A Web search revealed Lake Kanas, a day’s drive north of Urumqi, was situated in a mountainous forest on a small protrusion that was bordered by Kazakhstan, Russia, and Mongolia. It was remote, and difficult to police. It was also famous for a large fish that was said to drag unsuspecting horses into the water while they were drinking. Beginning in May, tourists would flock to the lake for the numerous tour boat excursions, hoping to catch a glimpse of China’s version of the Loch Ness Monster.
Ding Chavez rode shotgun, with Adara and Lisanne behind him. Ryan took the rearmost seat with some of the luggage. They didn’t have much, just a duffel apiece, but needed enough to pass for tourists. Most had grabbed catnaps along the way, wanting to be as fresh as possible when they arrived so they could hit the ground running.
An hour south of Burqin village—the entrance to Kanas Lake Park—Chavez got everyone’s attention. Yao was guide, but as an NOC, he operated by himself so much that he was more than happy to yield the role of team leader.
“Let’s do a quick gear check,” Chavez said. “Everyone up on commo?”
The group answered in turn.
Gavin Biery had modified their cell phones so they could function as radio and intercoms, allowing them a common net even when there was no cell service. Gone were the copper near-field neck loops and belt-pack radios. Linked to the Sonitus Molar Mics attached to each operative’s rear tooth, the entire communications system had been reduced to what looked and outwardly functioned exactly like a normal cell phone, and a piece of plastic that resembled a small retainer. It would be discovered only during an extremely invasive search.
Chavez looked across the front seat at Yao. “I know you didn’t want to dig out weapons prior to the checkpoints.”
“Now is probably okay,” Yao said. “Ryan, grab that camera bag in the back.”
Ryan did, passing it over the seat to Lisanne, who gave it to Chavez.
Yao nodded at the hard plastic case. “They’re in there. Two wide body cameras, a couple of lenses, and ten rolls of film.”
Chavez scoffed. “You’re still using film?”
Yao chuckled. “I’m not taking pictures, dude. Those little black film canisters are about the same size as the suppressors. Helps them blend in. The pistols are wedged in the camera bodies. Should be four total. One for each of you.”
Adara and Lisanne leaned forward to get a look. All the way in the rear, Ryan looked on glumly, chin resting in his hands over the backseat, waiting his turn.
“How’d you get this through security at the airport?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” Yao said. “The case was waiting for me at the rental car place in Urumqi.”
“You’ve got some serious contacts, my friend,” Lisanne said.
“A lot of people in this part of the country are good and pissed at their Chinese overlords,” Yao said. “I can usually find someone willing to do something for me as long as they figure I’m sticking it to Beijing. I use a couple of assets as cutouts, to keep my face off the transaction.” He shrugged. “Plus, you can accomplish more with a good cause and a duffel bag of cash than you can with a good cause alone.”
Chavez flipped open one of the cameras. “What the hell?” He held up a small black Beretta semiautomatic Bobcat.
“You got us toy guns?”
Ryan groaned from the rear seat. “You know what Colonel Jeff Cooper said about the .25 auto? You better not carry one because you might have to shoot someone with it, and if you shoot someone with it, they just might realize they were shot and it might piss them off … or something like that.”
“Shows how much you know,” Yao said. “These Bobcats are .22-caliber.”
“A .22 …” Ryan fell back against his seat. “Well, that is just fabulous news.”
Chavez passed one of the diminutive black pistols over the seat for Adara and Lisanne to look at.
Lisanne activated the lever on the side, flipping up the barrel, obviously familiar with the weapon. “My mother had one of these. The tip-up barrel made it easier for her to chamber a round without having to work the slide. Pretty nifty, if you ask me.”
“I agree with Ryan,” Chavez said. “I’d take nine-millimeter over nifty. Beggars can’t be choosers, though.”
“They cannot,” Yao said, tapping the steering wheel with an open hand as he drove. “We’re in the Wild West, my friends. Adapt and overcome.” He nodded sideways to the case again, eyes on the road. There were wild horses there, and the occasional camel. “Unscrew the lenses. There should be five blades in there. Some of them are better than others. Give Ryan the Halo. Maybe a good Microtech will appease him.”
Ding unscrewed the plastic cap on the end of a telephoto lens and dumped the knives out in his hand. All of them were Microtech automatics with OTF, or out-the-front, blades. The Halo was the largest, with a blade just over four inches long.
“Excellent,” Chavez said. “Just in case I need a sexy knife to cut open an MRE.”
“You will find the icing on the cake next to those film canisters we talked about,” Yao said. “It took some doing to get those babies. Everybody on my pipeline kept wanting to steal them.”
Chavez held up a black metal cylinder, an inch in diameter and just under three inches long.
“Small for a suppressor,” he mused.
“You know as well as I that these things aren’t mouse-fart quiet,” Yao said. “But with subsonic ammo this thing is amazing. Solid, too. Instructions don’t call for you to shoot it wet, but I’ve put a little lithium grease on the baffles and … I’ve gotta tell you, it is sweet. Jack could pop a round in the backseat and we’d think we ran over a rock.”
