The Vigilant Spy

by Jeffrey Layton

  She’d protested, cursing him in Mandarin. He slapped duct tape across her mouth.

  Resting on the deck ten feet away was the Asian’s backpack. Half of her life was inside. Before vacating her cabin, the two Americans turned it upside down. They found her laptop and cell phone, placing both inside the pack. Thankfully each device was passcode protected and all critical files encrypted.

  The devils also emptied the entire contents of Meng’s attaché case into the rucksack including a hard copy of a draft report she was editing on the implementation plan for Phase 2 of Serpent. She preferred working with paper when editing, which violated the security protocol she was mandated to follow regarding Serpent.

  Once that turncoat reads the report, he’ll know everything.

  Before securing Meng to the cradle, she had observed the other barbarian march the ship’s engineer into a nearby shipping container. After a couple of minutes, the Caucasian thug emerged from the steel box and locked the door.

  Did he murder the engineer?

  Furious at the brazenness of the kidnappers, another worry haunted Park. The submersible was in the hangar when she boarded the ship but now it was on the deck next to the replacement Viperinas.

  Why did they move the Xiu Shan?

  Park’s thoughts were interrupted by a new distraction, metal grating on metal. She looked upward. That’s when she spotted a partial coil from one of the Viperinas. It extended half a foot beyond the canister’s rim.

  I’ve got to stop them—somehow!

  * * * *

  Atop an unopened barrel, Yuri and Jeff examined a two-foot segment of Viper 2. Yuri held a two-inch diameter by three-inch-long plastic cylinder in his hands, extracted from the severed head.

  “What’s that?” asked Jeff Chang.

  “It’s a miniature hydrophone—omnidirectional.”

  “This thing is incredible,” Chang said.

  Yuri had already extracted the next hydrophone from the open end of the tube. “These units are linked together by a cable that connects with the CPU, very much like the towed sonar arrays used on subs.”

  Severing the tube was a messy proposition. Yuri needed four hacksaw blades to cut around the armored circumference. In that process, he nicked one of the hydraulic hoses that ran the length of the tube, releasing a spray of oil. When pressurized, the fluid activated the hydraulic actuators that created body oscillations. The sinuous movements propelled the weapon, mimicking the serpentine motion of a real sea snake.

  The system that powered the Viperina consisted of a three inch diameter tube that ran the length of the weapon. Yuri speculated it was a lithium-ion battery configured in a flexible linear array.

  “Should we grab one of the charges?” Jeff asked, pointing to the main body of Viper 2. The wedge of plastic explosive was visible a few inches inside the opening, just above the battery.

  “No way. Not touching it. Your people will have to rely on photos only.” Yuri checked his watch. He was three minutes over his planned autopsy. “We’ve got to go now.”

  “Okay.”

  Chapter 68

  Yuri stood on a portable aluminum ladder beside the access hatch to the submersible’s six-foot diameter acrylic sphere. He lowered a canvas bag through the opening. The bag contained the severed brain of Viper 2.

  “Got it,” Jeff Chang said as he grabbed the bag. He was seated in the pilot’s station at the aft end of the sphere. Meng Park was in the forward starboard passenger seat. Jeff lowered the bag onto the port seat, setting it next to his backpack.

  Yuri leaned through the opening. “You can go ahead and shut the hatch.”

  Jeff pointed to a switch on the pilot’s console and looked up at Yuri.

  “That’s the one.” Yuri started to back away when he glanced down at Meng. “Keep a close eye on her, Jeff. She’s big trouble.”

  “Will do.”

  The hatch with its thick rubber seals rotated shut, ensuring a watertight fit.

  Jeff eyed his captive in the starboard seat. Her torso slumped to the side, deflated.

  Meng Park was indeed ‘big trouble’. She’d fought vigorously when he and Yuri had struggled to lower her into the sphere, twisting and contorting her body with the verve of a python. Despite the gag, she’d uttered a litany of curses.

