China Star Page 23

  His mind raced for a way out. All he could do was try to drag things on for as long as he could. Maybe he could feign engine trouble. Or simply reduce his speed and say it was the best he could do in this weather. If he could hold them at bay until it was dark, he might be able to make a break for it. . . .

  Forget it. With the destroyer’s advanced radar and fire control system, it was dumb to even think about it. One shell into his tired old ship and CoMar Explorer would sink like a tin can.

  After four hours the weather began to clear. The seas were still choppy, but not enough to prevent a boarding. He looked at his watch. It was almost dark. If they were going to board, it would have to be soon. The Zhuhai slowed and drifted to a stop. Matt rang up All Stop, and CoMar Explorer drifted to within 300 yards of the destroyer. A signal light from the bridge began to blink a new message.

  “Stand-by-to-be-boarded. Do-not-resist-or-I-will-fire.”

  Long boats filled with dull green helmets were lowered away, rifles bristling above the gunwales. The boarding party was larger than the last time, at least twenty men. Bigger fish now - a largely all-American crew bound for a Chinese prison. There had to be something he could do.

  “Secure the bridge, Sam, and get all hands on deck,” Matt said. “I’ll meet the rest of you on the quarterdeck.” He bolted from the bridge and ran down the ladder to his sea cabin. The pistol Gray Wolf had given him was in the top drawer of the nightstand. After his little set-to with the escaped prisoner and his encounter with Captain Chen, he’d changed his mind about deep-sixing a gun that could evade metal detectors. He checked the clip and shoved the pistol into his briefs. He’d surely be patted down, but knowing how the Chinese detested foreigners, they weren’t likely to touch him there.

  By the time he got to the quarterdeck, Beth, Sam, and Charlie were waiting for him. Beth was kneeling, holding Traveller by the collar. The first boat from the Zhuhai came up to the Jacob’s ladder and reversed its engine. A young sailor stood in the stern with a machine gun trained on the quarterdeck. The second boat eased in alongside the first. There was no room in the first boat for passengers, and only room in the second boat for a few. Matt assumed that the crew of CoMar Explorer would remain aboard under guard, and the ship would be taken under tow. Captain Chen was nowhere to be seen. A young officer in the bow of the first boat was the first man on deck.

  “Captain Connor, please,” he said in English.

  “I’m Captain Connor.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Tan, PLA Navy. Captain Chen sends his compliments. He promises humane treatment if you give your word to cooperate.”

  “You have it,” Matt said.

  “I must warn you, however. If you’ve harmed Sergeant Li and his men, you’ll be severely punished.”

  “They’re alive and well.” Matt nodded to Sam. “Let them out.”

  Lieutenant Tan nodded to four marines standing near him, who fell in behind Sam. “Please order your entire crew on deck,” he said.

  “They’re here,” Matt said, counting noses. “All of them.”

  “Bind these stinking foreigners,” Lieutenant Tan said in Mandarin, nodding to the rest of the crew. “Hands behind their backs.”

  Sam emerged on deck with Sergeant Li and his men, surrounded by the four armed marines. A sailor coming from the direction of the bridge met them with an armload of assault rifles. He handed a rifle to Sergeant Li. The look of humiliation on his face couldn’t be missed. Sergeant Li’s men took their rifles and joined the others, heads lowered in embarrassment.

  “Now bind the captain, the mongrel whore, the black savage, and this murderous traitor,” Lieutenant Tan said in Mandarin, staring at Charles Shen. “Hands front.”

  A young marine stepped forward and began taping Sam’s hands in front of him.

  “What’s going on?” Matt said, looking at Sam’s hands. “Why are we being treated differently?”

  “You must remain silent,” Lieutenant Tan said in English.

  A young marine grabbed Matt by the left wrist and looped a roll of tape around it. Traveller bared his fangs and lunged.

  “No!” Beth screamed at the same time Matt yelled “Trav!”

  At the same instant, the crack of a rifle shot broke the air. The old dog crumpled at Matt’s feet, a swirl of red spreading around him. Matt looked up. Sergeant Li smirked at him, a wisp of smoke emerging from the muzzle of his rifle. Matt lunged at him.

