Dragon Key

by Don Pendleton

  “And then some,” Grimaldi said.

  Bolan went to the door, opened it a crack and did a quick peek up and down the narrow aisle. “I’ll be back.”

  “Give my regards to Hal,” Grimaldi said.

  Bolan slipped out. He exited the compartment and went in the opposite direction of the dining car. Bolan strolled to the end of the car and went into the gangway compartment. Accordion-like folds of rubber and canvas had been fastened around the gangway to interlock and seal off the compartment. Although it was noisy, Bolan figured it afforded him the privacy to make the quick call. He dialed the number for Brognola’s phone and listened to several rings.

  Finally, Hal answered. “What the hell, Jack? You know what time it is here?”

  “Right greeting, wrong person,” Bolan said.

  “Why are you using Grimaldi’s phone?”

  “Mine’s out of juice. We’re running on fumes trying to get out of here. I wanted to call in a sitrep.”

  “Where are you at? A tin-can factory?”

  “We’re on a train.” He gave Brognola a quick update on the situation, their itinerary and the dragon key.

  Brognola gave a low whistle. “Okay, I’ll brief the President and start greasing the wheels to get you guys out of there. Tressman, too. When you get where you’re going, contact the American Consulate’s office and we’ll go from there.”

  “Sounds good,” Bolan said. “I probably won’t be able to check back with you. Jack’s phone is about tapped out, too.”

  “Roger that, Striker,” Brognola said. “Godspeed.”

  Bolan hung up. It was time to find Tai Pang.

  Chapter Ten

  The Mantis listened to Master Chen’s final instructions carefully. The Triad boss ended with a stern admonishment.

  “You must recover the dragon key at all costs,” he said. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master,” the Mantis replied.

  “Let me hear you repeat this pledge.”

  “I will recover the dragon key.” The Mantis suddenly became aware of the smell of a cigarette. He turned to see the one they called Herbie standing in the corner of the gangway compartment. The noise of the jolting train must have obscured the sound of the sliding door as he entered this section. Either that or he’d opened it surreptitiously. The Mantis ended his call abruptly and turned.

  “Tai Pang, is that the food?” Herbie asked as he pointed to the paper sack on the floor. “The boss sent me to find you.”

  The Mantis felt like saying the big American was not his “boss,” but instead he said nothing. He wondered just how much this cockroach had overheard. At least they were alone in this small area.

  Herbie inhaled his cigarette and blew out a cloudy breath as he talked. “Master, huh? Who were you talking to? And what’s the dragon key?”

  The Mantis stared at him without speaking.

  “Hey, listen.” Herbie held up his hands. “I have no problem if you have another angle to play. In fact, I’ll help you with it. Just let me get my money from the Americans first, okay?”

  The Mantis considered his options.

  Herbie puffed nervously on the cigarette. The ash glowed with a sudden brightness, and he exhaled smoke through both nostrils. “I know how it is. We’re cut from the same cloth. I grew up poor, too, but that doesn’t mean I intend to stay that way. You and me, we’re the same, right?”

  Again, the Mantis said nothing, but he felt rage building within him. The same? How could this insect have the audacity to speak those words?

  Suddenly, the door to the main compartment slid open and a uniformed train conductor stepped into the area adjacent to the gangway. He looked at them, nodded in an officious sort of way and asked, “Is there a problem here?”

  Herbie flashed a nervous smile. He held up his cigarette, which was now burned down to the end, and said, “Hey, friend, do you have any smokes? I can pay.”

  The conductor’s right eyebrow elevated slightly. After a second’s pause, he nodded and took out a large ring of keys. “In my locker,” he said as he went to the luggage compartment, unlocked the door and opened it. Inside he slipped another key into the lock of a thin metal closet. He twisted the key and pulled the door open, revealing a locker approximately thirty centimeters wide and at least fifty deep. The Mantis could see a dressy jacket hanging inside. The conductor fumbled with a package of cigarettes on the top shelf.

