Point of Man (Book 2 in the "of Man" series)

Point of Man

P. W. Abbenhaus

ISBN: 1541129938

ISBN 13: 9781541129931

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016920920

Copyright © 2017 P. W. Abbenhaus

All rights reserved.

Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual firms, is purely coincidental. If you want to include fictitious businesses, try: All characters and corporations or establishments appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter_1

Chapter_2

Chapter_3

Chapter_4

Chapter_5

Chapter_6

Chapter_7

Chapter_8

Chapter_9

Chapter_10

Chapter_11

Chapter_12

Chapter_13

Chapter_14

Chapter_15

Chapter_16

Chapter_17

Chapter_18

Chapter_19

Chapter_20

Chapter_21

Chapter_22

Chapter_23

Chapter_24

Chapter_25

Chapter_26

Chapter_27

Chapter_28

Chapter_29

Chapter_30

Chapter_31

Chapter_32

Chapter_33

Chapter_34

Chapter_35

Chapter_36

Chapter_37

Chapter_38

Chapter_39

Chapter_40

Chapter_41

Chapter_42

Chapter_43

Chapter_44

Epilogue

Mourne View Park Football Pitch

Skerries, County Dublin, Ireland

Saturday, May 8, 2010

10:45 a.m.

Penalty kick? the coach of the Skerries’ Dragons screamed. Are you dense? The ball hit his shoulder.

It was the right call. The ball hit the kid in the arm. The fact that there was a minute left in a 1-1 game for the city championship of the seven-year-old-and-under Skerries youth league was beside the point. It was a handball in any league.

It hit his shoulder! The coach threw down his hat and kicked at it. He missed the hat, which made things worse. He stormed to the pitch toward Thomas Dolan, who was the lead referee of today’s match. You have bollixed up calls all game. Now, you call a PK with a minute left. I knew when this match started I would be buggered. I knew you would favor him. He jerked his thumb at Gabe.

From the sideline, Gabe yelled at the coach. Whoa, whoa, whoa. It hit his arm. Tough break.

The coach turned to him. Shut your bleedin’ cakehole, Yank. You don’t even know how to play this game. Go back the States where you belong, with your rap music, Walmarts, and lily-boy fashions. The coach pranced effeminately down the sideline toward Gabe. Look at me—I’m on Facebook, the coach said in a high voice, continuing his prancing. That brought laughter from his team of the six- and seven-year-olds, along with many of the assembled parents.

This is the kids’ game, Gabe said, starting to walk toward the coach. Why don’t you relax. You’re embarrassing yourself.

Embarrassing myself, am I? You better stay where you are, Yank, or I’ll put my foot up your arse. Then we’ll see who’s embarrassed, yeah.

Dolan jogged to sideline to position himself in between the coaches. As he reached the middle point between them, Dolan pulled out a yellow card. No-swear league, Coach. You get a yellow for that. If you want a red card, keep running your trap.

The coach glowered. I’m not afraid of you—he then pointed at the game’s other ref, who was jogging toward the escalating sideline conflagration—or him. It was no coincidence the other ref today happened to be Dolan’s longtime protégé, Peter Leary.

You’re an idiot, Gabe said, knowingly tossing more fuel on the fire.

The coach was trying to get past Dolan to go after Gabe. Dolan stopped him dead in his tracks with a single hand in the middle of his chest. He spoke softly. I don’t think so, lad. Let it go, or things will get… He trailed off, looking for the correct word. Unpleasant.

Leary pointed at Gabe. You, pick a shooter for the penalty kick. Get back to your bench before I hit you with it.

Gabe winked back at Leary Before he returned to his bench, he blew the opposing coach a kiss and then mimicked the man’s prancing, punctuated by a gentle tap on his own butt. His boys erupted in giggles. They had formed a ragged circle by the bench. He stopped watching the opposing coach’s theatrics, as the situation was now out of his hands. He could still hear him yelling and carrying on. If the opposing coach kept up much longer—or, God forbid, raised his fist in anger—Gabe knew the coach was going to get a personal demonstration of Dolan’s rule of disproportionate response.

Grab a knee, boys, Gabe said.

