No Place To Die

By Roger Kelly Smith

In a high-stakes game of international espionage, survival is the only option. 

Zhao Xin, a defector with secrets that could alter the balance of power, has landed on Andersen Field in Guam, bringing with her a stolen J-20 stealth fighter and a flash drive containing classified war plans. As the only child of China's President for Life, she holds unimaginable leverage over America's top rival. But her father believes she perished in the depths of the Yellow Sea, and now his enforcer is on a mission to confirm her death or eliminate her.

To protect Xin, the CIA hatches a daring plan: disguise her as an American astronaut and hide her in plain sight within the lunar mining colony. As an added layer of security, Delta Force operator Jan Worker is assigned as her personal protector. With danger lurking on Earth, in space, and on the Moon itself, Xin and her guardians become the target of President Zhao's relentless enforcer and his team of seasoned commandos.

In "No Place to Die," the world becomes a deadly battleground where loyalties are tested, and the line between ally and enemy blurs. As Xin fights to stay one step ahead of her pursuers, she discovers that trust is a luxury she cannot afford. The race against time is on, and the fate of nations hangs in the balance.

From the sprawling metropolises of Earth to the desolate lunar surface, the pulse-pounding action unfolds. Xin and her protectors must navigate a treacherous web of deception, betrayal, and shifting alliances. In a world where no one can be trusted, they must rely on their wits, their skills, and their unwavering determination to survive.

In this gripping spy thriller, filled with heart-pounding suspense and unexpected twists, the stakes have never been higher. With each passing moment, Xin inches closer to her own demise or the salvation of her secrets. 

As the hunter becomes the hunted, the world holds its breath, knowing that in the game of spies, there truly is No Place to Die.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Novus Mundi Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781961511064

Book preview

PROLOGUE

He was dying. She knew that.

She wasn’t going to get him to safety in time. She knew that, too. She kept trying. She had to. She owed him.

She struggled to her feet, her muscles crying out for more rest. She got him up and on her back in a fireman’s carry, staggered under the weight but somehow stayed on her feet. Then it was one foot in front of the other. Over and over again.

There was a rise ahead. A steep one. One she could not avoid. One she would have to climb. The next base camp was just on the far side of the ridge. Two more miles and they’d be there.

Two miles. It may as well have been two hundred. They were never going to make it. She was going to die on that rise. They both were. Their Golgotha.

Stay positive. Work the problem, she told herself.

She kept her head down. Kept the ridgeline out of sight, out of mind. Kept her focus on the next cluster of rocks poking through the sandy soil. And then, that objective obtained, she picked a new one, even if it was only a few shuffling footsteps away. Progress was all that mattered now.

She tried to ignore the gentle slope that grew into a vertical gradient. Even though each grudging step up the rise almost buckled her knees, it gave her hope. She was closer. Not far now. Don’t look up. Just push forward.

At the summit, one of her legs buckled and she collapsed, almost too exhausted to breathe. Only then, did she look up.

In the near distance, just a hundred yards away was the base camp. But what took her breath away, what always took her breath away, was in the far distance. Hanging in the dark, dark sky, a beautiful blue marble. Earth.

PART I

EARTH

1

COMBAT AIR PATROL, LIAODONG PENINSULA TO YALU RIVER

What was she? A thief? A spy? A traitor? A patriot?

She shook those thoughts from her head. All that mattered right now was she was a fugitive and she needed to run.

Lead, I have a problem.

Her flight leader responded immediately. Copy. What is it, Mulan?

The spy cringed every time she heard her call sign. Mulan, according to the famous ballad was the daughter of an aging, ailing, warrior. Disguised as a man, she took her father’s place in the imperial army and heroically helped defeat an invasion by a barbaric horde which, contrary to the Disney movie, was not assisted by a shape-shifting sorceress. She certainly didn’t choose Mulan and it was not bestowed by her fellow pilots. Rather, her squadron leader gave her the call sign and did so, no doubt, at the urging of the 1st Fighter Division’s political commissar, who assuredly was acting on instructions from Beijing. So, there was nothing she could do about it. As the only child of China’s President-for-Life, she had enjoyed a great deal of freedom, much more than many of her countrymen. But no one was ever completely free of the Party and what it determined was in its best interest.

It’s my displays. They’re flickering in and out.

It was a lie. Her screens and the passive sensors feeding them a steady stream of data were performing as they should.

Which display?

The J-20 Mighty Dragon had two large, liquid crystal touchscreen displays situated side-by-side in the center of the instrument panel and three smaller auxiliary LCD screens arranged at the panel’s edges. There was also a wide-angle holographic heads-up display projected on the front of the canopy.

All of them.

She gave her flight leader a few moments to contact ground control but didn’t let him get too far into describing the situation before she upped the ante.