  As the man turned back to them, the Mantis pivoted. A hooking kick hit the conductor in the abdomen. As he bent over, grasping his gut, the ring of keys clattered on the metal floor. The Mantis stepped in with a ridge hand blow that swept upward, striking the man’s throat. He reeled, gasping, as the Mantis encircled the conductor’s neck with a guillotine choke and punctuated the movement with a sharp twisting motion.

  Herbie heard the neck snap.

  Instead of letting the conductor slump completely to the floor, the Mantis held him and began stripping off his uniform shirt.

  “What did you do that for?” Herbie asked.

  The Mantis could smell the cockroach’s sweat. “Take that jacket out of the locker,” he said.

  Herbie stood frozen for a moment, and the Mantis flashed an angry stare that got the insect going with herky-jerky movements. The Mantis glanced in both directions as he stripped off the uniform shirt and told Herbie to slip the jacket from the locker over the dead man’s arms. So far, they were still alone. When they had tugged the jacket over the arms and shoulders of the corpse, the Mantis shoved the man into the luggage van, lowering him to a sitting position. Reaching into his pocket, the Mantis wrapped his fingers around the British agent’s gun. He hated to use such a shiny souvenir, but it was necessary. The ruse must continue until he had the dragon key.

  “What do you want me to do now?” Herbie asked.

  “I want you to join him,” the Mantis said.

  The cockroach looked down, then back up, grinning with that same nervous expression.

  The Mantis removed the Walther from his pocket, shoved it against Herbie’s belly and pulled the trigger twice. It was as the Mantis had hoped. The popping sound of the gun was muffled by their close proximity and the jolting squeal of the train.

  Herbie stiffened with each shot, his eyes wide with horror.

  The Mantis stepped closer, knowing the other man had but a few seconds of life left.

  “Remember this as you die, insect,” the Mantis said, their faces millimeters apart, “we are not the same.”

  * * *

  BOLAN CAUGHT SIGHT of Tai Pang running down the aisle toward their compartment. As soon as their eyes locked, the man motioned for Bolan to come with him, and he turned and ran in the opposite direction.

  This doesn’t look good, Bolan thought as he trotted after the lithe figure.

  Bolan followed him into the gangway compartment. A second later Tai Pang glanced both ways, then stopped. A man and a woman walked through the gangway connection and into the next car. Tai Pang waited until they’d gone and pulled out a ring of keys, opening the sliding door to the luggage compartment. Two men sat on the floor, slumped against the rows of suitcases. One of them was Herbie. Both were obviously dead.

  “What happened?” Bolan asked. He smelled the residual odor of burned gunpowder and saw two expended shell casings vibrating on the metal floor with the train’s movement. They appeared to be .380 rounds.

  “That man shot Herbie,” Tai Pang said, pulling a small, stainless-steel pistol partially out of his pocket. “He was secret police. They must know we’re on the train. I had to kill him.”

  Bolan glanced around. So far, they were still alone.

  “We must dump their bodies off the train,” Tai Pang said. “Before they are discovered.”

  “These doors are probably autolocked,” B
olan said. “They’re designed not to open while the train’s in motion.”

  Tai Pang held up the ring of keys and pointed to a square box on the wall. “That’s the manual override to unlock the door.” He stepped forward and stuck a key into the slot and the box opened. Bolan wondered how Tai Pang knew about the override box, and also something else...

  “Where’d you get those keys?” Bolan asked.

  “I stole them,” Tai Pang said. “From a conductor.”

  “And how did you know about the override box?”

  “My father worked for the railroad.” Tai Pang gestured toward the cop. “I’ll get that one.” He grabbed the dead man, dragged him over to the door and pressed a switch. The door popped open slightly and a cold rush of air whistled in. Bolan dragged Herbie’s body over to the door. He reached down and closed Herbie’s eyes. It wasn’t much of a send-off, but it was all he could do.

