by Todd Merer
“Mostly Chinese navy on patrol,” said Dolores, “and a scattering of warships from the other six Southeast Asian countries who also claim the area, although they stay well away from the Chinese—”
A huge roar erupted, quickly grew louder, louder, then a pair of fighter jets streaked past, so close I could see the red stars on their wings.
The intercom squawked: “We just were advised to turn before we enter Chinese airspace over the Spratlys.”
Older Brother turned, looked at Dolores.
Dolores nodded, said, “Reply . . . Red Lucky.”
“Copy that,” said Older Brother.
“No response,” said Younger Brother.
“Go straight over the islands,” said Dolores.
The brothers glanced at each other but stayed on course. Below, the Spratlys appeared: reefs and islets, some already reclaimed from the sea and lined with airstrips and dotted with buildings on whose roofs were painted the ubiquitous red star of Communist China. Dozens of ships were anchored offshore: cargo vessels, dredges, a pair of frigates.
The intercom crackled: “Their radar’s locked on us.”
Dolores’s face turned grim. I sensed the Logui and Green Dragons were equally concerned. Dolores took my hand and squeezed it, hard.
Long seconds passed.
Then the Spratlys disappeared behind us and ahead lay only empty sea. Dolores released my hand. The Logui and Dragons had visibly relaxed.
“Red Lucky?” I said.
Dolores didn’t reply. She didn’t have to because now I understood, remembering the Chinese sicario at the cartel confab outside Cali. I’d thought something had passed between him and Dolores. Now I was sure. The man was there because Dolores had something going with the Chinese. A side deal? Was I about to reprise my role as the Great Negotiator?
With them? Or with Richard?
If my adversary was Richard, I needed to prepare. I said, “I’m going to be dealing for what, for whom?”
“With everyone who wants Lucky. For an old woman who needs your help. You met her. Madame Soo.”
“Madame Soo has Lucky?”
“Not exactly.”
“Don’t make me pull teeth.”
Dolores laughed. “Madame Soo has a male admirer who’s going to tell her where Lucky is. Look there.”
Dolores pointed, and when I followed her gaze, I made out a small speck in the distance. Another atoll?
No. A cargo vessel, gray-painted, flagless.
As we lowered toward it, I realized its rear deck was flat and uncluttered. A helipad? Yes. Atop which a flagman guided us in. As we neared the pad, I glimpsed the vessel’s stern. Beneath the gray, the lettering of the vessel’s name was faint but visible:
Kitty.
CHAPTER 56
When we left the chopper, I realized the ship’s hull and superstructure had been painted in different shades and patterns of gray. Irregular blotches and splotches, as if halfhearted attempts to conceal rust. They seemed random at first—dull leaden areas, black-and-white striped patches, Jackson Pollock–type drippings in ashen shades—and then I realized the vessel was deliberately camouflaged. Professionally. From a nautical mile away through heat haze, she’d be an old freighter. But the vessel was anything but.
It was a man o’ war.
Gray tarps covered radar-controlled air-to-air missiles, state-of-the-art CWIS batteries, other deadly toys. Made me wonder what force or power had such resources. The vessel and its armaments must have cost many hundreds of millions of dollars. The Yanks and the Reds could easily afford that. And perhaps a consortium of Vietnam and Taiwan and other, lesser nations making claims in the South China Sea.
Had Dolores made a deal with one of them?
The thought was short-lived for I realized beneath gray paint, the deck was not the riveted sheet metal of a warship but was intricately inlaid hardwood. And beneath their drab finish, the knobs and fixed hardware were mahogany-ringed titanium. I laughed aloud.
The ship was Duke’s yacht. The very same I’d briefly seen emerge from the mist on Long Island Sound. Kitty. Clearly, Duke was the “male admirer” carrying a torch for Madame Soo.
The crew was a mix of Duke’s mercs and Filipino merchant mariners. Dolores spoke to the Logui in Anchiga, and they went below.
Dolores turned to Derek. “Get your boys ready.”
Derek nodded. “G’night, Ms. Dolores.”
