It was dark when the Asian men rose at the VIP House. Ru went straight to the communications room. It was three-thirty in the morning local time, three-thirty p.m. in Beijing. He heard William, Froggy, Hai and Danny leave the premises and start the cars for the trip to the beach. While yawning and stretching, Ru chatted with his counterpart in Beijing. He watched and waited and within fifteen minutes, he could see his four colleagues on the beach.
Ru leant forward, detecting a movement on the beach, but could not see it on the monitor again. He confirmed Beijing was picking up the signal from the four men, then called Danny Huang to report Beijing was happy, the cameras were working and there appeared to be nothing suspicious at any of the locations.
“In place, all clear,” Ru said. He waited for confirmation and the words “Code blue” and then hung up.
“Now we wait,” he said to himself.
Mitch and Ellen sat in the boat, awake, watchful at four a.m. on Sunday. Sam remained in the room and listened to the translator as he reported what was being said in the VIP house. Nick waited in the car in the beach parking lot, partially hidden by another car and lying low. There was no action yet.
“It’s so quiet and still,” Ellen whispered.
“I sometimes jog over the Memorial Bridge at first light and there’s a time in the morning when the river is unbroken, if you know what I mean, before the day and the traffic kicks in,” Mitch said.
“I know exactly what you mean, when it’s like glass. It will be beautiful here when the sun rises over the water.” She waved her hand over the surface of the water. “So romantic,” Ellen teased.
Mitch laughed. “Yes, just the two of us, out here watching the sun rise, waiting for baddies.”
“You do know how to show a girl a good time,” Ellen agreed.
“Yep,” Mitch nodded, “they all say that.”
He looked down into the water.
“What are you thinking?” she asked him after a while.
“What’s below. It doesn’t freak you out?” Mitch asked.
“What?”
“The depth, what lies beneath …”
“No, it never has, but I grew up on the water, it’s second nature to me,” Ellen said.
“Yeah, I grew up swimming in Nick’s pool.”
“Not quite the same.” Ellen laughed. “I’m more scared on land than on the water, especially in closed in places … I could never be a miner.”
“I remember you weren’t really at home when we were in Broad Arrow.” Mitch recalled one of their earlier missions. He looked at his watch again and exhaled.
“What happened to you in the water?” Ellen asked.
“What do you mean?” Mitch turned to her.
“There’s a reason people have reservations. I mean you don’t have to tell me, but for me, when I was a kid our school class went on this excursion … we went into this cave, and we kept going down further and further and it was getting really dark. We were studying stalagmites and stalactites. You know, one goes up, the other comes down … I can’t remember which way …”
“There’s a ‘c’ in stalactite so it comes from the ceiling and a ‘g’ in stalagmite so it rises from the ground,” Mitch responded automatically.
Ellen stared at him.
“Sorry, I don’t know which geography lesson in my head that came from. You were saying …”
“Ah yeah, so we were in this dark tunnel and the tour guide said if he turned off the torch, it would be pitch black but that’s the environment they grow in. And he did. It was so black, it was terrifyingly black, there was no outlines, no glimmer and it was only for a minute but I panicked. I’ve never experienced real black before. I didn’t know what I would do if he didn’t turned the light on again or if I found I was suddenly there alone. I know that wouldn’t be the case, but I dreamt that for months and months after … I’d be calling out but the tour guide and all my classmates were gone and I was in this blackness.” She shuddered. “The water, on the other hand is different. You just head up towards the light.”
“I have a friend who hit his head underwater and thought up was down,” Mitch said. “Took three of us to get him to the surface.”
“Is that why you don’t trust it?” Ellen asked.
“No.” Mitch glanced at his watch again. He cleared his throat. “I had a case once, in my first few years with the bureau. I was the young blood and for a while I was attached to the Underwater Search and Evidence Response Team. We went to investigate the report of a package tied underwater to a bridge pier. The boss and I went to cut it off and when I got level with it, these two eyes were staring at me through the plastic. It was a woman and her face was locked in this scream. Sorry, I shouldn’t have put that image in your head. It gets worse, but enough said.”
“Creepy,” Ellen agreed.
“Yep, you never know what’s down there.”
They sat in silence listening to the sounds of the water and morning, waiting for first light to tinge the horizon.
Mitch’s phone vibrated.
“Sam?” he answered.
“According to the translator, one of the Asian men has given the all clear—‘Code Blue’ he called it. They’re at the beach now,” she reported.
“Thanks, got them. Keep them in sight. Nothing else?”
“Nothing we didn’t know,” Samantha said.
“OK, didn’t think they’d be talking much at this hour. I’ll let Nick know.”
Mitch rang Nick. “We’re on, they’ve declared ‘Code Blue’ for all clear to go,” he said.
“Roger that,” Nick answered.
Mitch hung up and scanned the area. “A test run,” he muttered, looking across the line of water to the horizon and extending his gaze skyward.