The Ghost War (52 page)

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Authors: Alex Berenson

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers

BOOK: The Ghost War
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UNFORTUNATELY, THE CHINESE SEEMED TO
have come to the same conclusion. Helicopters were buzzing toward the crash site, their spotlights shining over the waves. Jets too. Wells couldn’t see them, but he could hear the whine of their engines. As they made their way west, the sky lightened, the giant fire producing a muddy yellow glare. No way could a helicopter cause such a big explosion. Maybe a 747 had been shot down by accident. Or maybe it wasn’t a plane at all. Maybe it was some kind of oil tanker.
The good news was that the Chinese didn’t seem to have any boats in front of them. And the heat of the blast would make it hard for the helos to get too close.
Not that Wells wanted to get too close either. As they moved toward the site of the explosion, the air grew heavy with the stench of burning gasoline and something else too, some kind of plastic, though Wells couldn’t figure out exactly what. Farther on, the air was alive with burning embers that looked like sparks from a backyard barbecue. The strange part was that they kept burning when they landed on the water. As Wells shielded his eyes and looked toward the fireball, he saw patches where the sea itself seemed to have caught fire.
“Napalm,” he said aloud.
Cao swung the boat hard left, north. Wells braced himself against the side of the hull and gritted his teeth as his ribs reminded him they were still broken.
Then a huge secondary explosion, maybe a fuel tank, lit the night. The boat rocked in the blast wave and Wells covered his mouth against the fumes. In the sudden glow Wells knew they were obscenely visible. Even as the firelight faded, a jet swooped toward them, hard and low, its running lights blinking red, the wash from its engines kicking up waves and rattling the boat.
“Close,” Cao said.
The fighter screamed off.
Three minutes later it came back for another pass. This time red flares popped off the wings, not directly on top of them but close, too close, dimly visible through the thick black smoke that was flooding the air. Two helicopters—one from the north, the other from the south—began to converge on the flares, closing like scissor blades.
And then Wells saw the lights of a ship, barely visible through the smoke. Toward the east, not the west. Toward South Korea.
“Cao.” Wells pointed at the lights.
“Could be Chinese.” Nonetheless, Cao swung the tiller, turning the boat east, into the depths of the filthy black soot. The helicopters closed, but they couldn’t fly blind. Wells closed his eyes and tried not to breathe. Then the wind shifted. The smoke lightened and the helicopters closed again. The spotlights swung at them, and one caught the hull of the boat in its glare. Behind them, a heavy machine gun opened up, kicking up flumes on the right side of the boat and then on the left. Cao swung the boat hard right, toward the center of the inferno, the heaviest smoke, and Wells ducked down, all he could do.
The spotlights swung over them and again the machine gun raked the waves around them, an angry hard rattle that blocked out every other sound, until Cao screamed, a short sharp cry. He collapsed, his body slumped over the outboard.
The engine lifted out of the water and the boat slowed to a creep. A lucky break, since the helos were now ahead of the boat and the wind was shifting direction again, catching the helicopters in the smoke. Wells crawled across the boat to Cao. The general was dead, his neck and chest torn open. “Damn you,” Wells said to nothing and no one, knowing that he’d be joining Cao soon enough, as soon as the wind turned enough to give the helos a clear shot. He pushed Cao aside and dropped the engine into the water. He couldn’t see where he was headed and he supposed it no longer mattered.
 
THEN, FROM ABOVE, THE GRINDING SOUND
of metal on metal. Followed almost instantly by an enormous explosion, two hundred yards ahead, and a second even closer. Wells bowed his head as sizzling bits of metal crashed around him.
They’d collided. The wind shift had left the helicopters blind. In their eagerness to get the kill, they’d come too close. They had crashed into each other in the dark and gone down, both of them. This filthy cloud had saved his life. Wells lifted the engine out of the water and looked around, trying to orient himself in the dark, thick air. Distant helicopters behind him. Somewhere overhead, a jet.
And ahead, a voice. Amplified. American.
Calling his name.
He closed his eyes and lowered the engine into the water and steered for it.
EPILOGUE
 