  “You son of a bitch!”

  Three marines grabbed him and held him while a fourth looped the tape around his right wrist and bound his hands in front of him.

  “Most regrettable,” Lieutenant Tan said in English. Switching to Mandarin, he said, “Load these four in the longboat. Lock the remainder of the crew in a compartment belowdecks and open the seacocks. Let the sea take this filthy hulk and the lice in it.”

  Matt stared at him, too stunned to speak. That was why their hands were being bound in front, so they could climb the Jacob’s ladder. The others were going to be killed.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he said.

  “We’re placing your crew belowdecks for safety, Captain. Another ship will be along later to tow your ship to Macau. You four will go with us.”

  “No,” Matt said. “I want to stay with my ship.”

  “You’ll be much more comfortable as Captain Chen’s guest,” Lieutenant Tan said.

  Matt stared at Lieutenant Tan, desperate to do something. He couldn’t just stand by and watch his entire crew die. He swallowed.

  “Don’t do this. Please. I’m asking you as a man. One officer to another. Don’t do this.”

  “You’ll be reunited with your men in Macau,” Lieutenant Tan said, smiling.

  “No!” Matt lunged. Even with his wrists bound he was able to open his hands enough to lock his fingers around Lieutenant Tan’s neck in a death grip. He wouldn’t let go even if they killed him. His death wouldn’t matter as long as he took this monster with him. He felt a thud at the base of his skull, then nothing.

  The ringing in his ears brought him awake, the sound of a thousand angry bees. He felt the rib of a keel in his back, felt cool water splash against his legs. He was lying on his back, in the bilge of a boat. He opened his eyes. The black sky was laced with streaks of white. Beth was seated above him, looking down with tears staining her face.

  “How are you?” she mouthed.

  Matt shook his head. “Dizzy.” Sam reached down and helped him to sit up. He rubbed his face in his hands. He felt the boat slow and bump against the fender of the destroyer, felt Sam’s hands beneath his armpits pulling him to his feet. Weaving, he reached out for a rung of the Jacob’s ladder and pulled himself up. With Sam helping from below, he made it to the top and fell over the rail onto the deck. He opened his eyes and saw a pair of black shoes a few inches from his face.

  “Captain Connor,” he heard a voice say. “We meet again.”

  Matt rolled over and came to a sitting position. With Sam’s help, he got to his feet. Captain Chen stood before him, resplendent in a fresh uniform. He must have been planning this moment for a long time. Matt felt the vibration of the destroyer’s engines in his feet. The ship was rapidly gaining speed. Standing in the gathering haze of nightfall, he watched CoMar Explorer fade into the distance and tried to imagine the horror his crew was feeling. He never wanted to forget it. The ship had already begun to list a few degrees to the stern.

  “This is monstrous.”

  “A terrible storm,” Captain Chen said.

  “You miserable son of a bitch,” Matt said. “You’re a disgrace to the uniform of a sea captain.”

  Captain Chen turned to Lieutenant Tan. “Please send the following dispatch to headquarters, South Sea Fleet Command, Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province:

  “At 18:30 hours today, June 16, PLA Navy destroyer Zhuhai responded to an international Mayday call and went to the aid of a Panamanian flag salvage vessel, CoMar Explorer, foundering in a storm west of Macau in the South Chi
na Sea. Due to the severity of the storm, the ship went down with all hands before rescue measures could be effected.

  “Also copy the Xinhua news agency. Mark it for immediate release to the international press.”

  Lieutenant Tan looked up from his notebook. He glanced at Matt, Beth, Sam, and Charlie.

  “Permit me, Captain. Did you say all hands?”

  “You heard me correctly,” Captain Chen said, looking into Matt’s eyes. “There were no survivors.”

