by Alex Ryan
“Have they found anything so far?” Dash asked.
“Not yet,” Zhang said and leaned over to stare into the open, empty chest cavity of the corpse on the table. “Completely gutted, huh?”
Dash nodded. “Heart, lungs, pancreas, liver, and one kidney missing.”
“What about the other kidney?”
“Not removed. It shows early signs of necrosis.”
“Is that significant?”
She nodded. “It helps confirm my working theory.”
“Which is?”
“Organ harvesting. The organs excised correspond to the organs most in demand for transplant: heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, and corneas. As you might expect, the cadavers with missing organs—the bodies I’m putting in Category A—all appear to have been relatively young and healthy. In the case of this woman on the table, they left the degraded kidney because it was unsuitable for transplant.”
“I assume these organs are sold on the black market after they’re harvested,” Zhang said.
“I’ve heard rumors of this sort of thing before, but I never imagined an operation was being conducted at this scale.”
“How quickly after an organ is removed does it need to be transplanted?”
“Ideally, as soon as possible. Tissue degradation from ischemia commences once blood flow is stopped, but under optimal conditions, hearts and lungs can remain viable three to four hours, kidneys and livers, six to eight.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Also, you should know that we found traces of anesthesia in blood samples taken from the aorta.”
Zhang screwed up his face. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that these people were not willing organ donors. We’re not talking about living-will scenarios here. Somebody put these people to sleep and took everything. They never woke back up.”
“That’s psychotic,” Zhang said.
“What’s more,” she said, her eyes downcast, “the internal surgical precision I’m seeing is exemplary. The quick and dirty post-op stitch-up is misleading. This is not some back-alley hack job. These people were anesthetized and operated on in a surgery suite by a team of skilled surgeons. To think of something like this being performed in a Chinese hospital makes me ill. We’re talking about murder, Zhang—the premediated, cold-blooded murder of people to steal their organs.”
“And what about the other cadavers—the Category B bodies with tattooed faces that had their noses, hands, and genitals hacked off. Any working theory on those people?”
“Maybe,” she said, crinkling her nose at a fleeting memory of some disturbing text she’d read in a history book once. “But I need to spend some time researching on the computer before I’m ready to discuss it.”
“Okay, fair enough,” Zhang said. “Have we made any progress identifying any of the victims so far?”
“We’ve fingerprinted all the corpses with hands and submitted the paperwork to your man, Sergeant Tan, to run a search in the database,” she said. “For the victims missing hands, eyes, and teeth, we’ll need to rely on DNA samples. Major Li and I are collecting tissue samples as we go.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Zhang sighed heavily under his mask. “The national DNA registry is extremely limited and has records for only a small percentage of the civilian population. If the victim isn’t a soldier or a criminal, odds are we won’t find anything.”
“I know,” she said. “I figured as much.”
“Anything else?” Zhang asked.
She glanced at Li, who nodded, apparently reading her mind. “We did have one outlier among the dead—a male, early twenties, who was tattooed, mutilated, and missing his internal organs. This body was the only one we collected that seemingly fit into both categories.”
“Hmm, interesting,” Zhang said. “I assume he was missing his hands?”
She nodded. “Along with his eyes, teeth, nose, genitals, and feet.”
“And the tattoo?”
“Same as most of the others—TRAITOR—inked across the forehead.”
“Did you get a tissue sample?”
“Yes, and I was hoping you could—”
“Expedite?” Zhang said, cutting her off.
“Exactly.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Zhang’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He retrieved it and took the call. “Zhang . . . yes . . . yes . . . where? Excellent work. Ready the helo pad and instruct the dive master to make preparations to dive.” He ended the call and slipped his mobile phone back into his pocket. “It appears our friends in the Coast Guard have found something submerged and drifting ten nautical miles off the coast of Cheung Chau Island.”
“You’re flying out to meet them?” Dash asked.
“Of course,” he said, turning to leave, his voice brimming with excitement. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m out of the water.”
