China Star

by Maurice Medland

  Sam nodded and motioned to Charlie that Matt wanted to talk to him. Sam and Beth talked loudly about being hungry while Matt briefed Charlie, then Sam and Charlie picked up the conversation while Beth got the same whispered briefing. They all nodded, faces grim.

  Matt said, “I can’t believe you’re thinking about food. You don’t think we’re going to get out of this alive, do you?”

  “Probably not,” Sam said. “But I’m hungry.”

  “They wouldn’t dare harm us,” Beth said.

  “What makes you think so?” Charlie said.

  “Because the cavalry is on its way,” Beth said.

  Sam laughed, a loud booming sarcastic laugh. “You think just because the captain got a message off to CINCPAC, that’s gonna help us? Fat chance.”

  “Why?”

  “Because all the Navy’s gonna be worrying about is stopping the launch of that satellite. The press release has already gone out about the ship going down with all hands. The Navy thinks we’re all dead.”

  “Uh-uh, they won’t buy it,” Beth said. “After getting the captain’s message, they won’t believe that press release. They’ll come looking for us.”

  “I think she’s right,” Charlie said. “If the fleet’s on its way to intercept the command and control ship before it gets to the launch site, they’ve got to be close to our neck of the woods. They come across this ship, they might just pull it over and search it.”

  “You guys are dreaming,” Matt said. “But at least we were able to get the word out.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “They’ll probably kill us, but at least they won’t get that satellite launched.”

  Matt winced at Charlie’s stilted dialogue and changed the subject back to food. He looked at his watch. Time would tell if the bluff had worked.

  He didn’t have long to wait. Within minutes he heard the lock being opened and the door swung wide. Sergeant Li stepped in and stood with his hands on his hips, glaring down at Matt, sitting on the deck, head propped against the bulkhead.

  “You,” he said, pointing.

  Matt started to get up, then slumped back, feeling faint. Sam stepped between them.

  “Cap’n’s not feeling so good. Take me. You can talk to him later.”

  “No, take me,” Beth said, stepping forward. “These guys don’t know anything.”

  Sergeant Li swept Beth out of the way and tried to shove Sam aside, but it was like pushing against a concrete pillar. Two marines started toward him.

  “It’s okay, Sam. I can make it.” Matt motioned for Charlie to help him up. He came to his feet, weaving. “What do you want, Li?”

  Sergeant Li glowered at the familiarity of being called by his family name. He jerked his head toward the door.

  “Come.”

  Matt followed him through the door, feeling groggy, trying to keep his balance with the roll of the destroyer. With two marines behind him, he leaned against the bulkhead to steady himself and trailed Sergeant Li down the passageway a few yards to another steel door. He’d been right about where the house of pain was located. The compartment was right next door, within earshot of Beth, Sam, and Charlie. He clenched his teeth, determined not to make a sound, no matter what they did to him. Li opened the door and shoved him inside, then closed the door behind him as a pair of brawny sailors caught him.

  Wearing white pants, T-shirts, and rubber aprons, they looked the part of “information specialists.” With shaved heads that glistened under the floodlights, all they lacked was the black hoods. In the seconds before they spun him around, Matt caught a glimpse of what looked like an operating table with tie-down straps. An array of stainless-steel instruments lay on a table beside it. The two men stood facing the door, holding him upright, neither speaking.

  After a few minutes, the door opened and Captain Chen stepped in. The door clanged shut behind him, and the two sailors stood at attention, still holding Matt between them.

  Captain Chen leaned back against the door and stood with his arms folded, saying nothing.

  Matt glared at him. “I strongly protest the sinking of my ship and the inhuman murder of my crew.”

  “You’re hardly in a position to protest anything, Commander. Or is it Captain by now?”

  “Captain,” Matt said. “Captain of CoMar Explorer, a Panamanian flag salvage vessel, which you ordered scuttled in the South China Sea with all hands locked belowdecks.”

