They carried her a short distance, then set her down on the ground long enough for the fluid in her ears to stabilize. The swelling in her left eye had eased up, and she saw a small sliver of her surroundings through the slit in her eye. She was on a dock next to a fishing trawler.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked in Mandarin.

A guard grunted in reply, apparently not wanting to divulge anything with even a vague answer. Instead, they lifted the stretcher and carried her across a short gangway and lowered her onto the boat’s exposed deck. She contemplated rolling off the stretcher into the water but knew that entertaining such a fantasy would be foolish. She had zero strength and would only sink to the bottom of whatever body of water they were on.

But before she could consider attempting her suicide further, the deck vibrated, and the boat’s engine sparked to life. It sounded like a large diesel motor and, based on the stable platform of the deck, she assumed the trawler was destined for open seas.

The wind across the deck picked up as the boat gained speed away from the pier, catching the wool blanket and peeling it away from her battered feet to expose her naked body from the waist down. But she ignored her nakedness and focused on the warmth draped over the upper half of her body. It was a foreign but welcome sensation. And she savored it.

But the boat ride was short-lived. In what seemed like only a few short minutes, the boat slowed and made its approach to a pier with a flurry of activity as sailors scurried around to tie off the boat to their new home.

Her captors lifted the stretcher off the deck and carried it to the gangway to transfer her to shore. They placed her in the back of a gas-powered cart that immediately began driving. She bounced in the stretcher as the cart motored away from the pier and began a quick climb into the hills rising away from the coast.

She had no idea where she was but knew her torture was far from over.

23

Wizard 323

Navy P-8A Poseidon

South China Sea

With a yawn, Lieutenant Commander Ashley Mitchell reached up and pressed the button to engage the autopilot. She was fighting fatigue and needed to stretch her legs. She unbuckled from her sheepskin seat and turned to her copilot. “You’ve got the aircraft. I’m going into the back to stretch for a few minutes.”

Logan nodded as she took her headset off and set it on the glare shield. Ashley contorted her body and lifted a leg over the center pedestal, then left the flight deck and made her way to the back.

She stopped to pour herself a cup of coffee before moving to where her sensor operators were busy scanning the electronic emissions from Hainan Island and cataloguing them. Her tactical coordinator, Lieutenant Edward Turner, saw her approaching and removed his headset. “What’s going on?”

“Just stretching my legs.” She took a sip of the hot coffee. “Get anything yet?”

He shook his head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. But we still have time.”

She had commanded missions in the South China Sea countless times, but there was an urgency with this one she hadn’t felt before. Partly, it was because the fleet of fishing vessels they had observed in the East China Sea had moved south, as they suspected. But mostly, it was because a missing American intelligence officer drove the stakes even higher.

“Keep me posted,” she said.

Ed nodded and placed his headset back on his shaved head. She moved down the aisle to watch her sensor operators manipulating the plane’s surveillance equipment. Each had an insulated coffee mug in a cupholder at their console to stave off the fatigue she knew was taking a toll on each of them.

As she reached Petty Officer Delgado’s station, she leaned over and saw him position the electro-optical sensor’s crosshairs on a small boat. He scrunched up his face and made notes in his logbook, cross-referencing the sensor’s position with a digital map of the waters around Hainan Island.

“Where is that?” she asked quietly.

Tony continued scribbling notes into his logbook, then reached up to shift the sensor through its various modes, switching between electro-optical and infrared as he took temperature readings to compare with their catalog of Chinese naval ships. She tapped him on the shoulder, and he jumped as he ripped his headset from his head.

“Sorry, Commander,” he said.

Ashley smiled at him and patted him on the back. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” She nodded to the screen. “Where is that?”

Tony sat back down and zoomed in on the digital map he had been referencing. “Fenjiezhou Island. It’s about fifty miles north of Sanya, a mile off the east coast of Hainan Island.”

“Military base?” she asked.

Tony shook his head. “Actually, it’s a tourist destination. Mostly uninhabited except for tourists vacationing there and the resort staff. Which is interesting…” He trailed off in thought.