Shadow Catcher (21 page)

CHAPTER 44

N
ovak strained his mind to filter the fog. He was with Anja again, in their small apartment in Sincheng. Her homemade Christmas decorations hung from the walls and over the door. Several open gifts still lay under the tree.

He knew he was dreaming. Over the past few days, he'd come to realize that the dreams were part of his body's defense mechanism, a way of forcing him to rest. But these were more than dreams; they were vivid memories. Somehow, in order to heal, his mind had to escape its present suffering by regressing to the past. At least, that's what he told himself. Maybe he was just going crazy. Maybe this was what people with dementia experienced inside their heads. He didn't care. Despite the knowledge that there were real threats in the real world, Novak released his mind into fantasy.

He watched Anja happily putter around the kitchen, preparing one of the sweet-smelling hors d'oeuvres that she loved to fix for him. In marriage, she had shown him more ways to love than he could ever have imagined. Her devotion carried so far beyond the physical. From Washington, DC, to Taiwan, no matter where they lived, Anja made a home for them. Her efforts allowed him to feel normal, even while living a life that was far from it.

In Poland, Anja's whole life revolved around the photo analysis shop at Remote Icon. It was her contribution to the resistance, something she owed to the memory of her parents. Now, with the Słuzba Bezpieczenstwa thousands of miles behind her, photo analysis had become just a job. Each night, when they returned to the apartment, Anja did not slump into a chair, exhausted from the day. Rather, she brightened, throwing herself into the passion of creating and fueling something amazing. Them.

As the dream solidified, Novak became aware of another presence. He discovered his friend Jozef seated beside him at the table, his eyes fixed in a thousand-mile stare. In this dreamlike state, Novak found it difficult to determine whether Starek was really lost in thought or was gazing at Anja. “I wish I could read your mind, my friend,” he said out loud.

Starek stirred and blinked at Novak. He looked at a loss for a moment and then settled into a concerned expression. “I was just thinking that it might be wise for you to reconsider this little sting operation of yours,” he said.

“Why? Don't you want to find the mole?”

Starek sighed and shook his head. “There
is
no mole. Every operation has its problems. It is Murphy's Law, right?”

“Is that what all the nationals are saying?”

“You know, you would do well to learn a little Mandarin yourself. It is good for our relations with them. Instead, you're going to alienate them by running a mission without their knowledge. They are smart people. They will realize your purpose.”

“That is a possibility I am willing to accept,” said Novak with finality.

Starek ignored the response. “What do you hope to accomplish? If we have a smooth mission that uncovers some Chinese secrets, do you really believe that will prove that the nationals are behind our failures?”

Novak frowned thoughtfully, staring past Starek to the picture of Washington, DC, on the wall behind him. “I'm sorry,” he said regretfully.

“Sorry for what?”

Novak looked his friend in the eye again. “I have not told you everything about our mission. I fully expect that it will go smoothly, and I do not believe that such a mission guarantees there is a mole among our nationals.” He paused as Anja brought a platter of blueberry pierogi to the table. He looked up at her. She gave him a comforting smile and nodded. Novak took a long breath and continued. “The whole thing is a trap for the supervisor in charge.”

Starek set down the dumpling he had just stabbed with his fork. “Explain.”

“I have suspected Wright for a while. We have the same troubles here that we had in Poland, and he is the most obvious link. There is a chance that it might be the director of photo analysis, but I can't be certain. Whoever it is, the mole is almost certain to do whatever he can to give us a smooth mission. That will implicate the nationals and divert attention away from him. To that end, he will have to communicate with his Chinese contacts.”

“So?” said Starek with a skeptical look.

“Let me finish. The mole can't use a messenger because that would take too long, and all the phone lines are monitored. That only leaves the radio. And thanks to the big mountain in the middle of the island, only one kind of radio is going to reach the mainland.”

“HF,” said Starek quietly.

“Exactly. Wright, or whoever the mole is, has to be running the set out of his room or his office—those are the safest places to keep it—but I can't get into either to check.” Novak paused and took a bite of pierogi.

