American Traitor Read online

  I began muttering under my breath, and Jennifer gave me a hip bump. The door opened on the ground floor. The man looked at me and said, “Gotta take some help once in a while. Even if she’s the one asking.”

  I locked eyes with him, about to give him a little American justice, and saw the same pirate I was. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  His crusty-ass self said, “I know I am.”

  He left the elevator, and we both stood there, looking at each other. I said, “What the hell was that?”

  She grinned and said, “Maybe being an asshole all the time isn’t the best solution. Let’s go find the shuttle.”

  I chuckled, now back on an even keel, grabbed our bags, and said, “Okay, okay. Point noted. Let’s go.”

  We exited the terminal, got on the first bus that arrived, and took a trip to the domestic terminal a mile away. Dumbest damn airport I’ve ever been in.

  We made our flight, with Jennifer wide-eyed about being in Australia and me just wanting to get some sleep. Having been through a plethora of long-distance flights, I knew how the jet lag would hit. We would need at least a day to recuperate before we were normal.

  We finally arrived at Adelaide, this time without drama. We found our rental car, I booted up our GPS and put in the address, and we left. I followed the signs out of the airport, getting into the suburbs of the city. Dunkin had given me an address about twenty minutes away, but you never knew with the GPS. It’ll get you close, but by no means would it guarantee the solution. I’d learned that in another life while using GPS for “precision-guided munitions.”

  As we drove through the side streets, Jennifer said, “Looks pretty much like America.”

  I laughed and said, “Did you think crocodiles were going to attack the minute you exited the plane?”

  She smiled, rubbed my arm, and said, “Yeah. Sort of, I guess.”

  We went up the coast, weaving along surface roads with Jennifer watching the GPS as my navigator. I felt my phone go off and pulled it out, saying, “Someone just texted.”

  “It’s Dunkin. He’s leaving work right now. He thinks we’re still in the air.”

  “Tell him we’re on the ground and rolling. ETA is . . .”

  Jennifer looked at the GPS and said, “Twenty-two minutes.”

  She tapped on my phone and said, “He says we’re going to beat him home. There’s a key underneath the outdoor light. Unscrew it like you’re changing the bulb and it’ll fall out.”

  I laughed and said, “Looks like all that security training at the Taskforce didn’t pay off. Tell him we’ll see him there.”

  She did, and we continued up the coast, following every command from the GPS, trying to remember to stay on the left side of the road. Eventually, we turned onto a double-lane avenue called Semaphore, with a median of trees and a line of businesses on both sides. A little outside of downtown Adelaide, it looked like any small suburb in America. Except that they drove on the wrong side of the road.

  Jennifer said, “Getting close. Slow down.”

  I did so and she said, “Here. Right here. On the left.”

  I looked and saw a two-story complex that was a little dilapidated, squeezed between a jewelry store and a Mexican restaurant. I had no idea how good that Mexican food was, but was fairly sure what I’d find in the complex. I’d lived in such places before.

  I pulled into a parking spot outside the complex, saying, “Looks like he’s saving a little money.”

  The building had two three-story towers, with a walkway between them and balconies at each level.

  I said, “I don’t think he’s home yet. Let’s go find his door.”

  Jennifer pulled out a GoPro camera and started filming, saying, “Here we are in Australia, first stop on our tour of the land down under. Say something for posterity, Pike.”

  I said, “Turn that shit off.”

  “What? Come on. Say something.”

  I put my hand over the camera and said, “Turn that off. Please.”

  She looked at me like I’d grown a third eye and said, “What the hell, Pike? You can’t be on a video? It’s our vacation.”

  I sank down into my seat, unsure of what I’d just done. Jennifer said, “Pike?”

  I rolled my head back and said, “I’m sorry for that.”

  She said, “For what?”

  I took a breath and said, “Heather always wanted to video us. I never let it happen because of my job. Everyone has a video of their child learning to walk or swim. I have nothing of Angie.”

  I turned to her and said, “I don’t want to be on video celebrating life. I never celebrated hers.”

  She cupped my chin and said, “Pike . . .”

  And that snapped me out of my pathetic melancholy, realizing I was destroying the very reason we were here. I put my hand over hers and said, “Sorry. I think leaving Amena took a little more out of me than I thought. You didn’t deserve that.”

  She smiled and kissed my cheek, saying, “Well, you did that right. You should let it go.” She opened the door, sprang out, and did a little dance. I grinned and she said, “Let’s get this party started.”

  We exited the car and marched up to the second floor of Dunkin’s apartment complex. We looked around a little bit, and Jennifer found the way. We walked down a dim balcony, the light muted by the overhangs, and ended up in a little cul-de-sac. Three apartments on the end, the biggest ones in the unit. Standing on a balcony were three Asian guys with maintenance uniforms on, but they didn’t look like they belonged. I kept my eye on them for a moment, not wanting to go to work on the light fixture in full view of them.

  It would look strange, to say the least.

  Chapter 12

  Dunkin watched Jake’s car disappear, feeling a little bit of unease at what he’d just asked the security manager. He fully believed that Jake was up to no good, but Jake could definitely affect his employment—especially if his employers sided with Jake over him. Jake was much smarter than Dunkin, with computer skills that were in another stratosphere. He decided to just let it drop. Enjoy the holidays without worrying about his job.

