by Tom Clancy
“Fast as you can without getting us shot down.”
“You’re the boss.”
Redding called, “Sam, I’ve got Lambert.”
Fisher sat down at the console. On screen, Lambert said, “Well?”
“Zhao’s gone—been gone for two days or more. The monastery was a diversion.”
“What about Heng?”
Fisher sighed. Heng.
KNEELING next to the man watching him die, Fisher considered his options, then made his decision. Given what Heng had had been through—what he’d done for the U.S.—he deserved a chance to live, even if that chance was too slim to calculate.
Using remnants from the wooden bunks and some para-chord he kept in one of his pouches, he cobbled together a cage he hoped would keep Heng’s head as stable as possible. In the back of his mind he knew it probably wouldn’t make any difference, but the less Heng moved his head, the longer he might last.
Once done, he left Heng lying still and made one more ciruit of the monastery, both inside and out to make sure there would be no surprises, then went back inside, picked up Heng, and carried him down the slope and into the river. He draped Heng’s arms over a bundle of planks he’d tied together, then pushed them off into the current.
TEN miles and two hours later they reached the village of Gulouzi. On Fisher’s OPSAT map, a waypoint was flashing; next to it was set or longitude and latitude coordinates. He pushed Heng to the bank and then, following the coordinates, picked his way down an inlet until he came to a small pier.
As promised, the river sampan was waiting. How the CIA had arranged the transportation Fisher didn’t know, nor did he care. With luck and guile, the single-masted fishing boat would take them the rest of the way to the extraction point.
Fisher donned the local clothes he found stuffed beneath the stern seat, then pushed off and poled back to where he’d left Heng.
IT took the rest of the night, but with only a few hours of darkness left, Fisher reached the Yalu Estuary, where he hoisted the sail and pointed the bow into Korea Bay. An hour after that the Osprey appeared out of the gloom, skimming ten feet off the ocean’s surface, and slowed to a hover beside the sampan.
“HE didn’t make it,” Fisher told Lambert. “He died on the way down the river.”
“I’m sorry, Sam. We’ll get Zhao. The world’s not big enough for him to hide in anymore.”
“And the material? Heng claims he had a couple hundred pounds of the stuff.”
“Zhao’s running for his life. Even if he’s still got it, he’ll get tired of lugging it around. We’ll find him and we’ll find the material. Come on home, Sam. You’ve done your part.”
59
OSPREY
LAMBERT had offered to send a Gulfstream to Kunsan so Fisher could fly home in much-deserved comfort, but he declined, opting to fly back with Redding, Bird, and Sandy. They’d been through a lot together and it seemed only right they come home together. Besides, Fisher told himself, he was so exhausted he didn’t need comfort—just a horizontal surface on which to recline.
Also, he needed time to decompress. Time to think about everything and about nothing. When he got back to Fort Meade, there would be days of debriefing as the powers-that-be tried to piece together what had happened in the Gulf and what role Third Echelon had played.
Whether it was simply exhaustion or something more, Fisher didn’t know, but Heng’s death haunted him. The man had sacrificed everything to help the CIA wage its war on Kuan-Yin Zhao when his own government had refused to lift a hand. According to Richards, Heng had never asked for money or recognition or a way out, and in Fisher’s book that was the definition of courage. And what did he get for it? A bullet in the head and slow death aboard a rickety sampan in the middle of the Yalu River. Though Fisher knew better, a part of him wondered if he could have, or should have, done more.
DRIFTING in a deep sleep, he became aware of a hand shaking his shoulder. He snapped open his eyes and reached for the leg holster he’d taken off hours ago.
“Relax, Sam,” Redding said. “Relax.”
Fisher rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. What time is it?”
“Just after midnight. We’re fifty miles west of Eugene, Orgeon. You slept through our refueling stop.”
“And why am I awake now?”
“Lambert’s on the bat phone.”
FISHER sat down at the console. On the screen, Lambert’s expression was dour. Fisher was immediately awake. “What’s happened?”