Lead, I’ve lost my connection. Her data connection – uplink, downlink, and crosslink – hadn’t failed. She had disabled it.

Her J-20 fighter had an advanced communications suite that allowed it to share information with nearby friendly platforms, such as her flight leader’s plane, ground controllers, and the airborne early warning drones the Chinese air force had seeded in the air along its borders. With no datalink, her commanders would have no way to verify what she was about to tell them. For the first time in her life, she was almost free of state control.

Mulan, there’s a civilian field outside Zhuange. It’s short, but Control thinks you can safely set down there.

Copy.

I’m turning on my nav lights. Follow me down.

Roger. Following you now. She had no intention of following her flight leader anywhere.

The J-20 was a twin-engine, single-seat, fifth-generation multi-role stealth fighter. The plane was so stealthy that during training or transits between bases, it had to fly with detachable radar reflectors to reduce the risk of collision with other aircraft. The plane was invisible to any radar if flown well and if flown without its big external tanks.

Tonight, both her plane and her flight leader’s were outfitted with two drop tanks each, one under each wing. The bulky auxiliary tanks robbed the planes of their stealth capability, but on a long combat air patrol, like the one being flown tonight, emphasis was on endurance, not invisibility. Should a threat emerge, the planes could disappear from radar screens just by shedding the extra fuel tanks.

She and her flight leader were flying race-track ovals hour after hour because the Yellow Sea, always crowded with commercial shipping, was now packed with warships from six different navies, all covered by their respective air forces, all trying to make a political point. The signing last weekend of the Sino-Russian military alliance had caused the United States and its regional allies, Japan, and South Korea, to engage in an immediate and unmistakable show of solidarity called Operation Resolute Shield, a massive joint training exercise in the approaches to the Yellow Sea. Such a provocation, of course, could not go unanswered. Elements of the Russian Pacific Fleet and China’s North Sea Fleet left port to shadow the American-led forces. Unwilling to be left out of any military confrontation, North Korea sortied a flotilla. To do what was anyone’s guess, but they too, were in the mix.

Right now, she couldn’t care less about the naval posturing. Nothing mattered except escape. The first step to freedom began with her shaking loose of her flight leader.

As Zhuange and its suburbs appeared on her displays, she stole a quick look at the rising moon. The odds were good she would never see it again.

She throttled way back on her port engine and dropped her left wing. She fell rapidly away from her leader and disappeared into the clouds beneath her.

On his displays, her flight leader could see her fall toward the earth. Mulan, what’s going …

She cut him off. Lead, I’ve lost my port engine. With her right hand, she pushed the control stick forward, pushing the plane into a dive. I’m losing altitude.

Mulan …

As she sank down through the clouds, rain began to patter her canopy. Good, she thought. The rain squall will blur whatever cameras might be angled toward the sea.

She eased the throttle back on her starboard engine too, letting gravity do most of the work while reducing the plane’s heat signature. My starboard engine is failing. I’m declaring an emergency.

She kept her voice crisp, her words clear, and her tone calm. All business. No emotion. She was playing to the voice recorders on the ground and on her flight leader’s plane. When the tapes were played back, she wanted to make it sound like she was a hero, worthy of her call sign.

She angled the plane away from the lights of the city rushing up towards her and toward the looming void that was the Yellow Sea. I’m going to punch out over the water … if I can make it that far.

"No, Mulan, don’t! Her flight leader knew at this time of the year, she’d be dead from hypothermia long before rescue could reach her. Do not ditch over water. Eject now."

She switched over to the UHF command net. Both her regimental commander and the division’s political commissar bellowed at her flight leader, telling him they could not lose the President’s only daughter; if they did, they would all be stood up in front of a wall. She toggled back to the VHF intra-flight channel.

No, Lead. I’m not going to that. Too risky. The starboard engine could shut down at any moment. I won’t risk civilian casualties. She increased the plane’s angle of attack.

Mulan, this is an order …

The digital altimeter was unwinding quite fast as the plane screamed down out of the sky. The dark sea filling the view forward. The rain was heavier, the sound of the drops hitting her ship like a roll on a thousand snare drums.

Both engines gone now, she lied.

"Eject, Mulan! Eject now!"

Negative. I’m still over the city.

She made her voice sound a little ragged, a little breathless. But not too much. She wanted a new ballad of Mulan sung about her. It would be good cover when she was dead. The Party didn’t waste valuable manpower looking for dead heroes, not when there were so many other threats. Besides, a new hero would be useful to a one-party state trying to recover its legitimacy from the bloody upheaval of the last few years.

She pushed the nose of her plane down a little more. Then a little more still. This had to look good. Better yet, it had to look real.

As the blood gathered in her head from the negative g-forces, everything she looked at had a reddish tinge. Her ass was no longer in her seat and her shoulder straps were cutting into her.

Tell my father I did my duty, she rasped, no longer faking.

