by Alex Ryan
“In that case, maybe Feng tipped off Ling and the MSS. Maybe Ling raiding our van was a critical component of his plan,” Nick said, brainstorming out loud.
Lankford rubbed his chin. “Interesting theory. If you’re right, our arrest and detainment would have certainly given him all the head start he needed. What do you think, Zhang?”
“The timing of Ling’s raid does seem remarkably coincidental. I wonder if Feng knows we’re not in MSS custody. I wonder if he knows we’re in pursuit.”
“I sure as hell hope not,” Nick said. “If he thinks we’re out of the picture, the airport team will blindside him. Easy day.”
“So once again, why Hong Kong?” Lankford asked. “What is so important in that damn city that Feng needs to protect it at all costs? And why drag Dash there with him?”
Nick’s heart skipped a beat as all the puzzle pieces clicked together in his mind: corpses washing up en masse on Tung Wan Beach with missing organs, the stolen shipping container lost at sea during a storm, Major Li murdered at the Port of Hong Kong while talking to a cargo superintendent, no rumors or reports of illegal organ harvesting at hospitals or medical facilities on land . . .
“We had it backward,” he mumbled.
“What’s that, Foley?” Lankford said.
“This whole time, we’ve been operating under the assumption that Feng’s organ-harvesting operation was operating at a facility in Hong Kong and then shipping the corpses to sea for disposal,” Nick said. “But we had it backward. The operation itself is at sea, and the bodies are offloaded for disposal, probably incineration. I wouldn’t be surprised if the only reason we found any bodies at all is because the container washed overboard in the storm.”
“Are you saying Feng is using a hospital ship for his operation?” Lankford said.
Nick nodded. “Or something like that. When I was with the Teams, we had an operation in Somalia go bad, and we had to CASEVAC a couple guys to the USS Nimitz for level-one trauma care. Since I was the Eighteen Delta, I rode along in the bird. I was amazed at the surgical suite onboard the carrier. Why couldn’t Feng retrofit a similar facility on a merchant vessel? It would be the perfect way to disguise his operation and keep it forever away from prying eyes.”
“That’s one helluva theory,” Lankford said. “But if you’re right, then that means we have another problem.”
“Feng did not take Dazhong to be his hostage,” Zhang said, completing Lankford’s thought as his complexion went pale. “He took her to be a donor.”
“We have to locate that ship before Feng lands,” Nick said. “We should start with satellite imagery.”
“Don’t look at me,” Lankford said.
“You do work for the CIA,” Nick said. “Spying on China is kinda your job.”
Zhang frowned.
“Thanks for reminding him, Foley,” Lankford grumbled. “But contrary to what you might think, I don’t have a dozen dedicated satellites in geosynchronous orbits over China at my beck and call. If satellite data are what you’re after, then talk to Zhang.”
An hour passed with Zhang making calls on his sat phone, trying to requisition current and historical satellite imagery of a two-hundred-nautical-mile radius around Hong Kong. The stone wall of bureaucracy the Snow Leopard Commander seemed to be facing made Nick actually appreciate the US defense complex, which he had once assumed had no equal in the realm of uncooperative gatekeepers and walled gardens . . . Oh, how naïve he had been. Of course, Zhang’s job was made more difficult because he could not utilize the normal chains of command and contact within the Chinese intelligence and counterterrorism structure. While there was no evidence of a specific breach, they all agreed it was inconceivable that Feng could have achieved what he had in Xi’an, Discovery Bay, and Hong Kong without some sort of inside information—something Lankford pointed out with great delight and to which Zhang was forced to reluctantly agree.
Zhang’s phone rang, and he picked it up on the first ring. He listened for a beat and then unleashed an angry tirade in rapid-fire Chinese. Red-faced, he hung up the phone and turned to Nick. “That was my team leader on the ground at Hong Kong International. It appears Feng changed his flight plans. The bastard took a page from my playbook and diverted to Zhuhai. Meanwhile, my guys are stuck on Lantau. They’re trying to secure an operational helo as we speak.”
