Ripple (Breakthrough Book 4)

by Michael C. Grumley

  ***

  It took only minutes to find the number and make the call. To his surprise, the call was routed several times before someone finally answered. The voice was slow and deliberate and not one he recognized. But it was clear that whoever it was had not been sleeping either. And they knew exactly who M0ngol was.

  “What is it?” the voice asked.

  “I have a positive identification!” M0ngol nearly shouted.

  “Where?”

  He dropped his phone from his ear and studied the data again. “I’m not sure yet. The Heilongjiang province, I think. From a surveillance camera. I only have coordinates.”

  “What are they?” the voice asked.

  M0ngol read them off, and the person on the other end repeated them, slowly.

  “Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who else knows?”

  M0ngol suddenly paused. It seemed an odd question given the entire department was working on the search. “I don’t…I don’t know.” A sense of fear suddenly welled up in his chest. It was his bot script that had found it. Sure it was already on the Ministry’s servers, but they obviously hadn’t made the connection yet. His script had done it first. And it was a script that no one else knew about. In fact, it was running on a different system even fewer people knew about, and its results wouldn’t be in the rest of the logs. So anyone monitoring his progress wouldn’t see it.

  M0ngol grew increasingly nervous. He wasn’t trying to keep anything secret. A lot of hackers had their own systems. Systems that avoided having to worry about someone else changing something, or screwing it up.

  But now he realized how it might look from the other side.

  “I wasn’t…” he fumbled. “I just…wrote some of my own code. Something easier and faster. I just wanted—”

  The voice cut him off. “How long ago?”

  “Uh…” M0ngol looked back to the small screen. “Twelve minutes.”

  “Disable your program.”

  “Okay.”

  “Speak to no one else about this until we can verify. Is that clear?”

  M0ngol nodded. “Yes. Perfectly.”

  “Delete the record of this call from your phone. We will call you back if needed.”

  “Okay.”

  The voice promptly hung up, leaving M0ngol sitting in the dark, still in his wrinkled clothes. And praying that he hadn’t just signed his own death warrant.

  35

  With a start, Li Na Wei woke up in the darkness. She looked around the room listening for it again. The sound of movement. But it never came.

  She remained motionless, propped onto her side, before she allowed her breathing to normalize.

  To her surprise, she found a few of the apartments in the ghost buildings to be unlocked. With locks either picked or mistakenly left open by someone. Maybe a facilities person or a security guard assigned the arduous task of checking hundreds of apartments in each building. Eventually, anyone was bound to miss locking one or two. At least that’s what Li Na hoped.

  There were over thirty floors, and from what she could guess, a couple dozen apartments on each level. The people she tried to follow had to be hiding in some of them. And like her, without any electricity or water.

  But the empty, one-bedroom apartment she’d found near the top floor still had a working door. The lock appeared to be broken, but a few scattered pieces of furniture gave her something to prop up against the other side. And a dirty stripped-down mattress provided a softer place to lie than the floor.

  The windows were all still intact, and even in the darkness, the walls and counters showed little signs of damage. Even after years of sitting idle, the apartments and the towers were in surprisingly sound condition. At least for now, until the rest of the homeless eventually discovered them and made the long trek inland. In the meantime, Yuhong, along with the other ghost cities, were left without a soul.

  Li Na pushed herself up and continued listening. The silence or lack of any appreciable sound was…eerie.

  She strode across the room and approached the bedroom’s large window. Never had her ears been so devoid of any noise whatsoever. With the sealed windows and a nearly empty city far below, it left her almost wondering whether the world outside still existed.

  Li Na stood behind the window, trying to think of a plan. She was getting less and less sleep, yet each time waking up just as alert, although struggling more and more on a plan to survive. And how to get out of China. But she was safe for the moment. Hiding in a city that everyone seemed to have forgotten.

  She could relax and take her time trying to piece together a strategy that entailed more than just surviving. As long as she could manage to stay hidden and still find food, she could finally relax.

  Li Na breathed a silent sigh of relief.

  She had no idea that a Chinese military helicopter had just lifted off and was headed straight for her, a mere two hours away.

  36

  The voice on the other end of M0ngol’s call belonged to a man named Lam. Who, unlike his predecessor Qin, was largely immune from the political and professional greed affecting so many of his compatriots.

  All politicians had it––all “infected” with the dream, whether they were willing to admit it or not. Leaders, ambassadors, statesmen, or whatever they chose to call themselves, it was always the same. Attain as much position and prestige as possible, no matter what the cost.

  Kings of old and ancient pharaohs did the same––insisting on being buried with all of their earthly possessions, and in many cases the very slaves who served them too––in hopes of living again, and more importantly, ruling again.

  It was the ultimate human desire, whether most admitted it or not. To rule. To be worshiped. To live in the hearts and minds of the masses forever.

