by Chuck Dixon
“And ice some beer!” That was Chaz Raleigh.
Morris wondered who they lost. He turned to check the signal profile, matching it to his projected aiming point. He’d know soon enough.
“Do they have it?” Taan roared. All his polished cool was gone.
“Tell him we have it. It was right where Fong said it would be.” After a pause, Lee added, “Almost.”
“Bring them back! Bring them back now!” Taan said, stabbing a finger at the tube chamber.
Morris Tauber tapped a series of commands on his keyboard. The arctic fog about the rings of the manifestation array rose to spread fractal ice patterns across the observation glass.
A bank of mist spread across the waters of the channel off Changxingxiang Island. It swelled outward and upward until it touched either bank of the Yangtze River mouth and mingled with the low cloud cover above. The epicenter of the sudden veil of cold fog appeared to be the recently constructed boat shelter erected mid-current almost a year before. The shelter and the big container ship within were soon invisible in the cloaking haze.
The strange weather phenomenon was keenly observed from a train of barges anchored at a berth along a slip at the Yuanshagang Yards at the southern foot of the island.
Maurice Franck watched through binoculars. The growing blob of white extended out across the river just as he’d been told it would happen. He touched a tab wired to the collar of his windbreaker.
“It is happening. We are ‘go.’ We go now,” he said in a voice that rasped from scarred vocal cords.
Within minutes five Zodiac inflatable boats were removed from hiding and lowered into the water by the barges. Armed men, five to a boat, dropped down into the boats. Within seconds they were off, powered over the water by twin outboards. The bows of the boats lifted from the water. The men on board made last minute checks of night vision gear, weapons, and body armor. They were being well paid for tonight’s operation. All were anxious to reach the center of the mysterious fog and get to work.
Quan Ho hunkered at the prow of the lead boat; an MP-5 clutched in gloved hands. His eyes were locked, through the lenses of an advanced NODs device, on the growing digitized silhouette of the shelter that contained the Ocean Raj, their primary target.
A blinding flash came through the lenses, searing his eyes with white light. Quan tore the NODs from his face with an irritated snarl.
Within the column of fog, a brilliant nimbus of light appeared for a moment. It glowed within the haze with solar intensity, turning the tops of the water silver. The sky went dark again, leaving only the lingering ghost shape of the ball of light on the retinas of the men on the boats.
A loud squawk of commands through his earpiece caused Quan to wince. Franck was shouting questions and directions in his barbaric Cantonese. Quan turned to the man at the helm of the Zodiac and barked a command. The man pressed the control arm down, and the prow of the inflatable rose higher off the water as the screws of the mighty outboards dug in. The rest of the boats matched the speed and followed to soar up the river toward the heart of the frigid mist.
59
Contact
The journey back down the Yangtze took half the time as the voyage to Nanking. For a fistful of silver tales, the team booked space on a barge piled with loot for the mandarins heading down river. Coolies worked the long poles, walking them bow to stern, to propel them along the current and around other craft.
Once back in Shanghai, they purchased a skiff they could row out into the channel. It was skunky with barnacles and weed but was solid enough. It would take them out to the Ocean Raj waiting at mid-river a century and a half away.
Boats found the stone pier where they’d scuttled the long boat marked with the USS Pennock’s name. Shan and Lee watched the SEAL strip off his shirt and dive into the brown water, vanishing in the murk. He surfaced moments later with a small wooden box in his fist.
“Is it intact?” Lee asked, helping Boats back onto the pier. “The casing is still watertight,” Boats said, handing the small carton over. Its surface was slick with river muck over a thick waxy covering.
“I did not know of this,” Shan said as they walked up the pier, wending their way between stacks of cargo and fish traps.
“This is how we coordinate with the Raj to get back to The Now,” Lee said. “A concession to the 21st Century. A modified radio transmitter.”
“It’s sealed in paraffin to keep it temporarily waterproofed,” Boats said. “The seal would wear away in six months or so, and the transmitter would rust away over time.”