“Commando, helicopter pilot, and scuba diver?” Dash called after him.
Zhang looked back at her over his shoulder. “Oh yes, Dr. Chen . . . all that and so very much more.”
She rolled her eyes but couldn’t help but grin at his bravado.
He winked at her and then headed for the exit.
“Wait,” Major Li shouted abruptly. “I’m coming with you.”
Dash watched Zhang’s shoulders stiffen, but he did not break stride as Li trotted to catch up. As the autopsy suite door was swinging shut behind them, she heard the Snow Leopard Commander’s parting words: “The Coast Guard is reporting sea state six today. I really hope you don’t get seasick, Major.”
CHAPTER 8
D3
CCG-1115 Hai Twen, South China Sea
6.5 nautical miles southeast of Cheung Chau Island
1140 hours local
Zhang watched Major Li clinging to the aft deck rail with white knuckles—vomit dribbling down the man’s chin and spackled across the front of his uniform. While the eighty-eight-meter-long patrol boat CCG-1115 was able to plow through the two-meter swells with ease, the incessant pitching and rolling was doing a number on the Army officer. For a man unaccustomed to the sea, the rhythmic rise and fall of the fantail would be more nauseating than any roller coaster at Hong Kong Disneyland. Zhang touched the tan-colored scopolamine antinausea patch affixed behind his left ear and grinned at his compeer.
He felt no sympathy for Li.
A soldier should always be prepared.
He’d warned Li of the rough conditions, but the Major had insisted on tagging along, rattling off something about protocol and compartmentalization. Zhang knew Li’s real motivation—control. Li wanted control of the information; he wanted control of the operation. The question nagging Zhang was why. Was it about satiating Li’s ego, or was something else going on? Li had already demonstrated a propensity for jumping the chain of command. When the Major had secretly lobbied to have Dr. Chen kicked off the task force, it had opened Zhang’s eyes to how the man operated. Now he couldn’t help but wonder if Li was back to his old tricks, routing information outside the task force. Did the Major have a secret agenda? Was he reporting to a secondary chain of command?
“How can you dive in these conditions?” Li groaned, wiping a fresh spattering of vomit from his left cheek, where the wind had spread the mess all the way up to his ear.
“Carefully,” Zhang admitted. “It’ll be dangerous near the surface, but once we’re at depth, things should settle down.”
Li opened his mouth to say something but then changed his mind and leaned over the rail to dry-heave, his stomach apparently empty at last. Zhang watched the Major retch in agony until he couldn’t stand it anymore and turned to monitor the Coast Guard team as they set up the dive command station on the helo deck. Thankfully, the sea state had calmed from a strong six to a manageable five over the past hour. Rough seas were bad for scuba diving and nasty for landing helicopters. He was certainly competent at both activities, but a rescue diver and naval aviator he was not. Landing his Z-11 on
the patrol boat had been precarious, and he had forced Li to suffer through two aborted attempts before finally sticking the landing. Hard to say which, the harrowing landing or the seasickness, would ultimately leave the Army officer with the worst memory. After landing, Zhang’s helicopter was moved into the hangar deck beside the ship’s own Harbin Z-9 helicopter.
Zhang turned his attention forward, looking up and along the superstructure of the impressive ship. Formerly the Haijian 15, a surveillance vessel of the first Marine Surveillance Flotilla, the Hai Twen CCG-1115 was one of the Chinese Coast Guard’s most capable ships. With the formation of a unified Chinese Coast Guard in 2013, dozens and dozens of naval assets had been reassigned, and the CCG-1115 was one of them. Although he had not had frequent occasion to work with the Coast Guard, their professionalism and competency so far today had impressed him. The CCG-1115 was presently on loan from the North China Sea Fleet for training exercises with the South China Sea Fleet, which was stationed 120 kilometers northwest of Hong Kong, up the Pearl River in the port city of Guangzhou. He was fortunate the asset was available to help with the search.
