Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

by Cameron, Marc

  Medina shook her head in disbelief, though it was clear from the look in her eyes that this was exactly what she thought had happened. She reached for the notepad in front of Chavez. “May I?”

  Yao scooted forward in his chair, looking at Chavez. “I may need to go to Huludao and take a look through the professor’s office.”

  Medina shook her head. “No,” she said. “He kept everything important to him under the floorboards of his bedroom.” She looked sheepishly at the men. “I did not … I mean to say … he was my superior. There was nothing …”

  “Bastard,” Ryan said again.

  Yao patted the table. “We are not judging you for the actions of bad men. Now, do you believe he would have kept plans from his work in this secret spot?”

  “I feel sure of it,” Medina said, scribbling on the pad. “He stored little at the labs, fearing others would steal his work and take the credit for it.” She got to her feet, carrying the pad as she walked, swaying with the motion of the truck to work off her anger, since there was no room in the back to pace.

  “I must return to China,” she said.

  “Not a chance,” Ding said. “We almost didn’t get you out.” He didn’t say it out loud, but he couldn’t help but think that Lisanne might well still lose her life on the mission to get Medina. He wasn’t about to let her return and risk falling into Beijing’s hands.

  “Listen to me,” Medina said. “I can retrieve the files.”

  “No,” Ding said. “I’m confident the professor’s home has already been ransacked by government agents a dozen times over.”

  “I doubt they could find his hiding place,” Medina said. “He has an engineer’s mind. He knows how to build clever things. I would pit his intellect against the idiots from the MSS any day.”

  “My friend is right,” Yao said. “We just prevented you from falling into Beijing’s hands. You are the key.”

  “No,” Medina said. “The key is the plans for the Mirage propulsion drive, and that will be in Liu Wangshu’s home. I am certain of it.”

  “Then we will go,” Ding said. Resolute. “Or, at least, I will.”

  Medina looked stricken at the thought. “If anyone goes, it should be him.” She nodded at Yao. “You look Chinese, so you might be able to walk around Huludao for a time without being questioned, but even you will still need me to get past Auntie Pei. She is the neighbor across the street.”

  “No,” Chavez said. “And that’s final. I may not be the person for the job, but you certainly aren’t. We’ll figure out another way to get around Auntie Pei.”

  Yao patted the table again, harder this time. “Wait,” he said. “How long after you turned in your assignment with the design of the Mirage drive were you expelled?”

  “That very evening,” Medina said.

  “Did Liu tell you what components of the project he wanted you to correct?”

  She looked up from the notepad. “He did not.”

  “I don’t think there was anything for you to correct,” Yao said. “I expect he saw right away your plans were workable. If he’d needed your help with anything, he would have waited to have you kicked out.”

  Chavez was nodding now. “So if the professor is somehow incapacitated on that sub, and the Mirage drive is damaged, then they want Medina so she can help repair it.”

  “Could be,” Yao said. “It is more likely that they want to destroy the existing one to keep it from falling into our hands. If they have Medina, they can re-create a new one.”

  Medina smiled. “And if Medina can re-create it for Beijing …” She tapped the side of her head with her pencil and turned the notepad toward them. “Then she can re-create it for you.”

  Chavez thought for a moment, and then smiled at Yao, who walked to the back of the truck so he could get a good signal on the sat phone.

  63

  In the control room of the Indiana, Captain Condiff watched over Petty Officer Markette’s shoulder at the green “waterfall” on his screen that turned sounds into pictures that only sonar technicians could read.

  The Indiana was at full stop, rigged for ultraquiet. The loudest pumps had been taken off-line, even if they were slightly more efficient than the quieter ones. Everyone not on station was in their bunk, to keep accidents from happening. Everyone spoke in whispers, not so much because the other sub would be able to hear them, but because it reminded them of their condition.

  A half-hour earlier, Markette had “spotted” the new contact—another sub—diesel-electric probably, quieter than a nuke, but for a squeaky bearing in one of the pumps.

