“Do you wish to change your story?” Zhong asked. “I’ll be forgiving if you do so now instead of after a failed mission.”
Eddie shook his head vigorously. “I swear that the exchange is taking place where I said it would.”
Zhong held up Eddie’s phone. “You’d better hope the text comes through.”
The helicopters sped low across the mountainous jungle, paralleling the train tracks winding along the coast. A few minutes later, they both set down in a valley clearing.
As soon as the eight men exited, including Zhong and Eddie, the helicopters took off again.
Eddie looked around in confusion. It seemed like they were in the middle of nowhere.
“This way,” Zhong said.
They hiked through the tropical forest for ten minutes until they reached a slope, where Eddie could see the ocean. The train tracks far below disappeared into a tunnel.
“That’s our destination.” Zhong pointed at the mouth of the tunnel.
Now the coils of rope made sense. Trying to get on board the train by helicopter would have telegraphed their approach from miles away. Dropping down quietly onto the roof of the train when it exited the tunnel would be much stealthier.
“Do I at least get a gun?” Eddie asked as they marched toward the tunnel opening.
Zhong gave him a grim laugh. So did the other men. They kept walking.
If Zhong returned to Beijing empty-handed, Eddie was sure Zhong and the rest of his men would face a firing squad for their failure. The memory stick they were trying to recover and keep out of American hands held the names of every Chinese spy currently operating in the United States.
2
THE PHILIPPINES
The squall arrived earlier than Luis Navarro expected. The forecast had said it wouldn’t hit until after sundown. Wind buffeted the front window of their 90-foot-long vessel, lashing it with sheets of rain. Visibility was limited. He looked behind him toward Negros Island, but he could no longer see the city of Dumaguete. The GPS unit said their destination of Dapitan City on Mindanao was still thirty miles away.
Captain Garcia ordered the first mate to cut back on the throttle. The smaller escort boats on either side slowed to match their speed. The officers manning the deck machine guns on both boats looked miserable in the downpour.
“What are you doing?” Navarro demanded. “Don’t slow down.”
The first mate looked to Garcia, an old salt who obviously wasn’t used to his orders being countermanded. “Inspector, if we stay at full speed in these conditions, we could be swamped.”
Despite being younger and more compact than the captain, Navarro wasn’t intimidated. “The chief of the Philippine National Police has put me in charge of this mission and I order you back to full speed.”
“You may be in command of the mission, but this is my boat. Do you want to make it to Mindanao or not? If the chief of the PNP were here, I think he’d want to live.”
“You know who we’re carrying,” Navarro said.
Garcia nodded. “And I want him off my boat more than you do. So let me do my job.”
Navarro grumbled but didn’t push it further. His country’s reputation for sunken vessels was well known. With a population of over one hundred million scattered across the seven thousand islands comprising the Philippines, a vast amount of commerce and transportation was done by water. Dozens of boats and ships went down every year, many of them in storms just like this one.
He couldn’t afford to alter the plan for this operation. Their prisoner, Salvador Locsin, was the most wanted man in the country, the leader of a splinter cell of the New People’s Army, a communist insurgent group dedicated to overthrowing the democratic government of the Philippines. Talks between the government and the rebels had dragged on for years, and Locsin had grown tired of the stalemate. His terror campaign had targeted important officials and government facilities, causing dozens of deaths and destroying several buildings. How he was funding his efforts was still a mystery, but Navarro intended to find out as soon as they got him to a secure interrogation room.
Thanks to an anonymous tip, he’d been captured in a raid in Kabankalan City. However, with thousands of rebels on Negros Island loyal to him, getting him off the island had proven perilous. The first attempt to transport Locsin back to the capital of Manila was by air, but the rebels mounted a failed attack at the airport, damaging the plane and killing three officers in the process.
The decision, then, had been to fake another attempt at flying him out from a different airport on the island. At the same time, Locsin was taken by road to Dumaguete, where three boats were waiting. There were fewer rebels on Mindanao, so flying him off that island was thought to be much less hazardous.
The walkie-talkie on his belt squawked. The voice was panicked. “Senior Inspector Navarro, you need to come down here right now!”
“What is it?” Navarro replied.
“Officer Torres is dead.”