Hong Kong (48 page)

When the York opened fire, Wu shoved the muzzle of the machine gun he was manning around the edge of the platform and triggered a long burst. On the other platform another rebel did the same. The muzzle flashes lit the scene in a ghastly flickering light.

Wu waggled the barrel of the weapon, hosing the bullets into the tunnel. Up tunnel he glimpsed showers of sparks where the bullets bounced off concrete.

In that dark, closed space the din of the hammering machine guns and the strobing muzzle flashes were almost psychedelic.

Wu stopped firing when he saw Bob York leave its hiding place and begin advancing. He would like to know what the York was seeing, but the only way to find out would be by calling the command center— and the wide-band cell phones did not work in this tunnel. Wu knew because he had already tried it.

The York fired several more individual shots, then ceased. With his eyes closed, waiting for them to adjust to the darkness, Wu listened to the York until he could hear it no more. As the seconds passed he thought he could hear someone sobbing.

Well, there was no way around it. He was going to have to put his men on the track and advance.

"Let's go," he whispered and lowered himself over the edge of the platform. Two other rebels passed down the machine gun.

He had advanced fewer than fifty yards before he stumbled over the first body. He stumbled over six more bodies before he came to his first live man, who was moaning softly, begging not to be shot. Wu flipped on his flashlight. In the beam he found a PLA soldier on his knees with his hands in the air. The man's eyes were shut and he had blood flowing from a gash on his forehead.

One of the men with Wu Tai Kwong picked up the soldier's weapon and told him to follow along behind the rebels.

On the streets above the subway tunnel the PLA had ceased to be a fighting force. The soldiers were no longer under military control; they were either running for their lives, trying to find a place to hide, or surrendering.

After conferring with Virgil Cole on the WB cell phone, Michael Gao ordered the rebel assault force to advance northward up the avenues.

The firing was sporadic and dying down. Soon each rebel was carrying an armful of rifles and being trailed by a half dozen PLA soldiers.

Gao met Wu Tai Kwong at the street entrance to the Yau Ma Tei subway station near the Nathan-Waterloo intersection. They conferred briefly, decided to hold the prisoners in the center of the intersection with a few guards while the main force advanced with the Yorks up Waterloo Road toward the army base. Wu called Cole on the cell phone and told him what they wanted to do.

While the leaders conferred, people began coming out of the apartment buildings on the side streets and avenues. They were in a festive mood and proved hard to handle.

When Wu finally got his men moving toward the army base, the civilians followed. Indeed, they mixed freely with his troops, as if everyone were out for an evening stroll.

Another force of two hundred rebels, accompanied by Charlie York, advanced northeastward toward the entrance to the naval base. The rebels advanced cautiously. The command center had informed them that the naval base personnel had dug a trench near the gate to the base and were in it with machine guns, grenade launchers, and antitank rockets.

After consultation, the rebels decided to appear in front of the position and threaten it while Charlie York worked its way over the buildings to a flanking position. When it was in position, it could pin the enemy with a machine gun while the rebels made an assault.

Charlie York had no trouble getting into position. The building contained enemy soldiers, but fighting in a dark building was the forte of the Yorks. Using infrared sensors and UWB radar, the Charlie robot quickly found the enemy and exterminated them.

Standing in a fourth-floor window looking the length of the trench, Charlie opened fire with the machine gun that it held cradled in its arms. Each round was aimed, each round found a target.

The people in the trench saw only the muzzle flashes on the side of the building. With people dying all around him, one man pointed an antitank rocket launcher at the muzzle flashes and squeezed it off.

The rocket hit Charlie in the right arm. The impact ripped the arm from its socket and knocked the robot off its feet. Shrapnel from the shaped charge in the warhead damaged the minigun, rendering it useless.

"Damn!" said an exasperated Virgil Cole. "That's what happens when we sacrifice mobility, put a York in a fixed position and let people whale away at him.
Damnation!
We're going to lose a bunch of our guys carrying this trench if we don't get with the program, people! Don't

let a York stand there like a statue until someone blows it into a thousand pieces! Now have Charlie jump down into the trench and get on with it."

Charlie leaped-----forty feet into soft earth. It fell when it landed, its

left hand ending up six inches under the ground.

The robot scrambled to its feet and charged the nearest live man with a weapon. Fortunately it didn't have far to go, because without the right arm to assist in balancing it lurched badly.

The melee that followed was short and vicious. Using only its left claws, Charlie York tore at living human flesh. One man had an arm ripped off at the shoulder and began screaming, a high-pitched wail that lasted until Charlie hit him in the head, fatally fracturing his skull.

The darkness, the screaming, the maniacal superhuman thing that killed by hitting, ripping, or tearing—the nerve of many of the sailors broke. They dropped their weapons and ran, either back onto the naval base or over the lip of the trench toward the rebels.

In less than a minute it was over.

The man leading the assault group didn't learn that for another thirty seconds, when his WB cell phone rang. "You can advance now," the controller said.

Governor Sun Siu Ki listened to the radioed reports from the units in the field and watched the headquarters staff mark the positions on a table map of Hong Kong. The senior officer was Colonel Soong, a practical, down-to-earth military professional who had spent forty years in the army. He had tried to advise Sun of the reality of the military situation earlier in the evening but the governor refused to listen, replied with bombast and party slogans and quotes from Chairman Mao about being one with the people.

As the Yorks cut a swath through his combat forces and demoralized the rest, Soong suggested that Sun confer with Beijing, which he did via the radiotelephone.

