“Stearn!”
Mobi heard his name called but paid it no heed. The thought was burnt into his head. If Mobi were to proceed on the premise that Quiann didn’t want him to re-establish communication with the satellite, then he might have sent him bad data. Data that was real enough to look legitimate, but corrupt enough so that Mobi could never crack it. What if Quiann’s whole point, and by that measure Alvarez’s, was to get him off the scent? Mobi wasn’t sure what happened next. He felt a sudden lurch in the floor below him as though the whole alcove was going to fall to the bottom of the building, followed quickly by the cold metal of a night stick thrust against his throat. But Mobi didn’t struggle. He didn’t even move. Because he had a hunch. Now, all he had to do was prove it.
Chapter 45
The percussive impact of the blast brought Michael to the floor atop Kate, chaos unfolding all around them. All he saw after the initial blast of light was blackness and all he heard was a terrible ringing, so piercing that when the second and third detonations hit, he heard nothing at all. Michael coughed because the cave was now filled with billowing clouds of dust, but the strange thing wasn’t the grit in the air or the ringing in his ears, but something else, something like the rush of water.
Michael had no idea how much time actually elapsed between the final detonation and the wall of water that followed it, but he knew that what felt like hours may well have been less than a second. In that time, Michael could sense the wave that was coming to take him away, he could feel the rush of moist air, and then the wall of river water simply picked him up, propelling him under the Horten and toward the back of the cave. He felt arms and legs flailing about, arms and legs that definitely didn’t belong to him, and at the same time he felt Kate beneath him. Somehow she had been able to grab a hold of him.
Michael struggled under the rushing tide, desperately hoping that the water would recede, but instead it continued to push them further and higher, until finally they both hit the back wall of the cave. Then miraculously enough, the river water began to recede, dragging them with it, until Michael grasped a slippery rock and held onto to it like he’d never held onto anything before. The current ripped at them, but in the end relinquished its tug, pulling back until they were left wet but alive on a low ledge on the far recess of the cave wall.
A battery-powered lantern must have floated to the surface, because a dim light was now cast through the cave and already Michael could see Huang’s men picking themselves up. There was shouting. Even though Michael couldn’t hear it, he could see it. But that wasn’t all. Something else had come in with the torrent of water — a hail of gunfire. And though Michael couldn’t see who was shooting, he could see Huang's men being cut down, even as they searched the waist deep water for their weapons. One by one they collapsed, only Ted escaping the hail of bullets as he wrenched himself to cover under the Horten.
Michael shared a glance with Kate. She was as beat up as he was, but the unspoken communication was clear. They would lay low until they knew what they were up against. As Michael broke eye contact with Kate he saw a single bright light entering the cave. It looked like a Cyclops, or train in the night, except its luminosity betrayed an airy quality, almost as if the light itself was floating on air. The light grew in intensity, floating toward them like the great white beacon at the end of the tunnel of death. At that moment, Michael didn’t care what was on the other end of that light. What mattered to him was that it represented a release from the black bowels of the bat cave and for that he would be grateful.
It didn’t take long, however, for Michael to recognize that they were not the focus of the light’s beam. In fact their very presence seemed incidental to the men who leapt off what was now identifiable as a Zodiac rigid inflatable boat. Michael watched as the men, whose faces were all but obscured by shadow, rounded up Ted with the frightening efficiency of seasoned professionals. Ordering him to raise his hands above his head, they zip cuffed his hands from behind and led him at gun point through the chest deep waters to the waiting boat.
Michael carefully craned his neck out of the recess in the rock for a better view. Once Ted was aboard, the focus of the men in the water changed. They set their sights on the Horten which, though standing in several additional feet of water, appeared undamaged from the blast. Their first order of business was to call a command into the dark reaches of the cave. Another spotlight glowed bright white and within moments a second Zodiac containing another crew of men purred in. They bumped up against the base of the Horten and the crew began unfolding mounds of black rubber from their boat. There was little light to make out the proceedings and Michael’s left cheek was level with a cold wet rock, but from what he could see, the men were placing the black rubber under the fuselage of the Horten, all to the chorus of a muted popping. Michael knew his hearing still wasn’t right and that the popping sound was no doubt the sound of the rubber slapping the water as it was unfolded but before he could confirm it, he felt Kate nudge him.
Michael mouthed the word, “What?”
She pointed above, pantomiming a gun. Michael got it. The popping he heard wasn’t the slap of rubber on water but gunfire echoing from the karst above. There was a shooting match going on up there even as the men below proceeded with their task, unrolling the rubber tubes like snakes beneath the Horten. Michael began mouthing another word, but Kate motioned him not to talk. It didn’t matter. It was obvious that the question on both their minds revolved around their next move. The wall of water that had deposited them so high up on the cave’s wall had given them an excellent vantage point, but it also made them sitting ducks. It would require some tricky climbing to get down, and getting down without being noticed would be even more difficult. For now it was best to stay put.
The bravado that Michael had felt in the face of the Chinese agent’s interrogation had been mostly washed away by the wall of water. Now all he felt was wet. Wet and cold and glad to be alive. He took the moment to empty his pocket of the sarin laced coins, placing his change on the ledge beside him. They were better there than in his pocket. Except as he placed the final two coins on the slippery rock beside him, he caught his wrist on the pile. One of the coins began to roll. He reached out to catch it, but he wasn’t quick enough. The coin bounced down and hit a rock which it again bounced off before hitting the black water below.
It was a tiny splash really. Nothing to get excited about. But someone must have taken notice. Because the powerful spotlight which illuminated the Horten began a slow arc over the cave wall. Michael and Kate lowered their profile as much as possible, doing their best to blend into the rock. It seemed to work at first because the spotlight passed right over them. Then the beam retraced its path backward, shooting past them again before returning to bathe them in a white focused light. Michael knew his hearing was back because he clearly heard the Cantonese chatter drifting up from the cave floor below. Whatever the merits of laying low, they didn’t much matter now. They had been discovered.