Golden Buddha

“Heck of a deal,” Gurt said. “I thought I was a goner.”

“Me too, old buddy,” Murphy said quietly. “Me too.”

FOR the Chinese, the battle for Lhasa was all but over. They had lost the initiative when King stopped the movement of the armored column. From that point on, the Dungkar forces had been seized by a rage that showed no boundaries.

Teams under the leadership of General Rimpoche had spread out through Lhasa, rounding up Chinese troops in their barracks and elsewhere. The war for the motor pool was bloody, but after forty minutes of fierce fighting, the Dungkar had taken control.

“This was all the red paint available in town,” a Dungkar warrior said as he slid to a stop inside the fenced yard of the motor pool.

General Rimpoche was sitting in the passenger seat of a Chinese jeep with a bloody bandage wrapped around his lower leg. A red-hot chunk of shrapnel from a fragmentary grenade had hit him as he was leading the last charge in the battle.

“Mark the captured armored personnel carriers and the three remaining tanks with the Dalai Lama’s symbol,” he said, coughing, “then alert our forces that these vehicles are under our control.”

The man scurried off to fulfill the request while at the same time his aide approached.

“I’ve found a dozen men with at least basic knowledge of how to drive,” the aide said. “We can have the vehicles on the streets of the city as soon as they are painted.”

“Good,” Rimpoche said. “We need to show we’re in control.”

Right at that instant, he heard a helicopter approaching from Gonggar. He watched as it passed overhead and headed for Potala.

DETECTIVE Po and his Tibetan underlings had just escaped a mob of Tibetans intent on capturing them. Po was now on the outskirts of Lhasa at the east end of the city. More and more he was considering his mission a failure. Either there was no one answering the description of the people he sought, or the Tibetans he and his men had questioned were lying. But the situation went deeper than that. In the last half hour, Po had felt the tide turn.

More and more he was feeling like the hunted, not the hunter.

His last call to the Public Security Bureau had gone unanswered, and although it might be a figment of his imagination, he was thinking the Tibetans assigned to help him had begun eyeing him differently.

Right then, a helicopter flew overhead and slowed to touch down on the flats below Potala.

“Stop the truck,” Po ordered.

The driver slowed and stopped. The helicopter was only two hundred yards away and the skids had just touched the ground. Straining to watch with his binoculars, Po waited until the dust from the rotor wash had cleared and the occupants climbed out. The leader of the group was wearing a helmet, and he was pointing out a spot on the palace grounds to the other men who had climbed out. At that instant, Po saw the man remove a portable telephone from his belt. Then he removed the helmet to hear.

Po stared through the binoculars. The man’s hair was worn in a short blond crew cut, but his face was familiar. Po watched.

“YOU’RE sure, Max?” Cabrillo asked.

“I just received confirmation,” said Hanley, a thousand miles away on the Oregon.

“Good, I’m going in,” Cabrillo said.

“The media is on their way,” Hanley said, “and the Dalai Lama has already left India. Both are due to arrive in Lhasa in just over an hour. We need you all out of there posthaste. I’ve dispatched the C-130 from Thimbu, and Seng is rounding everyone up. Just get this done—and get out of there.”

“All I can say is that you’d better have some beer on board that plane,” Cabrillo said, laughing.

“Bet on it,” Hanley said.

THE smile. the smile was the same as that of the man on the tape. Po slid the binoculars back in the case and turned to the driver. “To Potala.”

“FLY the cargo to that level and unload it,” Cabrillo said, pointing to a stark white center section of the palace, “then start searching. I’ll meet you on the courtyard that abuts the taller section.”

The Dungkar in charge of the detail nodded.

“I’m going to take the stair and search the lower levels,” Cabrillo said, removing a small portable oxygen tank from inside the helicopter and strapping it on his back. He attached a nose clip, turned on the flow of oxygen, then started up the stairs.

A few minutes later, the helicopter lifted off the flats and dropped off the Dungkar and cargo. Four minutes later, the truck carrying Po and the Public Security Bureau members slid to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. Po unholstered his pistol and, followed by the others, started up the stairs. Cabrillo disappeared out of sight in the first structure bordering the stairs.

The helicopter, now empty, parked on the flats near the truck.

The pilot noticed the truck and radioed the Oregon.

“It has markings from the Public Security Bureau,” he said.

“I’ll call Cabrillo,” Hanley said, “but I wouldn’t worry about it right now. We’re receiving sporadic radar returns here. We have yet to determine the source. Watch overhead.”

GEORGE Adams had stopped and refueled the Chinese attack helicopter twice. Chuck Gunderson still had half a tank. For the most part, their mission so far had been quiet. Gunderson had been called in to monitor the fighting at the motor pool, but the Dungkar had gained control fast enough that they never needed his makeshift gunship. Adams had yet to locate a clear target to fire upon. In the last twenty minutes, the situation had changed—other than a few pockets of small-arms fire in the city, it appeared that Lhasa was now firmly under Dungkar control. Both men could see the transformation clearly from the air—the war was almost over.

“Gorgeous George, this is Tiny,” Gunderson said over the radio.