23
Somewhere over
Northern Quebec
Where was he? Jake checked the altimeter.
Four thousand four hundred feet.
So he had some height to play with. He needed to find water. Fast.
Three million lakes in Canada, but out the window of the Super Cub, only endless greenery undulated in waves to the horizon.
Three million lakes.
All Jake needed was one.
He punched buttons on the GPS, hoping it would indicate water features. But it was old school. As ancient as the plane. Its black and white screen only displayed longitude and latitude along with some squiggles that he figured were roads.
Airspeed sixty-eight knots.
A gust of wind rocked the plane, and Jake fought to keep it level. He tried to remember what the stall speed of a Cessna was.
Fifty knots?
No idea what it might be for this bag of bolts.
Better keep the nose down, the airspeed up. He had no idea how the pontoon floats might be affecting the trim, the stall speed. The flight stick between his legs felt like it was stuck in molasses, and he heaved it back and forth as gusts tried to push the plane over.
Three thousand two hundred feet.
The carpet of rolling green gained some definition. Treetops, boulders—he dropped like a stone. Below him a huge basin, ringed by rolling mountaintops. He sailed straight at the top of the closest peak.
Jake gritted his teeth. “Oh boy.”
This was going to be close. Reflexively, Jake pulled back on the stick, raising the nose of the plane, but he quickly corrected. Eased the nose down. The trees on the peak ahead of him grew in size. He saw branches. Leaves. A gust rattled the plane.
“Goddamn it!”
At the last second he pulled back, bobbing the Super Cub up a few feet, the pontoons scraping through the topmost branches into the clear space beyond. A few thousand feet of open air greeted Jake on the other side, the forest retreating below him as he cleared the peak. And there, a twinkling blue at the base of the mountain.
A lake.
His lake.
“Thank you God,” Jake gasped. “I can make that.”
He had to skim down the face of this hill to gain enough speed to spot the landing. Then circle around once, bleed off the speed, and set it down.
Easy.
He brought up one hand to drag through his hair. Shaking. He put the hand back onto the flight stick, his knuckles blanched white.
A thousand nine hundred feet.
You can’t die here. Die here and they’ll never find you. Elle will think you ran away, abandoned your family. And Anna…
His little girl.
Focus.
The shimmering lake grew in size. He pushed the nose down further, the only sound rushing wind rattling the passenger door. Getting louder. Gaining speed.
Under a thousand feet.
The treetops swayed, individual leaves fluttering, the wind blowing tiny ripples across the lake. He headed with the wind. If he could swing around the other side, he could land against the wind. Holding his breath, Jake pulled back on the stick, using the speed he gained on the slide down the side of the mountain to level off.
Silently, the Super Cub rocketed across the edge of the lake, the surface like a mirror.
Jake turned the stick, pushing the plane into a banked turn. Slowed from seventy to sixty knots. “Come on, come on,” he urged between gritted teeth.
The plane lost more speed than Jake had anticipated. There wasn’t enough height to circle around. What next?
Flaps.
He brought one shaking hand up to the dashboard. There it was. The Johnson bar that controlled the flaps. How much? Ten degrees? Twenty? He grabbed it, pulled it out, and then forced it all the way down. Thirty degrees. He wanted to bring off as much speed as possible before he hit the water.
High in his banking turn, he stared out his side window at the edge of the lake—weeds and fallen trees, lily pads. The plane slid sideways, and he pulled back and right on the flight stick. No time to spot the landing. This was it.
He knew he had to get the nose down again, then swoop toward the surface and pull back, skim the top of the water and feather the backs of the pontoons onto it. That was the theory.
The plane dipped under the tops of the trees. Less than a hundred feet up now.
“Come on, baby.”
Jake pulled back on the stick, but not too much. He didn’t want to stall fifty feet in the air.
But he miscalculated.
In the last instant, the shimmering top of the water rushed at him. The still lake water was transparent—he’d been looking through it, at the bottom of the lake. Realizing his mistake, Jake hauled the stick back, pulling the nose up enough to avert the disaster of crashing headlong into the water.
The front left pontoon hit the water first, the impact bouncing the left side up. Jake’s face slammed into the dashboard. For a moment he thought he’d get another chance at landing, but the plane slipped sideways, bobbing up in the air. He pulled the stick right, but it didn’t respond. Not aerodynamic anymore. Now he was joyriding in a metal can.
The Super Cub tipped sickeningly. The next impact wasn’t as forgiving as the first.
A screeching roar erupted as the Super Cub slammed into the still water, tearing the metal airframe apart. Jake flipped over, his knees slamming into the side of the compartment. Another terrific crash, and his head slammed into the side window, cracking the glass.
Then silence and cold.
Jake coughed.
Water rushed into the passenger compartment.
He was upside down.
And sinking.
Shoving his hands above his head, he strained in his seat and took a deep breath, pushing his head above the cold water as he submerged. Junk from the cockpit rushed in brownish water around him. Jake fumbled with the seatbelt, felt his fingers against the clasp.
Water gushed up his nose and he gagged, letting out a mouthful of precious air. The plane, inverted, sank into the depths of the lake. Pressure needled his eardrums.
