Страница 48 из 80
“See the ship there, Kick?” he asked his nugget assistant, who was monitoring the flight from the second station.
“Yes, sir.”
“Zero the cursor in, query it, get the registration data.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Relax, Kick, I’m not going to bite your head off. You don’t have to say ‘sir’ every ten seconds.”
“Yes, sir.”
Zen laughed.
Both Kick and Starship were excellent pilots and Flighthawk operators, but both men tended to be nervous around him. Was it because he was in charge of the program and therefore had a huge amount to say over their futures?
Or was it the wheelchair?
When he first came from his accident, he would have automatically assumed the latter. Lately, though, he’d become more discerning, or at least willing to let the complicated attitudes people had toward him ride.
Most days, anyway.
The wheelchair could get in the way. It had with Fentress—but that was Zen’s fault. He’d been jealous of the kid, or rather jealous of the fact that the kid could walk away from a session and he couldn’t. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.
“Got the data,” said Kick.
Page 153
“So? What do you think?” Zen asked.
The information was already on Zen’s screen—the ship was a Malaysian freighter.
“Looks pretty straightforward. Carrying tea. My thinking is we go over low and slow, find out. No big deal.”
“No big deal.” Zen nudged the Flighthawk toward the ship. The computer already had a dotted line plotted for the recon run; he authorized the flight and gave control to C3.
“You know how I got crippled?” he said to Kick.
“I heard some sort of accident.”
“Mack Smith and I were having a mock dogfight with the Flighthawks. I got too close to one of them.
Sawed me in half. I was below five hundred feet. A lot below, actually. I don’t even remember bailing out.”
Kick was silent. Finally, he said, “Sucks.”
“Yeah, it does. But you move on. You have to.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hey, you know, just call me Zen. You take the stick after this run, all right? I’m going to roll back on the deck there and grab myself a soda.”
“I can get it.”
Pity? Or just a young officer trying to please his superior.
Zen opted to believe it was the latter. He’d give the kid the benefit of the doubt until proven wrong.
Same with Starship.
“That’s okay, Kick. I want you to get as much practice in the air as possible. Okay?”
“Great,” said the other pilot. “I appreciate it.”
Kaohisiung
1650
THE ISLAND OFTaiwan measures only 396 by 144 kilometers. While Kaohisiung was on the opposite end of the country from Taipei where Da
The first site they had to check was a large office building near the center of the city off Kusshan-1
Road. Da
Page 154
Even so, Stoner and Da
“What’s with the cards?” Da
“Considered polite to exchange them,” said the CIA agent. “I have dozens for every occasion.”
He showed a few to Da
“You sure you’re not schizophrenic?” said Da
“Sometimes I wonder.” Stoner pocketed the cards. “Computer system is easy to access. They’re networked with an Ethernet. We can get in if we want.”
“You think it’s worth it?”
“At the moment, no. But now we can come back and get in easily. Once the system is bugged, the NSA whizzes can get into the printing plant.”
“Where’s that?”
“Our next stop.”
NEITHER THE PRINTINGplant nor the warehouse they looked at seemed very promising; the printing plant was in fact used for printing, and the warehouse held vegetables. Stoner pushed on, aware that the last site on his list was the most promising—it had a pier on the harbor front and sprawled over nearly a hundred acres.
It was also well guarded by fences, men, and dogs.
“This would be a perfect place,” said Da
“Recycle everything and anything,” said Stoner. “Electronics mostly. That shed at the far left had car batteries. They strip away the outer casings, reuse the lead and the acid as well. Those drums there are filled with sulfuric acid.”
“Lovely.”
“Oh yeah. Real environmental operation.”
Stoner pointed to two buildings at the right side of the facility, fenced off from the others by a double Page 155
row of razor wire.
“That’s where I think the operation might be, if it’s here. There’s a track up from the pier.”
“Pier looks shaky,” said Da
“Appearances can be deceiving. Can you get a scan?”
“We’re too far for the viewer. We have to get a lot closer.”
“Not a problem. We can get on that dock at night, go up to the fence. There’s no guard on the water side.”
“Not now, maybe,” said Da
“We’ll have to find out,” said Stoner. “But if they’re not going to watch during the day, they probably won’t at night.”
“Man, I can smell the acid from here,” said Da
“Yeah. We stay away from the damn battery shed if we can.”
“I got to scan it.”
“Your call.” Stoner put down his glasses. “Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Let’s go get some shrimp.”
“ITHOUGHT WEwere getting something to eat,” said Liu when they stopped in front of the large warehouse building in the city’s southwestern district.
“We are,” said Stoner, getting out of the rental.
“This a restaurant?”
“In a way.”
Da
A woman sat on a stool in front of a large opening at the end of the hallway; at first Da
“Bait,” said Stoner, handing a pail to each man. “Liver. I think. She had trouble with my Mandarin and I Page 156
couldn’t quite get her Taiwanese.”
“What is this?” asked Liu.
“We have to fish for our di
The driver was smirking. Da