miles away he could see the monastery’s crenellated walls and spired towers rising from the forest along the northern bank. He angled that way.
He made a perfect stand-up landing in a clearing a mile from the monastery. He gathered the Goshawk, took five minutes stuffing it back into his pack, then checked his bearings and slipped into the forest, heading southeast.
When he’d covered half the distance, he angled back toward the Yalu and sat in the trees, watching and listening until certain he was alone, then crawled down the bank and into the water. The current caught him immediately and drew him downstream. Alternately watching for boats on the river and checking his position on the OPSAT, he floated for ten minutes, then breaststroked to the shore and crawled onto the bank. Though he couldn’t yet see it, he was directly south of the monastery, some three hundred yards up the forested slope before him.
He began picking his way up the slope, stepping from tree to tree until he found a break in the canopy. He pointed the SC-20 skyward, launched an ASE, holstered the rifle. On the OPSAT, he studied the monastery in the faded green/black of the ASE’s camera.
Abandoned at the turn of the ninteenth century, the monastery was laid out more like a medieval fortress than a religious retreat. Fisher took that as a clue as to why it had been abandoned. Had the natives or local government been unfriendly? The monastery’s eight-foot stone walls seemed to suggest so, as did the watchtowers that rose from every corner. The interior courtyard contained the remains of three pagodas — a larger one in the center and two smaller ones to each side.
A series of cobblestoned pathways linked each building. Several arched footbridges rose from the landscape, covering what Fisher assumed were once streams and ponds. The outer walls showed massive cracks in several places, as did the the pathways and pagodas. The roof of the larger structure looked as though it had been shoved to one side by a giant hand; it leaned, mostly intact, against the side of the pagoda. The other two structures had partially collapsed into a jumble of stone blocks; each one had remanants of its roof left, but the walls lay open in places, exposing the interior.
He switched to infrared. He saw nothing. If Zhao and his bodyguards were in there, they were laying low, waiting for his Korean benefactors to come get him. There would be lookouts, Fisher knew, and he had an idea where he’d find them.
He shut down the ASE and sent the self-destruct signal.
He checked the OPSAT map. What he was looking for should be to his left…
He found it ten yards away, an old drainage canal, about three feet wide and four feet deep. Though now choked with weeks and partially filled with silt, the canal had continued doing its job over the years, diverting rainwater runoff from the courtyard and down to the river.
Fisher dangled his legs over the side and dropped down. He flipped his goggles to EM, checked for emission points that might indicate sensors, but saw nothing. Zhao had probably gone to ground as soon as he realized his plan had fallen apart, and had been running hard ever since. For him, this monastery was to be a last stop before reaching safety.
Fisher was determined to make sure that never happened.
He began moving up the canal.
58
About fifty yards from the monastery, the trees thinned out and ahead he could see the outer wall. To his left and right were the watchtowers. He pulled out his binoculars and focused on the tower to the right.
A man was standing in the tower’s rectangular window, gun lying on the sill before him. Fisher checked the other tower: a second lookout. They were watching for the North Korean escorts, which probably meant they were were in touch with Zhao by radio.
He drew the SC-20, mentally tossed a coin, them zoomed in on the loser — the lookout in the left tower — and shot him in the forehead.
He picked his way up the canal to the wall, and was about to slip under when that little voice in the back of his head, the voice of instinct, whispered to him. He stopped. He switched his trident goggles to EM.
Twelve inches away, mounted at waist height on either side of the wall, was a paperback-sized emission point. Wall mines.
Fisher dropped flat and crawled beneath the mines. Once clear, he poked his head up and scanned the grounds. He saw no movement, no heat sources, no EM signatures. The moon had broken through the cloud cover, casting the courtyard in milky gray light. To his right, where the the walls met, there was a dark doorway at the base of the tower. He boosted himself out of the canal and sprinted to it.
Inside he found a spiral stairwell. He took the cracked steps slowly, pausing to listen each time he placed his foot. Halfway up he heard the scuff of a shoe on stone. He crouched down, drew his pistol, and continued climbing.
Three steps from the top he crouched down again. Ahead was a doorway and through it he could see the lookout standing at the window, silhouetted by moonlight. Fisher holstered the pistol and drew the Sykes. He creeped through the door, then clamped a hand over the guard’s mouth with one hand, pressed the edge of the Sykes to the his throat with the other.
“Good evening,” Fisher said in serviceable Mandarin. “Do you speak English?”
Fisher moved his hand and the man whispered, “Yes, I speak English.”
“Where is Zhao?”
“I do not know.”
Fisher pressed the Sykes into the flesh beneath his chin. “I don’t believe you. Tell me where Zhao is and you live to see another sunrise.”
“Please… I do not know. Someone came earlier this evening, but I do not know who it was or where they went.”
“You work for Zhao, correct?”
“Yes.”
“But you have no idea where he is?”
“Yes, please… ”
Fisher’s gut told him the man was telling the truth. He pulled back the Sykes, struck the man behind the ear with the haft, then let him fall.
Heng’s iPod beacon was still transmitting. The signal seemed to be coming from the remains of the smallest pagoda, near the north wall. Fisher made his way across the courtyard, then circled around the ruins of each pagoda. He wanted to hurry, to find Heng, but he forced himself to go slow. If Zhao had laid a trap, these ruins were rife with ambush points.
He returned to the smaller pagoda and slipped through a hole in the wall. The interior was partially blocked with chunks of stone from the upper floors, which lay exposed above him. A staircase, neatly cleaved in two, wound up the side of the wall and ended at the top floor.
Fisher picked his way through the rubble, following the signal until he reached a square hole in the floor. A set of steps disappeared into the darkness below. He descended. At the bottom he found a corridor; it was mostly undamaged, with only a few chunks of stone blocking the way. Doorways on each side stretched into the distance; at the far end he could see a square of faint light. He was momentarily puzzled until he oriented himself. This corridor stretched underground to a similar entrance in the central pagoda. He was seeing moonlight streaming in from the opposite entrance.
He checked his OPSAT. Heng’s beacon was twenty feet down the corridor on his right. He moved forward, pistol drawn, checking rooms as he went. Inside each was what looked like the remnants of a wooden bunk.
