“Halt!” the young man repeated.
Nick quickened his pace toward the intruder. “Shuochu ni de xìngmíng hé danwèi!” he said with authority, commanding the soldier to state his name and unit. He prayed he’d gotten the pronunciation correct. He had learned the phrase during a previous operation, but that was years ago. He intended to take advantage of an idiosyncrasy of Chinese culture. Young Chinese soldiers were not just obedient; they were submissive.
His plan also banked on the soldier’s poor night-vision system. With an older model of Chinese goggles, the soldier wouldn’t be able to distinguish Caucasian features from Asian, particularly with much of Nick’s face covered. The older system could not break out the pattern of the American camouflage either. With any luck, this guy might think Nick was from one of China’s myriad specialized units. “Shuochu ni de xìngmíng hé danwèi!” he said again, more forcefully.
The soldier slowed and lowered his weapon a few degrees, but he kept coming, rattling off a long string of Mandarin.
Nick had no idea what the man was saying. He took another gamble. “Women shì tèzhong bùduì,” he said, claiming that he was Chinese Special Forces. At least, he hoped that was what he said. He tried to feign indignation, but he found that difficult to do while maintaining an accent in a language he did not speak. With those last words, he had exhausted his reserve of Chinese military phrases.
The soldier replied with another string of Mandarin, this time in a defensive, subordinate tone. The ruse was working. He stopped and lowered his pistol until it pointed at the ground. In another second, Nick would be within striking distance.
Suddenly, he heard Quinn’s voice in his comm device. “I’ve got him.”
Nick did not get the chance to argue. He saw the Chinese soldier jerk his head to the left and raise his pistol. At the same time, he heard three heavy spits. The soldier fell at his feet, gurgling and spitting blood. He grabbed desperately at the radio clipped to his shoulder, repeating the same phrase over and over—“Tamen zài zhèli”—but he never reached the transmitter.
There was no time to ask questions. Nick grabbed the soldier by his battle vest and dragged him into the trees on the other side of the meadow. By the time he laid him down and tore off the awkward helmet and goggles, the young soldier was dead. He stared sightlessly up at the dark forest canopy.
“What were you thinking?” asked Nick as Quinn jogged up beside him.
“I was thinking of saving your crazy hide!” retorted Quinn, his gun still leveled at the dead man. “What was your plan, to dupe him with pig Latin in a bad Chinese accent?”
“You can holster your weapon, hero. He’s dead.”
“Good.”
“Not good,” Nick countered. “We could have gotten information out of him. We didn’t have to kill him.”
“Of course we had to kill him. The only response to unexpected contact during a black operation is to kill; otherwise, you risk discovery.” Quinn rattled off the sentence as if he were reading from a textbook.
“Real-world ops aren’t so black and white,” said Nick. “This guy wasn’t a real threat to us. He wasn’t a terrorist, and he wasn’t involved in some genocidal battle. He was a kid just like you, following orders during peacetime.” He closed the young man’s eyes and stood up. “He was probably ordered to search the forest for the escaped prisoner.”
“If he was searching for one escapee in prison rags, then why didn’t he seem more surprised to see two armed Americans in full combat gear?” asked Quinn.
Nick made no response. He hadn’t thought of that. He lifted his goggles and rubbed his eyes. The rest he got on the Wraith could not make up for weeks of poor sleep, and he knew it. He was beginning to feel the mind-numbing effects of exhaustion. Maybe the kid was right. “I don’t know, Quinn,” he replied honestly. “I don’t know.”
CHAPTER 46
Amessage indicating that the Palace lay just ahead of him flashed in Nick’s goggles, a welcome sight. Hiding the body of the Chinese soldier had put them further behind schedule. In addition, Nick had slowed the pace considerably, moving forward in sweeps to search for other patrols, but there were no more contacts. Now, with the Palace in sight, his frustration and exhaustion started to ebb away. In a few more minutes, they could reclaim Novak for the United States and then spirit him back to Shadow Catcher for a predawn launch back to the Wraith.
