Girl Rides the Wind (17 page)

“It’s just coming into view,” Martinovich replied. On the western edge of the lagoon, he spotted the eleven-meter long Rigid-Inflatables, three of them, and eight of the smaller ‘Zodiac’ inflatables. “All accounted for.”

At Martinovich’s signal, Phrog 6 banked right to take a southeasterly heading for two miles, until Emily brought her around to an approach vector for the windward side of the big island. At one mile out, she dropped the bird under a hundred feet and skimmed the waves the rest of the way, finally setting down in Drop Zone Alpha, a clearing near the lowest part of the eastern shore. Within seconds of disembarking the Marines, she lifted off to make room for Phrog 7 and Phrog 8. All three Phrogs took a wide course south and came back around to regroup on a sandy stretch along the western side of the longest reef island on the far side of the lagoon. Low greenery on a ridge provided enough cover to conceal them from the main island.

“Does this exercise feel different to you?” Martinovich undid the safety harness and squirmed into a sideways position in his seat. The gunners and the flight engineer had finished checking equipment and were occupying themselves with idle chatter on the tail ramp. The next few hours threatened to pass like molasses.

“Different how?” She arched an eyebrow in that way someone does who isn’t sure she should speak her mind.

“Don’t hold out on me, Ninja. Something’s up and you know what it is.”

“I don’t know what you want to hear, Cap.”

“Hankinson’s nervous as a cat around the Chinese contingent, and the next thing I know, you start strapping a goddamn sword to your back. Don’t tell me that’s just a coincidence.”

She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes cold as steel as some sort of calculation worked itself out in her heart. He knew she was weighing what she could say, what she could trust him with. He began to worry that the verdict might go against him. Finally she spoke.

“Have you been following the news?”

“Yeah, sure… I suppose. Why?”

“Two members of the Chinese Central Committee were placed under house arrest yesterday, and a member of the inner circle, the Standing Committee, hasn’t been seen in a week.”

“I guess… I mean, well, no. You’re talking about that stuff that slips by at the bottom of the TV screen. Who’s got time to follow that stuff?” He grimaced slightly when he saw the expression on her face. “Okay, fine, but I have no idea who those people are. How about you tell me what it means?”

“Did you hear the news from Japan? The Defense Minister, Mr. Ito, was killed in a car accident.”

“You’re beginning to sound a little paranoid, Tenno.”

“You asked.”

“Are you saying Ito’s death wasn’t an accident?”

“His driver and his bodyguard were killed, too.”

“They were in the car, too, right?”

“His Principal Secretary was found dead the next morning. You tell me if that sounds like a coincidence.”

“It sounds like someone is cleaning house, I guess.”

“There have been others, members of the Diet, mid-level officials in the diplomatic corps, a vice president at the Mori Corporation.”

“Whoa, Ninja. You’ve been making a study of this.”

“I keep my eyes open. But don’t you see what it means?”

“Not politics as usual, I guess.”

“Definitely not. It’s the sort of thing you see when… well, when a country is at war with itself.”

“Are you saying the events in Japan and China are connected… you know, like a concerted effort? How unlikely is that?”

Martinovich had barked out this last question perhaps more vehemently than he’d intended, and when his co-pilot said nothing for a long moment, her eyes no longer focused on him, he began to regret having said anything at all.

“Oh, crap,” she said, just as the radio crackled back to life. Martinovich pulled on his headset in time to hear Hankinson’s voice: “Extraction point alpha.”

A short hop across the lagoon brought the Phrogs down on the south end of the main beach on the big island. Diao and Kano had loaded their troops on the various inflatables and were already underway. The tail gunner reported a sighting of the LCAC approaching from the west to rendezvous off the outer reef beach. Martinovich glanced back through the cabin as Hankinson’s platoon settled in, and knew that something had gone very wrong. No coalition casualties had been reported, and he heard the radio chatter about an engagement with an enemy, and a brief firefight in the cave-complex – he didn’t even want to imagine what that had been like.

“
I
t was total bullshit
,” Perry said, once he’d returned from briefing Theo, the XO, and the Admiral. “Those guys were hostiles, but that was definitely not where the attack on the
Thetis
was launched from.”

“How do you know?” Emily asked.

“They didn’t have the right tech for something like that. The caves were a small-arms cache, you know, AK-47s, handguns, a few thousand rounds, and a couple dozen RPGs.”

“What about the hostiles? You couldn’t capture any of them alive?” Emily noticed a tremor in his hand as he prepared his answer.

“That’s just it. Diao’s men did capture one of them.”

“Then where is he?”

“By the time we arrived on the scene, he’d already been handled pretty roughly.”

