At the one-minute mark he still had a lot of cutting to do, but he kept sawing, kept kicking, kept holding his breath. His lungs screamed and he felt the muscles in his legs and hands hurt from the lack of fresh oxygen, but he just kicked harder, sawed faster, told himself his body could shake off the effects of another thirty seconds of oxygen deprivation so much better than it could shake off the effects of an AK-47 burst to the back of his head.
When he’d finally cut all the rope away, he slid the knife into his waistband at the small of his back, then took the bag with the phone in it out of his mouth and shoved it down the front of his pants, and now he began exhaling as he swam furiously, his mind dulling, his sense of direction beginning to fail him.
He surfaced slowly and silently forty yards away from where he went under, but the speedboats had moved closer to the western shoreline, so he was even farther from the men looking for him. He took in a quick three-second breath and then slipped back under the brown surface, feeling the ecstasy of oxygen in his exhausted body.
He made it another minute before surfacing once more, and soon he was eighty yards from the boats and in the thick river grasses. By the time he looked back around, the speedboats were turning back to the south and continuing on their voyage.
They had their main prize, so they’d press on.
Court couldn’t see Fan Jiang but he knew he was still with the river pirates, and he knew the young man must have felt like he’d been abandoned by the man who told him he’d keep him safe.
And Fan Jiang was absolutely right about that.
Court crawled up into the jungle, waterlogged and exhausted, his muscles and his mind spent.
He pulled the knife out of his pants and stabbed it into the ground next to him before he took out the phone. After turning it on and figuring out how to use the old simple device, he tapped in Suzanne Brewer’s phone number.
He sucked a few tired breaths, then looked down at the tiny screen.
No Signal.
He sighed, then dropped the back of his head into the mud. “Well, that fucking figures.”
Court rolled over onto his knees, grabbed the knife, then half crawled and half staggered into the woods.
Ninety minutes later he’d found a clearing at the edge of a sweet potato farm from where he could see a well-traveled highway in the distance. He sat down behind a large palm tree at the edge of the clearing, pulled out the phone, and tried it again.
It took forty seconds before he heard the phone ring on the other end.
He breathed a fresh sigh of relief when the call was answered on the second ring.
“Brewer.”
“Hi, Mom.”
“One second.” Court sat there a moment, either while Suzanne Brewer tried to figure out how to proceed with the challenge-response protocol, or while she recovered from being called “Mom” by an agent roughly her age. “Hi… son. So nice to hear from you. I was just watching your favorite documentary about Venus.”
This was his challenge code, delivered oddly, but effectively. Court just replied, “The one about Vesuvius is even better.” His response was delivered in the same cryptic form as the challenge because of the open line.
“Right,” Brewer said, confirming his response. “What’s this number you’re calling from? Are you in…”
Court said, “Yep. ’Fraid so. I borrowed it from a friend.”
“I see. Are you somewhere safe?”
“Actually, I was hoping you could tell me where I am.”
Brewer’s voice displayed incredulity. “You don’t know where you are?”
“Long night. You know how it is.”
“Right. I can do that, wait just a second.”
Court’s reply dripped with sarcasm. “Nothing but time on my end, Mom.”
Suzanne Brewer had been lying on her back on her sofa in her office when the call came through, and it had been some struggle to get back up onto her knee scooter and over to her desk to grab it.
She saw from her computer that the call was coming from a Cambodian cell phone carrier, and her agent was telling her he didn’t know where the hell he was, which was confusing to her, but she knew what she had to do.
She pressed a button on her desk that went to the operations center.
A tired voice came over the phone seconds later. “OpsCom.”
“I need you to geolocate the origin of the call I’m on right now. How long to do that?”
“Landline or cell phone?”
“Cell. Out of Cambodia.”
“Forty seconds for the tower, another minute to a minute and a half for the GPS coordinates.”
“Go.”
“On it.”
Suzanne hung up from Operations/Communications, then went back to the line from Cambodia. She said, “I’m working on getting you fixed up.” Violator would know that by “fix” she meant they were ascertaining his location. “What else can you tell me about… about your vacation?”
“I’m hoping you can help me catch a ride right now, to get me out of here. I was traveling with a friend, but we got separated, so it’s just me.”
“Who was the friend?”
“The one you told me not to meet up with on my own.”
Brewer kept her voice flat, knowing this was an open line. “Well, we can talk more about that later. I’m just glad you are safe, son.” That wasn’t true; Violator would know it, but Brewer didn’t care. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, considering how hard we partied last night.”
Brewer closed her eyes in frustration. “I’m disappointed in you, son.”
“I know, Mom. I’m your wild child.”
“Your friends from Hong Kong? Did they come with you?”
“No, but I’m sure they are wondering what’s happened to me.”
Just then an instant message popped up on her computer screen. She opened it and saw it was from Ops/Com. A satellite map of Cambodia was attached, and she clicked on it, enlarged it, and enlarged it again. A small red star showed her the position of the cell phone in Violator’s hand, down to an exactitude of less than five feet.
“How the hell did you get there?”
“I’ve got stories for the slide show when I get home.” And then he said, “And I also have some serious questions for you and Dad. I’m looking forward to a long conversation the next time we talk.”
Brewer blew out a sigh, still looking at the blip in a clearing by a field alongside a winding brown river in the wilds of Cambodia. She knew what Violator was telling her, and she knew it wasn’t good. “Let me get to work here, try to find some way out of there for you.”
Violator replied, “I know where my friend is going. I’m heading there next.”
Brewer shook her head, but she let on none of her disapproval. She just said, “One thing at a time, son. I’ll send someone to pick you up, not sure when it will be so just sit tight.”
“It’s that or start working on a dugout canoe.”
“I’ll get you home, Tom.”
Tom? Court would realize that he needed to remember the name she just gave him.
He started to say something else, but Brewer hung up. She wasn’t one to chat. She had to work on his extraction, and she had to figure out just what to tell him about CIA’s involvement in the operation to extract Fan Jiang from China.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
The helicopter was nothing but a tiny insect when he first noticed it: a speck of black hanging just over the endless green delta to the south. It seemed to flicker in the morning haze, still miles away.