Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

by Cameron, Marc

  “They were half an hour out five minutes ago,” Symonds said.

  Moon got up with a groan, gathering her anorak and duffel. “I get it,” she said. “Choppers burn a shitload of fuel every minute. Can’t blame them if they would rather have me waiting on the ice for them rather the other way around.”

  “Maybe,” Symonds said. It was her favorite word. She set her mug on the table and stood with Moon. “You’ll need a polar-bear guard. I’ll get the twelve-gauge and come with. Skipper saw two yesterday morning before the weather got bad, chowing down on an adolescent walrus they’d managed to nab off a haul out.”

  “I saw the photos,” Moon said.

  “Brutal to the bone, right?” Symonds said. “The snow was slathered in blood and gore. One look at that shit is enough to make me never venture onto the ice without the shotgun.”

  “You really think any self-respecting polar bear is going to stick around between us and an approaching helicopter?”

  Symonds shrugged and gave Moon a wink.

  “Maybe.”

  The gray twin-engine UH-1Y Venom “Super Huey” helicopter kicked a cloud of white into the air as it settled on thick ice fifty yards from the ship. The pilots kept the rotor spinning while a callow Marine bundled up like the Michelin Man beckoned Moon toward the open side hatch.

  She ducked instinctively as she approached, though the rotors were well above her head.

  “Dr. Moon?” the Marine shouted above the whumping blades and whining engine. She exaggerated her nod in the big parka ruff. Satisfied that she was the person he’d come for, he waved her aboard. She tried to thank him, but he shook his head, tapping the earmuffs on the side of his helmet and then pointing to another helmet and earphones hanging by one of the vis-à-vis seats inside the otherwise empty cabin.

  Moon frowned at the thought of being the only passenger. She’d been only half kidding about the possibility of getting dumped down a mine shaft—or, in this case, into the Arctic Ocean.

  In addition to the heavy flight suit, cranial protection, and goggles, the crew chief wore a load-bearing vest that included a sidearm—presumably polar-bear defense if they went down. Moon stifled a smile at the thought. A nine-millimeter pistol was better than your teeth and fingernails against a nine-foot bear who considered you food, but not by much. A cable attached to a line inside the cabin was clipped to the young Marine’s safety harness, allowing him to move around the cabin with relative freedom. He helped her put on the four-point harness in one of the forward-facing seats, then had her don the helmet. He pushed the tiny boom mic closer to her mouth.

  His voice came over the intercom. “Copy?”

  She gave him a thumbs-up. “Five by five.”

  “Outstanding,” the Marine said, sounding much more mature than he looked. “I’m Corporal Goen, the crew chief, Lieutenant Eggiman is up front on the left, Captain Pelkey is on the right. He’s the one in charge of this bird.”

  “You guys are based in Alaska?”

  “Oh, hell, no,” Corporal Goen said. “HMLA-269 out of New River. We’re doing cold weather out of Utgi … Utga … Barrow … for training with Marines from 2nd Division.”

  HMLA stood for Helicopter Marine Light Attack.

  “I was stationed at Norfolk for a while,” Moon said. “Been to New River a couple of times.”

  She’d dated a Marine from Air Station New River for a while. The three-hour drive had been worth it, but then he’d shipped off with a one-way ticket to Fallujah. She mentioned none of this to Corporal Goen, who, she suspected, was at least fifteen years her junior.

  “Navy, huh?” The crew chief gave a wide grin. “That’s some different shit, huh, pardon my French. Marines giving you a lift somewhere instead of the other way around.”

  “No kidding,” Moon said. “Hard to believe your commander let you fly all the way out here to get one person.”

  Captain Pelkey turned to look over his shoulder from the cockpit. He was hooked up to the intercom as well. “That’s correct, Doc. Someone further up the chain said make it so, so we’re makin’ it so. Colonel Cruz wanted to come with us, but frankly we needed the weight for fuel.” Pelkey returned his attention to the cockpit instruments again, but kept talking. “Your ship is right at the edge of how far we can go and get back before bingo. Wind’s been kind of snarky, and with these cold temps, we’re seeing as much as a five percent loss in range.”

