They all returned a crisp “Yes, sir.”
He looked at Eddie. “Last chance to tell me the truth.”
“This is the train,” Eddie said in a deliberately shaky voice. “I’m sure of it.”
Zhong nodded. “It had better be.” Via a camera that had been set up at the tunnel’s opposite end, they had already confirmed the engine’s number was the same as the one Juan had texted to him.
They all lowered goggles over their eyes. Eddie gripped the rope tighter when the diesel motor reached a thundering crescendo below them. Just as it burst out of the tunnel, Zhong’s men took their cue.
They dropped two lines straight down onto the diesel engine. The weights at the ends were powerful neodymium magnets that attached themselves to the top of the steel chassis. The lines were yanked tight as they spooled out from the winch above.
“Now!” Zhong yelled.
The first two men jumped from the ledge and sailed down the temporary zip line. As soon as they were away, Zhong and Eddie followed.
Eddie sat into his harness, the straps digging into his thighs. His full weight was supported by the dual-bearing trolley that hung on the line like a miniature monorail.
Gripping the braking mechanism, he shoved off and accelerated down the line, quickly matching the train’s speed as he approached the top of the engine. The wind buffeted him, but the goggles kept his eyes from watering. When his feet were nearing contact, he hit the brake and came to rest on top of the train as if he were alighting from a street tram.
He detached the quick release and dropped to his knees as the other men came to rest on the roof within seconds of each other. When all eight of them were aboard, two men cut the lines, which snapped back toward the winch leaving nothing but the magnets still clinging to the metal. They all slipped out of their harnesses.
Zhong sent one man to take control of the engineer and the train, and he sent three men along the top toward the very back of the train to cut off any possible escape. For the rest of them, the next task was getting inside the first passenger car to begin the attack.
Eddie stole a look toward the ocean and saw the Oregon out there pacing the train. And in the jungle behind them, he barely glimpsed the flash of a black object brushing the treetops, something he would have thought was a bird if he didn’t know it was actually a quadcopter drone.
He hoped Juan was getting an update on where he was because it wouldn’t be long before the train was even more crowded.
• • •
FLANKED BY his most faithful bodyguards, Jimmy Su, the head of the Ghost Dragons triad, sat at a table in the train’s dining car and told his men to bring in the Americans. Six more triad soldiers lounged at the tables around them, relaxed but alert. Like him, they were all dressed in black suits and white shirts unbuttoned far enough to expose the tattoos on their chests.
Su had built up the organization to be one of the most powerful in Taipei. His most daring exploits had occurred in the last month. First, he had David Yao, his main rival in the triad, killed and thrown into the ocean. Then he orchestrated the theft of the USB drive carrying the names of the Chinese undercover agents operating in the U.S.
His real target had been a drive listing the Chinese moles on the island of Taiwan. If he had gotten hold of that information, he could have used it to his own advantage in infiltrating the Taiwanese security forces for his personal gain. But when the courier they’d kidnapped had revealed what the drive actually held, he’d had to change his plans. The data was worthless to Su but extremely valuable to the right buyer.
There was no way he would sell the drive back to the Chinese, no matter what price they were willing to offer. He wanted them to suffer the loss badly. Although he hated the communists, Su didn’t plan on simply handing over the drive to the Americans. They had to pay, and pay dearly, for the intelligence coup of the decade. The revelations would set Chinese intelligence gathering back years.
The thought brought a smile to his face as the two Americans were led in. One was tall and athletic, obviously the man in charge. He had to be the one who called himself Thomas Cates, although that certainly wouldn’t be his real name. The other was the thin, nerdy sort, and held a tablet in his hand.
“Mr. Cates,” Su said without standing or offering his hand, “please sit down.”
“Oh, good,” Cates said. “You speak English.”
“Six years at the American School in Taipei.”
Cates and the other man took a seat opposite him. The two men who had led them in stood behind them in the aisle.
“It’s much better than my Mandarin,” Cates said.
“Interesting. I thought they would have sent someone who knew my language to make the transaction.”
Cates shrugged and grinned, showing off bright white teeth. “I was the lucky guy available. So, can we take a look at the merchandise?”
“You know that attempting to open or copy the file will erase the whole drive?”
The other man, apparently the technical analyst, nodded. “But I need to verify that the flash drive actually originates from the MSS. I won’t be able to see the data, but I can check the code on top of it without triggering an erasure. MSS code has a very distinctive signature.”
“You understand that we can’t hand over fifty million dollars for an empty drive,” Cates said coolly. “We need confirmation.”