“I needed to get out of that building for a while. Away from Colonel Chiu.”
“Chiu is a strange guy,” said Maxwell. “Why is he so hostile to you?”
“He considers himself a patriot, and he thinks I’m not. As much as he hates the People’s Republic, he hates people like me even more. He thinks I have no loyalty.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. To science. To civilization.” She smiled in the darkness. “To you, maybe.”
“No feelings for the PRC? Or Taiwan?”
“Why should I? The PRC is a repressive government that persecutes its own people. They killed Shaomin. Taiwan? It’s an island. That’s all.”
“What about the United States?”
“What about it?”
He gave up. The concept of patriotism was so ingrained in him that he couldn’t imagine not having it. Mai-ling was a person without a country, and that seemed to suit her. Obviously, it didn’t suit Colonel Chiu.
She fell silent for a while. Then, in the darkness, she said, “Brick, why don’t you have a girl friend?”
“I did. Now I don’t.”
“She left you? Or you left her?”
“It was more her idea.”
She thought about that for a moment, then she took Brick’s hands in hers. Her hands felt warm
and dry.
“A woman who would leave a man like you must have very bad judgment. You are lucky to be free of such a woman.”“Well, that’s putting a positive spin on it.”
After a moment, she said, “You would have liked Shaomin.”
“Your fiancé? Why?”
“He was much like you. Good looking. Very smart.
He loved what he was doing — working on the Dong-jin project and flying fighters.” But there was a secret part of his life that he didn’t discuss with me. I think it was because he wanted to protect me.”“Protect you from…?”
“The PLA security arm. Shaomin was afraid for my safety.”
Maxwell watched her in the darkness, realizing again how very little he knew about her. He could understand, at least from a professional point of view, why Chiu distrusted her. How could you trust someone who had no loyalty to the traditional things — flag, country, homeland?
He didn’t care. He could feel something in the touch of her fingers, like an electric field connecting them. Mai-ling Chen — he unconsciously made the switch from the Chinese usage to the western practice of family name last — was a girl with whom he could be comfortable. He liked her quick brain, the dry humor, her clear-eyed, irreverent world view.
That’s not all, Maxwell.
With a jolt, he realized he was smitten by the wide brown eyes, the lithe, curvaceous figure that even the baggy utilities couldn’t conceal.
More than smitten, actually.
He felt himself wanting to draw her close to him. And it definitely wasn’t her quick brain that he needed.
She sensed it too. She placed her hands on his forearms.
“What if we don’t come back?’”“I can’t predict the future.”
“I can. This is what I predict. You and I will come back and we will become lovers. It will be an intense and very physical relationship. After that, perhaps it will become something else.”
“Like what?”
“Something more advanced. We will appreciate each other for what we really are.”
“When did you become a fortune-teller?”
“When I was born. Chinese women have it in their genes.”
Be careful, said a voice inside him. You’ve got too much on your mind. This is no time to be thinking what you’re thinking.
Right.
With that thought, he felt himself filled with an even deeper longing. He told himself that what he sensed was just the chemistry of shared danger.
Right.
He felt her fingers sliding behind his neck. She was on her toes, her face six inches from his.
He gazed into her eyes for a full ten seconds, wrestling with his thoughts. I’m on a mission that requires total concentration. My country trusts me. Stay focused.
Right.
They weren’t aboard ship. No non-fraternization rule here. What they did was no one’s business except—
Enough thinking. He took her face in his hands and kissed her. Their lips barely touched, almost a social kiss, slow and tentative.
And then it became something else. She pressed herself to him, returning the kiss, her eyes wide open, hands entwined behind his neck.
He could feel her heart beating against his chest. He was aware that the sentry was watching them from his gun position. To hell with him. Nothing mattered at the moment. Nothing except the pressure of Mai-ling’s body against him.
They held each other for what seemed like an hour but was, in fact, less than a minute. She tilted her head upward. Her hands were still clasped behind his neck.
“You’ve done this before, Sam.”
“I have? I don’t remember.”
“You want to make love to me, don’t you?”
“Is that an invitation or an observation?”
“Neither. It’s a question.”
“The obvious answer is yes.”
“Yes, but…?”
“But we have a mission in five hours. And Colonel Chiu is spying on us.”
“Have you always been so honorable?”
“No. I’m just trying to impress you.”
She laughed. “When we’re finished with this mission, I’ll let you really impress me.”
Still holding her hand, he turned and started back toward the compound. Something made him stop. A sound, a low guttural voice behind them.
He glanced back over his shoulder. The sentry was watching them, talking into a radio handset.
CHAPTER 15 — INGRESS
Sitting in the aft cabin, Maxwell could feel the vibration of the big turbine engines through his hard metal seat. The whopping noise of the twin rotor blades filled the cabin as the CH-47 “Super D” Chinook lifted from the tarmac at Chingchuankang.
Seated along either bulkhead and in rows to the front and back were thirty black-clad, black-faced troops of Colonel Chiu’s special forces brigade.
Chiu sat next to him, on the side row of seats. He was peering at Maxwell’s holstered pistol. “What is that thing?”
Maxwell pulled the weapon out of the holster. “Colt .45, model 1911.”
“Why would anyone carry a relic like that?” Chiu said. “It belongs in a museum.”
“Family tradition. My father wore it in Vietnam. I’ve had it with me on every combat mission.”
“What for? To drive tent stakes?”
In the darkness of the cabin he couldn’t tell if Chiu was making a joke or being sarcastic. With Chiu, you couldn’t tell. He shrugged and replaced the heavy pistol.
Through the round cabin window of the Chinook he saw only the blackness of the tarmac, the faint silhouette of the high terrain surrounding Chingchuankang. Somewhere behind and in front of them were the other three “Super D” Chinooks carrying sixty more special ops commandos, led by their escort of four AH-1W Super Cobra gunships.
With fewer than a hundred troops, we’re invading China.
It was a joke.
The throb of the rotors deepened further. Maxwell felt the big chopper tilt forward and accelerate. Like all fighter pilots, he held a deep-rooted mistrust of rotary-wing aircraft. There was something unnatural about helicopters, all those whirling parts, gears gnashing together like metallic demons.
He could tell that Catfish Bass felt the same way. The Air Force pilot looked like a man waiting for a hemorrhoidectomy. Bass sat with his arms folded tightly over his chest, his face frozen in a glum expression. Like the rest of the raiding party, he wore ninja-like black utilities and a Kevlar helmet with night vision goggles attached. His face was smeared with greasepaint. He wore a satchel over his shoulder containing a PRC-112 handheld communications unit and a flight helmet fitted with oxygen mask and PLA-standard connectors. In a shoulder holster he carried a 9 mm Beretta.