The Eye of God (10 page)

In fact, out here, most of the drunken revelers seemed unaware of the neighboring turf war. Fireworks rang out from the crowd around the lake, exploding over the waters, reflecting among the thousands of candlelit lanterns floating on the lake. Closer at hand, the neighboring Wynn casino danced with flumes of water, rising from an acre-sized fountain, the jets set to the tunes of the Beatles.

“What now?” Kowalski asked, having to yell somewhat.

“We need a fast way out of here,” Gray said, heading down the alley toward the crowds around the lake. “But it’ll be hard to hail a cab, and it’s not like we can blend into the crowd.”

“I can,” Seichan said.

She closed her ripped blouse by crossing one side over the other like a sarong and tucking the ends into her jeans to hold everything in place.

“You stay here,” she ordered. “Stick to the shadows until I return.”

2:28
A
.
M
.

Gray kept to the mouth of the alley, his eyes never leaving the festival crowd. Kowalski hung back deeper in the alley, making sure no one snuck up behind them.

A moment ago, he had traded weapons with Kowalski. The big man’s long duster made it easier to hide the length of the AK-47 rifle. Gray kept the pistol at his thigh, turning his body to keep it out of direct sight.

Sirens grew louder and louder.

To his right, the grounds around the neighboring lake were still packed with revelers, but to his left, the throngs on the streets were already beginning to stream away, heading to bed or into one of the many casinos or bars.

As he stared down the street, the flow of pedestrians began to scatter, like startled pigeons.

The sharper timbre of a two-stroke engine cut through the cacophony of music and voices. A motorcycle burst into view, carrying a familiar rider. Seichan artlessly plowed through the straggling crowd, trusting them to jump out of her way.

As the people cleared, Gray saw it wasn’t a cycle but more of a rickshaw. The front end was a motorbike, the back end a small-wheeled buggy. Such vehicles were called
trishaws
. He had seen them whizzing about the streets on their way here. In Macau, a city with one of the densest populations, trishaws were much more practical than cars.

But maybe not when one was being hunted by warring Triads
.

Seichan skidded to a stop next to them. “Get in! Stay low!”

With no choice, Gray and Kowalski climbed into the buggy in back. Gray felt exposed in the open like this, especially as one of the rare white faces amid a sea of Asian countenances.

Kowalski tried to sink into the depths of his long coat, clearly mindful of his conspicuous bulk. “This is a bad idea.”

Once they were seated, Seichan sped the vehicle around and headed away from Casino Lisboa, skirting the edge of Nam Van Lake.

“It’s the best I could commandeer,” she yelled back to them. “Roads are blocked all over the city. No way I could get something larger through in time.”

She continued around the lake.

Gray realized they were heading
away
from the Macau ferry terminal.

“Where are you going?”

“Over the causeway.” She pointed across to the neighboring island of Taipa. A brightly lit bridge crossed to it from here. “A smaller ferry terminal lies on that side, not far from the Venetian hotel. It’s less likely anyone will be looking for us over there. I learned the last boat of the night leaves in twenty minutes.”

And we need to be on it
.

With targets painted on their backs, Macau had become too hot.

Gray hunkered low in the buggy seat as Seichan hit the main drag and raced toward the causeway. She wound in and out of traffic, even flying through slower-moving bicycles and pedestrians when necessary.

As they hit the bridge, it was a straight three-kilometer shot to the other island. Congestion bottlenecked on the bridge, but it barely slowed Seichan. They whisked along at a heady pace, weaving and dodging their way across. To either side, the moonlit waters of the Pearl River Delta glowed with thousands upon thousands of floating lanterns, spreading far out to sea, mirroring the stars in the sky.

Ahead, Taipa Island blazed with neon, a cheap spectacle to the quieter beauty found here.

In less than ten minutes, they had cleared the causeway and turned for the narrow streets that fronted the Taipa ferry terminal.

Before they had gone twenty yards, the massive grill of a Cadillac Escalade careened out of an alley to the right and T-boned their trishaw, sending it spinning and slamming it hard into a waist-high beach wall.

