“Mercer, what are they doing?” she shouted when he came back from the rowboat dragging the heavy bundle of supplies Gary Barber had left in it.
“Get to the highest point on the island and you’ll see,” he answered without pausing from his work. “Keep Miguel close to you.”
Taking the boy’s hand and somehow trusting Mercer, Lauren climbed up the twenty-foot-high peak on the island’s southern point and looked out over the lake. Near where the first of the explosions occurred, the water seemed to be boiling like a cauldron and she heard a steady jet of sound like a distant aircraft engine. As she watched, the patch of boiling water grew like a spreading slick of acid. In just a few seconds it had doubled in size and doubled again. She had no idea what it meant until she looked to the beach, where Ruben’s cooking fire still burned.
As if a gas fireplace was starving for fuel, the flames began to shrink, dimming down until she could barely see a flicker of yellow before it was gone altogether. Then she knew. The fire hadn’t starved for fuel. It had starved for oxygen! The twin explosions had created a chain reaction to release the last of the deadly carbon dioxide from the lake. The heavy CO
2
was forcing all the air from the mountain’s summit.
Odorless, tasteless, and invisible, a minute-long exposure was as deadly as any poison gas in military stockpiles and it was coming for them.
Not even when a faulty road map had led her HUMMV into a minefield in Bosnia had Lauren tasted the fear that slackened her muscles now. The trust she’d put in Mercer evaporated. Miguel sensed it and took her hand. Together they raced back to the cave.
“Mercer, what are you doing?” She hated that she couldn’t keep the panic from her voice. “The lake bed is going to be filled with CO
2
in no time. We have to row back to shore and get out of here.”
He continued to unroll a sheet of clear plastic Gary used as a ground cloth. “We’d never make it,” Mercer answered, finally looking up at her. “We’d all be dead long before we reached land.”
“Don’t you understand what’s happening out there? The gas? We’ll suffocate. We can’t stay.”
“The problem is,” he replied with more calm than he had any reason to possess, “we can’t leave either.”
The Lake
The open doors helped whip the stench of cordite from the helicopter, while only time could diminish the palpable excitement from the three commandos in the rear cargo area. Years of training and the compulsory duty on a death squad in order to teach them what it was like to take another human life could not properly prepare them for the adrenaline rush of combat, although gunning down three Panamanians who barely had time to react wasn’t really combat. Still, the exercise had instilled in them something that putting a bullet into the brain of a dissident could not. Pride.
Cigarettes were passed back and forth. Pantomimes of their victims played out under the throb of the rotors. Laughter. These men hadn’t been part of the team that had earlier found the treasure hunter’s camp littered with corpses. They hadn’t taken part in the hasty attempt to make the mysterious deaths look like a kidnapping gone wrong. Those men were back in Panama City, unaware that their tales were about to be overshadowed by stories of a massacre at the lake. The oldest of the gunmen was twenty-three, a five-year veteran in the People’s Liberation Army. As the JetRanger skirted the top of the jungle on its return flight, he carefully scratched three notches into the stock of his black-market M-60 machine gun.
The two others tried to hide their jealousy.
In the right-hand seat next to the pilot sat Huai Luhong, the senior noncommissioned officer in the PLA’s newly formed Special Forces group called the Sword of South China. Huai thought the name sounded ridiculous, but loved the men he had trained since the group’s inception. The regiment-sized outfit had come into being as a response to the stunning successes shown by Western Special Forces during the Gulf War. At the time, Chinese military doctrine held that such small, highly trained teams went against the egalitarian ideals of the government. Yet the capabilities of Special Forces couldn’t be ignored, and the Sword was formed by copying the lessons, tactics and equipment of the SEALs, Army Rangers, and British SAS squadrons. Fearing that the highly trained regiment would feel superior to the rest of China’s conscripted army, the military kept Sword on a tight leash, and those who were recruited into it came from only the most loyal families.