  But when she tried to smash the control panel with her bound feet, Jeff had had enough. He injected her with the last dose of the ketamine and cabled her forearms to the seat’s armrests.

  Jeff watched as Yuri climbed down to the Lian’s deck where he pulled the ladder away and set it aside. The ship was adrift; Yuri had idled the diesels ten minutes earlier.

  Yuri pointed to the A-frame control station some twenty feet away. Jeff waved back.

  A minute later, the A-frame’s hoist cable tightened. Secured to the submersible’s lifting tab, the steel cable raised the Xiu Shan from its cradle.

  The submersible swayed as Yuri pivoted the A-frame assembly toward the stern.

  Jeff peered down through the bottom of the transparent sphere. The minisub was now suspended ten feet over the placid sea surface.

  Jeff rehearsed his next moves, instructed by Yuri. Once in the water, turn on the exterior floodlights. Engage the horizontal thrusters. Reverse until fifty feet away from the ship and . . .

  * * * *

  Yuri lowered the rigid-hulled inflatable boat, using a hydraulic crane designed to launch and retrieve the tender. The RIB plopped into the water near the Lian’s stern. He retrieved the assault rifle commandeered from the guard and pointed the barrel overboard. Selecting the burst mode, he emptied the thirty-round magazine with ten trigger pulls, shredding the inflatable bladder and peppering the fiberglass hull.

  As the RIB sank, Yuri sprinted forward.

  * * * *

  Commanders Bowman and Mauk stood beside the horizontal large screen display in the Colorado’s control room. An electronic chart of the waters offshore of Hainan Island’s southern shore filled the touch screen.

  “It’s shallow for quite a distance from Sanya,” Jenae Mauk commented. “We’ll have to be careful, especially during any daylight ops.”

  Colorado’s commanding officer nodded his agreement. “We’ll maintain at least three hundred feet of water over us.”

  Water clarity in the South China Sea was currently exceptional due to calm weather conditions and a pause in water column biological activity. Colorado’s dark hull would contrast sharply with the white sandy bottom offshore of Sanya, allowing patrol aircraft to observe the submarine.

  “Hopefully, we can make the pickup at night,” Mauk offered.

  “Amen to that.”

  The Colorado was a thousand feet deep, running northwest at thirty-two knots. The submarine was on a rescue mission―a mission that it had never trained for and bordered on the impossible.

  Chapter 69

  Buffeted by whirling rotors, Captain Zhou Jun climbed into the military helicopter. It was 4:35 A.M. He moved forward to the cockpit’s center console. With a raised voice he spoke to both pilots. “The Lian is ninety-four meters long. It departed around zero three hundred, heading south. That’s all we know at this time.”

  “What’s the ship’s maximum speed, sir?” asked the pilot, a PLAN lieutenant.

  “Eighteen knots.”

  “Can you tell us what we might be up against…weapons, hostiles?”

  “We don’t know what happened. Just that the ship left abruptly seven hours ahead of its scheduled departure and with only a handful of crew aboard.”

  “Thanks, Captain. Please buckle up. We’ll be airborne in thirty seconds.

  * * * *

  Yuri checked the autopilot, verifying the ship’s new course. He took one last look around the darkened bridge. The only illumination came from the instrument panels and consoles.

  Yuri di
aled the ship’s throttle, rotating the knob from idle to flank.

  The deck under his feet shuddered as the diesel engines throttled up.

  Time to go!

  Yuri switched on his flashlight and trod briskly to an aft passageway.

  By the time Yuri passed through the submersible hangar and hurried onto the aft deck, the ship was moving at thirteen knots and accelerating. He ran past the cradle housing the replacement Viperinas. Stopping at the ship’s stern he looked seaward, searching.

  Where are you?

  He spotted the glowing glasslike dome; it retreated as the ship surged southwestward.

  Yuri took a mental fix on the submersible and checked the life jacket he’d liberated from a bridge locker. Satisfied, he leaped overboard.

  * * * *

  Jeff Chang’s feet rested on the pilot’s seat. His head and shoulders protruded from the transparent orb’s hatchway. The submersible’s exterior lights radiated an eerie luminous glow into the surrounding tropical waters.

