“They found my iPod… figured it out. Zhao took three or four men with him and left the others here with me.”
“How long ago?”
“A few hours after we got here.”
Damnit. Zhao had a two-day head start.
“Sam, he’s got more.”
“What? He’s got more what?”
“More material… from Chernobyl. I saw it.”
OSPREY
Fisher wasn’t two steps up the ramp before he said to Redding, “Get Lambert on the line.”
“Problem?”
“You could say that.” Fisher made his way to the cockpit. “Bird, how long to Kunsan?”
“Gotta stay under the radar until we’re clear of Korea Bay. Past that, figure an hour or so.”
“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
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.”