  “Bearing two-seven-zero,” Markette said. “Two thousand meters. She’s going back and forth, hunting.”

  “Captain,” the USS Indiana’s communications tech said. “Incoming on Deep Siren.”

  The lead F-35 pilot’s voice squawked over the radio in the Healy’s control room.

  “I think your company’s decided to RTB. We’ll be on station for a bit if you need us.”

  Captain Rapoza chuckled. It wasn’t surprising that the Chinese icebreaker’s little Z-9 helicopter had decided to return to base with two American fighter jets paying the Healy a social call.

  The Healy and the Xue Long found themselves in a standoff of sorts, both hove-to, facing each other, literally on thin ice. Open leads webbed the surface all around them. Drifting bergs bumped their hulls. A stiff wind blew in from the north, forcing both ships to work hard to keep from being pushed steadily southward with the broken pads of ice.

  A second-class petty officer named Lilly came across the radio from the afterdeck. He was from outside New Orleans, and to Rapoza, he always sounded like he had a mouthful of food when he spoke.

  “Communication buoy on the surface, Captain,” he said.

  The Healy had contacted Indiana via Deep Siren, the Raytheon low frequency tactical underwater paging system. Though not deployed fleet-wide, even on Navy vessels, it made sense to station such a device aboard one of the only ships in the U.S. inventory that ventured out on the ice where submarines lurked below. If the Indiana was down there, as Pacific Command said she would be, then he’d get the message and respond. He’d done just that, deploying a tethered device called an X-SUB Communication Buoy that allowed for two-way communication. The Indiana, knowing much more about Healy’s position than she knew about the sub’s, sent the buoy up twenty yards to port off the afterdeck. It was barely visible above the water.

  “Very well,” Rapoza said, nodding at his XO. “Let’s get Captain Condiff on the line.”

  The petty officer nodded. “Go ahead, Skipper.”

  “Captain Condiff,” Rapoza said. “I am instructed to ask you to stand by for a call from the President of the United States.”

  “President Zhao,” Jack Ryan said. “May I speak freely?”

  Silence on the line as an interpreter repeated everything in Mandarin.

  “Of course, Mr. President,” Zhao answered in perfect Oxford English.

  The two men had a history, albeit a fiery one. It would cause Zhao to lose face if he admitted it, but Ryan and his people had averted a nearly successful assassination attempt on Zhao’s life. Ryan did not bring it up. A Chinese leader without face was no leader at all. As the previous president had demonstrated when he took his own life. Zhao was proving to be increasingly belligerent as he consolidated his power, but the two men could still talk—so far at least. The czar you know …

  “Mr. President,” Ryan said. “I would appreciate it if you and I could speak … how shall I put this, off the record.”

  More translation, which, Ryan knew full well, was in place to give Zhao time to compose himself between each of Ryan’s questions or statements. He had no trouble with the language.

  “There are things,” Ryan said, appealing to the man’s ego, “that are not for the ears of underlings. I give you my word that I will send my people out of the room and speak to you alone. I ask you to do the same. It will keep me from making an error in
front of someone and losing face. We can speak as men and keep our honor.”

  Ryan knew Zhao was already thinking through the request while the interpreter translated.

  Zhao was smart enough to know that Ryan was giving him an out, to keep from losing face himself. Face, in China, was paramount. And ethics tended to hinge more on if one got caught than whether or not the original deed was right or wrong. If Zhao and Ryan spoke in private, neither man could be “caught” and both could retain their face.

  “As you wish,” Zhao said at length.

  Ryan kept his end of the bargain and shooed everyone out of the Oval, including Mary Pat. Subterfuge was one thing, but his word meant something.

  “I am alone,” Zhao said two minutes later.

  “Thank you for this, Mr. President,” Ryan said. “Again, I ask your permission to speak freely.”

  “By all means.”

  Ryan spent the next five minutes going over what he knew about the submarine, conveniently leaving out any mention of Professor Liu. He commended the brave actions of Commander Wan, executive officer of the 880—and the brave men who remained at the bottom of the sea.

