Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

by Cameron, Marc

  Ryan raised an eyebrow. “A sonar tech in Hawaii?”

  “Correct,” Forestall said. “These sound transients in question were recorded on a hydrophone during a scientific survey below the ice north of Point Barrow, Alaska. Chief Petty Officer Barker’s former shipmate, a Dr. Patti Moon, left the Navy and went on to earn her Ph.D. in physics. She works aboard the research vessel Sikuliaq, a light icebreaker operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It seems the R/V Sikuliaq was dropping under-ice sensors near an area at the edge of our continental shelf, a place called the Chukchi Borderland, when she recorded the sounds. I should point out that this is less than thirty nautical miles from the point of origin for the coded signal. In any case, Dr. Moon sent the file to her friend Chief Barker on the John Paul Jones and he submitted it through his chain of command.”

  “Does he agree with her assessment?” Ryan asked. “This Barker fellow.”

  “Enough to kick it up the chain,” Forestall said. “Which bears some serious consideration. I pulled Dr. Moon’s records. She’s originally from Alaska. Received consistently good performance evaluations, but all her commanders noted that she had a penchant for putting far too much credence in conspiracy theories, especially those involving the government. Secret cabals and such. Seems she doesn’t trust Uncle Sam to do right by her.”

  “What words?” Ryan asked.

  Commander Forestall cocked his head, not following. “Sir?”

  “Dr. Moon’s Chinese words,” Ryan said. “I’m assuming someone in your office speaks Mandarin.”

  SecDef Burgess walked through the door, already having read the brief.

  “Admiral Talbot is on his way,” Burgess said. Talbot was CNO, chief of naval operations. “He was having a root canal.”

  Ryan nodded and flicked his hand for Forestall to finish answering the question.

  “The sound file is extremely garbled, Mr. President,” Forestall said. “It could very well be fish or moving ice. But if it is someone screaming, my two Chinese speakers are at odds about what this person is saying. One of them thinks fire or danger. I’ve listened to the file myself. Honestly, I find it highly unlikely anyone could pick up human voices outside a submarine. The hulls aren’t like in the movies. We make them quiet. Now, you slam a hatch … drop a pan of cookies … that’s a different story. Voices … I’m not sure about that. I will say, though, the metallic sounds are extremely convincing, especially with the current situation.”

  “So,” Ryan said. “Let’s say these sounds are coming from a DISSUB. The Chinese are homing in on a signal thirty miles away from where Dr. Moon made her recording? Either the damaged sub traveled, or they’re looking in the wrong place.”

  Dustin Fullmer moved his hand like he was going to raise it but changed his mind.

  “Let’s have it,” Ryan said.

  “Well, sir,” Fullmer said. “I’m not a hundred percent sure of Chinese technology, but what if the DISSUB deployed a submarine rescue buoy? If the cable detached, it could have been carried under the ice and didn’t pop to the surface until it was thirty miles away.”

  Ryan glanced at Forestall.

  “I suppose that could be the case,” Forestall said.

  “Would the buoy have GPS of the original deployment?” Ryan asked.

  “I’m not sure about Chinese design,” Forestall said. “The buoys are designed to deploy automatically if the timers aren’t reset periodically, in case they’re unreachable in an accident. The Russians kept having accidental deployments, so they welded many of theirs in place.”

  “Okay,” Ryan said, giving Fullmer an attaboy nod. He scribbled something in his notepad and then looked up at Burgess. “Who do we have up north, Bob?”

  “The Navy’s biennial ICEX ended a little over a week ago,” Burgess said. “Two subs took part. The Connecticut was headed home, already abeam the San Juan Islands by the time we turned her around. But SSN 789—the Indiana—is still under the ice. We don’t have contact with her for the moment, but we’re sending ELF signals for her to make contact when she’s able to receive. I imagine she’s shadowing a Russian submarine. They would have come to lurk around the edges of our ICEX training. If need be, we can send someone up with Deep Siren. Find a lead in the ice and get a message to them that way.”