  “Captain of that piece of flotsam?” Captain Chen shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m sure the U.S. can find a better use for one of its most promising naval officers.”

  “You’ve been misinformed,” Matt said. “I’m a civilian. A private U.S. citizen.”

  Captain Chen smiled. “I hardly think a former brigade commander at the U.S. Naval Academy and former executive officer of a nuclear-powered submarine would be stripped of his position over an accidental death. Particularly one who’s related to the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations.”

  “It works a little differently in the U.S.,” Matt said. “We care about human life. Anyone who treats it carelessly, as I did, will be relieved of command. Anyone who takes it deliberately, as you did, will be charged with murder.”

  “Murder? You’re a professional warrior. You, more than anyone, should know that killing during wartime is not murder.”

  “Since when are the U.S. and China at war?”

  “Wars are not always declared,” Chen said with a shrug. “Now, tell me, what did the crazed half-Chinese woman tell you?”

  “I refuse to speak to a murderer.”

  “Oh, I think you’ll talk to me. You’ll pray for death before my men are through with you.” He nodded to the two sailors.

  They picked him up and threw him across the table, onto a thick, hard rubber mat. One of the men produced a knife and cut the tape binding Matt’s wrists. The taste of freedom was fleeting. They strapped his wrists down to the table, then pulled his boots and socks off and strapped his ankles down. The larger of the two men attached electrodes to his wrists, ankles, and the top of his head.

  “I’d advise you to cooperate,” Captain Chen said. He nodded to the larger of the two sailors. “This is Information Specialist Bing. He and his assistant, Ren, are highly skilled in both the old and the new ways of extracting information.”

  “Good for them.”

  “Our intelligence sources report that the half-Chinese American woman has been spreading lies about her visit to China,” Captain Chen said. “What has she told you?”

  “That she wants to go home.”

  Chen nodded to the younger sailor.

  Matt braced himself. A surge of electricity shot through him. The pain enveloped him, intense beyond any he’d ever felt. The blood in his veins felt as if it were boiling. Grinding his teeth, determined not to shout out, he smelled burning flesh and hair where the electrodes were attached. After what seemed an eternity, it stopped. He lay gasping for air, shaking violently.

  “If I were you I’d speak up,” Captain Chen said. “Depending on the strength of the individual, these shocks are sometimes fatal.”

  “Cao ni,” Matt said through clenched teeth.

  “Ah, so it’s true,” Chen said. “Sergeant Li reported that you speak some Chinese.” He nodded to Ren.

  Matt felt another jolt of electricity surge through him, rattling his teeth. An involuntary moan rose from him.

  “Cao ni ma.” Go screw your mother.

  “You disappoint me, Captain. Your language skills appear to be limited to waterfront profanities. I would have expected more proficiency from one so exalted.” Chen moved closer. “Do yourself a favor and tell me what I want to know, Captain. I don’t think you’re good for many more of these before your heart stops.”

  Matt steeled himself and shook his head violently. He felt his body rise off the table. With each surge of electricity, his tolerance for the punishment seemed to decrease. His tongue felt swollen to twice its size. He lay gasping for air.

&n
bsp; “I don’t . . . know what you’re . . . talking about.”

  Another jolt shot through him. The pain from the spots where the electrodes were attached seared his brain. He nodded.

  “Okay . . . No more.” He waited a long moment until his breathing was more normal. “She told us a wild story about a satellite launch,” he said finally, “but I don’t care about that stuff. I’m no longer a naval officer. I’m a simple mercenary, paid to pick her up and bring her back. I did it for the money. Nothing more.”

  “Who have you told about this imagined satellite launch?”

  “No one.”

  “Liar.”

  Another surge, this time longer, more intense. Chen was right. He wasn’t good for much more.

  “Speak to me, Captain,” Chen said. “Who have you contacted?”

  Matt lifted his head off the table. “How could we . . . contact anyone? You destroyed our radio.” He could barely hear his voice.