  Matt stood staring at CoMar Explorer, oblivious to everything but the sight of his ship and crew dying on the horizon. The old ship was fading out of his sight, her list to the stern now pronounced. Numb with the terrible pain God reserved for ship captains who lose their ships and their crews, he felt himself being pushed toward an open hatch on the afterdeck of Zhuhai. Unable to take his eyes off his ship, he felt hands tugging him through the hatchway, pulling him down into the belly of the beast.

  Still dazed from the blow to his head, he struggled to find the rungs of the ladder with his feet while hands pulled at him from below. With his wrists bound, he gripped each rung as best he could. Sergeant Li came down above him, trampling his fingers with his combat boots. Matt lost his grip and stumbled down to the steel deck below.

  Sergeant Li pulled him up and shoved him in the direction of a narrow passageway. At the opposite end of the corridor, two young sailors started toward him. Li barked an order to stand clear. They gawked at Matt, then scurried back out of the way. The sergeant was back on his turf now, and he was intent on regaining the stature he’d lost.

  The others came up behind Matt. Beth and Charlie each had their own guard, while Sam had two, one on either side of him. Sergeant Li’s men. Why had Li and his men been given the assignment of guarding them after their humiliating defeat? Captain Chen wouldn’t have given them a chance to redeem themselves. It was probably a face-saving gesture for Chen himself. Whatever the reason, the grim look on their faces told him it was about to be payback time.

  Midway down the passageway, they came to a steel door. A hand on his shoulder signaled him to stop. Sergeant Li spun him around, facing the door. The others were prodded around and told to face the bulkhead. Matt braced himself, expecting Sergeant Li and his men to vent their rage on their bound prisoners.

  Bristling with restraint, Li stepped back and ordered his men to search the barbarians. There was no way he’d lay his hands on a filthy foreigner. Matt drew Fong, the nervous young private he’d tried without success to get to radio in to Zhuhai. Fong’s small paws whisked over him, barely touching him. He held his breath, fearful that Fong would discover the pistol he’d hidden in his briefs. The Chinese marine didn’t go anywhere near that area. He finished up by sweeping him with a metal detecting wand instead.

  Matt glanced at the characters on the brass nameplate on the door while he was being searched. Before he could decipher what they said, Private Fong scampered around and opened the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sergeant Li move into position behind him. Something slammed against the back of his head. He pitched forward with a blinding pain, felt his shins scrape across the coaming, then blackness.

  A sea of faces flashed before him. Francisco, Doc, Murphy, Scootchy, Andy, Kuntz, the man who’d died in the fire aboard the sub. No one spoke. They just stared at him with haunted eyes.

  “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry,” Matt heard himself say.

  “Skipper, it’s okay,” a distant voice said.

  Drifting into consciousness, he felt the cold steel of the deck against his cheek, heard the sounds of people moving and talking above him. He felt hands roll him over, saw blurry figures hovering above him. He blinked and brought them into focus. Beth was kneeling on his right, weeping. Sam knelt on his left, looking as if he were trying not to and losing the battle.

  “Thank God,” Beth said. “We thought you were dead.”

  Matt closed his eyes. “You’d be better off.”

  “Hey, now, that’s enough of that kind of talk,” Sam said. “You’re the captain. We need you to help us get out of this.”

  “Like I got them out of it?”

  “Now don’t go writing them off,” Sam said. “There’s some good men there. They’ll figure something out.”

  “Sure they will,” Charlie said.

  Beth touched his forehead. Her palm felt cool and soft. “How do you feel?”

  He rubbed his face in his hands and tried to sit up, then fell back.

  “Whoa,” Sam said. “Just lay still and take it easy. You had a couple good knocks to the head.”

  Matt closed his eyes, trying to get his equilibrium. He had to snap out of it. He was still alive, and he still had people he was responsible for. People who were looking to him for a goddamn miracle. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Help me up, Sam.”

  “You better lay still-”

  “Help me up.”

  Sam pulled him into a sitting position against the bulkhead. He leaned back against the cool steel and tried to clear his head. As his alertness increased, his mind filled with white noise to block out the pain of what he’d just seen. The death of his ship and crew. He swallowed hard. The ship was nothing, but his crew was his family - the only one he had. Once again, people had died because of him. In spite of Sam and Charlie’s hopeful words, he knew - they all knew - that there was no hope. If his crew wasn’t dead by now, they would be in a matter of minutes, hours at the most, the victims of his blindness and greed.

