Leap - 02 (13 page)

“Nah, no one does.  Except our government, of course.”

“So, they’re involved?”

“Oh yes,” Brennan said, almost sarcastically.  “Something changed when that Chinese boat arrived.  Many of us have noticed that our dear, old government officials are driving a lot of spanking new automobiles around now.  And their families are too.  But that’s not all.  There’s a lot of new money floating around lately, which is helping just about everyone.  Hospitals, schools, the ferry, large stores, even small shop owners see it.  The government has even been talking about paying down our debt and reducing taxes.  And I can tell you lads this, that’s something I haven’t heard before in my lifetime.”

25

“I think we’re ready.”  Juan stood up with the vest, unplugging both cables.  He crossed the small cabin and stood next to DeeAnn, who looked up eagerly.  From inside her cage, Dulce also gazed up from her half-eaten clump of celery.

“Really?”

“Yep.”

DeeAnn was immediately up off her seat.  Juan held out the vest while she slipped her arms through one at a time.  He then clipped both sides together and cinched the large nylon strap. 

“How does it feel?”

She wiggled back and forth.  “Good.  But heavy.”

“It’s only a few pounds heavier but probably feels like a lot more.”  Juan turned her around and reached under the vest’s edges to make sure nothing was caught.  With his fingertips, he felt for the wires under the thick material and made sure they traced cleanly back to the batteries.  He turned her back around.  “All right.”

They both looked down at Dulce, who was still watching.

“Here’s the on-off switch,” he said, pointing to the front left side.  “Pretty close to where the old one was.  The microphone is here, as far from the speaker as we could get it.  And the video camera is right here in the middle.”  He stepped back and pointed his arm straight at her torso.  “Try to face Dulce straight on when you talk to her.  Otherwise the camera may not pick it up.”

“Okay.”  DeeAnn placed her finger lightly on the power switch.  “Now?”

Juan nodded.  “Now.”

The switch clicked easily and a soft blue LED light illuminated the plastic switch.  To minimize power consumption, it was the only indicator light on the vest.

Behind them, near the front, Alves rose from his seat and shuffled closer to watch.

With one more nod from Juan, DeeAnn cleared her throat and spoke loudly.  “Hello, Dulce.”

Her grin faded quickly when nothing came back out of the speaker.  She started to say something else when Juan cut her off, motioning to her to stay quiet.   Finally, almost thirty seconds later, the speaker broadcast the familiar pattern.

Dulce quickly rose to her feet with a giant grin.  She gripped the steel bars and rocked back and forth while replying.  The delay was as long as DeeAnn’s.

Me love Mommy.

DeeAnn exhaled with obvious relief.  “How are you?” she said, waiting.

Me happy now.

DeeAnn smiled and turned to Juan, who winked back at her.  “Not bad for a couple of yahoos.”

They both laughed.  It was a favorite phrase of Lee’s.  Next to both of them, Alves was also grinning widely.

“Well done, Mr. Diaz.  Well done.”

“Thank you.  I’m not done, but this will do until we get to your place.  I’ll see if I can tweak it a little more, but the slowness is mostly due to the system’s limited processing power.”

“Understandable,” Alves nodded, as if he understood what Juan had just said.  “But still impressive.”

Both men watched as DeeAnn sat back down onto her seat somewhat awkwardly.  She twisted her body to accommodate the stiff vest and leaned in close to the bars of the cage.  She reached in and grabbed Dulce’s hand.  “Are you okay?”

Yes.
  She looked excited. 
We fly like bird.

“Yes, we are flying like the birds.”

After a short silence, Dulce seemed to look around curiously. 
Me need potty.

DeeAnn nodded and stood back up.  She twisted the small metal knob and swung the door outward.  Dulce was gently led out by DeeAnn’s hand before heading toward the restroom.  “Gentlemen,” she announced.  “We’ll be right back.”

Juan watched them make their way forward to a large door, which DeeAnn held open for Dulce. 

He was worried.  One of the strange translation errors had already shown up on the new vest during testing.

He hoped their trip would be short.  And that they could make a difference helping to find DeeAnn’s friend Luke.  Because the errors were increasing.  And if he and Lee couldn’t fix them soon, it had the potential to quickly undo
all
the translation progress DeeAnn and Dulce had made together.  In other words, IMIS would have to be reprogrammed from scratch.

26

While Clay peered through a pair of 8x30mm military binoculars, Caesare silently unwrapped an energy bar and slipped the foil wrapper deep into his pack.  After making it back to the hotel room and grabbing their gear, they headed west to the edge of town where they waited patiently out of sight.

