The unfortunate truth was that the satellites were far more powerful than China’s adversaries suspected. And one of them had just been commandeered by the Ministry of State Security in an attempt to find out exactly who had picked up Li Na Wei on the side of the road.
The girl had already been granted her first stroke of luck in being picked up before Peng and his team could reach her. The second was when it happened — at night, when even the best satellite technology was much less effective.
It would take hours to not just discern the vehicle, in this case a truck. Then to attempt to follow its signature through the vast maze and glaringly bright lights of Shenyang’s shipping docks, scattered along the mouth of the Liaohe River, would be a painstaking process.
It would need to be carried out frame by frame, by a team of the MSS’s sharpest technicians. But find it, they did. And hours later, MSS agents descended upon the Canadian shipping dock and all of its workers. Including a stunned Victor Mooney.
112
Sheng Lam peered down through the helicopter’s side window at the ship below, steadily growing larger upon a sea of blackness. The Jasper’s navigation lights were clearly visible at a distance, as was the muted yellowish glow from the ship’s deck lights and wheelhouse.
Inside the aircraft, Lam glanced at his watch. It was far later than he’d hoped. It took several long hours but the MSS had found her. Not just the dock where the truck had stopped, but the ship itself — now trying to escape Chinese waters, and failing.
This time there was nowhere to go. Nowhere for her to run.
Lam turned to see the squad’s leader watching him. His intuition easily interpreted the message in Peng’s tired, unblinking eyes. Once they had the girl, Sheng Lam would not be aboard the flight back.
Captain Armsworth was standing in front of his wheelhouse in the brisk air, watching the helicopter approach and then hover over the only open area of the ship. Landing the Mi-17 helicopter was also a tight fit, but the pilot managed to touch down expertly with a small controlled bounce. At that point, two of Armsworth’s crew ran forward quickly with heavy chains to secure the aircraft.
No sooner had the helicopter’s bounce faded than the green door was slid open and armed soldiers began exiting.
Followed by his first officer, Armsworth calmly descended the two decks and reached the main. The Chinese soldiers approached with guns raised.
Peng spoke directly to Armsworth’s first officer, who was of Chinese descent but was a man who had little sympathy for or loyalty to the Chinese government.
“Where is she?” Peng shouted over the wind.
“What is the meaning of this?!” the officer demanded. “Where is who?”
“The GIRL!”
“What girl?”
Peng’s eyes raged. “Do not play games with me! The teenage girl you brought aboard in Shenyang!”
“There are no females aboard.”
Armsworth listened to the garbled exchange and moved his eyes from soldier to soldier, stopping on Lam. The smaller, wirier man seemed especially agitated. Even angry.
His first officer immediately grew quiet when Peng pushed the barrel of his rifle into the man’s chest. “I know she is aboard!”
The officer turned silently to Armsworth who also raised his hands. “There is no one like that aboard. Search the ship.”
“I WILL search the ship!” growled Peng. “And when I find her, you will be arrested for treason!”
Without a word, both men stepped aside, allowing the soldiers to pass. Peng shouted orders to his men and pointed at the cargo holds.
The two calmly watched as all six soldiers disappeared. They remained where they were standing, looking at one another. When Peng’s voice finally faded, Armsworth looked at his own watch.
The Chinese soldiers would find nothing. Not because they had hidden her. But because they were exactly thirty-eight minutes too late.
113
The UH-60J was a variant of the Mitsubishi H-60 twin-turboshaft helicopter and designed specifically for search and rescue missions for the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. It was also somewhat fitting that the white UH-60J they were on, speeding less than twenty feet above the ocean swells, was based on the United States’ Sea King helicopters.
Li Na’s unconscious body was laid out across the rear of the cabin, held steady by Steve Caesare, while John Clay readied the syringe.
“Now just like I said…” The voice they heard over their aviation headsets belonged to Amir Kanna, the ship doctor aboard the Pathfinder. “First the bolus injection then the maintenance infusion.”
Clay followed the doctor’s instructions carefully, administering both. Caesare then assisted by activating the small multichannel infusion pump to control the delivery. Together, they watched a portable EEG monitor and waited for the brain wave pattern described by Kanna.
“Okay,” Clay finally announced. “We’re beginning to see the pattern.”
“Good,” Kanna replied. “Now listen, the thiopental slows the metabolic rate of the brain tissue, but it also depresses blood pressure. Tell me what it is now.”
Caesare inflated the sleeve and counted. “Ninety-one over sixty.”
“Okay. Keep monitoring and tell me if it falls significantly below that. How long until you reach Busan?”
Clay looked at his watch. “About fifty minutes.”
“Good. We’ll have a team standing by.”
On the other end of the call, Kanna stared across the table at Neely Lawton, who looked just as worried.
“Do you think it will work?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s a long shot.”
It was more than a long shot. Medically induced comas were typically little more than last ditch attempts to save a patient’s life. And it was literally the only idea they had to save Li Na — to shut her brain down and force it to rest.
“The problem,” Kanna said, “is that keeping someone under for too long brings on more problems — worse than just low blood pressure. Under a coma, the entire body begins to deteriorate quickly. If this bacterium she has cannot counterbalance that…”
“It may not be enough,” finished Neely gravely.
“Correct.” Kanna leaned into the phone. “Gentlemen, keep monitoring. I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”
“Roger that.” The call ended and both men leaned back.
Clay stared down at Li Na, then continued watching the monitor before finally turning to Caesare. “How do you think he knew?”
“How who knew what?”
“How did Borger know she was on that ship?”
Caesare blinked, thinking, then shook his head. “Beats the hell out of me.”
114
Alone in her lab, Neely sat on a metal stool in silence, staring at the empty refrigerator. It had been the only way she could think to limit the attack on the ship, to end the Russians’ search and keep them from killing more of the ship’s crew.
Let them have the bacteria. Leave it in plain sight and let them have it all. At least then they would stop looking.
And they did. They took it and fled to the Valant, where it was subsequently destroyed, along with the entire Russian team. And where Les Gorski lost his life.
Through the window, she watched the fire, still raging. Blanketing the entire area beneath an eerie yellow glow.
Outside, the rest of the crew moved about the ship, assessing the damage. The lights of two Navy battleships approached steadily in the distance.