure they’re planning to use us as bargaining chips of some kind. The good news is, that means they won’t torture us too badly.”
“And the bad news?”
Tombstone stared at the last visible crack of open sky, watching it close up. The air smelled of electricity. “Frankly,” he said, “the bad news is everything else.”
“So you think it was a setup,” Batman said. “You think the Chinese fired a missile at their own city in such a way it would look like
“Yes, sir,” Bird Dog said in a level voice. “It was a radar-guided missile. It could have easily nailed us in the backside, but it didn’t. Which means it had to have been intended for Hong Kong all along.”
“How bad was the damage?” Tomboy asked. Her face, with its typically pale redhead’s complexion, looked almost greenish in the conference room’s subdued light.
“Bad,” Batman said. “Hong Kong’s the most densely populated piece of real estate in the world. Lab Rat’s checking on the latest reports right now. But it was bad.”
Tomboy compressed her lips so hard they almost disappeared. “I can’t believe they did it,” she said. “Killed their own people that way.”
“ ‘To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill,’ ” Bird Dog said, as if to himself. “ ‘To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.’ ”
“What?” Batman said.
For a moment Bird Dog didn’t seem to have heard him. Then he blinked and looked up. “Sun Tzu,
“Win without fighting?” Batman said. “Excellent idea. Any idea how to implement it, Commander?”
Bird Dog shook his head.
So did Batman. “We need practical ideas. We need some idea what the Chinese are likely to do next. Where the hell is Lab Rat?”
“Right here.” Lab Rat was just pushing open the door, holding a piece of paper by one corner, as if it had been used to wipe up something vile.
“I suppose that’s a Chinese press release denouncing the latest American aggression,” Batman said.
“No, sir.” Lab Rat’s glance shot toward Tomboy, then away.
“So what is it?” Batman demanded impatiently.
Lab Rat raised the sheet of paper with both hands this time. “We just received word that Admiral Magruder… Tombstone… is a prisoner in the People’s Republic of China.”
