David said, “So we need that first phone call to count. What should the plan be there?”
“I would think that we would want to get multiple government authority figures in the room. We know there are breaches — Chinese spies in our government. We need to spread out our information to a wide enough group of people that we don’t get unlucky and have one of the spies end up being the person we’re talking to. They’d hide whatever we tell them, call Lena, and it’s game over for us.”
David nodded. “You’re right. I think I know someone at my work that I can trust. A guy named Lundy. I’ve known him for years at In-Q-Tel. Good guy, family man, trustworthy as far as I know. We can get him on the line. But that won’t spread out the information like you’re saying. If we’ve got eight hours, let’s use the first call to tell my friend the quick information dump. Then we’ll get him to round up people from the CIA, Pentagon, whoever we think needs to be on the call — and we’ll give them an hour to get in a room together. He’ll have the connections to make that work. He’s tight with the CIA and has contacts in several other government agencies from the work we do. Then we’ll call the whole group back and give all of them the details.”
“We’re still putting a lot of faith in your friend.”
“I know. I don’t see how we can avoid that. We have to start somewhere.”
Henry frowned. “Can we just go to a newspaper? Or the Darwin police?”
David said, “How’d your phone call with your ex-wife go?”
“Less than ideal. It could have been better.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“Because she’s a spiteful old bitch?”
“No. It was because we had not established credibility and trust. Even if she did trust and believe what we were saying, she wasn’t equipped to take the right action. The first time we tell someone about this, we need them to trust what we are saying, and have the ability to take the proper action. We can’t go to the police without passports and talk about a Chinese invasion, just like we can’t go to the newspaper. There’s way too high a chance that they will think we are crazy and we’ll be apprehended by Lena’s goons before we can really do anything meaningful. We can’t take that chance. We need to hit a home run with our first at-bat.”
Henry cracked his knuckles. He nodded. “The two-phone-call plan could work. I’m a little worried about the Chinese version of the NSA jamming our second phone call. But I might have a way to get around that.”
“What about the Chinese SWAT team they send after us eight hours later? We might be able to make phone calls and warn people, but how do we protect ourselves?”
Henry said, “We’ll have to use our first two phone calls to ask for security. If they have the right US government pull, we should be able to get Australian protection. Or they can send us to the US embassy. Not sure where that is. Probably Sydney. I need to look at a map.”
“What if the Chinese SWAT team gets there sooner?”
Henry said, “I might have a way to buy us some extra time with that too. Let me think it over.”
David said, “Okay. We’ll have several days to go over our plan before we get there. Now we just need to pray that the Chinese don’t find out where we are — or where we’re headed.”
“With any luck, they’ll think we drowned in the storm. We almost did.”
David said, “Luck’s fickle.”
Two hours later, Byron lay in his bunk. He had just finished the second book in a new science fiction series. It was about thousands of people who were living their whole lives below ground in a dystopian future. Their days were filled with endless physical work and sheer boredom. It reminded him of working for his uncle on the trawler.
Uncle Nathan had made him stand the midwatch every night since they’d been at sea this time around. There was only so much holding a wheel and pointing it at the same compass heading that Byron could do before he drifted back to his books to pass the time. He loved to read. Sometimes they drifted a little off course. It was a big ocean, however, and there were very few reefs to worry about this far out.
Byron checked his watch. It was 10 p.m. A few more hours and he’d have to go on duty again up on the bridge. The midwatch ran from midnight to 6 a.m. It got so boring up there without anything to pass the time. Uhhh. They expected him to man the helm, navigate, and keep a lookout for ships for six hours through the middle of the night.
Byron decided that he needed to download the next book in the series for tonight. The problem was, Nathan had said that they weren’t supposed to use the computers until they got home. That didn’t make any sense to Byron. Nathan was always giving him more and more rules. Don’t go on the computer, no reading on duty. Stupid rules. It was just like the underground society in the book he was reading.
It wouldn’t hurt just to check and see if Nathan’s room was empty. He could sneak in for a few minutes, log in to his computer, and download the next book. Sneaky like a fox. He walked down the passageway in his flip-flops and cracked Nathan’s door, peering in. No sign of him. He must be on the bridge or out on the deck making his rounds.
Byron crept into the room and logged in to the desktop computer. Good satellite signal. The Internet was extremely slow, but the book file size would be tiny. He hooked up the USB cord between the ereader device and the computer and clicked through the options until the file was downloading. A time remaining box appeared: six minutes.
Hmm. A little longer than he was hoping. Hopefully Nathan wouldn’t arrive and catch him red-handed.
While he waited, Byron opened up another Internet browser window and logged into his Facebook account. He wondered if Wendy had written him back.
He had sent her several messages telling of his experiences at sea. He would write long passages recounting details of his day and his feelings about how their relationship was growing stronger while they were apart. Usually her replies were very short. Well, there was that long one that had said they were just friends and that he needed to realize that. Usually she didn’t reply at all. But that was probably just because she was a no-nonsense person.
Hmm. Wendy hadn’t written him in seven days. Byron looked at how many messages he had sent to her during that time. Seventeen. Huh. Kind of a lot. He didn’t want to send a desperation signal. Better just “like” her posts to let her know he was thinking about her… and maybe send her one final message since he wouldn’t be able to write anymore until they got home. Byron decided to keep this message strictly about how his day went. What would he tell her? His rescue. Of course he had to tell Wendy how he had single-handedly rescued the two Americans who were lost at sea. He typed her the story and hit send.
Byron checked the ebook file. Download complete. Excellent. Now he could read the next book while on duty tonight. He logged out of his uncle’s computer and walked out of the room. He couldn’t help but smile when he thought of how impressed Wendy would be when she read his latest note.
Lena stomped out of the control room, the soldiers and communications specialists vaulting out of her way. The site supervisor and Natesh hurried to keep pace with her as she travelled down a ladder way.
Natesh said, “What did Jinshan say?”
She flashed him a stern look. “He wasn’t happy. We may need to move up our timing.”