The Altman Code c-4

by Robert Ludlum

  Time seemed to stop as he told himself to inhale, to crawl. Inhale.

  Crawl. Follow the feet, as the dark tunnel seemed to swallow him.

  At last the air changed. It stank, fetid and thick. Jon gulped like a dying fish.

  “Hurry,” Asgar urged and crawled up to his feet.

  Quickly, Jon followed. They had emerged into a dark culvert at the end of a stench-filled alley. For Jon at the moment, he could not remember a more beautiful sight.

  Asgar trotted ahead, and Jon, still breathing deeply, stumbled after until they passed through an open iron gate and entered a street where two Land Rovers waited at the curb. Hands pulled him into the second vehicle, and he found himself packed into the rear, where the seat had been removed. Three men and two women pressed against him. He recognized Toktufan, Mierkanmilia, and the two makeup artists. The fifth was a stranger, but all were dressed with bits and pieces of traditional Uigher clothing. Alani rode in the front passenger seat, and Asgar drove.

  “Why two Land Rovers?” Jon whispered.

  “Decoy. In case the police are watching.”

  The first Land Rover, similarly loaded, headed off.

  They waited. Then, five minutes later, they left, too, turning through dark streets in the early morning hours, until they reached a lighted main road where there was traffic, but not much.

  Asgar glanced back. “We’re going to take the Huhang Expressway toward Hangzhou. We’ll stand out like a sore thumb: Eight country bumpkins from Xinjiang, heading south for Hangzhou, like your Okies in the nineteen-thirties. We’ll look like a joke, not a threat — we hope. If the Public Security people aren’t already following us, or fell for the decoy, we might just make it.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Huhang Expressway, China.

  Under the black night sky, the countryside took on a spectral air of shadows and wavering mists. Jon used a public phone in Gubei New Town in the Changning District to dial a number in Hong Kong. In French, he discussed a proposed business deal that was legitimate, if checked upon.

  The conversation contained his innocent-seeming code for a rescue by sea, and it related the time and coordinates. As soon as he hung up, the contact would relay the information to Fred Klein.

  “The line sounded clear, no sign of being tapped,” he told Asgar as the Land Rover resumed its tortuous passage over the bad road that sliced through the rocky, rolling land.

  “They were listening,” Asgar assured him. “Any long-distance call will be checked, especially to Hong Kong. What’s good is that low-level employees do the monitoring, and for them it’s routine. They seldom catch anyone unless they’re terribly obvious. This time though, the service knows you’re here, so they’re certain to have ordered a special alert. But if your contact’s a solid, long-term cover, you may be all right.”

  Jon grimaced. “Thanks.”

  They had been stopped twice at routine checkpoints before they left the city, causing amusement among the police. They had been let through with little trouble. Jon began to relax. Thirty minutes later, they were on the expressway, lightly traveled at this late hour, and more than halfway to Hangzhou. A few kilometers later, they turned off onto a two-lane rural road near Jiaxing, heading southeast toward the coast and the East China Sea.

  Even in the darkest hours before sunrise, there continued to be other vehicles — a few passenger cars and an intermittent stream of pickups driven by small farmers, their produce piled perilously high in their truck beds. Smaller entrepreneurs rode bicycles, pulling two-wheeled carts with specialty items to sell in Shanghai.

  Asgar drove steadily but slowly, not wanting to attract attention. “If the security police are watching, they’ll wait until we hit the beach and the mission’s in progress. They’ll want to capture the rescue team, too. But we’ve got time, so there’s no sense in taking unnecessary chances by speeding. With luck, they’re not following us anyway.”

  Jon agreed. He settled back and closed his eyes. Everyone but Asgar dozed, awaking occasionally to the clean salt tang of the open sea and the sour odor of mudflats.

  At Zhapu, they turned northwest toward Jinshan. Here on the coastal road, the pickups and bicycles flowed in both directions — north to Shanghai and south to Hangzhou. An occasional police car passed, but the officers either paid no attention or grinned broadly at the sight of the unsophisticated rubes.