If not for the trust placed in Liu Yousheng, the overall director of Chinese interests in Panama, the forty members of the Sword would never have been allowed outside China. As far as Huai knew, his team was the first Chinese troops to operate beyond their nation’s borders since the Korean War. But Liu was a senior executive in COSTIND, the Commission on Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, who had proven himself time and time again in a remarkable short career.
Unlike any other army in the world, China’s military had a dual nature, part defense force, the PLA, and part industrial conglomerate, COSTIND. They maintained control of a three-million-man combine of army, navy, and air force, as well as the thousands of companies that supplied their weapons and logistical equipment, including shipyards, electronics firms, and aircraft manufacturers. Through COSTIND, they had oversight of the China National Nuclear Corporation, the organization that produced nuclear materials for civilian and military use. COSTIND’s reach stretched far beyond China’s borders. Many of its companies had a strong presence in nations all over the world—port facilities, shipping lines, consumer goods and heavy construction. In this way, the PLA could help defray the costs of its own expansion even as the leaders in Beijing touted the demilitarization of their economy.
At thirty-eight, Liu was twelve years younger than Sergeant Huai, and yet the tough veteran of Tiananmen and countless undeclared wars against Muslim insurgents in China’s desolate western provinces had never met a more capable man. Liu had masterminded China’s initial involvement in Panama by waging a one-man crusade to convince the politburo that a lucrative power vacuum would be created by America’s withdrawal following the canal transfer in 2000. He’d worked tirelessly to get Chinese companies and interests to fill the void, beginning first with small-scale immigration and ending with virtual control of the ports that sprawled at each end of the fifty-mile canal.
The need to pay for the operation was what had prompted Liu’s interest in the rumors of the Twice-Stolen Treasure, and thus Sergeant Huai’s presence on the chopper. The earlier trip into Darien Province, when they found the American’s camp littered with bodies, had been the first active part in this phase of Liu’s overall plan and had not gone as intended. Liu had been hoping to gather intelligence from Barber and had been unsettled by Huai’s encrypted radio call about the bodies. Barber would have died anyway, but Liu had wanted information, and the deaths created a need for Huai to make sure that there would be no long-term official interest in the region.
Leaving the River of Ruin that first time, Huai had taken one body with him for an autopsy in Panama City that revealed what had killed the treasure hunters. The depth charges they’d brought today would ensure the last of the CO
2
in the lake bubbled out before they committed their own resources to the search. Today’s sweep also verified that the Panamanian police had no interest in the region, just as Huai’s agent in El Real had said. The three men they’d just dumped in the lake were most likely scavengers looking to loot whatever Gary Barber had left behind.
To make certain, Huai would recommend they scout the river and lake for a few more days before bringing in laborers and equipment. Yet if a treasure was buried somewhere along the river or at the lake, they would find it. Modest compared to other COSTIND actions, Liu’s budget for just this phase was a hundred times that of Gary Barber’s. They would soon have hundreds of workers digging along the river and lake.
With other parts of the operation already under way, Huai knew the importance of finding the ancient treasure. Beijing was currently subsidizing Liu’s efforts in Panama, but the funds were not without limits. After a deadline, now one month away, if Liu hadn’t found a way to finance his activities, COSTIND would withdraw their support. The genius of the plan, however, was that failure would not jeopardize what COSTIND had already built on the isthmus. The toe-hold Liu had already created would not be lost.
And the outcome if they succeeded? It was what had first interested the conservative politburo in such an audacious plot. Liu had promised them that China would enjoy a strategic presence in the Western Hemisphere much like what the USSR had attempted in Cuba in the 1960s.
Once secret bases were established in Panama, China could concentrate on the one goal that had united the government since the founding of the communist state—the reintegration of the breakaway province of Taiwan. America’s promised defense of Taiwan was what had spoiled the countless invasion plans drawn up over the decades. Liu had stated that he could nullify that threat, or more accurately match it, and foresaw the fall of Taipei just one year after the completion of this current operation.
