Golden Buddha (Oregon Files 1)

As Po and the other policemen loaded into a large six-passenger truck to scour Lhasa, the Chinese military officers were beginning to realize the gravity of the situation. They started to assemble to exert control over the city and crush the rebel forces.

The Dungkar started their plan in motion as well.

TIME was of the essence and Cabrillo had none to spare. For a man that had been yanked from sleep, bound and transported south to the airport under guard, Legchog Zhuren was surprisingly belligerent. Cabrillo had first tried to appeal to Zhuren’s sense of goodness, asking him just to explain the procedure for the poison gas and where the stockpiles were located, but Zhuren had spit in his face and puffed up his chest.

It was obvious that goodness was not a quality Zhuren cherished.

“Tape him,” Cabrillo said.

Up until this second, Cabrillo had tried to show respect by allowing Zhuren to simply sit in the chair in front of him—now it was time to learn what he needed, and for that the Chinese leader would need to be secured. Seng and Gannon wrapped his arms and legs with duct tape and secured him to the chair.

“Prepare the juice,” Cabrillo said to Huxley.

“What are you—” Zhuren started to say.

“I asked you nice,” Cabrillo said, “to help me save both the Chinese in Tibet as well as the Tibetan nationals. You didn’t seem to want to cooperate. We have a little serum that will help to loosen your tongue. Trust me, you’ll tell us everything, from your first conscious memory to the last time you had sex. The only problem is this:

We cannot always get the dosage right. Too much and we erase your memory like a wet cloth across a chalkboard. Usually we gradually increase the dosage to try and avoid that—but you’re a prick, so I think we’ll bypass that step.”

“You’re lying,” Zhuren said in a voice showing fear.

“Ms. Huxley,” Cabrillo said, “twenty cc’s in the lieutenant’s arm, please.”

Huxley walked over to where the Chinese army lieutenant was still bound to his chair. She squirted some of the liquid in the air until she had the correct amount, then with her other hand wiped an alcohol swab across his upper arm, then plunged the needle into a vein. Cabrillo watched the second hand of his watch as fifteen seconds passed.

“Name and where you were born, please,” Cabrillo said.

The lieutenant rattled off the information like his tongue was on fire.

“What is the total troop strength inside Lhasa?”

“There were eighty-four hundred approximate troops,” the lieutenant said. “Just over six thousand were sent north toward Mongolia. That leaves around twenty-four hundred. Of those, some two hundred fifty were sick or injured. The remaining troops are Company S, Company L—”

“That’s enough,” Cabrillo said.

“I don’t mind,” the lieutenant said, smiling. “We have the following armor. Four T-59—”

“That’s fine,” Cabrillo said.

Zhuren stared at the lieutenant in horror.

“Ms. Huxley,” Cabrillo said slowly. “Prepare one hundred cc’s.”

Zhuren started talking and it was nearly a half hour before he finished.

Cabrillo was scanning the notes of Zhuren’s disclosures. He turned to Seng, pointed out a spot on the map, and then examined a satellite photograph of the area.

“I want to lead this one myself,” he said slowly. “I’ll need a dozen men, air cover and some way to destroy the gas.”

“Sir, I inventoried the hangar,” Gannon said. “There were a pair of fuel-air cluster bombs in the ordnance room.”

“That should do it,” Cabrillo said.

STANLEY Ho might own a mansion in Macau and bear all the earmarks of legitimacy, but the fact was that he was really only one step away from street-level thug. Once he realized that Winston Spenser had screwed him on the Golden Buddha, his every waking minute since had been used in scheming to settle the score. It was not just that Spenser had ripped him off—that was one thing. It was the fact that he had dealt with Spenser so many times in the past. That Spenser had smiled in his face, then stabbed him in the back. To Ho, that meant that Spenser had been toying with him, that all the art dealer’s good-natured ass-kissing and pandering had been merely a prelude to the big screw. Ho had been treated like a dupe—and he hated that most of all.

Ho had personally gone down to the Macau immigration office to bribe the clerk. That had given him a list of everyone who had exited the country the day after the robbery. With that in hand, it had just been a case of eliminating all the improbabilities until Ho had gotten down to just three people. Then he had sent three men hired from the local triad leader to Singapore, Los Angeles, and Asunción, Paraguay. The first two had been washes; the parties had been observed and disqualified and the men were called back. Ho was starting to think that maybe he’d need to expand the search, that he had somehow eliminated Spenser from the first cut by accident. He was beginning to think this would take longer than he’d planned.

Just then his fax started printing and a picture came across.