The Ghost War

by Alex Berenson

  “Never thought I’d have to play this card, Vinny. I underestimated you. You sent him there and you’d rather let him die than lift a finger. The craziest part is, he might actually get us out of this mess.”

  “We don’t know what he has, Ellis, that’s the point. I’m not going to recommend that we put thousands of sailors in harm’s way. Maybe push the Chinese over the edge. To save one man.”

  “To stop a war.”

  “What if he’s been turned?”

  “Where have I heard this song before? It’s not his fault he saved New York while you tried to arrest him. Get over it.” Shafer stood. “Jenny, come on. Over the river and through the woods. To the president’s house we go.”

  “Ellis—” Duto said.

  “Herr Director. This is so simple, even you can understand it. You tell the president we have a chance to stop this war. You tell him we’re going to go get Wells. Or I will.”

  “And what do we tell the Chinese when they ask why half our fleet is twenty miles off their coast?”

  “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

  “You’ve forgotten the biggest problem, Ellis,” Tyson said. “We have no idea how to find Mr. Wells. Are you suggesting we sail in circles and hope he paddles up on his wooden raft or whatever he’ll be on? I assure you the Navy will dislike that plan, especially with that Chinese supersub still on the loose.”

  “I have an idea,” Exley said.

  “Do share,” Tyson said.

  “You’re right. We can’t find him. So we’re going to have to make it easy for him to find us.”

  Exley outlined her plan. Duto was shaking his head before she was half done. “No way,” he said. “The Air Force will never—

  “They will if the big man tells them to,” Shafer said.

  “How do you know Wells is even going to understand what we’re doing?”

  “He’ll understand,” Exley said.

  And suddenly Duto smiled at her, the easy smile of a poker player watching his opponent make a bluff that was doomed to fail. “You, me, Ellis. We’ll ride over there together. You and Ellis can tell the big man whatever you like. I don’t mind. As long as he knows it’s from you.”

  35

  ASLEEP—

  Then awake—

  And Wells had the .22 up before he knew where he was. The storeroom. Cao stood in the doorway. He raised his hands as Wells lowered the revolver.

  “You okay, Time Square Wells?”

  “Perfect.” Wells coughed. His bandage was still white, at least on the outside.

  Cao tossed Wells a blue zip-up sweatsuit, and Wells tugged it on. His shoulder was loose in its socket, maybe permanently damaged from the torture. He took a long drink of lukewarm water to soothe his parched throat.

  “Ready?”

  Wells tucked the gun in his waistband and struggled up. He took a few steps and sagged. Cao’s men helped him out of the restaurant. A dirty white panel truck waited, its engine running. Wooden crates and furniture were stacked high inside the twenty-five-foot-long cargo compartment.

  “You need piss?” Cao waved a fist in front of his crotch. “Go now.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Then we go.” Cao stepped into the truck and offered a hand to Wells. At the forward end of the cargo compartment, behind a big wooden bookcase, was a space maybe three feet wide. Just big enough for two men to sit, if they didn’t mind a little incidental contact. A blanket covered the compartment’s wooden floor, along with provisions: water bottles, a flashlight, blankets. A handful of airholes ensured they wouldn’t suffocate.

  Wells and Cao settled themselves, close enough for Wells to smell the green tea on Cao’s breath. As Cao’s men rearranged boxes and furniture to hide the space, Cao reached into his jacket and handed Wells a manila envelope.

  Wells opened it. Three pages of Banco Delta Asia bank records, showing transfers to UBS accounts in Zurich and Monte Carlo, $20 million a month. A fourth page covered with Chinese characters and topped with an official-looking letterhead. Wells wondered if these four pieces of paper could really stop a war.

  Cao pointed to the fourth page. “This from Army.”

  “Authorizing the transfers?”

