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  Ding heard shouting outside the broken windows now. The frenzy of barking Chinese, rushed footfalls of men running around in the street. More cyclic rifle fire close to the van.

  Someone tried to open the sliding back door, but it was locked. None of the Americans moved to help, they just kept their heads down between their knees.

  A rifle butt shattered the rest of the window glass of the door. Ding imagined someone reaching in to unlock the door, but he did not look up to confirm this. When the door slid open a moment later he did look up quickly, and he caught a glimpse of three or four masked men in the street, their weapons held high and their movements fast and nervous. Ding saw one man place a white cotton bag over Caruso’s head and then jerk him out of the van.

  A second hood was shoved over Chavez’s head, and now he was pulled into the street. He kept his hands up as he was pushed around roughly to the back of the other vehicle.

  Crazed-sounding shouts of Mandarin came from all around him. Instructions from the Red Hand team leader to his men, or barking arguments between them, Domingo could not tell, but he felt a hand shove him forward, and a second hand grabbed his jacket and pulled him up and into the back of the black truck.

  He did not know if the journalists in the vans behind were watching or perhaps even filming all this action. But if they were getting this, he felt it was a sure bet this would look just like a brutal third-world roadside kidnapping.

  This was about as realistic as anyone could make it. Likely because, it occurred to Chavez, Red Hand had done this sort of thing before.

  The truck lurched forward on squealing tires. Domingo fell over with the momentum, and only then did he feel two men sitting next to him.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Sam.”

  “And Dom.”

  “You guys okay?”

  They both said they were, though Dom complained his ears would be ringing for a while because one of the Red Hand jackasses had let loose a full magazine dump just a couple of feet from Caruso’s ear.

  The hoods stayed on the men as the truck continued. Chavez tried to talk to the Chinese men in the back with them, but they clearly did not speak English. He heard at least two men speaking back and forth, and they ignored the Americans.

  Fifteen minutes after they left the scene of the fake kidnapping, the truck stopped. Dom, Ding, and Sam were led out the back, their hoods still in place, and they immediately found themselves pushed into the back of what seemed to be a small four-door sedan.

  They were moving again in seconds, pressed tightly against one another as they took tight turns and went up and down steep roads.

  It was a long, nausea-inducing drive. The blacktop underneath them turned to gravel, and the sedan slowed and then stopped. The three Americans were led out the back and inside a building. Ding smelled the unmistakable scent of livestock, and he felt the cold damp of a barn.

  There were a few minutes of conversation around him as he stood there with his teammates. Several men were in conversation, and then Ding was surprised by a woman’s voice. An argument erupted, he could not fathom what it was about, but he just stood there, silently waiting to be addressed by someone in the room.

  Finally the barn door shut behind him, his hood was removed, and he looked around.

  Dom and Sam were with him; they had also just had their hoods removed. Together the three of them looked across the dark barn interior at about two dozen men and women. They were all armed with rifles.

  A young woman walked up to the three Americans. “I am Yin Yin. I will be your translator.”

  Chavez was confused. The people in front of him looked like college kids. They did not look like criminals. Not one of them had an ounce of muscle on their bodies, and they looked scared.

  It was pretty much the opposite of what Ding had hoped to find.

  “You are Red Hand?” he asked.

  She made an expression of distaste and shook her head vigorously. “No, we are not Red Hand. We are Pathway of Liberty.”

  Ding, Sam, and Dom looked at one another.

  Sam said what was on the other men’s minds: “This is our rebel force?”

  Dom just shook his head in disgust. “We do any direct action with this gang, and we are condemning the entire movement to slaughter. Look at them. These folks couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag.”

  Yin Yin heard this, and she stormed over to the three Americans. “We have been training.”

  “On Xbox?” asked Driscoll, coolly.

  “No! We have a farm where we have practiced with our rifles.”

  “Awesome,” muttered Dom. He looked to Chavez.

  Chavez smiled at the woman, doing his best to be the diplomat in the room. He excused himself and his colleagues, took Dom and Sam to a corner of the barn, and said, “Looks like Red Hand sold CIA a bill of goods. They passed us off to some coffee-shop student movement.”

  “Son of a bitch,” said Caruso. “These guys aren’t ready for prime time. That didn’t take long to figure out.”

  Chavez sighed. “I don’t really see how we can just walk out of here at this point. Let’s keep an open mind and spend some time with them to learn what they have accomplished. They may be just a gaggle of kids, but they sure as shit are brave to be standing up to the Chicom government in Beijing. We owe them some respect, guys.”

  “Roger that,” said Dom, and Driscoll just nodded.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Valentin Kovalenko watched the news reports of another wild shooting on the streets of Washington, D.C. This time there were two fatalities, a Syrian cabdriver and an unidentified Asian man in his thirties. Witnesses said two vehicles fled the scene, and “dozens” of shots rang out during the gunfight.