After the sun went down, the two spotted a building set far enough back for them to be discreet.  They watched a few patrols drive by before quickly passing through the shadows and climbing up the back ladder of the two-story structure.  From the top of the roof, they had a clear, if perhaps distant, view of the Chinese ship, which remained motionless at the water’s edge.

“Anything?”  Caesare took another bite and looked around at the other rooftops, scanning for movement.

“Nope,” Clay said, adjusting the binoculars.  “There isn’t the slightest movement on or inside that ship.  Fascinating.”

Caesare checked the faint red glow of his watch.  “We still have a little while yet.”  After taking another bite of his bar, he looked behind them once more before settling down again below the rim of the roof.  “You know, this reminds me of that time in Haiti.”

Clay smiled from behind the glasses.  “Without the gunfire.”

Caesare lay down and propped a broad arm behind his head.  He then examined the area around him.  “This roof is cleaner too.  It’s like the Ritz.”

Caesare looked up at a large patch of cloud passing overhead.  As it passed by, the stars behind it blinked back into existence one by one.  “I have to admit, John, there are a few things I still miss from the old days.”

“Yeah, same here.”

Neither of them had to say anything.  They still remembered their first few years together very clearly.  Although the mission in Haiti was the turning point for both of them, as well as a few fellow SEAL members.

The real “Operation Uphold Democracy” was very different from how it was explained to the media.  Even though originally designed as a combat mission, it was billed as little more than a peacekeeping operation.  The mission, as understood by the public, was to remove the regime that staged a coup in Haiti a few years earlier and overthrew the country’s president.  What was not known was that the new regime knew something the public didn’t, and as the situation continued to erode, the United States decided it had to neutralize a risk, urgently.

The secret was that the bloody coup had been quietly instigated by the U.S., the very country who was now trying to get rid of a regime that was quickly losing support from its own citizens.  Of course, both the media and the history books would report that the deployment of over twenty thousand peacekeeping troops eventually helped persuade the regime to step down.  However, the truth was far less diplomatic.  The primary driver, known only to a select few, was two Navy SEAL teams who silently found the head of the regime one night and eliminated him.  Yet, while the public was none the wiser, it was the last straw for several of the SEAL team members.  They’d had enough of cleaning up messes, particularly those created by idiotic politicians and an incompetent CIA.

Less than an hour later, Clay and Caesare heard what they were looking for, long before they saw them.  And they were right on schedule.  The rumbling of the trucks trudging down the hill in low gear was unmistakable.  It took another several minutes to see the first flashes of headlights through the canopy of trees.  Almost a mile out, the trucks emerged from the forest and reaching the bottom of the hill.  Their engines roared louder as they picked up speed.  Both Clay and Caesare watched intently, their eyes just over the lip of the roof.

There were six again, just as they’d seen on the satellite footage.  All in a tight single file line.  The lead truck veered toward the water, as did the others, and then followed along the river toward the ship.  As they passed the old buildings, Clay and Caesare studied them carefully.

“Three axle and armor plated.  Looks like Ural Typhoons.”

“These guys don’t mess around,” Caesare responded.

“That means protected armor and glass.  And bulletproof tires.  Not what I was hoping for.”

“Yeah, I was hoping for something more like…Chinese quality.”

Clay followed each truck.  “Unfortunately, I don’t think any of these are going to fall apart on us anytime soon.”

Both men fell silent and watched the short line of trucks continue along the river, just as the bright lights came on aboard the corvette ship.  They both remained motionless, with their heads and binoculars barely above the roofline.  They watched the first truck eventually slow, and then turn around.  It backed up into place, stopping at the bottom of the wide gangway. 

“No back-up beepers,” mused Caesare.  “Isn’t that illegal?”

As the first truck shifted into park, the rest remained in their single file line, idling with headlights still on.  Moments later, a small group of silhouettes emerged from the dark shroud around the ship to assist with the mysterious crates.

After each truck was unloaded, it was driven to a dark building not far from Clay and Caesare.  A tall metal door opened and the rear end of a much larger tanker truck became visible.  One by one, each Ural Typhoon stopped in front of the door for refueling.  What neither Clay nor Caesare had spotted on Borger’s monitor previously was that while each truck’s tank was being refilled, more empty crates emerged from the darkened building and were quickly loaded into the back of each Typhoon.

“They’re efficient, I’ll give them that.”