Nick was about to suggest they talk to their pilot about diverting to Zhuhai, when Zhang’s phone rang again.
Zhang picked it up, and this time he spoke in English: “Zhang . . . Damn it! Have air traffic control track that bird. I want to know exactly where Feng goes. We’ll be on the ground in thirty-five minutes. Have your team kitted up and ready to go. The mission has changed. We’re going to be conducting a maritime assault . . . Yes, you heard me correctly, a maritime assault . . . Leave that to me.”
Zhang slammed his sat phone down on the armrest. “Feng had a helo standing by at Zhuhai. ATC is reporting that he took off without clearance and that there was nobody at the airport to stop him.”
“What the hell do we do now?” Nick said as a wave of dread washed over him. “Feng is taking Dash to the medical ship. If we don’t get to her soon, she’s as good as dead.”
“The situation is bad,” Zhang said, “but I know a guy who can help.”
“Oh, Jesus, not this again,” Nick said, shaking his head. “Who is it now . . . a deckhand on a buoy tender?”
Zhang grinned as he pulled up a number from his contact list. “No. This time I’m bringing out the big guns. I happen to know the captain of the Hai Twen CCG-1115—a Coast Guard cutter with helicopters and everything we need to support a maritime assault.”
An electric charge of anticipation coursed through Nick’s body, and his mind went to work visualizing the op.
“It’s going to be risky. Depending on how that ship is staffed, a lot of innocent people could die,” Lankford said.
“Yes, but if we don’t act, the next time we see Dash will be with a pile of corpses inside a Conex box,” Nick said.
Lankford nodded.
“One way or another, this ends today. Let me make the call, and then we’ll brief the op. This is going to be a first for me,” Zhang said as a smile crept across his face. “Fortunately, we have a Navy SEAL on the team to plan the assault.”
CHAPTER 28
“Hospital Ship” Huangdi
104 miles south of Hong Kong in the South China Sea
0525 hours local
Dash gave up struggling against the leather straps binding her wrists and ankles. She had pulled and twisted until the skin beneath burned like fire. The wetness under her left hand told her she was bleeding. She was strapped to what could only be described as an operating room table with wheels. That, combined with the flimsy cotton hospital gown they had dressed her in, left no doubt in her mind what their intentions were.
A chill ran down her spine, and she pushed the terrifying thought away.
She’d woken up this way, which meant they had kept her drugged since her last recollection of consciousness on the jet en route to Hong Kong. She suspected she might be at sea—aboard a hospital ship—but the gentle rocking she felt might just be her own nauseating disorientation. The room she was in appeared to be a lab—she could see a hooded workstation behind her over her left shoulder and a row of workstations to her right. There was also what appeared to be an HPLC machine near an oval-shaped door, which meant a high-tech, remotely operated microscope was nearby. Someone had spent a lot of money on this room.
The oval door opened, and a woman entered, dressed in gray surgical scrubs, with a larger man pushing a cart. Dash was immediately reminded of the anesthesia cart—with its hep-locks and IV needles and bags of fluids and drawers of meds—from her residency and fellowship. Her skin began to crawl, and her throat tightened.
“Please,” she choked out as they approached. “Please, there is a mistake. You have to help me.”
Neither of the attendants responded or
even looked at her. The female nurse began to assemble an IV setup on the cart. Their faces blurred as tears filled her eyes, and she tried again to twist her wrists free from the restraints.
“Please,” she begged, focusing her gaze on the woman. This woman had to possess empathy. If she could just make eye contact—just establish an emotional connection. “Look at me, please.”
“How are you feeling, Dr. Chen?” a voice said.
Dash blinked away the tears and saw that someone new had entered the room. His face was familiar, and so were his hungry, dark eyes. He smiled at her and clasped his bare, sinewy forearms behind his back.