The boys looked tired. Although it was still morning, the day was proving a bit hotter than most. May in Skerries was always a weather crapshoot. Today, the sun was ducking in and out of low cloud cover. There was a constant breeze off the Irish Sea. Judging by the clouds, Gabe figured the skies wouldn’t open up for a couple of more hours. Although Skerries was on the drier, eastern coast of north Ireland, it could still rain at any time; most days, it did. It wasn’t a pleasant rain, either, but a clothes-penetrating downpour usually followed by a demoralizing, persistent mist and a teeth-chattering breeze. On the matter of climate, the Emerald Isle usually receives an atmospheric middle finger, which indirectly explains the Irish affinity for pubs. Pubs were one of only two places to go to get out of the rain. The other was home. And given the wife quotient of zero at the pubs, the decision was easy.

Gabe scanned his roster. Only one boy hadn’t taken a PK this year. The irony made Gabe smile. J. T., you’re the shooter.

Dad, are you sure? J. T. looked up at him, wide eyed and clearly panicked. Sean is a much better shooter. He never misses.

Boys, what’s the rule? Gabe asked, feigning exasperation.

The boys responded in unison. We’re a team. Everybody gets a chance.

Gabe gave J. T. a confident smile and leaned in close. Go get the ball, and set it up on the mark. Pick a corner, and kick it. It is just that easy. I know you can do it.

J. T. grinned back at Gabe and jogged off to retrieve the ball from the end line.

The opposing coach yelled at Dolan. Oh, that is some serious shite. His round face had turned the shade of red usually found on people entering acute cardiac arrest. Now, your own damn grandson, or whatever he is to you, is taking the kick? Mother of Mary, go hifreann leat!

Dolan blew his whistle again. Coach, I warned you. Red card. You’re gone. Leave the pitch. Now. The coach’s lips start to part when Dolan moved a few inches from his face and whispered. You open your gob, and it will be wired shut for six months. Yeah? The stone moai of Easter Island displayed more emotion and movement than Dolan.

All Skerries, and most of north Ireland, had heard the whispers about Dolan and Leary. The duo were an unusual mix. Dolan was an ordinary-looking, six-foot-tall man with jet-black hair. It was hard to gauge Dolan’s age because he didn’t look any particular age—could be sixty, could be forty, hard to tell. His only distinctive characteristic was his piercing eyes, which made the hair on the back of your neck stand up. His gaze was predatory. Being centered in his visual crosshairs made you feel like a lame impala on the Serengeti. You were about to become lunch and wouldn’t even see it coming. His bookend, Leary, was a tall, strawberry-blond chap who looked as if he’d fallen out of an ad for an Irish pub. While he wasn’t too much younger than Dolan—around ten or so years—he appeared younger because of his youthful mannerisms and ever-present smile. They were an odd pair, and tall tales spun themselves about their exploits. Depending on people’s religious affiliation and what part of Ireland they were from, some considered the duo either true Irish patriots or insurrectionists, but everyone knew they were not to be trifled with.

Leary, positioned just behind Dolan, was running over to save the coach when he saw two red dots on Dolan’s back. They took his breath away. How could those be here? Why were they here? They shouldn’t be here, not at a kids’ soccer game. Not now! Two shaky, red dots were dancing their way up Dolan’s black-and-white referee jersey. Leary had seen these dots thousands of times before. He had put them on dozens of unfortunate souls immediately before their advancement to the next plane of existence. They were laser sights, which were undoubtedly attached to a high-powered rifle.

Gabe! Leary yelled as he jumped on top of Dolan.

Leary’s action caused one of the two bullets intended for Dolan to hit the opposing coach’s right bicep. It exploded blood. A second bullet caught Leary in his back as he was tackling Dolan to the ground. Seconds later, three-round bursts were raining down around them in a less structured pattern. It was covering fire from a different weapon.

Gabe heard the shots as he saw Leary tackle Dolan. The scene shrunk around him as ice water ran through his veins. They had prepared for this type of event for years. They had received hundreds of hours of training and preparation for an attack that never came, until today. Gabe immediately knew whom the target would be. It wouldn’t be any of them. He saw J. T. was now thirty yards away from him at the end line of the pitch.

Boys, run! Gabe yelled at the still-huddled Skerries Tigers, who had no idea what was happening. Find your parents. Go!

Gabe sprinted down the field toward J. T. He wasn’t that far away, but he might as well have been on another continent. Gabe closed half the distance when a red van screeched to an abrupt halt on the grass a few feet away from the goalpost. Two men with rifles popped out of the side door. One was pointing right at him. Gabe hit the ground and looked for cover, which was in short supply on the soccer pitch. Rounds of gunfire were kicking up turf all around him. Through the space between his arms, which were feebly shielding his head, he saw the second man point a different-looking weapon at J. T. Gabe immediately recognized it as a tranquilizer gun. The man fired two darts at J. T. while the other laid down covering fire all over the field.

