“No kidding …”
Ahead, the little pickup truck’s headlights went dark. Still well away from the docks, it stopped in the middle of the road.
“Tell Jack to stand by,” Yao said from the front seat of the Great Wall pickup. Ma drove. Chavez sat in the middle. Medina and the two Uyghur men sat in the back. The men made no secret of the fact that if they suspected either intruder of treachery that would harm Medina, they would not hesitate to shoot.
Yao had to ask to borrow the night-vision goggles back from the young Uyghur, Perhat, who seemed particularly fascinated by it.
“Something isn’t right,” Yao said. “The skipper is supposed to be alone.” He passed the NVGs to Ma.
“Alone?” Ma said, peering through the device. “This boat is very crowded at the moment.”
Lisanne was awake again, whimpering softly, grimacing from the pain.
Yao came over the net, hollow. “We’re blown,” he said. “I don’t know how, but there are people on the boat. I can’t be certain, but I think it’s the tall guy with the hat.”
“We can’t be blown,” Ryan said. “We’ll just have to take the boat back from them.”
“Jack,” Yao said. “I want to run down there and kill that son of a bitch. But they’d see us coming before we made it halfway down the pier.”
“I don’t care,” Jack said. “Lisanne needs a doctor—”
“It’s okay,” Lisanne whispered from the back. “It’s my fault anyway.” She coughed again. “Should have paid better attention …”
Ryan pounded the steering wheel with both hands.
“We can’t be blown!”
“Jack, really,” Lisanne said, every breath like she was leaking air. “It’s …” She licked her lips, summoning the effort for a few more words. “It’s … not your fault …”
“Stand by,” Yao said over the net. “Medina has an idea.”
Fu Bohai cursed himself for not telling his men to kill the woman straightaway. They had yet to answer his calls, and that had him worried. The woman’s friends must have shown up. He had little doubt now that these tourists from Finland were the ones who had chartered this boat. There were cabins around the lake. Perhaps they had knowledge that Medina Tohti was hiding out at one of them. It was the only thing that made sense in a country with security cameras on virtually every light post. Yes. She must be hiding in the wilderness, possibly being supplied by the person with the boat whose ticket stubs the CIA officer spoke of. Fu and his men would simply wait, and then force them to disclose her location. With any luck, he would have the Uyghur bitch by morning.
He tried Qiu once more on the phone … What had the CIA officer in Albania called him? Pukwudgie … What an amusing word.
Again, there was no answer.
He slapped the chart table with his palm, causing his men to glance up from their phones and the boat captain to give a muffled yelp beneath the tape over his mouth.
Yang, who was seated at the dinette, perked up and peered out the window.
“Did you hear that?”
“I heard nothing,” Fu said.
Then, far down the docks, a boat motor burbled to life.
Fu bolted to his feet, rushing out onto the deck to look down the pier. Gray hulks bobbed side by side all the way down, barely visible against the ink-black water. The engines were running, as Medina and her fellow conspirators would expect them to be when they arrived—but he’d never expected to actually launch. The boat was still tied to its moorings.
Farther down, the engine burbled louder. Something thumped against the dock. A light flashed briefly across the water—getting their bearings—and then winked out at the same moment the engine opened up. In his peripheral vision, Fu watched a small cabin runabout disappear into the night.
He loosed a scream of rage, pounded the bulkhead by the rear door. “Which one of you can drive a boat?”
Neither answered quickly enough. Fu strode to the V-berth and hauled the skipper to his feet, ripping away the gray tape, then spinning him to reach his bindings. He opened his knife, pointing it at Yang.
“Untie the dock lines,” he snapped, before cutting the skipper’s hands free. “You will follow that other vessel,” he said. “Catch it, and you will be greatly rewarded.”
“Y-Yes,” he stammered. “No problem. I will do that. Thank you.” The skipper’s head snapped up, looking out at the man pulling a line off the stern. “No, no, no,” he said, walking to the open door. “You must cast off the bow or you will run us into—”
The skipper stepped out as if to finish his imperative bit of instruction—but instead leaped over the side into the black water.