  Although the Lian was blacked out, Jeff could see the ship’s silhouette in the reflected moonlight as it sped away. A boil of churning white water marked the ship’s stern. The din of racing diesels penetrated the still night air.

  He peered into the darkness, searching. Okay, Yuri, where are you?

  Two minutes went by. Still no Yuri. Jeff looked down at the starboard seat. Dr. Meng had slumped to the side, still sedated.

  Jeff again peered into the darkness, searching. It wasn’t long before he heard the rush of water.

  What’s that?

  Within an eyeblink, wake wash from the Lian raced up the sphere’s smooth exterior and soaked Jeff. Several gallons of seawater spilled through the hatchway.

  Jeff cussed his carelessness. Yuri had instructed him to keep the hatch shut until he arrived. Jeff closed the hatch and retreated to the interior trying to assess damage. Most of the water pooled in the pilot’s seat. But he worried about the electronics. The submersible was chock-full of electrically powered equipment.

  Jeff used clothing from his backpack to soak up the water when he heard a rapping sound. He turned to the source.

  Yuri bobbed in the water next to the hatch. The palm of his right hand pounded on the twelve-inch-thick acrylic sphere.

  * * * *

  Airborne for eighteen minutes, the Z-9D Dauphin raced southwestward two hundred meters above the South China Sea. The PLAN helicopter’s radar had a solid lock on the Lian.

  The pilot keyed the intercom mike. “Captain, we should have a visual on the target in about a minute.”

  “Very well,” Zhou Jun said. He wore a helmet with built-in comms, allowing him to hear and speak with the flight crew over the roar of the helicopter’s powerplant and rotating rotors.

  Zhou peered out the windscreen through a gap between the pilots. The waters were ink black. Sunrise was an hour and a half away. Where is it? he wondered.

  On cue, the copilot called out. “I have the target.”

  “Copy that,” the pilot said.

  It took several seconds before Captain Zhou could see the ship.

  “Captain,” the pilot said, “I don’t see nav lights or any lights at all. The ship is blacked out.”

  “Bring it down lower and get closer. I want to check the bridge.”

  “Roger that.”

  Matching the Lian’s pace, the Dauphin descended to bridge deck level. Like the rest of the ship, the pilothouse was dark.

  “I can’t see inside,” Zhou said. “Use your light.”

  The fifty million candlepower searchlight lit up the bridge deck.

  “No one inside,” Zhou announced, stunned.

  “Must be on autopilot,” offered the pilot.

  “Orbit around the entire ship with the light on.”

  When the spotlight illuminated the stern deck, Zhou noticed the change. One of the lids for the replacement Vipers was missing. What’s going on?

  The helicopter completed the 360-degree scan of Lian’s external decks. “Sorry, Captain,” the pilot reported, “but we don’t see anyone outside. They must be inside one of the compartments.”

  “What’s the projected course?”

  The copilot responded. “I’ll enter the course into our nav computer.”

  Zhou waited.

  “Captain, the ship is on a direct course to Da Nang.”

  “Bastards! I need to get aboard it now.”

  The pilot answered. “The ship doesn’t have a heliport.”

  “Lower me down.”

  “We don’t have a hoist aboard sir. We’re not SAR equipped.” The pilot referred to search and rescue.

  Shit!

  Zhou schemed for a quarter minute. “The Coast Guard cutter, does it have a helo deck?”

  “Yes, I believe it does.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I’ll check.” The pilot pivoted the helicopter, allowing the radar to probe the waters to the west. The cutter was conducting a fisheries patrol in the southern Tonkin Gulf when diverted. “I have it, Captain. It’s on an intercept course…should close on the Lian in about an hour.”

  * * * *

  Yuri piloted the Xiu Shan. For the past fifty-five minutes, the submersible hugged the seabed, running full out at seven knots.

  Jeff Chang sat in the forward passenger seat on the port side. The unconscious Meng Park occupied the adjacent bucket seat, her wrists still bound to the armrests.

