Clay turned around and looked at Caesare. “This place is definitely bigger.”
“Yep.”
“You see this on the wall?”
Caesare squinted and peered at the strange markings. “I didn’t see that in the other one.”
“Neither did I.”
They found themselves interrupted by another voice from the doorway. The voice was similar to Ronin’s and one which all three of them recognized.
“You have done well, John Clay.”
They turned to see several distinct figures, partially silhouetted by the sunlight outside.
Clay’s lip curled upwards as he stepped away from the wall. “Well, hello there, Palin. Nice to see you again.”
“As it is you,” the older man replied. “And of course, Mr. Caesare and Ms. Draper.”
Caesare stepped closer and shook his hand with a smile. “I guess we should thank you for sending Ronin.”
Palin peered at his soldier. “It was not entirely magnanimous, I’m afraid.”
“No, I suppose it wasn’t.”
Palin looked away and studied the giant pillars, reaching high toward the rock ceiling. “This is what you found with your first vault?”
“More or less.”
His eyes eventually returned to Clay. “We are grateful to you. You have again come through in our hour of need.”
Clay grinned. “Well, it wasn’t entirely magnanimous.”
“So what now?” Caesare asked, leaning on his good leg. One of Palin’s men moved past, kneeling down behind him, examining his bandaged leg.
“Now our work continues,” Palin answered. “We will keep trying to save what’s left of our planet. Hopefully we can achieve a greater foothold by studying and replicating the liquid that you found. Your last location was destroyed too quickly.”
“You can take that up with the Chinese.”
Clay glanced back to the pillars. “Why did they do it, Palin? Why would an alien race leave behind such a large supply of their DNA?”
Palin considered the question. “I do not know. Perhaps as a safety net for their own future. Or perhaps something else. Whatever the reason, you would do well to remember what I told you. Your Earth is unique. It is not the only habitable planet, there are many thousands, but your planet contains some unique properties.”
“We know, the water,” Clay replied.
“The amount of water,” Palin corrected. “Yes. That is one. Both of our planets are also on the edge of the galaxy, where looming astronomical threats are rarer. And each with an evolution that is still relatively immature, particularly yours. Because of these things, your planet is valuable. A water world ripe for the picking.” Palin glanced down at Dulce as she and Dexter both peeked out curiously from behind DeeAnn.
Palin continued. “Your Earth is a beacon. It has been for a very long time. What has been left here should come as no surprise. And is likely not the only one. Your planet is sure to have been noticed by many other races. Some more capable than others of reaching it.”
Caesare glanced at Clay. “Wait. You’re saying there’s more?”
Palin shrugged. “Most likely.”
Clay nodded thoughtfully. “So…what do you need from this vault?”
Palin looked back at his men. “We will not disturb it. It does not belong to us. We will study it only.”
“And try to reverse engineer the liquid?”
“Ideally. Our evolutions are not so far apart as you might expect. Only one or two hundred years. The liquid you found here is an advancement, even to us.”
“A hundred years doesn’t seem like much.”
“It is not,” Palin mused. “But more than enough for many more mistakes. Ones which you have yet to make.”
“Well, let’s hope we can learn from you,” Clay replied.
“Perhaps. Unfortunately, neither of our races seems to learn lessons as well as we should. It is why history, for both of us, repeats so frequently.”
Clay thought about Palin’s words. “We need to hide this, Palin. Better than we did before. And stop the leaking.”
With hands behind his back, Palin nodded. “No one shall find this.”
“We’ll also need a way to contact you.”
“Other than waiting for you to follow us,” Caesare joked.
Palin grinned. “Of course.” He nodded at Ronin. “You will no longer have difficulty contacting us.”
There was a short silence and just as Clay was about to respond, Caesare’s satellite phone rang. He stepped closer to the doorway and slid the pack off his back to fish it out.
“Hey, Will. Is that you?”
Caesare paused, listening. As he did, the cheeky expression suddenly disappeared from his face. He looked immediately to Clay. “The Pathfinder was attacked.”
“What!”
He continued listening. “There were casualties,” he added somberly.
Clay’s first thought was instant: Alison.
Caesare’s eyes softened. He pulled the phone away from his own ear and reached forward, offering it to Clay. “I think you’d better take this.”
A look of panic washed over Clay, and he immediately grabbed the phone. “Will?”
There was a rustling on the other end before another voice spoke. It was weak.
“Hey, handsome.”
“Alison! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just suffering from some decompression sickness.”
“How bad?”
“Dr. Kanna doesn’t think there’s anything permanent. But I’m going to need a lot of rest.”
Clay pressed his hand over his mouth with relief. “Thank God.”
“No, thank Dirk,” she joked faintly. She paused before continuing. “John, I need to ask you a question.”
“Anything.”
On the other end, Alison glanced wearily up at Will Borger, now sitting next to her bed. “How fast do you think you can get to an airport?”
Clay’s eyes turned intently to Palin, who stood before him, listening. “I’d say pretty damn fast!”