“So?” prompted Starek again.

“So I sort of requisitioned two SIGINT payloads from our pod shop. I modified them to record directional hits from an HF signal and placed them several hundred meters apart. They have enough juice to run for a few days. With any luck, we already have a few hits.”

“The crossing directional intercepts from the two pods will pinpoint the source of the radio signals,” said Starek.

“Exactly. X marks the spot.”

“Haven't you checked it? You might already have enough hits.”

“No, I don't want the mole to get suspicious. If he catches me heading out to the payloads, the game is up. I must be patient. I'll go after the mission. Then we're almost guaranteed to have the evidence we need.”

“Where did you hide them?” asked Starek.

Novak smiled and slowly shook his finger back and forth. “You'll have to wait. When we get back, we can go out and look together.” Novak checked his watch. “Speaking of going out . . .”

Starek jumped up from the table. “Biyu!” he said, smacking his head with the palm of his hand.

Novak laughed. Starek had forgotten about his late date with his new girlfriend.

Starek bowed slightly to Anja. “Pardon my hasty departure. The pierogi was lovely, better than my mother could make, but don't ever tell her I said that.”

Anja smiled warmly. “Go. We wouldn't want to come between you and your girl.”

“No,” called Starek over his shoulder as he opened the apartment door. “Friends should never do that.”

The sound of the door slamming shut shocked Novak back to reality. He stood up from the cot he'd been sitting on. Had the noise just been a part of the memory, or was it a manifestation of a sound in the real world? He crept up to the cave entrance and listened.

Nothing.

In the dim glow from the radio's control head, Novak surveyed the state of his hideout. Several crates lay open, their contents scattered. Empty ration packs were strewn about the cave. He'd been eating the MREs for days and felt stronger for it. He chuckled to think that the unnatural twenty-five-year-old food served his body better than the filth served to him by the Chinese guards. How much more healthy would he feel if he could just have some of Anja's pierogi?

Anja.

Was she waiting for him? Was she even still alive? Novak looked at the nuclear-powered radio. He had come to hate it. Night and day he stared at it, waiting for a return message, but no reply came. How much longer could he wait here? The food rations could last for months, but he would run out of clean water within a week.

He really did feel stronger. Taiwan was no short trip across the strait, but it was possible—if he could only get to the coast. He bent down and tried to peer through the tunnel's camouflage into the night outside. What he wouldn't give for a set of night-vision goggles. He knew that the Chinese would have them. Day or night, it didn't matter: leaving the Palace was suicide.

Novak glanced around the cave again. So was staying there.

Quickly making up his mind, he sat down and put on a set of boots and camouflage fatigues from the Palace supplies. Then he strapped on a Skyhook survival vest and filled its pockets with dry socks, a few K-rations, and every water pack he could find.

After crawling through the low entrance and replacing its leafy camouflage, he turned to face the rain forest. A night bird screeched. The sound sent pain through his head. He forced himself to breathe. Using a compass tied to his vest, he found a heading southeast and took a step forward. “One . . .”

CHAPTER 45

A
Chinese soldier emerged from the forest to Nick's right, on the other side of the small meadow. He moved toward them with purpose, his pistol out and leveled. He wore the mottled camouflage of the People's Liberation Army Ground Force, the Chinese regular army.

“Keep calm, and follow my lead,” Nick whispered. He did not raise his hands or ready his MP7; instead, he turned nonchalantly to face the intruder. The soldier had an older-generation night-vision system mounted to his infantry helmet. Between his voice, the little he could see of his face, and the way the soldier carried himself, Nick assessed him to be very young, probably the equivalent of a private or a private first class. He walked to the center of the clearing to meet the young man, keeping his head still but actively scanning, searching the periphery for more soldiers. There were none.

“Halt!” the young man repeated.

Nick quickened his pace toward the intruder.
“Shuochu ni de xìngmíng hé danwèi!”
he said with authority, commanding the soldier to state his name and unit. He prayed he'd gotten the pronunciation correct. He had learned the phrase during a previous operation, but that was years ago. He intended to take advantage of an idiosyncrasy of Chinese culture. Young Chinese soldiers were not just obedient; they were submissive.