“Agreed.”  Clay turned his binoculars back to the ship where the last truck was being unloaded.  They had noticed something earlier that Clay was trying to get a better look at now through the glare of the corvette’s bright lights.  The silhouettes of the sailors moved methodically back and forth, but standing on a higher part of the ship was a single individual who wasn’t moving at all.  Instead, he appeared to be watching the others, or maybe supervising them.

It was something else they had not noticed in the ARGUS footage.  The person, who appeared slightly taller than the rest, was watching the transfer of crates very carefully.  However, with one of the bright lights directly behind him, his face remained unseen.

Several minutes later, after the last Typhoon truck had reached the abandoned building for more fuel, the lights on and around the corvette instantly blinked out.  The only light remaining was from the headlights of the trucks themselves, five of which had already headed back up the hill.

When the last truck had departed, the metal door was lowered, and the area plunged back into darkness and silence.

“Well,
that
was interesting.”

Caesare watched the tail lights of the last truck finally disappear into the distance.  “How far would you say those trucks can make it on a full tank of gas?”

Clay shrugged.  “Uphill, with all that armor, maybe three hundred miles.  They wouldn’t use much gas coming down.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

A few hundred yards away, silence swept over the Chinese ship again as it rocked almost imperceptibly in the darkness.  The mysterious man standing above the others watched his men disappear again below deck.  He dropped his cigarette and mashed it out with the tip of his boot.

Lieutenant Wang Chao turned around and studied the bright lights of Georgetown less than a mile away.  He marveled at how well the government had kept the area clear given such a large nearby population. 
Money spoke
, he thought.

Chao then turned and focused on the small group of lights further out at sea.  It was a United States ship.  A science vessel, he’d been told.  Chao displayed a tight grin.  He was surprised it had taken the U.S. so long.  But it didn’t matter.  They had arrived too late.  Soon Chao, his team, and their loaded ship would all be gone.

27

General Zhang Wei stared absently at his desk as he laid the phone handset back into its cradle.  In his late fifties, with cool eyes and close-cropped gray hair, he was not a man to get excited too soon.  But he couldn’t help but smile now.  They had done it. 

Lieutenant Chao had confirmed it.  They were now days from completion, and the small science ship sent by the U.S. had only just arrived.  They were far too late.  Wei could not have hoped for a better result, especially since they expected, in all probability, to be discovered far earlier.  It was a risk that had paid off handsomely.  There was now nothing standing in their way.  They had made the find of the century and with virtually no international contention at all.  Yet when the world found out what the Chinese now possessed, it would leave them utterly shocked.

However, along with the good news from Chao came the unfortunate end to a problem that General Wei had known would have to be dealt with eventually.  He reached forward and picked up the remote control to a large television screen on his wall.  He powered it on and selected the special input feed he’d watched many times before. 

The picture came to life displaying a dismal gray cell at an unidentified location, deep underground.  In the corner was a small cot with a figure resting on top.  His back was facing the camera.

The General stared silently at the screen.  The truth was he felt a small amount of sympathy for the man.  His name was Zang, and he had done his country the highest honor of anyone perhaps in China’s entire three thousand year history.  Even more difficult, Zang was a true patriot.  He had returned to China with one of man’s greatest discoveries, wanting only to enrich the country he loved so much. 

In addition, it was clear from the hours of videotaped interrogation that he had absolutely no idea what he’d done wrong, or why he was being held captive.  How could anyone who delivered a gift like his be treated so poorly?  Zang could only imagine that there had been a terrible mistake.  Perhaps the authorities thought he was trying to use this find to his own advantage: to leverage some kind of deal or payment.  It was the only thing that made sense.

General Wei had watched for hours the barrage of questions put to Zang.  The patriot never wavered from his explanation.  More importantly, Zang showed himself to be wholly unable to think independently from the explanation his mind had created.  At one point, Wei watched Zang try to ask if something was wrong with his explanation: whether the government had been unable to locate the find in Guyana.

Wei lit a cigarette at his desk and continued staring at Zang’s cell.  The problem wasn’t that they could not find Zang’s discovery.  It was the opposite.  They
had
found it, right where he said it was.  And it was the very same reason that in a few days, Lieutenant Chao would have to kill every single one of his men in Guyana.

Wei picked up the phone and dialed.  When the call was answered, he spoke softly and clearly, “End it.”

When the door to Zang’s cell swung quietly open, General Wei held up the remote and turned the television off.  Less than sixty seconds later, Zang was dead.