  “So far you’ve had it easy, Captain. For more serious cases, we attach electrodes to the genitals of the offender. Specialist Bing here finds it distasteful to touch the genitalia of foreigners but will do so if I order it. The procedure usually results in electronic castration, the irreversible cessation of manhood.”

  Matt’s eyes darted back and forth between the two men. Chen had to be bluffing. No man would do that to another.

  “I told you, no one.”

  Chen turned to Bing. “Zuo ta nu ren.” Make him a woman.

  Bing snapped his head forward in a nod and pulled on a pair of white surgical gloves. He gathered up loose material in Matt’s left pant leg and made an opening cut with a pair of scissors.

  The game was over. Whether they were bluffing or not, Matt couldn’t risk the discovery of the pistol hidden in his briefs. It was all he had. He raised his head.

  “All right, all right. You win.”

  “Once again you disappoint me, Captain. That was too easy.” Captain Chen bent down over Matt’s face and spoke softly. “We’ll talk now, but you won’t be given another opportunity to be truthful. At the first instance I sense you’re not being completely candid, I will order Specialist Bing to proceed, leave the room, and there will be no turning back, no stopping it, no matter what you say. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Matt said. He sighed. “Let me up. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

  “Very well.” He motioned to Bing to release him.

  Matt rubbed his face in his hands and tried to sit up, then fell back on the table, disoriented. Bing and his assistant helped him to sit up. He sat on the edge of the table, rubbing his wrists, rolling his head around, trying to focus his mind.

  “Let’s begin at the beginning,” Captain Chen said. “You are currently a U.S. naval officer working undercover.”

  Matt hesitated. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. Captain Chen would never believe him if he denied it. He had to guess what Chen wanted to hear and give it to him, whether it was true or not. One miscalculation and he’d be back on the table. He nodded.

  “And your grade?”

  Matt ran the numbers. If the fire hadn’t happened, he’d probably have been a full commander by now, on track for captain.

  “Commander, United States Navy.”

  “I thought as much,” Chen said. “Who do you work for, Commander?”

  “The CIA,” Matt said. “I’ve been doing intelligence work off the coast of China under the cover of operating a marine salvage business in Taiwan.”

  “Very clever,” Chen said. “And you report to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jacobs, a member of your family.”

  Captain Chen’s intelligence was impressive, if a bit out of date. He told himself to go slow. It was another statement, not a question. He didn’t dare deny it, but he had to make the danger to them sound more immediate, more pressing.

  “Only indirectly,” he said. “For this mission, I report directly to CINCPAC, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Forces.”

  “More specific.”

  “Admiral Vern Taylor.”

  “And what have you told Admiral Taylor?”

  “Everything the woman told us,” Matt said, determined to negate any need for Chen to interrogate Beth. He couldn’t stand the thought of her being in this room, under the control of the Bobbsey Twins. “We made a full report.”

  “I want you to make that exact report to me right now,” Captain Chen said. “Verbatim. I want to know precisely what you told Admiral Taylor.”

  “Well, I may not be able to remember the exact words, but I told him about the capability of the killer satellite code-named Raptor. How it will destroy every American satellite, both military and commercial. I told him about the launch methodology, about the launch site on the equator at 106 degrees east longitude, approximately midway between Sumatra and Borneo. I told him about the launch date of June 21. And I told him about the plan to deploy and use it as soon as it’s in orbit. Everything.”

  Matt sensed that Chen, working hard to keep his expression steady, was hearing most of this for the first time. To show that he was out of the loop on something so important would be a huge loss of face.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, waving his hand. “We know all about this. Now, when did you communicate this information to Admiral Taylor?”

  “Within twenty minutes after she - the woman - came aboard. Right after she was picked up from the island, almost three days ago, it would have been the early morning hours of the fourteenth.”

  “And precisely how was this information communicated?”

  “By satellite phone.”

