“Perfect,” Zoya said. “Hook me up with them, and then you can go back to bed.”
“I hope Moscow is okay with this.”
“Moscow is interested in success. That is what I… that is what we will provide them.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
Court Gentry and Fan Jiang walked in the darkness for five hours, taking only short breaks when they found dry ground. The first portion of their hike, up to and including the border crossing into Cambodia, had been slow and arduous: a seemingly never-ending series of muddy fields and flooded rice paddies, broken every twenty minutes or so by thick, nearly impenetrable tree lines full of thorny underbrush and ankle-twisting root systems.
For the past hour and a half, however, they’d walked primarily along dirt or gravel roads as they continued to the west. They’d seen not another soul the entire time, which was good news for Court, because the batteries had gone dead in his night vision binos an hour earlier and he’d buried the device under thatch and fallen leaves, and without it he found it much harder to avoid dangers in their path.
Court had dumped the rifle, as well, although he felt sick about doing it. He knew there were a lot of threats in his path still; the Russians would have expected him to make a run into Cambodia, and the Mi-8 might come back looking for him.
But he couldn’t just walk public roads with a carbine on his shoulder, so he disassembled it and threw it into a grove of thick jungle along the way, and hoped like hell he wasn’t going to regret the decision.
Fan had been silent much of the way, other than occasional lamentations about his feet hurting and his legs cramping. Court had ignored him at first, then consented to his pleas for breaks every now and then. But now Court began to worry as the young man started limping noticeably.
The American realized they wouldn’t be able to make it much farther.
They left a road when it turned to the north because Court wanted to keep going west towards the population center of Phnom Penh. He didn’t have a map on him, but he’d studied the area knowing he might have to come this way and he remembered the route in a general sense, so they followed a dark narrow trail through rough jungle.
He thought he was saving time doing this: getting Fan to the west where he knew the farmland ended and there were more villages and even small towns. But after twenty minutes the dark wooded trail ended at a slow-moving river, with no way across anywhere he could see.
Court’s heart sank. It was easily seventy-five yards across, and while there was a tiny boat dock and a dilapidated wooden shack here, there were no boats at the dock and no signs of life on either bank of the river.
When he saw the water in the low light, Court remembered from the map that this river wound around the southeastern part of the nation, and this told him he was farther south than he’d thought. He also remembered there were no bridges for miles in either direction, and he didn’t think Fan would be able to walk nearly that far in his condition.
Court turned to the young computer expert. “Let me guess… you can’t swim.”
Fan replied defensively, “I can swim. But… but I am too tired. I will drown, I promise you.”
Court nodded. He looked at the area around him and saw that the shack was missing part of its roof, but the broken concrete slab it was built upon was dry. The jungle and the riverbank looked like prime locations for snakes to hang out, so he told Fan they’d take a break right here on the slab.
Together they went into the shack and sat down on the hard concrete. Court knelt over Fan and helped him get his shoes off, then used the small penlight feature on his thermal monocular, basically the only item to survive sliding down the levee, to look over Fan’s feet. They were blistered and bleeding, but only because they weren’t callused to begin with. With a little bandaging Court decided Fan would be fine.
Court said, “Take off that hoodie, it’s eighty degrees.”
Fan did as Court instructed, and Court ripped the hood off, then cut it into two strips. The material was damp but not completely soaked, and Court tied them gently over Fan’s blisters.
He said, “We can wait here until daylight, probably in another forty-five minutes or so. If someone comes with a boat, we get a ride out of here, and we get a phone. If nobody comes by in the next two hours, then we swim across, and we keep going.”
“But… I can’t walk any farther.”
Court said, “That’s why we’re resting, and that’s why I’m bandaging your feet.”
Fan just nodded distractedly, then said, “This is crazy.”
“What’s crazy?” Court asked.
“Everything. This night. That, back there, with the shooting, the soldiers. You. This is not my life. My life is three computer terminals and access to the networks of the Strategic Support Force.”
Court said nothing; he just worked on making himself comfortable. He had a good view up the trail, so if anyone came from that direction using flashlights, he’d see them long before they saw him.
Fan said, “But all this… everything that happened tonight. I guess this is what you do.”
Court smiled a little, still looking up the trail. “What can I say? I’m not smart enough to be a computer hacker, so I get the shit work. Like this.”
Fan gave out what sounded to the American to be a tired sob, then said, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
Court scanned the trees around him now, doing his best to absorb any light. While doing so he said, “Of course you do. You ran. They chased. If you hadn’t jumped the border… we wouldn’t be having so much fun right now.”
“I did not want to run. It happened so fast.”
Court kicked his own shoes off. They wouldn’t dry out, but letting the skin of his feet get some air around it would help them heal. “Seems like an odd thing to do on the spur of the moment. C’mon, dude. When you escaped I’m sure you knew the Chinese would come after you, and I’m sure you knew any of the countries you’d worked against would be interested in you, too.”
“You don’t even know the work I did, do you?”
“Like I said, cyber warfare is a bit over my head.”
“Well… I did not work against the United States. That’s another portion of my unit. My job was to find access points into my own nation’s secure networks by using the tactics of 61398. There is a big difference.”
Court said, “Maybe to your conscience. Not to your desirability. Look, I just came because I was sent. I don’t care what you did or to who. I wouldn’t even understand it if you told me.” Court lay down on the cement, facing Fan Jiang. “The only thing I am curious about is why you decided to make a break for it.”
Fan did not respond for a long time. Court thought the kid wanted to say something but had decided against it. Finally the young man answered. “The security department kept watch on us at all times. But that was everyone in the unit. I worked with a team inside unit 61398 called Red Cell; there were five of us. They had another way to keep us in line. There was an official term for it, but most everyone called it ‘family collateral.’”
“What’s that?”
“Our relatives. Everyone on the team had a wife or a husband, children, other family members, who were kept at the compound in Shanghai. Treated well, full party benefits, but watched over, twenty-four hours a day by an escort… a member of the security unit.”
“So they kept your wife and kids inside the military installation?”