Wall of Night (51 page)

“Your country is preparing to conduct a full-scale invasion of Russia.”

“I know of no—”

“I'm offering you a chance to put a stop to it before it's too late.”

“Me? I have no authority to—”

“I realize that. But you can forward my offer to your premier.” Lahey gestured to the phone beside the ambassador's elbow. “Simply pick up the phone and the call will be put through.”

The ambassador chuckled. “And what do I tell him—that you want him to call off an imaginary invasion? I can't do that.”

Lahey stared hard at him for several seconds, then looked over his shoulder at Dutcher. “Leland, if you would.” Dutcher walked down the table, laid a sheet of paper before the ambassador, then returned. “If you'll look, Mr. Ambassador, you'll see that sheet lists twelve latitude and longitude coordinates. Each represents a secret underground air base your government has built in the Hingaan Mountains.”

Lahey pressed a button in the tabletop and one of the wall's panels retracted, revealing a sixty-inch television monitor. Centered on the screen was a black-and-white image of the Mongolian salient and Hingaan Mountains.

“The bases in question are highlighted by the red circles you see, labeled one through twelve. Each facility holds some eighty to one hundred transport planes and over eight thousand airborne troops—all awaiting the order to drop into Siberia.”

“I don't see anything,” the ambassador replied. “This is nonsense.”

Lahey folded his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Again, Mr. Ambassador, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Pick up the phone and relay our terms to your premier. If your government fails to do as we ask, we'll destroy each of these bases in turn, then move on to the PLA's command and control facilities.”

The ambassador spread his hands. “Mr. President, I—”

“I won't ask again.”

“I cannot help you.”

Lahey punched a button on his phone. “General Cathermeier, are you there?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Proceed with the first target.”

“Stand by.” Twenty seconds passed. “First salvo en route. Impact in forty-two seconds.”

“Very well.” Lahey turned to the ambassador. “Keep your eye on the easternmost base, Mr. Ambassador.”

Cathermeier called, “Twenty seconds to impact.”

The ambassador said, “What am I—”

“Just watch.”

The image shimmered, then refocused, tightening on the red circle labeled “1.”

“What am I looking for?” said the ambassador. “All I see is what looks like a … quarry.”

Cathermeier's voice: “Ten seconds … five … four … three … two … one.”

On the screen, a black speck suddenly appeared in the center of the red circle. Then two more, then five. Within ten seconds, the white area within the circle was filled with dark specks. In slow motion, a grayish cloud began spreading outward from the circle's perimeter. The smoke cleared, revealing a rubble-filled crater.

The ambassador's mouth worked, but no words came out.

Lahey said, “Mr. Ambassador, the rubble inside that crater is all that remains of a division of airborne troops, their planes, and the base's six hundred support personnel. There are eleven more facilities like this one, and we'll destroy each of them in turn until the invasion is halted.”

“This is a trick.”

“No.”

“You're bluffing, then.”

His eyes never leaving the ambassador's, Lahey said, “General Cathermeier?”

“Sir.”

“Prepare the second package.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Wait!” the ambassador cried. He stared openmouthed at the screen. “My God … That's truly an air base? That crater was …”

“Yes.”

“Lord, what have you done?”

“Nothing compared to what we're prepared to do, Mr. Ambassador. Your country's little adventure in Siberia is over. The only question that remains is, How many Chinese soldiers and airmen have to die before your government realizes it?”

The ambassador tore his eyes from the screen and looked at Lahey. He closed his eyes for a moment, then reached for the phone.

China's invasion of Russia ended with a whimper.

Alerted to the alleged demise of their base, PLAAF surveillance planes were quickly dispatched to the area. The pictures they returned with were quickly sent up the chain of command and landed on the desk of the premier two hours after Toothpick's first salvo.

The cornerstone to their Rubicon gambit, the PLA's decade-long marvel of engineering had in the space of ten seconds been turned into a crater. Every blade of grass, every tree, every slab of concrete was dust. Not a single aircraft or soldier survived.

Further satellite and aerial reconnaissance showed no evidence that nuclear weapons were involved; rescue workers found no signs of radiation. Nothing could explain the utter destruction that had befallen their installations—nothing but the ambassador's testimony that the United States caused it.

With no other course left open, the premier acceded to David Lahey's terms.

Two days later, under the watchful eyes of Russian and American strike aircraft orbiting above, the troops and support personnel of the remaining eleven bases were shuttled south to Beijing, two airplanes at a time.

With the images being transmitted to PLA headquarters in Beijing, the remaining underground bases, now ghost towns, were one by one destroyed by Toothpick's deadly rain.

Spared the brunt of the explosion by Mike Skeldon's sacrifice, Ian Cahil survived with only a broken collarbone, several dozen scrapes', and some bruises. Twelve hours after clawing his way out of the partially collapsed vent tunnel, he drove Skeldon's truck to a village called Tas-Yuryakh sixty miles east of Chono Dam and pulled to a stop before a ramshackle hut that served as the village's general store, barbershop, and administration building, and walked inside.

The proprietor, a toothless old man smoking a pipe, gaped at him.