Nick scanned the area slowly, unwilling to leave the last stretch to chance. He would rather take an extra minute or two now than be caught by hostile forces just a few feet from the objective. Their path looked clear. He slowly rose from his crouched position and motioned Quinn to follow. They crept forward with their MP7s at the ready, scanning their respective fields of fire. Finally, the two of them stood on either side of the low cave entrance, masked by a tangle of fresh tree branches.
“Someone has definitely been here recently,” said Nick, carefully lifting one of the branches free and feeling its leaves. They were pliable, not dry and brittle as they should have been if the cave had not been used for many years. “These leaves are still green. This cover was placed within the last couple of days.”
Quinn kept scanning the surrounding forest. “Yeah, well, let’s hope he’s in there.”
Nick quietly removed the branches, unslung his MP7, and ducked inside. He crawled through the low entrance with his weapon in front of him, ready to fire. For all he knew, there might be a platoon of Chinese waiting on the inside.
“Hello?” said Nick, springing to his feet inside the cave. There was no answer. He removed an infrared flashlight from his vest and shined it around the enclosure, further illuminating the scene for his goggles. He saw no prisoner, no body, and no other rooms, only a small cave littered with ration packs and old supplies.
Nick set his MP7 down on a crate and helped Quinn to his feet. “He’s gone.”
“He can’t be.” Quinn jerked his arm away and drew his XDm pistol, scanning the cave with the infrared light mounted on its rail. “Where else would he be?”
“My guess is that he got tired of waiting,” replied Nick. He walked deeper into the cave to get a better look. After examining several of the spent rations that lay on the floor, he found a good sign. Smears of tomato sauce still covered the torn polypropylene coated foil of one of the packets. He removed a glove and picked it up, running his index finger through the sauce and rubbing it against his thumb. “The sauce in this MRE hasn’t dried out yet.” He held his fingers to his nose and smelled the sharp scent of garlic and basil. “Yeah, it’s still fresh, if you can ever say that about an MRE. My guess is that he hasn’t been gone more than a few hours, if that. We need to get out there and find him. But first I’ve got to check in.”
Nick activated his comm implant’s connection to Drake. “Wraith, this is Shadow One.”
An intermittent voice replied, masked by heavy static. Nick could not make out the words.
“Wraith, I need you to boost your signal. We’re in a cave.”
After a few moments, Drake’s voice came through. “Shadow One, this is Wraith. How do you hear me now?”
Nick breathed a sigh of relief. At least the comms were holding up. Once they failed, everything usually went to pot very quickly. “Loud and clear, Wraith. It’s good to hear your voice.”
A moment later, McBride joined Drake on the comm line. “Shadow One, this is Lighthouse.”
“Got you loud and clear too, Lighthouse. Where’s the Old Man?” he asked, wondering why Walker hadn’t come up on the line.
“He’s taking a coffee break, but I can tell you that he’s not happy. You’ve been on the ground for an hour and a half. You are way behind schedule. What’s the holdup?”
Nick gave both of them a brief summary of the mission since leaving Shadow Catcher. He focused on the encounter with the lone Chinese soldier.
“It’s odd that you o
nly encountered one,” interjected McBride. “PLA patrols usually go out in groups of five.”
“We thought the same thing,” replied Nick, “but we didn’t find any others. Not a soul. There’s something else that I need you to look into for me. After Quinn took him down, the soldier went for his radio. He kept repeating the same phrase: Tamen zài zhèli.”
“Stand by, Shadow One.”
Nick waited while McBride looked up his question on Romeo Seven’s network. It only took a few moments.
“Are you sure he said tamen and not ta zài zhèli?” asked the intelligence analyst.
“Affirmative, Lighthouse. He said it several times. I got a good sampling.”
There was a long pause. Nick could almost hear the wheels turning in McBride’s head. “What did you find?” he asked cautiously.
“It means, ‘They are here,’” said McBride slowly. “Shadow, do you want to abort?”