Dolores took my arm. As she led me below deck, the copter was being refueled. My worries about its range were misplaced. Miscalculation wasn’t in Dolores’s vocabulary. Obviously, Dolores had been aboard before, for she knew the way to the master cabin. Duke wasn’t there, but no mistaking his presence.
The cabin befitted a wealthy dilettante. Paneled walls, brass porthole fittings, a nice area rug—Chinese, I noted—and a big, soft bed. Like Duke’s den, the space was filled with the odds and ends of his memories . . . but these photographs were much older. Taken together they were a visual autobiography of Duke, from when he was Archie Petrie. Fading black-and-whites: a shirtless Archie standing atop the wing of a P-40. Archie and a dozen Shan men. Archie and a tough-looking short mug—Smitty?—lying atop a pile of money, beers in hands, laughing. Archie holding a little girl . . . Smitty’s child?
From outside, we heard the copter cough to life. Its rotors thudded too loudly for us to speak, so we waited until it took off and its engine faded to distance.
“Tell me about Duke,” I said.
“I met Duke through Richard. We agreed that, although our individual agendas were different, by pooling our resources, we could help one another.”
“So then you and Richard pooled?”
“You need to get past that, Benn.”
“I need to get past Richard.”
“Nothing to get past. He’s a creep old enough to be my father.”
“I’m old enough to be your father.”
“And immature enough to be my son. I helped Richard break the cartels. In return, although he doesn’t know it, he’s going to help me save the Sierra Nevada. But since you want the gory details, here’s how it was. Richard learned I was Sombra. He offered me a deal: full pardon for all my crimes. In return, I’d help him break the cartels.”
“You believed him?”
“Of course not. But he opened the door for me to save the Sierra. That’s how I know he’s a traitor. Because he used me to carry messages between him and the Chinese. Which suited my purpose, that being to deal with the Chinese.”
“What’s Duke’s game?”
She shrugged. “I wonder about that myself. He doesn’t need the money, and he sure doesn’t want the publicity. He wants to spend his last days peacefully. My take is that he’s doing it for a personal reason.”
“Stella.”
“Yes, and more.”
“Kitty.”
“Yes.”
“Richard and Duke make an odd couple. What’s up with them?”
“Richard’s using Duke to get Lucky. If, when, he does, the Chinese will reward him with a fortune. My moves in Colombia are making him a big man in Washington. Maybe he wants to go into politics. Maybe he wants to launch his own security consulting firm. Maybe it’s about money, or power. Richard doesn’t care what or whom he hurts as long as he gets what he wants.”
“But how’s Richard gonna be a hero in Washington if he gives Lucky to the Reds?”
“Because Washington won’t know.”
“But someone will have to answer.”
Dolores smiled. “USA v. Bluestone.”
“Not funny. So Duke has Lucky?”
“He knows where Lucky is.”
“What’s your plan A?”
“For you to react accordingly.”
“Chinese checkers.”
“Yep. So jump me.”
We spent the next hour or three dreamily making love. We were getting to know each other. Our first time had been fast and furious. Now we took things slow and easy. I nibbled at her
ear. There was a thin gold wire in her lobe that had been hidden beneath her hair.
“You gave it to me,” she whispered. “Remember?”
I remembered. What do you give a kid who has everything? Twenty years ago, my answer had been this gold wire, one we’d pretended was an antenna connecting our thoughts when we were apart. Then a realization came to me:
All my life I’d been waiting but never knew for what. Now I knew. I’d been waiting for Sara to grow old enough to be with me. Of course, now Sara was Laura and Sombra and Dolores and She Who Knows Most of All . . . but a rose by any other name . . .
“White picket fences, lots of kids, and dogs,” she said.
Is she for real? I desperately hoped so but even more desperately feared being let down.
“I love dogs,” I said. “Fences? Not so much.”
“My wonderfully weird Benn. I so love you.”
I saw myself in her eyes. “Double ditto.”
The PA squawked: “Battle stations!”