Putting on what he hoped was his most amiable smile, Bear cleared his throat and said, “Can you please tell me where the nearest phone is? I seem to be a little lost.”

Intimidated by
Columbia's
timely and dramatic appearance in front of them, the soldiers in pursuit of Jurens and his team stopped and began circling at a distance as the commander in charge pondered his next step. To nudge him in the right direction, Archie Kinsock called out his twelve-man Security Alert Team, which emerged from the fore and aft escape trunks, trotted to the foredeck, and snapped into parade rest formation, M-16's held across their bodies.

Eyeing each other across the water—Kinsock standing on
Columbia's
monolithic fairwater, the Russian commander at the stem of wooden skiff—the two men came to an unspoken agreement.
Columbia's
raft was sent across to Jurens and his team, who were pulled aboard and ferried back.

Columbia's
escape from Russian territorial waters was a close-run race. Alerted to her presence by the Federation ground commander at Nakhodka-Vostochny, the Krivak frigate and two Osa patrol boats to the northeast came about and headed down the coast at flank speed and were soon joined by the lone Akula
Columbia
had encountered days before.

With the pursuers closing the noose around his boat and no chance of evading them, Kinsock sent a flash message to the NMCC reporting their situation. What he wouldn't know until days later was that General Cathermeier had already informed Marshal Beskrovny about
Columbia's
peril. Aware that
Columbia
had played a role—albeit an involuntary one—in the destruction of Nakhodka but determined to avoid the war China was so desperately trying to manufacture, Beskrovny sent his own flash message to his Far East District Commander. With both the Krivak and Akula closing to within firing range of
Columbia,
each captain got the same baffling yet unequivocal order: Let the American submarine pass unmolested.

Four hours after rising off the bottom,
Columbia,
tooling along on the surface at four knots, exited Russian territorial waters, where she was met by
Cheyenne,
dispatched from the
Stennis
group to serve as her escort. An hour later an SH-60 Seahawk from
Stennis
picked up an unconscious but stable Smitty and flew him to the carrier for treatment.

Jurens and Dickie, both uninjured but sick at heart, remained aboard
Columbia
to see Zee's body back to Pearl, where they were met by his wife, his four-year-old son and two-year-old daughter.

As for Sunil Dhar, he was met pierside by two men in dark suits who ushered him into the back of a nondescript government sedan and whisked away.

Rappahannock River

In the end, it had been a bizarre confluence of irony and luck that had saved Tanner's life.

The first bullet had torn through his right buttock, missing his pelvic bone by a quarter inch, then blasted out of the front of his thigh. The second shot was more serious, having entered his lower back and cutting a ragged groove through both his diaphragm and spleen before exiting his abdomen.

Already slipping into shock, Tanner's plunge into the icy water pushed him toward the edge of hypothermia, slowing both his respiration and circulation as his body began to instinctively shut down nonessential systems. The snow he'd packed around his wound further slowed the bleeding of his ruptured spleen. By the time Hsiao pulled him aboard the helicopter, Tanner's heartbeat and respiration were nearly undetectable.

His stroke of luck came in the form of Novotroitskoye's base doctor, a former army field surgeon who'd served during the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. He'd seen and treated the worst of wounds in the worst of conditions. Upon seeing Tanner, he wasted no time, bypassing traditional treatment methods for those he'd successfully used so many times on the battlefield.

Keeping Tanner in a limbo of near-hypothermia, the doctor packed the major arteries in his arms and legs in ice, then took him straight to surgery, repairing the gash in his diaphragm and removing his spleen in a record thirty-four minutes. As the last stitch was closed, he ordered Tanner transferred to a warming table, covered with blankets, and pumped full of intravenous fluids.

For two days Briggs lay unconscious, his lungs and heart pumping at bare sustenance levels.

As the doctor predicted, on the third day Tanner's natural healing system took over and he regained consciousness. “Welcome back,” the doctor said with a smile.

Tanner blinked his eyes open. “Where am I?” he rasped.

“Under the care of the greatest doctor in all of Siberia, that's where.”

“Glad to hear it. How long have I—”

“Three days. This afternoon we'll have you up and walking—with a cane, mind you—and by the end of the week you'll be well enough to leave for your cell at the
gulag.
”

“What?”

“Just a joke.” ‘

“Very funny.”

The doctor shrugged. “As I understand it, there's an American transport plane waiting for you.”

“Where are my—”

“Friends? They're outside, waiting to see you.”

“They're okay?”

“Compared to you, they're Olympians.”

Tanner nodded, then laid his head back and closed his eyes. “Good.”

Twenty days after entering China, Tanner was back home.

Kam Hsiao and Han Soong were secreted in a luxurious CIA safe house in rural Maryland, where they would spend the next few months, after which both would receive new identities, homes, and vocations if they so chose. Either way, Dick Mason said, both men would never want for anything again. Along with Tanner, Cahil, Mike Skeldon, and Charlie Latham, Soong and Hsiao had helped prevent what could have easily become the third world war.