“Stop him!” Fu Bohai roared, then turned to his man who was left inside. “Tell me you have driven a boat before! Any boat!”
“Yes, Boss,” he stammered. “Though never one this large.”
“You take the wheel,” Fu said.
“Yes, Boss,” the man said again, tentatively sitting down to familiarize himself with the controls.
The outside man stuck his head in the door, pistol in hand, panting after running from one end of the boat to the other.
“He is gone, Boss.”
“I don’t care about him,” Fu snapped. “Are we untied?”
Yang nodded.
Fu began to pound against the seat next to the captain’s chair. “Then go! Go! Go!”
The new driver pulled the twin throttle levers toward him, causing the boat to lurch backward, burbling in the water. Away from the dock, he cut the wheel hard left and eased the throttle forward, taking the boat into the blackness of the lake.
“I said, go,” Fu snapped, and, reaching across the wheel, jammed the levers all the way to the firewall.
“Boss,” the driver said, knuckles white on the wheel. “I could use some light …”
60
“He’s back there,” Chavez said above the roar of the twin Tohatsu 150-horsepower outboards. “For sure. Lights just came on.”
He stood at the rear of the cabin, watching the lights of the approaching vessel grow larger and larger with each passing minute. Ma had provided them with an SKS rifle, old and beaten half to death, but it was better than a pistol and Ding was glad to have it.
Yao was on deck, slumped beneath the edge of the transom to remain out of sight, making yet another call on the satellite phone.
Ma was at the helm of his boss’s second boat, a thirty-five-foot day cruiser for use when they did not have enough customers for the Eternal Peach. Ding suspected it was also the boss’s play boat, the one he used for personal fishing trips and wining and dining influential members of the Party when they visited the park.
Over a hundred and eighty meters at its deepest point, Kanas was shaped like a crescent moon, much longer than it was wide, and curving gradually to the east as they sped toward the Russian border—just ten miles from the north end of the lake.
Medina stood next to Ma, her hand on the back of the captain’s chair. The glow of the radio illuminated her gaunt face. Outside, snow, stark and white against the backdrop of the water, shot by in the beam of the single halogen running light. Spray chattered along the hull of the boat as it skimmed across the glass-slick surface.
The three other members of the Wuming had stayed behind, helping to cast off, vowing to continue the fight against their oppressors if Ma did not return. Once Medina had agreed to help, there had been no argument.
Jack assisted Adara as best he could. They’d turned on the propane cabin heater and made Lisanne a bed on a cushioned vinyl passenger bench that ran along the starboard wall, wedging her in with life jackets and covering her with wool blankets they found in an aft storage locker. Beyond that, there was little to do but hold Lisanne’s hand and try to comfort her. She drifted in and out of consciousness, which, Ding thought, was probably a blessing, since they had no morphine. Medina, who had apparently taken upon herself the responsibility of medic for the Wuming, brought a small kit cont
aining a bag of saline and an IV catheter. The fluids helped some, but Lisanne needed blood—a lot of blood.
Yao finished his call and walked past Chavez, into the relative warmth of the cabin.
“We good?” Chavez asked.
Yao nodded and said “Yep,” which sounded to Chavez to be slightly less than good.
With Yao out of the way, he aimed the rifle at the oncoming light. If he couldn’t kill the son of a bitch in the felt hat, he could at least blind the boat, snuff out the light so they would be unable to follow.
“They’re moving up fast,” he yelled. “I’ll pop them when they get a little closer. Make them keep their heads down.”
Nine minutes from the time they left the docks, Ma eased back on the throttles.
The oncoming boat loomed closer now—less than a quarter-mile behind and closing fast.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this,” Yao said over the engines, “but if they’re in range, we are in range.”
The beam of the approaching vessel flooded the cabin’s interior, throwing distorted moving shadows around the walls as the boats bounced along on step.