Gabe could see J. T.’s face. He was confused. As the darts hit, he took two steps toward Gabe before he stumbled and fell softly sideways to the ground. The man scooped up the unconsciousness boy and sprinted back to the van.

J. T.! No! was all Gabe could yell.

He had to get to the van. He scrambled to his feet, but everything was moving in slow motion. He tried to sprint, but the van was already moving away, with a man still firing at everyone.

Gabe heard return fire coming from directly behind him. He turned to see Dolan sprinting at the van, squeezing off rounds from his Glock. Dolan was never far from a firearm, and he had retrieved this one from his ref bag. This was the second-to-last thing Gabe remembered. His final memory would be of a white-hot pain in his left shoulder, as if someone had hit him with a bat adorned with a railway spike. It was a familiar pain. He stumbled forward a few more steps and fell face-first.

The van’s tires squealed as it made a sharp turn and disappeared behind a row of houses that lined the north end of the park. Dolan had caught up to where Gabe fell and was issuing orders into his phone.

Target is a red van heading east toward Balbriggin Road. Alert the chief that we need medical at Mourne View field six. I have two men down. They need immediate attention.

No matter where they went—the grocery store, school, movies, or just for ice cream—Dolan always had security teams patrolling close by whenever J. T. was away from the Briar Patch. Four men, two teams. They were heavily armed and extremely dangerous and always just a few moments away. Dolan had always worried about games on this pitch; not only was it fifteen miles from the Briar Patch, it was also only a mile from the Irish Sea. Today, Blue Team was on the west side of the pitch, which made them too far away from the eastbound van. Yellow Team was in an ideal intercept position. Dolan always kept a patrol between the park and Balbriggin Avenue for just this reason.

Do not let them reach to Balbriggin. Repeat, take them out before they get to Balbriggin. Use only force necessary to disable the vehicle. They have J. T. Blue Team, on me at the pitch.

Skerries was a sleepy Irish costal town whose fishing heritage could be traced back hundreds of years, if not thousands. That was one of the reasons Dolan had moved here. He was never too far from a boat and an escape route. Today, this was working against him. Balbriggin was the main eastern costal road in Skerries. It had dozens of beachheads and piers that provided unfettered access to the Irish Sea. Dolan knew if the red van got to the sea, it was a short boat ride to any of four islands and, from there, a helicopter to anywhere in Europe. They had to stop the van before Balbriggin.

Dolan heard an explosion to the east well before the fireball and greasy, black smoke plume rose in the sky. It couldn’t have been more than half a mile away.

Yellow Team, acknowledge. Yellow? Conor, do you copy? Conor?

Nothing. Dolan knew all too well what the explosion and lack of response meant. Along with the two men laid out bleeding on the soccer pitch, two more of his men had probably just died.

Dolan picked up Gabe and propped him against the goalpost, where J. T. had been preparing to take the penalty kick for the Skerries 7U championship only a few minutes earlier. Dolan performed a quick triage of Gabe’s wound. The bullet seemed to have passed through the fleshy part of his shoulder. The only problem would be if it had hit his collarbone or ripped his rotator cuff. He removed Gabe’s shoes and pulled off his socks. He tied them together with the lanyard from the ref’s whistle draped around his neck. He took the socks and put them over the front and back bullet holes, cinching them in place with the lanyard. It wasn’t top-quality work but effective enough to keep some kind of pressure on the wounds until the paramedics arrived.

"Hold on, Gabriel,’’ Dolan said as he put his hand on Gabe’s cheek. He ejected his gun’s empty clip on the ground and slammed in a fresh one. Dolan made the sign of the cross on Gabe’s forehead. The movement drew Gabe into consciousness.

J. T. Gabe whispered, his eyes straining to focus. When he was able to focus again and saw Dolan’s face, he was pleased with the look in Dolan’s eyes because he knew what was going to happen next. The excommunicated priest, pursuing his own salvation, had transformed into an emotionless killer. He would have no compunction as to how he got the mission accomplished. If Dolan had to kill one person or one hundred, it wouldn’t matter. No one would stop him, and Gabe couldn’t be more thankful.

I will get J. T. back, Dolan said as he chambered a round into his pistol with a metallic click.