  “Liar. We searched your ship for communication devices and found nothing.” Captain Chen nodded to Bing and started to walk away.

  “Wait,” Matt said. “You also searched my ship for weapons and didn’t find the Stinger missile I used to shoot down one of your helicopters.”

  Chen hesitated, then turned back, glaring.

  “And you made contact directly with CINCPAC in Hawaii?”

  “No, it was out of range because of the storm. We couldn’t get through. We made contact with the USS Observation Island. It’s an intelligence-gathering ship, code-named Cobra Judy. It operates in waters off China somewhere. I don’t know where.”

  Chen nodded as though this made sense. Matt felt a tingle of relief. The ship had been parked off the coast of China for years. He assumed it was still there. Chen’s eyes told him it was.

  “What did you do with the satellite phone?”

  “We threw it over the side just before you came aboard.”

  Captain Chen took a couple of steps back, turned, and began pacing. After a full minute, he said, “I think you’re lying. We were monitoring all communications. We heard nothing from your ship.”

  “Do you seriously think we’d be sent on a mission like this without a safe way to communicate?” Matt said.

  “I still think you’re lying. It’s up to you to convince me that what you say is true.”

  “You don’t believe me when I tell you I didn’t tell anyone, now you don’t believe me when I tell you I did. You have to believe one or the other. Which is it?”

  Matt could see him agonizing over the decision. If he reported that the barbarians hadn’t made contact, and it turned out they had, his head would be on the block. On the other hand, if he reported that they had made contact, his head would be on the block for letting Beth get away from the island. Either way, he’d be in serious trouble, but the only prudent choice to make was to assume that Matt had made the contact.

  “Even if what you say is true, what of it? The U.S. can do nothing, short of attacking first, and that would be a declaration of unprovoked war. The world community would be outraged.”

  “With all respect, Captain, I know I’m a dead man, but you have to know the game is up. Do you think the U.S. is just going to stand by and watch you launch a satellite that will cripple the country, both militarily and economically? Believe me, t
hey have a way to solve this without the rest of the world knowing anything about it.”

  That got his attention. Matt could see him thinking. If Chen could come up with some counterintelligence, some information that would help safeguard the launch, he might regain the points he’d lost for letting Beth get away and divulge what she knew to the U.S.

  “You’re a senior naval officer with high connections,” Chen said. “You’re related to the Chief of Naval Operations, his brother-in-law. You know what the plan will be. You tell me. What will they do?”

  “I can tell you exactly what they’ll do,” Matt said. “And I will - in exchange for one thing.”

  Chen smiled. “You’re in no position to be making bargains, Commander.”

  Matt shrugged. “Kill me, then. I’m dead anyway.”

  “There are many things worse than death, Commander. Bing, here, knows what they are. But tell me what it is you want, just out of curiosity.”

  “We all know we’re going to die. We all accept this, it goes with the territory of being a spy. I just don’t want what’s left of my crew, or the woman, to go through what I went through.” He nodded toward Bing. “All I’m asking for is a simple bullet in the back of the head for each of us when the time comes. Give me your word of honor that my people won’t be harmed in any way until then and I’ll tell you the full plan of attack.”

  “Very noble.” Chen studied Matt’s face. He stroked his chin. After a moment, he nodded. “Very well. You’d tell me anyway, I assure you, but in the interest of saving time I’ll grant your request.”

  “All right,” Matt said. “The U.S. basically has two options. One, they can file a diplomatic protest over something that hasn’t happened yet, or two, they can take military action to preempt the launch.”

  “That is rather obvious,” Chen said.

  “The stakes are too high for a diplomatic protest,” Matt said, “so they’ll choose the second option. Military action. Under that option, they have two choices. Direct and indirect.”

  “Get to the point.”

  “Well, the direct approach would be to intercept the command and control ship - basically an unprotected merchant ship - when it’s at sea. They could either seize the satellite or just sink the ship.”