His plan also banked on the soldier's poor night-vision system. With an older model of Chinese goggles, the soldier wouldn't be able to distinguish Caucasian features from Asian, particularly with much of Nick's face covered. The older system could not break out the pattern of the American camouflage either. With any luck, this guy might think Nick was from one of China's myriad specialized units.
“Shuochu ni de xìngmíng hé danwèi!”
he said again, more forcefully.

The soldier slowed and lowered his weapon a few degrees, but he kept coming, rattling off a long string of Mandarin.

Nick had no idea what the man was saying. He took another gamble.
“Women shì tèzhong bùduì,”
he said, claiming that he was Chinese Special Forces. At least, he hoped that was what he said. He tried to feign indignation, but he found that difficult to do while maintaining an accent in a language he did not speak. With those last words, he had exhausted his reserve of Chinese military phrases.

The soldier replied with another string of Mandarin, this time in a defensive, subordinate tone. The ruse was working. He stopped and lowered his pistol until it pointed at the ground. In another second, Nick would be within striking distance.

Suddenly, he heard Quinn's voice in his comm device. “I've got him.”

Nick did not get the chance to argue. He saw the Chinese soldier jerk his head to the left and raise his pistol. At the same time, he heard three heavy spits. The soldier fell at his feet, gurgling and spitting blood. He grabbed desperately at the radio clipped to his shoulder, repeating the same phrase over and over—
“Tamen zài zhèli”
—but he never reached the transmitter.

There was no time to ask questions. Nick grabbed the soldier by his battle vest and dragged him into the trees on the other side of the meadow. By the time he laid him down and tore off the awkward helmet and goggles, the young soldier was dead. He stared sightlessly up at the dark forest canopy.

“What were you thinking?” asked Nick as Quinn jogged up beside him.

“I was thinking of saving your crazy hide!” retorted Quinn, his gun still leveled at the dead man. “What was your plan, to dupe him with pig Latin in a bad Chinese accent?”

“You can holster your weapon, hero. He's dead.”

“Good.”

“Not good,” Nick countered. “We could have gotten information out of him. We didn't have to kill him.”

“Of course we had to kill him. The only response to unexpected contact during a black operation is to kill; otherwise, you risk discovery.” Quinn rattled off the sentence as if he were reading from a textbook.

“Real-world ops aren't so black and white,” said Nick. “This guy wasn't a real threat to us. He wasn't a terrorist, and he wasn't involved in some genocidal battle. He was a kid just like you, following orders during peacetime.” He closed the young man's eyes and stood up. “He was probably ordered to search the forest for the escaped prisoner.”

“If he was searching for one escapee in prison rags, then why didn't he seem more surprised to see two armed Americans in full combat gear?” asked Quinn.

Nick made no response. He hadn't thought of that. He lifted his goggles and rubbed his eyes. The rest he got on the Wraith could not make up for weeks of poor sleep, and he knew it. He was beginning to feel the mind-numbing effects of exhaustion. Maybe the kid was right. “I don't know, Quinn,” he replied honestly. “I don't know.”

CHAPTER 46

A
message indicating that the Palace lay just ahead of him flashed in Nick's goggles, a welcome sight. Hiding the body of the Chinese soldier had put them further behind schedule. In addition, Nick had slowed the pace considerably, moving forward in sweeps to search for other patrols, but there were no more contacts. Now, with the Palace in sight, his frustration and exhaustion started to ebb away. In a few more minutes, they could reclaim Novak for the United States and then spirit him back to Shadow Catcher for a predawn launch back to the Wraith.

Nick scanned the area slowly, unwilling to leave the last stretch to chance. He would rather take an extra minute or two now than be caught by hostile forces just a few feet from the objective. Their path looked clear. He slowly rose from his crouched position and motioned Quinn to follow. They crept forward with their MP7s at the ready, scanning their respective fields of fire. Finally, the two of them stood on either side of the low cave entrance, masked by a tangle of fresh tree branches.