Kill them all, Gabe said, and he closed his eyes.

The horn on Blue Team’s SUV was blasting as the vehicle parted the chaos that had broken out on the soccer pitch and jumped the parking lot curb. Turf rocketed from under its wheels as the SUV sped through the middle of the soccer pitch, stopping only to let Dolan jump in and replace the driver.

Dolan thought about what would happen. Whoever had taken J. T. was going to the Irish Sea. There were three piers within four miles. He knew which one he would choose. He hit a well-worn number on his phone.

Kyle, I need the chopper on Balbriggin Pier Three in five minutes, Dolan told dispatcher of the Skerries police force. The Rabbit has been kidnapped. Repeat, the Rabbit has been taken. We are in pursuit of a red van heading southbound on Balbriggin. If any units are close, they must stop the van, but be careful not to damage the Rabbit.

Kyle responded from the other end of the line. Roger that. Red van on Balbriggin. ETS of chopper to Pier Three is twelve minutes.

Getting the Skerries police to assist was not a problem. Chief Constable Bisk and his fifteen men all but lived at the Briar Patch. Dolan had trained them all. He had molded them into the scariest police force in Ireland. Requesting the chopper wasn’t an issue, either. The chopper was always at Dolan’s disposal because he was the anonymous donor who had purchased it four years earlier. He needed the chopper for two reasons: to serve as an escape vehicle or to provide air cover for any kidnapping attempt. He had always hoped it would never be used.

Dolan pointed at the end of the pier. There they are. The red van was speeding down the old wooden Pier Three. It was just wide enough for car traffic, but pedestrians were still jumping into the water to avoid getting hit. The driver was firing a pistol out the window to get everyone’s attention. Dolan saw a boat waiting at the end of the pier. He wouldn’t get there in time.

Dolan hit the gas and took Blue Team’s SUV into the oncoming-traffic lane. Traffic wasn’t too bad for a Saturday morning at eleven, and the oncoming-traffic lane would be the fastest. What few cars there were swerved wildly to avoid the SUV speeding toward them. Dolan was rapidly closing ground on the entrance to the pier. In the distance, he could make out the police helicopter coming in their direction. He slammed on the brakes and fishtailed on the pier. They would be there in less than a minute. Angus and Sean, the two men who were with Dolan, checked their Tavor TAR-21 assault rifle magazines and chambered rounds.

A few bullets ricocheted off the SUV’s hood. Dolan stopped the vehicle at an angle to provide some cover on the narrow pier. He slid out the driver’s door, trying to isolate the source of the gunfire. He squeezed off two rounds at the back of the red van. He looked at Angus and Sean and waved his hand in a circle, stopping it with a fist. Coming up from the cover of the SUV, the two men started pumping a continuous stream of gunfire into the red van. Dolan dropped to the pier’s wooden deck, looking under both the SUV and the van. He slowly crawled out from cover to the back of the van. Still prone on the pier, he found the target he was looking for: a pair of legs crouched in the front of the van and out of the line of fire from the Tavors.

The target wasn’t moving. He was pinned. Dolan dropped flat on his belly and from under the red van fired three rounds at the shooter’s unprotected shins. All three hit, and the shooter dropped, screaming on the pier’s deck. Dolan hopped up on the bumper of the van just in case someone tried to return the favor. He cautiously craned up to look into the back window of the van. He saw a motionless body bleeding out on the van’s floor. The dual spray from the Tavors had cut through the van’s back door like paper.

Dolan peeked carefully around the van. He could make out the modified oceangoing speedboat at full throttle heading due east into the Irish Sea. A few purposeful shots slammed into the pier a few feet away. Dolan withdrew to the safety of the red van. He had to wait until the boat was far enough away not to be a threat. He slowly counted to thirty. It seemed like an eternity. Once he was finished, he stood on the bumper and cautiously looked over the roof of the van. The boat was a dot on the horizon, no longer a threat. He gave the hand signal for all clear. Angus and Sean came out from the protection of the SUV, weapons trained forward. The trio methodically made their way to the front of the red van.

Secure, Angus said over his shoulder. Dolan approached the shooter and kicked his rifle to a safe distance. The man was curled in a ball rolling back and forth, holding his mangled legs.

Dolan pointed the Glock at him. Hold him up, he said, snarling. He noted that the man wasn’t Irish or Anglo. He was highly tanned and most likely Middle Eastern. Angus and Sean grabbed the man and hoisted him up against the red van.

