The flight back to Hong Kong continued Slaton’s streak of successes. His private Boeing 747, flown by his dedicated crew, set up on final approach to Chek Lap Kok Airport right on time. Even Captain Lyle remarked on their run of good fortune. “It’s a good thing this approaching weather front didn’t get here any sooner. In a few hours, there are going to be some wicked air traffic delays.”
The jet touched down at the onset of dusk, a timetable set by necessity; Slaton had utilized most of the day for planning and rest, but the operational window when his targets would be vulnerable had already begun—he’d gotten confirmation that Zhao had indeed arrived at Li’s residence roughly an hour earlier. This information came from the Bumblehive—the NSA’s Utah Data Center—which was vacuuming every possible SIGINT channel to track the two men.
NSA also confirmed that Zhao was planning to fly out the next morning. It gave Slaton one night in which to work, and even that was frontloaded; the construction site where he planned to set up had a good look angle into the main living area and dining room, but no line of sight whatsoever to the four bedrooms, including the top-floor master suite. Chances were, once the men went to bed, he would have no shot at either until morning.
It was raining lightly as Captain Lyle set the big jet’s parking brake. Before leaving the flight deck, Slaton asked her for the latest aviation weather report; it showed winds out of the northwest at eighteen miles an hour, gusting to twenty-five. The forecast was for conditions to deteriorate over the next twelve hours. Hardly ideal for precision marksmanship.
Strike one, Slaton thought.
The familiar drill ran its course. Immigration was uneventful, and Thomas was as punctual as ever; Slaton found the van waiting at the same curb. Thomas began driving, and Slaton moved to the back; the SRS was in the luggage well, this time concealed in a nylon sports bag. Slaton went to work as they blended into traffic, transforming from aviator to operator in the back seat of the van. There was still mud on his trail shoes from the previous op.
It all felt like déjà vu until Thomas took a different road departing the airport, the Lantau Highway. Instead of crossing the sprawling bridge to Macau, they headed east. The lights of Hong Kong filled the windshield like an apparition out of the mist.
They drove in near silence, Thomas making no attempt to discuss anything that wasn’t related to the mission. In any social situation it would have been awkward, but here it fit perfectly. NOCs operated at great risk, and polite conversation was generally counterproductive. They didn’t want to know you. And they didn’t want you to know them.
Slaton understood.
As he began checking his weapon, the first flash of lightning flickered in the distance.
Five miles away, sheltered in a derelict pump shed at the base of Victoria Peak, eight men were going through similar motions. All were Filipino, all were mercenaries. Beneath a leaky corrugated roof they checked their comm nets, gear, and weapons one last time. That done, the group gathered around a makeshift table, and by the illumination of a shielded light they made one last study of a map of their target area: a hillside mansion surrounded by acres of forest.
“Both men are in the house,” said the leader of the team. A former master sergeant in the Philippine Army, and a veteran of minor campaigns throughout Southeast Asia, he spoke in their native Filipino.
“Do we know what they did to deserve this?” someone asked.
The sergeant shrugged. “They pissed off the wrong people. Not our concern. We do what we’ve been paid to do.”
There were discussions about tactics and approaches, which could only be expected for such an unusual mission. Silence then fell. It was the standard pre-mission hush; the time when soldiers harbored a few private thoughts before the shit hit the fan.
At that point there was nothing to do but wait for the “Go” command. All eyes went to the comm unit on the table. It was big and heavy, the size of a paver brick, and had been provided by the man who’d hired them. While none of them had ever seen a tactical radio like it, it worked well enough, and was supposedly secure.
The man they knew as Monkh had promised that much.