“What do you mean ‘roughly’?”

“Nearly beaten to death. Diao claimed that one of his men lost a brother on the
Thetis
, and that he got carried away. But you could see they’d been cutting on him. He was missing a finger and an ear… and they’re shrieking at him, but it sure didn’t sound like Chinese to me.”

“What did it sound like?”

“Not that sing-song sound the Chinese usually have when they get agitated, more guttural, like Dutch, and maybe even a little like Spanish.”

Emily couldn’t help smiling at him and his sense of what languages he didn’t understand sound like. He wasn’t exactly wrong, and his assumption that the Chinese pitch accents were mood-markers was a natural mistake. “Who exactly was interrogating him?”

“Diao and Ongpin, with Ongpin’s man translating for them. Does that mean they were speaking Filipino?”

“There isn’t really one Filipino language.” She couldn’t resist making an irrelevant distinction, even though it meant he’d surely make fun of her for it later. “The central government has pushed to make Tagalog the national language. But in the southern islands there’s like dozens of languages.”

“Well, whatever language it was, things got way out of control. Diao’s man tried to stab him in the chest, and Durant wades into the middle and pulls him off the guy… and the Chinese almost lose it and they attack Durant. It took me and Tarot and Racket to put a stop to it. You’d have been proud of those two. They just inserted themselves into the middle of the fray, and they’re so huge, you know, that everyone is really cowed.”

“So how come we don’t have a prisoner on the
BHR
, then?”

“Because, once everyone had calmed down, Ongpin steps behind the prisoner and makes some sort of announcement that sounds all official, and then draws his sidearm and puts a bullet in the back of his head.”

“He did what?”

“Yeah, he executed the guy, and then he tells us that the PNP will collect the bodies later, that we have to leave ’em there.”

“That’s total crap,” Emily said. “You know what it sounds like, right?”

“Yeah. They didn’t want us to interrogate him.”

“You remember what I said? The PNP is just using us to weaken the MLF.”

“It’s starting to look like you were right about them.”

T
he death
of Mr. Ito had the inevitable result of propelling his deputy, Mr. Saito, into the vacant office of Minister of Defense. It would take at least a month for the Prime Minister’s party to install a permanent replacement – that’s how long Mr. Saito had to make his case to be that replacement. Of course, Gyoshin cared very little about this development, since the government would be history long before then, though perhaps the distraction might prove useful. Also, since her boss brought her along with him – who else could he trust? – as his Principal Secretary, her new, much more generous expense account would only be overseen by herself. However, the car service and related perks of the new job only made her uncomfortable.

“It looks like you were right,” Jin-san conceded. “Not killing Saito-san has already paid a dividend.”

Sitting in Minoru’s personal suite on the fifty third floor of the Midtown Tower – nominally managed by the hotel that occupied the top nine floors of the building, but reserved year-round for the Soga family – Gyoshin thought she understood Jin-san’s hatred of the Crown Princess more clearly than ever. The floor to ceiling windows gave a clear view of the Akasaka Estate and the Crown Prince’s residence in the Togu Palace. The Imperial Palace lay less than a mile further to the east, with all the important government ministries huddled around it; and if she walked to the far end of the room, the south facing windows overlooked the Russian and American Embassies in Roppongi. To be in such proximity to the corridors of power and not to be able to rule them directly – it must be infuriating to watch those one considers beneath oneself given precedence.

“I’m glad you think so,” Gyoshin replied. “May I ask, if you’ll permit…”

“You’re wondering about the short interest?”

“Yes, Jin-san, and not just that. Two European conglomerates have reached the maximum ownership stake in the Takenouchi Corporation. They now control twenty percent of your company. If their interests coincide with the Australian entity behind much of the short interest…”

“It won’t come to that.”

“But if you lose control of the company…”

“They cannot force a shareholders meeting before we act, and once the dust settles, we can simply change Foreign Stock Ownership rules.”

“The repercussions of such a move could be disastrous for the economy, and public confidence in the new regime could be shaken.” Gyoshin paused to take a breath and compose herself. This wasn’t the moment to let the mask slip. “Are they working in concert? That would mean they know of our plans.”

“She’s behind it.” Jin-san’s voice rose as she spoke. “The Crown Princess thinks she can call in favors from her time in America.” She paused, perhaps as conscious as Gyoshin had been a moment ago about preserving the air of self-control. “The Belgian is a connection she made at university, as is the German. But it won’t save her. Soon enough she and her daughter will be dead.”

Hearing these last words chilled Gyoshin. It’s what she’d agreed to – at least she’d originally done so in her grandfather’s name – and she could hardly back out now. But with
Ogii-san
dead, she could hardly continue to fob off responsibility for the act on someone else.
She
was the one doing it, even as she hoped to pawn her own death, like an offering at a shrine, in exchange for preserving Haru-chan’s life a little longer.