  Tai Pang gripped the handle on the big sliding door and pulled it all the way open. The dark night rushed past. Bolan could see little else besides a smattering of gravel and flashes of periodic, adjacent metal structures. Tai Pang positioned himself by the open space and tossed Herbie’s body out first. Bolan noticed the two blackened holes, surrounded by splotches of crimson, on the dead man’s gut.

  Powder burns on his shirt, Bolan thought. A close-range shot. Very close.

  Tai Pang grabbed the other man and threw him out, as well. Bolan didn’t see any obvious wounds on that guy, but from the way the dead man’s head loosely bobbled, his neck appeared broken.

  Standing, Tai Pang took the pistol out of his pocket and looked at it.

  A Walther PPS, Bolan thought. Stainless steel. An expensive weapon for a plainclothes cop.

  Tai Pang drew his arm back to toss the gun out, but Bolan said, “Hey, maybe we’d better keep that. We may need all the firepower we can get.”

  Tai Pang nodded and slipped the gun back into his pocket.

  Bolan shoved the door closed. “Let’s get back to the compartment and sort this out.”

  “Okay.” Tai Pang bent and grabbed a large paper bag that was on the floor. “The food,” he said, holding the bag up. There were traces of blood on his hands, which had stained the paper with red smudges.

  Bolan nodded and pulled back the door to the interior of the car.

  They saw no one on their way back to the compartment. Bolan opened the door and they slipped inside.

  “Ah, fried rice and egg rolls,” Grimaldi said, rubbing his hands together. “My favorite.”

  “Herbie’s dead,” Bolan said.

  “What?” Yang’s face crinkled in horror.

  Han’s brow furrowed. “How did this happen?”

  Tai Pang looked at Bolan, said nothing.

  “Apparently, he was accosted by a plainclothes policeman,” Bolan said. “There must have been some kind of struggle and Herbie was shot at close range. The other man’s dead, too.”

  “Oh, how terrible.” Yang wiped some tears from her eyes.

  “Well, I guess we won’t be buying him that new van after all.” Grimaldi shrugged. “I’ll kind of miss the little guy.”

  Bolan gestured for Tai Pang to place the bag of food on the bench. “Watch out, there’s blood on the outside of the bag.” He looked down and saw tiny splattering along the top fold, as well as the smudges Tai Pang’s bloody fingers had left. Bolan took out his Espada and cut the bag down each side, exposing the cartons of food and six bottles of water.

  “I don’t think I want to eat right now,” Yang said.

  “You’ve got no choice.” Bolan handed her one of the cartons and some chopsticks. “It’s only a matter of time before they discover we’re on this train. They probably already searched the one going to Hong Kong.” He handed a box of rice to Han, and one to Grimaldi.

  Grimaldi popped his open and started shoveling the contents into his mouth.

  Bolan held a box toward Tai Pang, who shook his head and said he needed to wash his hands. He went into the small washroom and closed the door behind him.

  “So what’s our contingency plan?” Grimaldi asked.

  Bolan opened a box and began eating. “Good question. It’s going to depend on how far we get before they stop this train and search it.” He turned to Han. “You know your country better than we do. Any suggestions?”

  Han chewed slowly on some rice before answering, “I would say we are still perhaps six or seven hundred kilometers from Shanghai. That is a sizable distance.”

  “I have an idea,” Tai Pang said as he exited the washroom.

  They looked at him.

  “This is the high-speed line used by the bullet trains and the sleepers,” he said. “There is a freight train route that runs parallel to these tracks. It is a few kilometers to the west.”

  “What’s the terrain like between these tracks and the freight line?” Bolan asked.

  “Farmland. Rice paddies,” Tai Pang said. “We can walk.”

  Bolan mulled over the plan. They’d be trying to move on foot, in the dark, with no compass and the possibility of armed PLA soldiers in pursuit. Then they’d wait for a southbound freight moving slow enough to board. Plus, there was the little matter of jumping off this train, which was moving at a pretty good clip. But if the authorities did eventually stop this train, there weren’t a lot of options.