“Since you left Kunsan, Grim’s been trying to put together some of the missing pieces. She found something. Go ahead, Grim.”
“Sam, you remember the Duroc—the yacht that picked up the Trego’s—”
“I remember.”
“I tracked down the registration. It belongs to a man named Feng Jintao, a Chinese mobster out of San Francisco. The FBI claims Jintao is one of Zhao’s underbosses.”
“Okay, so he loaned out the Duroc and its crew to handle the Trego’s crew. Tell the FBI to arrest the bastard.”
“Here’s the problem: Jintao’s got two other yachts, one in Monterey and one in Los Angeles. Both of them left port about eight hours ago without notifying harbor control. We’ve found the one from Los Angeles; it’s headed back into port. The Navy’s dispatched a destroyer to meet it and a helo is en route with a SEAL team.”
“And the other one?”
“It was found run aground and abandoned near Eureka, California. Take a look at the satellite.”
Fisher’s screen changed to a gray-scale overhead image of a coastline. In the lower right quadrant he could clearly make out what he assumed was Jintao’s yacht resting on the beach, its deck canted to one side.
“Here’s the thermal,” Grimsdottir said.
The image changed, zoomed in. On the yacht’s afterdeck there was a dot of yellow-red.
“Look familiar?” Grimsdottir asked.
“Same signature as the Trego,” Fisher replied.
“Yes, but not nearly as hot. It’s a residual signature. Whatever was aboard, it’s gone now.”
LAMBERT said, “The FBI has agents from its field offices in Sacramento and San Francisco heading for Eureka, but they won’t get there for a couple hours. The Eureka PD and Humboldt County Sheriff ’s been alerted, but they’re not equipped to—”
“I know,” Fisher said, then to Bird: “You’ve been listening?”
“Sure have. At best speed, we can be there in fifty minutes.”
Lambert said, “Do it. We’ll keep you unpdated en route.”
TWENTY minutes later, Lambert was back: “The Eureka PD found a man shot at a place called Spruce Point Rail Adventures. He’s the night security guard there. They run one of those novelty lines—old-style trains that travel up and down the coast . . . see the giant redwoods, that kind of thing.”
“And they’re missing a train?”
“ ’Fraid so. A locomotive, three cars, and a caboose. Eureka PD’s not sure how long the guard’s been dead, so there’s no telling what kind of head start the train’s got. Grim’s putting an overlay of the track on your map. It runs north to south only and ends at Olema, just north of San Fransisco.”
Zhao’s roundabout method of reaching San Francisco made sense, Fisher decided. After 9/11, dozens of port cities, including San Francisco, had installed a network of radiation detectors. Slipping Jintao’s yacht past them would be impossible.
“Detonate a couple hundred pounds of radioactive waste in San Francisco, and it’ll make Slipstone look like nothing,” Fisher said. “It’d be a wasteland for centuries. Are there controls on the line? Shunts or spurs they can divert it to?”
“Fifty years ago, yes, but not now. It’s a straight run down the coast. We’re retasking a Keyhole to look for her, but we’re talking about a three-hundred-mile stretch of track, most of it running through heavy forest and mountain passes. It’s going to be hard to spot—plus, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill locomotive. According to Grim, it’
s been converted to run faster so it can make more round trips. Top speed: sixty miles an hour.”
There was only one way to stop it, Fisher realized. An F-16 or an F-15 could be overhead in minutes with a laser-guided Paveway missile, but the resulting wreck would spread radioactive material for miles. Better than it happening in San Francisco, but still unacceptable as far as he was concerned.
“Then we do it the hard way,” Fisher said. “We fly down the track until we overtake her.”
“And then?”
“And then we improvise.”
60
OSPREY
“WE got her, Sam,” Lambert said. “She’s eighty miles south of Eureka between the towns of Cedar Creek and Blue Flats. Satellite image is on your monitor; we’re streaming it real-time.”
The screen showed a stretch of heavily forested moutainous terrain. At first Fisher saw nothing, and then, breaking from a line of trees, a locomotive appeared, followed by three passenger cars and a caboose. A plume of black smoke trailed from the locomotive’s stack. The train rounded a bend in the track and disappeared into forest again.