  “Authorizing, yes. Says money for special operation.” Cao pointed to a raised emblem near the bottom. “Li’s stamp.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Wells didn’t plan to ask how Cao had gotten the papers. Presumably he’d just made his final trip inside Zhongnanhai. If Wells hadn’t just seen Cao shoot three of his own soldiers, he might have wondered whether this was all some superelaborate sting operation designed to prove Wells was a spy. But the Chinese had no need for an operation that elaborate. The torture had been working well enough on its own. Cao was a genuine defector.

  Wells tried to give Cao back the papers, but Cao shook his head.

  One of Cao’s men shouted something. The back panel came down and they were locked in the dark. Wells hardly minded. After the cave, this truck was easy. At least they were above ground.

  The truck grumbled into gear and reversed down the alley. A few seconds later horns honked, and they were in Beijing’s traffic.

  “Now we run.” In the dark Cao laughed humor lessly.

  “Yeah, tramps like us,” Wells said. He liked Cao very much. Probably because the man had saved his life. “What about roadblocks?”

  “Roadblock?”

  Wells couldn’t figure out how to explain. “Are they looking for us?”

  “Very soon.” Cao lit his watch—6:10. “Maybe twenty minutes. New officer come, open door. See bodies.”

  Wells thought he understood. There would be a shift change at the interrogation center where Wells had been held. The new commander would insist on seeing the torture room. And once he discovered the bodies, the hunt would be on.

  “But isn’t Li Ping wondering where you are?”

  “When we leave, I say to Li, let me take care of spy. He trust me. Anyway, he busy. Special meeting with Standing Committee.”

  “Must be hard fighting two wars at once.” Wells closed his eyes and tried to settle himself in the darkness. But he had too many questions. “Cao, who are these people helping us?”

  Cao said nothing for a minute. Then, finally: “Don’t know.”

  Don’t know? Wells waited.

  “I tell my pastor last night. About you. He send me these people from his church. They help when Christians get in trouble, need hiding.”

  A Christian underground railroad, Wells thought. “Do they know who we are, the risk they’re taking?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you trust them?”

  Again Cao laughed, low and hard. “You have other idea?”

  MINUTES LATER THE TRUCK TURNED, accelerated. “Third Ring Road now,” Cao said.

  “We’re making good time.”

  “Many people stay home now. Scared what America will do.”

  And without warning—

  The truck scissored down into a pothole. Wells’s broken ribs jumped under the bandage, stabbing from the inside out. The pain in his lungs and stomach was enormous and didn’t fade. Wells bit his lip to keep from screaming.

  Thump!Thump!More potholes. Wells braced himself against the side of the truck, feeling his ribs rattle like pencils in a coffee cup. If he wasn’t bleeding internally already, he would be soon.

  To distract himself, he thought of Exley, and their little apartment on Thirteenth Street, NW In the utility closet in the front hall, Wells had hung the letters the president had sent them after they’d stopped the attack on New York. “You haveearned the respect and gratitudeof an entire nation...”et cetera, et cetera. No one had ever understood him like Exley, Wells thought. He never had to tell her why the flowery words embarrassed him. Yes, he was proud of what they had done. But he hated being called a hero, especially by men who had never shed blood. Let the president save his soupy words and send his own children off to a battl
e zone for even one day.

  Wells wondered if he could claim to understand Exley nearly as well as she understood him. She rarely talked to him about marriage or having kids. Did she think that having more children would be selfish when she hardly saw the two she already had? Or was it that she couldn’t imagine a future with him? Maybe she decided that as much as they loved each other, they weren’t going to get over the finish line.

  When he got home, he would ask her to marry him.

  If it wasn’t too late.

  THUMP! The truck bounced again, the hardest jolt yet. Wells couldn’t help himself. He screamed. The blackness around him merged with the void in his head and down he went.

  LATER—HE HAD NO IDEA how long it was—his eyes opened. His stomach was throbbing and uncomfortably tight. He was bleeding internally now, he was sure. He raised the water bottle to his lips and sipped, trying to force the liquid down.

  The truck had stopped, its engine silent. Wells heard voices and footsteps on gravel. The compartment was totally dark, no light coming through the airholes. Night had fallen. How long had he been out?