  And yet, one man who did not have it, at least this particular infection, was Lam himself. No, his motivation was far simpler, even if just as self-serving.

  He didn’t know who had gotten him released from prison. Or what they ultimately wanted with the girl. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. What he wanted was revenge.

  General Zhang Wei was the man responsible for his imprisonment. After a particularly nasty battle several years ago, Wei settled on him as the army officer who had to be made an example of to the rest of the People’s Liberation Army.

  But the general should have known. If anyone understood what hell war really was, it was Wei. He should have understood that in the heat of battle soldiers had to do things that civilians on the sidelines would not approve of. Things that might seem barbaric on the surface but served a very important role in flushing out the enemy. An enemy that was trying to kill Lam and his unit.

  Wei had seen enough war in his own life to know the difference. There was a huge difference between a war on paper and a war in person––that when it came down to a choice between you and your enemy, you did whatever you had to do. No matter how offensive or how grotesque.

  But instead, the general turned his back on Lam, having him and his men brought up on charges. Charges that landed Lam in prison for most of the remainder of his life.

  It was there, sitting in his cell these past few years, that Lam finally grasped what Wei had become. He had become one of them. One of the political elite hell-bent on nothing more than his own personal power. No matter whom he had to use or step on to get it. And Lam was one of the casualties.

  But the tides had turned. And he would have his revenge. He would strike back at the man who had destroyed his life. With Wei now dead, the next best thing was the man’s offspring: a daughter who Lam had even met briefly when she was a young child.

  He had dreamed about it for years, sitting alone behind the bars of his prison cell. An almost feral yearning to strike back at the great general. An opportunity he never thought would come.

  But it had.

  Almost as if by miracle, his opportunity had finally arrived—out of a failed mission, leaving Wei a
traitor to his country. And his daughter a prize of extreme importance to the state.

  Wei’s daughter was now the instrument of this revenge.

  With dark, unmoving eyes, Lam sat on the Russian-built, Mi-17 transport helicopter without saying a word. Next to him were four soldiers of the PLA Special Operations Forces. Dressed in black fatigues, their assault rifles hung over their shoulders and pointed down at the black metal floor. The men’s hands never traveled far from their triggers. Emblazoned upon their shoulders was the familiar red insignia bearing a sword and lightning bolt.

  The helicopter’s cabin was eerily silent except for the whirling blades overhead, beating the air into submission. The glowing city lights of Jinzhou passed slowly beneath them.

  Lam kept his eyes low. His mind was fixated on one thing and one thing only.

  What he didn’t know was that the four soldiers sitting next to him were not there entirely for the reason he’d been told. They would help find her, but in the end, they were there to keep Wei’s daughter alive. Or put more simply, to protect her…from Sheng Lam.

  37

  Li Na sat quietly in the nearly empty living room of the abandoned apartment. With knees pulled up to her chest and arms wrapped around them, she waited patiently for sunrise.

  Her stomach growled, reminding her the previous night’s food had not lasted long enough. She tried to eat as much as she could, but her stomach wasn’t used to holding so much food. Which left her counting the hours until she could return downstairs for more.

  She tried to distract herself by examining the apartment for the hundredth time. Even without lights or a working door, she had to admit it felt nice. The mattress alone had been worth the loneliness, for a while. But eventually the gravity of her situation crept back in. Soon her mind returned to the priorities of food and a way to reach the coast.

  She had actually grown optimistic that it might not be too hard. Some people in the city had to have cars. She just needed to find them and bribe one of the owners to take her as far east as possible. It would be worth losing even a large chunk of her money as long as it got her there quickly.

  If she couldn’t find a car, there were always the trucks. Even a mostly empty city required some things brought in. Equipment, maintenance supplies, and especially food for what few shops existed. And if a truck didn’t bring it then something had to. She just needed to find out what.

  Li Na instinctively looked up at the door, putting a foot on the cold floor at the same time. There was a sound outside. Something barely detectable, but there. She lowered her other foot without a sound and leaned forward, listening.

  It sounded like scratching. After several long seconds, it became louder. It wasn’t scratching though. It was the sound of skittering.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. Rats were much better than something bigger. Li Na lifted both feet off the floor again and wrapped her arms back around her legs, gently easing her head against the wall.

  She closed her eyes in the darkness, trying to relax, and reminded herself that she had plenty of time.

  38

  Sheng Lam pushed a button on the side of his watch to read the illuminated face. It was similar to what he’d worn before prison, including his fatigues and boots, but better quality. His only weapon was a P19 semiautomatic pistol, holstered on his left side. And it gave him a sense of carnal pleasure each time his elbow brushed back against it.

  He’d snuck a look at the magazine before they lifted off to make sure they hadn’t given him an empty gun. Years ago he would have been able to tell just from the weight, but not anymore. Some of his skills were nowhere near as sharp after years of being unused. But others, the more innate abilities, were still intact. Especially his tracking abilities.