CHAPTER 57
Openly armed now, the crew rushed about, their footsteps clattering. When I emerged from the cabin, two of Derek’s Dragons stood in front of the next-door cabin. I’d forgotten their names but knew them both, but they gave me the cold shoulder. Some things never change. I remained the gweilo lawyer who’d taken their boss’s hard-stolen money. Obviously, Derek had told them that no one—including me—was to enter the cabin they guarded.
I wondered who was inside. Was it Duke, resting, girding his old bones for whatever lay ahead?
Or was it Lucky?
On deck, the weapons were still shrouded, but the crew stood ready to uncover them. The vibes were tangible, electric. I followed Dolores onto the bridge and saw why.
We’d caught up with the cargo traffic headed for the Strait of Malacca. Moving at flank speed, a sleek Chinese frigate cleaved toward us.
Older Brother handed Dolores a pair of binoculars and a radio phone. Looking up at a man on the flying bridge, she spoke into the radio phone:
“Captain? Signal ‘Red Lucky.’”
Our captain, a stocky, unshaven Filipino, gave a half-assed salute, then leaned into the bridge house, took out a mike, spoke into it.
A moment, then the Chinese frigate sharply turned away, rejoining the convoy.
“Magic words,” I said to Dolores. “You are working with them.”
“No . . . sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Mind control, Benn. They won’t touch us because they think we control Duke, and they think Duke knows where Lucky is.”
“Why don’t they just follow us to him?”
“I told the Chinese that Duke’s in the process of bringing Lucky to them at a position two hundred miles due west of us. We’re headed east so, for now at least, they’re not interested in us.”
“So, then, where are we going?”
“To see Duke.” She handed me the binoculars and pointed to the horizon, away from the convoy. “There’s another reason the Chinese won’t bother us.”
I looked through the binocs and saw in the far distance a large amphibious assault ship, actually a small aircraft carrier. Its flight deck was occupied by the wasps and bees of copters and VTO—vertical takeoff—Harrier fighters.
“That’s a US Navy ship,” I said.
“That’s Richard,” she said.
“He’s shadowing us?”
She shook her head. “You can bet your last buck that Richard’s broken the Chinese secure communication system. He’s been tagging along, knowing it’s a ruse that Duke’s elsewhere, knowing we’re on our way to meet Duke.”
“To where Duke won’t be.”
“Oh, he will be. Later. Come.”
I followed Dolores to a cabin just below the bridge. A windowless space lined with electronics and monitors. Dolores sat at one, pecked some keys, and a wall-size screen came on.
It was a map.
Its optics were in color. On a white sea, atolls were small blotches ranging from black to pale gray. I recognized the black outlines of the Spratly Islands.
Dolores said, “The black areas are where the Chinese have already established bases and are constructing airstrips. The paler areas indicate atolls in the process of being reclaimed. The palest are those earmarked for future development.”
She touched the keyboard, and the screen magnified, the white sea now speckled with small brown dots.
“These are the ships in the trade routes with us. As you can see, the route circles the black areas, so already the newly constructed Chinese islands have created a new status quo.”
Dolores’s fingers danced over the keyboard, and a green cursor blinked.
“That’s us,” she said. “Kitty.”
Her fingernails clicked some more, and a red spot appeared alongside an almost colorless atoll that must have been at least a hundred miles ahead. Again Dolores tap-tapped, and a yellow line appeared between our green cursor and the red spot.
“That’s our course,” said Dolores.
She worked some more magic, and the image reformed: from offscreen, beyond the red spot, a gray arc appeared, enclosing the red spot within it. Even as I watched, the gray arc jittered and grew fractionally larger, like a weather map depicting the approaching eye of a storm. It reminded me of the late-night war movies I’d watched in my bad old days—namely, near the end of Patton, when the German command worriedly contemplates a map on which rings indicate the range of allied bombers. The arc on the screen represented fighter-bomber range, which Kitty was rapidly approaching. But did the fighters belong to China’s one dated, refurbished carrier? Or the amphibious attack ship Richard somehow had commandeered?
Dolores was hunched over the keyboard, bringing up images and numbers beyond my ken. I said, “The red spot? That’s Lucky?”
Concentrating, she ignored me. I left the room.