  He’d heard the theory from Gray Wolf and refused to believe it, and he’d heard the reality from Beth in excruciating detail and still hadn’t wanted to believe it. Now he knew beyond doubt. The only way the Chinese would do something as horrendous as killing his ship and crew was if the conspiracy Beth had told him about was true.

  Somehow, some way, he had to get the launch stopped - but how? The press release that had gone out to the world had the four of them dead, gone down with the ship along with the rest of his crew. The Chinese could do anything they wanted with them now, and no one would ever know. He had no doubt they’d keep them alive for a while - long enough to get what they wanted - then kill them.

  The burning question was, what did they want? Why had only the four of them been spared? What did they have in common? There was only one thing. All four had been involved in Beth’s rescue. Captain Chen had to be acting on orders. There could be only one reason why he’d kept the four of them alive - to find out if they’d made any contact with the outside world.

  What would the Chinese do if they had? Or hadn’t?

  If the Chinese thought they hadn’t made contact with the U.S., they’d kill them as soon as they were convinced of that, dump their bodies over the side, and proceed as planned.

  But what if the Chinese thought they had? It would be unwelcome news to whoever was behind Raptor. They wouldn’t want to believe it, would have to keep them alive for as long as it took to confirm it. The more doubt he could raise in Captain Chen’s mind, the longer they’d stay alive.

  Staying alive was good, but there’d be an even bigger benefit in raising doubt in Chen’s mind. If the Chinese government thought there was any possibility that the U.S. had learned about the launch, they’d have to order an escort of the command and control ship to the launch site to protect it. A highly visible naval escort.

  What ships would be available to escort a vessel that was going to sail from Guangzhou? The Zhuhai, for one. But there had to be at least one other ship in the neighborhood playing war games off Macau. The Zhuhai wouldn’t have been alone - it took more than one ship to play war games. The more PLA Navy ships escorting the command and control ship to the launch site, the higher the profile on the radar screen or satellite screen and the more chance that the U.S. would pick up on it.

  Matt rubbed his eyes. The only thing he could do was try and convince the Chinese that the U.S. knew about the launch. But how? They’d never believe what the barbarians told t
hem voluntarily. They’d have to get the answers using their own methods. That would be the plan. In order to be convincing, he’d deny it first, then let the Chinese torture him into admitting it.

  He glanced around. It was obvious why the four of them had been put in the same room together. The compartment appeared to be a hastily rigged holding cell, probably within earshot of the place that would be used to extract the information the Chinese wanted. Nothing was more persuasive than hearing the agonized screams of a comrade-in-arms, knowing you were next.

  Matt wasn’t worried about Sam and Charlie handling the torture. They’d been trained to cope with abuse at the hands of an enemy, Sam in his SEAL training and Charlie by the CIA. He wasn’t worried about himself, either. He hadn’t been trained to handle torture, but he felt dead. No amount of physical pain could overshadow the emotional pain he felt.

  Beth was another matter. He couldn’t let that happen. He’d have to find a way to manipulate the Chinese into interrogating him first, then be so convincing in his “confession,” they’d never get to her.

  There was probably another reason they’d been thrown in the same room together. He was sure the room was bugged. If he was right, they could turn it to their advantage. He motioned for Charlie and Beth to talk loudly - about anything - then motioned Sam down to his level. He cupped his hand and whispered in his ear.

  “Okay, Sam. Here’s the drill. The only way we can slow them down is to convince them that we’ve contacted CINCPAC about the launch, and the game is up. The problem is, they won’t believe a word we tell them voluntarily, only what they extract by their own methods. I’m hoping this place is bugged. We’ll let it slip here first - that’ll get their attention - then deny it during interrogation. After they torture us an appropriate amount of time, we’ll break down and confess that the U.S. knows everything.”