by Marc Cameron
“We took the seats out in the back, so you’ll go four on the floor,” the copilot continued. He pointed to Chavez and Ryan with a knife hand. “You and you buckle in on the outside platforms for balance. There are a couple of parkas in the back to keep you from freezing your asses off!”
The pilot took his left hand off the collective long enough to wave it in a circle over his helmet. “Let’s haul ass!”
Lisanne went in first, followed by Adara, who refused to leave her side, and then Medina. Yao made sure they were harnessed in. Chavez did one last quick-check of his team before turning and securing his own harness. The copilot watched like a hawk, and the moment Chavez’s buckle snapped into place, he turned and gave a thumbs-up.
Chavez glanced at his watch as the Loach lifted off, pirouetting as it rose to point its nose to the east. Less than four minutes to cross the trees and reach the shadow of the next valley. As if the pilot read his mind, the chopper’s engine grew louder and its nose dipped, shooting forward toward the mountains. Chavez looked back one last time, to see the feeble beam from Mamut’s boat moving north across the black void of Kanas Lake.
In addition to the other stealth components, this CIA Quiet Loach also appeared to be covered with a rubberized, radar-absorbing skin. Even so, the pilots were flying NOE—nap of the earth—winding their way through valleys, mere feet above the ground. They followed rivers when they could, grassland or gravel, and rose just above the trees when they had to, always maintaining their speed. Several times, Chavez felt freezing spray from groundwater sting his skin or thought he might drag his boots on a treetop—but the pilots kept him just out of reach. He tried to turn and check on his friends, to see how Lisanne was holding up, but bitter, hurricane-force winds forced him to keep his head down, buried in the parka. Caught up in the urgency of an immediate departure, he’d made the rookie mistake of forgetting to pull the zipper up as far as it would go before takeoff. Buffeted by the wind, the metal button on his collar began to slap him repeatedly in the ear—taking him back to the first time he’d flown on one of these birds, a loose strap on his ruck slapping him silly in the wind. He thought of his son and what that kid had in store for him—and for some reason, it made him feel very old.
* * *
—
As the crow flies, the Little Bird’s point of departure at Kanas Lake was just over thirty miles from the Mongolian border. The pilots cheated northeast to stay below radar. It took them a mile out of the way through a pass that got them over the first line of snowcapped Altay peaks. At this point, the Mongolian border was only ten miles away. Instead of continuing east, the pilots took the little chopper south into a long valley, adding almost twenty miles to their trip, but avoiding a suspected radar site at the triple frontier where the borders of China, Russia, and Mongolia came together.
Twenty-five minutes after liftoff, the copilot reached down to where Chavez sat on the platform less than a foot away, and gave him a thumbs-up, signaling that they were out of Chinese airspace. Chavez breathed a sigh of relief, slumping against his harness. The mountains quickly gave way to steppe and the ground beneath was generally treeless and rolling. It was still bitter cold outside the chopper, but the clouds had cleared once they’d passed through the mountains, revealing why, once the sun came up, Mongolia would live up to its nickname of Land of the Eternal Blue Sky. Ten minutes after that, the MH-6 turned on its landing lights. Three large trucks were parked facing one another on a deserted gravel road with their headlights forming a makeshift landing zone. They looked like they might be Deuce and a Halfs, but Chavez’s eyes teared so badly from the wind that he could hardly see.
Landing was anticlimactic, since they weren’t quite as worried about someone trying to kill them.
A Mongolian military officer and two young men Chavez assumed were with CIA air ops helped everyone off the chopper except Lisanne and Adara. Two docs from the Mongolian military climbed in with the women. She was still in and out of consciousness, but alive—for now. The docs looked incredibly grim and pounded on the pilot’s seat to get him to go.
One of the hazards of covert missions was that they often had to remain covert during rescue or medical emergencies. The circle of people who even saw the stealth helicopter was already too large and Yao was stretching the limits directing it to fly Lisanne toward the city of Khovd, a hundred and fifty miles to the east. A military ambulance was already on the road to intercept ten miles out of the city, where the two doctors would transfer the patient. A Hawker Air Ambulance would take her the remaining seven hundred miles from Khovd to Ulaanbaatar. It was a testament to how remote they truly were that absent a return to China, the nearest trauma hospital of consequence was nine hundred miles from where they now stood. Even with a cursory glance at her wounds, the surgeons were astounded that Lisanne had not already bled to death. If she did live, the odds were against her keeping the injured arm. Jack and Adara both wanted to go with her, but there was barely enough room for one with their medical equipment. Adara’s training won out, and she remained on the chopper, cradling Lisanne’s torso on her lap.
Jack, relieved of his duties with Lisanne, returned reluctantly but quickly to mission mode and helped Medina board the truck. Covered with canvas and heated with propane, the back was set up like a small war room with a folding table, chairs, and two lanterns.
“Mongolia,” Chavez said to Yao, shaking his head as they stood by the lowered tailgate, waiting for Medina and Jack to climb aboard. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the departing MH-6 Cayuse, as it was swallowed up in the night. “I thought all the Quiet Ones were destroyed or dismantled after Vietnam.”
