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.”