Kate and Ted hunched down alongside Michael to remove the earth from the metal plate’s surface. Within minutes they had uncovered a four-foot-wide iron trap door, hinged into aging concrete. A simple deadbolt key lock kept the plate fastened down, but one look revealed the mechanism was heavily corroded.
“Pass me the pick.”
Ted handed over a lightweight climbing pick and Michael jammed the blade under the metal door at the hinge. The concrete was white and flaking where it had deteriorated with exposure to moisture over time. Holding the edge of the door up with the pick, Michael levered the blade of the shovel into the gap and popped it up with one swift motion at the hinge. The rusted metal let go almost immediately and Michael pulled the blade of the shovel out, moving on to the second hinge. This one was harder to jimmy, but ultimately let go with a groan. Ted moved in beside Michael and together they were able to lift the heavy metal plate up on end, letting it fall backwards into the fresh pile of dirt. They were left with a gaping hole into the darkness.
A flood of cool air rushed out, but from a standing position they could see nothing. Michael immediately laid down, focusing his headlamp into the depths, but still he could see only shadows. Michael didn’t like it. The hole reminded him of the mineshaft. But he was close to finding his father. So close, he could taste it. “Pass me the rope,” he said.
“Michael,” Ted said, tossing him a walkie talkie, “There are other options here.”
“Pass me the rope. I’m going in.”
* * *
The flat-bottomed boat moved slowly down the river, not much faster than the current. Huang wanted it that way. In his view the American was on to something. And if this was the case, the worst thing he could do was get in the way, at least before he had led him to the prize. On this matter Huang was convinced — better to be the vulture moving in to feed after the kill than the leopard risking life and limb to make it. Add to that, the technical situation with the satellite appeared to be well on its way to resolution. Though not strictly his purview, Huang had it on good authority that the mole in the American Space Agency was providing actionable intelligence. The fallout from the situation would soon be contained. Still, Huang could feel the tension building up among his men. Yes, patience was good, but if the American didn’t make his move soon, Huang knew that he would have to act. For now, though, he would follow. The time to lead would come.
* * *
The cavern was as dank as it was enormous. An extra long six–hundred-foot top rope secured above, Michael had descended less than forty feet and already the Petzl descender was warm in his hand. As the cave opened up around him like a bell jar, he only hoped that he had enough rope to get to the bottom. He carried an extra three hundred feet of line with him, and though more rope would have been ideal, truth be told Michael was impressed that Ted had been able to gather the climbing equipment he had. It was all new, top of the line stuff, making his descent into the depths of this cavern a lot more secure than it might have been.
He had descended at least a hundred feet now, the LEDs in his headlamp glistening off the wet cavern walls. And though those walls had expanded dramatically around him, Michael still could not see bottom. He was, in every sense of the word, dropping into the abyss. The aluminum descender he held in hand had heated up to the point that he decided to give the mechanism a rest. He eased up on his grip, the descender’s jaws crimping the line, and Michael slowly came to a stop, bouncing gently on the rope like a human yo-yo.
Surveying the space around him with his headlamp’s beam he saw only darkness. The cave was big, so big he suspected that the entire double karst was hollow: porous limestone that had succumbed to the gentle flow of water over millennia, yielding the enormous cavern in which he now found himself. He reached up and rotated the bezel of his headlamp, clicking it off. Then there was nothing. The only sound was the murmur of the elastic rope singing ever so quietly with his movements like a loose bass string. Michael was so entranced by its low murmur in the echo chamber of the cave that, for a moment, he didn’t recognize the flapping. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, came the high pitched squeal.
Michael knew what it was. He felt the wind rush by his face even before he switched on his headlamp. Bats. A storm of them engulfed him. Michael had no particular loathing of the winged creatures, but contracting rabies or histoplasmosis wasn’t on his agenda either. He fanned his right arm and simultaneously gripped the descender, releasing its crimp on the rope. He felt the warm furry mammals brush by his ears and face. Like wall-to-wall carpeting, they were everywhere. Fortunately their presence was fleeting. It took several seconds, but by then Michael had dropped through the worst of them and slowed his descent back to a crawl.
Michael checked his face and neck with his free hand. He felt no cuts or abrasions, meaning a trip to the hospital for a painful series of rabies vaccinations was unlikely. More to the point, as the remaining bats flew lazily around him, he reasoned that their very presence pointed to another entrance to the cave, perhaps an entrance large enough to bring in an aircraft. Michael gripped the descender, squeezing it tightly. As the rope raced through it, he knew he was testing the limits of his equipment, but found he didn’t care. All that mattered now was that he get to the cavern floor.
The bottom snuck up on him like a hammer. Michael thought he saw a flash of something, an amorphous expanse of organic steel, and like that his feet slapped down and he was bending his knees to absorb the impact as he landed in a pool of water. The water was little more than calf deep and he quickly recovered. He then unclipped his harness, reasonably certain that the tingle in his spine had been caused not by his rough landing, but by the object he had viewed from above.
Though every fiber of his being compelled him to look upon the object, he took a moment to reflect. The aircraft was after all the reason he was here. It was the reason his father had spent a lifetime in China, and it was, in many ways, his last best hope of finding the man who had given him life. And so, hoping against hope, Michael cast his glance up at the amorphous expanse of aluminum above. And in that moment he understood. He understood the pull the plane must have exerted on his father and others like him. He understood why nations had covertly fought to find it for so many years. And he understood, clearly for the first time, what he had to do. Reaching into the pocket of his cargo shorts, Michael pulled out the encrypted two-way radio Ted had given him and pressed the talk button. “Drop on down,” he said. “The water’s fine.”
Chapter 40
Within minutes Kate and Ted had descended to the watery cavern floor, where they now stood alongside Michael, quietly amazed by what they saw. The aircraft was a flying wing: stealth technology from a bygone era. Like its blueprint, the bat-winged plane looked to have a wingspan of about sixty-five feet. It appeared amorphous not by design, but due to the decades-old accumulation of bat guano covering its surface. The underside of the plane was, however, clear of guano, and it was from this perspective that it began to take shape. Its fuselage stood perhaps seven feet above the cave floor on a tricycle landing gear. What appeared to be vertically mounted jets or thrusters poked out from its underbelly, suggesting that the plane was in fact capable of vertical take off. A metallic surface of a matte titanium gray sloped up forming a low cockpit between the wings, a swastika adorning the flat nose of the aircraft. It was a perfect life-size version of the blueprint — a crap-covered, decades-old, Nazi bomber.