“The assassinations are underway, then?” she asked.

Jin-san stood next to her at the window and pointed to a building just south of the Imperial Palace. “Our people blew through the Ministry of the Economy like a sacred wind yesterday, though it will be a few days before all the deaths are recognized, because of the holiday weekend.”

“Yes. Weekends are a great boon to conspirators.”

“Which reminds me: you’ll need to delay any replacement appointments at Defense until we can act openly. For now, those offices will have to remain vacant.”

“That will not be a problem. Mr. Saito is preoccupied with composing his ‘Grand Design’ speech, which he hopes to present to the PM next month.”

Jin-san laughed at this news. “He has a grand design? Such presumption.”

“It keeps him busy, and out of my way. The more concerned he is with trying to convince the PM to make his position permanent, the freer hand I have.”

“I must say, Gyo-chan, you never cease to impress me. Your grandfather must be very pleased.”

“
Y
es
, sir,” Admiral Crichton said. Three faces stared back at him from the screen, and the two faces hovering over his shoulders nodded, their reflections dimly visible as well. “The value of their intell is suspect, at best, and Ongpin’s actions…”

“That’s a matter for the Philippine authorities to decide. It happened within their jurisdiction, on their soil.”

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Theo said.

“Granted, Commander,” Admiral Hannifin said.

“The Filipinos didn’t want us to interrogate the prisoner, or even to examine the other bodies.”

“That’s a fair guess, Commander,” SECNAV said. “But there may be lots of secrets they don’t want aired in front of any member of the coalition. It may have nothing to do with Operation Seabreeze.”

“We have no choice but to accept their intell as genuine, not with the political climate being what it is,” Admiral Hannifin said.

“They’re calling for a night-time insertion this time, Admiral,” Theo said. “The risk of a friendly-fire incident will be significantly higher in the dark.”

“You trained for this scenario,” General Lukaszewicz said.

“Yes, sir. But each time, the ‘fox’ was able to trap the ‘hounds’. The danger is significant.”

“It always is, son. You’re telling a Marine that the odds may not be in our favor. This is what the circumstances have handed us. If backing out is not an option, then we have to fight through to the other side.”

SECNAV cut the connection from the Quantico end, once the rest of the details of the mission had been rehearsed a second time for his benefit. On the
Blue Ridge
, the Secure Comms room went quiet for a moment, as they digested what they’d heard.

“We don’t have time to re-task a satellite, which means we’ll be going in blind,” Theo said. “And that weather system may not miss us.”

“How long has it been since the last survey?” Admiral Crichton asked.

“The last pass was six years ago.”

“You’ll have usable terrain data, but recent construction, bunkers, and the like… well, you may have to improvise.”

“In the dark,” Perry added.

“Hankinson and I have been studying the most recent high-res images for choke-points, overlooks, possible cave entrances…”

“We’ll find a way, sir.”

“
T
here’s no way
,” Emily said. “What possible advantage do we get from a night insertion?” The atmosphere at MidRats after Theo’s briefing was tenser than usual. She’d shooed Tarot and Racket away so she could have Perry and the corner booth to herself. “More space, guys,” she said, when they tried to sit two tables away.

“All those times we came up empty…” Perry said.

“Because the intell Ongpin and Diao supplied was worthless.”

“Maybe so, but now Diao is saying that the terrorists must have figured out how to track us, and a night-time attack will get us there before they can bug out, and before that storm-front has a chance to turn north.”

“This is bullshit. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to create a friendly-fire incident.”

“Who? Diao? That seems far-fetched.”

“Why? Because he cares about his men… or about you? Don’t count on it.”

“But… what would be the point?”

“It’d be a black-eye for us, and if we lose credibility here, it might give… Diao’s people an opening in the region.”

“The Chinese already have immense influence. What do they need to create an incident for?”

Theo and Martinovich entered the mess and filled trays at the steam-table. When Martinovich moved to join them, Emily shook her head, and Theo pulled him over to Tarot and Racket’s table.

“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “It’s not the Chinese I’m thinking of. The other day, Martinovich was grilling me about some intuition he has about strange tensions in this op, and it occurred to me… the strange doings in China and Japan…”

“You mean the disappearances, and the folks who’ve died in convenient accidents?”

“Yeah, it’s a pattern of assassinations, and it’s coordinated.”

“How is that possible? I mean, with all the bad blood between both countries…”

“It wouldn’t be possible, if it were the countries. But I’m talking about private parties.”

“You’re talking about a coup.”