  The footsteps crunched to the back of the truck and—

  The back panel opened. Cao gripped Wells’s leg, a warning to stay silent.

  A flashlight shined in, making slow loops around the compartment.

  A man’s harsh voice, shouting questions.

  The replies, soft and deferential.

  Then the truck’s springs creaked as someone stepped onto the back bumper.

  Wells pulled his snubnose pistol from his waistband, silently dropped the safety.

  The light shined around, closer now.

  But not finding their compartment.

  And the truck came up on its springs as the man stepped down.

  The back panel closed. The doors to the truck’s cab opened, slammed shut. The engine groaned and they were off, slowly at first, then more quickly.

  Only after they reached highway speed did Cao finally speak. “Close.”

  “No kidding,” Wells said. “What time is it?”

  Cao flicked on his little digital watch and showed it to Wells—9:15. He’d been asleep at least two hours.

  “How much longer?”

  Cao shined his flashlight over Wells. “Five hours, maybe. Okay?”

  “I’ll get by.” Wells coughed a little black clot of blood and phlegm into his hand. “General, what made you—” Wells stopped, wondering if he was overreaching. He settled on a more neutral formulation. “Why did you decide to leave? After all these years.”

  Cao turned the flashlight to his own face, as if interrogating himself. “Why I betray General Li, you mean?” Wells was silent. “I tried to say once.”

  “What you thought.”

  “What I thought. He never listen.” Cao tapped the flashlight against the stump of his leg. “Li forget what war is like. I don’t forget.”

  “Some wars you have to fight,” Wells said.

  “Not this one.”

  “Not this one.”

  THE TRUCK ROLLED ON. The road turned smooth, a blessing, and the compartment cooled as the night air rushed in. They were probably taking a chance on an expressway now, Cao said. The danger had lessened now that they’d reached Shandong Province.

  “But why doesn’t Li just shut everything down?” Wells asked. “Put in a countrywide curfew.”

  Cao’s explanation stretched the limits of his English, but eventually Wells understood: Li was afraid to tell the Standing Committee that Cao had defected. Cao was Li’s closest aide, so Cao’s treachery would reflect badly on him. Li’s opponents might use it to undo Li’s grip on power, which was still tenuous.

  But without the approval of the Standing Committee, Li couldn’t simply shut all of China down. So the roads were still open. Li was depending on roadblocks to catch them, and the Navy if they somehow got to the Yellow Sea.

  “So there’s a window.”

  “Yes. Window.”

  And with that, Wells closed his eyes uneasily. He tried to imagine what would happen after he handed the papers over and explained what they meant. Treasury would connect the Banco Delta Asia accounts with Kowalski’s accounts in Zurich and Monte Carlo. The Pentagon would give the State Department the confession from Sergei, the Russian Spetsnaz that Wells had captured in the cave.

  Then the American ambassador would ask Li’s enemies on the Standing Committee for a secret meeting. There he’d give Minister Zhang the proof of what Li had done.

  Zhang and the rest of the committee would know they had to act. They’d know that if the United States publicized China’s support for the Taliban, world opinion would turn in America’s favor. After all, American soldiers weren’t the only ones fighting the Talibs in Afghanistan. By supporting the guerrillas, China had committed an act of war against all of NATO.

  Zhang wouldn’t need much convincing, anyway. He and Li’s other enemies on the committee were looking for any excuse to stop Li. This was a good one. They wouldn’t care that it had come from the United States.

  For the first time, Wells allowed himself to believe that they might actually get out of this mess. He pressed his hands together in front of his face. Here’s the church and here’s the steeple. Open the door and there’s the people. He and Exley wouldn’t have a church wedding, though. Not a mosque wedding either. They’d go down to city hall and do it quick and dirty. Exley liked it quick and dirty....

  He knew he was drifting and didn’t mind. Drifting made the shooting pains in his belly easier to take. And so he drifted, dozed, woke, drifted again. All the while, the truck rolled on. Eventually they left the highway and passed along a series of narrow switchbacks, rising and falling, not mountains exactly but certainly good-sized hills. Wells snapped awake as the truck took a turn too hard, its left rear wheels briefly leaving the pavement.

