The Eye of God (9 page)

“You mean Gray, Kowalski, and Seichan.”

She nodded. “It’s only a few hours from Hong Kong to Ulan Bator, the capital city of Mongolia.”

“It sounds like you’ve thought this all out. But I should let you know, there may be a
third
member of the U.S. team.” He glanced over to Jada. “A civilian who has convinced me her expertise may be needed.”

“Not a problem. I value Dr. Shaw’s help.”

He smiled. As usual, Kat had read his mind.

“Also,” she said, “there is another advantage in making this detour. By working with the monsignor and his mysterious colleague, it offers us the perfect cover story for our search into the restricted Khan Khentii Strictly Protected Area.”

“Of course,” Painter said, nodding, pleased at her resourcefulness. “They can pose as an archaeological team.”

“Exactly. Especially if the monsignor would be willing to venture to Mongolia with us—as it seems we have a common goal.”

Saving the world . . .

“Then let’s get things rolling,” Painter said. “Put a call in to Gray and get his team moving.”

Kat sighed, her irritation plain. “I would if I could reach him . . .”

4

November 18, 2:02
A
.
M
. CST

Macau, People’s Republic of China

The Casino Lisboa had become ground zero for World War III. Or at least it sounded that way to Gray from inside the barricaded VIP room. The initial spats of suppressed gunfire had escalated into a full-out firefight in the hallway.

More blasts echoed in the distance.

Inside the room, Gray crouched behind their makeshift barricade in front of the door. With Kowalski’s help, he’d manhandled the upended baccarat table and blocked the only way inside. Seichan had slid one of the red-silk sofas to further brace their fortification. The only other way out was the narrow window, but it was a straight four-story drop through the dark to the asphalt pavement below.

Across the room, Dr. Hwan Pak huddled in the far corner. His self-satisfied elation at his betrayal had turned to terror. Plainly something had gone wrong with his plan. The
Duàn zhī
Triad’s attempted ambush had run into a snag. Gray had initially hoped it was hotel security thwarting the attack, but as the fighting grew in volume and severity, including spats of assault rifles and the chugging rattle of machine guns, he suspected this was a gangland turf war.

And apparently we’re the prize.

Gray knew their barricade would not last forever. Someone would get the upper hand. Proving this assumption, a shotgun blast tore a fist-sized hole through the door.

“Now or never, Kowalski!” Gray yelled.

“You try doing this when your pants keep falling down!”

The large man crouched on his knees in the middle of the floor as Gray and Seichan kept their backs to the sofa, using its bulk as shelter.

Kowalski had stripped off his belt and positioned it in a circle on the floor, cinching the buckle in place and affixing a radio receiver to it. Kowalski was Sigma’s demolitions expert. While they couldn’t risk bringing weapons to China, Kowalski had traveled with an ace up his sleeve. Or in this case, laced through his belt.

The high-yield detonation cord had been developed by DARPA. It was sealed in a tube of carbon graphene, making the explosive inside undetectable to airport screening processes.

“All set,” Kowalski said and rolled back to join them, dragging a chair behind him.

“What are you doing?” Pak called over to them.

The three of them crowded behind the chair.

“Fire in the hole!” the big man yelled and pressed the transmitter in his hand.

The blast rocked the room, ringing Gray’s head like a struck bell. Smoke billowed. For a moment, the firefight outside halted as all parties froze at the sudden explosion.

“Go!” Gray yelled, shoving the chair aside.

He prayed the detonation cord had done its job. Otherwise, they were out of luck, as they’d blown Kowalski’s only supply of explosives.

Ahead, the fiery smoldering of burned carpeting glowed through the smoke. A crater had been blasted in the floor—or rather,
through
the floor. The larger steel trusses were intact, but the explosion had ripped a hole between them.

Gray stared down through the wreckage. He knew the third floor below had an almost identical layout as the fourth. Luckily the VIP room under them was empty.

As the gunfire resumed out in the hallway, sounding even more furious, Gray waved Seichan through first. She slipped between the trusses and smoothly leaped to the floor below.