  Moon nodded. “I’ll bet. The speed of sound decreases with the temperature, increasing Mach drag on your rotors.”

  Captain Pelkey turned to look at her again. “You fly choppers in the Navy?”

  “Nope,” Moon said. “Sonar. Sound. It’s sort of my thing.”

  “Still …” Pelkey shook his head. “Anyhoo, weather between here and Utqiagvik is marginal, but we’re equipped for it. We should have you back in a little under an hour and a half. I understand there’ll be a C-21 Learjet out of Eielson Air Force Base waiting to take you to Washington.”

  “Unbelievable,” Moon said, mostly to herself, but it went across the intercom. “At least I can visit friends on Whidbey Island, I guess …”

  “The other Washington,” Pelkey said. “The one on the Potomac.”

  Suddenly chilled, Moon looked out the window at the passing ice as the Super Huey banked to the south. If they were going to fire her, they would have waited for Sikuliaq to make her next port call. No, Barker had come through and submitted her findings up his chain of command. Someone believed her theory enough to spend a considerable amount of money snatching her off the middle of the ice pack. She could not believe it. They actually wanted her expertise. Unless … what if she truly had stumbled on some ultra-secret operation and they were calling her in to silence her?

  She’d grown up in the Arctic, a place with no snakes, but she’d seen enough of the world after leaving home to know that in Washington, D.C., there were vipers behind every rock and tree.

  24

  The American smelled like soap and oiled leather—like the saddle of a horse Hala’s father had once set her on at the market. He spoke softly, obviously trying not to frighten her. That would be impossible, she thought. Her aunt had died saving her and now lay on the floor mere paces from the lifeless blood-drenched lumps that had once been horrible men.

  He said his name was John, and that he was a friend—but nothing more. He’d saved her from Ren, but that only made him slightly less terrifying. John found some pomegranate juice in the kitchen and made her drink it, telling her the sugar would make her feel a little better. He moved quickly, looking out front a lot, like he thought someone else might be coming.

  “We need to go,” he said after Hala drank all her juice. “It’s not safe here.”

  She chewed on her collar. “Where?”

  “I’m not sure.” He looked out the window again, then stepped to the door. “As quick as you can, wash up and change into clean clothes. Sturdy and warm.”

  “Clothes are clothes,” she said. “Why would anyone wear clothes that were not sturdy and warm?”

  “Right,” the man said. “Quick as you can.”

  Hala began to panic when he eased open the door. “Are you leaving?”

  “I’m not going anywhere without you, kiddo,” John said. “But these guys had a friend outside. I need to bring him in so your neighbors don’t call the police.”

  “But you’re coming back in?”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay.” Hala gave a shuddering sigh, still chewing her collar. “I will go clean off this blood.”

  The idea had been to watch Hala Tohti. Clark was supposed to ascertain if there was anything about the girl that might lead to her mother’s whereabouts. Observe and report. Interview Hala and her aunt if it came to that. Taking either of them had never been on the table. Getting a third party out of any part of China would be difficult enough. Xinjiang, and particularly Kashgar, had so many cameras, checkpoints, and armed patrols that leaving here with anyone would be akin to b
reaking them out of prison.

  Clark dragged the body of the sentry into the house and dropped it in the corner beside a wooden chair. He sighed to himself.

  No plan survived first contact with the enemy—which was often a boot to the nose. Things changed. The girl was coming with him, one way or another. She was as good as dead if he left her here.

  The room was filled with far too much carnage to fret about the poor kid seeing more of it. He found a cloth vegetable sack in one of the cupboards and filled it with two rounds of naan bread and a shank of roast meat he thought was probably lamb.

