52: Chapter 52 A Blood-Red Banquet?

Their slippers stepped onto the corridor carpet.

Inside the elevator, Jiang Rumu stared at the changing floor numbers.

"What time are we going?"

"Ten o'clock. Abu Dhabi malls open early."

"Do you know how to pick women's clothing?"

"I don't, but I can read architectural floor plans. The women's clothing section is usually on the second to fourth floors."

Jiang Rumu turned her head slightly, her lips moved, but she didn't speak.

Ding.

Twentieth floor.

The two stopped at the fork between 2001 and 2005. Door to door.

"Don't get your shoulder wet."

"Mm."

Jiang Rumu pushed the door open and entered the room. The door closed, and the hallway returned to the white noise of the air conditioning.

Li Li rotated his wrist. Buy a dress. How hard could it be?

Pushing the door open to enter the room, before he had even finished washing his face, his phone buzzed three times in a row on the vanity.

News push notifications.

BBC: "Israel Denies Using Cluster Munitions in Dubai"

CNN: "Persian Gulf Situation Escalates Sharply, Multiple Parties Call for Negotiations"

Al Jazeera: "Chinese Dating Reality Show Livestream Records Entire Capture of Israel Submarine, Over 80 Million People Watch Globally"

BBC is whitewashing. CNN is muddying the waters. Al Jazeera is reporting the facts.

Combine the attitudes of the three, and the answer is quite clear—the daddy behind Israel is anxious.

He locked the screen.

Qatar. Al Udeid Air Base.

US Central Command Joint Operations Center.

Thirty-two LCD screens arranged in an arc wall. The room temperature was a constant eighteen degrees.

John Browning stood in front of the operations console.

On the encrypted call screen in front of him, General Watawobuhu's face occupied the entire monitor. Square face. Thick beard. The Israel emblem on his military cap reflected the light.

John spoke, biting off every word.

"General Watawobuhu, I need you to answer a question."

He raised a hand and pointed to the screen on the side—the looping footage of the attack on Dubai Water World. High-definition camera angles from the Chinese Dating Reality Show. Submunitions hitting the ground. Debris flying everywhere.

"Cluster munitions hitting a water park. Whose order was it?"

General Watawobuhu remained motionless.

"The battlefield situation changes in an instant—"

"Whose order."

John slammed a palm onto the operations console. The coffee cup bounced, and black liquid spilled out.

"This strike did not go through the Joint Coordination Center's approval process. Washington was unaware. The Pentagon did not sign off. You unauthorizedly used US-made munitions to hit a water park packed with tourists from all over the world—and then public opinion blamed us for it."

He pointed to another screen.

Twitter global real-time trending topics.

Rank 1: #USBackedClusterBombs.

Rank 3: #DubaiMassacre.

Rank 5: #BoycottAmerica.

"The President called me personally and cursed for four minutes, a full four minutes."

John paused for a beat.

"He said—'Why am I paying for their mess?'"

General Watawobuhu's Adam's apple bobbed.

"Translate that yourself."

There was silence on both ends of the screen for a few seconds.

"I will say this one last time." John rested his hand back on the operations console. "Before the Joint Coordination Center approves it, any strike operation—is not to be executed."

"Received."

The call disconnected.

John turned to the operations staff officer behind him.

"Mark a twenty-nautical-mile radius around the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi as a no-fly and no-sail zone. There is an Eastern Giant 055 in those waters; don't let the Israel people go there to throw their lives away again."

The staff officer saluted.

"Yes, sir."

Tel Aviv, Israel Ministry of Defense Underground Command Center.

At the same moment.

General Watawobuhu hung up the call and turned around.

Four people sat across the long table. The Israel Supreme Military Council, four generals, all with ashen faces.

The screen in the center of the table was looping a video.

Li Li's livestream replay.

A civilian drone was locked onto the "Dolphin-III". The screen was flooded with comments. At the end, the Ala Country Embassy in China donated 6.6 million.

The Chairman of the Supreme Military Council—an old general in his seventies—tapped the table with his cane.

"Watawobuhu."

In Persian. Very low.

"Teacher."

"The naval deterrent I spent twenty years building was dismantled by a young Chinese man using a toy plane."

General Watawobuhu lowered his head.

No one at the table dared to make a sound.

The old general stared at the Chinese man on the screen.

Tousled short hair. Slender. An old construction site undershirt.