She risked a quick glance at the HUD. Checked her altitude, airspeed, and angle of attack one last time. She was cutting it close. Damn close. But she had to, if her escape plan was to work.

As the plane tore through the winter sky and out past the coast, the spy could see long, steep swells and lots of white caps. The sea was running higher than the weather report had predicted. That would be a problem. Sweat was rolling down her back, soaking her g-suit.

Another fast look, this time at one of her main displays. Her leader was behind her but not close. The island was just ahead. She took a breath and tightened her grip on the control stick.

Long live the People’s Republic, she said over the radio, as she pulled back and to the left on the stick and at the same moment released the two drop tanks.

If the sea had been running any higher, she would have caught a wave with a wingtip and gone somersaulting into the water, disintegrating on impact. Because the J-20 had delta-shaped canards – movable forewings positioned just aft of the cockpit – it could change direction quickly and, as the J-20 tore past the wave-tops with only a few feet to spare, maintain lift.

As the plane heeled into a sharp climb around the far side of the island, she felt something besides the g-forces. A sharp spot of pressure on her left hip. It wasn’t a flaw in her contoured ejection seat or her hydrostatic, self-contained flight suit. It was a slim flash drive sown into the waist band of her panties. A reminder of the stakes, not only for herself but millions of others.

She switched radio frequencies. Over the command net, she heard her flight leader describe a huge splash as one of the commanders on the ground began swearing.

At 3:14 in the morning on November 11, a fighter plane landed at Andersen Air Base on the northern tip of Guam. The logs, written and electronic would later be scrubbed, but those who were in the tower remembered.

It was a textbook landing, the plane’s nose gear touching down squarely on the runway’s center stripe. The plane came in rock steady despite a gusty crosswind, the loss of one engine, and the other engine sputtering and dying from bone-dry fuel tanks.

Like the Navy plane the control tower expected, the plane that landed was painted a flat gray, had an elegant nose, and twin vertical stabilizers. The plane wasn’t an F-35 off the USS John F. Kennedy. It was something else entirely. Before the crew in the control tower realized what they were seeing was not what they had been led to expect, before they could figure out exactly what it was they were seeing, the plane taxied directly into an open maintenance hangar.

When First Lieutenant Zhao Xin of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force opened the canopy, the first thing she said to the astonished on-duty mechanic, after she caught her breath and shook the sweat from her hair, was close the hanger door. When he hesitated, she drew her side arm and repeated her command, again in flawless English.

As soon as the big roller doors banged shut, she extended her gun to the airman butt first, requested asylum, and an armed guard for the hanger.

2

BEIJING

President-for-Life Zhao Wujun stood out in the hallway, one hand on the knob of the door leading to his daughter’s room, looking in. The gears in his cold, analytical mind slowly turned.

Heaped in a corner on the floor were a dozen dresses. Elegant and expensive dresses. Chic and stunning dresses. The very best offerings from China’s leading designers. Dresses other women would have treasured and protected by hanging them on padded hangers in sturdy garment bags. His daughter, however, had discarded them without a second thought after wearing each of them only once. Hanging neatly in his daughter’s closet were the uniforms she had worn as an officer cadet and later as a second lieutenant. Even though it had been years, each uniform was pressed and encased in the dry cleaner’s plastic wrap. His daughter had worn both the smooth silk dresses and the scratchy wool uniforms in service to the State. She treated only one with respect. Her choice surprised the President.

A week before she died, he summoned her from her duty station to act as official hostess for the endgame negotiations with the Russians. Lunches. Cocktail parties. Formal dinners. It was a role she played many times before, had been forced to play since her mother’s death. A role she played well. She had her inherited her mother’s knack for putting strangers at ease with a word and a smile, getting rivals to laugh and put aside their differences for an evening, and for making him look more imperial just by standing at his side.

This time around she didn’t have to do much but smile demurely, laugh politely, and look pretty. For four days, she had been dressed in the shimmering best China’s fashion-forward designers could offer. A colorful contrast to the dull grays of the two presidents and their civilian aides. A fashion foil for the earthy greens of the generals and the somber blues of the admirals. A necessary prop for the news cameras. Judging by the jumble of haut couture on the floor, playing hostess was a duty she performed brilliantly but without joy. Something he had not realized before. Something she had hidden from him.

The President’s eyes roamed the room stopping at each framed photo. Photos of her and her mother at a park, the beach, the mountains, the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, and Statue of Liberty. Nothing from Beijing. Always somewhere far from the seat of government, always when mother and daughter were off duty.

There were no pictures of him. Not even one of the three of them. Pictures of the three of them and of just him with her existed. The press office had dozens and dozens. Some lined the credenza in his office downstairs, but none of them were to be found in her bedroom. Like a disgraced party boss from Mao’s time, he had been exorcised from her history. It was something he had never noticed before. Yet another thing she had kept from him.

