River of Ruin

She seemed reluctant to come with me and had some pretty flimsy answers why Gary’s radio was out.

“None of this mattered at the time. Even when I found the bodies in the jungle I didn’t get suspicious. Granted she didn’t act like she was too upset, but she’d told me that she and Gary were having problems. She didn’t even want to come for his funeral.” Mercer shuddered, thinking about her coldness that day and how she’d come on to him just a couple of nights later. “After what happened tonight, I was thinking about who could have set us up and that’s when I recalled her odd reactions. I think she knew her husband was dead before we got there. Only she believed that the camp had been overrun by Liu’s men, not CO₂ gas.

“I arrived in Panama a full day before she was expecting me and didn’t give her a chance to warn Liu that I’d go to the camp. So it was no coincidence that his choppers were there the next day when Lauren, Miguel, and I were exploring the lake. They knew about Gary’s purported discovery from Maria and were already in the middle of securing the treasure for themselves.”

Rene interrupted, “I can believe that Liu was told that Barber was about to find the treasure, but couldn’t he have learned it from someone living in the nearby village?”

“It’s possible,” Mercer conceded. “That wouldn’t explain what happened tonight. Only Maria knew about Gary’s discovery and that we were going to the lock.”

“Oh, God,” Roddy cried quietly as he realized his role in what had happened. “I told her on the phone that you were out on Lake Gatun. She must have informed Liu and he made the connection to the lock. It was the same as if I told the Chinese myself.”

“You couldn’t know what she would do with that information,” Mercer said, hoping to assuage some of Roddy’s misplaced guilt.

“I should have.”

“How? No one suspected her until it was too late. Roddy, listen to me.” He waited for the Panamanian to look him in the eye. “No matter what you’re thinking, you are not to blame for Lauren and Vic. Maria Barber was the one who passed on that information, knowing what Liu would do with it. We can’t afford your feelings of self- recrimination. It’s selfish.”

Harry cleared his throat to get the conversation back on track. He gave Mercer a look that said he’d talk more with Roddy afterward.

“You still haven’t shown me any proof,” Bruneseau said. “You suspect Maria Barber had her husband killed. You think she was the one who told the Chinese that you were in the canal. Even if I believed you, this is simply more conjecture.”

“Vic’s death isn’t conjecture,” Foch snapped.

Bruneseau gave him a hard look. “You know what I mean.”

They started arguing in French, their voices crashing in the middle of the room like artillery barrages. Their hands were in constant motion. Mercer was too drained to try to stop it so it went on until Harry tucked two fingers in his mouth and blew a whistle loud and shrill enough to make everyone wince.

“I said earlier that I can give you the proof you need,” Mercer spoke into the stunned silence. “I want to meet with Maria Barber.”

“She’ll tell Liu the moment you phone her,” Roddy said, appalled that another of his friends could be lost.

“That’s true.” Mercer studied Foch. “But I don’t plan on giving her the opportunity to tell him and I’m relying on you and your men if things do get hairy.”

“You believe that Maria Barber can give you the evidence?”

Mercer nodded at Rene and took a long draw off his beer.

“What if she doesn’t know anything?” The agent continued to probe for holes in Mercer’s plan.

“Wouldn’t it be enough that she told the Chinese about us being on Lake Gatun tonight? Even you can see the causative link. It’s safe to infer from there that everything else we’ve deduced must be close to the truth.”

“Meaning,” Harry said in a lecturing tone, “that the Chinese will be in economic control of a country that’s close enough to the United States to lob nuclear missiles from.”

Mercer hadn’t listened to his friend. He’d laid out his arguments to Bruneseau and sat waiting for an answer, drained by the emotional toll this day had taken. But something broke through his exhaustion and he leaned forward. “What did you say?”

“That unless we stop them, China’s gonna run Panama the same way the Soviet Union used to run Cuba.”

“And it’s close enough that a medium-range nuke could hit the States.” Mercer’s voice went vague. He suddenly launched himself from his chair. From the suite’s desk he grabbed a piece of stationery and plucked the pen Harry always carried in his shirt pocket for doing crossword puzzles.

“What are you-?”

“Shut up.” Mercer cut off Rene’s question and excluded everyone else in the room as he thought back to when he and Lauren had been in the Hatcherly container facility. The secure warehouse. It was where Liu had stored the crushed ore he was using to make the mine look legit. Near it had been some strange trucks. They’d looked like some kind of special cargo transporters, painted yellow like most of the other vehicles at the port. It took him five minutes to sketch one of the massive trucks, detailing its eight heavy wheels and the crane attachment on its low bed. When he was done he showed the picture to Bruneseau. “Recognize it?”

The French spy went pale. “Where did you see this?”

“There are eight of them about ten miles from where we’re sitting,” Mercer answered.

“You know what this is?”

“I do now, thanks to Harry.”

“What is it? What’d I do?” the octogenarian asked, not liking that they were talking like he wasn’t in the room.

Bruneseau held up the picture so Harry, Roddy, and Foch could all get a look. Only the Legion officer recognized it. He sucked a breath through his teeth. “That’s the transporter for a DF-31 intermediate-range nuclear missile.”

“Road portable,” Rene added, borrowing the pen to sketch in a rocket sitting on the back of the big truck, “with the ability to cold launch a missile with about two hours’ notice. Guidance package automatically compensates for wherever it’s erected. New intel reports give it a range of thirty-two hundred kilometers because of an improved solid propellant.”

“About two thousand miles,” Roddy said. “Such a missile could hit New Orleans, Dallas, Atlanta. Or Washington, D.C.”

“China doesn’t have the technology to hit us with weapons from the mainland so they’re going to park eight of these shorter-range missiles here. Once they control Panama’s economy and the canal all we can do is lodge diplomatic protests.”

“We could blockade,” Harry offered, “like Kennedy did with Cuba.”

“No way,” Mercer replied, once again in awe of Liu Yousheng’s audacity and genius. “This isn’t some isolated Caribbean island. Eleven thousand ships a year pass through the canal, representing flags from just about every maritime nation on earth. With the canal out of action for a couple of years, Hatcherly Consolidated will still be able to move roughly seventy percent of that cargo on their railroad and oil pipeline. We’d disrupt the entire global economy by enforcing a blockade.”

“But it would be China’s fault,” Harry persisted.

“Yet we’d be the ones sending cargo ships on a ten-thousand-mile detour around South America. How long do you think world condemnation is going to remain focused on China’s acts when it’s a U.S. fleet costing countries their seaborne commerce?”

“By making their temporary stoppage of the canal look like an accident, Hatcherly can deflect an American reprisal,” Roddy said, “so long as they have my government under some sort of control. No doubt President Quintero is involved. My question is what happens when the waterway’s reopened after a year or two? By treaty, the United States could come in and take it by force to ensure nothing ever happens to it again.”

Bruneseau answered, “The question should be what the Chinese want to accomplish in those two years by stationing nuclear missiles here.”

“Well, they’re always going on and on about Taiwan,” Harry said from the mini-bar, where he was dumping Jack Daniel’s onto the thin film of Coke he’d already dribbled into his glass.