  Finally, the Land Rover pulled off, so Asgar and Alani could check their position. They consulted and used a penlight to scan the map. Alani looked back and said something in Uigher. Toktufan squeezed into the front seat between them. A heated discussion in Uigher began, with Toktufan pointing at the map and then ahead, and Alani trying, apparently, to pin him down to an exact location.

  She offered him a pen to mark the map. He shrugged, waved off the pen, and continued to gesture insistently.

  Clearly Toktufan was the one who knew exactly where they were going but strictly by visual aids in the dead of night and from the seat of his pants. This did not make Jon feel secure, or apparently Alani or Asgar.

  Swearing under his breath in Uigher, Asgar pulled back onto the road and drove on, while Toktufan surveyed the shadowy gloom.

  “You sure he can find this beach?” Jon asked.

  “He’ll find it,” Alani said. “The only question is when.”

  “It’ll be dawn in a couple of hours.” She turned in her seat and smiled her small, mocking smile. “You wouldn’t want your life to be dull now, would you, Colonel? Excitement and adventure. That’s why you became an agent, isn’t it? Incidentally, if you aren’t CIA, what are you?”

  Jon kicked himself for saying that earlier. Damn. “State Department.”

  “Really?” She seemed to study him, as if she knew what a State agent looked like. Maybe she did.

  Asgar’s voice was harsh. “Ahead!”

  Jon saw the uniforms. A police car blocked half the road. It was a checkpoint.

  “Toktufan, in back again!” Asgar ordered.

  Toktufan slid out of the front of the slow-moving Land Rover and squeezed in among the others in the rear once more. The Land Rover inched ahead in a snakelike line of pickups, old cars, and bicycles. At the head of the line, drivers and cyclists held up papers. The officer in charge was leaning sleepily back against his car, yawning. Every now and then, he barked an order.

  The policemen, however, were busy. They checked identifications and lifted canvases covering loads, whether small or large. When the Land Rover reached the front, the sleepy officer did a double take. He straightened alertly and snapped an order.

  The two patrolmen gaped at the eight packed into the Rover. One scanned the papers held out by Alani and Asgar as the second grinned, entertained. The officer barked again, marched forward, and took the papers. He studied them and peered up at Asgar and Alani. Alani smiled.

  A winning, almost flirtatious smile this time. The officer blinked and stared.

  Jon scrunched low to hide his height and build, and the others pressed closer. One of the policemen trained his light across all their faces and said something in Han that included the word Uigher.

  The officer, still gazing at Alani, nodded and snapped another order.

  The policemen turned their attention to the next two cyclists in line.

  The officer smiled, nodded to Alani, and waved them on.

  As Asgar drove away, Jon resisted the urge to look back. Everyone breathed deeply, relieved. The night enclosed the Land Rover with anonymity, and they smiled and whispered among themselves.

  But Jon did not smile or whisper. He asked Alani, “Are checkpoints like that common?”

  “Sometimes in the city, not usually in rural areas.”

  “They’ve been alerted by the Public Security Bureau to look for someone.”

  Asgar nodded. “But not for Uighers.”

  “An American like me,” Jon agreed.

  “It means they don’t know where you are, who you’re with, or what you’re going to
do next. If they did, they’d be swarming the coast right now.”

  “They’re obviously thinking I could be trying to leave, or they wouldn’t have alerted the police so far from Shanghai.”

  “That’d be true for any agent whose cover was shattered.”

  Jon liked none of it. Someone in Public Security suspected he would call for help so had ordered the coastal area around Shanghai on alert.

  Patrol boats and fighters might be prepared to scramble, too. The patrol boats did not worry him particularly. Jets were another matter.

  But he soon had something else to think about. Toktufan leaned forward, spoke in Uigher, and gestured eagerly to the left, away from the sea.

  Through the press of bodies and heads, Jon caught a glimpse of a narrow building high on the top of an inland hill. Its roof lines were up-curved, in the silhouette of a Chinese pagoda. Excitement rippled through the group.

  With a spin of the wheel, Asgar drove the Land Rover abruptly off toward the ocean. The Rover rattled down into a gully hidden from the road.