  “May I ask how you discovered them?” Zhao said. “As you know, my people were searching an area many miles from there.”

  “A fluke,” Ryan said. “A science vessel dropped a test buoy almost on top of them and picked up noises of the accident.”

  “A fluke indeed,” Zhao said. “So you were not shadowing the 880 with one of your Virginia-class fast-attacks? As you have said, it seems one was able to respond from quite close.”

  “No,” Ryan said. “I wish we had been. We could have started a rescue much sooner.”

  “We will handle any rescue,” Zhao said, an air of hostility creeping in, then fading just as quickly.

  “And that is the reason I wanted to speak privately,” Ryan said. “My people believe we should try to work with you to rescue your men in hopes of learning more about your technology.”

  “That cannot happen—”

  “Please,” Ryan said, “hear me out. You have been very open about the advancement in your quiet propulsion systems. I have a copy of your address to the Central Committee on my desk as we speak. Impressive. Seriously. The thing is, Mr. President, I know you want to save your men. I want you to save your men. But I also know that if I try to step in, you will be forced to protect your military secrets. Leaders must make these tough decisions.”

  “Mr. President,” Zhao said. “I believe you may be stalling. For all I know, you are even now sending your Navy SEALs to board the 880.”

  “Let me be blunt,” Ryan said. “Having access to your ring propulsion drive would be nice, but it is not an imperative. Of course, we are always refining, learning, investing in new designs, but our submarines are already among the quietest and most deadly in the world. You had no idea our vessel was even there until I told you. In short, Mr. President, I wish you didn’t have this propulsion system, but I don’t need it. And it’s certainly not worth the lives of all your brave submariners to keep it out of our hands.”

  “And Commander Wan?”

  “We are happy to afford him medical care until he is ready to fly.”

  “I would prefer he come aboard the Xue Long as soon as possible.”

  “As you wish,” Ryan said. “I want you to be free to rescue your men. To that end, I am pulling my assets out of the area as soon as the commander is safely aboard your vessel.”

  “Just like that?” Zhao said.

  “Just like that,” Ryan said. “And you may even tell your people you forced me into it. God forbid there is ever a sea battle between our great nations, because many of our finest would die. This is not that time. The men on the 880 have taken no hostile action toward my country. So save them. Please.”

  64

  Tim Meyer sent an emergency message to Dot, telling her he had to meet.

  She told him to call her instead, on the burner he kept hidden in a fake pipe beside the garbage disposal. Most guys who went into law enforcement or counterintelligence wouldn’t know jack shit about installing their own appliances. Meyer sure wouldn’t. If they did ever search his home, they’d look right past it.

  “They arrested Gretchen Pack,” he said, feeling light-headed, elated that he’d temporarily escaped the mole hunters.

  “That is fortunate,” Dot said. “They will assume she is their only leak.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Meyer said. “I still want out. I mean, they’re pretty serious about plugging any holes after your guys killed the people in Albania.”

  “I assure you I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dot said. She was careful that way, always worried that he was wearing a wire or recording their calls.

  “Whatever,” Meyer said. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that over the line. But listen … Rask, the station chief in Tirana, has gone dark. Disappeared. Did your guys … you know. Him, too?”

  “I said I don’t know, so let’s leave it at that. I still look forward to any information you receive on CROSSTIE.”

  “Will that be enough to get me out?” Meyer said. “Seriously, I think my days are numbered. They’re still polygraphing people. I’m not so much worried about that. It just means they’re still hunting.”

  Dot paused for a long time. Meyer knew she was still there. He could hear her breathing.

  “Yes,” she finally said. “Find us CROSSTIE’s identity and we will take care of you as you’ve requested. Also, I am supposed to ask you, have you heard any talk regarding a special submarine propulsion system?”

  EIGHT DAYS LATER

  Jack Ryan leaned back in his desk chair, fingers interlaced on top of his head. The trip to Alaska had been postponed indefinitely.

