Free Beyond all Limits by J. T. Brannan

beside him. He had eaten on the plane, but his adrenalin had still been racing and he hadn’t managed to keep much down; now his hunger was appearing with a vengeance.
    Catalina dos Santos looked down at her files, though it was hardly necessary; she had already memorized everything there was to know about him.
    ‘To a certain extent, he’s an unknown quantity,’ she admitted, ‘which is one of the reasons he was able to take everyone by surprise. All we have at the moment is his military file, although we’re working hard to get more data. Fifty-six years old, born June fourth, nineteen sixty-four in Chengdu, Sichuan province. No information on parents or siblings. Joined the People’s Liberation Army at seventeen, reportedly fought well during several border clashes with Vietnam, which stemmed from the Sino-Vietnamese War in seventy-nine. Eventually led units as a captain against the Vietnamese in the late eighties before transferring to the Second Artillery Corps. You’ve heard of the Great Wall Project?’
    Cole nodded. ‘I’ve heard about it, although I’m not sure if the rumors have ever been verified. Supposedly the Chinese have built a system of tunnels, thousands of miles long, underneath the Taihang Mountains, named after the Great Wall due to its size and the amount of work that’s gone into it. They’re apparently using the tunnel network to hide their nuclear stockpile – which is again rumored to be several thousand rather than the mere hundreds they claim to have.’
    Olsen nodded. ‘That’s the rumor,’ he confirmed, ‘and that’s all it is really. But enough people seem to be telling the same story for us to at least give it some credibility. I know we’ve been defensive partners of the Chinese for over a year now, but that doesn’t mean they trust us any more than we trust them, and they’re not likely to have let us know about such a system, even if it exists.’
    Dos Santos also nodded in agreement. ‘General Olsen’s right,’ she said, ‘it is just a rumor. But General Wu was posted to the Taihang region for several years, along with several battalions of engineers, thousands of men. A lot of tunneling could have gone on in that time, and Wu’s record indicates his elevation to general rank occurred about the same time the stories about the network being completed started to leak out. It’s been suggested by some of our analysts that it was a reward for his work on the Great Wall Project.’
    Cole thought, grabbing his third sandwich. ‘I guess it explains how he could organize the use of the Dong Feng mobile units before he’d gone through with the coup itself – he would know all of the officers from the Second Artillery Corps, they’d all be loyal to him. If those stories about the Great Wall are true though, I guess that makes things even worse.’
    ‘Yes,’ Abrams agreed. ‘The possibility is that we now have a madman in control of the only country in the world whose military could give ours a run for its money – and he’s possibly the very man who helped design and engineer a nuclear missile network that could vaporize our own in an instant.’
    ‘Resources?’ Cole asked.
    ‘Anything you need,’ Abrams replied. ‘Pete and Cat have already opened up the channels, you’ve got full military and intel back-up. You come up with the plan, and let them know what you need.’
    Cole nodded. ‘I’ll need a full intel dump,’ he said, turning to dos Santos.
    The Director of National Intelligence nodded, smiling. ‘I’m already working on it, I’ll send you over everything we have to your office.’
    Abrams sipped her coffee, then looked back over at Cole. ‘There is another aspect to the mission,’ she said.
    ‘The government officials?’ Cole asked.
    Abrams nodded. ‘We suspect that Tsang Feng is dead already, and it’s a possibility that other government ministers might be next. We need to get them out before they’re targeted, or else we’ll have