A look of panic washed over Clay, and he immediately grabbed the phone. “Will?”
There was a rustling on the other end before another voice spoke. It was weak.
“Hey, handsome.”
“Alison! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just suffering from some decompression sickness.”
“How bad?”
“Dr. Kanna doesn’t think there’s anything permanent. But I’m going to need a lot of rest.”
Clay pressed his hand over his mouth with relief. “Thank God.”
“No, thank Dirk,” she joked faintly. She paused before continuing. “John, I need to ask you a question.”
“Anything.”
On the other end, Alison glanced wearily up at Will Borger, now sitting next to her bed. “How fast do you think you can get to an airport?”
Clay’s eyes turned intently to Palin, who stood before him, listening. “I’d say pretty damn fast!”
109
It was under the bright glow of his headlights that Vic Mooney saw the outline. As he drew nearer, the image crystallized and confirmed his first impression. It was the image of a person sitting on the side of the road, leaning against a tree.
Had his truck been full, he would never have been able to stop in time. But instead, his air brakes shuddered and smoked as he slowed the red semitrailer truck down enough to get a clearer picture — just as the figure passed beneath his side mirror and out of view.
After another two hundred feet, Mooney’s brakes brought the semi to an abrupt stop at which point he immediately turned on his emergency lights. He flung the door open and jumped down onto the pavement. Trotting to the back of his rig, he found with a sudden sense of dread that the person had not moved.
In the distance and under the glow of flashing yellow lights, he could clearly see it was the figure of a teenage girl — with her head down.
He raised his baseball cap higher onto his balding head and eased closer to examine the girl. She wasn’t moving. He reached out and gently shook her.
No response.
He shook her again. This time the girl’s head stirred.
Li Na Wei rolled her head and squinted almost imperceptibly at the man staring down at her from above. His complexion looked western, maybe like an American.
The only word she could manage was “help.”
110
Vic Mooney was not American. He was a Canuck. Or more commonly known, a Canadian.
A forest planner by trade, Mooney was born and raised in British Columbia. There, he later retired and signed on as a contractor with one of the country’s largest shipping companies. He now spent six months out of the year driving trucks in Northeastern China and the other half fishing giant white sturgeon along Canada’s famed Fraser River.
Just an hour after stumbling upon Li Na, he stood in a shabby hallway, facing a small office with a clear glass window.
“So, what the hell are we supposed to do?! Call the police? Or a hospital?”
Sixty-one-year-old Mooney stared at his friend and fellow Canuck, Brian Armsworth, without an answer. “The girl needs help.”
“We don’t even know who she is!”
Mooney looked at him sarcastically. “Do you know who anyone in China is?”
Armsworth, slightly shorter with a full gray beard, frowned. “Not really.”
“Look, man. I don’t know who she is either. But the girl needs help. Look at her.”
Armsworth glanced again through the glass at Li Na, lying still on a ratty couch. “Okay, so she’s lost. And hungry.”
“Are you kidding? I found her on the side of the road for Christ’s sake. Unconscious. So, unless you want to take her back—”
“Fine! Fine,” Armsworth said, shaking his head. “So what did she say?”
“She said her father was murdered. And someone is trying to kill her too. Been chasing her for days.”
“And how do you know that’s true?”
“I don’t. But she’s scared to death and stinks to high heaven. What kind of conclusion would you draw?”
“Where is she from?”
Mooney shrugged. “No idea.”
“What’s her name?”
“Li Na.”
“Li Na what?”
“Don’t know.”
Armsworth frowned suspiciously at Mooney. “So why are you making this my problem?”
“Because the Jasper is leaving tonight.”
Armsworth’s eyes suddenly shot open. “Oh, hell no! No way!”
“What?”
“Not on my ship!”
“Brian, look at her,” Mooney motioned through the window again. “Look at her! This girl’s in trouble. Do you think she’d be looking like that for fun?”
“Who the hell knows with kids these days? Maybe she’s on crack.”
“Maybe she’s not.”
Armsworth was still shaking his head. “Then who’s chasing her?”
“She said some soldiers. The Army, maybe?”
“The government?! My God, you’re out of your gourd! You want to get mixed up with the government? And not just any government, the Chinese government?”
Mooney shrugged again. “She’s got a passport.”
“Oh, well, that’s different then. If she’s got a passport!”
“And she’s willing to pay her way.”
“I don’t care.”
Mooney folded his arms. “Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
Armsworth shook his head.
“I’ll tell you why you care. Because you know she’s in trouble. Just like I do. And just like me, you’ve seen some really shitty things over here. Bad things that make your damn skin crawl.”
Armsworth didn’t answer.
“And you know why else? Because you have daughters.”
Armsworth looked sternly back at Mooney.
“You have daughters, just like me. Grown and moved out, or in college. Where we can’t protect them.” Mooney stared hard at his friend. “Now you stand there and you tell me that if one of your girls was in trouble, and I mean real trouble, that you wouldn’t be praying to God for someone to help them. To help your little girl if they were able to.”
Armsworth tried to shake his head.
“Say it. Say that you would rather have your daughter fend for herself. Against who knows what? And over here, of all places.”
The aging captain stopped shaking his head and stared again at Li Na through the glass.
“Christ, she’s unconscious.”
“She comes and goes. I think she’s exhausted.” Mooney raised his hand and showed Armsworth a wad of Chinese Yuan. “She can pay.”
“Get that out of my face,” Armsworth growled.
“If you get caught, all you have to say is that she’s a stowaway. Sneaking aboard some random cargo ship. Plausible deniability.”
Armsworth turned and looked out of another much larger window, one that faced out over the endless shipping docks of Shenyang. Dozens of people moved back and forth, many pushing pallets of supplies. None were paying attention to them in the small office.
“This is insane.”
Mooney raised his eyebrows. “Is it? Do we really have that much to lose?”
Armsworth was not amused. “That’s what people usually say right before things go horribly wrong.”
111
There was very little known about China’s new Shijian 16 satellites. Thought by most western analysts to enhance the communist country’s electronic eavesdropping efforts, the true capabilities of China’s growing number of spy satellites were anything but clear.