“Someone has definitely been here recently,” said Nick, carefully lifting one of the branches free and feeling its leaves. They were pliable, not dry and brittle as they should have been if the cave had not been used for many years. “These leaves are still green. This cover was placed within the last couple of days.”

Quinn kept scanning the surrounding forest. “Yeah, well, let's hope he's in there.”

Nick quietly removed the branches, unslung his MP7, and ducked inside. He crawled through the low entrance with his weapon in front of him, ready to fire. For all he knew, there might be a platoon of Chinese waiting on the inside.

“Hello?” said Nick, springing to his feet inside the cave. There was no answer. He removed an infrared flashlight from his vest and shined it around the enclosure, further illuminating the scene for his goggles. He saw no prisoner, no body, and no other rooms, only a small cave littered with ration packs and old supplies.

Nick set his MP7 down on a crate and helped Quinn to his feet. “He's gone.”

“He can't be.” Quinn jerked his arm away and drew his XDm pistol, scanning the cave with the infrared light mounted on its rail. “Where else would he be?”

“My guess is that he got tired of waiting,” replied Nick. He walked deeper into the cave to get a better look. After examining several of the spent rations that lay on the floor, he found a good sign. Smears of tomato sauce still covered the torn polypropylene coated foil of one of the packets. He removed a glove and picked it up, running his index finger through the sauce and rubbing it against his thumb. “The sauce in this MRE hasn't dried out yet.” He held his fingers to his nose and smelled the sharp scent of garlic and basil. “Yeah, it's still fresh, if you can ever say that about an MRE. My guess is that he hasn't been gone more than a few hours, if that. We need to get out there and find him. But first I've got to check in.”

Nick activated his comm implant's connection to Drake. “Wraith, this is Shadow One.”

An intermittent voice replied, masked by heavy static. Nick could not make out the words.

“Wraith, I need you to boost your signal. We're in a cave.”

After a few moments, Drake's voice came through. “Shadow One, this is Wraith. How do you hear me now?”

Nick breathed a sigh of relief. At least the comms were holding up. Once they failed, everything usually went to pot very quickly. “Loud and clear, Wraith. It's good to hear your voice.”

A moment later, McBride joined Drake on the comm line. “Shadow One, this is Lighthouse.”

“Got you loud and clear too, Lighthouse. Where's the Old Man?” he asked, wondering why Walker hadn't come up on the line.

“He's taking a coffee break, but I can tell you that he's not happy. You've been on the ground for an hour and a half. You are way behind schedule. What's the holdup?”

Nick gave both of them a brief summary of the mission since leaving Shadow Catcher. He focused on the encounter with the lone Chinese soldier.

“It's odd that you only encountered one,” interjected McBride. “PLA patrols usually go out in groups of five.”

“We thought the same thing,” replied Nick, “but we didn't find any others. Not a soul. There's something else that I need you to look into for me. After Quinn took him down, the soldier went for his radio. He kept repeating the same phrase:
Tamen zài zhèli
.”

“Stand by, Shadow One.”

Nick waited while McBride looked up his question on Romeo Seven's network. It only took a few moments.

“Are you sure he said
tamen
and not
ta zài zhèli
?” asked the intelligence analyst.

“Affirmative, Lighthouse. He said it several times. I got a good sampling.”

There was a long pause. Nick could almost hear the wheels turning in McBride's head. “What did you find?” he asked cautiously.

“It means, ‘They are here,'” said McBride slowly. “Shadow, do you want to abort?”

Nick remained silent for several moments.

“I don't understand,” said Quinn. “What's going on?”

Nick moved deeper into the cave, sounding out his thoughts as he walked. “The soldier said, ‘They are here,' not ‘He is here' or ‘I found him.' He wasn't looking for a single escaped prisoner. He was looking for
us
. That was why he spoke English when he told us to stop.” He turned and faced the entrance, half expecting Chinese soldiers to begin pouring through. “This whole thing is a trap.”

