Warriors (47 page)

“My darlings . . . I thought you were . . .” she managed to say before she staggered and broke down completely.

“Mom! Mom!” both children cried and ran to her.

She dropped to one knee and embraced them both, hot tears running down both cheeks as she pulled them as close to her as she could, not daring to believe this moment was really happening.

C
H A P T E R
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A
lex Hawke made his way forward along a cramped companionway toward the sub’s sick bay, ducking his head to miss the bulkhead every time he entered a new watertight compartment. USS
Florida
’s sick bay was located just aft of the forward torpedo tubes. He was greeted with a smile and a cheery “Morning, sir!” by all the young sailors who passed headed aft, everyone on the boat feeling good about the hostage rescue mission just completed.

And it was a good feeling.

In the six hours since they’d been back aboard, sailing in enemy waters, the three Americans they’d rescued had been under intensive care. Hawke’s team had four casualties. Despite his shoulder wound, Colonel Cho was now leading legions of freed death camp captives on a march to safety across the Yalu River and into China. Many of the older prisoners would not survive—but most if not all of the children would.

Three other badly wounded men, including comms specialist Elvis Peete, had been in surgery and were now resting comfortably. At Hawke’s behest, the U.S. secretary of the navy had included in the ship’s roster a physician trained in the care of rescue victims suffering severe deprivation and major trauma. So, even at sea, the Chase family was getting the best care possible.

Hawke had been reading a new CIA dossier on Chase in his bunk when the ship’s telephone on the bulkhead rang. He picked it up.

“Hawke,” he said.

“Commander. It’s ship’s medical officer, sir. Mrs. Chase would like a word with you. She’s drifting in and out of the sedative I’ve given her, so I’d come as quickly as you can.”

“How is she?”

“I’d say you didn’t get her out of there a minute too soon, sir. She had just about exhausted her resources, physically and emotionally. Malnourished, dehydrated. Multiple bone injuries. Systems in the process of shutting down.”

“She’ll recover?”

“Oh, yes. A lot of heart, that woman. Already survived far worse than most endure in a lifetime.”

“Please tell her I’m on my way.”

“Will do,” he said and hung up.

A MEDICAL ORDERLY OPENED THE
patient’s door, and Hawke ducked his head, stepping inside.

“Mrs. Chase?”

“Yes . . .”

“I’m Alex Hawke. I’m so very glad to see you awake. Are you feeling any better?”

“Oh. You’re the one who . . .”

“Yes.”

“How are my children?”

“Being very well looked after. Weak and hungry, of course, but they’re going to be fine. I looked in on them an hour ago. Milo says he would very much like some ice cream, please, and Sarah wants pancakes, but the doctors want to go slowly and—”

“I . . . I really don’t know how to thank . . . I never thought we would be . . . that the children and I would . . . ever see one another . . .”

The tears came, hot tears of relief, tears of grief for their years of suffering . . . tears of remorse for all the lost time. And perhaps a few tears of joy that, somehow, she and her children had hung on just long enough to survive.

“Can I see them?”

“Of course you can. As soon as the doctor—”

“Please . . . uh . . . sorry, what is your name?”

“Alex.”

“Please, Alex. Sit down a minute?”

“Delighted,” Hawke said, pulling a chair up to her bedside.

Her voice was tired and strained, but she clearly had something she wanted him to know.

“There’s one more of us, you know. My whole family was taken that night.”

“Yes.”

“My husband. Bill Chase.”

“I know.”

“Are you here to . . . to find him, too?”

“We are. My comrades and I are here as part of a joint U.S./U.K. operation to rescue your entire family. Tell me, Mrs. Chase, do you have any idea at all where your husband might be?”

“None. I’ve written letters over the years. All censored, probably never sent. I haven’t seen or heard from him since the night we were taken . . . my birthday, you know. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. My guess is not.”

“He’s alive, ma’am.”

“Oh! Are you . . . certain?” Her eyes brimming, she reached out her hand to him. He took it.

“I am. I saw a picture of him taken just last week. He was photographed leaving a government building in Shanghai. The Ministry of State Security. The Chinese Secret Police.”

