Depth Charge

by Andrew Warren

  A light rain shower suddenly fell from the sky. The droplets painted the streets with a slick, black sheen. Caine turned and walked at a brisk pace, matching the speed of the foot traffic. The dense crowd offered concealment, but it was impossible to see more than a few meters in any direction.

  The fireworks continued to burst above. The crackling pops and explosions sounded like gunfire. Caine's eyes darted around the mass of people, scanning for any threats, his senses on high alert. He had to get off the streets as soon as possible. He stepped into the road to cross.

  A BMW Mini Cooper pulled up fast, then screeched to a stop. It reversed until it was directly in front of Caine.

  The passenger door swung open.

  A young, slim Asian woman in her twenties sat behind the wheel. Her hair was tied back in a short ponytail. She wore jeans, blue canvas shoes and a striped t-shirt. There was no one else in the car.

  “Get in,” she said in English.

  "Do I know you?" Caine asked.

  The woman did not smile. There was a trace of fear in her voice. "I know you. And so do the men chasing you.”

  Too convenient, Caine thought. This has to be a trap. The sirens wailing in the distance grew louder. Closer.

  "Quickly," the woman hissed, her voice a panicked whisper. "It is only a matter of time before they find you."

  Caine made his decision.

  “We'd better get moving then,” he replied in a low, hard voice. He kept his eyes fixed on the woman as he ducked through the door. Despite the risks, the offer of a ride seemed preferable to evading the authorities on foot.

  The young woman stepped on the gas, and maneuvered the Mini Cooper into the heavy night traffic. They sped out into a sea of blinking tail-lights and neon buildings. The rain grew more intense, spattering the windshield with a percussive beat. Caine didn’t mind. The inclement weather made it harder to spot him in the car.

  Caine looked his savior up and down. He thought he might have recognized her, but he wasn’t sure. Perhaps her face was in one of the many profile reports he was supposed to digest back at Langley. Maybe she’d sat in on MSS/CIA cross-table negotiations. But she didn’t strike him as an MSS operative.

  She turned her eyes from the road for a moment and smiled at him. She was pretty, with shoulder-length dark hair, a slim figure, and she was of medium-height. Caine sensed she was nervous. Her smile looked forced, and her eyes had a pensive, haunted gaze.

  “So, what’s the plan?” he asked casually.

  There was no doubt in his mind this woman knew exactly who he was and why he was in Macau. What he didn’t know was if she worked for the Ministry of State Security, or some other interested party. It was also possible she was working alone. If he were a betting man, he would have gone for the second option.

  She continued speaking in English. “I wanted to talk to you earlier, Mr. Caine, before those men took an interest in you. When they came to kill you, I thought I might have missed my opportunity.”

  Caine nodded and looked back to the road. They had pulled from the narrow, shop-lined streets onto the multi-lane Avenue Marginal Flor de Lotus. They sped past a row of shimmering hotels and casinos. The towering buildings disappeared into the rain and misty clouds above. Their architecture resembled a cross between ancient Chinese fortresses and gleaming skyscrapers.

  The sirens and the police were far behind them now. After a few minutes the young woman pulled the Mini Cooper up to the Morpheus, one of the flashier hotel casinos in Macao. The modern building was shaped like a gigantic letter ‘O’, and its shimmering glass reflected the rainbow of neon lights surrounding them. Unlike most buildings, the Morpheus contained no internal support walls or columns. Instead, the glass exterior was wrapped in a freeform geometric exoskeleton. The interlocking white rods gave the structure its strength and rigidity. The building’s warping curves and twisted glass made it look more like an alien organism than a decadent casino.

  The woman darted the Mini Cooper into the parking garage. A valet driver took her keys and chattered to her in Cantonese. Caine didn't speak the language, but he assumed the man was asking for her room number. Then Caine and the woman exited the car and stepped into the building's palatial lobby.

  “My room is on the eighth floor," she said quietly. "We can change there.”

  “We?”