  Valentin did not waste a moment wondering if this had something to do with the Center organization. He knew. And while it was apparent Center’s assassins had failed to eliminate their target, it was also obvious that their target was Darren Lipton’s agent.

  The address Kovalenko had given Lipton to pass on to his agent was less than a mile from the location of the shoot-out. That a submachine gun was used by the dead Asian made it even more obvious that this was a crew of Center’s people. Whether or not the dead man was Crane himself, Valentin had no idea, but it did not matter.

  Valentin understood the larger meaning of the news story.

  Center kills his own agents when he has no further use for them.

  Which was why Kovalenko turned off the television, went into the bedroom, and began throwing his clothes in a suitcase.

  He came out a few minutes later and went into the kitchen. He poured a double shot of cold Ketel One into a glass, and then drained it as he began packing items in the living room.

  Yes, he had SVR sanction, and yes, Dema Apilikov had told him to see this through, but he’d already seen enough through, and he knew that at any moment Crane or his goons could show up at his door and kill him, at which point his promise of a plum position in Moscow at R Directorate would lose its ability to motivate him onward.

  No. Valentin needed to run, to get away. From a place of safety he could negotiate with SVR for a return to active service, he could point to all the time he put his life on the line while going solo, working in Russia’s interests by following Center’s commands.

  That would get him back in the good graces of SVR.

  He reached to turn off his computer, and he saw Cryptogram was open and a new message was blinking. He figured Center was watching him right now, so he opened it and sat down.

  The message read: “We need to talk.”

  “So talk,” he typed.

  “On the phone. I will call.”

  Kovalenko’s eyebrows rose. He had not spoken to Center before. This was indeed odd.

  A new Cryptogram window
opened on his computer, and on it was the icon of a telephone. Kovalenko plugged a set of headphones into his laptop and then double-clicked the icon.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Kovalenko.” The voice was a male in his forties or fifties, and he was most definitely Chinese. “I need you to remain in Washington.”

  “So you can send your people to kill me?”

  “I do not want to send my people to kill you.”

  “You just tried to kill Lipton’s girl.”

  “That is true, and Crane’s men failed. But that was because she stopped working for us without permission. I suggest you do not follow her path, because we will find her and the next time we will not fail.”

  Kovalenko needed some leverage, so he played the only card he had. “SVR knows all about you. They sanctioned me to continue helping you, but I am pulling the plug on this right now and getting out of here. You can try to send your Chinese wrecking crew to find me, but I will return to my former employers, and they will—”

  “Your former employers in SVR will shoot you on sight, Mr. Kovalenko.”

  “You aren’t listening to me, Center! I met with them, and they said—”

  “You met with Dema Apilikov on October twenty-first in Dupont Circle.”

  Kovalenko abruptly stopped talking. His hands squeezed the edge of the desk so tightly it seemed the wood would break off in his hands.

  Center knew.

  Center always knew.

  Still, that did not change a thing. Kovalenko said, “That’s right, and if you think about touching Apilikov, you will have the entire illegals department after you.”

  “Touch Apilikov? Mr. Kovalenko, I own Dema Apilikov. He has been working for me, providing details of SVR communications technology, for over two and a half years. I sent him to you. I could see that you were losing your vigor for the operation after the Georgetown action. I knew that the only way to bring you back into the program to the extent that you would follow orders was if you thought your efforts would earn you a glorious return to SVR.”

  Kovalenko slid off his chair, sat on the floor of his apartment, and cradled his head between his knees.

  “Listen to me very, very carefully, Mr. Kovalenko. I know that now you are thinking that there is no more incentive to follow my instructions. But you are wrong about that. I have wired four million euros into a bank account in Crete, and the money is yours. You won’t be able to return to SVR, but with four million euros you can do much with what is left of your life.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Think back over our relationship. Have I ever lied to you?”

  “Is that a fucking joke? Of course you—”

  “No. I had others deceive you, yes. But I do not lie.”

  “All right, then. Give me the access code to the account.”

  “I will give it to you tomorrow morning.”

  Kovalenko just stared at the floor. He didn’t really care about the money, but he did want to be free of Center.

  “Why not give it to me now?”

  “Because you have one more task. One more very important task.”

  The Russian on the floor of the basement apartment in Dupont Circle heaved a long sigh. “What a fucking surprise.”

  —

  President Ryan was running on fumes at five in the afternoon, after having been up and hard at work since three a.m. The day had been full of diplomatic and military crises; often success in one arena was offset by setbacks in another.

  In the South China Sea a pair of Chinese Z-10 attack helicopters flying off China’s aircraft carrier shot down two Vietnamese Air Force aircraft monitoring activity in Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Just an hour and a half later, several companies of PLA paratroopers dropped in Kalayaan, a tiny Philippine island with a permanent population of only three hundred fifty, but also an island with a mile-long airstrip. They took the airfield, killing seven, and within a few hours more Chinese troops began landing in transport aircraft.

  American satellites had detected Chinese attack aircraft landing on the island as well.

