“Park, are you okay?”
Meng Park knelt at the toilet bowl and retched again.
Captain Zhou Jun stood on the other side of the lavatory door. “Let me know if I can help.”
After five minutes, Meng joined Zhou in the corridor. They were alone. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Zhou slipped an arm around Park’s waist and pulled her close. “I regret you had to witness that.”
Seared in Dr. Meng’s memory, the horror endured. Viperina 3 had swirled around the escape pod just below the water surface. Like a gargantuan boa constrictor, V-3 gripped the cylinder’s steel hull with its metallic claws. The PLAN patrol aircraft had swooped in for a closer view of the pod when the weapon detonated. The shockwave from the blast rocked the four engine plane with the vengeance of a Cat 5 hurricane. The live video feed from the Y-8FQ had flashed to a sheet of static on the wide screen monitor in the S5 ops center.
It took the airborne camera operator about a minute to reboot the system before new images materialized on the S5 video display. The rescue pod had vanished. In its wake, several corpses and a collection of body parts littered the frothy waters.
“It should never have come to the surface,” Park said.
“I understand. We’ll figure it out and fix it.”
“All of those men—torn to pieces.”
Zhou again hugged Meng. “Just give it time,” he whispered. “The bad memories will fade.”
Park buried her brow in Jun’s shoulder. He comforted her as best he could. But he too suffered.
During Zhou’s twenty plus years as an officer in the People’s Liberation Army-Navy, he had never experienced combat. The visceral images he witnessed today would remain with him for the rest of his life.
* * * *
While Meng and Zhou embraced, Yuri Kirov stepped gingerly on their native ground about one hundred feet above the couple. He followed Master Chief Halgren. It was late morning.
Jeff Chang and Murphy were one hundred and thirty yards upslope, serving as lookouts. They kept an eye on the nearby Fleet Logistics building but a new arrival captured most of their attention. The Shandong loomed beyond the three story structure. The wounded aircraft carrier had docked several hours earlier. The Shendao pier buzzed with activity as work crews boarded the ship and sailors milled on the pier deck.
Yuri and Wild Bill approached one of the shafts that ventilated S5. The holes were concealed within the dense undergrowth of the tropical canopy. Four 0.75-meter (30-inch) diameter vertical steel tubes extended downward from ground level to the ceiling of the underground complex. Two downhill shafts served as air intakes. The uphill tubes discharged excess heat and stale air.
Halgren stopped beside the vent. Yuri joined the SEAL. The rush of warm air flowing from the pipe brushed Yuri’s cheek.
“This is the one we want to use,” Halgren whispered. He and Murphy had located the shafts earlier in the morning during a recon patrol.
Yuri examined the open end of the exhaust port. The pipe jutted two feet above the ground. A galvanized steel mesh matching the diameter of the pipe lay on the dirt. During the SEALs earlier look-see, they had disconnected the anti-critter mesh. They also checked the vent and the surrounding grounds and vegetation for electronic sensors, motion and ground pressure detectors in particular. Finding nothing, both operators hoped they had not missed something.
Yuri peered into the tube—a black hole. He grabbed his flashlight and illuminated the pipe’s interior. That’s when he spotted the steel grill twenty feet down. One inch diameter steel dowels welded to the pipe and spaced every five inches provided a low-tech access barrier while allowing for the flow of exhaust.
“Govnó,” Yuri muttered. He turned to Halgren. “You’re right. That’s going to be a bitch to get through.”
“We’ve got thermite, which will blow through those bars. But that damn stuff will keep going. If it gets into the ventilation fans below, who knows what kind of alarms that will set off.”
“Maybe we can work out a way to capture the excess.”
“I don’t know…that shit is wicked, burns through everything.”
Maybe not everything, Yuri thought. “Let me think on it some more. Anyway, let’s run the camera down and take a look.”
“Okay.”
* * * *
Dr. Meng and Captain Zhou were next to Zhou’s BMW in the Fleet Logistics parking lot.
“I just need to rest for a while,” Meng said.
“If you’re too tired for dinner tonight, that’s okay with me.”
“No. I’m looking forward to that.”
“Okay, great.” He gave Park the key to his sedan.
