Task Force 99 safe house
Daxing district
Beijing, China
0147 local time
Weariness hung on Clark like a lead blanket, but he couldn’t afford to yield to it. Laziness was a killer. He forced himself to check his six one last time before turning the corner and walking to the safe house. He’d been out all night, checking the Spider’s dead-drop locations and making drops of his own. Disappointingly, he’d found no notes or signals left by her, but he’d deposited four coded notes in strategic drop locations—one each of four separate quadrants of Beijing.
Hopefully, she’s making rounds.
He let himself into the safe house by punching in the “all clear” security code on the door. If he had entered the alternate code, the door would have unlocked, but not before notifying the team inside that he was in distress. He closed the door behind him and trudged up the stairs to the common room, where the team waited.
“Hey, boss,” Daniel Wu called out from where he was hunched over a laptop at the dining table. “You all right, mate? You look knackered.”
“I’m good,” Clark said, taking a seat at the head of the table and rubbing his hands over his face, but even he knew his answer wasn’t convincing.
“I’ve got some good news that will cheer you up, I just checked the secondary mail account drafts box and Chavez left a message that he is out of China and heading to Manila. Guessing he’s standing by there in case we need help on exfil,” Wu said.
Clark nodded, a wave of relief sweeping over him that his friend and son-in-law was safe.
One less thing to worry about…
“How did the drop go?” Bauer asked, all business. The German looked tired as well. This was a problem that needed addressing. Sleep was a weapon, and they all were operating in deficit.
“Drops—plural,” Clark corrected. “And they went well. It was a long damn night of SDRs and barhopping to get into the correct positions, but the four drops were made.”
“Sounds awful,” Wu teased. “Having pints with pretty girls all about town while we work.”
“Yeah,” Clark said, and gave the Brit a Team Guy smile. “Would’ve been great work back in the day, but I’m not a young buck anymore.” He turned to Charlie. “Any fresh guidance about what we’re supposed to do next? This is one of the few times in my career I’ve dropped a coded message that I hadn’t decrypted first.”
“As a matter of fact,” Charlie said, “I just finished unpacking a burst message.”
That woke Clark up. Burst messages were heavily encrypted, nondirectional messages sent out via DoD satellite, intended to look like message traffic to the Navy fleet.
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Am I gonna like it?”
“We’re supposed to rendezvous with the target in just over thirty-six hours,” she said, opening a notebook, where she had written out the decoded message. They were strict about using the computer as little as possible, since nowhere were cyber hacks a bigger risk than inside China. Clark looked at the chicken scratch on Charlie’s notebook page and laughed.
“What the hell is that? Sanskrit?”
Charlie punched his arm, the team dynamic now fully in place, to his relief. Bringing a team up to operational readiness on short notice was always a challenge. Adding different cultures and national priorities complicated matters. But operators tended to be cut from the same cloth across cultures, and this team was no exception.
“The meet will happen tomorrow afternoon at 1600 local time at a display inside the Peking Man museum complex in Zhoukoudian,” she said, reading her poor handwriting. “The message you dropped is apparently coded from a handler she worked with years ago, but the reference is one that she will understand. Or at least that’s the hope. Assuming she gets the message…”
“And assuming she can get herself and the package there without getting killed,” Bauer added, yawning.
“Where exactly is this place?” Clark asked, his weariness gone now. Beside him, Tsai Akio rolled out a paper map, again choosing to avoid the internet at all costs. He expertly folded the map, leaving Beijing at the center of a much smaller square that extended to the coast to the east and west forty miles or so beyond Beijing.
“The Zhoukoudian site is considered still a Beijing address,” Akio said, and tapped a finger on the map, “but it is about thirty-five kilometers southwest of city central in a rural area in the foothills, just outside the suburb town of Fangshan, north of S320.” The Taiwanese Special Forces operator turned to Wu and shot him a grin. “Thirty-five kilometers is about twenty-two imperial miles for you, in case you were wondering.”
“How many fingers am I holding up in metric?” Wu asked, laughing as he flipped Akio the bird.
“We’re looking at a forty-five-minute drive, realistically,” Charlie said.
