Blue Warrior

Zhao saw the punch coming in the man’s eyes even before he threw it. As the African swung his enormous right fist, Zhao spun on the ball of his right foot and launched a devastating roundhouse kick. His heel crashed into the boxer’s left temple, just behind the swollen left eye. The African boxer grunted as his brain short-circuited. His upper body still twisted on a right axis, following the centripetal weight of the failed right cross, and the strike from Zhao’s heel into his skull accelerated the spin. The big Malian pirouetted on his right leg, then tumbled to the floor like a bag of wet meat slapping wood. He didn’t move.

Zhao sauntered over to a gilded table and pulled a bottle of water from a champagne bucket brimming with ice. He tossed it over his shoulder at Guo, who caught it in one hand. Zhao cracked one open for himself, pointed it at Guo. “Ganbei.”

“Ganbei!”

Mali was hot. Guo was glad for the cold water. He drained it.

But Zhao sipped his water, Guo noticed. The man also wasn’t breathing hard, and didn’t seem to be sweating much, if at all.

“So tell me, Guo,” Zhao said, smiling. He nodded at the unconscious African. “What should we do about him?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“You said that you were to conduct your mission without revealing your identity or location while you were here. And yet you revealed both in front of this man.”

“I assumed he was in your employ, sir. Otherwise, you would not have summoned me in his presence nor inquired about my mission.”

“Not an unreasonable assumption. He does work for me, but he is an African. Where do you think his loyalties are?” Zhao knelt down next to the boxer, felt for his pulse.

Guo flushed with humiliation. It had been a test, and he’d failed. He drew his combat knife. “I’ll take care of him now.”

“No need. I already solved your problem.” Zhao stood, held out his hand for Guo’s knife.

Guo turned the blade in his hand and extended the handle to Zhao. His mission was over before it began.

“I was told you were the best,” Zhao said. He drained the last of the water and let the bottle tumble to the floor.

“I am the best.”

“That’s disappointing.” He lifted the heavy combat knife in his hand. “Nice weight. Well balanced. Is it a good thrower?”

“Yes, sir. It is.”

Zhao glared into Guo’s emotionless eyes. Raised the razor-sharp blade behind his ear to throw it.

Guo didn’t flinch. How one died mattered even more than how one lived.

The blade launched from Zhao’s hand. It thudded heavily between the shoulder blades of a naked young French woman combing her long red hair. The carbon steel blade buried itself into the plaster wall behind the old oil painting.

“Never really cared for Degas,” Zhao said. “You?”

“I don’t have an opinion, sir.”

“Be sure to keep your blade sharp. And don’t make me clean up your mess again.”

“No, sir.”

Zhao picked up his shirt and pulled it on. “My bartender makes a fantastic Rusty Nail. We’ll drink a few and talk some more about your mission. I especially want to hear more about this Pearce fellow you are supposed to capture, if you have the time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Of course Guo had the time. He had all the time in the world now.

CIOS Corporate Offices

Rockville, Maryland

CIOS wasn’t unique. American defense and intelligence agencies like the NSA contracted with thousands of private, nongovernmental companies to handle their enormous workloads. CIOS was just one of hundreds of contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton, the infamous former employer of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

As an authorized NSA contractor, Jasmine Bath had either legal access to NSA resources or the knowledge to gain access to those resources, and the ability to cover her tracks while doing so in either case. She had been subjected to the pervasive scrutiny of security-clearing authorities, not only before she was initially hired by the NSA, but also during and after her government employment, then reexamined again when she applied for her contractor authorization. Those investigations themselves were conducted by a private contractor, National Investigative Services. Bath easily penetrated the NIS mainframe and wrote her own glowing clearances.

She was also well aware that her bank accounts, e-mails, and all other data footprints were subject to constant, randomized checks to ensure her continued loyalty and fidelity. But since the day she entered Berkeley, Jasmine had been prescient enough to sanitize her own records and to create the necessary fictions to maintain the illusion of purity.

As far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter that her job was to violate the privacy of other people in the name of national security. It was no one’s damn business but her own to know whom she slept with, which nineteenth-century German transcendentalists she read on her Kindle, or how often she ordered Kao Pad Poo at the Smiling Panda.