  Jeff stared downward at the sandy bottom, mesmerized by the passing flora and fauna. Yuri had switched on the low power floods to help him navigate. He was not yet comfortable with the sub’s controls and needed a visual reference to avoid colliding with the bottom.

  Jeff looked over his shoulder at Yuri. “This is frigging incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

  Yuri did not respond. After a minute of silence, Jeff asked, “How deep are we now?”

  Yuri checked the control panel. “Ninety-eight meters.”

  “How deep can this thing go?”

  “I don’t know for sure. The depth gauge has a red line at two thousand meters so that’s probably the limit.”

  Jeff settled back into the bucket seat, once again watching the seafloor pass by.

  Yuri worked the joystick, slowly gaining confidence with the controls. Still waterlogged from his swim and forced to endure the soaked pilot’s station seat, he coped. What worried Yuri was the high-pitched whine that permeated the acrylic sphere. The submersible’s horizontal thrusters were maxed out. Not only was the din annoying but it was hazardous. The right kind of sonar could detect the racket. Yuri’s goal was to speed to deep water. By dipping below the thermocline—a rapid change in seawater temperature identified by a warm layer above and cold water below—the difference in water temperature would help shield the noisy sub from surface sonars.

  Yuri pulled up the chart he’d liberated from the Lian. Dammit, it’s just too far to risk it at this speed!

  Yuri throttled back, reducing the undersea vessel’s speed to four knots. The annoying racket diminished to a mellow hum.

  “What’s going on?” Jeff asked.

  “This thing makes too much noise at max speed. Could give us away.”

  “So, it’s going to take us longer.”

  “Yes, a lot longer.”

  Chapter 70

  “It’s starting to get light outside,” Jeff said as he peered upward through the plastic sphere. The solid black water column had evolved into hazy tones of turquoise.

  “Sun’s coming up,” Yuri noted. An hour had elapsed since he throttled back the minisub.

  Amazed by the dive, Jeff said, “The water… it’s so beautiful.”

  Yuri ignored Jeff’s enchantment. “Check Meng’s bindings. She could wake up anytime now.”

&nb
sp; “Okay boss.”

  Once Yuri took command of the Lian and the submersible, Jeff started addressing him as boss.

  “Everything’s cool,” Jeff reported.

  “Thanks.”

  “Are we any deeper yet?”

  Yuri shifted in his seat, uncomfortable in his damp trousers. “Not much. It’s just a hundred meters or so deep here.”

  “This is going to take forever.”

  “According to the chart, the bottom is flat in this area. It’ll be another hour before we see much of a change. But even after that, we’ll still have twenty miles to go before we reach the real drop off.”

  “And we’re sitting ducks the entire time.”

  Yuri instantly deciphered Jeff’s latest idiom. “The reduced speed helps but until we dip below the thermocline, we’re naked.”

  * * * *

  With eyes sealed and slumped to the side of the seat, Meng Park eavesdropped on the crosstalk between the barbarians. She’d regained consciousness several minutes before the Asian tugged on the bindings that anchored her wrists to the armrests.

  The Asian’s English was flawless. From her years as a college student in the U.S., Meng determined that he was American born. She was not certain about the other thug. Although he was fluent in English, she detected a slight accent, which she couldn’t place.

  Meng took a peek, her third since the knockout drug wore off.

  Good, it’s getting lighter!

  She again prayed to Guanyin.

  Send Jun to rescue me—and to dispose of these vermin.

  * * * *

  Captain Zhou Jun and the officer in charge of the China Coast Guard security detail were inside the Lian’s bridge alongside the windscreen. The sun had emerged twenty minutes earlier. The research ship’s engines idled. The sixty-four-meter cutter from CCG Hainan’s Second Flotilla loitered two hundred meters to the south. China’s Coast Guard was part of the People’s Armed Police Force. The PAP, in turn, was controlled by the Central Military Commission, which allowed Zhou to assume operational control of the cutter.