Chapter 46
Mobi’s extraction from the alcove was brutally efficient. Within minutes of being subdued he was transported to a glass walled holding cell. They had cuffed his hands, but there had been no interrogation, only Rand and Alvarez arguing heatedly outside the cell. Mobi could hear nothing of course as the cell was completely sound proof, but what surprised him was that he didn’t care. What he cared about was following up on his hunch — a hunch that told him that he had just wasted a whole lot of time barking up the wrong tree.
If Quiann was trying to get Mobi off track it would be something simple. As far as Mobi knew, Quiann had no way of knowing he would contact him. Therefore if Quiann had wanted to mislead Mobi, it had to be done quickly. After all, the data had arrived soon after Mobi had phoned. There wasn’t a lot of time to alter it. Quiann would have wanted Mobi to believe the data was real, yet he didn’t want it to be real. That meant the changes would be slight, yet significant. And a rigorous scientist like Quiann was nothing if not a perfectionist. Even if engaging in an act as of subterfuge, Mobi assumed Quiann would go for the elegant solution. Simple, but systematic. To Mobi, it suggested one thing: that the damage could be reversed. But if his premise held, if the data stream had been altered, the bigger question was how to bring it back to its natural form. Mobi considered this point as the glass door to the cell slid open behind him.
“Mobi?” Alvarez said softly.
Mobi didn’t react, but simply stared at his reflection in the glass wall, his thoughts churning.
“Mobi, it’s me.”
Mobi heard the Deputy Director this time around, but continued to stare at his reflection.
“Mobi, damn it, I’m the only thing standing between you and the three hundred forty-two pages of the Patriot Act. Talk to me.”
“You know there’s somebody sending messages out of this facility.”
“I’m the one who told you about it.”
“That person would need access.”
“Of course.”
“That person might even want me to waste my time with Quiann.”
“Mobi,” Alvarez said, uncomfortable with the suggestion, “whatever you’re thinking you need to put that aside for the moment and focus.”
“Why?”
“Because you can still help.”
Mobi looked to Alvarez. He didn’t want to doubt her, but it didn’t change the fact that he did. Regardless, she was right. He could help. Even if he wasn’t sure which side he would be helping. “Quiann wasn’t square with us,” Mobi finally said.
“What do you mean not square? Why?”
“The why I’m not sure, about,” Mobi said, eyeing his reflection in the glass, “but the how is obvious.” He turned to Alvarez. “And I know how to fix it.”
Chapter 47
From the moment the spotlight found them on the cave wall, it was clear to Michael that there was only one course of action — to come down. The man with the Uzi submachine gun below had an unobstructed line of sight and what was more, there was nowhere to go. The cave wall above the ledge was too smooth to climb. A brief glance at Kate had confirmed that her thinking matched his and they scaled the slippery cave wall back down to the cave floor. Their circumstances, however, had rapidly deteriorated since their descent. Both Michael’s and Kate’s hands had been bound behind their backs with plastic zip cuffs. They stood upright, chest deep in the cave water, held hostage by a muscular Uzi wielding man in the Zodiac.
Kate was silent, but she didn’t have to speak. Michael could tell that she recognized their captor’s Tiger-Snake tattoo just as he did; he was another Tiger Snake Boy. Shortly after they reached the cave floor, a compressor had been turned on and the rubber tubes beneath the Horten had begun to inflate. Four men fit the pontoons together with a tubular steel frame. As the pontoons took on a cylindrical form, the Horten actually rose above them like a water bug skating on a pond. A roughly circular fifty-foot hole had been blasted into the cave wall from the river front. How the Horten had gotten into the cave was still a mystery. It could have been sealed in with a similar explosion years ago or it could have come through an as yet unseen tunnel. But how it was going to get out was obvious. One look at Kate told Michael that she, like he, understood exactly what was going on. The Tiger Snake Boys intended to float the Horten downriver.
It was a good plan, Michael thought, if getting a Nazi war plane out of a bat cave was on your to do list. Not fool proof maybe, but good. A cry of protest erupted from Michael’s right and he redirected his attention to the farthest corner of the cave. There, where the newly blasted cave opened to the river, Ted was being forced into the second Zodiac by two gun wielding men. Several shouts of protest were followed by a short growl as the Zodiac’s twin outboards purred to life. The man at the helm made a quick turn forcing Michael to stand on his toes to avoid swallowing the second Zodiac’s wake.
“Where are they taking him?” Michael said.
His words were answered by a sudden silence. The compressor had been shut down. Apparently the machine’s work was complete because the Horten had risen so high on its inflatable pontoons that it was actually floating now, drifting toward where they stood at the bow of the boat. Michael listened carefully as the men who had been working to inflate the pontoons waded back to the Zodiac, each carrying a three-quarter-inch polyethylene tow rope. He could hear the receding purr of the second Zodiac, but not much else as silence enveloped the cave. Michael knew it was the calm before the storm. The quiet might last another minute or two, but it wouldn’t last forever. You didn’t blow a hole in the side of a mountain just to enjoy the view.
“Kah!”
Michael recognized the Cantonese word for “Go” and felt the twin Yamaha outboards snort to life. A second man grabbed them by their collars and within a few seconds the bow of the Zodiac swung gently around pulling Michael and Kate with it. They soon lost their footing, hanging from the bow of the boat in the deeper water, barely able to hold their heads above the surface. Michael was so cold his body was numb now. He felt the slack in the polyethylene ropes being taken up as the Zodiac moved forward, churning the dark cave water behind it. The Horten was no doubt floating behind them, but Michael directed his attention to keeping his head above water as they steered toward the newly blasted hole in the cave wall.
One thing Michael had learned from Peru was that in the long run, you had no idea what curves life might throw at you. You could plan, you could visualize, but in the end, you had no idea. Michael had done almost everything wrong when he was captured on that mountainside in the Andes. He had wept, he had screamed, and he had panicked. And yet, when it was all over, the one thing that he had done right was to not lose faith in himself. Even in his darkest hour, when he was clinging to that ledge in the mineshaft, he had told himself that he would make it out alive. Even if his father didn’t save him, even if nobody saved him, he would survive. It might have been misguided, but he credited this blind faith with saving his life. Now, thousands of miles away and many years later, he suspected he was going to need to tap that same faith again.