“Custom job?” Adara asked.
“No,” Yao said. “Made by Bowers Group. They call it the Bitty. These are the same, they just don’t have any manufacturer’s markings, in case we have to ditch them.”
Adara screwed it onto the threaded barrel of the Beretta Bobcat and hefted the little setup. “Bowers Bitty ‘Black,’” she said. “Makes the .22-caliber much more interesting.”
She passed the gun over her shoulder to Ryan, who gave it a nod of approval. “I guess the little cuss grows on you after a while,” he said.
Chavez laughed and looked back at him. “Like somebody else I know.” He turned to Yao. “There are only four. What are you going to carry?”
“I’ll make do.” Yao chuckled. “Frankly, if things turn to shit, I plan to run screaming into the woods …”
Yao knew something was wrong when the Han woman at the front desk at the Hongfu Lake Kanas Resort fanned the collected passports in her hands like a poker hand, pushing his upward to separate it from the pack. She set that one aside and then gathered the rest into a neat stack before placing them on the counter. Probably in her mid-forties, her black hair had the slightly auburn tint of a person who spent a great deal of time outdoors. The tag on her navy-blue cardigan said her name was Ming.
Absent the frown lines of someone who looked as grim as she did at the moment, she was probably a very nice woman, or she would have been had not the two hawkeyed police officers been watching from the lobby—one a bulldog, the other a whippet.
“You may check in,” Ming said, loud enough that the two policemen could hear. “But I am sorry to inform you that we are too full to accommodate the foreign guests.”
“I see,” Yao said. He knew full well they had plenty of rooms, but it would have done no good to call her on her lie. Instead, he gathered the Finnish passports and passed them back to their respective owners. This would have certainly been the problem if he’d tried to get them rooms at one of the hotels right next to the lake. They were notorious for telling foreigners at the last minute that they could not be accommodated. He’d hoped to mitigate it by staying in Jiadengyu fifteen minutes away. “My secretary made the reservations,” he said. “I will speak to her about the error.”
“Perhaps,” the desk clerk said. “Or perhaps it was a problem with the computer system. I
t happens.”
Yao started to leave, but then turned, as if struck by a sudden idea. “What if we were to upgrade the rooms for my foreign guests? Their budgets are large. I’m sure they would happily pay for any larger suites you might have available, and, of course, any surcharges such upgrades might include.”
The clerk glanced at the bulldog, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“Would your friends pay in cash?” she asked.
“Of course,” Yao said.
This brought nods from the bulldog and the whippet. The desk clerk took the passports again and made copies for her records. She’d saved face and Yao was able to secure the exact same rooms he’d originally reserved for a mere doubling of the cost. It was a small price to pay.
Yao moved to retrieve the passports again, but the whippet policeman walked over and put his hand on top of the stack. He looked them over one by one, examining each photo, comparing it to its owner.
“Finland?” he said to Adara in Mandarin. “I have seen photographs on the Internet. Forests and lakes like here, no?”
Of all the Campus operatives, Adara spoke the best Chinese. There was no need for them to know that, so Yao translated.
Adara smiled and unleashed her baby blues. Nodding enthusiastically, she said, “Yes, yes.”
“Okay,” Whippet said, and stuffed the passports into his pocket.
Yao protested. “They need those.”
“I have to make a report at my office,” Whippet said, pointing at the double doors with a slender chin. “One of you may retrieve them in …” He whispered to Bulldog, who thought for a moment and then grumbled something back.
“After dinner,” Whippet said. “And you must get them tonight. You will be unable to eat at a restaurant, take a boat or horse tour, or any of the other park concessions without your passports.”
“But—”
“Retrieve them after dinner,” he said again, nodding his skinny face once to show that the matter was closed.
42
Seated to Ryan’s right beside Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Talbot, near the head of the polished Situation Room table, Secretary of Defense Bob Burgess got straight to the point, as he always did. He was brash, outspoken, sometimes downright combative, but, as Lincoln had said describing General Grant: “Where he is, things move.” Ryan didn’t often yield to Burgess’s hawkish nature, but it was good to have a plan. As Ryan’s dad had told him: Decide what you’re going to fight for, and how you plan to do it, then, when the time comes, you don’t have to waste any time making those decisions.
Bob Burgess provided Ryan with the military options, so he didn’t have to search for them himself.
The Situation Room, not exceptionally large to begin with, was packed to the gunnels. Arnie van Damm was there, along with Foley, Forestall, Commander Carter with the Coast Guard, and a dozen other military men and women—and their aides.
Commander Carter had completed his brief regarding the Healy’s recently acquired new passenger—and the fact that the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long’s Z-9 helicopter was already buzzing dangerously close to the Healy, while she closed the distance at a steady six knots.
Carter stood to leave, but Ryan asked him to stay, stating his desire to have all the smart nautical brains the room could hold.