  “Shandong,” Cao said. “Back roads.”

  “How long?”

  Cao lit his watch—12:45. “One hour, maybe two. No more.”

  It was 12:45 P.M. in Washington, Wells thought. The attack on the Decatur had happened about twelve hours before. He wondered whether Exley had persuaded Duto and the White House to hold off. Surely the president would be speaking to the country tonight, and politicians on both sides would be pushing for action. God. Until now he hadn’t even considered the possibility that they’d make it to South Korea and still be too late.

  THEN THE TRUCK SLOWED, HARD, pushing forward on its shocks—

  And stopped.

  Again the engine went quiet. Again voices shouting in Chinese. Again the back panel slid up.

  But this time two men stepped into the truck. This time the flashlight searched the compartment much more thoroughly than it had before.

  This time the cops smelled something wrong, Wells thought. Maybe the fact that the truck had two drivers. Maybe the route they were taking, running back roads in the middle of nowhere at 1:00 A.M. Maybe the cops were just having a little fun, looking for a television or something to steal. Whatever it was, these guys weren’t giving up until they turned the compartment inside out.

  Wells wondered how many there were. How many he’d have to kill. A country roadblock in the middle of the night. Two cops, maybe? Two in the truck, two out? Four at most.

  Now the cops were shouting and throwing furniture out of the back of the truck as the drivers yelled. Cao leaned forward and whispered to Wells.

  “They say, ‘You four have no right.’ Four. Understand?”

  “Four.”

  Crash! A couch landed on the ground. The flashlight closed in. Wells drew his .22, cocked the hammer, pulled himself to a squat, braced himself against the side wall. The empty bookcase scraped sideways and started to tip. The compartment echoed with shouts in Chinese. Not so long ago, Wells had told Exley the secret to surviving these moments: Shoot first. Don’t wait. He was about to follow his own advice.

  He pushed himself up, ignoring the agony in his stomach. As the bookcase tipped
, Wells saw the cops, five feet away, tugging at the case. They reached for their guns as they saw him. Too late. He squeezed the pistol’s trigger, twice.

  And then they were dead.

  The bookcase fell. Wells dropped behind it. The other two cops stood at the back of the truck. They should have gone for cover. Instead, they were shooting, but wildly, high. A mistake, the last they would ever make. Wells focused and fired, hearing the pfft of Cao’s silenced pistol beside him. One of the cops twisted, his head turned at an unnatural angle, and dropped. The other doubled over, his hand on his stomach, beginning to yell. Wells moved his pistol a fraction of an inch and fired again. This time the shot caught the cop in the shoulder. He dropped his gun and fell, still yelling.

  Wells staggered out of the cargo compartment. He took aim at the moaning cop at his feet and then lowered his .22 without firing. Let Cao do it. Let someone else. Anyone.

  Then he raised his gun again, took aim. He was what he was. No point in pretending otherwise. No point in making someone else do his dirty work. He fired. The cop’s body twitched and went still.

  The roadblock had been in front of a bridge over a narrow canal. A police car and a jeep sat at the edge of the road, their emergency lights still flashing. Wells leaned against the truck, looked around. The hills behind them were forested and seemed empty, but a couple of miles ahead Wells saw the beginnings of a town, red smokestack lights blinking in the night. Fortunately, the two-lane road was silent. For now.

  Cao jumped down from the truck, yelling at the men who’d driven them. Wells understood his frustration, but there wasn’t time. They couldn’t hide this. They had only one choice.

  “Cao.” Wells grabbed the smaller man’s shoulder. “Tell them, put the cops in the truck. Leave everything else. Let’s go. Now.”

  Cao looked around, nodded. He said something to the men and they threw the bodies in the truck as casually as if they were slinging sacks of rice. Wells stumbled over one of the corpses as he stepped back into the truck. The body was still warm. Practically still alive. Except it wasn’t.