by Jack Du Brul
“Lifeboat,” he croaked. “They took the lifeboat as soon as we landed. I stayed behind to distract you.”
The soldiers engaged in a quick conversation in Chinese, refining the translation of the answer. Huai turned back to Mercer without easing the pressure on his pistol. “Where they go?”
“Cruise ship,” Mercer replied without hesitation, feigning total defeat. “Unless you’re willing to slaughter three thousand people, they’re gone.”
Huai didn’t need to hear the rest of the explanation. He heard the words cruise ship and understood the others were beyond his reach. Equal measures of anger and fear coursed through his body. Liu Yousheng was going to kill him. There was no alternative, and for a moment the old sergeant considered not going back. But thirty years in the military had all but erased thoughts of personal safety. He’d taken an oath those many years ago and his decades of service had strengthened it, built it up, made it into an armor that excluded all other considerations. He had to go back and face his superior. That was what he’d been trained to do. He could only trust that learning what his prisoner knew would be enough to save him from Liu’s wrath.
That took care of his fear. His anger he took out on the man lying beneath him. Without warning, Huai threw a punch to the point of Mercer’s chin that contained only half his strength yet was more than enough to knock him unconscious.
Without handcuffs, it was easier to guard a comatose prisoner than a motive one.
“Throw him in the back of the truck,” he ordered his men. “Just in case, we’ll check the lifeboat station then get to the chopper.” He plucked a walkie-talkie from his belt and called to the other driver he’d sent out to corral the Bentley, ordering him to police the ship for the body of their one comrade and the other who’d been critically injured. He then called the pilot waiting in the Gazelle to get ready to clear out.
Ten minutes later they took off. The Gazelle flew west, where Liu had another secret project under way, thirty minutes behind the gunship he’d ordered away from the canal when he’d landed. In his wake he left a JetRanger helicopter crashed onto the car carrier’s roof, about two hundred spent shell casings, and a million dollars’ worth of luxury automobiles that looked like they’d all lost a demolition derby. Huai had confidence that when the vessel’s master reported the incident to the authorities, Liu’s government contacts would deflect any investigation toward drug smugglers or modern-day pirates.
That would explain away what had happened here, but what about what had occurred at the lake? Three other people had seen the excavation. They probably knew what it meant and would report it straightaway. It was a costly failure, to be sure, but again Liu might be able to save the operation. He had so many on his payroll that the nature of the excavation could be disguised. In order to do that, Liu would need to know exactly who the American trussed up in the hold worked for.
As a professional soldier, Huai knew the importance of interrogation even if he found the methods barbaric. He had no problem engaging an enemy in a fight and using any means necessary to accomplish his goal. It was a soldier’s calling. But torturing a captive to extract information was the work of another breed of men altogether—men without any sense of honor or the sacrifice of combat. They were like vultures who descended on battlefields to pick apart the bits of useful offal. They would crow over a piece of information, carry it back to their shadowy masters still covered with the blood of their victims as if it were a badge of courage.
A political officer had been sent with Huai’s detachment to Panama. It would be his job to handle the questioning sessions. Sun was his name, and no one was willing to spend enough time in his presence to learn his first name or his proper rank or title. He was simply called Mr. Sun, an irony not lost on the few soldiers who knew the English word. Sun was the darkest man any had ever met.
With a cadaverous skull sucked in at the cheeks and temples, he appeared to have no flesh at all. His skin was so dry that flecks often fell away when he moved, like a lizard caught halfway through a molt. Whatever his skin affliction, it also affected his hair, so his scalp was covered by a patchwork of graying follicles he combed over to hide the bald spots. His head was too large for his slender body, as if a burden to his thin neck. Huai guessed that Sun was in his sixties but the man’s odd appearance could hide an age swing of ten years either way.
