“Well, that was interesting.”
Caesare watched the tail lights of the last truck finally disappear into the distance. “How far would you say those trucks can make it on a full tank of gas?”
Clay shrugged. “Uphill, with all that armor, maybe three hundred miles. They wouldn’t use much gas coming down.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
A few hundred yards away, silence swept over the Chinese ship again as it rocked almost imperceptibly in the darkness. The mysterious man standing above the others watched his men disappear again below deck. He dropped his cigarette and mashed it out with the tip of his boot.
Lieutenant Wang Chao turned around and studied the bright lights of Georgetown less than a mile away. He marveled at how well the government had kept the area clear given such a large nearby population. Money spoke, he thought.
Chao then turned and focused on the small group of lights further out at sea. It was a United States ship. A science vessel, he’d been told. Chao displayed a tight grin. He was surprised it had taken the U.S. so long. But it didn’t matter. They had arrived too late. Soon Chao, his team, and their loaded ship would all be gone.
27
General Zhang Wei stared absently at his desk as he laid the phone handset back into its cradle. In his late fifties, with cool eyes and close-cropped gray hair, he was not a man to get excited too soon. But he couldn’t help but smile now. They had done it.
Lieutenant Chao had confirmed it. They were now days from completion, and the small science ship sent by the U.S. had only just arrived. They were far too late. Wei could not have hoped for a better result, especially since they expected, in all probability, to be discovered far earlier. It was a risk that had paid off handsomely. There was now nothing standing in their way. They had made the find of the century and with virtually no international contention at all. Yet when the world found out what the Chinese now possessed, it would leave them utterly shocked.
However, along with the good news from Chao came the unfortunate end to a problem that General Wei had known would have to be dealt with eventually. He reached forward and picked up the remote control to a large television screen on his wall. He powered it on and selected the special input feed he’d watched many times before.
The picture came to life displaying a dismal gray cell at an unidentified location, deep underground. In the corner was a small cot with a figure resting on top. His back was facing the camera.
The General stared silently at the screen. The truth was he felt a small amount of sympathy for the man. His name was Zang, and he had done his country the highest honor of anyone perhaps in China’s entire three thousand year history. Even more difficult, Zang was a true patriot. He had returned to China with one of man’s greatest discoveries, wanting only to enrich the country he loved so much.
In addition, it was clear from the hours of videotaped interrogation that he had absolutely no idea what he’d done wrong, or why he was being held captive. How could anyone who delivered a gift like his be treated so poorly? Zang could only imagine that there had been a terrible mistake. Perhaps the authorities thought he was trying to use this find to his own advantage: to leverage some kind of deal or payment. It was the only thing that made sense.
General Wei had watched for hours the barrage of questions put to Zang. The patriot never wavered from his explanation. More importantly, Zang showed himself to be wholly unable to think independently from the explanation his mind had created. At one point, Wei watched Zang try to ask if something was wrong with his explanation: whether the government had been unable to locate the find in Guyana.
Wei lit a cigarette at his desk and continued staring at Zang’s cell. The problem wasn’t that they could not find Zang’s discovery. It was the opposite. They had found it, right where he said it was. And it was the very same reason that in a few days, Lieutenant Chao would have to kill every single one of his men in Guyana.
Wei picked up the phone and dialed. When the call was answered, he spoke softly and clearly, “End it.”
When the door to Zang’s cell swung quietly open, General Wei held up the remote and turned the television off. Less than sixty seconds later, Zang was dead.
28
Alison gripped the stainless steel railing, unable to decide if she was nervous or scared… probably both. She looked to the port side of the boat at the sun peeking up over the line of the horizon, separating ocean from sky. The water was like glass this early in the morning, making it the perfect departure time.
It was the day they had all been preparing for. Alison looked down and watched Dirk and Sally leap excitedly through the calm water, just ahead of the boat’s surging bow. They were as thrilled as she was and were leading their human friends out into the waters of the Caribbean.
It was a dream come true for any marine researcher but especially for Alison. Not just to observe, but to communicate and participate within the natural world of another species. To experience what they experienced, and to see the world from their eyes was more than she could ever have imagined. Now it was happening. At that moment, she realized it wasn’t nervousness or fear. It was an unbridled excitement which she had never felt before: the point where dreams and miracles met.
Behind Alison, Kelly Carlson sat in the skipper’s seat, looking out over the top of the cabin and scanning the ocean. She wore a tan baseball cap and a long, loose-fitting white T-shirt. Kelly leaned forward and reduced the throttle to match Dirk and Sally’s pace.
Inside, down in the forward starboard hull, Chris stood behind Lee, who was running through yet more system checks on the servers. The sound on the graphs was spiking up and down along the top, much higher than normal. It was the underwater microphone picking up the noise from the boat’s 267 horsepower John Deere diesel engine as they motored forward.
Lee glanced up and over his shoulder at Chris. “Here goes.” He typed a command that activated a new algorithm designed to identify the signature of the engine and eliminate it. The large spike was immediately highlighted and disappeared from the graph, displaying a more normalized baseline.
“So this will allow us to hear the dolphins but not the other way around?”
“Right,” Lee nodded. “We’re receiving sound from the microphone, which is a lot easier to work with than what we’d be sending out through the speakers. This should allow us to hear them while running the engines in case they need to tell us something.”
“Nice. Everything else look okay?”
“So far, so good.” He glanced at the servers, now strapped to the floor near his feet. It was another benefit of the catamaran design. The amount of heeling or leaning was negligible, reducing the chance of the servers being tipped, even in rougher seas.
“Well, if you don’t need me,” said Chris, “I’m gonna head up top.”
“Sure, go ahead. I’ll be up in a little while after I’ve checked a few more things.”
With a nod and a pat on Lee’s shoulder, Chris stepped through the narrow oval doorway and climbed the half dozen steps into the salon. After stepping out in the warm breeze, he spotted Alison at the bow and trailed along the lifelines to join her. Looking past her, he could see Dirk and Sally swimming effortlessly out in front.
“Everything okay?”
Alison inhaled deeply and smiled. “Couldn’t be better.”
“Anything more from DeeAnn?”
She glanced at her watch. “Not yet. Not for a few more hours.”