The wheels in his mind spun faster.

The one thing he had learned about his daughter since hearing of her death was she was a keeper of secrets. The only question for the President was what other secrets had she kept from him?

He shut the door to her room and went back down to his study.

Waiting for him was a man dressed in foul weather gear that was still dripping. The man was neither short nor tall. Neither broad nor thin. Neither handsome nor ugly. The one thing that did become apparent, if you chanced to look at him long enough, was his eyes were as hard and unyielding as his physique.

The President did not greet the man, offer refreshment, or wave him into one of the armchairs facing the massive desk. Instead, the President let the man stand as he sat at his desk.

Well?

The man gave a small shrug. The same as before. Nothing conclusive has washed up. Just bits and pieces. Most seem to be from the drop tanks.

The President waved his hand impatiently. Don’t talk about what’s washed up. Tell me about the plane itself.

The man gave the President a slight shake of his head. We’ve haven’t found the wreck yet.

"What?"

From the radar plots, we’ve got a good idea where to search but we’re talking several square miles. It’s not like looking for a needle in a haystack, but it’s not far off. We’ve tried magnetometers, but there’s too much metal on the bottom. A lot of wrecks – ships, planes, fishing boats. Plus, a lot of trash. To make matters worse, the winter storms have churned up a lot sand and grit. We’d need a week of patient grid-searching with underwater drones to find it.

The President shook his head angrily. Why are you talking about magnetometers, drones, and grid searches? The plane had a ‘black box.’ Its beeping should lead you right to it.

The other man didn’t respond right away and when he did, he spoke quite deliberately. The plane had a flight recorder, right enough. It has yet to activate. A pause. It should have activated as soon as the plane hit the water.

The man waited for the President to react because he expected a reaction to the possibility his daughter faked her own death and defected with one of China’s crown jewels. When no reaction was forthcoming, the man asked, You were expecting this?

The President looked up from his desk and met the man’s frank look with one of his own. It’s a possibility I’ve only recently come to consider.

The man listened to the rain lash the windows for a long moment. He went to the drinks cart and from a crystal decanter poured them each two fingers of whiskey. As he set a tumbler in front of the President, the man said, Show me.

The President jiggled the mouse and the computer on his desk awoke. Instead of typing a password, the President used a biometric scanner, one for each finger, to unlock it. With a few clicks, he brought up the activity log. He scrolled and highlighted a series of entries dated three days ago. The downloads occurred between 11:34:42 and 11:36:14 p.m. One of the downloaded files was massive.

The computer is air gapped?

The President nodded. Whoever downloaded those files was here. In this room.

The man knew better than to ask about the contents of the downloaded files. If he needed to know, the President would tell him. So, Jing stayed in his lane, the President’s personal enforcer.

He looked across the room at the double doors. There’s an electronic lock. Who knows the code besides you?

My daughter and my majordomo. My daughter hasn’t been in here on her own since … since she was a teen. She only comes when I summon her.

The President paused for the briefest of moments as his mind replayed his words, the words transporting him back in time to when he was younger, and both his wife and daughter were alive. When he returned to the present, he spoke quickly, annoyed at allowing himself to be distracted.

My man lets the maid in once a week, and she is always accompanied by someone from my security detail.

Cameras?

Not in here. Not anywhere inside the house. The house is ‘swept’ every week to make sure there are no unauthorized recording devices.

The man lowered his head and nodded at the computer screen and the highlighted entries on the activity log. Where were you when these files were downloaded?

In the Hall of Purple Light, chatting with the President of the Russian Republic. We were celebrating the signing of the alliance.

And your daughter?

Presumably in the Hall as well.

Isn’t she always by your side at these things?

This was a private conversation, about next steps. Just me, the Russian, and our interpreters.

She could have been in the Hall.

Or she could have been right here.

One of the things the other man admired about the President was he never, ever backed away from bad news. He met adversity straight on and attacked it. It’s why he had become emperor in all but name.

Jing straightened and stepped away from the flat screen. Well, it’s a good thing you’ve spent billions on cameras, AI, and facial recognition software. We’ll find her and track her movements everywhere she went that night.

The President shook his head. "At present, it’s not that night I am most concerned about. First things first. Find the plane."

The man downed his whiskey in a gulp and walked toward the door. Halfway there, as he zipped up his slicker, he turned back. What about the funeral?

A massive state funeral was planned for two days from now. Hundreds of thousands were expected to pack the streets around the Forbidden City. The funeral would be attended by hundreds of heads of state and statesmen. The United States would send its Vice President and Secretaries of State and Defense. Russia’s president, who had only just left Beijing following the signing of the Sino-Russian pact, would return with his key ministers to pay his last respects.

"It goes forward as planned, because no matter where or when or how you