Ed DeWitt had hustled the SEALs into a Navy COD plane at T’aipei. The carrier onboard delivery plane was a Greyhound C-2A, developed from the airborne early warning aircraft, and its primary job is to ferry goods, mail, and personnel from land bases to carriers at sea. It can land and take off from the aircraft carriers. It has a crew of three and can carry thirty-nine troops or twenty-eight passengers, or a payload of fifteen thousand pounds. It has a cruising air speed of 299 mph and a range of twelve hundred miles. In less than two hours out of Taiwan, the Third Platoon landed on the carrier John C. Stennis, CVN 74 cruising in the East China Sea two hundred miles south off the southern most island of Japan, Kyushu.
Still in Taiwan, Murdock put down the magazine and went to the hospital room to talk with Van Dyke. He was alert now, and the doctors said he was on the way to recovery. They figured it would be five more days before he could be sent home on a Navy jet fitted with a litter section. It would be the same type of business jet they had arrived in little more than a week before.
Detective First Class Hector Villareal had been the first officer on the scene after a hysterical woman reported the two homicides early in the morning. Hector was thirty-two, married, and had four children. He was only five feet six and sensitive that he was shorter than most of the other detectives. But he had a strong desire to do well at his job, and had become one of the best detectives in Tijuana. The woman who called was the housekeeper who cleaned the rooms and fixed meals for the man who lived there with one friend.
Hector had handled it by the book. He called his superior, Captain Carlos, who called the chief and together they went over the murder scene carefully, examining every detail.
Captain Carlos was tall, with a pencil-thin moustache and deep-set piercing eyes. He was forty-two, and a widower. He stared at the bodies and scowled. “Yes, I agree this is not the usual type of Mexican Mafia killing. Those hired killers always go with three or four gunmen with submachine guns and spray a hundred and fifty bullets into the victims, making sure the targets are dead.”
“This looks almost surgical by contrast,” Detective Villareal said. “There is no sign that the apartment here on the second floor has been broken into. No smashed glass, no forced entry at the doors. Three of the windows are unlocked, but that is normal — there are no locks on them.”
“Someone could have come in one of the windows off the shed,” the chief said. “I will send a man to check that out.” The chief was more politician than lawman. He held his post by appointment after the former chief had been gunned down on his way to work one morning. The former chief and three bodyguards were all slain. Reports showed that at least two hundred rounds had been fired from submachine guns. The chief stood tall and heavy, swearing that he was going to lose weight, but never could.
“No struggle, no broken furniture, nothing disrupted,” Captain Carlos went on, summarizing the scene. “It could be that the victims knew their attacker. Knew him and even let him in the door, then the bodyguard reacted when he heard the shots, charged into the hall and was shot down himself. Small-caliber weapon, two shots to the head of this big-time drug businessman. He was the main target. The bodyguard must have been a complication. The two shots to the head are the mark of a professional killer. Someone who has to make sure of the death so he can collect his blood money.”
“A gringo?” the chief asked.
Captain Carlos cringed. He didn’t like the term. “Yes, it could be someone from north of our border, an Americano. But if so, how could he do this deed without being seen? Our detectives and uniformed men have canvassed the neighborhood, the street, and the alley. No one could remember seeing anyone who did not belong. No Americano walked up to the door, went upstairs, and shot down the two men. Someone would have seen him.”
The chief looked at his captain. He rubbed his face with one hand and stopped at once. He had to get rid of that habit when he was unsure of himself.
“So, Captain Carlos. You still have friends in the policia in San Diego just across the border?
“Si. Several in the detective bureau. Good friends.”
“So, Captain, why don’t you take a copy of Detective Villareal’s report and have a two-day vacation in San Diego. There you can show the report to your gringo friends. They might recognize the techniques, and might know some Americanos who are capable of such a professional job of murder.”
“Yes, Chief. I will go tomorrow early and talk with my friends across the border. Perhaps they will have some ideas that will give us some leads.”
In a secret room, ten floors below ground level, the four highest men in the Chinese government sat around a table. Before each man lay a folder that was marked “Operation Self-Sufficiency.” The room was brightly decorated, had carpet on the floor, and soft upholstered furniture around the sides; at one end was a living room — type area with a large-screen television and a CD player with large speakers. On the other end of the forty-foot-long room was a bar and a small kitchen filled with supplies. The room had been built four years ago to specific designs that would withstand a direct hit of a forty-megaton nuclear explosion.
The four men consulted the file and nodded. They had been working over the plan for months, now it was ready and they had agreed to talk about it one last time before final approval.
General Hui Hon Yuen was the only one in uniform. It was his meeting. General Hui had come up the hard way through the vagaries of the Chinese Army. He attached himself to one top general after another, side-stepped when they were deposed or died, and rapidly climbed in the hierarchy until he had the top spot. He was taller than the other men at nearly five feet ten. He was fifty-three years old and silver was invading the sides of his black hair. He wore glasses and was clean shaven. Sometimes details of an operation drove him crazy. He’d rather be out leading a tank battalion.
At Hui’s right hand sat the head of state, president of the People’s Republic of China, Chen Shung Wai. Chen was a politician of the old school; had ridden every phase of Chinese politics for the past thirty years; and weathered each one, moving upward with each purge and each switch in the agenda. He was fifty-six, father of one child and grandfather of one, hewing exactly to the party line on one offspring per marriage.
The second man in the country was called the head of government. He sat to Hui’s left. The fourth man was the defense minister.
General Hui rose and stared at the three men. “We have worked hard on this plan, this operation. It will ensure our future as a powerful nation for the next two hundred years. It will allow us to grow without becoming dependent on any other nation. We will be self-sufficient, we will be able to rule this part of the world with total impunity.”
The defense minister looked up. He was a general himself now out of uniform and in the cabinet of President Chen. He peaked his fingers, frowned, and motioned to the general. “Sir, I know of the powers of our Army and Air Force. I have agreed that we will have no trouble taking the first objective and even the second. Our troops can carry enough food for a week. Ammunition and shells and equipment repair will be a factor. Resupply of our troops is my main concern. Resupply is the key in any battle, any campaign. No matter how sharp and experienced and determined a fighting force may be, it will be whipped without timely resupply of ammunition, supplies, and food.”