“Grim, do you have infrared?”
“Yep, here.”
The train reappeared. In the center of the third car, just ahead of the caboose, was a reddish-yellow oval.
“How far away are we, Bird?” Fisher asked.
“Twenty minutes.”
Lambert said, “Humboldt County Sheriff’s has a SWAT team. They’re airborne and a few minutes ahead of you. They’re going to try and put men onto the train’s roof.”
FIFTEEN minutes later, Bird called, “Got a visual. Descending to five hundred feet.”
Fisher trotted to the cockpit and peered through the windscreen. Ahead and below, the Humboldt SWAT helicopter was trailing behind the train’s caboose as the train chugged up a hill. The helo’s spotlight was focused on the locomotive, but Fisher could see no one moving in the cab. On either side of the track, redwoods and pines crowded the embankments, so close their branched seemed to almost scrape the sides of the cars.
“Humboldt SWAT, this is Federal zero-nine,” Bird radioed. “Taking station on your six o’ clock high. Ready to assist.”
“Roger, Federal, stand by. We’re going to make a pass, see if we get an officer onto the roof.”
The Oprey’s console monitor was in FLIR mode, showing an X-raylike image of the scene below. Fisher reached out and tapped a spot on the screen. Bird nodded and keyed his microphone. “Humboldt, be advised, you’ve got a narrow gorge ahead. Two miles.”
“Roger, Federal.”
The helicopter picked up speed and descended until it was ten feet off the roof of the second car A rope uncoiled from the helicopter’s open door and an officer climbed out, clipped onto the rope, and began descending. Fisher saw a figure appear on the coupler platform between the locomotive and the first car. There was a pinprick of light, then another, then four more in rapid sucession.
Over the radio, the helo pilot’s voice: “. . . taking fire . . . taking fire. Get him back in!”
The officer jerked as though hit with a current of electricity, then went limp, dangling sideways.
“. . . hit. . . . Christ almighty, he’s hit.” In the background Fisher could hear bullets hitting the helo’s windscreen. “I’m pulling up . . . !”
The helicopter angled upward and banked over the trees, falling back until it was even with the Osprey. Fisher looked out the side window. In the door of the helo two men were struggling to reel in the dangling officer.
“Federal, this is Humboldt SWAT. Be advised, I have one casualty and a heat warning on my cooling pump. I’m going to have to find a place to set down.”
“Roger, Humboldt, understood. Luck. Federal out.”
The helicopter dropped farther back, then came around and headed west over the trees.
Bird turned to Fisher. “It’s your call, Sam.”
“We’re going to take some fire.”
Bird grinned. “It’ll take more than a little popgun to ground us.”
“That’s what I thought. Give me two seconds over the roof and then get out of here.”
AS the train entered the gorge, Bird climbed to a thousand feet and eased back on the throttle, letting the train get ahead. It burst from the far mouth of the gorge, chugging black smoke. Bird nosed over and dropped in behind the caboose, twenty feet off the track.
“How tall you think that thing is, Sandy?” Bird asked.
“Twelve feet—no thirteen. Why?”
“I’m not giving any more of a target than I have to. Sam, you and Will get ready. Grab ahold of something. Gonna get a bumpy.”
Fisher hurried back into the cabin, where Redding was checking the SC-20 and pistol. He handed them over. “Both loaded. Harness.”
Fisher took it, slipped it on, adjusted the fit over his shoulders, then slid the SC-20 into its back holster and the pistol into its leg holster.
Bird called, “Sixty seconds, Sam. Ramp coming down.”
The ramp door groaned open. Wind whipped through the cabin. Over the drone of the Osprey’s engines, Fisher could hear the syncopated chug of the locomotive, could smell coal smoke. He walked down the edge of the ramp and crouched down. Twenty feet below, the track whipped past, a blur of steel rails and wooden cross-ties.
“Stand by,” Bird called. “I’m moving ahead.”