“That way, if we didn’t make it back, the radio wouldn’t cause a ripple in the continuum,” Lee said. “Though I don’t understand what all that really means, the Taubers get all pissy about it.”
“And without it, we could not return,” Shan said.
“Without it, we’d need you to teach us all Chinese,” Boats said with a snort.
Back on the skiff that Chaz had christened The Rusty Turd, Lee broke the waxen seal on the box to remove the transmitter. It powered up, speaker crackling.
“Op team to central control. Op team to central control,” Lee said, settling down on a bench below deck. It might take time to reach the Raj. On low power, Morris Tauber could keep the field open just enough to allow a transmission through. A pinhole in time; not enough for anything physical to pop through. From past experience, they knew the transmission field was twitchy and unreliable.
Members of the team poked their heads over the lip of the open hatch above him, curious and anxious to see if he’d made contact. More than an hour later, he received an answering squawk followed by Morris’ voice.
“Who’s there? Who am I speaking to?”
“It’s Lee Hammond, Mo. You have a fix on us?” Lee said. He heard footfalls on the deck above. Shadows fell over him from above as everyone gathered to listen.
“It’s weak,” came Morris’ brittle reply through the hiss. “Give me time to amp up the signal. Be ready to move.”
“Roger. Out,” Lee said and turned the gain down to conserve the transmitter’s battery. He looked up to see the others looking down at him.
“Get this shitbox seaworthy. We’re going home,” Lee said.
As evening fell, The Rusty Turd made its sluggish way through the maze of junks and barges anchored in the harbor. Boats stood at the tiller calling time for the rest of the team working the long sweeps. He noticed that there were more masts and stacks of merchant ships visible along the harbor quays than when they left a month before. The wars were over, and it was back to business.
They anchored the skiff out on the open river and took turns watching the water rising in swells as the ocean’s tide pushed against the Yangtze’s current. The night was clear with a near-full moon.
Lee and Bat sat on the bench below decks. Near them, Byrus was sound asleep on coils of musty rope. A hanging lantern swayed while the boat rolled gently side to side. Lee pulled the ivory reliquary from the rucksack and examined it in the lamplight.
“You think Genghis Khan’s last words are really in here?” Lee said.
“All this crap for something I’d probably have walked right past at a garage sale.” Bat shrugged.
“Who gives a shit. It’s what Tann sent us back for, and we got it.”
Lee held one end of the tube up and examined the golden lid.
He found a place below the head of a golden swan where there was a gap that went all the way around the curved neck. He pulled it, and the head came free, connected to the neck by a rod with serrations worked in it.
“You’re going to break it,” Bat said, hushed.
“It’s just a pimped-out mailing tube. It’s what’s inside that makes it valuable.” Turning the head clockwise, Lee heard some catches release inside the cap. He yanked, and the lid came free in his hand with a hiss.
He tipped the tube, and a roll of vellum dropped from the carved out hollow of the tusk. It was a scroll tied with a ribbon of silk. Lee
pulled the ribbon free of the wax seal and unrolled the vellum easily. It was still supple even after centuries in the air-tight reliquary.
“This is the big man’s diary?” Lee said, examining row after row of tiny, precisely penned characters.
“He wasn’t that big, actually,” Bat said, taking the free end of the scroll to marvel at the penmanship of whoever served as the Khan’s stenographer.
“Big enough to take over half the known world,” Lee said and continued unraveling. He stopped when he reached a series of drawings. Lines and squiggles done in the same skilled hand as the characters. Alongside the drawings was a grid containing symbols that were not part of the Chinese alphabet.
“That’s a key, right? It looks to me like a map,” Bat said, leaning closer to squint at the markings in the flickering light.
“It is a map.”
They turned to see Wei standing on the ladder in the hatchway. He had his revolver trained at them, the barrel steady on Lee. A second revolver was tight in his other fist and trained toward Byrus snoring on the deck. The Ranger moved on the bench to shield Bat. Wei clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“Please return the scroll to its place,” Wei said in a flat voice.