109
It was under the bright glow of his headlights that Vic Mooney saw the outline. As he drew nearer, the image crystallized and confirmed his first impression. It was the image of a person sitting on the side of the road, leaning against a tree.
Had his truck been full, he would never have been able to stop in time. But instead, his air brakes shuddered and smoked as he slowed the red semitrailer truck down enough to get a clearer picture––just as the figure passed beneath his side mirror and out of view.
After another two hundred feet, Mooney’s brakes brought the semi to an abrupt stop at which point he immediately turned on his emergency lights. He flung the door open and jumped down onto the pavement. Trotting to the back of his rig, he found with a sudden sense of dread that the person had not moved.
In the distance and under the glow of flashing yellow lights, he could clearly see it was the figure of a teenage girl––with her head down.
He raised his baseball cap higher onto his balding head and eased closer to examine the girl. She wasn’t moving. He reached out and gently shook her.
No response.
He shook her again. This time the girl’s head stirred.
***
Li Na Wei rolled her head and squinted almost imperceptibly at the man staring down at her from above. His complexion looked western, maybe like an American.
The only word she could manage was “help.”
110
Vic Mooney was not American. He was a Canuck. Or more commonly known, a Canadian.
A forest planner by trade, Mooney was born and raised in British Columbia. There, he later retired and signed on as a contractor with one of the country’s largest shipping companies. He now spent six months out of the year driving trucks in Northeastern China and the other half fishing giant white sturgeon along Canada’s famed Fraser River.
Just an hour after stumbling upon Li Na, he s
tood in a shabby hallway, facing a small office with a clear glass window.
“So, what the hell are we supposed to do?! Call the police? Or a hospital?”
Sixty-one-year-old Mooney stared at his friend and fellow Canuck, Brian Armsworth, without an answer. “The girl needs help.”
“We don’t even know who she is!”
Mooney looked at him sarcastically. “Do you know who anyone in China is?”
Armsworth, slightly shorter with a full gray beard, frowned. “Not really.”
“Look, man. I don’t know who she is either. But the girl needs help. Look at her.”
Armsworth glanced again through the glass at Li Na, lying still on a ratty couch. “Okay, so she’s lost. And hungry.”
“Are you kidding? I found her on the side of the road for Christ’s sake. Unconscious. So, unless you want to take her back—”
“Fine! Fine,” Armsworth said, shaking his head. “So what did she say?”
“She said her father was murdered. And someone is trying to kill her too. Been chasing her for days.”
“And how do you know that’s true?”
“I don’t. But she’s scared to death and stinks to high heaven. What kind of conclusion would you draw?”
“Where is she from?”
Mooney shrugged. “No idea.”
“What’s her name?”
“Li Na.”
“Li Na what?”
“Don’t know.”
Armsworth frowned suspiciously at Mooney. “So why are you making this my problem?”
“Because the Jasper is leaving tonight.”
Armsworth’s eyes suddenly shot open. “Oh, hell no! No way!”
“What?”
“Not on my ship!”
“Brian, look at her,” Mooney motioned through the window again. “Look at her! This girl’s in trouble. Do you think she’d be looking like that for fun?”
“Who the hell knows with kids these days? Maybe she’s on crack.”
“Maybe she’s not.”
Armsworth was still shaking his head. “Then who’s chasing her?”
“She said some soldiers. The Army, maybe?”
“The government?! My God, you’re out of your gourd! You want to get mixed up with the government? And not just any government, the Chinese government?”
Mooney shrugged again. “She’s got a passport.”
“Oh, well, that’s different then. If she’s got a passport!”
“And she’s willing to pay her way.”
“I don’t care.”
Mooney folded his arms. “Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
Armsworth shook his head.
“I’ll tell you why you care. Because you know she’s in trouble. Just like I do. And just like me, you’ve seen some really shitty things over here. Bad things that make your damn skin crawl.”
Armsworth didn’t answer.
“And you know why else? Because you have daughters.”
Armsworth looked sternly back at Mooney.
“You have daughters, just like me. Grown and moved out, or in college. Where we can’t protect them.” Mooney stared hard at his friend. “Now you stand there and you tell me that if one of your girls was in trouble, and I mean real trouble, that you wouldn’t be praying to God for someone to help them. To help your little girl if they were able to.”
Armsworth tried to shake his head.
“Say it. Say that you would rather have your daughter fend for herself. Against who knows what? And over here, of all places.”
The aging captain stopped shaking his head and stared again at Li Na through the glass.
“Christ, she’s unconscious.”
“She comes and goes. I think she’s exhausted.” Mooney raised his hand and showed Armsworth a wad of Chinese Yuan. “She can pay.”
“Get that out of my face,” Armsworth growled.
“If you get caught, all you have to say is that she’s a stowaway. Sneaking aboard some random cargo ship. Plausible deniability.”