“That’s what Michael’s been saying for a couple weeks now: a military coup in China. But in Japan, I think something subtler is going on. Someone means to bring the government down, but we won’t see troops in Tokyo.”

“How does that work?”

“You remember the message from the Crown Princess? She thinks some of the ancient families are conspiring to discredit the government. If they can create a crisis, and a pattern of growing civil unrest…”

“You mean like we saw in Sasebo?”

“Yeah, only much larger. If they have enough allies within the
Jietai
, and choose their moment well, those families could present themselves to the nation as the only alternative.”

“There’s no way,” Perry said. “The US military presence is too great. Surely, we’d stabilize the situation before it got that far. Wouldn’t the Prime Minister ask for our help?”

“Maybe. But if we’re discredited, then maybe he won’t be able to trust us, or at least, he won’t be able to get the public to trust us.”

“Okay, fair enough. But I still don’t see how a friendly-fire incident creates that much distrust.”

“That only means there will be more than one incident.”

“Don’t we know who these ancient families are?”

“No. The Crown Princess’s message wasn’t that specific.”

Perry rubbed his chin, and reached for the papers rolled up on the seat next to him. “Let’s make some room,” he said, and pushed his tray aside so he could spread out a map – actually more a black and white photo-montage with red and blue annotations. He waved Theo over, and Martinovich followed. “We’ve made some changes for this mission.”

“We can’t change much about what the Chinese and the Japanese do,” Theo said.

“It’s not the
Jietai
we should be worrying about,” Emily said. “It’s Ongpin and the PNP.”

“I assume you’re basing that on Kano, because he turned the letter over to you. But we may not be able to trust every man in his company.”

“You said it yourself, if something’s up in Japan, the people behind it will need the support of elements within the
Jietai
.” Perry poked a finger in the air as he said this, and then retreated into his seat when Emily glowered at him.

Theo placed his hands on either side of the map, which showed a heavily-forested, kidney-shaped island dominated by a northern peak from which two ridgelines snaked their way down to the beaches on the southern end.

“Kano will land his men here in two of the Rigid-Inflatables and two Zodiacs. There’s a soft spot here between the rocks, and they will come around the hilltop from the northwest, in order to clear this area, where we think he may find a cave entrance. They’ll hold this position to block any retreat.”

“How deep is the tree cover?” Emily asked.

“It’s typical for the islands in the Celebes Sea. Sparse and under twenty feet tall near the beaches, mainly bamboo and tropical palms. But you can see here, once you get inland, it’s much more dense, and the canopy rises to forty feet or more in spots.” Theo pointed to the broad swale between the two main ridgelines in the south. “But these images are six years old, which means the canopy could be much higher now.”

“…or much lower, if there’s been any fires,” Perry said.

“It looks like mainly scrub pines on the north end,” Emily said.

“Yeah, and there’s a few meadows on the western side, which is where the Phrogs will drop Perry and Oleschenko, along with Ongpin’s platoon. And the hovercraft will release Diao’s platoons south of this point, so they can approach the southern beach area in the third Rigid-Inflatable and four Zodiacs. Of course, because there are no other islands nearby, you’ll return to the
BHR
until we need you.”

“So, what’s different this time?”

“As I was saying, we can’t determine Diao’s arrangements, but instead of operating at platoon strength, we’ll split into squads and fire-teams. Oleschenko and I will coordinate from these two positions, which should allow us to take better advantage of the comms situation.”

“We mean to send Ongpin north, to drive any hostiles into Kano’s men,” Perry said. “My platoon will shadow their movements in three units.”

“Diao’s men are supposed to clear the area between the ridgelines and along the western edge, and Oleschenko will shadow them on the eastern ridgeline, to make sure they maintain mission integrity. Our mission is to prevent a friendly-fire incident, and we’ll let Diao and Ongpin and Kano handle the hostiles.”

“That assumes there are any hostiles,” Emily said.

A
ll three Phrogs
on the flight deck were fully fueled, waiting for a signal to return to the island drop-zone. Martinovich had stepped inside the flight-deck island, where the OOD kept a coffeemaker, and Emily sat in the back with her tail-gunner, Cpl Billy Hanseal, listening to tall tales and improbable war stories. Somehow, even though he was only a year older than her, he had managed to simulate the voice of ancient authority, which she found soothing. It may also have had something to do with his languorous, Tennessee hilltop drawl, which would rise up a few tones when he got excited.

“Yeah, the Chinooks have a better set up back here,” he said. “You can get comfortable, dangle your legs over the edge in flight.”

“I guess it’s not quite the same over the water,” Emily said.

“A harness is a harness. Either it holds you in or it doesn’t.”