  The girl had been cooperative so far, apparently accepting the fact that she had no other choice than to come with him, considering the four dead bodies in her living room. Clark knew he could be terrifying, but this girl was incredibly resilient. Judging from her scraped knuckles and the amount of blood covering her body, she’d been smack in the middle of the violence that occurred here. She’d been trying to help her aunt cut a man’s throat when he came in—and then watched Clark finish the job. No, she was tough as a boot. And it would take a whole lot more of the same if they were both going to get out of the country alive.

  Hala was washed and dressed by the time Clark had dragged in the dead driver and filled the canvas sack with provisions. The wooly fake-fur ruff around the hood of her blue coat looked out of place against the scene behind her.

  “I was thinking,” she said. “There is an old caravanserai about twelve kilometers away from here. We can take my aunt’s scooter.”

  “Which direction?”

  Hala pointed. “Near the livestock market.”

  Caravanserais were the truck stops of the ancient Silk Road that connected China through Central Asia to the rest of the world. Water and food stops for man and beast. A place for weary travelers to lay their heads and worry slightly less about getting their throats cut at night by robbers wanting to take their animals and cargo.

  “No one else stays there?”

  “It was empty when I went there before. My father let me explore it when he took me to the livestock market. It is not far away, maybe two kilometers into the desert. The spring there has dried up, so no one goes there anymore.”

  Clark thought for a moment. The livestock market was RP Bravo, one of six SHTF rally points in and around Kashgar he’d prearranged with Midas, options for places to meet if things hit the proverbial fan—which they had. It was also the location of Adam Yao’s in-country contact. The area would be crawling with police and soldiers—especially on a Sunday—but it also was a popular tourist destination, a place where it was said a person could find everything but the milk of a chicken. Clark counted on the crowd to be able to blend in.

  “The market is on Sunday,” he said. “That’s tomorrow.”

  “It is,” Hala said. “But when I saw the caravanserai it was on market day and it was filled with nothing but spiderwebs and dust.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Clark said.

  “Okay,” she said. “I will show you the way.”

  She tiptoed gingerly around one of the many pools of blood and pushed a chair up to the counter next to the small white refrigerator. Removing the lid of a large clay jar of loose tea leaves, she took out a roll of brown waxed paper and held it out to Clark. “My aunt saved some money for … bad times.”

  Clark nodded. “Emergency.”

  “Yes,” Hala said. “I think this is emergency. No?”

  “It is.” Clark gently nudged the child’s hand away. “But you keep it. Everyone needs to have some money of their own. Now, it’s going to be cold. We should bring some blankets.” He glanced around the kitchen. “And, if you don’t mind, I would like to borrow a knife to take with us.”

  Hala pulled open the drawer below the cupboard where she’d found the money and retrieved a folding knife with a four-inch blade. A simple folded piece of steel formed a flat handle. The blade was carbon steel, with a wicked-sharp scimitar point. The knife did not lock open, but had a hefty spring that kept it from closing on the user’s hand under normal use. Clark recognized it immediately. It was not a fighting knife, as he’d hoped, but a French utility blade often found in the pockets of Legionnaires during conflicts in Algeria and Indochina. They’d generally fallen out of favor with modern Legionnaires, who now carried the wood-handled Opinel No. 08. The Opinel was more comfortable in the hand, but the older style suited Clark just fine.

  It made sense. The wicked little French knife was called a douk-douk, after the Melanesian god of chaos and doom.

  Hala took him a back way out of her neighborhood that skirted all but one of the police checkpoints, the last on the outskirts of town, some two kilometers from the livestock market. They had to abandon the scooter and cut through a pasture of fat sheep to get around. Clark took the registration plate off the scooter and then set it on fire before they left, hoping any identifying numbers would be destroyed. It was better that the police respond to a fire than find a bike that belonged to Hala’s aunt abandoned so near the Sunday Market.

  The walk to the caravanserai was relatively short, but the cumulative effects of jet lag and a near-constant flow of adrenaline left Clark dragging with exhaustion.

  As usual, this caravanserai was a fortresslike affair of mud and brick built around a large courtyard where camels and goods could be brought inside while the travelers ate and slept.