The seatbelt clasp opened.
Jake pirouetted in the tiny compartment. Grabbed the door release handle. Pushed it open and swam outward, then upward.
Sunlight streamed down through the water.
In three strokes Jake broke the surface, gasping for air with burning lungs. Pain sliced through his chest. Pulling his fleece top off, he swam for the shore. It wasn’t far, two hundred feet, but it felt like a mile. Jake pulled himself through the lily pads and collapsed into the weeds on the shore.
AUGUST 21st
Sunday
24
Lockhart Street
Hong Kong
Almost two days stuck in this apartment. Jin needed out.
The noise in the streets outside was working its way into a frenzy again. The now-familiar thumping bass came up through the apartment’s floor, through Jin’s feet and into her bones, shaking her brain. The walls felt like they were closing in, the air being sucked from her lungs. She looked out the window at the crowds of people weaving in the streets. How much she’d give to be one of them—careless, unaware.
She gritted her teeth and returned her attention to her laptop screen.
“Where’s Wutang?” Chen asked from his workstation, leaning back in his chair with an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth.
Wutang went out to get dinner for them over an hour ago. Chen had given up on data diving and wanted to get out of the apartment to stretch his legs.
Jin couldn’t blame him. “I have no idea.”
They had a rule: at least two people in the apartment at all times, which in effect meant at least one of the guys was with Jin. There was no way she was going to expose herself out there. “You can go out if you want,” she added.
“I’ll wait a bit more.” Chen opened his laptop. “So you really think Bluebridge is behind this?”
; “I don’t know.” It was still a guess.
She’d been trying to unravel Bluebridge’s tentacles. Not easy. While it was the largest hedge fund in the world, Bluebridge was still a private corporation. It didn’t divulge much and remained as opaque as possible. The world was a big place, though, and there were a lot of connection points if you burrowed deep enough.
“The partners of Bluebridge have senior board positions at hundreds of major corporations around the world,” Jin said after a minute of silence. “That makes Bluebridge connected into every financial and government system on the planet.”
She was mining the reporting structures of stock markets, drilling into their shareholding and reporting disclosures. Bluebridge controlled hundreds of shells, which in turn invested in thousands of other companies, all focused on defense and military. She’d watched Vidal Viegas in webcasts, talking this up as the next big growth industry after a recent slump.
“Somehow,” Jin continued, “Viegas and Montrose are appearing at multiple, simultaneous meetings—and never ceding voting control to a proxy.” She brought up a graphic illustrating the timing of shareholder and board meetings.
It seemed beyond possible that a blue chip firm like Bluebridge was caught up in a hacking and identity theft ring, but Jin couldn’t be the only one to notice that Bluebridge executives attended meetings at the same time in different places.
“One thing’s for sure,” Jin added. “The partners of Bluebridge are buying their way into a political party.” She brought up an image of Vidal Viegas with Senator Russ on stage at a fundraising event.
Chen was nonplussed. “So what? People are buying elections everywhere.”
Everywhere.
The word stuck in Jin’s mind. People left data trails behind them like vapor trails behind jets, a cloud of bits and bytes that followed them everywhere—cell phone location records, credit card purchases, social media postings, web browsing history—pull enough of it together, and you could almost read someone’s mind.
You could almost become them.
What were these partners at Bluebridge up to? Were they buying political influence on both sides of the fence, even masquerading as dead Chinese nationals? If so, this went beyond simple corporate espionage. This was political espionage.
Why would they risk it?
Then another thought.
Why stop there? Why stop at China and America? Bluebridge had holdings all around the world. She glanced at her monitor again, at the image of Vidal Viegas standing next to Senator Russ. With American elections less than two months away, Senator Russ was the landslide favorite. Bluebridge was about to gain access to the most powerful economic and political platform in the world. She stared at the image of Viegas on the screen. Was it the face of a megalomaniac?
“Your friend, Jake,” Chen said, interrupting Jin’s daydreaming.
“What about him?” She turned around. No sign of Jake yet. Nothing new in the news or social media. Jin feared the worst.
The light from Chen’s laptop screen illuminated his face in a ghostly glow. It was getting dark out. “He’s been indicted on Federal US charges, for conspiracy to commit fraud, international money laundering. And Danny Donovan, the CEO of Atlas, was murdered yesterday. Looks like Jake skipped bail, he’s on the run.”
“How did you find out?”
“I have some friends in the NYPD. It just came up.”
How did he have connections in the NYPD? He hadn’t mentioned that before.
“Any hits on him yet?” Chen asked.
Jin glanced at her laptop screen. She set up her facial recognition system to scan social media and photo sharing websites to search for Jake O’Connell, programmed it to center on people in New York and fan outward from there. There were no alerts. “Nothing yet.”
If he was still alive, there was a good chance that they’d find Jake before any authorities did. Live data mining on the open web wasn’t something the police were good at yet.
An alert sounded on Jin’s laptop, and she flinched. An urgent incoming message from Sheldon. Clicking the link, his face popped up on the large wall monitor beside Chen.
“You guys need to get out of there.” Sheldon said immediately, his eyes wide.
“What’s wrong?” Jin tensed, her faced flushing.