“I’ll come back and pick you up,” she offered.
“Don’t bother. I’ll get a ride to Sanya from one of my staff. Seven o’clock okay with you?”
“Fine.” Meng kissed Zhou on the cheek. “See you tonight.” She opened the door and climbed into the automobile.
* * * *
“I don’t frigging believe it,” Jeff Chang said as he watched the BMW exit the parking lot.
“What?” asked Murphy. He squatted nearby, working on an MRE—Meal Ready to Eat.
The CIA officer and the SEAL staffed the team’s observation post. Yuri and Halgren were still downslope, investigating the S5 vents.
Chang lowered the Nikon 35 millimeter camera with a telephoto lens. “I just noticed something very interesting in the parking lot.”
“Oh yeah,” Malibu Murph said now peering through an opening in the vegetation. The asphalt lot was only a quarter full. Maybe twenty vehicles. He observed a uniformed male walking toward the Fleet Logistics building.
Chang pointed west. “That officer walking back to the building runs S5. Captain Zhou Jun.”
“Son of a bitch!”
Zhou was in charge of the South Sea Sound Surveillance System. But it was the female who had accompanied the navy captain that supercharged Chang’s interest.
Jeff worked the Nikon, retrieving one of the dozen images he had just recorded. “Hello there, little sea turtle!” Jeff muttered as he studied a digital blowup of Meng Park’s lovely face.
* * * *
Yuri and Halgren returned to the observation post. The two SEALs and Yuri currently debated how best to penetrate the S5 ventilation shafts.
Master Chief Halgren said, “We can blast through the steel bars with our shaped charges but the racket will reverberate through the pipe. Probably sound like thunder inside S5.”
“Maybe we can muffle the blast,” offered CPO Murphy.
“Doubtful. That shaft is a perfect sound conductor.” Halgren fingered the stubble on his chin. “We don’t have any choice, Murph. We have to use thermite.”
“I hate working with that stuff.”
“I read you.” Halgren engaged Yuri. “What’s your take?”
“Thermite is probably our best approach but controlling the discharge will be the challenge. We might be able to construct a tray that hangs under the bars to catch the debris.”
“A tray made out of what?” Halgren asked.
Yuri started to respond when Jeff Chang finally jumped in. “Maybe we don’t need to get inside S5 after all.”
That captured Halgren’s instant attention. “What do you mean?”
“Half an hour ago, we spotted the officer in charge of S5 in the parking lot. Captain Zhou Jun. Runs the entire network.”
“Snatch him?” Halgren asked.
“We could but the real prize is the woman he was with.” He pulled up the Nikon and displayed a digital photograph. “This is Dr. Meng Park. She’s a research professor at the the University of Science and Technology of China. She’s the brains behind the S5 ASW system.”
“She’s young,” Yuri offered. “How’d she pull that off?”
“You’re right. She’s only thirty-four. He passed the camera to Halgren. “She’s what we call a Sea Turtle.”
“And what’s that?” Wild Bill Halgren asked as he viewed the digital photo of Meng Park.
“You know the story. Tens of thousands of baby turtles are hatched on a beach. They waddle into the ocean while birds and other critters pick ’em off left and right. Anyway, the turtles spend years at sea before finally returning to their ancestral shores to lay eggs and repeat the entire process.
Halgren handed the camera to Murphy.
Jeff continued the story, “Our little turtle here was born in Beijing. Received her undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. Moved to the USA where she earned a PhD—at MIT no less. Specialized in robotics. Had a postdoc at CAL Berkeley working on unmanned underwater vehicles for oceanographic research. She then went to work for a Bay Area R & D robotics company. That’s where we think she finally fulfilled her mission.”
“A spy?” Yuri asked.
“More of an obligation to the motherland. We think she managed to get access to another researcher’s work, classified stuff for the U.S. Air Force on drones. Something to do with controlling swarms of drones based on natural systems like flocks of birds and schools of fish.”
“Let me guess, Yuri said. “She got what she was looking for and took it home with her.”
“Correct. Returned after years in the States, bearing a precious gift for the homeland.”
“Let’s snatch her, too!” Malibu Murph offered.