ONE MONTH LATER
 
“
CERVEZA, POR FAVOR
. NO, MAKE IT TWO.
DOS
.”
Keith Robinson held up two fingers, watching them float in the bar’s murky air as if they weren’t connected to his body. Keith Edward Robinson, late of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now at liberty and seeking other employment.
“Anybody need an expert in counter-counterintelligence?” he murmured to the empty room. A soccer match played on a television high in one corner, two local teams kicking the ball around halfheartedly.
The bartender, heavy and dark-skinned with a long white scar down his right arm, plunked down two Polars. They joined the half-dozen other bottles—all empty now—in front of Robinson. “Ten dollars,” he said in English.
“Ten dollars? Last time it was two bolivars”—a bit less than one dollar.
“Ten dollars.”
“Okay, okay. I’m a lover, not a fighter.” More than anything, Robinson wanted to relieve the pressure on his bladder. Drain the main vein, as they said in the trade. What trade? The room swam as he extracted a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from the dollars and pesos stuffed in his wallet. Robinson wished he hadn’t brought so much money. The sight of the cash had undoubtedly provoked the sudden price increase. The bartender plucked the bill out of Robinson’s wavering fingers and turned away.
“Don’t forget my change.” Robinson tapped the bar. “Hey, I’m serious.” But the little brown man was gone. “I don’t like your attitude,” he mumbled. “Don’t cry for me, Venezuela.”
He tipped the beer to his mouth and took a long swallow. Better. He was drunk, drunk as the drunkest skunk. At this point he didn’t even know why he was drinking. More alcohol wouldn’t make him any more intoxicated. Intoxicated. A good word, from the Latin for wasted. But he was awake, and these days, consciousness seemed to be reason enough.
He wasn’t even having fun anymore. Getting this drunk was work. Every morning he felt as though someone had taken a hammer to his skull. Soon enough the feeling would be more than metaphorical, he knew. He’d pick the wrong bar, the wrong whore, the wrong hotel. Wind up with a knife between the ribs. Like he cared. He was a wanted man. Even down here he’d been in the papers. A few days ago, he’d felt the shock of seeing his picture on television. A celebrity at last. He’d rather die in a hotel room in Caracas than rot in solitary in the Supermax.
Of course, somewhere in his mind he had a plan. Not so much a plan as a single word: Cuba. The Cubans would love him. Anything to piss off the American government. Heck, even the Venezuelans might refuse to extradite him. They hated America too. But making his presence officially known would turn him into a bargaining chip, to be traded in the moment his hosts wanted better relations with Washington. For now he’d decided to lie low.
And with that thought, he lost his balance and toppled sideways, knocking his beers over in the process. A golden river of beer ran down the bar.
“¡Puta!”
the bartender said. “Out!”
“Show a little mercy, hombre,” Robinson said. “I just wanted a cocktail.”
But the bartender said nothing more, only pointed at Robinson, then the door, like God evicting Adam from Eden. Robinson shuffled onto the narrow street. He checked his watch—9:40. How could it be only 9:40? He had hours to drink away before he’d be exhausted enough to pass out.
A hand touched his shoulder. To his right stood a brown woman in a denim miniskirt. She had legs like a linebacker’s. A fading shiner poked through the makeup under her tired eyes. The girl of his dreams.
“Date, mister?” Her breath stank of pisco, a grape brandy that burned like turpentine. Even Robinson avoided it.
“You had me at hello.” He took her arm and away they went.
 
 
 
THE STYLIST BRUSHED A HAND
over Pierre Kowalski’s head. “You see, Monsieur Kowalski,” he said. “I promised the blemish was only temporary.
Et voilà.
Use the ointment and all will be well.”
Indeed, Kowalski’s hair was growing back, sparsely and cautiously, like grass after a long winter. As a boy, he’d been handsome. He still thought of himself that way, despite his triple chin, C-cup breasts, and size 50 waist. But no one could convince him his skull looked good at the moment. When the duct tape had come off, it had taken most of his hair with it. He looked like a chemotherapy patient, only fatter and less sympathetic.
“Fine, J.P.,” Kowalski said. He waved a hand. The stylist flounced out of Kowalski’s office, a square wood-paneled room decorated with famous weapons. Rommel’s personal Luger. A saber that Napoleon had carried.
Alone now, Kowalski stared out at Lake Zurich and the mountains behind it. Peace at last.
But not for long. Steps outside his office. Fast young steps in high heels. Natalia, his current favorite. “Not now,” he said, not bothering to turn around, as she walked in.
“Pierre—”
“Not now. If you need a check, tell Jacques.”
She walked off.
Kowalski had nearly gone into hiding after the Chinese announced that they’d arrested Li Ping for unspecified “crimes against the state.” He’d guessed, correctly, that the United States had discovered how Li had used him to help the Taliban and passed the evidence to Li’s enemies on the Standing Committee.
For two anxious days Kowalski wondered whether the United States would come after him too. Then he heard from friends at Langley and the Pentagon that he was safe. Both America and China wanted to pretend that their confrontation had never happened. China apologized for torpedoing the
Decatur—
Beijing called the attack a “tragic and unnecessary accident”—and agreed to pay $1 billion in reparations to the United States and sailors on the ship. The Chinese also ended their nuclear aid to Iran, and—in a move that offered ironic proof of China’s new military prowess—gave the American navy a fully functioning Typhoon torpedo to reverse-engineer. In turn, the United States was paying millions of dollars to the families of the students who had drowned when the
Decatur
rammed the fishing trawler. Neither side wanted to dredge up Kowalski’s involvement and admit that Li had funded the Taliban. After all, Li had manipulated the United States as badly as his own government. More disclosure would only mean more embarrassment for both sides.
 
KOWALSKI KNEW HE OUGHT
to let the matter rest there. He’d escaped retribution. As a rule, he prided himself on staying above the fray. His vainglorious clients fought the wars. He sold tools, nothing more. But this time reason failed him. Presidents and generals begged him for the weapons they needed. He was no one’s servant, no one’s whore. No one touched him without his permission.
Yet when he closed his eyes each night he felt thick silver tape across his face, hands squeezing his neck tight. Insolence. Beyond insolence. A stone in his shoe, irritating him with every step. He couldn’t allow it. He needed to know the name of the man and the woman who’d done this to him.

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