“I don't like this, Shadow,” said Drake. “I only have enough fuel to loiter for a few more hours. We don't have tanker support for the return trip, and launching an alert tanker out of Guam would raise too many questions. You don't know where this guy is or if he's even real. You need to get out of there.”

“Wait. This doesn't make sense.” Nick scanned the cave again. The open crates, the disheveled cot, the freshly opened rations—all of it added up to a refugee hiding out. And where were the enemy soldiers? If this was a trap, they would have already moved in and captured them both. Instead, he and Quinn found one random soldier roaming the woods and took him down without a fight.

Nick took in a short breath. He suddenly understood. They weren't competing against the entire Chinese military; they were competing against just one unit, one that didn't seem to want the rest to know what it was doing. “No, Lighthouse,” he said finally. “We're going to stay. Novak is real. He's down here somewhere, and we need to know what these people are up to. Trap or no trap, we're not leaving.”

“Belay that!” said Quinn. “We need to get back to Shadow Catcher and . . .”

The kid kept going, but Nick talked over him. “Shut him up, Drake,” he ordered. A short tone sounded on the line as Drake severed Quinn's signal from the comms. Nick could still hear his rant, but at least the kid's voice no longer rang in his ear.

“Some team management issues?” asked Drake.

“I'll handle him,” replied Nick. “And one more thing, Lighthouse.”

“Go ahead,” said McBride.

“I don't like the direction this is going. Wulóng spoke of control before he threatened Luke. Maybe he really wasn't there to kill me. If this whole thing is a trap, then maybe his job was to hold my family hostage and get me to hand Shadow Catcher or Wraith over to the Chinese during the mission. There might be other operatives in DC. I need you to pick up Katy and Luke and bring them in to Romeo Seven.”

“The colonel won't like it. That's a lot of paperwork.”

“I don't care if he fires me for it. Too many things aren't adding up. Whoever is behind all this has already shown that they know where I live. I'm not willing to leave my wife and kid exposed out there.”

“Lighthouse copies. I'll take care of it.”

“Thanks,” said Nick. “Shadow out.”

The hair on the back of Nick's neck suddenly stood up. He slowly turned and found that he was staring down the long suppressor of Quinn's XDm pistol. Nick raised his hands. “You are so fired.”

“Call him back,” said Quinn angrily. “Call him back and tell him that we are headed for Shadow Catcher right now. Tell him to get ready to pick us up. We'll be airborne in an hour.”

Nick wished he could see Quinn's eyes behind the goggles. He heard no fear in the kid's voice, only anger. The pararescueman seemed to believe that he was doing the right thing. “Back down, Quinn. I'm not calling anyone,” he said with icy calm.

Quinn kept the pistol perfectly steady. “Yes, you are. We're not going to stay here and walk directly into a Chinese trap. If we do that, we're going to hand them Shadow Catcher and all of its stealth. Call him back.” He pressed the suppressor into Nick's forehead. “Do it.”

The press of the gun into his skin was more than Nick was willing to take from the rookie. He rapidly brought his raised hands together under the pistol, shoving the weapon up and right while jerking his head down and left. He heard a spit as the XDm discharged a round. The bullet ricocheted off the cave wall and slammed into the radio control head, sending up a shower of sparks. Nick spun, intending to trap the kid's shoulder under his biceps and slam his face into the wall. But Quinn recovered too quickly. With stunning agility, the pararescueman muscled out of the hold and ran up the wall, flipping backward over his head.

The move shocked Nick, but it did little to undermine his advantage. During the fancy escape, Quinn had to let go of his weapon, which Nick now held by the barrel. The pararescueman landed swinging and caught Nick in the jaw with a powerful left hook, but he had to thrust out his right hand to keep his balance, exposing his temple. Nick shook off the hit and swung the pistol at the kid's head. Quinn let out a surprised grunt and then crumpled to the floor.

Nick ejected the XDm's clip, cleared the round from the chamber, and tossed the weapon onto Quinn's chest. He massaged his throbbing jaw and spat a spoonful of blood at the unconscious pararescueman. “Flip over that, junior.”