  “We need to talk, Mr. Caine. Your description will have been broadcasted widely.” She nodded towards a mirrored column near the elevators. “There, why don’t you secure yourself a fresh set of clothes before we head up?”

  Caine noticed several suit bags hung on a rolling rack, no doubt returned from dry cleaning. He made sure no one was watching, then grabbed three bags off the rack as they walked past. The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open. He entered the car, the mysterious woman at his side. She tapped the elevator's control panel with her key card. The doors closed and the car ascended, speeding them up to the eighth floor.

  “Eight, the Chinese number for fortune and prosperity,” Caine said with a smile. “I hope that’s a good sign.”

  “Who knows?” she replied, staring at the blinking numbers as the elevator slowed to a halt.

  Once in her room Caine made a quick search of the sleek, immaculate interior. The modern room was decorated in deep red and black hues. Once he was satisfied there were no hidden attackers, or weapons the woman might use against him, he laid the three garment bags on the king-sized bed.

  The first bag contained an Italian Zenga two-piece charcoal suit. Two business shirts in his size, and three neckties, hung beneath the luxurious suit. The garment's fabric looked expensive, probably worth thousands of dollars. He began to change.

  “Are you going to tell me who you are?” he asked as he slipped on the charcoal trousers.

  She shook her head. “Not here." She took a short black cocktail dress from the wardrobe and laid it on the bed next to Caine’s new clothes. She slipped out of her canvas shoes, jeans and tee shirt. With her back to him, she slipped off her bra and dropped it on the bed.

  Caine couldn’t help but admire her slim figure. The room's soft lights highlighted her curves, transforming her body into a chiaroscuro of pale flesh and deep shadows. She slipped into the dress, wiggling as she tugged it over her hips.

  Caine removed a pair of freshly polished black dress shoes from one of the garment bags, and slid them on his feet. Bare-chested, he entered the bathroom and checked himself in the mirror. Luckily, he’d suffered no serious injuries to his face from the earlier altercation. He patched up the cuts on his muscular torso and arms as best he could, using a first aid kit the woman brought to him. When he looked presentable, he threw on one of the white shirts.

  “You scrub up quiet well,” she said, watching him from the door of the bathroom.

  Caine looked her up and down. She had transformed completely, looking every bit a sophisticated and elegant woman. “Is this supposed to be some kind of date?”

  “You could say that.”

  Caine returned to his old clothes and collected a contact lens case from the pocket of his pants. He unscrewed the case, and popped the two lenses onto his eyes. He turned and looked back at the bathroom mirror. He too had transformed his appearance. His natural green eyes were a dead giveaway. The brown contacts made him less striking, but that was exactly what Caine needed tonight.

  As the woman finished her makeup, he ran some grooming cream through his thick hair to flatten it down. Then he slipped on the jacket, along with a skinny argyle-patterned tie. Checking the mirror one more time, he was satisfied he looked the part of a rich businessman. He bundled up his old clothes and weapon holsters, ready to dispose of them on the way out.

  “Where to now?” he asked.

  “The casino, Mr. Caine. What else do you do in Macau?”

  Chapter Three

  Caine and the woman stepped into the hall. He found a laundry chute and disposed of his clothes. His pistol and knife holster went into a bin on a room servic
e trolley.

  Within minutes they were inside the casino lobby. The vast chamber of marble and gold was packed with guests and staff. Every surface was polished to a sparkling sheen. A ring of fountains launched sparkling jets of water up from a shimmering pool. An array of strobe lights made the falling droplets appear to hover in mid-air.

  Ethereal ambient music played from hidden speakers around them. Looking up, Caine saw Chinese women in silver and gold bodysuits, swinging from wires attached to the domed ceiling. Colored orbs and spheres spun around them in a slow orbit.

  They found a bar. Caine ordered a James Boags lager, an Australian beer he’d discovered on a recent mission. His companion asked for a diet coke. Caine understood why she wanted to talk here. It was not unheard of for the MSS to bug rooms in the casinos. The music and crowd noise of the lobby would muffle any surveillance equipment that might be monitoring them.

