BOSARELLI SAW THE EXPLOSION BEFORE he felt it. The night came alive with a second sun, a yellow-gold cloud that exploded up and out, forming a classic mushroom cloud, like a miniature nuclear bomb. So bright, so beautiful. A couple of seconds later the blast wave hit him, hotter than he’d expected, rich with gasoline and benzene vapor, but by then he was close enough to the water that he knew he’d survive.
He only hoped the bomb had done its job.
38
WELLS THOUGHT HE WAS DREAMING WHEN THE SKY turned white. Then he heard Cao shouting and knew he wasn’t. He started counting, one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, waiting for the sound of the explosion to reach them, trying to calculate how far off they were. On his twelfth “Mississippi,” the blast filled his ears. Maybe fifteen seconds — three miles, give or take.
In the last hour the Chinese had put more and more helicopters in the air, and he’d had a bad moment a few minutes before when a helicopter swung by them, its searchlight missing them by no more than a few hundred yards. Now this explosion, which couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. Had a Chinese jet or copter exploded? No, this fire was far too large. It looked to be slightly southeast of them, burning in the night like a beacon.
Like a beacon.
Cao was steering the boat north, away from the blast. Wells tapped his shoulder. He pointed to the white fireball, already losing its shape, melding into the clouds, but still burning brightly. “Go toward it.”
“Toward?”
“It’s for us.”
UNFORTUNATELY, THE CHINESE SEEMED TO have come to the same conclusion. Helicopters were buzzing toward the crash site, their spotlights shining over the waves. Jets too. Wells couldn’t see them, but he could hear the whine of their engines. As they made their way west, the sky lightened, the giant fire producing a muddy yellow glare. No way could a helicopter cause such a big explosion. Maybe a 747 had been shot down by accident. Or maybe it wasn’t a plane at all. Maybe it was some kind of oil tanker.
The good news was that the Chinese didn’t seem to have any boats in front of them. And the heat of the blast would make it hard for the helos to get too close.
Not that Wells wanted to get too close either. As they moved toward the site of the explosion, the air grew heavy with the stench of burning gasoline and something else too, some kind of plastic, though Wells couldn’t figure out exactly what. Farther on, the air was alive with burning embers that looked like sparks from a backyard barbecue. The strange part was that they kept burning when they landed on the water. As Wells shielded his eyes and looked toward the fireball, he saw patches where the sea itself seemed to have caught fire.
“Napalm,” he said aloud.
Cao swung the boat hard left, north. Wells braced himself against the side of the hull and gritted his teeth as his ribs reminded him they were still broken.
Then a huge secondary explosion, maybe a fuel tank, lit the night. The boat rocked in the blast wave and Wells covered his mouth against the fumes. In the sudden glow Wells knew they were obscenely visible. Even as the firelight faded, a jet swooped toward them, hard and low, its running lights blinking red, the wash from its engines kicking up waves and rattling the boat.
“Close,” Cao said.
The fighter screamed off.
Three minutes later it came back for another pass. This time red flares popped off the wings, not directly on top of them but close, too close, dimly visible through the thick black smoke that was flooding the air. Two helicopters — one from the north, the other from the south — began to converge on the flares, closing like scissor blades.
And then Wells saw the lights of a ship, barely visible through the smoke. Toward the east, not the west. Toward South Korea.
“Cao.” Wells pointed at the lights.
“Could be Chinese.” Nonetheless, Cao swung the tiller, turning the boat east, into the depths of the filthy black soot. The helicopters closed, but they couldn’t fly blind. Wells closed his eyes and tried not to breathe. Then the wind shifted. The smoke lightened and the helicopters closed again. The spotlights swung at them, and one caught the hull of the boat in its glare. Behind them, a heavy machine gun opened up, kicking up flumes on the right side of the boat and then on the left. Cao swung the boat hard right, toward the center of the inferno, the heaviest smoke, and Wells ducked down, all he could do.
The spotlights swung over them and again the machine gun raked the waves around them, an angry hard rattle that blocked out every other sound, until Cao screamed, a short sharp cry. He collapsed, his body slumped over the outboard.
The engine lifted out of the water and the boat slowed to a creep. A lucky break, since the helos were now ahead of the boat and the wind was shifting direction again, catching the helicopters in the smoke. Wells crawled across the boat to Cao. The general was dead, his neck and chest torn open. “Damn you,” Wells said to nothing and no one, knowing that he’d be joining Cao soon enough, as soon as the wind turned enough to give the helos a clear shot. He pushed Cao aside and dropped the engine into the water. He couldn’t see where he was headed and he supposed it no longer mattered.
THEN, FROM ABOVE, THE GRINDING SOUND of metal on metal. Followed almost instantly by an enormous explosion, two hundred yards ahead, and a second even closer. Wells bowed his head as sizzling bits of metal crashed around him.
They’d collided. The wind shift had left the helicopters blind. In their eagerness to get the kill, they’d come too close. They had crashed into each other in the dark and gone down, both of them. This filthy cloud had saved his life. Wells lifted the engine out of the water and looked around, trying to orient himself in the dark, thick air. Distant helicopters behind him. Somewhere overhead, a jet.
And ahead, a voice. Amplified. American.
Calling his name.
He closed his eyes and lowered the engine into the water and steered for it.
EPILOGUE
“CERVEZA, POR FAVOR. NO, MAKE IT TWO. DOS.” Keith Robinson held up two fingers, watching them float in the bar’s murky air as if they weren’t connected to his body. Keith Edward Robinson, late of the Central Intelligence Agency. Now at liberty and seeking other employment.
“Anybody need an expert in counter-counterintelligence?” he murmured to the empty room. A soccer match played on a television high in one corner, two local teams kicking the ball around halfheartedly.
The bartender, heavy and dark-skinned with a long white scar down his right arm, plunked down two Polars. They joined the half-dozen other bottles — all empty now — in front of Robinson. “Ten dollars,” he said in English.
“Ten dollars? Last time it was two bolivars”—a bit less than one dollar.
“Ten dollars.”
“Okay, okay. I’m a lover, not a fighter.” More than anything, Robinson wanted to relieve the pressure on his bladder. Drain the main vein, as they said in the trade. What trade? The room swam as he extracted a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from the dollars and pesos stuffed in his wallet. Robinson wished he hadn’t brought so much money. The sight of the cash had undoubtedly provoked the sudden price increase. The bartender plucked the bill out of Robinson’s wavering fingers and turned away.
“Don’t forget my change.” Robinson tapped the bar. “Hey, I’m serious.” But the little brown man was gone. “I don’t like your attitude,” he mumbled. “Don’t cry for me, Venezuela.”
He tipped the beer to his mouth and took a long swallow. Better. He was drunk, drunk as the drunkest skunk. At this point he didn’t even know why he was drinking. More alcohol wouldn’t make him any more intoxicated. Intoxicated. A good word, from the Latin for wasted. But he was awake, and these days, consciousness seemed to be reason enough.