“Damn,” Jake said.
“What?”
“I was supposed to call in once we left Harbin with your friend.”
As he mentioned her dead college friend, her eyes seemed to sadden, as if she had just found out about his death for the first time.
Jake focused and retrieved a cord that would connect the camera to the phone. He turned on the phone, which was supposed to work anywhere in China, but he got no signal.
“Dead spot?” she asked. “But it should work. We put up a tower ten miles to the south last fall.” Then she thought about it and took out her phone and tried it. “Nothing. This is crazy.”
“Maybe the signal is being jammed somehow,” Jake said. “Would it be hard to do it?”
“Not easy. Not hard.”
“Is this one of those Yin and Yang things?”
“Maybe.”
Jake put the phone back and started shooting a few more shots.
“How many can you take with that?” she asked him.
“Depends on the quality. At this distance we want the highest we can get so they can blow it up.” He glanced at her and could barely see her eyes in the darkness. “We have to get closer.”
“We can’t. Not without three. My friend was our in. We can’t just walk in.”
“Why not? There are no fences. No guards.” Jake didn’t believe his own words; he was just trying to test her knowledge and resolve.
“What is not there is not always seen. What is seen is not always there.”
“Sounds like a Taoist conundrum to me,” Jake said.
Her eyes looked hurt, as if he had just insulted her.
“That was a joke,” Jake assured her.
“I don’t get it.”
Jake didn’t have time to explain himself.
Suddenly, the domed observatory came to life. First, there was the 180 degree twist. Then the top of the dome opened. Not like a normal observatory, with just enough room for the large telescope to swivel across the sky, but this dome retracted back like an eyelid opening from a deep sleep.
Jake took a couple of shots.
Next, something rose up from inside the observatory. It looked almost like an industrial robot that would spot-weld cars on an assembly line.
One more shot.
The robot-like contraption adjusted back and forth, as if it was confused.
By the time Jake or Su knew what they were hearing, it was over. Jake had continued shooting shots one after the next. But he wasn’t sure what he was shooting. Nor was he sure what was happening in the compound below.
And then, as if a magician was finally revealing his trick, things became more clear to Jake.
High above, the clouds had opened for just a moment. Just long enough for Jake to see the object crossing the sky.
Then came the explosion. And Jake got the shot.
“What just happened?” Su asked him.
Jake didn’t answer right away. Maybe he wasn’t entirely certain himself. However, seeing the dome on the observatory cover the robot object again, he was more certain.
“That, my friend, was a near miss by a ground-based laser on a flying object at about twenty thousand feet.”
“But it blew up.”
“That’s right. But there was too much delay. From the time they powered up the laser to the explosion was too long. It should have happened much sooner. That was an abort. Self destruct. Did you see how the laser jerked about trying to acquire the target?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a software problem,” he said. “Looks like they have the laser working, but they still can’t tell it what to do.”
“I don’t understand. I thought we were just verifying a missile site that could strike the U.S. west coast.”
Damn. They had really kept her in the dark, Jake thought.
“What does this mean?” she continued.
There wasn’t time to answer her. Without warning, the compound below was full of activity. Soldiers in civilian clothes ran about. Then one pointed in their direction.
“Shit,” Jake said, grabbing her arm. “Let’s go.”
Slinging their backpacks on, they ran in the direction from which they had come. How had they known? Jake had no idea. They must have had a broad array of motion sensors. How was not important, he knew. All that mattered was his reaction.
He smashed his way through the trees, and he could feel Su right on his heels.
23
They were only to meet on the north shore of Yuyuan Lake if something serious had happened.
Special Agent Brian Armstrong had called his contact, Steve Anderson, from the conservative think tank, and simply said, “Time for a swim.” Then he had hung up.
In the darkness on the lake shore, Armstrong leaned against a large oak. During the day, he thought, the place was one of the most pleasant parks in Beijing. But at night it was a different story. Darkness shrouded the entire shoreline and cast shadows outward to the lake from the surrounding buildings, which were low and dark, but for a few lights. If he looked carefully, now that his eyes had adjusted, Armstrong could see movement. A man? He pushed himself closer to the tree. He had only a butterfly knife in his pocket, which he ran through the fingers on his right hand.
He tried his best to control his breathing, but he feared he was failing miserably. He wanted to pull out his inhaler and take a shot, but the shadow was too close.
Then he felt a hand touch him.
“That water has to be cold,” his contact said quietly.
“Not as cold as the air,” Armstrong answered. “You’re late.”
“I was in the hot tub.”
“Must be nice.”
“I can’t wait to get back. What’s up?”
Armstrong looked about, not seeing or hearing anything unusual. “There was an explosion up north. We think it was a test.”
“Damn. Was it successful?”
“We don’t know.”
“Any word from our man up there?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Armstrong said, trying his best not to get outwardly disturbed. “He should have contacted you by now. You haven’t heard a thing?”
“I would have told you,” Anderson assured him defiantly. “What’s goin’ on here?”
Armstrong let out a deep breath and almost coughed. Then he finally pulled out his inhaler and took a long draw on it. Almost instantly he could breathe again.
“Our man in Harbin is dead,” Armstrong forced out.
“Adams is dead?”
“No. Our Chinese contact. The programmer from Stanford.” Armstrong was getting disturbed now, wondering if Anderson had lost his mind.
“How?”
“Beaten to death. Cut. Tortured.”
“What about Adams and the girl?”
“Got away. But no word. The police are after them.”
“We’ve gotta pull Adams,” Anderson said. “He’s compromised.”
“We don’t know that. He could be in the mountains right now. Besides, we have no way of pulling him.”
Anderson laughed. “GPS.”
“What?”
“He can be tracked by a GPS transceiver we planted in the backpack handle.”
“And you didn’t tell us?”
“Need to know.”
“I needed to know.”
“Now you do.”
There was a slight noise off behind the both of them, some fifty feet away. An animal maybe.
“Here,” Anderson said, passing the Agency officer a piece of paper, which he would have to wait to read. “The GPS code to locate Adams. As I’m sure you know, turn it on only for a couple of seconds at a time. The signal goes both ways. The Chinese could pick up on it without too much trouble.”
“Thanks,” Armstrong breathed heavily.
“No problem. Can I get back to my hot tub now?”
“Yeah.”
With that, Anderson patted the Agency man on his arm and headed off into the darkness.