  The Taiwanese destroyer that had been hit by the Silkworm missiles sank in Chinese waters, but the PLA had allowed the Taiwanese to enter China’s side of the strait for recovery of survivors. China very publicly claimed it had acted in self-defense, and Jack Ryan had gone before cameras at the White House to express outrage about China’s actions.

  He announced he would be sending the Nimitz-class carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, currently with the Sixth Fleet in the Indian Ocean, farther to the east, to the mouth of the Strait of Malacca, the narrow waterway through which some eighty percent of Chinese oil passes. His rationale, delivered in measured tones to convey strength yet composure, was that America wanted to ensure the safe passage of world commerce through the strait, as if the Ike would go simply to ensure that the spigot of world trade continued to flow nicely. What he did not say, but which was clear to all with understanding of ocean commerce, was that the Ike could shut off the flow of Chinese oil much more easily than it could ensure the safe passage of container ships up the entire length of the South China Sea.

  It was a threatening gesture, to be sure, but it was a measured response, considering all China’s actions of the past few weeks.

  The Chinese, quite predictably, went ballistic. Their foreign minister, ostensibly the most diplomatic person in a nation of 1.4 billion, blew a gasket on Chinese National Television, and called the USA a world power run by criminals. The chairman of the Central Military Commission, Su Ke Qiang, released a statement saying America’s persistent interference with a Chinese internal security matter would cause an immediate and unwelcome response.

  The unwelcome response came at five minutes after five in the afternoon, when the NIPRINET, the Department of Defense’s unsecure network, went down under the weight of a massive denial-of-service attack. The entire U.S. military global supply chain—and a vast amount of its ability to communicate between bases, departments, forces, and systems— simply ceased to function.

  At five twenty-five, the secure DoD network began having drop-offs in bandwidth and problems with communications. Public military and U.S. government websites went down completely or were replaced with pictures and videos of American forces being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, a sick and violent loop of images of exploding Humvees, sniper victims, and Jihadi propaganda.

  At five fifty-eight, a series of cyberkinetic attacks on critical infrastructure in the United States began. The FAA’s network went down, as did the Metro systems in most major cities along the eastern seaboard. Mobile phone service in California and Seattle became spotty or nonexistent.

  Almost simultaneously, in Russellville, Arkansas, the light water pumps at Arkansas Nuclear One, a pressurized-water- reactor nuclear power plant, suddenly shut down. A backup system failed as well, and the core temperature at the plant quickly began to rise as the fuel rods radiated more heat than the steam turbines could handle. As the system neared a potential meltdown, however, the Emergency Core Cooling System did function properly, and a crisis was averted.

  Jack Ryan walked the length of the Situation Room conference room, manifesting his anger in his movements instead of his tone. “Someone explain to me how the hell the Chinese are able to turn off equipment at our nuclear facilities?”

  The head of Cyber Command, General Henry Bloom, answered on video link from his crisis center in Fort Meade. “Many nuclear facilities, for purposes of efficiency, have linked their secure plant computer systems to their less secure corporate networks. A chain is only as strong as the weakest link, and many of our links are weakening instead of strengthening, as technology improves, because there is actually more integration, instead of more security.”

  “We have managed to keep the news of the attack at the plant secret for now
, have we not?”

  “For now, sir. Yes.”

  “Tell me we saw this coming,” Ryan said.

  The head of Cyber Command said simply, “I’ve seen it coming for a long time. I’ve been putting out papers for a decade describing just exactly what we are all witnessing today. America’s cyberthreatscape, the spectrum of possible threats, is vast.”

  “What can we expect next?”

  Bloom said, “I would be stunned if Wall Street’s systems operated normally tomorrow morning. Banking and telecom are ripe targets for an attack of this magnitude. So far the electrical grid has not been attacked like it easily could be. I suspect large power outages across the country sooner rather than later.”

  “And we can’t stop it?”

  “We can fight back with whatever electronic resources they don’t rob from us. Something this large and well coordinated will take some time to combat. And there is something else you should know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The networks that are not down, and I’m speaking of Intelink-TS, the CIA network, for example, are suspect.”

  “Suspect?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. I see their capability by what they have accomplished this evening. Anything left standing is only left standing because they are using it to spy on us.”

  “So they are inside the CIA’s digital brain?”

  Bloom nodded. “We have to operate under the assumption that they have deep persistent access to all our secrets.”

  Ryan looked to CIA Director Canfield and DNI Foley. “I would take General Bloom’s comments seriously.”

  Both Foley and Canfield nodded.

  Ryan then asked, “Why the hell are we so far behind the Chinese on cybersecurity? Is this more of the aftermath of Ed Kealty’s gutting of defense and intelligence?”

  General Bloom shook his head. “We can’t blame Ed Kealty for this, sir. The simple fact is that China has millions of very smart people, many of whom were trained here in the U.S. and then went home to essentially do the modern equivalent of taking up arms against us.”