Where did they go? Dolan asked. He hit him on the head with the Glock. The blow was merely an attention-getter.

The man said something in Arabic. Dolan was not fluent in Arabic, but he knew enough. The man had significantly disparaged Dolan’s mother.

Wrong answer, Dolan said. He knelt in front of the man and inspected both of his mangled shins. He paused a second to look up at the man, who said something in a panicked, pleading tone. Dolan grabbed the bloodier of the man’s two legs and bent it in the wrong direction. The fractured shin snapped like a tree branch. The man screamed. His left foot now dangled at an impossible angle.

Dolan stood to look the man in the face. He was moaning and looked as if he were going into shock. Dolan slapped him back into reality.

Where did they go?

The man didn’t answer.

Dolan bent down and grabbed the man’s other ankle. This one will hurt more. The bullet didn’t hit the shinbone, so it is still pretty intact. Dolan looked up at the man. Last chance. He started to put backward pressure on ankle. He could feel the man start to convulse in pain as the pressure increased.

Isle. The isle, the man said, mumbling with a heavy accent.

You sure? Dolan asked, still grasping the bloody leg.

Yes, yes, the isle. The man nodded emphatically. Please, no.

Found your English, too, didn’t you? Sean asked, full of contempt.

Let him down, Dolan said to him and Angus. I want you to keep him alive. I may have some questions for him later.

Dolan had to be very specific. He knew Angus and Sean had heard what happened to Yellow Team. They were all family, and this man had killed two of their brothers. Do you understand? He is to be kept alive.

They nodded as Dolan ran to the pier’s end.

Good hunting, Angus said. Either kill them all, or bring some back for us.

The closest port on the Isle of Man was over fifty miles away, which would give Dolan a good chance to intercept them, but he wouldn’t be able to muster any additional nautical help in that time frame. The closest patrol boat was a good hour or so away. Dolan figured if the boat made it to the isle, a larger force would be waiting for them. So, he had to locate and disable the boat, or J. T. would be gone. He waited on the end of the pier as the chopper inched closer. The pier was too small to land on, so the chopper had deployed a chain-link ladder, which Dolan scrambled up.

Single boat, northeast heading, probable destination is the Isle of Man, he told the pilot as he stowed the ladder and dropped into the copilot seat. Once Dolan was secure, the pilot hit the throttle.

In under a minute, they spotted the boat on the horizon. Dolan unbuckled and grabbed the Knight’s SR-25 ECR sniper rifle that was stowed away. He wished he had a larger-caliber weapon to rip open the boat’s hull or possibly penetrate the engine block. The SR-25 ECR was deadly accurate, but the .308 shell wouldn’t have enough power for long-range sniping. He would have to get much closer for a shot to disable a human target, which meant return fire.

Take me to fifty meters off the starboard side, and match pace, Dolan told the pilot.

They were now close enough to see a boat driver and two other men on the boat. The two latter men were aiming their rifles at the helicopter and presumably firing. The boat was jerking back and forth in the rough sea, so Dolan knew it would be a miracle shot if they hit the chopper. He couldn’t see J. T., which was good. Any object on the boat deck was an open target. If they were smart, they would have placed J. T. in plain sight. No way would Dolan risk that shot. That told Dolan something. They hadn’t thought that far ahead, or they just weren’t very professional. Dolan was thankful he was the one shooting down from a fairly stable helicopter platform. He steadied the SR-25 at the closest man and fired two shot rounds. The second shot produced a cloud of red, and the man fell. Dolan then squeezed two shots at the driver, who was ducking behind the captain’s chair. Neither shot hit. The driver started waving his hands wildly at the remaining man, who disappeared into the bow.

Dolan fired two more shots. One hit the instrument panel in front of the driver. The other slammed into the side of the boat.

Damn, hold it steady, Dolan said to the pilot and changed his orientation. He peered again through the SR-25’s scope to sight in a new target. The blood drained from his face. The other man had returned from the bow and had something on his shoulder that he was aiming at the chopper. Dolan immediately knew what it was. So did the pilot.

Dolan yelled at the pilot. Get out! Eject! Eject! Eject!

The pilot immediately jerked back on the stick to shed speed and altitude. Both men jumped out of the chopper as a red flame blew out of the back of the rocket-propelled grenade on the boat. In three seconds, the RPG traveled the short distance from the boat to the chopper. The chopper exploded brilliantly and fell, burning, into the Irish Sea.