Ma turned sharply to the right, nudging the throttles back even more. The roar of the engines fell dramatically. Their speed dropped by half.
Medina looked at him. “This is too soon!”
Yao checked the moving map on his phone and moved forward, grabbing handholds as he went to keep his feet. “We’re not far enough.” He held the screen down so Ma could see it, pointing at two respective spots. “We’re here. You need to be here.”
The other boat was almost on top of them now.
Ma gave a curt nod. Instead of speaking, he continued to turn the wheel to the right, pushing the throttles forward only when the other boat was almost on top of them.
Even at less than fifteen knots, the twin 150s were clearly outrunning the running lights. Snow and glare reduced navigational visibility to a few dozen yards.
Bullets from the pursuing vessel slapped the transom, narrowly missing the motors.
Chavez pushed open the door, firing the SKS at the most blinding point of light—to absolutely no effect. He fired again anyway, on the off chance he could force the pursuers to keep their heads down. Another volley thwacked the doorframe by his shoulder, chasing him inside the cabin.
“Any reason why we’re letting these guys climb up our ass?”
Ma glanced over his shoulder. “Hold on!”
Downed trees, a line of bright grass, and jagged black rocks suddenly filled the windshield, caught in the glare of the single halogen light.
Ma jammed the throttles forward and cut the wheel hard left.
Fu Bohai’s driver, being unfamiliar with the lake—and boats—focused with laser precision on the vessel ahead, mirroring its every turn. Clouds obscured even the hint of a moon. The incredibly bright running lamps were almost a hindrance in the driving snow and surface spray, making it easy to become confused.
“You must have struck a fuel line,” the driver said when the fugitive boat began to slow. “Shall I ram them?”
“No!” Fu said, standing beside the captain’s chair, one hand on the console, the other clutching an H&K rifle. “I do not want you to ram them. That would sink us both. Stay close. He may speed up again once he makes this turn—”
Fu glanced at the chart plotter mounted to the ceiling, surprised that the moving triangle that represented their vessel had not caught up with their actual location. Ma was clearly following Kanas Lake’s dogleg bend to the right, but the plotter showed they were still at least three miles away.
The driver cursed.
Ahead, the fugitive vessel increased its speed and virtually stood on its side as it arced sharply to the left, cutting a deep C of froth in the water and heading back the way it had come, roaring down the port rail, almost close enough to touch.
“You fool!” Fu screamed. He dropped the rifle to brace himself with both hands. “Turn! Turn the boat!”
They hit the mud at over twenty knots, slamming everyone forward. The driver flew out of his seat, impacting the windscreen with the crown of his head and breaking his neck.
Fu was thrown sideways against the metal console, snapping his left arm in at least two places. Pain and nausea brought him to his knees. One of the engines still roared, grinding the exposed propeller against the mud and gravel. Fu felt certain the otherworldly whine would shatter every piece of glass on the boat. He dragged himself up with his good arm long enough to kill the engine, before collapsing again to the floor.
The motors were off, but battery-powered lights were still operative, for the time being at least. Cold air poured through the shattered windscreen. The smell of fuel permeated everything.
Fu coughed, bringing sharp pains to life deep inside his skull. Seething fury blurred his vision. A steady flow of blood dripping off his brow said he probably had a concussion as well. Yang fared little better with a shattered leg and jaw.
Fu didn’t care how badly the man was hurt.
“Find me the phone!” The excruciating pain in his head made him gag when he shouted. He lowered his voice to a whispered hiss. “Now!”
The boat lay keeled over to port on her V-shaped hull, piling everyone and everything that wasn’t fastened down on the left. Yang found the phone under a pile of orange life vests.
