Threat Vector jrj-4 Read online

  But this travel and this waiting would take money, and for that Kovalenko would continue to work for Center until he was ready to make his move.

  Though he’d been warned by the Russian mobster that Center would have him killed, he was not worried. Yes, Center contracted out the unpleasantness at Matrosskaya Tishina prison, but Kovalenko felt that staying out of Russia would keep him relatively safe from those thugs.

  This was an organization of computer hackers and technical surveillance specialists. It’s not like the Center organization were killers themselves, after all.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Captain Brandon “Trash” White looked away from his instruments, turned his attention outside his canopy, and saw nothing other than the black night and the streaking raindrops lit up by the lights of his aircraft.

  Somewhere out there, off his eleven o’clock and several hundred feet below him, a tiny postage stamp of deck in the middle of the sea bobbed up and down on heaving swells. He closed on it at one hundred fifty miles an hour, except when the swirling winds at this altitude slowed him down, sped him up, or knocked him left and right.

  And in just a couple of minutes he would, God willing, land on that erratically moving postage stamp.

  This was a Case Three landing, night ops, and this meant he’d been “flying the needles,” watching the Automatic Carrier Landing System needles projected on the heads-up display in front of him. He kept his aircraft lined up in the center of the display as he neared the carrier, which was easy enough, but he was about to get passed off from radar control to the landing signals officer for the last few hundred feet to the deck, and he almost wished he could fly around up here in the shit a little while longer to compose himself.

  The winds were said to be “down the angle” at deck level, meaning blowing from bow to stern, and this would help things a bit as he got lower, but up here he was getting knocked all over the damn place and his hands were sweating inside his gloves from the effort of keeping lined up.

  Still, it was safe up here, and it was dicey as hell down there on the deck.

  Trash hated carrier landings with a white-hot passion, and he hated nighttime carrier landings a hundred times more. Adding awful weather and an angry sea to the equation ensured that White was having one hell of a shitty evening.

  There. Down there past all the digital information projected on his heads-up display, he saw a tiny row of green lights with a yellow light in the middle. This was the optical landing system, and it grew in brightness and size in his HUD.

  A voice came over his radio an instant later, loud enough to be audible through the heavy sound of his own breathing coming through the intercom. “Four-oh-eight, three-quarter mile. Call the ball.”

  Trash pressed his transmit key. “Four-oh-eight, Hornet-ball, Five-point-niner.”

  In a calm and soothing voice the LSO answered, “Roger ball. You’re lined up left. Don’t go any higher.”

  Trash’s left hand drew the throttle back just a hair, and his right hand nudged the stick a touch to the right.

  Marines on carriers. Why? Trash thought to himself. He knew the answer, of course. Carrier integration, they called it. Marines had been flying off carriers for twenty years as a result of some bright idea thought up by some officer sitting motionless at a desk. It was a manifestation of the thinking that anything Naval Aviation could do Marine Corps Aviation was supposed to be able to do as well.

  Whatever.

  As far as Trash White was concerned, just because the Marine Corps could do it, it didn’t necessarily mean the Marine Corps should do it. Marines were meant to fly off flat runways cut out of jungles or deserts. They were meant to sleep in tents under camo netting with other Marines, to walk through the mud to their aircraft, and then to take off and support their fellow jarheads in battle.

  They were not meant to live on and fly off of a damn boat.

  That was Trash’s opinion, not that anyone had ever asked him for it.

  * * *

  His name was Brandon White, but no one had called him that in a long time. Everybody called him Trash. Yes, it came from a play on his last name, but the Kentucky native wasn’t really what anyone but the most blue-blooded Northerner would call white trash. His father was a doctor with a successful podiatry practice in Louisville, and his mother was a professor of art history at the University of Kentucky.

  Not exactly trailer-park material, but his call sign was part of him now, and, he had to admit, there were worse call signs out there than Trash.

  He knew a pilot in another squadron named Mangler, for example, which sounded cool as hell to Trash until he learned the poor guy received the moniker after one night chugging margaritas in a Key West bar. On his stagger out of the men’s room the young nugget zipped his balls in his fly, couldn’t get them out, and was rushed to the hospital. The medical term the ER nurse wrote down on his paperwork was “testicular mangling,” and though the young lieutenant recovered from the unfortunate incident, he was damn sure never going to be allowed to forget that night in the Keys, since it became his permanent call sign.

  Earning a call sign as a play on one’s last name, as Trash White had done, seemed like a hell of a lot less trouble.

  As a boy, Brandon had wanted to be a NASCAR driver, but by his mid-teens a ride-along in a friend’s father’s crop duster set his life’s course. That one morning he spent streaking low over soybean fields in a “two-holer,” a two-seat open biplane, showed him that the real excitement was not on the oval track but rather in the wide-open sky.

  He could have gone into the Air Force or the Navy, but a friend’s big brother joined the Marines, and then sold Brandon on the Corps the night he came home from Paris Island and took his kid brother and his friend out to McDonald’s and regaled them with stories about what a badass he was.

  Now White was twenty-eight, pilot of an F/A-18C Hornet tactical fighter, an aircraft about as far away from that first Air Tractor crop duster as one could get.