  His call with the hacker M0ngol was just another example. The kid was clearly frightened, but several slight pauses in his speech told Lam he was also hiding something. A hunch further confirmed by some of the subtle fluctuations in his voice. The hacker was beginning to worry more about covering for himself than finding the girl––which meant he needed to be watched very carefully.

  Lam could also sense the mood amongst the five men sitting around him. Something…deceptive. A second agenda he clearly didn’t know about.

  But it didn’t bother him. He’d had more than his share of secrets when serving in the army. Lam’s only concern now was whether those men would get in the way of his objective. Because if they did, he was ready to kill every single one of them.

  Impatiently, Lam glanced again at his watch.

  Less than two hours.

  39

  Li Na was moving before dawn broke. Once there was enough ambient light to navigate the stairwells, she began quietly descending, pausing briefly at each floor to listen before continuing.

  She stopped at a floor where she thought she’d seen one of the others disappear, but there was no sound. No talking, no movement, nothing. Li Na abruptly gripped one of the handrails when it occurred to her that perhaps the others might be listening for her.

  She looked up the stairs behind her, then down below, listening harder. She placed each step toe to heel to eliminate any pounding, no matter how subtle. On each stair, she moved down the gray metal steps with only a slight reverberation.

  When she finally reached the bottom, she pushed open one of the beige double doors and checked the exit at the end of the hall. She eased the door closed behind her and bounded lightly down the hallway.

  There was no one outside yet. Still half dark, the streets were both easily visible and very empty. From a nearby corner, Li Na scanned up and down her street, spotting the entrance to the mall she’d found the night before. She spotted movement further down the street on the far side. A man with his head down, dressed in gray pants and a white shirt.

  She inhaled and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  ***

  The team’s Mi-17 helicopter landed several kilometers outside of the city, where the thumping of its rotors would not be heard. The men climbed out to see the towers of Yuhong rising solemnly into the air, silhouetted by the first rays of sunrise.

  From that distance, there was little indication that the metropolitan area was empty. Instead, the cityscape looked calm, almost peaceful, in the morning air.

  The leader of the five soldiers, a man named Peng, stopped almost two hundred meters beyond the chopper’s spinning blades and withdrew a small handheld device. The flat screen came to life, promptly displaying an aerial map. It was quickly followed by the appearance of a red dot, indicating their location. The others, including Lam, closed in around him as the leader zoomed in on the mall where the video images had been recorded.

  “Eight, maybe nine kilometers,” he instructed in Mandarin. He looked up to observe the tip of the morning sun peeking over the distant mountain range. “It’ll be too light when we get there. Leave the rifles and change clothes. Take only weapons you can conceal.”

  “We should split up,” one of his men offered.

  “When we get a few streets in. Our target is here,” he replied gruffly, pointing at the screen. “We see if she comes back first.” The leader then turned to Lam. “You stay with me.”

  Lam didn’t reply.

  Peng ignored him and nodded to the rest of his men, a nod they promptly returned before running back to the helicopter.

  40

  The first sign of hope Li Na found was in the form of a large parking garage. It was several stories tall, attached by a glass bridge to a very large and expensive building, towering high overhead. Mirrored glass covered all sides. The spacious entrance to the building was visible in the far corner and looked as deserted as the rest. Once-tall Gingko trees planted on either side now stood wilting and neglected.

  Inside the garage, Li Na found the first two levels empty. However, on the third level, where the skyway connected the two buildings, she was surprised to find several cars. They were all parked together in a small group, leaving the rest of the leve
l as barren as the first two.

  She recognized the symbols on each of three Mercedes and one Jaguar. But the last two she hadn’t seen before. All of them were expensive.

  Li Na turned to check behind her, then eased behind a concrete pillar, watching for movement. There was no motion at all. Just the row of automobiles parked in silence.

  Across the bridge, she could make out a large heavy glass door. Opaque and still.

  She moved cautiously. Walking forward in a wide arc allowed her to keep her eyes fixed on the glass bridge. Without a sound, she reached the group of cars and moved in close enough to look inside the windows. It wasn’t their opulent interiors or upholstery that surprised her. Or even the wide television screens embedded in the thick leather of the backseats. What surprised her was that two out of the three cars she examined did not have their doors locked.

  Searching the other levels confirmed the rest of the garage was empty. Her growling stomach kept interrupting her thoughts. If she was going to find another option, it was going to take time.

  From the top level of the garage, she peered out over the early-morning city. Even with the sun’s light casting long shadows, she could see much more now than she had the night before, including a larger city center. And a park that stretched almost a half kilometer on the other side. Both locations, to her surprise, showed signs of movement.

  This revelation caused a brief wave of optimism to course through her veins. There were more people here than she thought, which could mean an opportunity for making a friend––someone who might be able to help her get out of the city.

  And now with the hope of a new day, the most logical place to start was back at the food court.