The Emperor's Tomb (Cotton Malone 6)

“How far away?”

“Hard to say,” she said. “Several miles.”

He’d been around enough fighter pilots to know how they thought, no matter the nationality. Hell, he’d wanted to be one himself. This was easy prey, a hawk challenging a pigeon. The pilot would wait until he was close before firing.

He checked his airspeed.

A little under 110 kilometers.

He recalled what his instructor had taught him.

Nobody ever collided with the sky. Altitude is your friend.

“He’ll be here in a few seconds,” Cassiopeia said.

He hoped the Twin Bee could handle what he was about to do. The starboard control surfaces were damaged, but the port side and tail rudder seemed okay. Most important, the engines were working. He waited another two seconds, then slammed the throttle wide open and pulled back on the yoke. The amphibian rose in a steep climb, prying upward with a groan from her hull. Tracer rounds rocketed past as their altitude increased.

2,000 feet.

2,500.

3,000.

The fighter shot passed beneath them, its turbofans leaving a trail of black smoke. Fighters were not low-altitude machines. They worked best in the stratosphere, not near the ground where fuel and computers could be tapped to the max.

He topped off at 3,300 feet.

“My stomach is in my throat,” Cassiopeia said.

“I had to do something he wouldn’t expect.”

“That certainly qualified.”

He knew small planes were not her favorite mode of transportation, recalling a rough helicopter ride in Central Asia, when Viktor had been at the controls.

He focused through the windshield. The Annihilator loomed in the distance. He realized the fighter could easily shoot them down with air-to-air missiles. Another navy lesson flashed through his mind.

Learn from other people’s mistakes.

“We’re going in,” he said.

He lowered speed and cranked the elevators. The outside air was capricious and inconsistent, which only aggravated the situation. He dropped the left wing and slipped into a slow bank. After a sharp turn he angled the nose and leveled off at 800 feet above the lake.

“You see the jet?” he asked.

Cassiopeia’s head spun in every direction. “No. But that doesn’t mean anything. He could still have us in his sights.”

A fact he realized. He struggled to keep the wing level as the port side control surfaces ignored his commands.

“Apparently this was a trap,” Pau Wen said.

“Brilliant observation.”

He threw Cassiopeia a glance that she seemed to understand. Viktor. How else would they have known? China was a big place, yet here they were, waiting, over Lake Dian, exactly where Ivan had sent them.

Treetops grew in size as he glided toward the lake. Luckily, the nearest junk floated a mile or so away.

A rush of wind shoved them to the right.

He held the nose high.

He’d never landed on water and could already tell depth perception was going to be different. He would have to judge the distance correctly and make sure speed was perfect when the plane’s bottom kissed the surface. The last thing he needed was to porpoise across the lake. He was also worried about stalling. Luckily, no crosswind blew, or at least none he could see on the treetops. He decided to make it easy and switched off the engines just as the last of the trees raced beneath and nothing but water loomed ahead.

Like he’d been told, Gravity never loses.

“I’m glad there’s lots of room,” she said.

He was, too. Plenty to glide to a stop. He eased down the yoke and pitched the nose up so the tail touched first. One thought flashed through his mind. The floats on the underside of each wing needed to stay on top of the water, as both could quickly become anchors.

The Twin Bee bounced twice, then hydroplaned. The rudder fishtailed and the plane came to a rest about two hundred yards from shore.

He popped open the door.

Cassiopeia did the same on her side.

The Twin Bee bobbed in the agitated water, its fuselage riddled with bullet holes. Malone studied the sky. The fighter was nowhere to be seen. Off to the south, a flash appeared. An instant later a vapor trail snaked a path across the morning sky.

He knew instantly what was happening.

Air-to-ground missile, its fire-and-forget active radar zeroing in on them.

“In the lake. Now. Go deep,” he yelled.

He waited an instant to make sure that both Cassiopeia and Pau made it into the peaty-green water, then leaped in. He ignored the chill and powered himself toward the bottom, pawing with cupped hands.

Another disturbing thought swept through his brain. Pollution. Most likely this water was not safe.

A few seconds later an explosion rocked the surface as the Twin Bee was obliterated by the missile. He arched his body and kicked for the surface. His head found air and he opened his eyes to see nothing left of the amphibian except burning wreckage.

A second later Cassiopeia and Pau broke the surface.

“You okay?” he called out.

Both nodded.

“We need to get to shore.”

He waded around the smoldering debris, toward them. He cocked his head toward the south. A black dot began to grow in size.

The Annihilator was returning.

“Float in the water, facedown. Play dead,” he said, “and don’t move until he’s gone.”

He quickly assumed the same position and hoped the trick worked. He’d wondered why the fighter had not simply shot them down. It would have been easy, especially in the beginning when its presence was unknown. But the idea had surely been to allow the lake to swallow the evidence.

He extended his arms and allowed his body to float, hoping the pilot did not ensure the kill with a strafe of cannon fire.

FORTY-EIGHT

LANZHOU

TANG LEFT THE LABORATORY, SATISFIED THAT THE PROBLEM OF Lev Sokolov had been resolved. He’d instructed the men he’d left to guard the facility that any attempt to escape should be met with deadly force. He now knew enough to know how to begin—with or without Sokolov. The Russian merely offered a more convenient way to confirm the discovery, not the only means.

And its implications were enormous.

China craved more than 300,000,000 tons of crude a year. Its industrial output—which meant its entire economy—was based on oil. Sixty % was currently imported from Africa, Latin America, and Russia, as a way not to be vulnerable to volatile Middle East politics and not be within America’s sphere of influence. Why else, except to monopolize the Middle East oil supply, had America occupied Iraq? N

o reason he could conceive, and his foreign affairs experts said the same. Those same experts had repeatedly warned that the United States could easily wield Middle Eastern oil as a weapon. Just a minor disruption in supply could send China into a free fall, one that the government would be impotent to halt. He was tired of dealing with rogue nations rich in oil. Just a few weeks back, billions of yuan had been loaned to another African nation that would never repay—all to ensure that China was first on its oil export list. The present regime’s foreign policy—a dizzying blend of appeasement, contradiction, dismissal, and defense—had long bartered away ballistic missiles, nuclear resources, and precious technology just to ensure that oil kept flowing inward.

That demeaned China, and exposed a weakness.

But all that could change if the thousands of wells that now dotted China could provide perpetual energy. He could not reveal the how, but he could exploit the what by keeping the oil flowing and eliminating the tankers that flooded into Chinese ports every day loaded with foreign crude. Results bred success, and success bred pride. Properly packaged and distributed, its effects could certainly bolster any political regime.

According to the fossil fuel theory, he knew China possessed a mere 2.1% of the world’s oil reserves. The United States 2.7%. Russia 7%. The Middle East, 65%. Nothing can be done about Arab dominance, one of his vice ministers had recently warned. He disagreed. It all depended on what you knew.

His phone rang.

He stopped walking toward the waiting car and answered.

“The target is on the lake,” Viktor Tomas said.

The idea had been to attack Pau Wen’s plane with minimal attention. Radio traffic, monitored by countless governmental agencies, including officials in Yunnan province, would verify that an unidentified aircraft had been intercepted by an army fighter. Protocol required that the intruder be brought to the ground.

“Survivors?” he asked.

“Three. In the water. The fighter is making its final pass. He’ll use cannons to make sure they will not be swimming to shore.”

“You know what to do.”