  An entire side had fallen in—a victim of the siege of time. There was spray-painted graffiti here and there on the remaining walls—tentative, like the artist had been in a rush, terrified of being caught. Clark couldn’t read the Arabic, but it was faded and old, much of it naturally sandblasted away by the wind. A bony rat hustled from one pile of stone to another, not nearly as worried about getting caught as the graffiti painter. Peeling paint on a dusty wooden sign out front suggested that someone had once tried to turn the place into a tourist attraction. WONDERS OF THE SILK ROAD, the peeling paint read in Chinese characters and English. For whatever reason, the project had failed—leaving this particular wonder of the Silk Road long abandoned and offering Clark and Hala what appeared to be the perfect place to hide.

  Any straw or animal bedding had long since turned to dust, leaving nothing but the dirt ground and the blankets they’d brought with them for beds. Clark found a spot in the back corner of an old room.

  There was a vacant hole in the thick clay wall a few feet to the left of his bed—a small window, or perhaps even a gun port. He had no firearm, but he could roll out of his bed quickly and the hole gave him a viable vantage point where he could see anyone who tried to approach from the road before they saw him.

  This place would do for now.

  He took the secure cell phone out of his pocket. The battery was dangerously low, and there was certainly no way to charge it here. Instead of calling, he entered the code to open the encrypted text capability behind his Walk-to-Me pedometer app and thumb-typed a quick message. It would disappear ten seconds after Midas read it.

  Have package. All intact. RP Bravo.

  Midas would know to try to meet at 0900, 1400, and 2100 local time. Other than that, there was nothing he could do.

  Clark was a planner, a strategizer, and even a gambler if the stakes were high enough, but he didn’t waste much time on worry. He’d decide what to do next tomorrow, when a couple hours’ rest had cleared his head.

  Hala, obviously accustomed to sleeping on the floor, made a nest for herself at Clark’s feet. She’d spoken only to give directions since they’d left the house, her collar always in her mouth, her arms trembling as she held on to his waist behind him on the scooter.

  “Will you be warm enough?” Clark asked. He was unsure of what to say but felt like he needed to check on the poor kid before passing out himself. He wasn’t completely blind to the experience of having a daughter, but was honest enough with himself to know his wife had done the lion’s share of the parenting while he was traveling the world kicking ass for flag and freedom. What coul
d he possibly say to any little girl to comfort her? That was Sandy’s job.

  Hala Tohti was what? Ten years old? When Patsy was that age, she had a comfortable home and a warm bedroom full of Barbie dolls and posters of boy bands. Hala’s father was dead, her mother gone. Three hours ago, she’d witnessed her aunt stab one man to death in the neck and then helped her cut another man’s throat with a meat cleaver—and she still had the wherewithal to think of this place to hide.

  Maybe this kind of kid deserved more bedtime stories, not less.

  “I am fine,” she said. Her voice quivered as the events of the evening caught up with her. Nights were always the worst—for everyone. “Did you know that I am very good on the balance beam? The government even sent me to a special school.”

  “You must be good, then,” Clark said. For some reason, her small, fragile voice in the darkness brought on him an immeasurable sadness.

  “I was going to compete in the Olympics someday,” she said, “but I do not think that will happen now.”

  Clark swallowed, having a little trouble speaking. It was odd the things that got to him lately.

  Hala saved him. “May I ask a question?”

  Clark rolled up on his side, resting his elbow on the ground as he peered through the dusty darkness at the lump of blankets. He swallowed again, working very hard to smooth the gravel in his voice. Many years of being John Clark had given his personality more jagged edges than he liked to admit.

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Am I …” Now she sat up, looking back at him. “Am I your prisoner?”

  “Oh, no, no,” Clark said. “Not at all. I am going to get you to safety.”

  “That is what you told me at my aunt’s house,” the girl said, breathless, like she might get up and run at any moment. “But one can never be sure with men. They give you cake and tell you lies.”

  “That is true about many men,” Clark said. “But not me. I am running, too.” He gave a soft chuckle, hoping it would help to calm her. “And I have no cake.”