  He got in his car, started it up, then pulled out his cell. He saw the text from Pike and texted back that he was headed home, knowing Pike wouldn’t see the message until he landed. He was surprised to get an instant response. They were already on the ground.

  He looked at his watch, realized they would beat him, and texted how to access his apartment.

  He got back: Really? A key in the light fixture? Pike says the Taskforce training didn’t take. We’ll meet you there.

  He smiled and realized yet again how much he missed the mission. The purpose.

  He put the car into drive and left the parking lot. He hit the outside gate, waited on the bar to rise, and saw a pair of running lights turn on from a late-model Lexus. Unbidden, he thought about the surveillance training he’d been taught, about a “correlation of events.” Leave a place and see someone stand up as you exit? Might be surveillance.

  He smiled at the thought, swung by the car, and saw two Asians inside, one male, one female. He continued down the exit road, heading to the A9 thoroughfare, and a car swung in behind him. He looked in the rearview and saw another pair of Asians, this time young guys about thirty. Which was strange, but not unduly so. There were a lot of Chinese in Australia. It was just a fact of life, but two in a row made him think.

  He wasn’t paranoid—at least he’d tell you that—but he’d had enough training from Pike drilled into him that he lived by a simple mantra: If you think it’s wrong, it probably is.

  He entered the A9 with both cars behind him. He gently increased his speed, passing cars. The two vehicles behind him kept pace. He slowed back down to the speed limit, and they did the same.

  He thought, This is stupid. Probably getting off at the M2 for downtown.

  He continued in the traffic, not speeding or slowing down, and passed the exit for the main artery into Adelaide. They didn’t exit.

  The A9 would eventually run out, becoming Semaphore Road and leading right to his apartment complex, which was why he chose it for his job, but now he wanted to run a little bit of a surveillance detection route. If they were following him, they either didn’t know where he was going or wanted to keep him in sight for some other reason, so they’d stick with him.

  If he wasn’t paranoid.

  He exited early, before crossing the Port Adelaide River, and saw both cars come with him. He began snaking through surface streets, making no obvious moves like he was trying to escape, and they stuck with him. After three turns his paranoia changed to true belief. They were following him. Why, he had no idea.

  He entered Semaphore Road and continued straight, keeping his eyes glued to his rearview mirror. They were still behind him. He passed his apartment complex and kept going, pulling into a strip mall two blocks down, parking in front of a convenience store.

  He waited. The two cars passed him, continuing down the block, then made a right. As soon as they were out of sight, he reversed, gunned the engine, and raced back the way he’d come, his mind spinning over his options.

  Chen Ju-Long circled the block, moving rapidly so he could set up a box on the convenience store. He called the follow car and said, “Go long. I’ll have the short.” The car acknowledged, and he pulled back around, driving slowly, looking for a bumper position that would allow him to see the target leave the market, giving him the ability to trigger.

  He pulled abreast of the convenience store and saw the car was gone. In the wind. He parked at the first spot he could find and said, “Target is unsighted. I say again, target is unsighted.”

  From the stationary team—the one that was supposed to take out the target—he heard, “We have a man and a woman at his apartment. Looking to get in.”

  “Who are they?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Stand by.”

  He called his other mobile unit and said, “Start concentric circles. Focus on the main highways. He went somewhere for a reason. See if you can find him.”

  He got an acknowledgment and called his contact, Jake, unsure of whether the man could be trusted. He had been recruited through the octopus tentacles of the United Front Work Department—a division of the People’s Liberation Army that pressured the Chinese diaspora around the world—but the man could be setting them up. It had happened in the past, and would happen again. It couldn’t be helped when you were recruiting someone of Chinese heritage who worked in a place like Silicon Valley. Sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn’t.

  Jake had proven trustworthy in the past, executing the implant of the new F-35 jet fighter that had crashed, and he’d been well paid, but the PLA had also leveraged his extended family in China to gain compliance, putting them under the knife, so to speak.

  It could have generated a need for revenge. The man could be trying to set them up as well.

  Chen was well versed in the wilderness of mirrors inside the People’s Republic of China. A staunch party member, he had worked his way up to the tip of the spear inside the Guoanbu, and was now the head of the PRC’s Ministry of State Security’s external kinetic branch. Meaning he executed what others had failed to do through less violent means. Given that, he knew the bounds of his playground. He was not a killer who wanted to kill. He was a killer who executed what was necessary. And he wasn’t sure this one was necessary. Especially given what he’d already conducted inside Australia.

  That killing had been necessary.

  The phone rang forever, then Jake finally answered, saying, “Is it done?”

  “No, it’s not done. He didn’t go home. He went to a store next to his apartment and we had to break off. When we reengaged, he was gone. I want to know why this is so important. Right now, we aren’t in the surveillance footprint, but if we continue, we will be. Taking him at his home in a robbery leaves an easy answer for the police. Killing him somewhere else will invite an investigation because of the random nature. It’s much riskier. They’ll have to solve the crime and will use all means to do so.”

