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Than stood quickly and extended a hand. He and the general conversed in Chinese. Jiang didn’t introduce his aide, nor did the general even glance in Cabrillo’s direction. Juan took the opportunity to keep sipping at the water, hoping that the fluid would give him strength for whatever hell Jiang had planned for him. Cabrillo studied the general a little closer. There was something familiar about him, but he was certain he’d never met the man before. Maybe he’d seen a photograph in a briefing. He wasn’t sure.
“On your feet,” Than said in English.
Cabrillo stopped wracking his brain and did as he was ordered, balancing as best he could on his only foot. One of the guards grabbed his arms and pinned them behind his back so he could whip on a pair of Flex-Cuffs. The plastic bit deep, but Juan had kept his wrists slightly apart so when the guard stepped away the binding wasn’t so tight. It was an old trick that on rare occasions had allowed him to get out of bindings or, at a minimum, make them a heck of a lot more comfortable. Well, less uncomfortable.
A minute later, MacD appeared with two more guards. They had to prop him on his feet. His uniform was hanging off him in rags, and fresh bruises covered his face, masking the old ones inflicted by the Taliban. His head lolled drunkenly, and if not for the guards, he would have collapsed. Spittle oozed from his lips. Jiang hardly gave Lawless a look, but his aide gasped when she saw him and had to stop herself from reaching out to him in a gesture of compassion.
They made a sad little procession. MacD was barely conscious, and Juan had to be dragged because he didn’t have the strength to hop. His guards sort of carried him under the shoulders and let his good leg take long steps.
They were taken into a large loading dock/motor pool. Sunlight blasted through the big overhead doors, forcing Juan to squint. The air reeked of diesel and spoiling food. Prisoners under the watchful eyes of more guards were unloading sacks of rice from the back of a Chinese-made stake truck with the baldest tires Cabrillo had ever seen. Its driver sat in the cab and smoked. Another truck was being loaded with produce grown on the prison grounds.
Parked just outside the big room was a white van without rear windows. The back doors were opened to reveal a cargo bed separated from the cab by a metal grille. The two prisoners were tossed into the back. MacD’s head hit with a thump and he lay still. There was nothing Cabrillo could do.
More Flex-Cuffs were used to secure the two men to hooks built into the floor. This wasn’t a regular prison vehicle, just a commercial van, but without internal door handles it was just as effective as an armored car. The doors slammed shut with a finality Juan felt in his bones. This was not going to end well.
A few more minutes went by. He could imagine Than and the general comparing torture techniques the way housewives swap recipes. Even with the front windows open the rear of the van grew as hot as a Dutch oven.
Jiang finally broke free from Than and got behind the wheel himself, his demure aide at his side in the passenger seat. They didn’t speak to each other as the engine was fired and the vehicle put into gear. A little wind puffed into the cargo area as they threaded through the prison grounds and headed toward the main gate. Juan couldn’t see anything but sky from his position on the floor, but he recalled that Insein Prison was a massive complex in northern Yangon built around a central hub like the spokes of a wheel. He also remembered that families were allowed to bring nonpolitical prisoners food at the perimeter wire and that, without it, many would simply starve to death.
Society is said to be measured by the condition of its prisons. Myanmar had to be at the bottom of the barrel.
The van slowed to a stop at the main gate. Guards checked the underside and opened the back doors. One pointed first at Juan, then at MacD, checked a clipboard, counted them a second time, and nodded. The doors were slammed closed.
They were a block from the prison, and Juan was about to try talking to the general when his aide opened the steel grille confining them in the back. She’d removed her glasses.
Juan gaped at her, unable to believe what he was seeing. She started crawling back into the cargo bed, carrying a small black case.
“How?” he rasped.
Her eyes’ shape changed with latex appliances and her hair dyed and lengthened with extensions, the Oregon’s chief medical officer, Dr. Julia Huxley, threw him the warmest smile he’d ever seen.
Then it dawned on him why he recognized the general. It was Eddie Seng, also heavily made up to appear older.
“Eddie and I were in the neighborhood.” She quickly cut Cabrillo’s Flex-Cuffs with a scalpel from her medical bag and started examining MacD Lawless.
“Don’t get cocky,” Seng warned from the driver’s seat. “We just passed a motorcade heading toward the prison and, if I don’t miss my guess, in the backseat of the second car was the real General Jiang. We’re not out of the woods yet.”
“What?” Cabrillo cried. “The Chinese really want me? What the hell for?”
Seng glanced over his shoulder. “It was before I joined the Corporation, but didn’t you sink one of their navy’s Luhu-class destroyers?”
“The Chengo,” Juan recalled. “It was the first time we ever worked with NUMA’s current director, Dirk Pitt.”
He took Hux’s seat in the van’s cab. On the center console was a liter bottle of water. He drank a third before rescrewing the cap. He wanted more, but cramping was a real concern. Outside, Yangon was like any other modern megalopolis. The air was thick with smog and the stench of leaded gasoline being burned in untuned engines. This part of town was poorer than most. The road was a strip of crumbling asphalt. The curbs were open sewers. The single-story houses all seemed to lean on one another for support while half-naked children watched traffic with vacant eyes. Mangy dogs lurked in alleyways, looking for whatever scraps the kids hadn’t gotten to. Car horns blared at every intersection and usually for no apparent reason. In the far distance, Cabrillo could see some high-rises, but they had the institutional blandness of 1970s Soviet architecture. Occasionally there were signs of the city’s Oriental nature, a pagoda or Buddhist shrine, but other th
an that Yangon was indistinguishable from every other Third World city on the planet.
“Where’s the Oregon?” Of the dozens of questions swirling through Cabrillo’s mind, that was the most pressing.
“She’s about twenty miles southeast of us,” Eddie replied.
“Do you have a phone or a radio? I need to tell Max that the air force and navy are hunting for her.” Seng fished a two-way radio from his uniform pocket. Juan called the ship and told the duty officer—Hali Kasim, as it turned out—about the search under way and to place the Oregon on battle stations. The ship’s klaxon was wailing by the time the last words were out of the Chairman’s mouth.
Next, Cabrillo spun in his seat so he could look into the rear. “How is he, Hux?”
“Head injury for sure,” she replied in her clinical voice. “Can’t tell how severe until we get him back to the medical bay and I run an MRI.” Like everything else on the Oregon, her infirmary was state of the art, and would qualify as a Level One Trauma Center. “How about you? Any injuries?”
“Dehydration and a broken collarbone. I had a concussion, but it’s cleared up.”