The wind was up and bow spray showered the deck, salting me down, so I went to Duke’s cabin and showered. His medicine chest was essence of Duke: mixed hints of leather and manly astringent and a dozen-odd phials of prescription meds.
Refreshed, I kicked back and turned on the TV. To my surprise, we had Internet and a BBC-clone station showing emotionless Asian commentators. On-screen was stock footage of a large US Navy warship, a copter-equipped amphibious landing craft. The commentator said, “In keeping with United States policy, Washington has announced that US Navy ships are again patrolling the South China Sea, a vital waterway though which passes one-third of the world’s cargo. The United States says that it will not allow the shipping lanes to come under Chinese control. China has ordered a general mobilization. The US Seventh Fleet reputedly is steaming to the South China Sea.”
I felt a not-unpleasant tingling.
It was happening.
CHAPTER 58
Late day. The sea glassy flat, the sky pale blue. But the weather changed as quickly as my moods. We entered a squall, and my thoughts coalesced to a landlubber’s knot in my gut as I held on for dear life while Kitty bucked and plunged beneath my feet. A dense fog spat blinding sheets of rain that seemed to endlessly worsen—
And then, in an instant, we emerged from the squall line to low sun gleaming off calm sea, and in the far distance ahead, I saw white waves smashing against the outer reefs encircling a small atoll. From Kitty, the atoll seemed as pale and insubstantial as it had appeared on the war-room screen. A godless half acre of white sand crested by a green ridge.
Skull Island?
Kitty slowed. The crew was active now, their vibe resonating anticipation. A pair of Filipinos stood on the flying bridge, peering through binoculars. The captain barked orders in Tagalog; at each, Kitty slightly altered course. As we neared the atoll, more reefs appeared. Dangerous waters, but our captain was a master seaman, and soon we were past the outer reefs. The atoll was horseshoe-shaped, and Kitty slowly proceeded to its open end, where it dropped anchor.
The sun was nearing the horizon, the sky a pastiche pai
nted by a Renaissance genius, a canvas of spirituality. But at the moment, I wasn’t into religion, rather what I saw on the atoll:
An old tramp steamer was anchored, bow facing the sea, stern close by a dredge fifteen feet from shore, powered by a generator on the white sand beach. Men working there guided the dredge as it scooped sand from the shallows.
I hadn’t an inkling of what was going on, nor did I try to make sense of it. My attention was fixed on the small ridge of greenery in the center of the atoll, where light shone through the windows of an old tin hut. Above the hut flew a flag.
The red field of the People’s Republic of China.
And again, I wondered: was I Dolores’s lover, or her tool—
There was a sudden flash of green—I turned and saw the sun had dipped below the horizon. Night had fallen. A moment later, the lights went out in the hut, and another moment later, Kitty went dark.
The only sound was the sea gently lapping against the hull.
I stood there in the black tropical night, thinking that this time I’d really fallen through the cracks, into a hole so deep, I was still tumbling. No rabbit hole, no Wonderland, a hole to eternity. I remembered how fervid Missy had been:
How would the United States like it if China patrolled the Caribbean, staking mineral rights, and arming anti-US factions in other countries?
The undoubted answer was that Washington would go ballistic—depending on the specific president and his generals, possibly literally.
Was this December 6, 1941, redux?
If so, the world was about to change, and if I were to survive, I’d have to adapt. No more playing in criminal sandboxes for me. I was at the no-limit table now, where only a few won. I was determined to be among them. To survive.
With Dolores.
That night Dolores and Javi and I dined by candlelight. I’d located Duke’s liquor cabinet and liberated a $1,000 Petrus, with which we washed down a surprisingly good dinner. The Filipino crew cooked for us and served us. In their white jackets—undoubtedly pillaged from Duke’s storeroom—they resembled USN officers’ mess boys. Got me to thinking how Filipinos had fought and died side by side with Americans during the Second World War, and how so many Filipino medical professionals had immigrated to the States, forming a seemingly unbreakable bond between the two countries. Yet now the Philippines—like most Southeast Asian nations—faced tremendous pressure from China’s growing stranglehold on the region and looked to the United States for help.