Armsworth turned and looked out of another much larger window, one that faced out over the endless shipping docks of Shenyang. Dozens of people moved back and forth, many pushing pallets of supplies. None were paying attention to them in the small office.
“This is insane.”
Mooney raised his eyebrows. “Is it? Do we really have that much to lose?”
Armsworth was not amused. “That’s what people usually say right before things go horribly wrong.”
111
There was very little known about China’s new Shijian 16 satellites. Thought by most western analysts to enhance the communist country’s electronic eavesdropping efforts, the true capabilities of China’s growing number of spy satellites were anything but clear.
The unfortunate truth was that the satellites were far more powerful than China’s adversaries suspected. And one of them had just been commandeered by the Ministry of State Security in an attempt to find out exactly who had picked up Li Na Wei on the side of the road.
The girl had already been granted her first stroke of luck in being picked up before Peng and his team could reach her. The second was when it happened––at night, when even the best satellite technology was much less effective.
It would take hours to not just discern the vehicle, in this case a truck. Then to attempt to follow its signature through the vast maze and glaringly bright lights of Shenyang’s shipping docks, scattered along the mouth of the Liaohe River, would be a painstaking process.
It would need to be carried out frame by frame, by a team of the MSS’s sharpest technicians. But find it, they did. And hours later, MSS agents descended upon the Canadian shipping dock and all of its workers. Including a stunned Victor Mooney.
112
Sheng Lam peered down through the helicopter’s side window at the ship below, steadily growing larger upon a sea of blackness. The Jasper’s navigation lights were clearly visible at a distance, as was the muted yellowish glow from the ship’s deck lights and wheelhouse.
Inside the aircraft, Lam glanced at his watch. It was far later than he’d hoped. It took several long hours but the MSS had found her. Not just the dock where the truck had stopped, but the ship itself––now trying to escape Chinese waters, and failing.
This time there was nowhere to go. Nowhere for her to run.
Lam turned to see the squad’s leader watching him. His intuition easily interpreted the message in Peng’s tired, unblinking eyes. Once they had the girl, Sheng Lam would not be aboard the flight back.
***
Captain Armsworth was standing in front of his wheelhouse in the brisk air, watching the helicopter approach and then hover over the only open area of the ship. Landing the Mi-17 helicopter was also a tight fit, but the pilot managed to touch down expertly with a small controlled bounce. At that point, two of Armsworth’s crew ran forward quickly with heavy chains to secure the aircraft.
No sooner had the helicopter’s bounce faded than the green door was slid open and armed soldiers began exiting.
***
Followed by his first officer, Armsworth calmly descended the two decks and reached the main. The Chinese soldiers approached with guns raised.
Peng spoke directly to Armsworth’s first officer, who was of Chinese descent but was a man who had little sympathy for or loyalty to the Chinese government.
“Where is she?” Peng shouted over the wind.
“What is the meaning of this?!” the officer demanded. “Where is who?”
“The GIRL!”
“What girl?”
Peng’s eyes raged. “Do not play games with me! The teenage girl you brought aboard in Shenyang!”
“There are no females aboard.”
Armsworth listened to the garbled exchange and moved his eyes from soldier to soldier, stopping on Lam. The smaller, wirier man seemed especially agitated. Even angry.
His first officer
immediately grew quiet when Peng pushed the barrel of his rifle into the man’s chest. “I know she is aboard!”
The officer turned silently to Armsworth who also raised his hands. “There is no one like that aboard. Search the ship.”
“I WILL search the ship!” growled Peng. “And when I find her, you will be arrested for treason!”
Without a word, both men stepped aside, allowing the soldiers to pass. Peng shouted orders to his men and pointed at the cargo holds.
The two calmly watched as all six soldiers disappeared. They remained where they were standing, looking at one another. When Peng’s voice finally faded, Armsworth looked at his own watch.
The Chinese soldiers would find nothing. Not because they had hidden her. But because they were exactly thirty-eight minutes too late.
113
The UH-60J was a variant of the Mitsubishi H-60 twin-turboshaft helicopter and designed specifically for search and rescue missions for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. It was also somewhat fitting that the white UH-60J they were on, speeding less than twenty feet above the ocean swells, was based on the United States’ Sea King helicopters.
Li Na’s unconscious body was laid out across the rear of the cabin, held steady by Steve Caesare, while John Clay readied the syringe.
“Now just like I said…” The voice they heard over their aviation headsets belonged to Amir Kanna, the ship doctor aboard the Pathfinder. “First the bolus injection then the maintenance infusion.”
Clay followed the doctor’s instructions carefully, administering both. Caesare then assisted by activating the small multichannel infusion pump to control the delivery. Together, they watched a portable EEG monitor and waited for the brain wave pattern described by Kanna.
“Okay,” Clay finally announced. “We’re beginning to see the pattern.”
“Good,” Kanna replied. “Now listen, the thiopental slows the metabolic rate of the brain tissue, but it also depresses blood pressure. Tell me what it is now.”
Ripple (Breakthrough Book 4) Page 34