“You must be so excited,” Feng said. “I cannot imagine how it must feel to be in your position—to know that your life will be sacrificed to save such a great and noble woman.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Dash asked and immediately regretted it. She knew already, and she hated that she sounded weak. But this was not how she wished to go out of this world. Not after everything she’d risked over the past three months.
Feng sat on a black rolling stool and rolled over to her. He leaned in—uncomfortably close—smiling widely. His eyes burned with anticipation and excitement. After studying her for a long moment, he picked up a remote control and pressed a button. The mirror on the wall behind him suddenly became transparent, and she saw an old woman lying propped up in a hospital bed, connected to a host of monitoring equipment.
“She’s suffered so much,” he said, gazing lovingly at the old woman. “To think how close I came to losing her. But then you came along, her guardian angel, to save her in her moment of greatest need.”
Terror seized her. “Help!” Dash screamed, pulling against her restraints with renewed vigor. “Help me! Somebody—please!”
“She can’t hear you. Nobody can hear you, Dr. Chen,” Feng said, shaking his head. “Well, nobody that cares.”
She felt her throat tighten.
This is going to happen.
Oh God, this is going to happen.
“Think of this as the first step in the quest for immortality, Dr. Chen. Your organs will be harvested, transplanted, and edited to match my mother’s alleles with CRISPR. Within a month, your organs will be her organs, which means no more antirejection drugs, no more dialysis, no more diabetes, no more pain or weakness or deterioration. So you see,” he said cheerfully, “even in death, a part of you will live on.”
“You’re insane,” she said and began to sob.
The man shooed the comment away with his hand, as if it was a familiar argument he had fended off before. “Yes, yes,” he said with mocking irritation. “Me and Louis Pasteur, Hippocrates, DeBakey, Galen, Rhazes, William Harvey, Christopher Wren, Joseph Lister, William Morton, John Gibbon—my God, we could go on forever with a list of the company I keep.”
“You are nothing like them,” she hissed. “They were great scientists who didn’t go around murdering people.”
“Oh, please,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Do you really believe that all went well with Karl Landsteiner’s early work, or that the family of Gibbon’s first patient had reason for thanks? Don’t be naïve. There is no progress without sacrifice.”
“You’re delusional if that is what you think this is.”
He gave her arm a patronizing pat. “Don’t fret, Dr. Chen, your sacrifice will not go uncelebrated. The work we do today is an important step toward achieving my ultimate vision.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Editing genes in transplant organs is only phase one of the path to immortality. Phase two is where the real transformation occurs.”
Keep him talking, she told herself. Anything to drag out the inevitable.
“I don’t understand. What is phase two?”
Before he could answer, the large male nurse grabbed her left arm at the wrist and elbow, gripping her painfully with all of his strength. Eyes downcast, the female nurse swabbed her forearm with a cool alcohol prep and then pulled the cap off of a large IV needle, the green hub pinched in her gloved fingers. Dash watched the woman insert the needle, and she felt a sharp pain in her forearm, followed seconds later by a cool ache as the nurse established a saline drip.
“Well, enough with the small talk,” Feng said, still smiling as if they were having tea on a first date. “Time to move onto the matter of your deception and the administration of punishment.”
She turned to him. “My deception?”
“You lied to me, Dr. Chen, about both your identity and your intentions. Because of you, my entire operation is now under the microscope. Because of you, my career, my reputation, and Nèiyè Biologic itself are in jeopardy. Your colleagues will be coming for me, and for that, you must be punished.”
A new and horrible dread washed over her. What could possibly be worse than what he already had planned for her? What could possibly be worse than having her organs cut out against her will and gifted to another? She looked at the ceiling, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear. She waited for her head to swim, for whatever preanesthesia meds they were pumping into her to take effect, but she felt bright-eyed and normal, except for the burning in her arm from the saline IV.