From the corner of his eye, Zhang saw Lieutenant Chung approaching. Chung’s 3mm wet suit hung open at the chest, and he wore sunglasses, the combination making Zhang chuckle. The young Snow Leopard looked at Major Li dry-heaving over the rail and flashed Zhang a conspiratorial grin.
“How’s the station keeping going?” Zhang asked before Chung had time to get a wisecrack in.
“The bridge team is doing an exemplary job tracking the object and matching its set and drift,” Chung said. “It’s moving south-southeast at two and half knots with the current. The dive should be manageable without DPVs.”
Zhang nodded. “Good, I hate those damn things. The name of the game on this dive is going to be buoyancy control, and those vehicles make static hovers a living hell.”
“Fin down, take a look, and fin back up. Easy day, Commander.”
“Don’t be overly confident, Lieutenant,” Zhang warned. “The ocean is unforgiving. Just because the current is stable now doesn’t mean it will stay that way. This is going to be an untethered dive, due to the rough surface conditions. After a big storm, there’s no telling what we’ll encounter.”
“Yes, sir,” Chung said, tempering his bravado.
“What’s the depth of the object?”
“Twenty-six meters,” the young counterterrorism officer said. “I recommend we base our decompression table on a maximum depth of just under thirty-five meters; that gives us fifteen minutes for a no-decompression limit. It’s conservative, but I suggest that we follow this protocol, as decompression stops with these surface conditions would be a challenge.”
“Agreed,” Zhang said. “If we stay under thirty meters, we can squeeze out a few more minutes.”
“Twenty minutes if we stay above the thirty-meter mark. More than enough time to dive, examine the object, and return to the surface. If the object looks retrievable, we can call for topside to drop a winch cable and try to retrieve it.”
“Agreed,” Zhang said. “But diving on a nonstationary object is dangerous, Mr. Chung. You are not to enter the object without my express permission. Disturb the air bubble keeping the object at neutral buoyancy, and it could plummet very deep, very fast, taking anyone stupid enough to be inside down with it.”
“Understood, sir. The investigation of the object will be performed and controlled by us and us alone. The ship’s rescue divers will serve as safety divers for the duration of the dive in case we run into any problems.”
Zhang ran through his mental checklist, ticking items off on his fingers as he did until he came to something they had not discussed. “What’s our comms plan?”
“The comms package is run from the surface using the built-in EM-OTS2 comms in our dive masks, but I secured OTS D2 transmitters as well, so you and I can communicate over a secure channel.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Chung. Feet wet in ten.”
The young officer saluted, an unnecessary courtesy in these conditions, but no doubt a show for the PLA Major anguishing on the rail. Then Chung turned and headed back to the makeshift dive command post.
Zhang approached Li, who was still clutching the deck rail, his forehead pressed against the back of his hands. Zhang put a hand on the Major’s shoulder. “Go belowdecks, Major,” he said. “Find yourself a nice piece of a real estate somewhere amidships and get horizontal. The fantail is the worst possible place to loiter.”
Li looked at first as if he might object, but instead he gave Zhang a weary, defeated nod. “Will you brief me on what you find when you get back?” Li said, his voice hoarse, ragged, and almost pleading—a nice change from his usual arrogant affect.
“Of course,” Zhang said.
“What do you think you’ll find down there?”
A great question and one he had no answer for.
“Hopefully, a clue to whatever the hell is going on,” Zhang said. “Now go get some rest. I’ll see you in an hour.”
Li nodded, suppressed a belch, and then headed forward, his hand dragging across the rail as he swayed and stumbled his way belowdecks. Zhang shook his head at the Army man and then made his way to the dive station to gear up.
