The Ghost War

“Very soon.” Cao lit his watch—6:10. “Maybe twenty minutes. New officer come, open door. See bodies.”

Wells thought he understood. There would be a shift change at the interrogation center where Wells had been held. The new commander would insist on seeing the torture room. And once he discovered the bodies, the hunt would be on.

“But isn’t Li Ping wondering where you are?”

“When we leave, I say to Li, let me take care of spy. He trust me. Anyway, he busy. Special meeting with Standing Committee.”

“Must be hard fighting two wars at once.” Wells closed his eyes and tried to settle himself in the darkness. But he had too many questions. “Cao, who are these people helping us?”

Cao said nothing for a minute. Then, finally: “Don’t know.”

Don’t know? Wells waited.

“I tell my pastor last night. About you. He send me these people from his church. They help when Christians get in trouble, need hiding.”

A Christian underground railroad, Wells thought. “Do they know who we are, the risk they’re taking?”

“Yes.”

“But you trust them?”

Again Cao laughed, low and hard. “You have other idea?”

* * *

MINUTES LATER THE TRUCK TURNED, accelerated. “Third Ring Road now,” Cao said.

“We’re making good time.”

“Many people stay home now. Scared what America will do.”

And without warning—

The truck scissored down into a pothole. Wells’s broken ribs jumped under the bandage, stabbing from the inside out. The pain in his lungs and stomach was enormous and didn’t fade. Wells bit his lip to keep from screaming.

Thump!Thump!More potholes. Wells braced himself against the side of the truck, feeling his ribs rattle like pencils in a coffee cup. If he wasn’t bleeding internally already, he would be soon.

To distract himself, he thought of Exley, and their little apartment on Thirteenth Street, NW In the utility closet in the front hall, Wells had hung the letters the president had sent them after they’d stopped the attack on New York. “You haveearned the respect and gratitudeof an entire nation…”et cetera, et cetera. No one had ever understood him like Exley, Wells thought. He never had to tell her why the flowery words embarrassed him. Yes, he was proud of what they had done. But he hated being called a hero, especially by men who had never shed blood. Let the president save his soupy words and send his own children off to a battle zone for even one day.

Wells wondered if he could claim to understand Exley nearly as well as she understood him. She rarely talked to him about marriage or having kids. Did she think that having more children would be selfish when she hardly saw the two she already had? Or was it that she couldn’t imagine a future with him? Maybe she decided that as much as they loved each other, they weren’t going to get over the finish line.

When he got home, he would ask her to marry him.

If it wasn’t too late.

THUMP! The truck bounced again, the hardest jolt yet. Wells couldn’t help himself. He screamed. The blackness around him merged with the void in his head and down he went.

LATER — HE HAD NO IDEA how long it was — his eyes opened. His stomach was throbbing and uncomfortably tight. He was bleeding internally now, he was sure. He raised the water bottle to his lips and sipped, trying to force the liquid down.

The truck had stopped, its engine silent. Wells heard voices and footsteps on gravel. The compartment was totally dark, no light coming through the airholes. Night had fallen. How long had he been out?

The footsteps crunched to the back of the truck and—

The back panel opened. Cao gripped Wells’s leg, a warning to stay silent.

A flashlight shined in, making slow loops around the compartment.

A man’s harsh voice, shouting questions.

The replies, soft and deferential.

Then the truck’s springs creaked as someone stepped onto the back bumper.

Wells pulled his snubnose pistol from his waistband, silently dropped the safety.

The light shined around, closer now.

But not finding their compartment.

And the truck came up on its springs as the man stepped down.

The back panel closed. The doors to the truck’s cab opened, slammed shut. The engine groaned and they were off, slowly at first, then more quickly.

Only after they reached highway speed did Cao finally speak. “Close.”

“No kidding,” Wells said. “What time is it?”

Cao flicked on his little digital watch and showed it to Wells—9:15. He’d been asleep at least two hours.

“How much longer?”

Cao shined his flashlight over Wells. “Five hours, maybe. Okay?”

“I’ll get by.” Wells coughed a little black clot of blood and phlegm into his hand. “General, what made you—” Wells stopped, wondering if he was overreaching. He settled on a more neutral formulation. “Why did you decide to leave? After all these years.”

Cao turned the flashlight to his own face, as if interrogating himself. “Why I betray General Li, you mean?” Wells was silent. “I tried to say once.”

“What you thought.”

“What I thought. He never listen.” Cao tapped the flashlight against the stump of his leg. “Li forget what war is like. I don’t forget.”

“Some wars you have to fight,” Wells said.

“Not this one.”

“Not this one.”

THE TRUCK ROLLED ON. The road turned smooth, a blessing, and the compartment cooled as the night air rushed in. They were probably taking a chance on an expressway now, Cao said. The danger had lessened now that they’d reached Shandong Province.

“But why doesn’t Li just shut everything down?” Wells asked. “Put in a countrywide curfew.”

Cao’s explanation stretched the limits of his English, but eventually Wells understood: Li was afraid to tell the Standing Committee that Cao had defected. Cao was Li’s closest aide, so Cao’s treachery would reflect badly on him. Li’s opponents might use it to undo Li’s grip on power, which was still tenuous.

But without the approval of the Standing Committee, Li couldn’t simply shut all of China down. So the roads were still open. Li was depending on roadblocks to catch them, and the Navy if they somehow got to the Yellow Sea.

“So there’s a window.”

“Yes. Window.”

And with that, Wells closed his eyes uneasily. He tried to imagine what would happen after he handed the papers over and explained what they meant. Treasury would connect the Banco Delta Asia accounts with Kowalski’s accounts in Zurich and Monte Carlo. The Pentagon would give the State Department the confession from Sergei, the Russian Spetsnaz that Wells had captured in the cave.

Then the American ambassador would ask Li’s enemies on the Standing Committee for a secret meeting. There he’d give Minister Zhang the proof of what Li had done.

Zhang and the rest of the committee would know they had to act. They’d know that if the United States