  He calculated how long they had before the MSS would track his movements here. He guessed they were good for half an hour. After that he would be pushing his luck. But before he left, he needed to understand who this woman was and what she had to offer.

  “Well, now that we’re enjoying a drink, are you going to tell me who you are?”

  She sipped her coke, then spun the straw in her glass with her delicate fingers.

  Caine sensed her unease. Before he could prod her again, she turned and looked him in the eye. “It’s not who I am that’s important. It’s what I can offer you.”

  Caine raised an eyebrow. “What is it you think I’m looking for?”

  “I know why you are here, Mr. Caine. You’re trying to figure out how the PLAN is hacking into your NRO. How they are subverting your submarine tracking satellites.”

  Caine nodded. PLAN was an acronym for the People’s Liberation Army Navy. NRO was America’s National Reconnaissance Office. The latter operated America’s network of defense and spy satellites. They had indeed been compromised, and Caine had been ordered to find out how and why.

  She sipped her coke again. “Jasper Min promised to provide you with evidence of this, for money. But I can assure you, he never had the clearance or the access to do so.”

  Caine sipped his beer and hoped his blank expression masked his concern. Whoever this woman was, she seemed to know too much about Caine and his mission. China was flexing its military muscles in the South China Sea. They were constructing artificial islands, enforcing military and economic pressure on neighboring countries. The United States’ ability to understand PLAN submarine movements, especially their long-distance nuclear vessels, was vital. Complicating matters, NSA, CIA and NRO cyber-specialist teams had recently identified intrusions on the NRO’s supposedly secure server network. All evidence pointed back to the PLAN as the hackers. Caine’s mission was to terminate those hackers, with extreme prejudice. But first he had to identify who they were.

  He had thought of denying everything, but decided that was just wasting time. She obviously knew far more about him than he did about her.

  “I'd be more inclined to believe you if I knew your name,” he replied.

  She took another sip of her drink, and gave him a pensive glance. “I guess you’ll find out eventually. My name is Su Liao. I’m a civilian programmer with PLAN. I work on their submarine navigation systems.”

  Caine forced himself to keep his expression blank, despite his surprise. “Quite a risk you're taking, Ms. Liao. The MSS won't tolerate someone with your security clearance chatting with someone like me. Especially not after what happened earlier.”

  Su’s eyes were wide and dark. He saw them glisten in the casino’s shifting lights. She looked away for a moment, and dabbed at them with her napkin. “You’re right, I’m taking a risk talking to you. But it would be an even greater risk for me to do nothing. My life is in danger. Or it will be, very soon.”

  Caine drank more of his beer. “And you think I can help you?”

  Su reached into her purse, hugging it close to her body so no one could see what she was doing. She withdrew a data stick, and held it in her slim fist for a moment. Then she sighed and dropped it into Caine’s waiting palm. “What you’ll find there are the routes taken by all PLAN submarines in the last three months. You can cross check it with your NRO SIGINT.”

  Caine pocketed the memory stick. SIGINT was jargon for Signals Intelligence… information gathered by satellites, electronic communications, phone and text message tapping. It would be easy to verify if she was telling the truth.

  “Why are you giving this to me?” Caine asked. He already suspected where this conversation was headed, but he had to be sure.

  She finished her coke. “In two weeks I will be in La Paz, for the Latin American Defense and Security Conference. That is the best opportunity for me.”

  “Opportunity for what?”

  She stared at him like he was mad. “To defect, of course. I wish to come over to your side, and work for the CIA.”

  “Defect? You’re serious?” Caine was even more suspicious now than he had been earlier. Chinese rarely defected or turned double agent. Their cultural and family ties were usually too strong to break. The CIA had been trying to recruit Chinese assets for decades without much luck. But if Su Liao was legitimate… Caine realized he might have stumbled into the intelligence coup of the decade.