  Raytheon’s Deep Siren was essentially a low-frequency acoustic tactical paging system to communicate underwater. It had proven itself many times over during several ICEX scenarios. Moving ice was problematic, but as long as there was open water, messages could be sent to the sub. “In addition to the Indiana, the USCG icebreaker Healy is also present,” Burgess added. “We’ve been in contact and they are moving to investigate the point of this coded signal’s origin.”

  “Very well,” Ryan said. “The ice makes it problematic …”

  Forestall nodded.

  “It does indeed, sir,” Burgess said. “Surface ships are a no go, other than the Healy. And with this many Chinese, U.S., and, surely, Russian submarines playing cat and mouse the chances of someone bumping rises sharply.”

  Ryan shook his finger. “No bumping.”

  “Roger that, Mr. President.”

  “Have your experts keep playing with the sound file and that coded signal,” Ryan said, still tapping the desk with his pencil.

  “Of course, sir,” Forestall said.

  “So,” Ryan said. “Dr. Moon is from Alaska?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Forestall said. “Her record says she’s from a small village on the Arctic. Point Hope.”

  “Point Hope.” Ryan gave a sad shake of his head. “Interesting.”

  “It’s in the top corner of the state,” Forestall said. “On the northwest coast.”

  “I’m familiar with Point Hope,” Ryan said. “And some of you likely read about it in college. Shortly after World War Two, some well-meaning but poorly informed folks at the Atomic Energy Commission were trying to come up with peacetime uses for the A-bomb. In their infinite governmental wisdom, somebody decided we should detonate five nuclear bombs a little south of that village where Dr. Moon is from to build a new harbor … in an area that stayed covered in ice more than half of the year. The plan was nixed, but it’s no wonder she doesn’t trust the government. I’m sure she grew up hearing stories about Project Chariot. You work for the government as long as I have, you learn some conspiracies deserve a little extra credence. Given the total of what’s going on, there is a strong probability that the PLAN Submarine Force is launching a rescue mission.”

  “Agreed,” Burgess said.

  “Very well,” Ryan said. “I’ll leave the how and how many up to you. But I’d like to be kept informed. Where exactly is the Healy right now?”

  The Coast Guard vessel Healy was one of only two functional icebreakers in the U.S. military inventory. China also had two. Russia had over forty.

  Commander Forestall tapped a query into his tablet, waited a moment, then said, “The Healy is patrolling north of Kaktovik, Alaska—an old DEW Line station.”

  DEW Line was a series of Distant Early Warning radar sites, meant to keep tabs on the Soviet Bear during the Cold War. Some three hundred miles east of Point Barrow, the Inupiat village of Kaktovik was on the northern edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It now served as a hub for scientific research on climate change and a thriving tourist destination for watching polar bears that came to eat on the boneyard from the village’s yearly harvest of bowhead whales.

  Ryan stood. The others were already standing, but van Damm got to his feet as well.

  “Who’s Healy’s skipper?”

  Forestall glanced at his tablet again. “Captain Jay Rapoza.”

  Ryan picked up the pencil again, thinking, then tossed it back to the center of his desk.

  “And he’s heading for the source of this coded signal?”

  “Correct,” Burgess said.

  “And that will take him near the place were Dr. Moon heard her sounds?”

  Burgess glan
ced at Forestall.

  “Right over the top of it, Mr. President.”

  “Bob, get in touch with Rapoza’s chain of command and make sure everyone stays in the loop as things develop.”

  “Yes, sir,” the SecDef said.

  “Robbie,” Ryan said, causing Forestall to turn. “There’s one more thing I’d like you to facilitate for me.”

  20

  John Clark marked the police minders as soon as he boarded the aircraft. Both were Han Chinese men in their forties, seated three rows behind him on either side of the aisle. They read magazines, looking up periodically with feigned disinterest. The one on the right had thinning hair and a long, horselike face. He was dressed like a businessman coming home from a conference, open-collared white shirt, rumpled suit, an overcoat he kept in his lap like a blanket. He talked on his phone a lot—or pretended to. The other was slightly doughy with a blue ball cap and puffy blue ski jacket over a corduroy sport coat that looked too tight to button. Clark noted Horse Face’s shoe that stuck half out in the aisle. It was well worn, sturdy, and didn’t quite match the business suit. The Uyghurs who’d boarded in front of Clark recognized the minders for what they were as well, and leaned slightly away when they shuffled past, as if the men were contagious.