Gray and Kowalski started to follow, but Hwan Pak tried to interfere, begging for them to take him with them. Kowalski punched out with a fist, as if swatting at a fly. Bone crunched, and Pak flew backward, landing on his backside, blood pouring from his nose.

A moment later, Gray stood next to Seichan by the third-floor door. Kowalski landed heavily behind them.

“Sounds clear out there,” Seichan said, her ear to the door. “But we’ll have to move fast. That ruse won’t last long.”

“We need a way out of this war zone,” Gray warned. “But all the exits from the hotel will be guarded.”

“I may know a way.”

Seichan opened the door, stuck her head out, then bolted into the hallway.

“So how about telling us,” Kowalski groused as he and Gray followed.

Seichan ran for the fire stairs and pounded through the door—only to be faced with a gunman running down from above, leaping steps.

Seichan ducked and hit him low, flipping the assailant over her back.

Gray, a few steps behind, spun on one toe and snap-kicked out with his other leg, catching the flying man in the jaw, cracking his head back. He landed in a crumpled pile.

“Remind me never to get on your bad sides,” Kowalski said.

Gray relieved the Triad member of his weapon, an AK-47 assault rifle. A search quickly revealed a holstered Chinese army Red Star pistol. He tossed the handgun to Kowalski.

“It’s Christmas already?” he mumbled, efficiently checking it over.

“Let’s go!” Seichan urged, poised at the steps leading down, checking the stairwell below.

Gray joined her with the rifle, and they hurried together down the steps, leaping from landing to landing. The firefight above faded slightly. But when they reached the first floor, the exit door began to swing open ahead of them. Whether it was someone seeking refuge or new reinforcements, Gray didn’t care. He fired a spat of rounds, peppering the door.

It quickly closed.

A pistol cracked behind him as Kowalski angled a shot up the stairwell, discouraging anyone from following.

Seichan ignored the first-floor door and continued down toward the basement level. From Gray’s study of the Lisboa, he knew an extensive shopping market tunneled beneath the casino floor. The place was also notorious for its parade of prostitutes, earning the level its nickname, Hooker Mall.

Seichan reached the basement door and cracked it open enough to peek through. It was eerily quiet out there compared to the ruckus above.

She spoke softly. “As I thought, all the shops are barricaded closed.”

Likely the owners had locked down their gates as the firefight began, battening down their hatches.

Gray began to get an inkling of Seichan’s plan. While the public entrances were surely under armed guard, no one was likely to be watching the market’s warehouse ramps and doors. Like Seichan, the Triads knew the shops would bottle themselves up to protect their wares from looting.

So how did she expect—?

Seichan wiggled out of her sweater vest and tossed it aside. She then ripped open her silk blouse, popping buttons across the floor, exposing a black bra, revealing the flat curve of her stomach. She pulled a tail of her shirt out of her jeans and disheveled her hair.

“How do I look?” she asked.

Gray was speechless—and for once, so was Kowalski.

She rolled her eyes at them, turned, and slipped out the door. “Hang back until I get someone to unlock a security gate.”

Gray took her place at the door.

Kowalski clapped him on the shoulder. “You are one lucky bastard, Pierce.”

He wasn’t about to argue.

2:14
A
.
M
.

Ju-long Delgado cursed his bad luck.

He stood before the plasma screen in his office, staring at the smoking hole blasted through the floor of the VIP room. He wanted to blame such misfortunes on the comet in the sky, but he was not a clinger to such superstitions. He knew the true source of his grief.

He had simply underestimated his quarry.

That would not happen twice.

A few moments ago, he had watched the larger of the two men detonate the explosive device—then he could only stand idly by as the trio made their escape, like rats down a hole.

The room’s only remaining occupant huddled in a corner.

Dr. Hwan Pak.

As he stared at the North Korean scientist, Ju-long tapped a finger on the edge of the Portuguese naval chest under the television, running various scenarios through his head, weighing each option for its best advantage.

He settled upon one course.