“I got access to the Assassin Market again.” Sheldon looked at Jin. “The pool on you just doubled. Someone added another $100,000 bet. For 6 a.m. tomorrow morning.”
Jin shot to her feet. “What?” Now there was a time? Less than twelve hours away? “Are you sure?”
Sheldon clenched his jaw. “The dead pool bet doubles if you die at exactly six.”
Jin began shaking. “Can you…can you get in, change it?”
“I can’t do anything. I just have access.” Sheldon looked at Chen. “And you’re on there now, too.”
The cigarette fell of out Chen’s mouth. “That’s not possible.”
Sheldon brought up an image of the Assassin Market darknet page. Chen and Jin’s names were at the top of the list. “Somebody just placed huge bets minutes ago. They must know where you are.”
“That’s not possible,” Chen mumbled again. “That can’t be possible.”
“What do we do?” Jin asked Sheldon. “Is Wutang on the list?”
Sheldon shook his head. “Just you two. Half a million dollars together.”
“I need to leave.” Chen was already at the entrance to the apartment.
“No!” Jin jumped toward him. “Don’t leave me here alone.”
But he opened the door and jumped out. Jin ran to the door in time to see him disappearing down the staircase. She thought of chasing him, but closed the door instead. She needed to think.
Another ping. She looked at the couch. It was her laptop.
Breathing heavy, her head spun. Her skin crawled. Less than twelve hours to live. Somebody had to know they were here. Should she run? But how? And where to? And where was Wutang?
Her computer pinged again. Shaking, she walked over and opened it. A message popped up. The social media monitoring tool had a hit on Jake O’Connell. So he was alive. What was he doing? She stared at the image, a photograph of him in boxer shorts and ragged fleece top holding a rifle, surrounded by trees. The social media post it came from was tagged in Canada.
The door opened.
“Chen, don’t run out like that,” Jin said, turning. But it was Wutang. “Where have you been?” she almost yelled at him.
“What’s wrong?” Wutang asked, frowning. “What happened?” He dropped a box of noodles and set of chopsticks in front of her.
“The Assassin Market, they know where we are. Chen’s been added to the hit list,” Jin said breathlessly. “We need to leave. Chen just ran out. Did you see him?”
“No.” Wutang shook his head. The news didn’t seem to surprise him. “Are you okay? Keep calm, sit down. Eat something, we’ll figure this out.”
How could he be so calm? “And we just got a hit on Jake O’Connell in Canada.” Not knowing what else to do, she sat down and opened the noodle container. With shaking hands she unwrapped the chopsticks and stuffed in a mouthful of noddles and chewed.
Wutang stood and watched her eat. “Why are you standing like that?” she asked.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
Wutang leaned down and took the noodle container away from her. Behind him, the door swung open and two other men entered the room. Men who were much larger than Wutang.
Jin’s heart hammered in her chest. “What have you done?”
25
Kahnawake Indian Reserve
Quebec
Drums echoed over the waters.
Not so long ago, the sound of the drums struck fear into the hearts of the people on the other side of the river, a signal that the war canoes were coming. Now the sound was mournful, echoes of a great nation corralled into reservations.
But still proud.
Echoes o
f a Proud Nation, proclaimed signs spray-painted onto concrete bridge pylons on the route leading into the reservation.
It was the end-of-summer powwow in Kahnawake.
Dancers in Mohawk ceremonial clothing circled a central grassy area, their bright fabrics adorned with beads and bones and tiny bells that jangled in rhythm with the drums. Many wore the hair roach, the crow-belt with the eagle-bone whistle. Thick hanks of long, colorful fringes swayed gracefully with the movements of the dancers’ bodies, like blowing grass on the prairie.
The dancers were surrounded by rows of grandstand seating amid a haphazard sea of vending tents selling arts and crafts, everything from carved whale bone to dream catchers. The Mohawk powwow was open to the public. It was as much a celebration for the Mohawk nation as it was a spectacle for visitors, and the Mohawks were happy to oblige them.
Jake hung back at the edges.
He’d walked in on foot, passed the yellow barricades, paid his $7 entrance fee to a woman wearing a “Mohawk Mom” T-shirt, then walked over the bridge onto the small island that split the swift currents of the St. Lawrence River.
It was the same bridge where he and Sean had rescued those kids all those years ago. Jake stopped at the embankment on the other side and sat for a while under the bridge, remembering his friend, before continuing. He did a sweep of the powwow, starting at the food stands—walleye nuggets, moose dogs, sturgeon subs—then circled the vending tents and made his way toward the edge of the water.
At the edges of the powwow were campers and RVs, many with campfires burning, their flames reaching up into the night sky. Jake noticed some of the cars and campers were decorated with “Retired US Army” bumper stickers, and amid the traditional Mohawk dress, there were men standing around in active-duty combat fatigues.
Jake watched the dancers move slowly to the beat of the drums, stepping forward with the ball of one foot on one beat, then flattening that foot and shifting weight onto it on the next beat, their heads bobbing up and down. The sign of a good dancer was the ability to keep the feathers moving constantly, Jake remembered, to keep swaying up and down and around and around.
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