Just a person like that.

"Why did the Dolphin surface there!"

"Sigh, it was all human error. The Dolphin had a mechanical failure five days ago and intended to return for repairs, but that damned Eastern Giant 055 happened to arrive in these waters, so they remained silent for three days."

"They barely made it until the 055 left, but the oxygen inside the submarine was running low, so they had no choice but to surface to quickly replenish oxygen."

The cane tapped again.

"The submarine incident is irreversible. However—"

The old general pressed the red button on the table.

The screen switched.

Abu Dhabi Royal Palace. Architectural floor plan of the banquet hall. Security deployment. Guest list.

"Isn't Ala Country holding a banquet? Expanding the scale fivefold? Inviting the whole world to eat?"

The old general slowly raised his head.

"Then we shall attend the banquet as well."

General Watawobuhu looked up abruptly.

The old general's finger pointed at the screen.

"Activate the sleeper agents. All of them. All personnel lurking within Abu Dhabi, codename 'Red Moon'. Mission—control the banquet hall during the dinner, kidnap core members of the Ala Country royal family. Create chaos. Let the whole world see that Ala Country can't even protect its own dining table."

General Watawobuhu's spine stiffened.

"Target list?"

The old general pushed a piece of paper across the table.

General Watawobuhu took it and scanned from the first line down.

King of Ala Country.

Crown Prince.

Fahd bin Deputy Prime Minister Mohammed Al Maktoum.

Minister of Defense.

Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Sixth line.

The last name.

All other targets were printed text.

Only this line—red ink, handwritten, bolded, the strokes almost tearing through the paper.

"Li Li, Chinese national, Dating Reality Show guest. Directly responsible for the discovery of the 'Dolphin-III' class submarine."

General Watawobuhu's fingers pinched the edge of the paper.

"An amateur filming a Dating Reality Show? Worth listing separately?"

The old general's cane slammed onto the table. The teacup bounced, and water spilled over half the map.

"He made us lose face in front of eighty million people!"

His voice reached its limit.

"His face appeared on every news headline! The Arab world calls him a hero, Chinese social media crowns him a God of War—eighty million people watched our submarine being towed away. Not a news recording, a live broadcast!"

The old general caught his breath.

"Capture him. The Chinese are the most protective of their own citizens. Bind him together with the Ala Country royal family, and the Eastern Giant will have to speak up."

General Watawobuhu folded the list and stuffed it into his military uniform's inner pocket.

"How long to activate 'Red Moon'?"

"The Abu Dhabi team leader's codename is 'Gardener', lurking for eight years. Eleven subordinates—restaurant servers, outsourced security company staff, hotel cleaners—all in place within twelve hours."

The old general leaned on his cane and walked to the door.

He paused for a step, not turning back.

"This time—do not let any Chinese person operate a drone to film our jokes again."

The door closed.

The tea on the table flowed down the creases of the map, soaking the words "Abu Dhabi".

Burj Al Arab. Room 2001.

Li Li sat on the edge of the bed.

Fahd's message: "The shuttle bus will arrive at the hotel at 3 PM tomorrow. Banquet at 6 PM, formal attire. Looking forward to Hotpot."

He replied "Received".

A patch on the back of his neck felt cold.

He couldn't explain why.

Outside the window, the sunset over the Persian Gulf sank. The sea surface turned from blue to dark gray.

The phone buzzed again.

Not Fahd. Not Director Pei Zhao. Not Jiang Rumu.

A text message.

The number field was all zeros. No origin, no carrier information.

He swiped it open.

Six characters.

"Banquet, someone wants you."

Li Li's thumb hovered over the screen.

Sender—blank.

He turned the phone over, screen down, placing it on the nightstand.

He raised his hand and glanced at his left wrist.

The blue text didn't move.

The system didn't react.

The last ray of light outside the window sank into the sea level. The room darkened by a shade.

Li Li rotated his wrist.

Stood up. Walked to the door. Opened it.

The door to 2005 opposite was tightly shut.

He looked down.

The afterimage of the last character of that text message burned a faint outline onto his retina.

"Wants."

Wants what?

The "want" of inviting someone to dinner, or the "want" of taking a life?

The cold wind from the hallway poured in through the door gap.

Li Li stood in the door frame.

The phone was on the nightstand behind him, screen down, but those six characters—

He knew, the person who sent this text message was also counting down.