Nighthawk (NUMA Files 14)

“Anything and everything,” Gowdy grunted. “We’re in a race against time. Every day that craft is missing, the danger increases.”

Something in Gowdy’s tone struck Kurt oddly, as did the stony silence of the Air Force officer, who hadn’t said a single word.

“We’re the closest,” Gunn said, jumping in. “NUMA will be on scene days before anyone else. I’ll bet you a bottle of Don Julio tequila that NUMA locates the Nighthawk before either our Navy or the Russian and Chinese fleets.”

Gowdy nodded appreciatively. “I’ll see your bottle of Don Julio and raise you a box of Cuban cigars if you can find it before our adversaries arrive.”

Kurt was listening and thinking at the same time. With only three ships, two of which wouldn’t be there until at least a day after his own arrival, chances of success were slim. But then, Kurt had spent a lifetime figuring out ways to change the odds. As he studied the map, an idea jumped out at him, a way to up his chances and deal a blow to the Russian and Chinese fleets all at the same time.

He looked up with a roguish grin on his face. “In that case, someone better call Fidel and ask him to start picking out the best tobacco leaves on the island. Because if the Nighthawk is out there, I’m going to find it for you. And I’m going to do it before we see any foreign flags on the horizon.”

Gowdy looked on blankly, probably considering Kurt’s boast nothing more than a false bravado. But Kurt had an ace up his sleeve. An ace and an elephant.

4

Beijing, China

Constantin Davidov sat in the back of an American-made sedan as it moved along a crowded Chinese highway through a canyon of high-rise office towers built from Brazilian steel, Korean glass and cement imported from Australia.

Throngs of people moved along the sidewalks. Armies of them massed at each intersection like opposing battalions. They surged toward each other at the changing of a light but mixed and meshed and passed on through without incident as they traveled to a hundred different destinations.

Street vendors and shops by the hundreds catered to them with food brought in from the countryside. Construction engineers dug up the road to bury new pipelines that would feed the city’s ever-growing need for water and natural gas, while smog from exhaust pipes and coal-fired power plants choked the air, blotting out the light of the noonday sun.

“How can you stand it?” Davidov muttered to himself.

A Chinese man sitting beside him overheard and looked appropriately offended. Li Ying was a liaison officer in the People’s Liberation Army, a captain in a pea-green uniform with gold stars on his shoulder boards and a smattering of ribbons above his breast pocket. “This is globalism,” Ying said. “The engine that drives the Chinese economy.”

A look of disgust settled on Davidov’s face. As far as he could tell, globalism and the interlinking of the world’s economies was nothing but a disaster in the making, a disease slowly infecting the cells of the world’s collective body. Everything, everywhere, all the time. At least that seemed to be the motto. Personally, he longed for simpler days.

The Chinese officer continued. “China has transformed in a single generation from a backwater land to a global powerhouse. We’re very proud of what we’ve built.”

“Pride goeth before the fall,” Davidov said.

The sentiment was lost on his host. And why not? Why should Ling worry? He was twenty-eight. A captain in the army of an ascending nation. Like his country, Ling was bold and brash at this point in his life, undaunted by decades of work that might lead nowhere.

“At least we move forward,” Ling said. “Russia seems to do nothing but regress these days.”

Davidov couldn’t argue with that. Forty years prior, he’d come to China with a group of Soviet officials. They found no cars on the street, few working phones and nowhere decent to stay—even by Moscow standards, which at the time were dreadfully low.

Back then, the Chinese bought Russian MiGs and patrol boats with borrowed rubles. Back then, Russian oil, coal and financial aid were a lifeline for Mao’s hermit kingdom, but now . . . Now, even a pitiful, junior-grade officer could be rude to a Russian emissary.

The sedan pulled up to a modern, angular building. Walls of gray cement, broken by narrow, vertical bands of glass. The design was dramatic; it brought to mind a medieval castle, complete with slits in the wall for archers to fire through.

A white-gloved soldier stepped forward and opened the door. He stood at rigid attention as Ling climbed out and Davidov followed.

“This way,” Ling said.

“I know where to go,” Davidov said. “Stay with the car.”

“Excuse me?”

“Trust me. This won’t take long,” Davidov said. “You can even keep the engine running,” he suggested, glancing up to the brownish sky. “Add to your precious globalism.”

A minute later, Davidov was inside the building, his shoes making distinctive clicks on the cultured granite floor of the Ministry building. He was ushered into a conference room. The man he’d come to see waited for him.

“You’re free to speak in here,” General Zhang, of the Chinese Ministry of State Security, insisted.

“Thank you for the reassurance,” Davidov said. He was quite certain the room was bugged. It didn’t matter. He had no intention of disclosing anything General Zhang didn’t already know. “We have word on the American space plane,” he announced. “Confirmation.”