Kyung Xiang had vanished. As Tanner and the others were en route back to Novotroitskoye, the base commander had ordered a pair of Havoc helicopter gunships loaded with soldiers back to the Bira River. Xiang, his remaining paratroopers, and Lian Soong were gone, as was Xiang's Hind. The Hoplite pilot was found alive in the cabin where they'd left him and was returned to the border.

In subsequent meetings between the U.S.-Russian delegation and its Chinese counterpart, questions about Xiang were deflected with the vague comment, “Former-director Xiang is unavailable at this time.” Recognizing diplomatic subtlety when they saw it, State Department analysts took it to mean Xiang had either already been executed, or he was already locked away in a dank
laogi
cell.

For Tanner's part, he spent his first days home savoring hot showers, home-cooked meals, dry clothes, and a bed with soft sheets and thick blankets. After his time in China, each experience seemed new. He vowed to never take such amenities for granted again.

All in all, he decided, it felt good to be alive.

It was just after dusk when Tanner arrived home from his second-to-last physical therapy session. Though the damage to his leg was neither permanent nor disabling, the bullet had badly torn muscles and tendons in its passage. Tanner had rid himself of the cane the previous week and now walked with only a slight limp. Ignoring warnings to the contrary, he'd started swimming in the mornings and running in the evenings—or as Cahil had called it, “hobble-jogging.” Tanner found every stroke and step painful, but each day he awoke feeling a bit more like himself.

He pulled into the driveway behind the lighthouse, got out, then grabbed the mail from the box and walked around the deck to the back door. A wind was coming up and he could smell rain in the air. The hanging baskets swung in the breeze.

Leaving the screen door open for some fresh air, he dropped the mail on the kitchen counter then checked his voice mail. There was one message: Oaken had found Andrew Galbreth Hadin's descendants. His three great-grandchildren, the oldest of whom was the director of the Hadin Museum, all lived in Long Island, New York.

“I didn't contact them,” Oaken said. “Thought you'd like to do that yourself. Anyway, gimme a call when you get a chance, and I'll give you the info. Bye.”

Tanner almost hated parting with Hadin's diary; it had been his constant companion over the past several weeks as he'd sat in the hospital's whirlpool or laid for hours as the flexor machine stretched and contorted his leg. He read and reread the diary from cover to cover, each time feeling a bit closer to Hadin. Their stumbling upon the
Priscilla
had not only saved their lives, but possibly hundreds of thousands of others as well. In a way, Hadin was again the dashing hero, albeit eighty years after his death.

Tanner grabbed an apple from the fridge, then shuffled through the mail. Bills, junk mail, a mailer insisting that he “may already be a winner” … and a padded, manila envelope. He checked the front; there was no return address. He tore open the top.

Inside was a black, unlabeled, VHS tape.

Curious now, he took the tape into the living room, slipped it into the VCR, then grabbed the remote and hit Play. There was ten seconds of blackness, then the picture swam into focus. A dark object swung before the lens. The camera retreated until he recognized it: a shoe.

The angle widened and began to pan upward.

“Good God,” Tanner murmured.

The shoes had feet in them. The camera skimmed up past a pair of calves, then thighs and torso, then finally to the neck and face.

Briggs felt his stomach heave into his throat.
Oh,
God.
No,
no
…

Suspended from a noose, her face bruised and bloody, was Lian Soong.

Tanner snatched up the envelope, turned it over. The postage stamp bore no cancellation mark. Someone had delivered the envelope in person.

“She hardly struggled at all,” a voice called behind him.

Briggs felt a shiver trail down his spine. He turned around and looked up.

Standing at the loft's railing was Xiang. He held a small-caliber automatic in his right hand. It was leveled at Tanner's chest.

Briggs stared at Xiang, unable to speak. The room swirled around him. He glanced back at the television; Lian's face filled the screen. After a moment, the screen went black.

Tanner turned back to Xiang. “You did that?” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“Why? For God's sake, why?”

“She'd served her purpose. I was done with her.”

You're lying,
Briggs thought. Xiang had killed Lian as punishment for her silence at the paddle wheel. Her refusal to pinpoint their location had bought Hsiao and her father the time they'd needed to get away. Whatever her reasons, in that last act of defiance, Lian had again become the daughter Soong had thought he'd lost, and the woman Tanner had feared never existed.

And Xiang had killed her for it.

Briggs felt a ball of hot rage explode in his chest.
Focus,
Briggs.
He's come here to kill you.
Think
!
Tanner took a step forward, blocking the television screen. He fingered the remote's volume button to it's highest setting. Set on the VCR channel, the screen flickered silently.

“You came all this way for revenge,” Tanner said.
Play him along,
Briggs.

“That's right!” Xiang growled. “Why not?”

“I'll say this much: You plan a pretty lousy invasion, but you sure can hold a grudge.”

“Shut your mouth! You destroyed my life! I can never return to China. I'll be hunted until the day I die. Everything I struggled for is gone, and it's your doing!”

“Glad I could help.”

“Tell me: Where did they put Soong and the other one—the guard from the camp?”

Holding the apple in his right hand, Tanner held it up for Xiang to see, then took two slow steps to the left and set it on the dining table. The door was seven feet away now.

“That's your plan?” Tanner said. “Once you're done here, you're going to hunt them down?”