“Come again?” Lauren hadn’t known about the nuclear angle so this was the first the general had heard of it.
“What we first thought was an attempt to destroy the canal has turned into something more. The CIA will be getting a call shortly from DGSE, the French intelligence agency. Lauren and I were working with one of their spies. They are going to confirm our findings. In a Chinese-controlled warehouse, Lauren and I stumbled across eight DF-31 strategic missile launchers.”
“Were they armed?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure they will be soon. Things are moving pretty fast down here.”
General Vanik blew out a long breath. “All right. You’d better start from the top.”
Keeping the briefing as concise as possible and avoiding mentioning Lauren’s name, Mercer laid out their findings, starting with the book auction in Paris and ending with the upcoming meeting with Maria Barber.
“You think she knows something?”
“I do, sir. I think she can provide enough proof to nail Liu.”
“Question is, who’s gonna do the nailing?” Vanik said, his Southern accent emerging more as the conversation went on. “There’s gotta be some higher-ups in Panama’s government involved. Don’t think they’re gonna want to hear your story.”
“Do you have any suggestions?” Mercer asked crisply. If the general could subvert his feelings of loss, at least temporarily, Mercer owed it to him to do the same.
“I need to check with the CIA and our own intelligence yahoos, see if they’ve detected anything going on with China’s rocket forces, like if a few of them were moved recently. For now just sit tight, talk with that woman, then call me back when you’ve found something.” Vanik paused. “She was a good girl, wasn’t she?”
“The best, General,” Mercer replied. What else could he say?
“I’ve lost hundreds of men. Vietnam, Kuwait, Bosnia, a dozen ops you never heard of. I’ve always understood my responsibility and I’ve always carried on. I don’t know. It’s all such a damned ...”
“Waste,” offered Mercer.
“There are a lot of people in this world who like nothing more than killing and there are precious few who are willing to stop them. I hear you’re one of ’em. So was Lauren. Don’t seem right.”
“It isn’t.”
“Shit,” Vanik drawled. “If I hadn’t been a soldier, she’d be alive right now.”
“With all due respect, that isn’t true. I knew her a short time, but I learned that your daughter was her own person. You didn’t pressure her into the military, nor did you pick her duty stations. Lauren chose her path.”
The line remained silent.
“Maybe, but it doesn’t make it easier. Call me when you have something,” the general said hastily. “I’ll do the same.”
The phone went dead. Mercer shut it off. “I’m done, Harry.”
“How’d it go?” Harry asked when he returned from the bedroom.
“As well as it could, I suppose.” Mercer noticed that his friend had filled in half of the crossword from the Spanish-language newspaper. “What the hell are you doing? You don’t speak Spanish.”
Harry held up the puzzle. “I’m putting in English words with the right number of letters and making sure they mesh.” He shrugged. “Better than nothing. In fact I’ve gotten myself in a bit of a jam. Know any six-letter words with the middle ones r and f ?”
Despite his jumbled emotions, Mercer needed just a second. “Try barfly.”
Harry looked at him sharply, wrote it in, then with a malicious glint said, “That’ll work if I change eighteen across from donnybrook to”—he gave another significant glare—“douchebag.”
Mercer smiled, grateful for the repartee. “You don’t have enough letters. Has to be douchebags.”
“You’d think so,” Harry muttered, “but there’s only one of you.”
Fifteen minutes later, Foch arrived with Rene Bruneseau and a pair of Legion soldiers. All wore civilian clothes that hid the bulges of their handguns from untrained eyes. Mercer called Roddy Herrara up to the suite so he could phone Maria to make sure she was home. Roddy disguised his voice so she wouldn’t recognize him and hung up as soon as he’d woken her, apologizing for dialing the wrong number. He gave the men a thumbs-up.
It was time to snatch Maria Barber.
When she first realized she was still alive, she didn’t even remember what had happened at the last second. She remembered sinking. She seemed to recall seeing a light, but that was it. Everything else was blank.
No, that’s not true. The more she regained consciousness, the more the memories returned. The light came from a wrist lamp strapped to the body of the second Chinese commando who’d entered the intake tunnels with her. She remembered falling toward the dead diver and pulling his regulator to her mouth. She’d just filled her lungs when the divers who’d earlier avoided the sucking torrent entered the lock from the open doors. She had been in no condition to put up a fight.
They took her someplace. Where?
“A diving chamber,” Lauren Vanik whispered through chapped lips.
The Chinese had a diving bell near the lock that the frogmen used while they worked underwater. While the four men who’d survived the fight returned to the surface, she’d been guarded by another two for a few hours. Back on the surface she was gagged and blindfolded and then tossed into the back of a van.
Now she was awake, tired but alert. She levered her eyes open. They were about all she could move. She was strapped to some sort of frame, a bed maybe. Her legs were splayed and her arms were secured over her head. She could tell she was naked. The air was stifling and the absolute darkness was cut by a sliver of light leaking from under a door she could see if she tilted her head.
When she tried to speak she managed just a hoarse croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Come on, you bastards,” she yelled. “Get it over with.”
A minute later she heard footsteps outside the door and a key being inserted into a lock. When the door swung open, she could tell by the angle of the sun it was just past dawn and that she hadn’t been taken to the Twenty Devils Mine. The landscape outside her cell didn’t look familiar. She also saw that her prison must have been a garden shed. There were racks for tools bolted to the wall and from somewhere close she recognized the taint of fertilizer.
The man who entered was Chinese, a soldier in a uniform without insignia. He was old enough to be an officer, but had the hard look of a drill instructor. She guessed he was an NCO. When the sergeant turned on the overhead lights he made sure his gaze didn’t wander from her face.
“Very gallant of you,” Lauren sneered.
“Your strength,” the soldier said not unkindly. “Keep it.”
Lauren knew what she was in for. She’d known as soon as she realized she’d been tied up. The terror of Mercer’s stories about the acupuncturist filled her mind. Strangely, this veteran soldier seemed bothered by her fate. Why else would he have warned her just now? She wondered if she could use that concern.
“You can help me,” she pleaded. “Don’t let them touch me.”
The soldier’s eyes dropped.
He felt shame. Was it enough? Would he let her go?
“You know what he’ll do to me. You’re a soldier. Like me. Where is your honor?” Her cry was met by silence. “Please. You can’t let him do this to me. The other man. The American. He’s in a hospital. He hasn’t spoken since his escape. He’s a vegetable.”
Sergeant Huai was unable to hide his revulsion.
“It’s true,” Lauren continued. “Mercer is his name, but he can’t even remember it. Listen. I don’t care anymore about what you’re doing in Panama. My country doesn’t care. Please, let me go.”