  Asgar pulled under the cover of a willow and parked. The sudden quiet of the vehicle made all of them sit still a moment, appreciating it. Shaken by the long, bone-jarring ride, everyone crawled stiffly out and crouched in a circle around Asgar and Toktufan. Trees and bushes surrounded them.

  Asgar did the talking in Uigher, with Toktufan throwing in comments and pointing in various directions in the waning moonlight. When they finished, one of the women stood up and vanished among the growth, heading back toward the road above the gully.

  Alani turned to Jon. “Asgar sent Fatima to the pagoda with an electric lantern and a shielding sleeve. She’ll put it in a window embrasure at the top, with the shield protecting it from being seen from land.” She nodded in the opposite direction, toward the water. “The beach is about five hundred meters in a straight line from the pagoda. It’s normally deserted, especially at this hour, but there are those who like to fish or crab at night. There’s also the chance the police could be watching through night-vision binoculars.”

  “Then we should avoid the beach as long as possible.”

  She nodded. “We’re armed. We’ll go with you as soon as we see the light in the pagoda.”

  The group stayed together, hunched down in the thick growth, tall trees rising and arching toward an imaginary ceiling overhead. Every second seemed like a minute, every minute an hour. The low whispering from the Uighers was subdued, concerned, and deadly serious. Alani crouched beside him in silence, busy with her thoughts.

  A sudden, distant point of light appeared high in the night sky. Asgar materialized among them. He spoke quickly in Uigher and turned to Jon.

  “Time to move, Jon. I’m not completely certain, but I believe I heard someone near the road while I was crossing. I saw nothing, so I hope I’m wrong. No reason to take chances. We don’t know how far offshore your people are, or if they’re here at all. Still, we’d best hurry.”

  “It’s time, so they’re here,” Jon assured him.

  Toktufan trotted in the lead, snaking his way through the brush and trees like a phantom. The rest of the Uighers were right behind, weapons in hand. Jon followed with his Beretta ready, while Asgar and Alani brought up the rear. The hushed procession seemed to float among the grasses, wraiths no more substantial than the fog.

  At last, Jon heard the splash of breaking waves. A salty breeze stung his face. The trees and brush reached to a low ridge of tufted grass that dropped off perhaps four feet to a narrow, rocky little beach. Jon and the Uighers squatted inside the edge of trees to wait. The moon was nearly down over the black sea, projecting a silvery path toward the horizon. Tall trees swayed, leaves rustling eerily.

  There was a flash of light out at sea. Once. Twice. Three times.

  Then darkness again — and an abrupt sound. A stumble. A grunt. An angry oath.

  “Under the bank!” Jon whispered urgently and rolled.

  At the same time, Alani shouted in Uigher.

  They slid and dove into the cover of the bank at the edge of the beach nearly simultaneously with a fusillade that exploded in an arc from deep among the trees. The bullets burst into the sand and rained into the surf.

  “Wait until you see them!” Jon yelled over the din.

  Asgar repeated it for the Uighers. No one panicked. They waited with their backs to the sea, calm, with a sense of cold inevitability.

  Another fusillade erupted, and Jon saw movement deep among the trees to his left. He fired. A distant cry. He had hit one, whoever they were.

  Someone else fired, and then a third shot. There were no cries, no crashing through the undergrowth.

  Asgar cursed in Uigher and yelled angrily.

  A third volley thundered from ahead, but weaker this time, ragged, and Jon saw to his left that shadows were running from the trees and out into the open swath of tall grass before the beach.

  “They’re outflanking us!”

  Alani repeated his warning, and Jon wondered — were these the same people who had attacked him and Mondragon on Liuchiu Island and then at Yu Yongfu’s mansion? Feng Dun once more, using his favorite tactic?

  He had no time to analyze further. No matter who they were, they outnumbered the Uighers, and they were closing in. Already Jon could see more movement, visible now, much nearer the front line of trees. So could the Uighers, who opened a careful, lethal fire, sending the approaching attackers to ground.

  Asgar crouched beside him. His breath was hot and worried in Jon’s ear.