“Okay,” Clark said, studying the route on the map, which was mostly highway until the smaller road that led to the site from S320. “So, we get to the site without a tail…”
“Theoretically,” Bauer added.
“Theoretically,” Clark conceded. “We meet up with the Spider and Qin who, theoretically, also get there undetected. And then what?”
“That’s the part you’re gonna love, mate,” Wu said, clapping Hyori on the back, who stood beside him. “Because then we get a nice long haul to a mission impossible exfil.”
“Okaaaay,” Clark said, drawing it out and turning to Charlie.
“The exfil plan,” Charlie began, “and there is a concerning lack of bloody detail here, by the way, is to then get the team all the way back to the coast, south of Beijing here”—she leaned over and tapped her finger on the map—“in Tianjin. This is where it gets pretty vague. All we know is we are scheduled for a maritime exfil from the port in Tianjin that night.”
“So, they want a multinational group of eight officially unrelated people who don’t know each other to travel…how far?” Bauer asked.
“About eighty kilometers as the crow flies,” Akio said. “Farther, obviously, since we’re not flying.”
“Right,” Bauer continued. “Eighty kilometers in a highly suspicious group that now includes two new people, who happen to be the most wanted people in China.”
“What could possibly go wrong?” Wu asked.
Clark studied the map again and felt Bauer’s concern. It did seem like mission impossible.
“And we don’t know where in the Tianjin port we go or what this maritime asset is?”
“Not yet,” Charlie said. “More information to follow.”
“Keeping it compartmentalized for obvious reasons,” Akio offered. “Until the last minute.”
“Safe bet they’re not sending a bloody destroyer into Bohai Bay,” Wu said.
“And no submarine is coming into the Bohai,” Charlie added. “Far too shallow.”
“I think I can shed light on the plan,” Hyori said, speaking for the first time.
Clark’s joined the other four pair of eyes in turning to stare at the South Korean soldier.
“Okay,” he said, prompting Hyori to continue.
“The NIS in my country,” Hyori began, referring to the most recent name for the Korean version of the CIA, “has intelligence-gathering assets in and around China. Like everyone else, we suffered a brutal loss of assets in the purge. One asset we have exploited with great success the last few years, however, are civilian merchant vessels that transport goods in and out of Tianjin on a regular schedule. We have agents embedded in the crews who mostly collect signals intelligence, though on occasion they assist in moving assets—both people and material—in and out of China. There are three to four round trips per week. A vessel owned by East Star Shipping has a scheduled departure tomorrow.”
“How do you know this?” Bauer asked, and looked happy for the first time since Clark had arrived.
“I have used this route myself once. I was bringing something into the country as it was, but I exfiltrated on the same ship. The Capella, if memory serves.”
Clark nodded, feeling marginally reassured. If the Capella had an active and successful track record of conducting regular smuggling operations for the Korean National Intelligence Service, then that meant the vessel was probably not on the Ministry of State Security’s watch list. Getting the team out of Beijing and slipping the MSS dragnet was another matter altogether. Traveling as a large group was too risky. Clark felt like he had no choice but to split the team up and he explained this to the group.
“I will proceed to Tianjin, first, alone, and in the morning to board the vessel, meet with the captain, and obtain clearances for port entry for everyone else,” Hyori said.
“Good,” Clark said.
“I agree with splitting up. Bauer and I are working in the same building,” Wu said. “We can meet up for a business dinner, two Western guys, then proceed to Tianjin tomorrow night.”
“What about me and Akio?” Charlie said.
“Akio should travel ahead and scout the Peking Man site,” Clark said. “Charlie, you and I will travel together, posing as a couple. We’ll pretend to meet and hit it off at Club Pink, which is a fifteen-minute walk from here off Jiuzong Lu Road. We’ll book a hotel room and spend the morning together sightseeing to look like we’re together before we drive to the Peking Man.”
“Who would have guessed my NOC has a thing for old dudes,” Charlie joked, getting a laugh from Wu.
“Keep in mind, we can’t risk coming back to the safe house once we all split up.”
Clark leaned over the table, palms down, studying the map.
“We have a very short time to come up with contingencies if things go wrong and a system for comms,” he said as the rest of the team crowded around him. “I’ve done enough talking, let me hear your ideas…”