Earlier, Ju-long had tried to raise Tomaz at the Lisboa, to warn of their targets’ pending flight, but he had failed to reach anyone. He pictured the firefight being waged across the floors of the casino. It was a war being fought at his own behest, so he could not fault that it demanded Tomaz’s full attention at the moment.

So be it.

He pressed a button on his phone. As it was answered, he passed on a terse order. “Bring my car around.”

As he waited, someone knocked softly on his door. He turned to see it open, and a small figure slipped inside wearing a short silk robe and slippers. She was a vision in tanned skin, draped with a flow of honey-colored hair. As she crossed toward him, she cradled her swollen belly with one hand.

“Natalia, my sweet, you should be in bed.”

“Your son won’t let me,” she said with a tender smile, her eyes glancing invitingly toward him. “Perhaps if his father were lying beside me . . .”

“How I wish I could, but first I must attend to some business.”

She pouted.

He crossed to her, dropped to his knees, and kissed her belly where his son slumbered. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised them both, adding a kiss to her cheek as he ushered her out.

He truly wished he could join her—but at his father’s knee, he had learned that whether in war or business, sometimes one simply had to get one’s hands dirty.

2:16
A
.
M
.

Seichan sensed the walls closing in on her.

The longer they remained trapped inside Casino Lisboa, the slimmer were their chances of escaping.

She drew upon that desperation as she rushed from the stairwell door and out into the open of the basement shopping mall. Feigning a slight limp, she put on a great show of distress, pretending to be one of the mall’s prostitutes caught amid the firefight.

She spun around in a circle, pulling at her hair, crying for help in Cantonese. Tears streamed down her face as she ran from one gate to another, pounding to be let inside, for someone to rescue her.

As with many such places, she understood there was an unspoken relationship between the storeowners and the prostitutes who prowled this lower level, defined by the mutually beneficial flow of commerce.

The shops drew prospective clients, while the prostitutes lured potential shoppers.

The great circle of life.

She counted on that relationship extending to the two sides protecting each other. When she reached a farmers’ market, she sank to her knees against its steel fence. She rocked and moaned, looking lost and frightened.

As she had hoped, her plaintive cries finally drew someone out of hiding. A tiny white-haired man with a dirty apron came timidly to the gate. He made a motion to shoo her away, scolding her.

Instead, she clung to his gate, hanging from it in an operatic display of despair and fear, pleading with him.

Realizing she wasn’t going to leave, he dropped to a knee. He searched over her shoulder to make sure she was alone, and only then did he risk unlocking the gate.

As soon as he began to lift the steel fence, Seichan secretly motioned to Gray and Kowalski.

The stairwell door creaked open behind her, accompanied by the pounding of boots coming toward her.

The proprietor’s eyes grew huge. He tried to push the gate back down. Before he could, Seichan skirted under it and elbowed him back with one arm and yanked the fence higher with the other.

Gray ran up and skidded on his knees under the gate.

Kowalski barrel-rolled after him, slamming into a stand of oranges.

Gray pointed his rifle at the man.

“Lock it,” Seichan ordered, straightening her back and shedding her act like a snakeskin.

The storeowner obeyed in a rush, resecuring his gate.

“Tell him we mean him no harm,” Gray said.

Seichan translated, but from the cold look in her eyes and her stony countenance, he did not seem soothed. She questioned him briefly, then turned to Gray.

“The warehouse exit is back this way,” she said and led them in that direction.

Moving deeper into the market, they passed along a long counter supporting boxes of locally grown fruits and vegetables. On the other side, rows of watery tanks held live fish, turtles, frogs, and shellfish.

Upon reaching the far side, she found a concrete ramp headed up, ending at a large roll-up door used by delivery trucks. A smaller service entrance beckoned to the left.

Glad to be rid of them, the proprietor keyed the side door open and angrily waved them out into the night.

Gray led the way with his rifle.

Seichan followed, pushing into a narrow service alley.

Sirens echoed from all directions as emergency vehicles closed in on the Lisboa, but the press of the festival’s crowds around Nam Van Lake and its surrounding streets continued to stymie a fast response.