Free Razing Beijing: A Thriller by Sidney Elston III

limited
assistance as a favor granted to Lester Burns and the CIA. The tarmac glistened
beneath a diesel-powered cart pulling away from the plane with an empty luggage
train. A passenger tram sitting idle beneath the plane’s wingtip appeared to be
empty.
    Twenty minutes earlier, one of Sun Stone’s men posted
inside the terminal had contacted McBurney first to confirm arrival of the
targets—the husband pushing the wife in a wheelchair—and second to say they
were about to proceed with their planned distraction. He had not received any
subsequent updates.
    “Every out-going flight is being delayed,” Hans Schuetter
informed his copilot. Seated behind the controls, the Swiss pilot looked beyond
his cockpit and whistled at the sight of aircraft, luggage carts, fuel trucks
and passenger trams clogging the gates and taxiways surrounding the terminal
building, many abandoned wherever space would allow. “If they keep this up they
will have to re-open Kowloon.”
    McBurney lowered the glasses. “Can they do that?”
    “No, but soon there will be nowhere to park incoming flights.
Just look at it. How could anyone expect to control such a mess?” Schuetter
held one hand to his headphones and muttered something as he altered the
frequency selection on one of the aircraft’s receivers.
    McBurney felt the vibrating alarm inside his coat. He
retrieved his satellite phone and pressed it to his ear. “Speak to me.”
    “We lost them.”
    The heavily accented words, nearly a whisper, burst into
his brain. “What do you mean? Where?”
    There was a pause, the sound of a toilet flushing. “Near
the gate. Wheelchair. We lost them.” The connection went dead with a decisive
snap.
    McBurney held the phone to his ear, gazing at the terminal
and looking for wheelchairs. He was vaguely aware of Schuetter moving his hands
about the cockpit, speaking into his microphone in efficient, professional
phrases.
    McBurney turned off the phone and placed it inside his
coat. “Save me a seat.”
    Schuetter cranked his head around. “Where are you going?”
    “Out.”
    “You cannot. We are number eight for departure.”
    “I’ll be back in a few minutes, before you finish your
checklist.”
    “We do not have any minutes!”
    “Just stall the fuckers. Make something up. I need more
time.”
    “Holy Christ, look at this,” the copilot cut in.
    All three men watched a Cathay Pacific 767 on final
approach and about to touch down. Flying abreast of it were two Sukhoi
fighters. The China Air Force jets continued low over the runway after the 767 landed.
They then veered off in bank turns and disappeared into the gloom.
    Schuetter said, “I wonder how many people understand what
it was they just witnessed.”
    With PLA flooding the terminal, McBurney knew it meant that
Beijing had strong-armed the Hong Kong Authority into a complete abdication of
local control. “You will not move this aircraft without my saying so,”
he ordered the men. “Is that understood?”
    “Look there.” Schuetter pointed outside toward the
departure gate. “Are they by any chance our special guests?”
    McBurney looked through the windscreen. A broad-shouldered
man in a hospitality jacket was swiftly pushing a woman in a wheelchair through
standing pools of water, thin streams of water flinging up from the wheels. Beside
them an older man struggled to keep up. They were heading toward the plane. A rumble
accompanied a gray puff of smoke as the co-pilot started an engine.
    Schuetter said to McBurney, “Somebody will be watching
them, no?”
    McBurney strained his eyes. Two PLA soldiers stood inside
the boarding gate peering out through the darkness. “Not if they can’t be
blamed for an obvious error. Most of all they abhor a bad scene.” Zhao and his
wife did not appear to have been apprehended, after all. That had to be one of Sun
Stone’s people walking with them... fifty meters to go.
    “Okay! Wait here while I—” McBurney choked off his