English with no accent. Like he learned it from a machine. “Looks like Wei was playing his game close all this time, babe,” Lee said.
“Return the scroll to its place. It is not yours,” Wei said, stepping off the last rung to aim both revolvers at them.
“Sure, it belongs to your boss. We were just taking a peek. We’ll be handing it to Mr. Taan when we get back,” Lee said, judging the distance between them. More than ten feet over an uncertain surface. He’d get one shot at it. He’d take some slugs. That was sure. He could drop the smaller man in a rush. Bat would have to follow up, finish it. Lee let his breath out all the way. He didn’t want Wei to see it in his eyes. He’d go in three.
“You will not be going back,” Wei said, raising the barrels of the revolvers to center on his targets.
Lee flung himself forward.
An explosion of sound filled the hull.
Lee collided with Wei through a fog of black powder, slamming him to the deck.
He raised a hand to drive a fist into the face of the other man. He felt a warm stickiness running down his brow. Someone tugged at his arm.
Wei was under him, body limp. Half of the man’s face was gone. Jagged bone shards gleamed white around the lip of a fist-sized hole where his right eye had been.
Lee looked up as Bat pulled him off, her shouts muted through the ringing in his ears. Shan stood midway down the ladder, a smoking rifle in his fists.
60
Killer App
Jason Taan insisted on being in the manifestation chamber when the team returned. He was joined by five of his guards. All five were armed with handguns they made no effort to conceal under the jackets. They viewed the swirling fog with barely concealed suspicion. These were not curious men. They only knew to distrust what they could not understand. And they neither trusted nor understood this large space refrigerated to freezing with the weirdly humming tubular structure dominating the center of the room.
The first to emerge up the steel platform was the American Ranger Lee Hammond. He was followed by the woman, the Israeli. The pair stopped at the end of the ramp and looked about themselves to see weapons aimed at them.
“This how you keep a promise, Taan?” Lee said, spotting the billionaire huddled in an ill-fitting parka.
“Disarm them,” Taan ordered in Cantonese.
As the others emerged down the ramp from the past, they were forced to drop what weapons they had left. Rifles, pistols, and blades dropped to the ramp. Jimbo seized Byrus’ arm to keep the Macedonian in check. The little man maintained his grip on his gladius while his eyes bored into the eyes of the closest guard. After a few seconds, he cast the blade down to clatter to the deck, sending an arc of spittle that froze in the air to fall to the floor in tinkling crystals.
Shan was the last up the ramp. He held a rucksack in his arms. His expression was impassive as he shouldered through the others to reach Jason Taan.
“The other man? His name was Wei Li, right?” Taan said, accepting the filthy rucksack.
“A regrettable casualty,” Shan said, eyes hard.
Taan turned away to undo the straps of the pack and toss it aside. He held the ivory reliquary in his hands, the surface of it still warm from a Shanghai summer one hundred and fifty years in the past.
“You got what you want. Time to let us go,” Lee Hammond said, stepping forward. Two guards raised their weapons to train on the big Ranger. The rest stood ready to spray the others with bursts of point-blank fire.
“I am sorry. That won’t be possible,” Taan said, a smile curling his lip.
Morris Tauber’s voice came out of speakers mounted on the glass observation wall. “Don’t tell us what’s possible, asshole.”
Taan looked up to see Morris standing at the frosted glass tabbing keys on the wireless board cradled on his arm.
“Whatever you’re doing, you will stop it right now!” Taan shouted.
“Too late,” Morris said and brought a finger down onto the board with a smirk.
The deck below Taan’s feet shuddered violently as if the ship had run aground. But the vibration continued along with a deafening shriek of tortured steel. The hull of the ship popped and screamed as the metal came under stresses it was never built to withstand. The temperature dropped further until the cold was stabbing into every joint on his body. Every patch of exposed skin seared in a blaze of freezing air.