  “Do you know how often those freight trains run?” Bolan asked.

  Tai Pang shook his head. “I do not.”

  “Well, let’s keep it in mind,” Bolan said. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to get a lot closer to Shanghai before we have to jump ship. But if this train stops, be ready.”

  He looked at each of them, noticing their grim expressions as they ate in silence. Something else gnawed at Bolan, but he couldn’t grasp it through the fatigue.

  * * *

  GENERAL WONG SAT in his office and stared at his personal cell phone. After the discovery of the Hong Kong bullet train ruse, he’d had little choice but to implement the stop-and-search order for all trains that had left Beijing in the past twelve hours. To do less would create more suspicion in the Standing Committee.

  They had already expressed their displeasure with the way the matter had been handled. And the news about the missing guidance system had been discovered as well, furthering the Committee’s ire. Someone was going to pay dearly.

  Wong knew his best—his only—chance to avoid discovery was to remain in command of the investigation and make a good show of trying to capture Han and the Americans. Naturally, he would see to it they all perished in an “attempted resistance,” but he also had to recover the dragon key first.

  If Han did have a plan in place to deliver the dragon key to the journalists, and if they could somehow crack his password, the result would be immediate and deadly for him. But if Wong could get his hands on Han, there were ways of making him talk. He would keep the man alive just long enough to get the location of the dragon key.

  Wong looked at the phone again, willing it to ring. Where was the update from that bastard Chen?

  The phone rang. He grabbed it, glanced at the number and answered.

  “Things are proceeding well.” Chen’s calm voice did little to soothe Wong’s anxiety.

  “You have found it?”

  “Not yet. But we are getting closer. How is your train search proceeding?”

  Wong snorted. “I delayed things as long as I could with that Hong Kong train, but they would get suspicious if I did not enact more sweeping actions. I cannot appear as a total fool in their eyes.”

  Chen chuckled. “A wise man is often thought of as a fool until the light shines upon his wisdom.”

  More Confucian nonsense. Wong was in no mood for it. “My soldiers will be stopping the Shanghai sleeper train in Jiangsu Province shortly.
Are your people in place?”

  “They are,” Chen said. “When Han and the Americans abandon the train, Lee will take them to the freight lines, ostensibly to complete their journey to Shanghai. My men will be waiting for them. But I still feel it would be better to wait until they have retrieved the dragon key in Shanghai.”

  “And take the chance of losing them again?” Wong said.

  “Lee will not let that happen. And we still do not know its exact location. Remember, the smart fox follows the rabbit back to his lair in order to feast on a larger bounty.”

  Wong started to swear, but stopped. He could not afford to lose his temper with this son of a whore. Not at this time. Not while he held all the pieces of the puzzle.

  “Regardless,” Chen said, “You should begin your journey south, to Shanghai, so we’ll be able to ascertain the validity of the dragon key once it is recovered.”

  “I have a plane standing by,” Wong said. “Call me back when you have them.”

  And with that, he hung up. It was time for him to begin his exit strategy to leave China forever. All he needed was that elusive dragon key.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bolan was woken by the jolt of the train suddenly slowing down. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been under. At Grimaldi’s insistence, he’d agreed to take a nap and had fallen asleep almost immediately.

  “I think the engineer just hit the brakes,” Grimaldi said.

  Bolan looked out the window. It was still dark. He checked his watch: 2149. An hour and a half since he’d lain down. The train had probably traveled another hundred or so kilometers. They were still a good distance from Shanghai.

  He swung off the bunk and jumped to the floor. Han and Yang were both on their feet. Grimaldi was at the door holding his SIG Sauer.

  “Where’s Tai Pang?” Bolan asked, grabbing his Beretta as he slipped into his shoulder holster.

  “I sent him to try to find out what’s going on.” Grimaldi peeked out the partially open door. “He’s coming back now.”

  Grimaldi opened the door and Tai Pang slid through the opening.