In an unguarded moment on the flight from China, Captain Chen had confided in Huai that Sun had headed the Chinese program to interrogate American pilots shot down during the Vietnam War. Because of advances in technology and tactics, the prisoners China had kept following the Korean War had long since outlived their usefulness. The last of them had been put to death in 1959. Needing a new source of intelligence concerning Western military doctrine, the PLA saw an opportunity in the jungle conflict and paid the North Vietnamese with arms and training for hundreds of pilots. The first, an A-6 Intruder pilot, had arrived at a facility in central China in 1966 and lasted until 1971. During the course of the program, Chen had heard that Sun had overseen the torture of more than two hundred men, and had only lost funding when the last of the aviators died in 1983. Since then he’d been “working” with dissidents and most recently with suspected leaders of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Wiping his face and head, Huai glanced at his prisoner. The man had regained consciousness and gazed idly out the window. He almost looked like he was enjoying the flight. The American saw that he was being observed and gave Huai a little smile, then winked.
And the man wasn’t faking it, Huai thought. He must know what was coming, and yet didn’t seem concerned. By allowing himself to be captured, the American had to realize that he’d be interrogated, tortured, and yet had chosen it over simply letting Huai’s men gun him down. The captive seemed content with his choice. If not anticipating, at least accepting of the inevitable outcome.
Sheer bravado or real courage?
Huai shuddered, knowing how Mr. Sun would find that answer on his quest for the truth.
The Canal Zone, Panama
An hour had passed since Mercer had driven away aboard the auto carrier. In that hour they had dropped down the near-vertical rails that launched the freighter’s podlike lifeboat and waited for ten tense minutes for one of the ship’s loading ramps to open. It was Bruneseau who motored them toward the repair docks at Gamboa, satisfied that he had given Mercer enough time and that the geologist was not coming. The Gamboa harbor was where the canal operators kept some of their tugboats, as well as the 350-ton crane barge Titan. Away from where workers repaired large buoys that bobbed along a seawall, the French spy had hot-wired an employee’s battered Chevy while Foch and Lauren helped the injured pilot. Bruneseau took the wheel for the drive to the Legion safe house in Panama City.
It was just moments into that ride, as they crossed the trestle bridge they had almost hit with their helicopter, that they saw the auto carrier again as it continued toward the Pedro Miguel Lock. From the ship’s towering deck they spied the Chinese Gazelle lift away toward the west, all of them certain that Mercer was on board, but only Lauren Vanik feeling that he was somehow still alive.
Panama’s military had just begun their response to the distress calls from the ship and a handful of army vehicles passed them on the road, headed toward the lock where the ship would likely be detained for an investigation. They were in the outskirts of the city when they spotted the first military chopper headed for the canal—far too late to go after the Gazelle.
Now they were safely at the house. Carlson was being looked after by a medic who had the skills to remove the bullet fragment lodged in his thigh. The corpsman singled out Lauren for stemming the pilot’s blood loss with a tourniquet while still maintaining a trickle of circulation in the lower limb. She had spent the time riding to Panama City ministering to the man. In her rage against the French, her aid to the pilot had nothing to do with compassion. She simply needed something to keep her from being overwhelmed by grief
and anger.
Two of the off-duty Legionnaires went out to dump the stolen car downtown while the rest huddled over Carlson in a back bedroom, leaving Lauren alone. Restless, she stripped off her fatigue blouse and stood over the kitchen sink splashing palmfuls of water over her face. The cool water soaked the neck of her T-shirt and beaded like diamond chips in her long lashes. She could feel hot tears mingled with the water, greasepaint and sweat.
She couldn’t define what Mercer had become to her in the few days she’d known him. It had been so long since she’d had such a reaction to a man and she didn’t trust herself enough to dwell on it. During her tour in Kosovo, she’d learned to insulate herself from her feelings. To become too close to comrades or those she’d been charged to protect made the inevitable losses unbearable. In order to face the horror and the pain she had to prevent them from getting too deep. That lesson had cost her part of her soul, she knew. By insulating herself from the agony, she’d had to sacrifice what brought her the deepest joy, too.