  The Russians had provided the Chinese a submarine rescue vehicle to get the marooned crew off the 880. The Mirage drive must have been so badly damaged that they did not try to take it off the vessel. Hours after the rescue, the departing Indiana picked up the sound of an explosion that they presumed to be the destruction of the 880. PLAN officials announced that Liu Wangshu was in the hospital, recovering slowly. VICAR’s Russian asset in China, however, confirmed that the professor had succumbed to a massive stroke.

  “You think it’s possible?”

  Dr. Patti Moon thumbed through a file of schematics and line drawings of the Mirage propulsion system as designed by Medina Tohti.

  “I’m not that kind of engineer,” Moon said. “But as far as the sound goes, yes, your idea is certainly possible. I can work with the team that manufactures this to make sure it chirps periodically.”

  “But nobody could hear it without special equipment?”

  “Right,” Moon said. “We can calibrate something, preferably a hard surface instead of a belt—a bearing, tiny flywheel, some piece that seems integral to the design but really is only there for the chirp. To anyone else it would sound like a biologic.”

  “Like a whale or one of those farting cod you showed us in our first meeting.”

  “Exactly,” Moon said. “We’ll make it happen. This looks like it would be an extremely quiet mechanism. Absent your invisible chirp, I mean. It should be a simple task for our subs to track anything that has this installed. But the Chinese could never know to look or they’d simply track down the noise and fix it.” She closed the file and set it flat on her lap. “I’d think it would be tough to get the plans into their hands, though, without them knowing, I mean.”

  “I have some really smart people working on that as well.” Ryan sat forward in his chair, leaning on folded hands. “How does it feel to be part of our little conspiracy?”

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  Monica Hendricks gave her replacement on the China desk a file on a Uyghur woman named Medina Tohti, including a set of meticulously hand-drawn plans for “some kind of submarine system.” Hendricks was on her way out, but suggested her replacement pass the file along to Odette Miller, the referent from the Counterint
elligence Mission Center to the Central Asia desk. The issue for Miller had little to do with the plans themselves, and everything to do with the young Uyghur woman who had brought them forward. She was under CIA protection with her daughter for the time being, but Hendricks had a hunch there was a good chance she was a dangle for the Chinese, or possibly just attempting to make herself more valuable than she really was in order to gain asylum. Tohti had come out of China, but Miller handled Central Asia. Medina Tohti supposedly had family in Kazakhstan. Perhaps Miller could open a CI case and do some digging into the woman’s background. See what she could find before the Navy invested any more time or money into something that was probably a scheme to get asylum. The Uyghur woman talked a good game, but one never knew. Anyway, it was worth a second look.

  Monica’s replacement locked the plans in a cabinet with the counterintelligence case file and left them there for Odette Miller to access. It took three days for Tim Meyer to hear about the information from Miller naturally, but only two hours for him to find a reason to sneak a camera into the restricted file room.

  Back at the ELISE station in Crystal City, Monica Hendricks thanked her team. Mary Pat Foley was present as well. Apart from a close circle around the President, the people in this room were the only ones who knew of the ruse.

  “He was responsible for Leigh Murphy’s murder,” Mateo said, almost in tears. “I understand why we have to do this, but I don’t like it.”

  “SURVEYOR was responsible for more than one death,” Hendricks said. She didn’t even like to say his name. “It absolutely kills me to let him go.”

  Foley stepped up to the table. “It’s a gut punch, I know,” she said. “But I can promise you, we’re not done here. The Bureau has their best surveillance teams up on SURVEYOR’s handler now. She’s very good at her job. Gretchen Pack hadn’t given them anything too damning yet. In fact, much of what she handed over could have been found on the Internet if you knew where to look. But once she started giving them anything, she was trapped and she knew it. The President and I believe—and I imagine all of you do as well—that it would be worthwhile to keep ELISE up and running for at least another month. Sadly, Admiral Li has to leave us to return to his day job, but Chief Hendricks has agreed to deprive the private sector of her presence for a little while longer while we watch the illegal, see if anyone else contacts her. You found two. We have to work under the assumption that there are more.”