“You see, normally, after a crime such as yours, I would subject you to the Five Pains. But given the circumstances, I’ve been forced to be a little creative.” He laughed, and it was the most obscene sound she’d ever heard.
He leaned in, his lips beside her ear, his breath warm on her face. “You will be the first to truly experience what we do here,” he whispered. “To fully experience it. You see, I have instructed the nurses to administer only succinylcholine, a depolarizing paralytic, during your procedure. You will be completely paralyzed, but you will not be given any other anesthesia. You will have no sedation. You will have no pain medications. You, Dr. Chen, will experience fully every moment of the procedure—as we draw the blade across your lovely abdomen . . .” With his fingers, he untied the knot keeping her gown closed and spread the flaps open, exposing her naked body beneath. He dragged the tip of his index finger down her abdomen to the top of her pubic hair, making her jump against the restraints. “. . . as we open you, remove your kidneys, your pancreas, your liver—which I’ve instructed the surgeon to save until late in the procedure so you don’t drift away too soon. Then, if all goes well, you will still be alive to feel the snap of the shears as we split your sternum.” Next, he ran his finger gently down her chest, from the bottom of her neck, down between her breasts, making her jump again. “You will fade away after we excise your heart, ceasing the flow of blood to your brain, a prison in which your mind will be screaming silently in anguish until you die.”
Leaving her naked and vulnerable, Feng moved toward the oval door.
She stole a glance and took in all the details of this monster and the sadistic grin lingering on his face. She searched for the perfect thing to say to take away some of his pleasure. Unable to think of anything, she began to cry instead.
At the threshold, he said, “See you shortly, my dear,” his voice almost cheerful, and then he was gone.
As the tears streamed down her cheeks, she wondered if Nick and Zhang would find her body floating in the sea. With what Feng had planned, for Nick’s sake and for whatever it was he felt for her, she hoped not.
CHAPTER 29
Lead H155 helicopter
Ninety-two nautical miles southeast of Lantau Island, Hong Kong
0615 hours local
If Dash’s life were not on the line, Nick might have actually been enjoying himself—kitted up in the back of a helo, the blue China Sea screaming by two hundred meters below as they made their low-altitude stealth approach on the hospital ship. The assault force was divided between two helicopters: Zhang’s team of six was in the lead bird; Nick and his team were trailing. The operators sitting beside him were all Chinese, and although their chatter was foreign to him, the mood and camaraderie was not. They were relaxed, confident
, and ready to go. The weapons they held were different from the SOPMOD M4s his SEAL teammates had carried, but the intimate way they handled them was familiar. With a few tweaks of fate, this could easily be a SEAL Team. Nick had planned the details of the assault with Zhang’s support, and the team was as ready as a foreign team could be. Maritime assault was the legacy mission of choice for the SEALs—that is, before perpetual combat in the deserts and mountains of the Middle East forever changed the force. Now Nick was preparing to execute the mission he’d always dreamed of, and the stakes could not be higher. The woman he loved was on that ship, and he suspected that mere seconds would determine whether she lived or died.
He had not, until this moment, permitted himself to acknowledge his true feelings for her, but there it was. He loved her. He loved Dash. The timing of this epiphany could not be worse. Instead of feeling excitement at the realization, he recognized it for what it was—an emotional liability. Personal stakes added stress and made for a dangerous distraction during what should otherwise be just one more operation in a log of hundreds of direct-action missions he’d completed. Hostage rescue, covert intel gathering, seek and destroy, capture or kill—they were all the same. But not this one.
Not today.
“Two minutes.”
Zhang’s voice snapped him back from the mental precipice he’d best stay clear of for the next thirty minutes or more. He held up two fingers to the Snow Leopard beside him, who passed the signal down to the next operator. Around him, men began the familiar kata of last-minute gear and weapons checks.
“You okay?”
Nick looked at Lankford, who sat beside him on the canvas bench seat.
“On time, on target,” he answered, but he knew Lankford could see past the operator bravado.