The passage of time was mending that gap and maybe this was the first instance where her heart had broken through the shield she’d built around it. She wasn’t sure, and wouldn’t allow herself to think specifically about Mercer, gladdened that anyone had gotten through. She clung to that thought, drawing from it, using it to find the will to act. For the past hour, events had moved her along because she’d had no choice. Now, standing at the sink, she knew it was time for action.
Mercer had programmed Rodrigo Herrara’s number into her cell phone so she could dial it with the press of a button. Roddy’s wife, Carmen, answered. Without going into details, Lauren told her that she needed Roddy and Harry White. She gave directions to the safe house, which wasn’t too far from the Herraras’ home in Panama City’s El Cangrejo neighborhood. Carmen said the men were in the back-yard with Miguel and would be on their way in minutes.
Bruneseau’s actions at the lake—his reckless need to get into the compound—was an indication that the French mission in Panama went beyond a concern for radio interception antennas. But until she knew what it was they were looking for, she decided not to call the U.S. embassy. The ambassador had bought his post with financial contributions to the current White House administration, so he didn’t have the clout in Washington to forward any report she gave him. The CIA station chief was a hopeless drunk who was marking time to his retirement and Lieutenant Colonel Bancroft, her military superior, wouldn’t jeopardize his chance to put eagles on his shoulders by acting on what Lauren had found out. Maybe if she had concrete evidence—but for now he’d do nothing. That left her with Frenchmen she didn’t trust, an old man and an out-of-work canal pilot.
She was at the front window drinking from a second bottle of water when an older Honda Accord pulled into the driveway. She recognized Roddy behind the wheel and Harry sitting erect next to him. It was only when she opened the door that Rene Bruneseau came out of the back room.
He glared at seeing the two men enter the safe house. “What is the meaning of this?”
His size and intimidating build may have stopped most people in their tracks but Harry White brushed past him with such a casual contempt that the spy retreated a step. “Where’s Mercer?” he asked Lauren in a brusque tone that couldn’t cover his concern.
“Captain Vanik,” Rene snapped, “who are these men?”
Harry wheeled on Bruneseau, poking the heavier man in the chest with every third word. “I’ll ask you the same question in a second, but first I want to know where Mercer is.” It had taken him two seconds to gain control of the situation.
Lauren felt a rush of comfort that Harry was here. More than an ally, the feisty octogenarian was an advocate who wouldn’t stop until Mercer was safe. Had Bruneseau not been in the room, she would have hugged him. “The Chinese have him,” she answered. “They took him away in a chopper.” She paused, unsure how to tell him that she didn’t know Mercer’s condition. “We don’t know if he’s . . .”
White ignored the implications of her voice trailing off. “Took him on a chopper from where to where?”
“From a ship in the canal. They were headed west.”
“I thought you guys were going to the volcanic lake?”
“It’s a long story,” Lauren replied.
“That is enough!” Bruneseau snapped. “Captain Vanik, you have compromised our safe house and our mission by inviting these two men. I will not permit you to tell them any more.”
“As of right now,” she said hotly, her well of strength seemingly replenished by Harry’s presence, “your mission, whatever it is, means nothing to me. I am getting Mercer back. I suspect you will do nothing to help me, but you damned well can’t stop me either.”
“What she said,” Harry echoed and settled onto a couch, his body language dismissing Bruneseau. He lit a cigarette. “You said it was a long story. I’ve got all day to hear it.”
The Frenchman wouldn’t let his point drop. “I cannot believe your unprofessionalism. These men are civilians.”
The rage Lauren had been holding in since the canal exploded. “My unprofessionalism? Don’t you dare lecture me. You and Foch were the ones who tried to infiltrate Liu’s camp at the lake and nearly got us all killed. You still haven’t explained what you were looking for, and don’t give me some cock-and-bull story about Chinese listening posts.”
“I will not answer your questions.”
“But I will.” The voice came from the hallway leading to the bedrooms. It was Foch.
“Lieutenant!”