  Trash loved flying, and he loved the Marine Corps. He’d been stationed in Japan for the past four months, and had enjoyed himself as much as anyone could. Japan wasn’t as much fun as San Diego or Key West or some other places he had been stationed, but still, he had no complaints.

  Not until the day before yesterday, when he was told his squadron of twelve aircraft would be heading out to the Ronald Reagan to make haste toward Taiwan.

  The day after the U.S. announced the Reagan was moving closer to the Republic of China, People’s Liberation Army — Air Force warplanes began harassing Taiwanese aircraft around the Strait of Taiwan in retaliation. Trash and his Marines were ordered to the carrier to bolster the Navy Super Hornets already on board. Together the Navy and Marine aviators would be flying combat air patrol missions on the ROC side of the centerline of the Strait of Taiwan.

  He knew the Chinese would probably go ape shit when they saw American aircraft protecting the ROC, but Trash didn’t care. He welcomed the opportunity to mix things up with the Chinese. Hell, if there was going to be action and F/A-18Cs were going to be involved, Trash damn well wanted the Marine Corps there, and he damn well wanted his own aircraft in the thick of it.

  But he hated boats. He’d qualified on carriers — every Marine has to qualify on carriers — but he had fewer than twenty traps under his belt, and all twenty of those were more than three years ago. Yes, for the past couple of weeks, he’d been on FCLP, field carrier landing practice, at a field in Okinawa, where he landed on a stretch of runway fixed with arresting wires just like on a carrier, but that flat stretch of concrete hadn’t been Dutch rolling in the dark in a rainstorm like the deck of the Reagan below him.

  FCLP was a long way from what he was going through now.

  Two minutes ago Trash’s flight lead, Major Scott “Cheese” Stilton, touched down on the deck and caught a four-wire for a long but acceptable landing. The other ten Marine F/A-18C pilots coming in this evening had all landed before Cheese. Trash was the la
st one in the sky tonight, with the exception of the refueler, and this sucked for Trash, because the weather was getting worse by the minute and Trash was down below six thousand pounds of fuel, meaning he would get only two passes at the deck before he’d have to refuel and try again, making everyone down there in flight ops on USS Ronald Reagan wait.

  “Power. You’re low,” the landing signals officer coached Trash in over the radio.

  Trash had backed off the throttle too much. He goosed it forward again, which pushed his jet too high.

  Too high meant he’d either catch the four-wire, the last wire on the deck, or he’d bolter, meaning he’d miss all four wires and roll down the deck. In the case of a bolter he’d fly right off the end, climb back into the soupy black sky, and reenter the landing pattern.

  Too high would not be good, but it was a hell of a lot better than too low.

  Too low, not catching the one wire but really too low, meant a ramp strike, which was carrier-ops speech for slamming into the back of the boat, killing yourself and sending your burning wreckage rolling across the deck in a fireball that would turn into a video to be used in carrier training curriculums as a bright and shining example of what not to do.

  Trash didn’t want to bolter, but it sure as shit beat the alternative.

  Trash was focused on the meatball now, the illuminated amber bulb in the center of the OLS that helped pilots maintain the proper approach angle down to the deck. As much as every human instinct told him to eye the deck itself as he approached it at one hundred fifty miles per hour, he knew he had to ignore his impact point and trust the meatball to bring him down safely. He was on the ball now, it was nice and centered in the middle of the OLS, indicating a good glide path, three-point-five degrees of descent, and he was just seconds from touching the deck. It looked like he was on his way to a safe three-wire, a nice landing considering the weather.

  But just a few moments before his wheels and his tail hook touched down, the amber ball rose above the center horizontal green datum lights on the OLS.

  The LSO said, “Easy with it.”

  Trash quickly pulled back on the throttle, but the ball rose higher and higher.

  “Shit,” Trash said between two heavy breaths. He came off the power even more.

  “Power back on,” admonished the LSO.

  It took Trash a moment to realize it, but that was only because he wasn’t a Navy pilot used to carrier landings. He had been lined up perfectly, but now the pitching deck was dropping away as the Ronald Reagan sank between massive ocean swells.

  Trash’s wheels touched down on the deck, but he knew he was long. He shoved his throttle forward to the full power detent, and his speed shot up. He raced down the deck toward the impenetrable darkness ahead.

  “Bolter! Bolter! Bolter!” called the LSO, confirming something Trash already knew.

  In seconds he was back in the black sky, climbing over the sea, reentering the bolter/wave-off pattern with his plane as the sole aircraft.

  If he could not land on this next pass, the air boss on the carrier, the officer in charge of all flight operations, would send him to gas up behind the F/A-18E that was circling around ahead and to the left of the bow of the Reagan.

  Trash had a strong suspicion the pilot of the refueler didn’t want to be up here in this black soup any more than Trash did, and was probably wishing that a-hole Marine pilot would put his jet on the deck already so he could call it a night.

  Trash concentrated on his instruments as he leveled out and began a series of turns that would put him back on final.

  Five minutes later he was lined up on the carrier once more.

