Power and Empire

Before Tan had a chance to repeat himself yet again, Xu turned to Long Yun and gave a knowing glance toward the car.

Long Yun settled in behind the wheel as the general took his customary spot in the backseat, on the right side, so the two men could more easily communicate. Outside, Tan blustered on the gravel pad as he packed the camera equipment, no doubt made more nervous by his boss’s watchful eye through the tinted window.

“Follow this witless egg,” Xu instructed Long Yun. “When he has killed the cripple, silence him as well. I am afraid your man Tan lacks the constitution for matters of delicacy and discretion. If the fool on the docks has not yet bragged to his friends, then someone will most certainly have witnessed him meeting a man with such a hideous eye. That ship will reach the United States in two weeks. I’m confident there will not be much left after… the incident, but the Americans are known to be extremely thorough. There can be absolutely nothing to link Orion to this office. Do I make myself clear?”

Long Yun turned and grinned at the general.

“Of course,” he said.

1

Jack Ryan, Jr., sat behind the wheel of a dusty Ford Taurus and rubbed a hand through his dark brown beard, trying not to think about his growing need to pee. The car sat parked for the fourth time in seven hours, and Ryan rested both hands on the steering wheel, staring into the darkness. Dallas, Texas, had a reputation for being muggy, even in fall, but this September night had turned out cool, allowing the two men in the Taurus to keep their windows rolled up most of the way and the AC turned off.

Just two years old, the dented Ford looked to be in much worse shape than it actually was. The Taurus was one of the few models that could be a police car, or, with a quick coat of rattle-can black and some judiciously applied dents to the doors and fenders, become a ratty beater that those same police would see as a meth fleet vehicle. Despite being in dependable shape mechanically, this particular car stank like bad cheese and dirty gym socks — blending well into this seedy South Dallas neighborhood.

A quick Internet search had revealed that the intersection not three blocks away was among the top five most likely spots in Dallas to get stabbed. There’d been no stabbings tonight as far as Ryan knew, but the night was still young. The sound of bottles breaking on pavement not too far down the street signaled that a cutting, at the very least, was a distinct possibility.

Ryan tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs and looked at his watch. His need for relief was going to reach critical mass in the next few minutes. He had a Gatorade bottle in the backseat, stashed there for surveillance emergencies, but he really hoped to get out and stretch his legs for a minute — even if it was behind a stinking dumpster that overflowed with pizza boxes in an alley littered with broken syringes and used condoms.

During the forty-two minutes they’d been parked between the back door of a Mexican grocery and a store that sold sewing machines — of all things — Jack had seen a half-dozen guys — all Asian — go into the Casita Roja strip club across the street. Over the course of those same forty-two minutes, he’d watched a homeless dude stagger by and vomit all over himself, a graffiti artist tag the back of the sewing-machine shop, and two hookers entertain clients as they stood against the rough brick wall beside the dumpster, accompanied by a halo of moths fluttering under the sad glow of a feeble streetlamp.

“If you could see me now, Mother dear,” Ryan mumbled to himself, tapping the Taurus’s armrest.

“You say something?” Bartosz “Midas” Jankowski asked from the passenger seat. Like Jack, he was bearded and wore a loose button-down shirt with short sleeves to cover the Smith & Wesson M&P Shield pistol tucked inside his waistband, as well as the loop of copper wire he wore low around his neck. Hollywood would have everyone believe the entire communication package, including the mic and radio, could be wrapped up and fit into the tiny bit of plastic worn inside the ear. Ryan wished it were that simple. There were tiny mics, but they still required a radio and some kind of power source. Campus members used a Profilo wire near-field neck-loop mic and a small flesh-tone earpiece. A house-built voice-activated intercom system obviated the use of a PTT switch. The whole shebang ran off a Motorola radio about the size of a fat deck of playing cards.

“Just thinking about this sexy life of a spy,” Ryan said. “I’m going to need to take a leak in a few.”