  “We can hold them for a time, but when those others up the beach move in, they’ll trap us if we don’t clear out of here soon.”

  “Right,” Jon agreed. “You’ve done a lot. I’m grateful — you know that.

  When you have to go, go.”

  “And you?”

  “It’s only me they want, whoever they are.”

  “You don’t think they’re security?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to us.”

  Jon understood. “If it’s security, I’ll try to hold them until you get a good―”

  A fresh barrage of automatic fire burst from the left. The Uighers hit the beach and returned fire, but now their front was exposed. Feet ran from among the trees before them, pounding the sand. They were cornered.

  “Go!” he snarled to Asgar. “I’ll surrender.”

  Asgar hesitated.

  Alani was there. “We can’t leave him!”

  “Come with us!” Asgar urged. Before Jon could decide, a withering eruption of automatic weapons frac-tured the night again, the bullets mowing the stretch of grass between the trees and the low bank. Chilling screams echoed across the dark sea.

  Jon and Asgar spun on their heels in time to see eight black shapes rise at the surf line, deployed at equal intervals, still firing over the heads of Jon and the Uighers at the ambushers.

  Jon grinned. “I’ll be damned. It’s our navy. The best of the best — SEALs.”

  The word spread instantly. The Uighers opened up again on the flanking attackers, who fell back. With shouts and curses, the group above the bank retreated from the assault.

  A SEAL loped up from the water and hunkered down. “Orchid.” He was broad-shouldered and muscular. His face was covered with black grease.

  “Nice of you to drop by.”

  “Lieutenant Gordon Whelan, sir. Glad we made it in time. We’d better book now. There’re patrol boats out there, more than one. They know something’s up. Can your people get away on their own?”

  Asgar nodded. “If you keep them pinned down a few more minutes.”

  “Roger. Go.”

  Asgar called low to the rest of the Uighers. They did not wait for farewells. Crouched low, they crab-walked quickly along the beach to the right and vanished into the darkness. The SEALs provided a steady covering fire, keeping the attackers too busy to notice.

  “Get to the raft, sir,” the lieutenant ordered. “We have
to get out damn quick now.”

  Jon ran the short distance to the big rubber Zodiac that had been pulled up onto the beach. White surf churned around it. He clambered aboard.

  Four of the SEALs fired a final volley before pushing off, jumping in, and paddling swiftly out to sea.

  Behind them, the remaining four, including Lieutenant Whelan, continued firing. Then silence. From the raft, Jon watched as the land receded.

  Shadowy figures had gathered to stare helplessly out to sea, weapons hanging down from their hands.

  Jon’s heart hammered with leftover adrenaline. He listened to the quiet wash of waves against the raft, felt the gentle rise and fall of it. The Zodiac kept moving farther and farther from the shoreline. The SEALs said nothing. He knew they were thinking about the quartet left behind.

  Worrying. He was, too.

  Finally, at least four hundred yards out, four black shapes suddenly burst out of the water. Hands reached over the side of the raft. The men grabbed the hands and scrambled aboard, one by one. Lieutenant Whelan was last. He counted heads and nodded. “All accounted for. Nice work, people.”

  Nothing more was said until they were a half mile at sea. The searing glare of a searchlight suddenly whipped across the dark water to the north. It was sweeping the sea more than two miles away but approaching rapidly.

  “They’ll spot us soon,” the lieutenant said. “Better start the motor, Chief.”

  One of the SEALs cranked the sealed outboard motor, and the raft shot ahead, bouncing like a toy across the tops of the swell. Jon held on, enjoying the cold spray on his sweaty face. At the same time, he watched the Chinese patrol boat uneasily. It was approaching through the night, closer and closer, gunfire singing from it, looking for a target. Its searchlight had yet to hone in on them, but when it did–

  Then he saw a dark shape, towering ahead like a giant sea monster. It was a submarine. American, thank God. At the same moment that the SEALs raft reached the hulking steel sub, the searchlight on the patrol boat finally found them. Bullets ripped through the rubber as they swarmed up aboard, hauling Jon and the tattered Zodiac after them.