The caboose’s coupler slid into view, followed by the roof, and then the windowed cupola. Fisher kept his eyes fixed on it and tried to ignore the trees flashing past on either side.
Fisher glanced back at Redding, who stood at the ramp’s control panel, and gave him the signal. Fisher braced himself. The ramp lurched down and crashed against the roof. The jolt was harder than Fisher had anticipated and it rocked him backward onto his butt. His left foot slipped over the edge. He jerked it back.
Bird called, “Taking a little gunfire up here, Sam.”
Wait . . . wait. . . .
He somersaulted down the ramp onto the caboose roof and spread himself flat. Redding gave him wave and then the ramp started closing. The Osprey nosed up, dropped back, then banked over the trees and out of sight.
DOWN the length of the train he could see two figures standing atop the locomotive’s coupler. Muzzles winked at him through the coal smoke. He couldn’t tell if the shots were accurate or wildly off, but it didn’t matter. He started crawling.
The train lurched forward, picking up speed. Fisher felt his stomach drop and he realized they were going down a grade. He crawled to the edge of the roof, braced himself, then flipped his trident goggles into place, switched to NV, and ducked his head over the side.
He was looking through a window. On the other side was a man holding a radio to his ear. He spun, saw Fisher, then raised a pistol and fired. The window shattered. Fisher jerked back, but not quickly enough. He felt warm blood trickling down his chin and neck. He plucked a frag grenade off his harness, pulled the pin, counted one-one thousand, tossed it through the window. There was a muffled boom. He peeked back over the edge. The man lay sprawled on the floor.
Beside Fisher’s head, a bullet punched into the roof. He looked up in time to see a man running toward him down the second car’s roof. He rolled to the right, drew the pistol, and snapped off two shots. The first one went wide, but the second one hit center-mass. The man doubled over, dropped to his knees, then tipped over the side and tumbled down the embankment.
Fisher crawled forward the last few feet, then turned and dangled his legs over the edge and dropped to the coupler below. As he landed, the door to the third car slid open. A man stood in the opening, a .357 Magnum leveled with Fisher’s chest. They stood staring at one another for a few seconds. And then, from behind the man, a face appeared. It was Zhao. “Shoot him, you idiot! Shoot . . . !”
Fisher knew there was nothing he could do; he was going to take a bullet. He was about to give his tac-suit’s RhinoPlate a true-life test. Not wanting to give the man a chance to adju
st his aim and go for a head shot, Fisher went for his pistol.
The man fired. Fisher saw the muzzle flash, heard the blast, and felt a hammer-blow in the middle of his sternum. Even as he crashed backward into the door, he drew his pistol and shot the man in the throat. Behind him, Zhao dove to one side. Fisher adjusted aim and fired twice, but Zhao was gone.
Fisher reached back, groped for the door handle, turned it. The door crashed inward. His pistol slipped from his hand and disappeared under the train. He sprawled onto the floor. He rolled over, crawled to the door, slammed it shut.
The pain in his chest was crushing. He couldn’t catch his breath; it felt as though an anvil was sitting on his chest. Still alive, though. RhinoHide had done its job.
He felt the floor tilt beneath him as the train started up a grade. He climbed to his feet and looked around. The hot spot had been here, somewhere in this car. . . . The car was divided by a center aisle, with long, tourist-friendly benches on either side facing the windows. Ten feet away he saw the corner of a steel box beneath the bench. He rushed forward, dropped to his knees.
Made of brushed stainless steel, it was no bigger than an average suitcase with a latching footlocker lid. He laid his hand on the steel. It was warm to the touch.
Gotchya. . . .
The box shifted, sliding farther under the bench as the train chugged up the grade.
And then a thought: What had Zhao been planning to do with the box? He would have worked that through, would have had a plan—and it would have been something more than simply dump the material into San Fransisco Bay. Something to maximize the spread. . . .
He pressed his ear to the lid and plugged his other ear with his finger. It took a few seconds to tune out the chugging of the locomotive and the wind whistling through the shattered window, but as those sounds faded, he heard something else. A faint mechanical whirring.