“Very well,” replied Hopkins, “Let’s ask him about the American company, the pipes, and the other stuff you mentioned, at dinner tonight. If there is time.” Again he began turning away.

      “Mr. President?” asked Secretary Striplin again. “Sir, well, Boeing late yesterday afternoon reported orders from China for several hundred aircraft. That’s billions of dollars – and they’ve paid half up-front. And enough foodstuffs have been ordered – and futures bought, we think from China – to feed a small country for a year or more. We really are puzzled as to what is going on.”

      “Where are the foodstuffs being sent?” Hopkins asked.

      “Sir, they have ordered millions of tons of cereal grains, beef, pork, potatoes. It is to be delivered soonest possible to ships now arriving in, or being re-routed to, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston and New Orleans.” She paused. “It really is quite a lot of food. We just have no idea where it’s going… or why it’s all been ordered now.”

      Hopkins was intrigued. But he also realized that she had no more information to provide. “Let’s ask Premier Fang about this commerce this evening, shall we?”

      Hopkins looked around the room and said, “Thank you,” dismissing the meeting. He rose and returned to the Oval Office.

      13

       West of Quetta, Pakistan

       Thursday, 11 April, 13:20 hours GMT (18:20 Local)

      Night was falling. Colonel Li finished the targeting process for the final missile. He disconnected the communications cable connecting his computer to the guidance input port on the side of the missile, and then initiated one final application on the laptop.

      As it executed he looked up into the twilight, seeing the first bright stars, like cold, hard diamonds in the darkening sky, and listened to the peaceful desert evening surrounding him.

      And thought of the fires of Hell.

      This final application would “scratch” the hard drive by writing zeros to every byte position on the disk, writing-over the data, application program and operating system files, leaving only those portions of the application and operating system active in memory.

      In the extremely unlikely event that the laptop ever came into the hands of an enemy, it would be useless. Standard procedure.

      Once completed, the application committed suicide, deleting itself from memory. The computer “hung” in an electrically active, but computing-dead state. Colonel Li watched this process silently, then closed the laptop, stood and walked back toward where he had spoken with the Arab earlier in the day, the computer almost absently in-hand. Arriving, he waited for the other man to come to him.

      Remaining in their defensive positions, the North Koreans impassively observed the Arabs at their camp. A helicopter could be heard closing on their position.

      60,000 feet above, and miles away, Staff Sergeant Elmo Racher, AWACS radar operator asked of no one in particular, “What’s that?” pointing at his screen.

      His commanding officer, Colonel Hebb, quickly walked over and punched the “record” button to store the data. A small, slow-travelling blip was being traced in the farthest corner of his area of observation as the AWACS slowly banked from a southeast to a northeast heading through yet another of its racetrack orbits.

      As Hebb punched record, Racher jotted a quick note on the pad on the table before him, writing the latitude and longitude of the craft, whatever it was, just as it disappeared from the radar view of the turning AWACS.

      Hebb knew they’d be back over this area shortly. On the terminal before him he called up satellite images of the area to get a feel for the terrain below them, studying the images with interest. He next retrieved the satellite orbit and availability schedule. Just as he remembered, a bird was on its way and available to him for tasking to keep an eye on this area for a while. He re-tasked it immediately and continued the tasking for its next several orbits. If he had seen anything real, he would have not only radar but digital imagery recorded.

      He called the pilot, Colonel Sullivan, informing him of the acquisition of a large helicopter crossing the wasteland below them.

      “What’s he doing, Hebb?” Sullivan asked.

      “Don’t know. But I’m locking him in to our observation platforms. Maybe in our next circuit we’ll pick him up again?”

      The Arab raised himself from his reclining position near his men, stood and stretched and then strode imperiously over to Col. Li. “You have completed?”

      “Yes.”

      The thin man reached out for the laptop. Li looked at him, curiously, and then handed it to him.

      Behind Li a large helicopter with PLA markings on it, on-loan to the North Korean army, descended carefully into the canyon, hovered over the flat ground for a brief moment and then landed softly.

      The Arabs turned from the wind blast and covered their eyes with their robes. The Special Forces operators simply pulled down their combat goggles and kept watching their targets.

      The helicopter was of Russian origin, an Mi-8TBK, “Hip-E” in NATO parlance. It was outfitted with 24 tip-up seats along the sidewalls of the cabin, and carried a nose-mounted 11.7mm Gatling gun. The 192 S-5 rockets and four 9M17P AT-2 “Swatter” anti-tank missiles and their pods, heavy weapons systems with which it normally was armed, had been removed to increase the range of the helicopter. Additional deck armor also had been removed to decrease the overall weight of the aircraft. In the place of the external weapons stores, external fuel tanks had been added, doubling its range to the 1,000 kilometers necessary for the mission.

      The pilot disengaged the rotor and brought the turbines to a stop. The blades slowly spun down and the dust settled. The canyon quieted again.

      The Prince of Terror turned and motioned forward one of the men in his group. A young man stood and quickly walked over. The Arab handed the laptop to him.

      Sitting down in the sand, placing the laptop computer on his crossed legs, he opened it and turned it on.

      The Arab watched his technician fruitlessly try to boot the machine. After two tries the younger man looked up and spoke a brief sentence to his leader.

      Turning to the Colonel, the Arab looked a question to Colonel Li.

      The Arab reached for the laptop. The technician gave it to him, stood and walked back to the group of men at a wave of dismissal. The Arab turned to Li, irritation on his face.

      The Colonel looked at the Arab. “You bought missiles, warheads and targeting and launching assistance. Did you think we would give you the ability to re-target these weapons on others, perhaps ourselves?”

      The Arab listened, and then tossed the laptop to the ground, angry. “I have many men here. How are you confident you will be able to leave without doing what I tell you?”

      Colonel Li ignored the question and looked at the Arab for a long moment. Finally he said, “The missiles are ready for launch. They have been targeted. The launcher for the weapons is inside the helicopter, where it will remain. We will launch them as we leave – from our helicopter as soon as we are out of range of any weapons you have in your possession.”

      The Arab for the first time looked surprised as well as angry. “You think we will trust you to do this?”

      Colonel Li regarded him expressionlessly. “What choices have you?” He asked.

      The Arab angrily looked over at the large helicopter, noticing for the first time the machine gun under its nose, and that the aircraft had landed facing directly toward him and his men at a distance of under seventy meters.

      “I will tell you shortly the launch time,” he said in impotent fury as he turned his back and strode angrily across the gravel canyon floor.