418: Chapter 418 Sending him back to Langley alive

It was his voice. A satellite phone recording of him giving orders to Jial on the night "Operation Savannah" launched: "President Nyusi—Wednesday, three in the afternoon, rear entrance of the Maputo Defense Forces General Hospital. Use an SVD or a car bomb. Frame Shuguang Group and João Mutale."

The recording had been edited into an impeccable loop—the beginning and end locked together; there was no censoring or bleeping in between. Every word was as clear as testimony read directly from a witness stand. In the background, the laughter of Jial's men and the sound of khat packaging being torn open were clearly audible.

Loudspeakers were mounted on the four outer walls of the warehouse, each facing a different road leading to the port. The port area was sparsely populated late at night, but it wasn't empty—there was a row of 24-hour grilled fish stalls outside the container terminal. The fishermen at the stalls stopped their knives, truck drivers rolled down their windows and poked their heads out, and the stevedores playing cards in the container yard stood up and looked toward the warehouse. Everyone was listening.

Harper's fingers released the terminal keyboard. The recording finished, the speakers fell silent for a few seconds, and then a new voice came on—not his, but a list being read in Portuguese by a top news anchor from a local Maputo FM radio station.

Every name on the list corresponded to a CIA asset in Mozambique: an army colonel, three Ministry of Defense officials, two deputy customs directors, a deputy director of the Central Bank's Foreign Exchange Administration, and four long-term sleeper informants. From real names to codenames to the amounts transferred over the last three years, everything was articulated clearly, as if reading a weather forecast.

The last part of the list returned to an ending added by the announcer himself: "The above intelligence was provided by an anonymous CIA insider—we thank them for their courage." Harper knew that wasn't him, but it was already useless.

The names were real, the amounts matched the books, and every smuggling operation under the deputy customs director was there—no one would believe him. His mouth twitched, and he punched his own thigh. There was only one signal that made his chest feel emptier than the denied communications—he was no longer the hunter. He was the bait.

Those officers whose names were read out were now the most dangerous teeth behind him. He looked down at the terminal screen; the progress bar for the 79th connection attempt was still stuck at 37 percent, unmoving.

He drew the M17 pistol from his waist and ejected the magazine to check—seventeen rounds, fully loaded. But bullets couldn't pierce the loudspeaker overhead, couldn't pierce the encrypted satellite communication broadcasting all his cards, and couldn't pierce the Shadow Blade team surrounding the warehouse. He could only sit there, listening to his own voice playing over and over, like a pre-recorded funeral eulogy.

Four hundred meters outside the warehouse, on the roof of an abandoned tobacco factory, "Gargoyle"—captain of the Shadow Blade Mozambique task force—lowered his night-vision binoculars. Behind him, six Shadow Blade members deployed in a fan shape, the surfaces of their optical camouflage suits slowly shifting from the color of the factory's red brick walls to the gray-blue of the pre-dawn sky. The suppressed rifles in everyone's hands were locked onto different directions—the main entrance, the back alley, the basement exhaust pipe, the sewer manhole cover near the port, and the windows on both sides of the warehouse.

"Harper is still in front of the terminal. The 79th connection attempt failed. He drew his gun, but didn't chamber a round." Gargoyle pressed his encrypted communication key.

In Naypyidaw, Zhang Cheng sat before the holographic situational map in the Presidential Palace's secret room. Hearing the report from the communication, he picked up the Pu'er tea that Li Lanzhi had just refilled.

"New order—keep him alive. Make Harper sign. Have him sign a public statement in his capacity as CIA Station Chief in Mozambique: admitting that 'Operation Savannah' was under direct orders from Council of Elders, admitting the details of Plan B to assassinate President Nyusi, and admitting all the facts regarding the CIA's illegal recruitment of armed organizations within Mozambique. Once he signs, send him to Maputo International Airport and buy him a one-way ticket back to Washington. Let him go back alive—and take this statement with him."

Zhang Cheng took a sip of tea. Letting Harper die in Mozambique was worthless; it would only give Langley a mourning statement for a fallen hero. Letting him walk into Langley headquarters alive, making him sit in an interrogation room in front of all his colleagues—that was what counted as useful.

Gargoyle was silent for two seconds, as if digesting this order that was completely different from what he had expected. Then he replied curtly: "Received. Keep him alive."

4:22 AM Maputo time. Gargoyle and two team members rappelled from the roof of the tobacco factory and landed in the warehouse's back alley. His ceramic composite dagger remained in its sheath, replaced by a suppressed pistol and a freshly printed statement document—every word on the document had been drafted by the Naypyidaw legal team, precise down to the unalterable punctuation marks.

The hinges of the only iron door in the back alley had been silently removed. Gargoyle slipped inside, his optical camouflage suit shifting from the deep blue of the night sky to the off-white of the warehouse's peeling plaster walls. He walked straight toward the basement staircase, his footsteps muffled to the softest level by his soft-soled tactical boots and years of infiltration experience.

It wasn't footsteps that Harper heard. He only realized someone had entered when he saw his own reflection on the screen of the portable terminal in the basement, suddenly lit up by a gray-white figure looming from the stairwell. His hand holding the M17 hung in mid-air, the magazine not yet inserted, and the muzzle shook for no reason—like the hackles of prey suddenly rising while the predator's claws had not yet bitten into the flesh.

Gargoyle placed the statement document next to the terminal, without pointing a gun at Harper's head, without saying "You are surrounded." He simply placed a plastic ballpoint pen on the document and said in accent-free English: "Sign it. Go to the airport. Your ticket is already booked—Delta Air Lines, Maputo to Atlanta, economy class, window seat. Connecting to Washington."

Harper looked down at the document, seeing his name, his position, and phrases like "admit to all the above actions," "under direct orders from Council of Elders," and "violation of Mozambique's sovereignty and international law." A whole page, every word as precise as a confession he had rehearsed countless times in his mind. He suddenly realized that his hand, which had just drawn the gun, had relaxed—not because he was scared off, but because the basement was filled with an even colder sense of oppression: the enemy in front of him had even arranged his return boarding pass, meaning they could have killed him long ago, but chose not to. This indifference wasn't humiliation; it was the rules—you are no longer a chess player, you are just a discarded pawn, and a discarded pawn has only one path.

"Sign it," Gargoyle said, "walk to the door, and someone will take you to the car. Do not look back."

Harper picked up the pen. When he wrote the final stroke of his name in the signature field, the tip of the pen tore through the paper—he didn't notice. He was just thinking that those officers whose names he had read out must be listening to the same recording now. They wouldn't believe that he signed that statement "voluntarily"—but Council of Elders would believe it. Langley would believe it. Washington would believe it. The moment he returned to Langley headquarters alive would be the moment he became a traitor.