Concentrating to stay awake, Fu telephoned the Burqin Airport, sixty kilometers to the south. He invoked the name of Admiral Zheng of People’s Liberation Army Naval Intelligence and demanded to speak to the XPCC 10th Division officer on duty. Fu was connected immediately and gave a hurried rundown of his urgent need to stop the escape of a valuable fugitive from the forest around Lake Kanas. The officer in charge, a youthful-sounding captain, was extremely cooperative but not especially helpful. Air assets this far north consisted of a handful of L-39 Czechoslovakian fighter jets for border patrols, and two helicopters, both of which were Harbin H425s, the civilian version of the Z-9W (or WZ-9) built in China for the PLA Air Force on a licensing agreement with Eurocopter. The colonel barked at a subordinate to get both birds in the air and then contact Xinjiang Corps Helicopter Brigade in Urumqi.
“But … the helicopters are generally used for search-and-rescue,” the captain said. “They are both equipped with infrared cameras, but no weapons.”
“That is fine,” Fu said, feeling as though he might pass out. “Just send them. These fugitives should not be difficult to find. Their boat will be visible somewhere on the north end of the lake.”
“Please excuse me.” The captain broke off the conversation to speak with someone else on his end.
“Major,” he said as he came back on the line. “A JY-14 radar station near our frontier with Kazakhstan and Russia reports numerous contacts less than ten kilometers across the border toward the Novosibirsk region of Russia. An unknown type of aircraft, but judging from the speed and varied course, they are believed to be rotary-wing.”
“The Russians …” Fu mused, too light-headed to think. “Why would the Russians be involved …?”
“Unknown, Major,” the captain said. “But considering your situation, it seemed connected. The Russian border is a mere twenty-six kilometers from Kanas Lake.”
“Yes,” Fu said. His left eye would not stay open, no matter what he did. “That makes sense.”
“Two of our L-39s will overfly you in approximately twenty minutes,” the captain said. “Perhaps they will discourage the Russian aircraft from making any incursions into China. I have already notified my superiors of your fugitives as well as the radar contacts. Very soon, you should have all the resources you need to make your capture.”
Fu leaned against the bulkhead, ending the call as he watched a steady trickle of blood drip from the driver’s ear where he lay draped over the wheel. The dead did not bleed, meaning the man was still alive. Fu took a deep breath, steadying himself. There was little he could do. He would need all his wits and strength when it came time to str
angle every last person who had helped Medina Tohti lead him on this ridiculous chase.
61
SKS in hand, Chavez watched out the back window for ten full minutes after Ma’s last-second turn, fully expecting to see the larger boat appear at any moment.
The snow had abated to a few flakes here and there, but temperatures fell sharply, making Chavez wish he had a thicker hat.
Adam Yao ended another call out on deck, patting Chavez on the shoulder as he passed, coming in to get warm. His brow was furrowed, his jaw tense.
“Everything on track?” Chavez asked.
“All good,” Yao said, just like before, sounding as if he didn’t quite believe his own words. “They’re five minutes out.”
Medina gazed out the back window, an unfocused, thousand-yard stare. “Do you think they survived?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me if none of them made it,” Yao said. “A hard stop like that … It can be like falling off a roof.” He stuffed the sat phone in Chavez’s bag. Odd, but both were simple earth tone duffels. They were all running on fumes. It was an easy mistake to make—and Chavez didn’t mind carrying a few extra ounces of weight.
“I hope it killed them all,” Ma said. “For the sake of our people who remained behind.”
He reduced power again, this time referring to the moving chart on the electronic plotter as he scanned the shore.
Yao pointed with an open hand at the darkness beyond the glow of the running light. “There,” he said as a small cove materialized out of the black void. Two boulders the size of small cars guarded the entry to the cove, forcing him to hug the southern shoreline as he entered. Deadfall floated in the still water. Ma nosed the logs gently out of the way. The bank was relatively flat, rising gradually toward the tree line fifty meters away. Between water and trees lay a grassy meadow the size of a soccer field and braided with small streams flowing out of the Altay Mountains beyond.
Ma worked the twin Tohatsus in opposition, reversing the port engine while he nudged the starboard throttle forward, swinging the stern around so the starboard, or right side, of the vessel sidled up parallel to the shoreline.
Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon Page 38