Fifteen minutes later, Zhang, Chung, and the two Coast Guard rescue divers were standing shoulder to shoulder on the ship’s stainless-steel dive platform. The platform resembled a window-washer’s station, except instead of being raised and lowered manually along the side of a building, this platform was designed to be hoisted into and out of the sea by the CCG-1115’s stern service crane. They waited until the grate decking of the platform was positioned just above the tops of the highest swells. On Zhang’s mark, the four divers took a giant stride off, stepping in unison into a receding wave. The ship’s engines were at idle as a safety precaution to prevent the divers from being shredded by the twin propellers should the unpredictable currents and waves drive them forward.
Zhang kicked hard, leading the team deep as fast as possible to get away from the rough surface chop. He equalized pressure in his ears continuously during the rapid descent. At six meters, the wave action began to wane. By fifteen meters, it disappeared almost completely.
“We have you on sonar. Stay tight, so we keep a nice return,” came the voice of the surface dive coordinator in Zhang’s headphones.
The dive mask Zhang wore covered his entire face but bore no resemblance to the steel diving helmets of old. Inside the mask, a fighter-pilot-style respirator cone covered his mouth and nose, which permitted easy voice comms and minimized fogging, but it still relied on a rubber to skin contact seal for watertightness. His earphones were held in place by a neoprene band fitted inside his wet suit hood. As he scanned the area, an annoying smear appeared on his facemask, making it hard to see at the ten o’clock position. He wiped his gloved hand across the Plexiglas until it cleared up, then he glanced at his depth gage.
Twenty meters.
It was getting dark. The anemic daylight from the rainy, overcast sky above was now almost completely filtered out at depth. Zhang clicked on the lights attached to either side of his mask by each temple. The LED illumination was unsatisfactory, lighting less than a one-meter sphere around his head. Particulates and slimy floaters filled his field of vision.
Is that oil? Maybe we’re dealing with a sunken vessel after all, he thought.
Zhang’s earphones crackled, and he strained to hear a garbled report from the dive coordinator over the roar of the howling winds topside.
“Say again, louder,” Zhang replied.
“Descent on target. Sonar holds you directly over the object—five meters and closing,” the dive coordinator repeated, this time shouting to be heard over the background noise.
“Roger,” Zhang said into his microphone.
“How is your visibility? Do you see the object?” the coordinator yelled.
“Visibility poor,” he replied. “No visual contact yet.”
“Looks like oil,” Chung answered.
“It’s not oil,” came the second Coast Guard diver’s voice, more relaxed than his partner. “It feels oily, but it is light in color, and the droplets are loose and small—not the consistency of machine oil.”
When Dr. Chen had performed autopsies on the bodies in Kizilsu during the bioterrorism attack a few months ago, Zhang had witnessed a foul-smelling, light-colored grease pooling in metal dissection pans. Could this be the same thing? He shuddered and forced the terrible thought away.
“Dark shadow bearing two-seven-zero and just below us,” came Chung’s voice over the comms channel.
Zhang looked in the direction the junior officer was pointing but saw nothing except flickers of light reflecting back from whatever was dispersed in the water. He realized he had a greasy feeling on the back of his hands as well. Then he saw something—an orange-yellow blob in the distance.
“I see it too,” Zhang said.
He glanced at the depth gauge on his wrist: twenty-five meters. He glanced at the dive counter: eleven minutes burned. That left them only fourteen minutes to investigate whatever it was.
“Where did it go?” one of the safety divers asked.
“Sonar now holds the object at a depth of twenty-seven meters. I repeat, twenty-seven meters,” the dive coordinator reported.
Zhang squinted, but he too had lost sight of the object.
Shit, it’s sinking.
“I see it,” Chung said. “Follow me.”
Zhang saw his lieutenant kick deeper and followed him, the orange blob now taking on a geometric shape through his oil-coated faceplate. The object looked triangular. It appeared to be made of metal, and the bulk of it disappeared into the darkness after only a half meter.
“What the hell is that?” Chung asked.
At first, Zhang didn’t answer, but as he finned around to the left for a different perspective, the mystery revealed itself as the triangle morphed into an elongated container.