“Mr. President,” Burgess said. “We believe the 880 is the Long March 880, the Chinese Type 094 Jin-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine that took part in the Snow Dragon war games. Last year, President Zhao gave an address to the Central Committee where he noted a ‘revolutionary’ propulsion system for their submarines that would render them as quiet as any in the United States’ arsenal. It was, Zhao said, a new dawn for the PLA-Navy that would take them out of littoral waters and into the blue—an ‘underwater Great Wall’ of weapons that could protect Chinese interests from anywhere, and remain undetected.”
Burgess nodded to an aide against the wall on the other side of the room. A moment later, the two images appeared side by side on the screen at the end of the table and Admiral Talbot took over.
“These are both satellite images of a submarine believed to be Long March 880.”
“The sub on the left is shorter,” Ryan noted. “By at least …”
“Twelve feet,” Talbot said. “We believe this indicates the addition of their new propulsion system, similar to our gearless pump jets. To the consternation of his admirals, President Zhao even called the new device by name—Hai shi shen lou—Mirage.”
Ryan nodded to Commander Carter. “The man the Healy plucked from the ice used this same term.”
“He did, Mr. President.”
“Any chance the Chinese know we have Commander Wan?” Ryan asked.
Carter shook his head. “Very slim. Captain Rapoza was closer. His Dolphin picked up the commander a good twenty minutes before the Xue Long’s chopper overflew the scene. Rapoza sent the bird back out again to recon, so for all the Chinese know, we are trying to figure out what happened as much as they are.”
“This guy, Wan, mentioned a professor as well,” van Damm said. “The missing Professor Liu?”
“Just so,” Burgess said. “He’s one of their top propulsion engineers. It’s not a great leap forward to think that Liu is on the DISSUB. Whoever it was sounds like he had a heart attack or some other debilitating injury. Commander Wan is much more taciturn now that he’s warmed up.”
“Nice work by Captain Rapoza, by the way,” Ryan said. “Engaging him while he was still hypothermic.” He leaned back in his chair. “In any case, if Liu is on board and badly injured, there may not be any way to make repairs to the 880.”
“Heck of a lucky stroke,” Arnie said. “The rest of the submariners are fortunate that the Healy picked up their guy since their rescue party is looking in the wrong place.”
Burgess, Talbot, and Ryan looked at one another, and then at van Damm.
“What?” the chief of staff said, in the crosshairs.
“Arnie,” Ryan said. “Those subs are coming to make sure we don’t get our hands on it, even if they have to destroy it—”
Van Damm cut him off. “I guess this rules out your Fairbanks trip. A ballistic missile sub off the coast of Alaska … that’s the last place you need to be.”
“The icebreaker Xue Long will be on station with the Healy in …” Ryan looked up at Carter.
“Six hours, sir,” Carter said.
“There you go,” Ryan said. “And their Yuan submarine three times faster than that. A few hours and this is all going to be over, one way or another.” Ryan turned to the SecDef. “Bob, I don’t want to escalate this any more than we need to, but with the Xue Long’s chopper harassing Healy, let’s get a couple of F-35s from Eielson to let Captain Rapoza know he’s not alone on the ice.”
43
“That, my friend,” Ding Chavez said, “is one of the worst plans in the known history of plans.”
White vapor blossomed around his face as he spoke, the sight of which made this kid from East L.A. tug the wool hat down over his ears.
He closed his eyes, inhaling the pungent odor of fir trees and a hint of woodsmoke. Gone was the cloying odor of cigarette smoke, gasoline, and garbage that went hand in glove with urban China. The breeze blowing off the pristine lake nestled between tree-covered mountains was clear and clean and cold enough to hurt his face. He could have been someplace in Colorado or Montana.
The sun was low, about to dip behind the frosted mountains to the west, giving the area a pink evening alpenglow to accent the cobalt-blue water. All of them had zipped up their coats and put on hats as soon as they’d gotten out of the van.
Behind a pair of binoculars, Yao tried again with his pitch. “I’m just saying it’s the only—”
“Bad idea,” Chavez said. “We’ll think of something else.”
Adara Sherman lowered her own binoculars a hair and narrowed an eye at Yao. A tear, brought on by the chilly wind, ran down a rosy cheek. “For what it’s worth, I
agree with Ding.”
“Okay …”
More than a dozen tour boats bobbed against their moorings on a long wooden float that ran parallel to the shore. Three piers, continuations of the boardwalks that ran from the hotel parking lot, led to the boats. Three of the boats, including the one that issued tickets identical to the stubs Yao had gotten from the Kazakh, were just returning from a day on the water. Tourist season was still weeks away, but each had a handful of tourists and their local crews.
They were focused on a boat called the Xiantao, which Yao translated as Eternal Peach. Chavez estimated it to be a fifty-five-footer. It had an enclosed cabin with large windows for when the weather was bad, and a long aft viewing deck for when it was clear.
“Interesting name.” Ryan tipped his binoculars at the tour boat.
“Typical for China,” Yao said. “The Jade Emperor’s wife, Queen Mother of the West, looks after the Xiantao—the Peaches of Immortality. Eating them is said to give the gods their long lives.”
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