Cameron, Marc - Tom Clancy's Shadow of the Dragon

The killing of Bingtuan special police, especially when one of them was a line commander—was sure to make a splash. In all likelihood, the action would spawn a brutal crackdown by local authorities, making an already difficult life harder for minorities in Urumqi. Mamut had confided this worry to Medina, but felt the long-term goals were worth the sacrifice.

They’d taken great care to leave no calling card on the bodies, nothing that would give them the obvious credit other than the cold precision with which the assassinations were carried out. They left the bodies exactly as they fell. There was no physical evidence other than the slugs buried inside the dead men’s brains. The whispers would begin before the bodies were loaded onto a mortuary van. Some would blame the killings on other groups—the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, or some other independence or jihadist group. Captain Lo marked the fifteenth such assassination for Mamut and his group, six of them regional politicians who had made decisions that led directly to Uyghur imprisonment and death. With that many, some in Beijing would surely call it a plot of the American CIA. Local Party leaders, Bingtuan security force commanders, even the soldiers themselves whispered among themselves, jaws tense, teeth gnashing, hiding their fear with bluster and threat to a foe they could not see or even describe. But they knew who was responsible for each of the killings.

The Nameless.

Wuming.

16

Dr. Patti Moon rubbed exhausted eyes and lay back on the bunk in her cramped cabin aboard the icebreaking research vessel Sikuliaq .

“Are you seriously telling me you don’t hear human voices?”

A wide terry-cloth band held black hair, still damp from an evening shower, out of her eyes. The apples of her high cheekbones were flushed pink, warm with the glow that came from working on deck all day in the cold wind. Dressed in gray merino wool long john bottoms and a white T-shirt—she knew better than to sleep in anything less on a vessel that had frequent abandon-ship drills—Moon rolled over toward her open laptop with a groan to study the digital signature of her hydrophone recording for the hundredth time. Her friend and former shipmate Chief Petty Officer Shad Barker’s voice crackled on the voice over IP connection. The connection was via satellite, which was slow to begin with, and the lag between each sentence was beginning to make conversation a chore. Sixty miles northwest of Utqiagvik, the Alaska city white people called Barrow, satellite antennas had to be pointed almost at the horizon to get a connection. What few visitors she’d ever taken to her home village of Point Hope were always astounded when they learned that, one, the Native people there had satellite TV, and, two, all the dishes appeared to be aimed at the ground.

Moon and Barker had been at it for nearly an hour. She aboard R/V Sikuliaq in the Arctic Ocean, he on the destroyer USS John Paul Jones , steaming off the coast of Oahu four thousand miles away. Moon had spent her fair share of months at sea aboard a tin can, some of it with Barker when they were both second-class petty officers, long before he’d become a chief and she’d left the Navy to finish graduate school. They’d made a short go of a romantic fling—while on liberty in Manila. Hooking up on land didn’t make her feel as loose as getting under way while under way. Moon didn’t want to be “that girl on the ship.” It hadn’t worked out anyway. They’d both been young and stupid enough to let their hormones take control, but old and wise enough to know that they would be much happier as shipboard friends than sneaking around trying to find some nook or cranny on the destroyer just to get a little privacy—which would have given them both reputations they didn’t want.

Turning on her side, she tapped the trackpad on her computer to start the sound bite again.

She pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, squinting as she focused on the sounds pouring through her headphones.

The recording stopped, leaving her banging her head softly on the industrial-strength bunk mattress. “Now tell me you don’t hear that?”

Barker scoffed on the other end of the line. “And you’re telling me you hear voices?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Moon said.

“That’s a stretch,” Barker said. “If that’s the case, it has to be a submarine and they’re double-hulled. I don’t think it’s possible.”

“I’ve heard that, too,” Moon said. “But I’ve also heard submariners say they have heard voices on their hydrophones—and anyway, I know I’m hearing something.”

“Much more likely to be sea ice, maybe some mating whales or—”

“Why do guys working the sonar always think the whales are mating? Girl whales like to talk at other times, too, you know. And besides, whales don’t mate in Arctic waters. They swim south for that.”

“Can’t blame them there,” Barker said. “But I still think what you’re hearing could be a whale song. Don’t you have narwhals up there?”

Moon clicked some keys on her laptop to slow down the recording. “There,” she said. “That’s metal banging on metal. I’m sure of it.”

“Are you, though?” Barker asked. “I mean, the simplest explanation is the most likely. It’s probably the screws of your own ship pinging off an ice chunk. Didn’t you say you were in an open lead when you made the recording? That means ice all around you.”

“We were,” Moon said. “But that’s not what this is. I can clearly hear a metal door slamming shut when I slow down the loop. When I filter the lower frequencies I can make out what I think are voices—screaming, panicked voices.”

“Okay,” Barker said, only a little condescending. “I’ll bite. What are these voices saying?”

“I don’t know,” Moon said. “I think they’re speaking Chinese. Shad, if you’d been on the sonar and you heard this, wouldn’t you report it?”

“Of course.”

“Well, somebody needs to be made aware,” Moon said. “And I flat don’t have anybody else to tell besides Twitter.”

“Wait,” Barker said. “You want me to kick this up my chain of command?”

“It’s all I can ask.”

“I hate to point this out,” Barker said, “but nobody is likely to buy this, considering it’s coming from you.”

“I’m aware of my reputation in the Navy,” Moon said. “That’s why you should take the credit.”

“Not in a million years,” Barker said. “This is your baby.”

“But you will kick it up?”

“I’ll do it as soon as we’re done here,” Barker said.

Moon rolled onto her back, staring up at the bottom of the vacant bunk above her. She rubbed her face with an open hand, feeling the glow of warmth from a long day in the wind. “Naamuktuk,” she said.

Inupiaq for good enough .

Barker groaned. “You used to always say that when you were pissed.”

“No,” she said. “Really. I do appreciate this. I’ll send you the coordinates where I picked up the voices—”

“The as-yet-unidentified sound transient—”

She stood her ground. “Voices. I’m certain of it.”

“You know I’m in your corner,” Barker said. “I’m just reminding you that not everyone thinks the shadows are full of conspiracies and secrets.”

“They should,” Moon said. “Because they are. Anyway, thanks again for doing this, Shad.”

“No worries,” he said. “It’s good to talk to you.”

“You, too.” She started to end the call, but was a fraction of a second late getting her finger to the keyboard.

“You ever wish we’d made more of a go of it?” Barker asked. “You know. That time in Manila?”