Free All Necessary Force by Brad Taylor Page B

anything considered extraordinarily sensitive, which an attack on Chinese assets would most certainly be. The Chinese had abruptlygone silent at his protest, then come back a few months later with a request: Find them a weapon they knew existed. Obtain samples and transfer them to the Chinese.
    He’d never, ever been tasked before. In fact, he didn’t even consider himself an “asset” of the Chinese. More like an entrepreneur. When he’d balked, he’d received a veiled threat—something else that had never happened. While the threat irked him, he had decided to go ahead because of the money involved. He was given parameters to research by his handlers, and begun to dig, using his Intelligence Committee standings. He’d found what they were looking for in the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, and now was within a month of transferring the technology.
    He had no idea how the Chinese knew what to look for, knew how to point him in the right direction. Maybe there were more like him in America, but he didn’t think so. If there were, and they were feeding the parameters to the Chinese, why wouldn’t they just feed them the device? Why make him dig, and risk exposure? At the very least, why not just tell him where to look? One thing was for sure; he was out after this. The risk was just too great. And the Chinese were now treating him a little like a doormat instead of the rock star he had been. He’d had enough of their ungrateful shit.
    Opening the door, he felt his BlackBerry chime with a message to check his e-mail.
Probably a change in the flight schedule.
    He connected securely with his congressional account and saw a note from his aide, short and to the point: “You said to keep tabs on this guy.” Attached was a report from the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command detailing possible information regarding the location of Christopher Hale, MIA in 1970, Cambodia. The name brought a flash of nostalgia, a comfortable blanket he found himself wanting more and more as he grew older.
So they finally found him
.
    He remembered the disbelief he had felt when the North Vietnamese had said a reconnaissance team was in the area. At first, he had dismissed the alarm, since he knew for certain where every recon team was targeted and had routinely passed that information on to the NVA. The nearest one was a full day’s walk from the camp. After the gunfireerupted, he had fled with his Chinese counterparts, desperate to beat the bombing that was sure to come.
    Returning to his job as CIA liaison to MACV-SOG, he had been relieved to learn the team had died, then mortified to hear one man was MIA. He had lived in absolute terror for weeks, waiting for Chris Hale to pop out of the jungle and finger him. As time went on, and the man never appeared, the terror faded, only spiking briefly in 1973 when the POWs were released by North Vietnam. Chris Hale wasn’t among them.
    Returning to the United States, he had forgotten all about the man, until the drive for MIAs in Vietnam had reached a fever pitch in the U.S. consciousness. He’d used his position as a newly minted congressman to be updated on the status of Hale and had done so every year since, more out of a perceived connection to the man than anything else.
    He opened the report and felt a small sliver of fear. The only items listed were a reconnaissance journal and a camera. He immediately willed himself to calm down.
No way any film has lasted this long, and even if it has, the odds of it having anything besides some bamboo bunkers is nil.
    Just to satisfy his curiosity, he Googled “processing old film,” and felt the fear return. Apparently, it not only could be done, but it was done routinely. There were whole Web sites dedicated to finding old cameras at garage sales, developing the film, then trying to determine who is in the picture. Several companies were solely dedicated to developing outdated formats, and claimed success with film from the early 1900s. A