  “He knows what I’m doing. He saw me at the Taiwan desk. He suspects. I watched him talking to the security manager. If he lives, I’m not delivering what I have. I won’t do it. It will seal my fate.”

  “What does it matter? You give up what you have, and it’s done. So you lose your job.”

  “Lose my job? I’ll be arrested as a damn spy! I did this because of my family. Now what do I do?”

  “You did it for money. I ask you again, if we let him go, does that compromise the mission? I don’t care about your fears. I only care about the mission. You’ll be well taken care of inside China.”

  “I’ve never even been to China! I don’t speak Chinese. I don’t know anything about the country. You people said you’d take care of me.”

  “And we will. Answer the question. Will this compromise the mission?”

  There was a pause, then, “Yes. Yes it will. If he gets back and tells them what I rooted through, they’ll search the code. They’ll see the penetration. They’ll know what I took, and they’ll patch it. I have what you want, but if he gets back and raises an alarm with the management, it will cause the mission to fail.”

  “I thought you could do this clean. No trace of penetration?”

  “I can, from the machine’s perspective, but not with Clifford’s persistence. Nothing is one hundred percent. There may be a trace. I don’t think there is, but there might be. I know we’re clean from a cursory search, but I don’t know about a complete forensics scan.”

  Chen considered the implications. What Jake said held a ring of truth, but Chen was seriously exposed in Australia at the moment, and thus so was the People’s Republic of China. He’d just executed a man who had been bribed by the PRC—an act that had not gone unnoticed by the Australian authorities. A luxury car dealer in Melbourne named Nick Zhao, the man had been primed to run for Parliament—the first such deep penetration the PRC had ever managed—had become scared by the stakes and had approached the Australian intelligence agencies about his recruitment.

  Which was how Chen came in.

  Flat-faced and broad-shouldered, with muscles that came more from work than nature, Chen was the final solution for problems the Ministry of State Security could solve no other way, and he’d been called to resolve the issue of the errant parliamentary candidate.

  Zhao had been found dead in a motel room, with the cause of death still under investigation. The entire press universe in Australia was breathlessly screaming that his killing was a Chinese operation to shut him up. Which of course it was. Chen wasn’t eager to conduct another lethal operation in the land down under so soon. But this sounded like it was necessary.

  He said, “You’d better have the data. If I do this, and you don’t, you won’t have to worry about being arrested as a spy. You’ll just have to worry about where you’ll be buried. It won’t be in China.”

  He heard breathing for a moment, like the man was hyperventilating, then, “I have the data. I’m headed to Cairns right now. Just like you asked.”

  “No aircraft. Trains only. Just like you were told.”

  “Yes, yes. I’ll meet your man in Brisbane. He’ll give me the meeting site in Cairns. Just like I was told. I have it all. Just get rid of that guy.”

  Chen said, “Give me his cell phone number.”

  “Why? I thought you had him. Have you lost him?”

  His voice beginning to drip with menace, Chen said, “Ask me another question and I’ll rip out your throat. The number.”

  Jake passed it, then said, “That’s all I can do. This is your problem. Your skill set, not mine. I do the hacking. That’s all.”

  Chen said, “You’ll do what I ask, period,” then hung up the phone. His female partner said, “So?”

  He took a breath, looked at her, and said, “So it’s going to be the hard way.”

  He got on the radio to the stationary team and said, “Capture the people at the door. We’re headed your way. I want to interrogate them.”

  Chapter 13

  I waited for the workers to leave, and, of course, they didn’t. In fact, they stared at me a little more intently than I would have liked.

  Jennifer said, “Hey, let’s just go back to the car. Wait on Dunkin. It’s not like we’re in a rush.”

  I glanced at them and said, “Yeah, I guess.”

  We turned to leave, and the lead maintenance guy advanced, saying, “Do you know the man who lives here?”

  Turning to him, a little miffed, I said, “Why do you care?”

  He pulled a small semiautomatic pistol out of his pocket, aimed it at my head, and said, “Because I do.”

  Jennifer’s jaw dropped open. The other two men circled around behind us. One of them worked the door—whether he had a key or something else I couldn’t see—and it swung open. The man with the gun said, “Inside.”

  What the hell?

  It was surreal. I stood there for a moment, a little bit stunned, and he waved the pistol, saying again, “Get inside.”

  We entered, finding that Dunkin lived like every other bachelor on earth. It was a pigsty. Meaning it was also full of weapons for Jennifer to use.

  I had no idea at all of why this was happening, but that was sort of irrelevant. The five-meter target was the men threatening me. The fifty-meter target was why. They’d learn the hard way that I was pretty damn good on a five-meter target.

  We entered a den full of beer cans and pizza boxes, with a few choice implements lying around the room. Jennifer looked at a bottle opener with a corkscrew on the bottom, then at me. I nodded.

  The lead “maintenance worker” said, “We don’t want to hurt you. We only want to know where Clifford Delmonty is. That’s all. Tell us and you can leave.”

  I raised my hands and tried my best to sound like a coward. “Hey, come on, what’s going on here? We just came for a vacation. He gave us a room. I don’t know anything about anything. Please.”