  Clark had the entire row to himself. The China Southern Airlines flight was only around half full, but most of the passengers were Uyghur men. None of them wanted to risk being seen chatting with a foreigner by the two police minders.

  The steady hiss of air flowing across the fuselage of the shabby but serviceable Airbus changed to a burbling roar as the pilots deployed flaps and slowed the plane in preparation for landing. Clark’s ears popped, alerting him to the aircraft’s descent. He hated airports, and didn’t particularly enjoy being crammed into a flying metal tube. But he wasn’t apprehensive about flying itself. At best, he was ambivalent. For him, slipping the surly bonds of earth was simply a means to an end. Some found the idea of flying a romantic notion. Good for them. Clark understood, a little.

  He felt that way about the sea.

  The pilots kept the cabin on the chilly side, so most passengers wore their coats or at least a heavy wool sweater during the flight. Most of the Uyghur men wore black fur hats pulled low over their eyes, like the winter hat worn by Brezhnev in all the newsreels. Others wore ball caps, or snap-brims. A couple of the older ones wore large fur Kyrgyz hats, similar to a Russian ushanka but wider at the earflaps, perfectly suited to their long white beards and Turkic features. Dark eyes and aquiline noses peered back and forth at the gathering twilight out of the windows on each side of the plane.

  Clark watched the ground rise up to meet him out the window to his left. A dusty haze hung over the dull gray of the city and muted brown of the surrounding countryside. Patches of grimy snow clung to the shadows. The canal along the highway leading from the airport northeast of the town flowed full of chocolate-brown water. A convoy of three white-topped military troop carriers rolled down the highway east of the city. Pickups and larger trucks shared the roads with taxis and scooters.

  Clark could already feel the grit of dust in his teeth and the chill on his neck just from looking out the window. It was no wonder everyone on the plane wore winter hats.

  The plane bounced once, crabbing into a stiff crosswind before straightening up and settling onto Kashgar Airport’s only runway.

  The police minders followed Clark off the plane and then jumped ahead when he was held up at Immigration and Customs. He was sure he’d see them again. No doubt about that.

  The uniformed Han officer grunted as Clark slid his Canadian passport and visa, courtesy of Adam Yao’s friend in Beijing, across the counter. The officer perused it with the jaundiced eye of someone accustomed to being lied to on an hourly basis.

  He asked Clark a couple perfunctory questions about the purpose of his trip. For his part, Clark tried very hard to hide the predatory edge in his eyes by acting bewildered. The three-thousand-mile trip from Ho Chi Minh City via Guangzhou and Urumqi had sapped him, and he was able to play weary traveler without acting. The officer barked something unintelligible, making the bewildered look easy to sustain.

  It sounded as if he’d asked Clark if he had a jeep.

  Clark shrugged and tapped his ear. It was better for the officer to think he was simply dealing with an old deaf guy rather than to be offended because Clark couldn’t understand his English.

  “You have the GPS?” the officer pantomimed, using his index finger like a compass needle. “For navigation.”

  “On my phone,” Clark said, honestly.

  “Mobile phone!” The man snapped his fingers. “Give to me.”

  Clark fished the phone out of his jacket pocket and passed it to the officer without argument.

  “Extra battery?”

  Clark dug out the spare charging block as well.

  “Passcode!

  “I …”

  “Passcode or I do not give back,” the man said. He gazed up at Clark without lifting his head.

  Clark gave him the code to unlock the screen.

  The officer scrolled, perusing the various icons, then said, “Do not use in China.”

  “The phone?”

  The officer gave a disgusted shake of his head, then pointed to the map icon on the screen, raising his voice for the deaf Canadian at his station.

  “No JEEPS in China.”

  “I understand,” Clark said. “No GPS.”

  The officer slid the phone and passport back, but kept the extra battery for himself, giving no explanation. It was a small sacrifice to the Immigration and Customs gods.