Gray got tossed, flying, tangled with Kowalski.

They hit the rocky sand and rolled. Gray managed to keep hold of his pistol as he came to a skidding stop. Still on his back, he swung the weapon up toward the road, where the Cadillac sat askew, blocking traffic.

Men—a mix of Chinese and Portuguese—burst out of its doors, but they kept low, the wall blocking a clear shot. They swarmed to the left as a group.

Only then did Gray realize Seichan wasn’t there.

With his heart pounding in his throat, he rolled to his knees for a better vantage and began firing. He struck one assailant in the arm; the next three shots went wide. Then he saw Seichan hauled up among them. She was dragged toward the Cadillac, dazed, her face half covered in blood.

Cursing, Gray lowered his pistol, fearful of shooting into the cluster of men who held Seichan.

The enemy was not so reticent.

Sand blasted around Gray’s knees.

Steps away, Kowalski finally freed his AK-47. Holding it with one arm, he strafed the wall, driving back the pair of shooters. His other arm pointed toward the shelter of the causeway.

They were open targets on the beach.

With no other choice, they sprinted for its shelter. Gray fired a few potshots back toward the Cadillac. A tall, bearded man stood beside the SUV, unfazed by the rounds ricocheting off its bulletproof windows. The figure scooped Seichan’s limp form from the men and rolled her into the back.

Doors slammed, and with a squeal of tires, the Cadillac careened away. A few gunmen remained, shooting toward them, but Gray reached the causeway and ducked under the bridge, Kowalski at his heels.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Kowalski said.

“Keep moving.”

Ducking his head, Gray passed beneath the causeway. He needed to shake the gunmen left behind. Reaching the far side, he crossed back to the beach wall next to the bridge and clambered over it. The snarl of traffic was slowly clearing.

Taking advantage of the bedlam of honking horns and bumper-to-bumper vehicles, Gray kept low and maneuvered across the street. To his left, a gunman searched the beach. Another one hopped over the wall to get an angle of fire under the bridge.

Gray rushed across the road and into the densely packed maze of streets and alleyways. Kowalski followed, huffing heavily next to him.

“Seichan?” Kowalski asked.

“They didn’t immediately shoot her,” he answered.

Thank God for that.

They continued for another quarter mile, mostly paralleling the beachfront, heading away from the causeway. The streets were still crowded, but not as thickly as earlier in the night. Still, in a sea of Asian faces, the two Americans stuck out too prominently. It would not be hard for the hunters to track them.

Knowing that, they dared not stop moving.

“What’s the plan?” Kowalski asked.

Until now, Gray had been running on pure adrenaline, but Kowalski was right. They needed to think strategically.

Whoever had staged this attack had cleverly assumed they might make a break for the other ferry terminal. With the causeway being the closest access to the other island, it was easy enough to set up the ambush at this choke point and wait for their targets to come to them.

“They’ll certainly be watching the ferry terminal,” Gray said, planning aloud. “That means we’ll have to find another means to reach Hong Kong.”

“What about Seichan? Are we just going to leave her?”

“We have no choice. If the gangs have her, we don’t have the firepower to go after her, even if we knew where she was being taken. And it’s not as if we can move about Macau inconspicuously.”

“So we run?”

For now.

Gray had slowly sidled back toward the waterfront. He nodded to a marina a few blocks away. “We need a boat.”

He shifted into the flow of carousing partiers still cruising along the beachfront, Kowalski in tow. Once they reached the marina, he turned into it. Lanterns decorated the waters around the moored yachts and motorboats. They marched along the docks until they found a sleek midnight-blue speedboat being prepped by a middle-aged couple, who from their accents appeared to be British expats, a husband and wife, likely on their way home after the festival.

Gray stepped over to them. “Excuse me.”

The two stopped in midargument.

Gray grinned sheepishly as they looked over. He ran fingers through his hair as if his next words pained him to admit.

“I was wondering if you were heading back to Hong Kong and might be willing to help out a pair of guys who lost their shirts playing pai gow. We don’t even have enough left over for a ferry ticket back to Kowloon.”