The fall of the naval base was the turning point for Colonel Soong. It was then that he realized that he could not defeat the rebels with

the forces he had at his disposal. He made tnis statement to sun, wno turned deadly pale.

After one more hurried conversation with Beijing, Sun got out his cell phone and made a local call.

"Sonny Wong."

"Governor Sun here, Wong." He took the time to exchange the usual pleasantries, perhaps as a way of composing himself.

With that over, he said, "I am calling to inform you that Beijing has decided to accept your offer. They are wiring one hundred million American dollars to your account in Switzerland."

"Rather late in the game, don't you think, Sun?"

"Governments are not like businesses—some things take time."

"I understand." Sonny let the silence build, then said, "I should wait until the money is in my account before I act, but since the hour is so late, I'll trust the government's good faith and move ahead expeditiously."

"Good! Good!" Sun said, genuinely grateful. "The government has committed to pay; it will honor its commitment, as it does all its obligations."

"Of course," said Sonny, a bit underwhelmed. "I'll let you get back to your pressing duties while I get on with mine."

When he severed the connection, for some reason Sun Siu Ki felt better.

Sonny Wong tossed the cell phone on his desk and broke into a roaring belly laugh.

Kerry Kent was sitting across from Wong. Her broken nose had been set, filled with packing, and taped into position. If she could have frowned, she would have.

"What's so funny?"

"We've
won!
That idiot Sun has talked Beijing into paying me a hundred million American."

"I told you Cole took the bombs out of the Yorks," Kent said. "We can't sabotage them. There is nothing we can do even to slow the rebels."

Sonny grinned pleasantly. "I know that and you know that," he said, "but the ministers in Beijing don't. By the time they figure out that we

have done nothing to earn the money it will be too late. The money will be in my bank and they will be unable to reverse the transaction."

Sonny Wong laughed awhile, then poured himself a drink of good single-malt Scotch whiskey and lit a cigarette.

Damn, he felt good.

Too bad about Yuri. Too bad about the restaurant and the yacht. Grafton and Cole had screwed everything up and cost him some serious money. Before he left Hong Kong tomorrow he should probably settle that score.

But tonight, a drink. A laugh. One hundred million from the Communists in Beijing and ten million from their archenemy, Rip Buckingham's old man down under.

A good score, any way you looked at it.

Ha ha ha!

"Here's to revolution, wherever and whenever," Sonny Wong said and lifted his glass.

Rip Buckingham accompanied the rebels following the Yorks north on Nathan Road. He stopped to watch technicians service the Yorks, replace batteries, replenish ammo, oil and lubricate them. He looked over the herd of prisoners sitting in the center of the street—they didn't seem unhappy—then he went looking for Lin Pe.

He found his mother-in-law just where the controller said she was, in the entrance to the alley a block west of the Nathan-Waterloo intersection. The street was filled with a happy, joyous crowd, everyone talking at once. The glare of numerous small fires that the celebrants had built in the center of the streets lit the scene.

Rip sat down beside her. The old woman looked exhausted.

"We have won," he told her. "The PLA soldiers are surrendering by the hundreds, by the thousands."

"They really did not want to fight," Lin Pe said. "I could see that in their faces. Their officers made them fight."

They sat together watching the rebels stream up Nathan Road and turn east, heading for the army base. From where they sat they could see one of the still-smoking tank hulks. When the breeze gave them a whiff, the smoke smelled of burning diesel fuel and rubber, a nauseating combination.

"Why are you here:' Lin i'e demanded, wny are you not writing this story for the world? That is your job."

"Sue Lin was worried. She wanted me to come. Since I love you both, I could not refuse."

After a moment to collect his thoughts, Rip said, "Wu was rescued earlier this evening. He is leading the rebels now. He was just here a little while ago, organizing the rebel forces. He led them up Waterloo Road toward the army base."

Lin Pe nodded. She had heard the news that Wu was alive and with the rebels earlier this evening from the girl taking cell phone calls. She didn't say that to Rip, though; she was so tired. And content.

In the midst of this raucous, happy crowd she could feel the common thread of humanity that ran down the long centuries of Chinese history from the unknowable past, through the present, into the unknowable future. Dynasties, wars, famines, babies born, and old people buried— these living people surrounding her now, filling the streets, were the sum of all that had ever been, and in their spirits and bodies they carried the future, all that would ever be.

She rested her head on her knees. With her eyes closed she could see her parents' faces as they were when she was very young, could remember the wonder she felt when she saw the sun rise on a misty morning, with the earth pungent and fresh after a night's rain. She remembered her husband, his face, the way he touched her, the feeling she had that their children were life the way it should be—these memories washed over her now, swept her along.

Lin Pe got out her notebook and wrote, "You are mankind."

She stared at the words, trying to decide if she had captured the nub of it.

Beside the first sentence she wrote, "You are the past and the future."

She gave it one last try: "Do not despair—life is happening as it should."

Sun Siu Ki's mood was just the opposite of Lin Pes. His world was crashing in on him. The rebels owned Hong Kong Island. They had the only television and radio stations still operating in the S.A.R. and were filling the airways with their capitalist, imperialist filth. Rebels were in control at the airfield on Lantau and at the naval base. With

six robots and an armed mob, they defeated the trained troops Colonel Soong had put in the field. In fact, the only real estate the government still controlled in the Hong Kong S.A.R. was the army base.

All this, Sun reflected, was a local disaster, like a fire or an earthquake. It was just his bad fortune to be here when it happened. Certainly his friends in Beijing would understand.