“Was he alone?”

“No, Mrs. Chase. He was being manhandled by two secret police thugs. Hustled into a waiting car. CIA operatives followed but lost him in traffic. Both CIA and U.K. intelligence officers, like myself, are working day and night to locate your husband. So that my team can go in and get him out. It’s only a matter of time.”

She was silent for so long, Hawke thought perhaps she fallen prey to the sedative.

“Alex,” she said sleepily.

“Yes?”

“I have something. It may be nothing. It was given to me by a Chinese woman in the camp. She had been arrested spying on the North Koreans for the Chinese Secret Police. On the morning of her hanging, we were all lined up to witness as always. We parted to let her through and she saw me, caught my eye, and nodded. It was odd. Almost as if she recognized me. As she pressed past me, she slipped something into my hand. The guards never saw it. I managed to hold on to it all these years, hoping it was worth something, a talisman, something to believe in, you know?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s in this little pouch around my neck. Could you remove it?”

“Of course.”

She raised her head and Hawke gently lifted the thin braided necklace. The pouch was small and made of leather, faded and cracked.

“Open it,” she said.

He tugged at the drawstring, and something fluttered out onto the bedcovers.

A tiny scrap of paper, folded many times, about the size of a postage stamp.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, really. It’s a single handwritten word. I don’t even know how to say it. It’s a word I’ve never seen before . . . but . . . I swear to you that it’s written in my husband’s handwriting. . . . Read it out loud. I want to hear how you say the word. It’s been . . . my . . . private incantation all these years. My last shred of a connection with what my life had been.”

“Xinbu,” Hawke said.

“The ‘X’ is pronounced like a ‘Z’?”

“Yes. It’s Chinese.”

“What does it mean, Alex?”

“I’ve no idea. But I do promise you this, Mrs. Chase. I will find out and tell you before the sun goes down. Please rest now. I’m going to visit my men who were hurt at the camp. Then I’ll check on the children again. See how they’re . . .”

She was asleep.

ONE HOUR LATER, HAWKE WAS
back at Mrs. Chase’s bedside. In his hand, a printout of a flashpoint message just arrived from his old colleague Brickhouse Kelly, director at the CIA. Alex pulled up the same chair and sat beside her.

“It’s a very good, good thing that you believed in your talisman all these years, Mrs. Chase.”

“I believed in hope. Tell me what the word means, please, Alex.”

“Xinbu is a semitropical island. It’s located in a remote corner of the South China Sea. It’s primarily a resort haven for the Communist Party and military elites, but here’s the hopeful part. It’s also home to a major Chinese army weapons design facility.”

“I see.”

“Here’s why I’m so hopeful. In recent years, the Chinese have been leapfrogging the West in terms of their military technological advances. The world is at a frightening place right now, Mrs. Chase, far more dangerous than the one you left behind.”

“And you think Bill has something to do with that?”

“He’s the reason for it. He’s been sending us coded messages. Using parts of weapons he’s designed, in the hopes that we’d find them. We did.”

“Do you think he’s a traitor?”

“No. I think he’s been placed under enormous duress. I think the Chinese have used you and Milo and Sarah as a sword to bend him to their will. He did what he did only because he put you first.”

“When his torturers learn what happened at Camp 25, about our rescue and all the freed prisoners, they’ll kill him.”

“No. He’s far too valuable. And his work is not finished. But they have a problem they’re not yet aware of.”

“What is it?”

“Me.”

“What do you even mean?”

“They think he’s safe from me. And he’s not.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I can’t really give you that kind of information. But I can tell you this. Right before I came to the sick bay I told the captain of this sub to change his course. We are now sailing for Xiachuan Island. We have air transport waiting on an abandoned airstrip there. It’s a short flight over water to Xinbu.”

“May I ask, what is it that you do, Alex?”

“Fairly straightforward, Mrs. Chase. I go after bad people. And I go after good people. I hurt the former and help the latter. Like you and the children.”

“Thank you.”

“And, with any luck at all, your husband.”

C
H A P T E R
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T
here was a rap at the door.