The man straightened, clearly suspicious, but also a little drunk. “You’re Yanks,” he said, with no less surprise than if they’d been Lilliputians. “Normally I would say yes, my good chaps, but you see—”

Gray showed them his pistol, while Kowalski parted his duster to reveal his AK-47.

“How about now?” Gray asked.

The man sagged as if the air had been let out of him. “You know my wife will never let me live this down.”

She crossed her arms. “I told you we should have left sooner.”

The husband shrugged.

After tying and gagging them aboard a neighboring dark yacht, Gray chugged their craft out of the marina. Once clear, he opened the throttle and set off across the dark waters toward Hong Kong.

As the lights of Macau receded behind them, Gray stepped away from the helm. “Take the wheel.”

Kowalski, a former seaman, gladly took his place, rubbing his palms in anticipation. “Let’s see what this baby can do.”

That normally would have worried Gray, but he had greater concerns.

With this brief respite, he unbuttoned his satellite phone from his jacket pocket. He saw he had multiple voice mails from Sigma command. Earlier, he had turned the ringer off before taking that meeting back at the Lisboa. Since then he’d never had a safe moment to turn it back on.

Rather than listening to the recordings, he simply called up Sigma command in D.C. The phone had DARPA’s latest encryption software to discourage unwanted eavesdropping.

Kat Bryant immediately picked up. “About time you checked in.”

“Been a little busy.”

From the tone of his voice, she picked out something was wrong. “What happened?”

He gave her a thumbnail version of the night’s events.

Kat asked a few probing questions, quickly assessing the depth of the quicksand. “Gray, I can’t get you help. Certainly not in time to do any good, not with her already in their hands.”

“Understood. That’s not why I was calling. I just wanted to give Sigma a situation report.”

In case things went south from here.

“We’re having our own crisis out here,” Kat said. “That’s why I was trying to reach you. Director Crowe wanted you and your team to travel to Mongolia.”

Mongolia?

She told him a sketchy story of a downed satellite and a last image that showed the East Coast burning.

“I can’t head there,” he said as she finished. “At least not now.”

“Of course. The circumstances have changed.” Her next words were laced with worry. “But what
are
you going to do out there, Gray? You have no resources. And the criminal organizations in Macau are notoriously ruthless and well funded.”

“I have a plan.”

“To do what?”

Gray stared across the waters ahead toward the distant glow on the horizon.

“To fight fire with fire.”

5

November 17, 6:04
P
.
M
. EST

Washington, D.C.

Jada held her breath.

What am I doing here?

It felt like she had fallen through Alice’s looking glass.

To her side, Painter Crowe placed his hand on a security pad inside the elevator. A blue line scanned his palm, and the elevator cage began to drop into the earth.

Their jet had made the cross-country trip in less than five hours. After landing, they had been whisked by private car to the National Mall, stopping at the majestic Smithsonian Castle, a flag waving from its highest tower. As she had stepped out of the car, she had looked with new eyes at the historic building with its jumble of redbrick parapets, turrets, and spires. Completed in 1855, the structure was considered one of the finest examples of Gothic Revival in the United States and now served as the heart of the many museums that made up the nation’s Smithsonian Institution.

Having grown up in Congress Heights, a poorer area southeast of D.C., she had visited the Castle countless times as a girl. Admission to the museums had been free, and her mother, a single parent, encouraged her daughter’s education in every way she could.

“I never knew this was under here,” Jada said in a hushed voice as the elevator dropped into the subterranean world beneath the Castle.

“These levels were once bunkers and fallout shelters. Back in World War II, it even served as home to a scientific think tank. After that, it was abandoned and forgotten.”

“Such a prime piece of Washington real estate as this?” She offered Painter a crooked grin.

He smiled back. For someone two decades older than her, he was a fine-looking man, with his dark hair laced by a single snowy lock and those blue eyes. After their long conversation during the flight here, she also found him remarkably smart, with a wide swath of knowledge on many subjects—with the exception of the history of jazz. But she could forgive him that lapse, especially when those blue eyes danced in sunlight.