“I am sorry, monsieur. They deserve the truth.”
Although the two men switched languages, there was little difficulty following their argument. Bruneseau’s anger did nothing to blunt the Legionnaire’s resolve, even when faced with what sounded like a direct order. When it was over, the spy leaned against a wall with his arms crossed. It was evident by his expression that Foch was going to pay for what he was about to reveal.
“Eleven weeks ago, a shipment of spent uranium fuel was transported from Rokkasho in Japan to the reprocessing plant in France owned by Cogema.” Foch overrode the startled gasps and the quick looks of confusion directed at him. “The route, like the previous one hundred and sixty times such a load has been moved, took the specially designed double-hulled ship through the Panama Canal. The fuel was stored in what are called type-B casks, huge drums about twenty feet long and weighing over a hundred tons. About six tons of spent uranium are carried in each cask. Since 1971 about thirty-five thousand tons of spent fuel have been transported in these and other types of containers.
“This is all sanctioned by the International Atomic Energy Agency under guidelines drawn up in the 1970s,” Foch explained when Lauren drew a breath between her teeth at the amount of radioactive material routinely shipped around the globe. “When the ship arrived in France, and each cask was reweighed, one came up five hundred pounds light.”
“Jesus Christ! You lost five hundred pounds of radioactive fuel?” Harry said.
Foch nodded. “There are two ways this could have happened. Either it wasn’t loaded in Japan or it was taken from the ship during its run to France. French regulators are working with the Japanese at Rokkasho to see if the problem occurred at the plant—”
“And you’re working with Bruneseau to see if it was somehow taken off when the ship passed through the canal,” Lauren finished for him.
“It is an unlikely scenario,” Bruneseau scoffed. “The ship never stopped on its way through and only three pilots came on board to guide it. Not enough men to open one of the casks and steal a deadly fuel assembly weighing almost two hundred kilos.”
“But you were still given orders to check it out anyway?”
“My government wanted every contingency investigated.”
“How big is the ship that carried the fuel?” Roddy Herrara spoke for the first time.
“One hundred and four meters, about three hundred and forty feet,” Foch answered after Roddy told him
he had been a canal pilot.
“A ship that size,” Roddy said, “would only need one pilot.”
“Except for its extraordinary cargo. Surely they’d bring in extras to help.”
“Maybe one other,” the Panamanian replied. “Not two.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Bruneseau said. “Even two men couldn’t have done it alone. There’s no way the uranium could have been taken off the ship here. The safety monitors on the vessel never recorded a spike in radiation, the ship’s officers said that the pilots never left the bridge and the security tags on the cask hadn’t been tampered with. The five hundred pounds of missing uranium was not on board. The Japanese screwed up by shorting the load when they put the fuel into the casks. It’s a clerical error.”
“You’re probably right, sir,” Roddy said respectfully, “yet you seem to have stumbled onto something here or you wouldn’t be so vehemently pursuing your investigation.”
Bruneseau remained silent for a moment. “I’ll grant you something’s going on, but it’s not about a lost shipment of uranium. We focused on Hatcherly because of their connection to China’s military, but in the weeks we’ve been monitoring them with gamma detectors we’ve found nothing. Their activities at the lake were something we didn’t know about, and yet there was no evidence of radiation at that location either.” He turned to Lauren. “You’re right when you said my mission has nothing to do with yours. I don’t care that Hatcherly Consolidated is robbing this country blind or that they’re about to complete a Chinese takeover of the Panama Canal. Your country should have considered that when they gave the damned thing away. As I told my superiors when they sent us here, the whole trip is a waste. Nous sommes fini, ici. We’re done here.”
“Señor.” A little of the respect had drained from Roddy’s voice. “I am not saying that it is likely that your ship was tampered with in the canal, but I think you should know it is possible. Many times during a transit, tugboats are used to nose a ship into a lock. Depending on the time of day your ship went through, enough men could have boarded the vessel from the tug and broken into one of these casks.”