But worse than the sights, sounds, and sensations was the disabling wave of vertigo that crushed Taan to his knees on the deck. His vision swam. His gorge rose. He pressed his eyes closed to shut it out, and the grip of disorientation only sharpened until he felt his consciousness slipping away.
He came around, seconds or hours later, his cheek stuck to the steel deck by a layer of frost. His face was caked with a skein of frozen vomit. The taste of rancid raisins filled his mouth. Taan screamed in pain as he was lifted to a seated position. He left a patch of skin from his cheek on the frozen deck. The sting served to bring the world back in focus.
The mist in the manifestation chamber was dropping away. Before him, his five bodyguards were down on their hands and knees. Their weapons were stripped from them and in the hands of the Americans. Most wore frozen vomit on their clothes. They looked pale as ghosts. Shan stood aside, the ivory tube capped with golden swan and frog in his arms. Taan raised a hand; fingers splayed, eyes anxious, to have the reliquary back in his arms.
“You changed the deal, Taan. Now we’re changing the deal,” Lee Hammond said, lifting Taan to his feet by the collar of the Italian suit worn under the borrowed parka.
“What have you done to me?” Taan croaked, gulping to keep from retching.
“Taken you for a little trip. Tauber style,” Lee said. That brought a hoot from the red-bearded giant. Even Shan was smiling.
Taan blinked. He could not comprehend the American’s words.
There was a second explosion of light in the night sky as the five Zodiac rafts approached. The flash was followed by a rumbling boom of thunder. Within seconds, the river foamed with chop. A sudden gust of wind turned the tops of the wavelets white with frost. The gale force wind was gone as swiftly as it came, and the river was quiet and dark once more.
With engines whining as they slowed, they drifted toward the towering wall of the sheltered anchorage.
Quan Ho stood at the bow of the lead boat and waved them ahead. The men behind raised weapons and steeled nerves for the jump off. They had their orders. They understood the mission. Each team had an assigned section of the container ship, a kill zone they were responsible for. The directions were simple. Get on board, sweep the ship, and eliminate everyone they met.
The hardest part of this op was concentrating on the job at hand rather than the pay. They were each co
ntracted for one million UK pounds apiece.
The outboards puttered to a stop. The inflatables continued on their courses silently toward the foot of the broad piers running down either side of the inner wall of the shelter. From the piers, it was a short charge up the gangways to the main deck, and from there the Ocean Raj’s deck and cabins and holds would become a free fire zone.
Except that the massive steel shelter contained nothing but empty water.
The huge container ship that had been housed there only seconds before was gone.
61
Slave Ship
Dwayne guessed that he was in Chula Vista. The blue of San Diego Bay lay below with the Pacific vanishing in mist beyond. Where he was hiding was some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Multi-million dollar homes sat on these hills like books on a shelf. That was another time, another world. Now the canyons around the bay were chocked with aloe plants and populated only by pumas, coyotes and wild pigs. Dwayne stayed out of the way of all of them.
He lay in the concealment of rocks along a ridgeline above the bay. Far below, a fat ship sat at anchor. It was a design he was unfamiliar with. A big wooden craft with a high deck fore and aft. It was tub shaped and ungainly. A single mast rose from amidships and from it hung a triangular sail that even at this distance showed signs of patching. It drooped unmoving in the still air. There was a symbol painted on the sail, but it was so sun-faded that Dwayne could make nothing of it.
The hulls were lined with openings that had to be gun ports. It was a warship of some kind or an armed merchantman. Still, it wasn’t like any sailing ship Dwayne had ever seen in books or movies.
A pair of smaller craft were making their way from the larger vessel. Oars swept them along. The sail mounted on each was as limp as the cloth on the mother ship. The boats made it through the lazy surf, and men leapt out to help push the craft up onto the sand. The boats disgorged more men, an astonishing number from what looked to Dwayne, from his perspective, like toy boats.