  “I’m very serious, Mr. Caine. If you agree, I will need you to stage my death, and do so convincingly. In return, I’ll show you exactly how the PLAN is attacking your spy satellites. I can also help you hack into our submarine navigation system without being noticed. I coded in a backdoor access point, one only I know about.”

  Caine finished his beer. The waiter asked if he wanted another, but Caine shook his head.

  He thought about what all this meant, what this woman was offering. The ability to track the movements of every Chinese submarine in real time, anywhere in the world… It would give the U.S. a significant advantage in power struggles growing between the world’s two largest economies. He was about to ask more but Su was already standing, ready to leave.

  “Don’t follow me. We’ve been seen together long enough. You need to get out of the country, fast. The MSS have been onto you for weeks. It is only a matter of time before they find you. They will kill you when they do.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I’ve been forced to work with the MSS. I helped them plant false information trails to lead you into tonight’s trap. The plan almost worked. I’m glad you are still alive Mr. Caine, but if you’re not out of China in the next twenty-four hours, I don’t think you’ll ever leave.”

  Caine didn’t say a word. He stared at her for a moment, trying to guess if he was being played. He knew the subtle tells that could give away a lie or falsehood. But the woman didn’t cross her arms or look away when she spoke. She was doing a commendable job of hiding her true emotions, but Caine sensed she was terrified.

  “You said you were forced… Forced by who?” Caine asked. “The same people who are going to kill you?”

  Her eyes darted around the room. “No more questions. La Paz, two weeks. We’ll speak then, and only then." She pushed her empty glass across the bar, and stood up. "Thank you for the drink."

  She turned and walked into the crowd, clutching her tiny bag under her arm. Caine watched as the sequins of her dress reflected the spinning lights above. Then she was gone, lost in the shifting bodies of the casino crowd.

  Chapter Four

  HONG KONG, PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

  Caine wasted no time extracting himself from Macau. A moored speedboat was waiting for him at a local marina, paid for and registered under a false name. Once on the water, he killed the boat’s lights and donned his PVS-7 Gen 3 Night Vision Goggles. The pitch-black ocean glowed bright green through the lens as he raced across the water. The trip took no more than a couple of hours. Caine only made it into Hong Kong territorial waters just as the morning sun rose over the South China Sea.

  Even at
this early hour, commuters, red taxis and double decker buses packed the humid streets. Glowing neon signs blazed in the dim morning light. Skyscrapers cast their long shadows over the traffic below.

  As he walked through the crowded streets, Caine performed a surveillance detection routine. He varied his walking speed, or made abrupt stops to tie his shoelaces. He made sudden changes of direction, pretending to window-shop in the stores along the sidewalks. After two hours of walking, Caine felt certain no one was following him. Only then did he make his way to the CIA’s Hong Kong Station.

  The CIA's center of operations in Hong Kong was inside the United States’ Consulate General building. Like all embassies, the location was considered sovereign territory. It offered those inside diplomatic immunity. But Caine knew he couldn’t just walk through the front door. The MSS kept the building under constant surveillance. Like all spies, Caine valued his anonymity. So he chose another route.

  He entered via one of several discrete entrances spread across the Central District. The tunnel was hidden behind a false wall, in the men's bathroom of a cathedral in Cheung Kong Park. Caine followed the long dark passage until he reached another false stone wall. He pressed a stone in the wall, and it slid open. Next, he keyed his passcode into the secure steel-plated door revealed behind it. Only then did he enter the field office proper and U.S. territory.

  The U.S. Marine manning this entrance nodded when he recognized Caine. Following standard procedure, he insisted Caine pass through the metal detector and sign in.

  Five minutes later Caine stepped into the CIA’s Hong Kong operations center. A collection of video screens covered one entire wall of the large room. The screens displayed satellite images of Hong Kong and China. Various blinking icons represented assets and other targets, tracked in real time. Dossiers of assassins, terrorists, and other persons of interest filled one of the glowing screens.