Nick remained silent for several moments.
“I don’t understand,” said Quinn. “What’s going on?”
Nick moved deeper into the cave, sounding out his thoughts as he walked. “The soldier said, ‘They are here,’ not ‘He is here’ or ‘I found him.’ He wasn’t looking for a single escaped prisoner. He was looking for us. That was why he spoke English when he told us to stop.” He turned and faced the entrance, half expecting Chinese soldiers to begin pouring through. “This whole thing is a trap.”
“I don’t like this, Shadow,” said Drake. “I only have enough fuel to loiter for a few more hours. We don’t have tanker support for the return trip, and launching an alert tanker out of Guam would raise too many questions. You don’t know where this guy is or if he’s even real. You need to get out of there.”
“Wait. This doesn’t make sense.” Nick scanned the cave again. The open crates, the disheveled cot, the freshly opened rations—all of it added up to a refugee hiding out. And where were the enemy soldiers? If this was a trap, they would have already moved in and captured them both. Instead, he and Quinn found one random soldier roaming the woods and took him down without a fight.
Nick took in a short breath. He suddenly understood. They weren’t competing against the entire Chinese military; they were competing against just one unit, one that didn’t seem to want the rest to know what it was doing. “No, Lighthouse,” he said finally. “We’re going to stay. Novak is real. He’s down here somewhere, and we need to know what these people are up to. Trap or no trap, we’re not leaving.”
“Belay that!” said Quinn. “We need to get back to Shadow Catcher and . . .”
The kid kept going, but Nick talked over him. “Shut him up, Drake,” he ordered. A short tone sounded on the line as Drake severed Quinn’s signal from the comms. Nick could still hear his rant, but at least the kid’s voice no longer rang in his ear.
“Some team management issues?” asked Drake.
“I’ll handle him,” replied Nick. “And one more thing, Lighthouse.”
“Go ahead,” said McBride.
“I don’t like the direction this is going. Wulóng spoke of control before he threatened Luke. Maybe he really wasn’t there to kill me. If this whole thing is a trap, then maybe his job was to hold my family hostage and get me to hand Shadow Catcher or Wraith over to the Chinese during the mission. There might be other operatives in DC. I need you to pick up Katy and Luke and bring them in to Romeo Seven.”
“The colonel won’t like it. That’s a lot of paperwork.”
“I don’t care if he fires me for it. Too many things aren’t adding up. Whoever is behind all this has already shown that they know where I live. I’m not willing to leave my wife and kid exposed out there.”
“Lighthouse copies. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks,” said Nick. “Shadow out.”
The hair on the back of Nick’s neck suddenly stood up. He slowly turned and found that he was staring down the long suppressor of Quinn’s XDm pistol. Nick raised his hands. “You are so fired.”
“Call him back,” said Quinn angrily. “Call him back and tell him that we are headed for Shadow Catcher right now. Tell him to get ready to pick us up. We’ll be airborne in an hour.”
Nick wished he could see Quinn’s eyes behind the goggles. He heard no fear in the kid’s voice, only anger. The pararescueman seemed to believe that he was doing the right thing. “Back down, Quinn. I’m not calling anyone,” he said with icy calm.
Quinn kept the pistol perfectly steady. “Yes, you are. We’re not going to stay here and walk directly into a Chinese trap. If we do that, we’re going to hand them Shadow Catcher and all of its stealth. Call him back.” He pressed the suppressor into Nick’s forehead. “Do it.”
The press of the gun into his skin was more than Nick was willing to take from the rookie. He rapidly brought his raised hands together under the pistol, shoving the weapon up and right while jerking his head down and left. He heard a spit as the XDm discharged a round. The bullet ricocheted off the cave wall and slammed into the radio control head, sending up a shower of sparks. Nick spun, intending to trap the kid’s shoulder under his biceps and slam his face into the wall. But Quinn recovered too quickly. With stunning agility, the pararescueman muscled out of the hold and ran up the wall, flipping backward over his head.