He’d wanted to ask earlier, but there had been no time.
The Quiet Ones, as the CIA called them, were two OH-6As specifically modified for stealth in an operation code-named MAINSTREET. The test flights were done at Area 51—giving rise to many a “black helicopter” conspiracy, and the ultra-quiet birds were handed over to CIA’s front company, Air America. Many who were in the business of stealth felt that there was no modern helicopter as quiet as these MAINSTREET Loaches had been.
Yao scoffed. “If you were the CIA and you’d developed the quietest chopper in history, would you toss it into the dung heap after a single secret mission into North Vietnam?”
“I suppose not,” Chavez said.
“Anyway,” Yao said, climbing into the truck, “my official answer is what black helicopter? I don’t know about any black helicopter.”
Before boarding one of the remaining trucks, the Mongolian military officer, a general named Baatar, welcomed the group to his country and gave a short speech about how Mongolia considered the United States its most important “Third Neighbor.” He assured them that he was at their disposal, and then urged them to consider departing his country as quickly and quietly as possible—so as not to alert the dragon or the bear who were his actual neighbors.
62
I do not understand,” Medina Tohti said when they were all seated around the table and the truck was moving—also toward the airport in the city of Khovd. Her face was flushed red with sleepy warmth after hours in the cold. Everyone was beyond exhausted. “How did the Chinese not see us when we flew out? I know you stayed low, but surely they were looking—”
“They were,” Yao said. “But they were looking in the wrong place. Russia and Kazakhstan were less than twenty-five kilometers away from the lake. Mongolia was double that.” Yao gave an impish smile. “And someone may have reported the son of a Russian politburo member who had gone missing out on a mountain adventure in the wilderness area north of the border. Chinese air assets would have seen the search-and-rescue efforts on radar and assumed they were there to assist in our escape.”
Chavez put a hand flat on a blank yellow notepad in front of him. “They will, in fact, likely still assume that.”
“I would like to speak to my daughter again,” Medina
said.
Chavez dug the satellite phone out of his duffel. Yao had obviously put it there when he thought he might be left behind. “Of course.” Chavez slid the phone across the table to her and yawned. “Entirely up to you, but it is the middle of the night where she is, just like it is here. I’m sure she is sleeping.”
Medina pushed the phone away. “Okay . . . then tell me what you want to know.”
“It involves Professor Liu Wangshu,” Yao said. “Why would Beijing be so determined to find you? What do you have to do with him?”
Chavez nodded. “That’s our question. Why you?”
“I am sure I do not know,” Medina said. “I was one of his engineering students for a time. I was what you would call his teaching assistant.”
“Forgive me for being so blunt,” Yao said. “But I know how the Han majority feel about Uyghur people. How were you able to attend university as a teaching assistant?”
“I am not offended,” Medina said. “In western China there are two kinds of schools for Uyghur children. Schools where Uyghur children learn Mandarin and Han Chinese history with other Uyghur children—and schools where Uygur children are fully integrated into schools that are majority Han. My math and science scores were such that I attended the latter. Eventually, I was sent to university. Hala was very young, but she was even more skilled in gymnastics than I was at mathematics. The state took her away to train at a special school in the city. I believe they may have done this so I would go willingly to Huludao.”
Ryan, who had said little up to this point, frowned. “Bastards.”
“Yes,” Medina said. “They are that—though they would assure the world that everything they do is for our good.” She sighed, staring down at the table as she spoke. “I am sure I was the first Uyghur student to hold this position with Professor Liu. And I feel equally sure I was the first female Uyghur engineering student. I believe he truly respected me for my intellect, though . . .” Her voice trailed off, changing direction. “We worked on several different projects, all having to do with propulsion—submarine drives, propellers, for the most part.” She glanced up. “Submarine propellers are often closely guarded secrets. Maybe this has something to do with that.”
“Maybe,” Yao said. “Were these projects all on paper, or did you have functional buildouts?”
“Paper designs,” Medina said. “We built some models, but nothing functional. I was in the process of modifying one of Professor Liu’s propeller designs when I was expelled. My husband was dead, my daughter taken by the same government that killed him. All I had was my mathematics, and that, too, was ripped from me. One day I was a respected student, fully integrated into the program, the next Party officials came into my room without knocking and ordered me to pack my belongings. I was to return immediately by train to Kashgar. I telephoned Professor Liu’s private number from the train station, begging for an explanation. He assured me that this was all a misunderstanding, a mistake on the part of the government and that it would all work out. He said not to worry, that I was vital to his work . . .
“But I was not vital and it did not work out. Whatever the reason, it must have been far above Professor Liu’s head. The government changed my mobile number and his, effectively putting a fence between us. They are very skilled at that. In any case, Hala was still a virtual prisoner at her gymnastics school. There was nothing for me in Kashgar. One of my childhood friends had joined the group you call Wuming. I contacted her and . . . you saw the rest.” She looked back and forth between Chavez and Yao. “There is something you are not telling me.”
“There is,” Yao said.
Chavez gave a little shrug, exhaled sharply, and then nodded. They wouldn’t get anywhere unless Medina learned at least some of what they knew, though it was classified above top secret.
