“What do we do now?” I asked Priest.
“I suggest we sleep, sir. Not much else we can do.”
I slept for six hours, about as much as I ever could. When I awoke I found Priest reading his Bible.
I yawned, examining my watch. “Another hour to China.”
Priest's eyes never left the page. “God willing, sir.”
Irritated, I said, “God has nothing to do with it. Say, 'the weather willing' or 'the failure of the Chinese navy willing'.”
“You do not believe in God, sir?”
“No. I have never seen a good reason to think there must be someone out there watching over us.”
“And you think science explains how and what we are, sir?”
I was a captive audience. “Not yet. But every time there's a scientific breakthrough, the realm of science expands and the realm of myth shrinks. Someday, there won't be anything of myth left.”
Priest looked up from his Bible. “My mother is a scientist. She was part of the research team that developed the first operational quantum computer. Do you know anything about quantum mechanics?”
I shook my head, not seeing the connection. “Not really, no.”
“When looking at very small, subatomic particles, the classical rules of the universe change. Waves and matter blend together in the same particles. Information can move faster than the speed of light. An observer detecting the results of an event changes the event itself. In short, things get weird in ways that the normal bounds of possibility don't apply to.”
I asked rudely, “Is there a point to this little lesson?”
“The fringes of the universe are mysterious, Mr. Cortez. Quantum mechanics, dark matter, you name it. It's enough to make you see that there is much beyond all this.” Priest gestured around the submersible. “Whether we live or die in China, forces beyond our comprehension will continue to shape and mold the universe. In all of that mystery, there is ample room for God.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Is this what Christianity is like in Taiwan? A physics lesson?”
“No, sir. But we're tinkerers in Taiwan, Mr. Cortez. We look for new technologies, new theories, and, in the process, maybe we find new reasons to believe in old ideas.”
Chapter 6
The landing came as a surprise. We had been flying so low that there was little in the way of warning that a descent had begun. There was just a sudden deceleration as five million pounds of ammunition, guns, tanks, fighter jets, missiles, submersible and people were sapped of inertia by the mass of the Pacific Ocean. The water displaced by the landing probably ended up as a large wave when it impacted the Chinese mainland, I thought.
I heard the rear doors of the Pelican open outside the submersible. A hydraulic sound whined as a ramp unfolded. A minute later, the brakes were released and the submersible began sliding down. There was no audible splash, but I could sense from the pronounced floating sensation that we were no longer on the massive aircraft.
The autonomous program controlling the submersible started the engines and pushed the vehicle forward. There were no ports on the submersible's wall, just an electronic readout of course and speed. A big red button labeled “SURFACE” and an emergency override for the hatch were our only ways of affecting the operation of the vessel.
With nothing to see other than the map, I whispered to Priest, "I'm not going to ask how the Chinese can't see us on sonar."
"Good, because I can't tell you exactly how, sir. Just know that when we need to resupply, this is how it's going to come in: from the Pelican to a submersible to our landing point. It'll take at least a day to get anything to us.”
I nodded. “And now we're out of the protection of the Taiwanese military. From here on in, it's up to us.”
“Yes, sir.”
Two hours and fifty-seven minutes after we left the Pelican, two loud clangs announced the separation of the containers from the submersible.
“I assume we shouldn't be worried about that,” I said to Priest.
“No, sir. The containers have some equipment built in that changes their buoyancy. They'll float just below the surface until someone comes to take them away.”
The submersible itself continued to move forward for a few more seconds so that it would not surface into the containers. Then, the sole display flashed, “DESTINATION REACHED. SURFACING IN 90 SECONDS.”
The seconds began to tick away. The submersible engines cut off, as did the interior lights, leaving Priest and me in a silent, hollow tube a dozen feet deep in the ocean.
With no equipment or luggage to gather together, Priest and I waited.
Finally, the submersible lurched up, and we clung to the ladder leading to the hatch. The hatch opened atop the submersible, releasing the smell of tidal water and sewage into our nostrils. “Welcome to the People's Republic of China,” Priest said. He climbed up and out of the hatch, instantly jumping out into the water.
I paused at the hatch and took a look around. The shore was only about fifty yards away, and I could see a light at the edge of the water.
Priest hissed, “C'mon, sir!”
I stepped out of the hatch into the ocean. The water felt cold even through the wetsuit. Strange, I thought. We're not that far from Vietnam, and the water there is tropical.
Then the smell really hit me. “Oh Jesus, we're right in the middle of the sewage stream aren't we?”
If Priest was annoyed at my whisper, he hid it well. “Yes sir, just as we planned. Nobody's coming here for an evening stroll any time soon. Just our friend on the beach. Let's go meet him.”
Our friend on the beach was actually an employee, not a friend. And the employee was a woman, not a man.
Merlin Printing, like all large industrial concerns, maintained a Beijing office. I had surreptitiously asked the head of the Beijing office to provide me with a trustworthy local contact who could set up our base in China. And so, Lian Ming, Director of Communications of the Beijing office of Merlin Printing, was publicly fired from her former job and given an overly generous severance package. She used that severance package to retire at the age of 39 to a quiet fishing village in south China called Qiaogangzhen, a few dozen miles from the Vietnamese border. She had purchased a house near the beach, well away from the rest of the fishing village. This section of China's shore, the location of a massive sewage pipe outlet, was not frequented by tourists, fishermen, or anyone else for that matter.
This evening, Ming had just happened to take her truck to the beach, and she just happened to be standing on the beach waving a flashlight, which Priest and I used to close in on her location.
When Priest and I were ten yards away, Priest called softly in Mandarin, “Is the picnic ready?”
Lian replied in Mandarin, completing the coded exchange: “Yes, though the smell has taken away my appetite.”
Priest and I emerged from the water. “Nice to meet you, Lian. I am Ding Cortez. This is Priest, a Taiwanese associate.”
Lian nodded curtly. “I will bring the truck down.” She handed one end of a chain to Priest. “Go attach this to the container. I will drag the container to the beach with the truck. While Mr. Cortez helps unload it, you can attach the chain to the second container. We will have to make a few trips, but it is a short drive to the house. We will be fully unloaded in an hour.”
Priest grunted his affirmation. I asked, “What happens to the containers after we leave?”
Priest answered, “I chain them to the submersible, which will sink them offshore.”
“OK. Let's get moving then.”
The process went exactly as Lian described. When the first container was ashore, Priest accessed a waterproof control panel on the outside of the door and punched in the release code. The locked watertight door on the container popped open, and I looked inside to see the men. They were uniformly bedraggled, unshaved, but seemingly alive and alright.