“That’s possible,” Shafer said. “But it won’t be on Chinese territory.”
“Sir,” Duto said.
“It won’t be on Chinese territory, sir,” Shafer said. “We don’t know what Wells has, sir. But I trust him. If he says it’s important, it is.”
“Because tonight I’m going to have to stand up and tell the American people”—Exley winced privately as she heard the words; she hated when politicians talked about the American people—“I’m going to tell the people what we’re going to do about this attack. And you all know the pressure we’re under to come back hard.”
“Sir. Nothing about this locks you into further action. All your options are still open. I agree it’s a long shot, but if the odds are even one percent—”
At that, the president nodded. “All right. Get me a finding”—the official written authorization needed for this kind of black operation. “I’ll sign it.”
“Sir—” Duto said.
“Director Duto. Your objections are noted. For the record. But let’s try not to go to war if we can help it. We’ve all learned a few things since 2003.”
NOW EVERYTHING WAS IN PLACE, or so they’d been told. They didn’t have much time. The sun would rise over the Yellow Sea in barely three hours, and Exley and Shafer knew that if Wells wasn’t in friendly hands by then, he probably wouldn’t make it. The Chinese didn’t have great night-vision equipment — it was one area where they were still a couple of generations behind the United States — but by tomorrow morning, they would have covered the Yellow Sea with their navy. Any civilian boat still on the water would be searched from stem to stern, or simply blown to bits.
Left unsaid was the fact that the plan depended on Wells getting off the mainland in time. If he was still stuck in Beijing, then all they were doing was wasting a planeful of gasoline — and putting a couple of brave pilots at risk.
Shafer’s phone rang. He picked up, listened for a moment. “Good,” he said, and hung up. “Still on track. Our boats are nearing the exclusion zone. They’re projecting another hour or so.”
“I wish the sun would just stop,” Exley said. “Let it stay afternoon here, night over there, until we find him.”
“Do you—” Shafer stopped, cleared his throat. Exley waited.
Finally she couldn’t wait anymore. “What?”
“You wish you were there, Jennifer? With him? I mean, knowing the odds right now…” Shafer trailed off. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
Exley smiled, a thin, sad smile. Let Shafer wonder. She didn’t plan to satisfy his curiosity. But she knew the answer: Yes. In an instant.
37
THE WAVES WERE LOW AND FLAT and the boat skimmed over them without too much trouble. Still, Wells felt his ribs rattle every time the sea caught the boat sideways. He sat on the front bench gripping the wood so hard that his hands felt welded to it. There was probably a better way to hold on, but he didn’t know it.
They’d run along the coast for more than an hour, maybe a half-mile from land, Cao handling the tiller. Wells didn’t have much to do. They’d heard helicopters overhead and seen the lights of a boat in the distance, but so far no one had been within hailing distance. They were running the engine full-out, and despite its peeling paint and rusty engine, the boat seemed seaworthy. It wasn’t leaking, anyway, which was the only way Wells could judge. His naval experience was limited to the occasional bath with Exley.
To the south, the coast grew rockier. During the day, the development was probably obvious. But tonight, under the weak light of a quarter-moon, the land looked surprisingly unspoiled. Wells supposed that even China had a few places that hadn’t been overrun.
The lights of the coast grew sparser and sparser, then faded entirely.
“Tianjintou,” Cao said. He pointed south. In the distance, the land ended in a rocky spit, waves kicking up narrow white flumes around it.
“Tianjintou?”
“Means ‘end of the world.’ Farthest east place in Shandong. Only water now.”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to swim.”
A HALF-HOUR LATER, Wells’s line looked more like a prophecy than a joke. Two helicopters shined their spotlights along the coast behind them. And in the distance to the west, Wells saw the lights of three boats. At least one was a destroyer or a frigate, something big. The boats were heading east, into the open water. Chasing Wells and Cao, even if they didn’t know it yet.
Then, to the south. Two boats. Small and fast. Wells couldn’t hear them, not yet, but he could see their spotlights. He tapped Cao’s shoulder, pointed. Cao just shrugged.
They weren’t going to make it, Wells thought. With the cloud cover helping them, they would last until sunrise. But once the sun came up, they wouldn’t be able to hide. They’d be caught far before Incheon.
Wells focused on the rolling dark water ahead of them, stale and brackish. In college, he had been a decent swimmer. Not his favorite sport, but he’d liked it in the winter, as a way to rebuild his muscles after the pounding of football. But even if he hadn’t had a chestful of broken ribs, swimming two hundred miles to Korea would have been a hopeless fantasy. Like the rest of this mission, Wells thought. But he didn’t regret taking the chance. He knew the secret now, the reason for this war. If only he and Cao could survive, they could stop it.
Anyway, he’d been playing with house money ever since Exley had saved him in New York. He didn’t want to die, not like this, but some part of him had accepted the fact that he would. If not today, soon enough. He would push his luck until it snapped. He could excuse himself for risking this mission, because it meant so much. But what was his excuse for screaming down 1-95 at 125 miles an hour? How could he ask Exley to trust him?
He remembered an old joke from an intro philosophy class in college: I’m an optimist, not a fatalist. Anyway, if I were a fatalist, what could I do about it? Or in the words of that great philosopher Bruce Springsteen, Everythingdies, baby, that’s a fact. Wells was drifting again. Tianjintou. End of the world. He sagged down and the curtains closed on him.
AT 22,000 FEET THE NIGHT AIR was smooth, though the clouds were thickening quickly beneath the C-130. Bosarelli eased back on the engines, slowing the plane to 180 knots. Osan had asked him to slow down, give the flotilla on the water beneath him a chance to get a few miles farther west.
“Ninety-five hundred rpm,” Keough said. “One hundred eighty knots, heading two-seven-zero.” Straight west.
“Taking us down to sixteen thousand.” Bosarelli extended the wing flaps to begin the descent. As he did, an alarm briefly sounded and the flat-panel display before Bosarelli flashed red before returning to its normal black background. The Chinese J-10s were now within a hundred nautical miles — less than eight minutes on afterburner.
For now Bosarelli wasn’t too worried about them. He was over international waters and flying slow and straight — hardly signs of hostile intent. He looked down through the cockpit’s glazed windows, and through the clouds he saw the lights of a ship beneath him, heading west. A friendly, he hoped. “Everything set back there?”
“Sure hope so,” Keough said.
Bosarelli leveled them out when they got to 16,000 feet, and for another fifteen minutes the plane cruised steadily. Bosarelli and Keough hardly spoke. After thousands of hours in these C-130s, Bosarelli could fly them, almost literally, in his sleep. And there wasn’t much to say anyway. Beneath them the clouds became an unbroken white mass, glowing under the moon and the stars like a little girl’s dream. Under other circumstances, Bosarelli would have considered the clouds beautiful. Tonight he would rather have seen the water. A crosswind kicked up, lightly rocking the plane.