Warriors

CHAPTER 64

Alex 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.”