  One problem down, Clark moved to the next. He traveled with just a carry-on, so he made his way directly through the terminal, past the crowd of passengers. They squatted on tiny plastic stools by their bags, eating instant noodles or shanks of meat, while they waited for flights that rarely departed on schedule.

  The two police minders, Horse Face and Doughboy, resumed their tail before Clark made it out the glass doors. Blowing yellow dust muted the glow of the streetlamps, forcing Clark and everyone else to bow their heads against the biting wind. The two minders trotted to keep up as he skirted a group of construction workers in hard hats laying rebar for a new sidewalk between the buses and taxi stand.

  He’d let them follow him for now. But sooner or later, he’d have to lose them or lie to them.

  Clark was, in fact, extremely good at lying. Sociopathy within proper bounds, the shrinks at Langley called it. Clark had never considered himself a spy in the strictest sense of the term. He was an operator, had been since he was a pup. Operators lied to get where they needed to be—or, more often than not, to get out of the grease after the job was complete. He grabbed intel when he came across it, of course, but in the main, he used other people’s intel to go in, do his thing, and then slip away.

  A good percentage of the time his thing had to do with getting some spy out—or killing one.

  Hala Tohti helped load boxes of oiled noodles onto the back of her aunt’s scooter. Her aunt’s normally olive skin was chalky pale. She’d been up at all hours of the night, sewing, cooking, reading, anything but sleeping.

  “I can take these to the market,” Hala said, nodding at the noodles.

  “I will be fine,” Zulfira said.

  A cold wind howled up the dusty street, picking up bits of trash and causing them to dance under the light posts, bristling with security cameras. Zulfira pulled her woolen scarf around her neck and shivered.

  “I think you may be ill,” Hala said.

  “I said I will be fine.”

  The busy Jiefang Night Market was only a few blocks away, but Zulfira swayed in the wind as if she might fall over before making the short trip.

  Zulfira climbed aboard the scooter with unsteady legs. “I will drop off the noodles to Rami and return at once,” she said, head bent against the wind. “Chop the meat while I am gone. We must have dinner ready when Mr. Suo arrives.”<
br />
  Hala’s throat convulsed, making her warble like a frightened child—which made her angry with herself. “What if he comes while you are gone?”

  “Ren sent word. Mr. Suo is delayed with meetings. He will be here in two hours. Plenty of time.”

  Hala knew better than to argue. She was a guest in her aunt’s home.

  Hala watched her aunt’s scooter disappear into the dusk before going back into the house. She was no stranger to work—and there was always plenty of it to do. Her mother had taught her to make savory rice plov, and chop mince and vegetables to fill dough for samsa, by the time she was six. She could joint a chicken with her eyes closed, especially with her uncle’s razor-sharp cleaver.

  She stood on a stool while she worked, chicken carcass on a flat board, cleaver in her right hand. Holding a drumstick—yellow foot and claws attached—away from the breast at an angle, she pressed the cleaver against the joint and popped it away, setting aside the neatly separated leg. What else could she do? She saw the way the fat bureaucrat Suo and his secretary, Ren, looked at both her and her aunt. Oh, Fat Suo liked Zulfira, but Hala was old enough to realize men looked at her as well with glazed eyes and sagging jaws. Fat Suo would be back soon, looking at her like she was a sweet. But Zulfira was strong. Zulfira would protect her.

  Hala had seen it before, at the dance and gymnastics academy in Nanjing. Coaches sometimes looked at the older girls that way. They took them on walks or to their offices upstairs. None of the girls ever said what happened when they came back to the dormitory, but they cried a lot. Some of them got so sick that they had to leave the school.

  Sometimes, early on when she was still only seven years old and she’d just been identified as a gymnastics prodigy and sent away to train for the glory of the Motherland, Hala wished she would get sick so she could go home like the other girls. Later, when she was old enough to understand some of it, she learned the girls hadn’t gone home. They’d left the school in shame, to have babies. Hala had grown up around farm animals and understood the basics, but not the narrow-eyed looks some of the coaches had when they looked at the older girls.