Hawke opened it and a fresh-faced young orderly saluted him. “Sorry to disturb you, sir. The captain requires your presence in the wardroom. I’m instructed to tell you that it is urgent.”

“Tell him I’ll be right there.”

There were two sentries posted outside the wardroom.
This is serious,
Hawke thought as he was ushered inside. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw all the ranking officers seated around the large green baize table. And the president of the United States speaking on a large monitor, obviously a real-time feed. Hawke swiftly and silently took a seat and listened to what the very grave American president had to say:

“Captain Malpass, I cannot possibly overstate the urgency of this matter. Iwo Jima is gone. Disappeared. General Moon says Okinawa is next. God knows what’s after that. Pearl Harbor? Christ, Los Angeles? They are launching those goddamn Centurion ICBMs from the seabed. So it’s obvious there is at least one more of those unmanned submersibles out there in the Pacific. Hell, if not more than one.”

The sub’s skipper said, “Mr. President, Commander Hawke has just joined us here in the wardroom. I won’t ask you to repeat everything, but if you could briefly reiterate General Moon’s demands?”

Hawke was jolted upright.

General Moon? A name from his bloody past with a lot of unhappy memories attached.

The president said, “Certainly. At 0300 hours this morning I was informed that there had been a military coup in China. President Xi Jinping and his cabinet have been arrested. General Sun-Yat Moon, former head of Ministry for State Security, and now with the full support of the entire military establishment, is running the show. He immediately issued an ultimatum. We have twenty-four hours to agree to comply or he launches a third Centurion at God knows where on the U.S. mainland. All U.S. and allied forces must withdraw from South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan within seventy-two hours. The
Theodore Roosevelt
carrier battle group withdraws from Okinawa and the Pacific region within six days; likewise, the Seventh Fleet and the Fifth Fleet with two marine divisions en route to the DMZ in South Korea. And the list goes on for another two pages. Let me stop a moment. Any questions so far, Commander Hawke?”

“Thank you, Mr. President, I do have one. The Chinese Centurion Project clearly lies at the very heart of this crisis. Defuse that and you defuse Moon. My colleagues at MI6 believe that the Centurion USV was designed for China by Dr. Chase. Is that your belief?”

“Absolutely. Got his name all over it.”

“I read in one of the classified White House dossiers about a built-in fail-safe system on board the USV. A way to destroy the vessel should it ever be in extremis. Is that accurate?”

“Yes, it is. There were forty missile silos aboard the
Gaius Augustus
. The forwardmost silo to port had a missile in the tube but no hatch cover for launch purposes. A young naval officer who’d been aboard her sat right here in my office and told me he was convinced it was a fail-safe self-destructive device to be used in cases of submarine malfunction or should the vessel fall into enemy hands. And I believe him.”

“As you may know, Mr. President, I am currently en route to Xinbu Island to attempt the hostage rescue of Dr. Chase and—”

“Sorry, did you say Xinbu Island, Commander?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Thank God. CIA has just identified that island as General Moon’s headquarters. A top-secret Chinese military installation. It’s where he’s doing TV statements and interviews and issuing all these goddamn ultimatums from. Also, we just learned, it’s where Langley believes he’s holding Chase. We’re looking at Xinbu in real time here in the situation room right now, via satellite.”

“I’ll wave to you when I get there, Mr. President.”

Rosow smiled.

“How in hell did you know about Xinbu Island before I did?”

“Mrs. Chase, sir. Luckily for us she’s now aboard this submarine with her two children.”

“Lucky doesn’t begin to cover it. Listen, Commander Hawke, I’ll go to war with China if I have to, but there will be countless millions of casualties and a world spun out of control. So timing is critical to say the least. Get Bill Chase the hell out of there and find out how the Centurion fail-safe works. He designed those submarines, so he damn well knows how to destroy them. With them off the board, Moon has zero leverage in the Pacific.”

“Yes, sir. I understand.”

“It’s literally the only way out of this death spiral, Commander Hawke. Five minutes ago, I didn’t think we had a way out.”

“I understand completely, sir. Get him out and get the codes. Chase and I will make every effort to destroy the Centurions together. How long have I got?”