The move shocked Nick, but it did little to undermine his advantage. During the fancy escape, Quinn had to let go of his weapon, which Nick now held by the barrel. The pararescueman landed swinging and caught Nick in the jaw with a powerful left hook, but he had to thrust out his right hand to keep his balance, exposing his temple. Nick shook off the hit and swung the pistol at the kid’s head. Quinn let out a surprised grunt and then crumpled to the floor.
Nick ejected the XDm’s clip, cleared the round from the chamber, and tossed the weapon onto Quinn’s chest. He massaged his throbbing jaw and spat a spoonful of blood at the unconscious pararescueman. “Flip over that, junior.”
CHAPTER 47
The metallic clacks of ammunition belts cranking into loaders echoed in Zheng’s small hangar. Two teams of commandos prepared Norinco fast attack vehicles for battle, mounting 12.5- millimeter machine guns to their small cargo beds.
Zheng stood at a table between the off-road vehicles, pouring over a map of Fujian Province with one of his men. He drew a finger along the map from a dirt road to Novak’s cave. “You can make your approach from here, to the north,” he said. “Then split to flank them on either side.”
Suddenly, Sung burst into the hangar. He strode briskly up to the table and gave a short bow, pausing only for a short second to catch his breath. “Minister, the prisoner is on the move. He has left the cave and is heading south toward the coast.”
The news did not faze Zheng at all. “That is no surprise,” he said calmly. He had expected that Novak would become impatient if the Americans waited too long. “How many men did you send to follow?”
Sung grimaced. “That is the problem. My foolish lieutenant took all of his men to follow the prisoner, all but the two making sweeps of the forest around the cave. I ordered him to send a man back, but the cave has been unguarded for some time.”
Zheng tensed. He should have expected a mistake like this from the regulars. His prison doctor had installed a tracking implant in Novak some time ago. There was no need to follow him. But now the Americans could reach the cave without his knowledge. He quickly turned to the commando standing next to him. “Take four men from your team and head to the cave. Make your approach quietly. If the Americans have already arrived, notify me immediately.” Then he started for the hangar door, motioning for Sung to follow. “How long until Novak reaches the coast?”
“At his present pace, he could reach Hanjiang in less than three hours. He is armed now. I expect that he will try to hijack a boat and then make a bid for Taiwan. Do you want me to have the men pick him up?”
Zheng
shook his head. “No, not yet.”
“We must recapture him before he reaches a populated area,” advised Sung. “Otherwise, this operation may become very public.”
“I said no,” said Zheng impatiently. He stopped just outside the hangar and clasped his hands behind his back. “We will leave him in the open until the Americans make their move.”
Sung bowed. “Then let us hope that they do it soon.”
Looking east, Zheng could see a magenta glow already forming on the tree-lined horizon, washing upward into dark, faded blue. “They will, Colonel. They have no choice.”
CHAPTER 48
Quinn awoke to a tickling sensation, the feel of a thousand tiny legs scrambling across his upper lip. In his confused state, he found the sensation more intriguing than terrifying, but then the owner of those legs tried to crawl up into his right nostril.
He sat up with an involuntary yelp, slapping the millipede away from his face. His right temple throbbed. A ginger touch revealed a good-sized lump. Baron. His team lead had actually left him for dead out in the jungle, just like he promised. At least that psycho hadn’t put a bullet between his eyes.
Instinctively, Quinn reached for his weapon. He found it right where it should be, holstered on his harness, a full clip loaded. He found his MP7 lying by his side as well. It occurred to him that Nick had shown either a lot of faith or a lot of stupidity in leaving him with two loaded weapons.
After a much-needed pull of water from his CamelBak, Quinn cautiously stood up to survey his surroundings. To his naked eye, the rich vegetation seemed a slightly lighter shade of green than before. How long had he been out? He saw a pale gray patch of sky peeking through a break in the tree canopy above, the light of the breaking dawn. Still, only sparse scraps of dim light reached the forest floor, so he was still shrouded in darkness.
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