  The LSO came over the radio, “Four-oh-eight, this is Paddles. The deck is pitching a bit. Concentrate on a good start and avoid overcontrolling in the middle.”

  “Four-oh-eight, Hornet-ball, Five-point-one.” He watched the ball, it was just about the only damn thing he could see at this point, and he could tell he was high.

  The LSO said, “Roger ball. High again. Work it down.”

  “Roger.” Trash pulled back slightly on the throttle.

  “You are high and lined up left,” called the LSO now. “Easy with it. Right for line up.”

  Trash’s left hand twitched the power back again and he pushed the stick to the right.

  He centered nicely on the deck ahead and below, but he was still too high.

  He was moments away from another bolter.

  But just then, as he crossed the threshold of the rear of the massive carrier, he saw the lights of the deck rising underneath him, he watched the deck push up into the black sky toward the bottom of his aircraft like it was on a hydraulic lift.

  His tail hook caught the three-wire, and the arrester cable yanked him to a stop with the effect of bringing a loaded semi-trailer traveling at a hundred fifty miles an hour to a complete halt in under three seconds.

  Trash jerked to a violent but welcome stop on the deck of the Ronald Reagan.

  An instant later the air boss came over his headset. “Well, if you can’t come to the Reagan, the Reagan will come to you.”

  Trash gave an exhausted chuckle. His landing would be scored; all carrier landings are scored. It would be judged fair, which was fine with him, but the air boss made it clear he knew that the only reason he’d not boltered again was that the boat had reached up and snatched him out of the sky.

  But he was glad to be on the deck. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Welcome aboard, Marine.”

  “Semper Fi, sir,” Trash said with a bit of false bravado. He took his gloved hands off the stick and throttle and held them up in front of his face. They shook a little, which did not surprise him in the slightest.

  “I hate boats,” he said to himself.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The office of SinoShield Business Investigative Services Ltd. was located on the thirty-third floor of IFC2, Two International Finance Centre, which, at eighty-eight stories, was the second-tallest building in Hong Kong, and the eighth-tallest office building in the world.

  Gavin, Jack, and Domingo were dressed in high-dollar business suits, and they carried briefcases and leather folios; they fit in perfectly with the thousands of office workers and clients moving through the hallways of IFC2.

  The three Americans checked in with the receptionist for the floor, and she called Mr. Yao and spoke to him briefly in Cantonese.

  She then said, “He will be here right away. Won’t you sit down?”

  They got the impression that several small companies shared the check-in desk, the receptionist, and all of the common areas here on the thirty-third floor.

  After a few minutes a young handsome Asian man walked up the carpeted hallway into the common space. Unlike most Chinese businessmen, he was not wearing his suit coat. Instead his lavender dress shirt was somewhat wrinkled and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. As he closed on the three men in the waiting area, he ran his hands over his shirt and straightened his tie.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” the man said with a tired smile and an extended hand. He possessed no hint of any accent, save perhaps a touch of southern California. “Adam Yao, at your service.”

  Chavez shook his hand. “Domingo Chavez, director of corporate security.”

  “Mr. Chavez,” Yao replied politely.

  Both Jack and Ding recognized immediately that this kid was probably a great intelligence officer, and likely a hell of a poker player. Every last member of CIA’s Clandestine Service would know the name Domingo Chavez in a heartbeat, and they would also know the man would be in his middle to late forties. The fact that Yao did not bat an eyelash and let on that he recognized a CIA legend was a testament to his good tradecraft skills.

  “Jack Ryan, associate financial analyst,” Jack said as the two men shook hands.

  This time, Adam Yao did show genuine surprise.

  “Whoa,” he said with a bright smile. “Jack Junior. All I knew about Hendley Associates was that Senator
Hendley was running the show. I didn’t know you were—”

  Jack interrupted, “Yeah, I try to stay pretty low-key. I’m just one of the grunts working a keyboard and a mouse.”

  Yao gave a look like he found Jack’s comment to be just modesty.

  After Yao was introduced to Gavin Biery, he led all three back toward his office.

  Chavez said, “I’m sorry about springing this meeting on you like this out of the blue, but we were in town with a problem and needed somebody who knew the lay of the land.”

  Yao said, “My secretary said representatives from your company were in town and asked for a brief consult. I honestly wish I could offer you more than twenty minutes, but I am slammed. As I bet you can imagine, intellectual property investigations in HK and China keep a guy in my profession busy. I’m not complaining, even if I am reduced to catching catnaps on the love seat in my office instead of going home and having a life.” He waved a hand over his slightly wrinkled shirt, making an excuse for his worn look.

  As they entered his small and spartan office, Jack said, “We appreciate any time you have to talk to us at all, we really do.”

  Yao’s secretary brought coffee service for the four men and placed it in a small sitting area in front of Adam’s messy desk.

  Jack wondered what was going on in Yao’s head. Having the son of the President of the United States in his office must have been somewhat cool, as laid-back as Jack was about his family name, he recognized at least that much. But meeting and chatting with Domingo Chavez would be, Ryan had no doubt, one of the seminal events in this CIA officer’s life.

  “So,” Yao asked, “how did you guys find out about me?”