Page 79 of Rising Tiger

“Chinese national. Twenty-four years old. Was on a student visa, studying applied physics at MIT. Had been absent from class the last couple of days.”

“Anything else in his background?”

“You meanherbackground,” Lawlor said, correcting him.

“The attacker was female?”

“Yep.”

“Just like I—”

“Just like you projected,” Lawlor said, finishing his sentence for him. “The Chinese are getting more desperate and their tactics reflect it. They’re hoping that they can be more successful by utilizing female operatives.”

“Didn’t work this time, did it?”

“Judging by how much of her is scattered across Nicholas’s property, no, it did not.”

“Do we know anything about her background?” Harvath asked. “Was she working for Chinese military intelligence? State intelligence? Do we have anything at all on her?”

“She was unremarkable. Clean. No flags. She sailed right through the visa process.”

Harvath shook his head. “One-point-four billion people. Welcome to the next fire hose we get to choke on. Beijing isn’t going to send anything butclean, unremarkableoperatives. They have an endless supply. We’re fucked.”

“Going forward, perhaps,” Lawlor replied. “But right now, on this one, we lucked out.”

“How so?” he asked, perking up.

“We got the weapon.”

“You’ve gottheweapon? The Havana Syndrome device?”

“Saint Nick’s claymores really did a number on it,” said Lawlor, “but yes, we’ve got it. DARPA is pulling it apart as we speak.”

“And it’s gotMADE IN CHINAstamped all over it, right?” Harvath joked.

“It may be covered in bloodmade in China,” Lawlor replied, “but our enemies are much smarter than that. I have no expectation that anything about that weapon is going to trace back to Beijing. Or Hong Kong. Or Shanghai. Or Huaibei. It’s one of the first ghost guns of the twenty-first-century battlefield.”

“So you got one gun. One operative. Well done,” said Harvath. “But how do we know there aren’t more? How do we know they aren’t going to hit him again?”

“To be honest, we don’t know.”

“Exactly. Which is why I want you to bring me back.”

“Now?” said Lawlor. “While you’re in the middle of an op?”

“Send over Staelin and Haney. Send over Preisler. Jesus, send over Johnson. Even he couldn’t fuck this up.”

“Scot, I can’t—”

“Gary, listen to me,” Harvath interrupted. “I am the only family Nicholas has. He would drop everything to help me. Right now, I need to drop everything to help him.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Nicholas has Nina and they have each other, as well as the baby—who I have every expectation is going to be okay. Nick splattered that operative who was sent to attack him. News travels fast, but over long distances and in situations like this, it doesn’t travel well. Beijing is going to have a hard time finding its footing and figuring out what exactly happened.

“There’s going to be uncertainty up and down the ranks in China. We can use that to our advantage. The bottom line is that we’re midstream and we are most definitelynotchanging horses. If you want to help Nicholas, complete your assignment and then return home. Is that clear?”