“Our government has reason to believe,” Yao said, “that a Chinese submarine is in trouble, stranded on the seabed, unable to surface or communicate. It’s highly likely that Professor Liu is aboard this submarine and that it has been outfitted with a quiet gearless ring-propulsion drive the Chinese call—”
Medina finished his sentence. “Hai shi shen lou—Mirage.”
“Was Mirage one of the projects you worked on with Liu?” Chavez asked.
“It was my project,” she said. “I submitted it to the professor as an assignment. He told me there were too many flaws. He said that I should go . . . how do you say it . . . back to the drawing board, before he would accept it.”
“Was he working on a similar project?” Chavez asked.
“He was,” Medina said, eyes narrowing.
“Do you think it is possible the professor had you expelled so he could call the Mirage drive his invention?”
Medina shook her head in disbelief, though it was clear from the look in her eyes that this was exactly what she thought had happened. She reached for the notepad in front of Chavez. “May I?”
Yao scooted forward in his chair, looking at Chavez. “I may need to go to Huludao and take a look through the professor’s office.”
Medina shook her head. “No,” she said. “He kept everything important to him under the floorboards of his bedroom.” She looked sheepishly at the men. “I did not . . . I mean to say . . . he was my superior. There was nothing . . .”
“Bastard,” Ryan said again.
Yao patted the table. “We are not judging you for the actions of bad men. Now, do you believe he would have kept plans from his work in this secret spot?”
“I feel sure of it,” Medina said, scribbling on the pad. “He stored little at the labs, fearing others would steal his work and take the credit for it.” She got to her feet, carrying the pad as she walked, swaying with the motion of the truck to work off her anger, since there was no room in the back to pace.
“I must return to China,” she said.
“Not a chance,” Ding said. “We almost didn’t get you out.” He didn’t say it out loud, but he couldn’t help but think that Lisanne might well still lose her life on the mission to get Medina. He wasn’t about to let her return and risk falling into Beijing’s hands.
“Listen to me,” Medina said. “I can retrieve the files.”
“No,” Ding said. “I’m confident the professor’s home has already been ransacked by government agents a dozen times over.”
“I doubt they could find his hiding place,” Medina said. “He has an engineer’s mind. He knows how to build clever things. I would pit his intellect against the idiots from the MSS any day.”
“My friend is right,” Yao said. “We just prevented you from falling into Beijing’s hands. You are the key.”
“No,” Medina said. “The key is the plans for the Mirage propulsion drive, and that will be in Liu Wangshu’s home. I am certain of it.”
“Then we will go,” Ding said. Resolute. “Or, at least, I will.”
Medina looked stricken at the thought. “If anyone goes, it should be him.” She nodded at Yao. “You look Chinese, so you might be able to walk around Huludao for a time without being questioned, but even you will still need me to get past Auntie Pei. She is the neighbor across the street.”
“No,” Chavez said. “And that’s final. I may not be the person for the job, but you certainly aren’t. We’ll figure out another way to get around Auntie Pei.”
Yao patted the table again, harder this time. “Wait,” he said. “How long after you turned in your assignment with the design of the Mirage drive were you expelled?”
“That very evening,” Medina said.
“Did Liu tell you what components of the project he wanted you to correct?”
She looked up from the notepad. “He did not.”
“I don’t think there was anything for you to correct,” Yao said. “I expect he saw right away your plans were workable. If he’d needed your help with anything, he would have waited to
have you kicked out.”
Chavez was nodding now. “So if the professor is somehow incapacitated on that sub, and the Mirage drive is damaged, then they want Medina so she can help repair it.”
“Could be,” Yao said. “It is more likely that they want to destroy the existing one to keep it from falling into our hands. If they have Medina, they can re-create a new one.”
Medina smiled. “And if Medina can re-create it for Beijing . . .” She tapped the side of her head with her pencil and turned the notepad toward them. “Then she can re-create it for you.”
Chavez thought for a moment, and then smiled at Yao, who walked to the back of the truck so he could get a good signal on the sat phone.
63
In the control room of the Indiana, Captain Condiff watched over Petty Officer Markette’s shoulder at the green “waterfall” on his screen that turned sounds into pictures that only sonar technicians could read.
The Indiana was at full stop, rigged for ultraquiet. The loudest pumps had been taken off-line, even if they were slightly more efficient than the quieter ones. Everyone not on station was in their bunk, to keep accidents from happening. Everyone spoke in whispers, not so much because the other sub would be able to hear them, but because it reminded them of their condition.
A half-hour earlier, Markette had “spotted” the new contact—another sub—diesel-electric probably, quieter than a nuke, but for a squeaky bearing in one of the pumps.
“Bearing two-seven-zero,” Markette said. “Two thousand meters. She’s going back and forth, hunting.”
“Captain,” the USS Indiana’s communications tech said. “Incoming on Deep Siren.”
* * *
—
The lead F-35 pilot’s voice squawked over the radio in the Healy’s control room.
“I think your company’s decided to RTB. We’ll be on station for a bit if you need us.”