As Dolan popped to the surface, he located the chopper pilot. The pilot gave a thumbs-up signal. Dolan swam to him, gathering up two life preservers floating in the exploded chopper’s oil slick.

I punched the PLB on the way out, the pilot said, spitting seawater from his mouth. The personal life beacon was now sending its coded message on the 406 MHz distress frequency, which would be relayed via the Cospas-Sarsat global satellite system straight to the Skerries Coast Patrol. Shouldn’t be too long. We are only fifteen or twenty clicks out from Pier Three.

So much for them not being prepared, Dolan thought as he bobbed in the chilly waters of the Irish Sea, waiting for the search and rescue team. This was no simple smash-and-grab operation. The abductors had a van, a boat, weapons, and RPGs. This team knew exactly where J. T. was, where they were going, and how Dolan would respond. Dolan wondered how long the men had been in Skerries and how long they’d been right under his nose. He could think of only one person with the patience and resources to pull this off.

The Briar Patch

Skerries, County Dublin, Ireland

Saturday, May 8, 2010

10:49 a.m.

Essentially, every technological accomplishment humankind had created, from Babbage’s calculating engines to the International Space Station, all came down to binary simplicity: one or zero, on or off, open or closed. Those two static data elements were the foundation of all computing power. When you wrapped your mind around that fact, the world of computers and software seemed fairly simple. For Xiang Zhu, everything was just that easy. It was the only way Zhu saw anything—the basic code of all life funneling back into ones and zeros.

What was greatly aggravating him at the moment was the lack of a reading on a combination laser-microwave sensor on the Briar Patch perimeter fence. Zhu looked over the diagnostic routine. It was LM sensor number four. Something was off that should be on; a one was a zero. Since he’d written the code that controlled mostly everything at the Briar Patch, the inevitable truth of this problem had to be a hardware malfunction. He knew it wasn’t his software because his programing never failed. The timing of this failure was bu hao, or not good. Zhu had been starting to probe an abnormal threat from a very sensitive area of interest, or AOI. This AOI was somewhere in the middle of the United States called Saint Louis. Loaban, Zhu’s Chinese word for Dolan, meaning the Boss, was very curious about the nature of the traffic. He had instructed Zhu to reverse migrate the IP addresses to isolate the origin of the traffic. What Zhu had initially found was that Loaban was right. Something was very odd. Zhu just hadn’t figured it out yet. Whoever was sending the small packets of code was doing it at the same time every day. Even stranger, the probing code was in binary. No one sent pure binary messages anymore. The intrusion was organized into pulses of packets so small that they were hard to notice. Then, the pulse code assembled itself into an intrusion algorithm that started a routine. That routine hit the Briar Patch firewall at the same time for five hours every day. Zhu would have dismissed it as spam, but the pulse code fragments were very well developed. The program they assembled was basic and short lived but highly extravagant. Once the algorithm executed, it disintegrated against his firewall like pebbles against a tank, over and over. Zhu didn’t understand why someone would go through the enormous effort at all, which for Loaban highlighted the concerning part. Zhu could reverse ping the pulses to a spot of origin, but for now, it would have to wait. The malfunctioning sensor was more important for his long-term survival. If it were down when Loaban returned, Zhu would be dead.

The failed LM sensor was just outside the Briar Patch’s HD video network. Zhu couldn’t see if it had been affected by a downed tree or if an animal had eaten through a cord, which happened frequently. Sensor number four’s failure created a miniscule puncture in the overall security in the Briar Patch, which Zhu regarded as just short of impenetrable. It had taken him the better part of two years, but he had encased the Briar Patch in a digital Great Wall. The primary responsibility of this row of sensors was to create an invisible LM curtain, and it was actually the fourth line of redundant perimeter security. First, there was a camouflaged, seven-foot chain-link fence with vibration sensors, followed by an underground hardwired sensor network. Next was a video surveillance network, and finally came the LM motion and sound sensors. For someone to get through all four layers simultaneously would be next to impossible.

Zhu rubbed his eyes and looked down at his watch. It was right before 11:00 a.m. The team of men would be back to the hutang soon—with a trophy, Zhu hoped. Having grown up in Hangzhou, China, Zhu hadn’t been exposed to any competitive sports. Irish football was as foreign to him as he was to this place. All he knew was that if Gabe, Loaban, and little Tu