Huai was ambivalent about Taiwan. China already had too many people, and he never saw the need to slaughter thousands of troops to bring in millions more. But it was the stated policy of his government and he would do his duty.
Rolling below the chopper was a jungle that reminded him of the Guangzhou Military Region where his regiment had been created. Though trained in every type of terrain and environment China could offer, Huai felt most comfortable in the jungle, perhaps an affinity learned from Vietcong instructors who’d trained him as a raw recruit thirty-plus years ago.
This would likely be his last action. He was fifty years old, the scales slowly tipping from the wisdom of experience to the impediment of age. When the invasion of Taiwan came, he was sure he’d be at a desk somewhere. Therefore he was glad that his final campaign was in the jungle. It seemed fitting.
Mercer bent back to his task, speaking as he worked. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the ever-increasing roar of the bubbling gas. “The eruption that killed Gary was probably a natural phenomenon, an underwater rock slide caused by his work that discharged a fraction of the CO
2
. Those depth charges are going to bring the rest out of solution. Because the mountaintop is shaped like a bowl with only a narrow outlet that’s currently blocked by the prevailing wind, the gas is going to stagnate here until the breeze dies down. Only then will the CO
2
pour down the waterfall and allow breathable air back near the lake’s surface.”
“How long will that take?”
“The summit will probably be poisoned until morning.” With a twist, Mercer released the flexible frame of a three-person tent. Gary had replaced the nylon shell over the spidery scaffold with mosquito netting.
“What do we do?” Although Lauren didn’t understand Mercer’s actions, the fact that he worked steadily returned a measure of her control.
“We need to make a bubble of air to support us.” Mercer began to wrap the clear plastic sheeting around the tent frame, securing it with duct tape from the supplies taken from the boat. He didn’t stop until the tent resembled a translucent cocoon.
“That tent can’t hold enough air for the three of us until morning.”
Mercer pointed at the large duffel bag he’d dragged to the cave. “There’s a coil of hose in the bottom of that bag and a hand pump Gary used to drain water from some of his excavations. Once the CO
2
fills the caldera, it will spill over the tops of the surrounding hills like an overflowing bathtub. I estimate the lowest hills are about twenty feet above us, which puts us under a layer of CO
2
twenty feet thick. If we can secure the top of the hose to a tree above where the gas levels out, we can pump air down into the tent. We’ll be like a glass inverted into a bowl of water with a hose to replenish the air.”
Lauren immediately saw the parallel to Mercer’s idea. “Like a diving bell?”
“More like a bathysphere with an umbilical. Only we’re trapped under poison gas rather than water.” Because CO
2
was one and a half times as heavy as air and they were only going to be twenty feet down, Mercer wasn’t concerned about keeping the tent pressurized. The frame would support the plastic sheets.
“How much time do we have?”
“I can’t tell without knowing how much gas is gushing from the lake. But we’re only a couple feet above where Ruben had his fire. We don’t have long. Can you climb a tree with the hose?”
“Damned right I can.” She went off, leaving Miguel to help Mercer level an area to set the lightweight tent.
The physics behind Mercer’s plan was simple enough but he wouldn’t know how well they’d carried out the execution until they were sealed inside the tent. A thousand things could go wrong, the worst being a miscalculation about the height of the hills and the top of the tree Lauren was climbing like an electrical lineman. If the mouth of the hose wasn’t high enough, CO
2
would drain down into the tent, replacing the air, and smothering the three of them. He had enough tape to keep the tent airtight but there was nothing they could do if the hose was too low.
Mercer found a dozen candles in Gary’s duffel and set a few of them in a row running down to the shore of the lake, lighting them with one of the lighters Gary had also cached. The candle he placed closest to the lake wouldn’t even light. The next one placed at a slightly higher elevation burned for just a few seconds before it starved for air. The gas was creeping ever closer. Captain Vanik was still at the top of the tree, tying off the thick length of rubber hose.
“Come on, Lauren.” Another candle was snuffed. The CO
2
was just a few feet below the tent.