Hidden Sun

by John Campbell

  His partner had wrenched an AK47 from Konaka’s soldier and fire a short burst into him. The man fell to the ground and was still.

  Hendrick picked up his dead enemy’s assault rifle and slid next to Malik. What next? he thought as he gasped for breath.

  A small object flew through the fog and landed between them.

  “Grenade!” shouted Hendrick. He picked it up in a frenzy. Two more grenades dropped ten feet away from Malik. Hendrick threw his grenade underhanded then flung himself to the ground.

  Malik got to the first grenade, getting it up and over the edge of their rock cover before it exploded, sending a shock wave across both of them. Hendrick’s grenade went off, flooding the area with a strobe of light. The concussion from the grenades battered them. Malik reached for the second grenade, his body between the grenade and Hendrick.

  A split second later it went off, and Hendrick knew instantly his best friend was gone.

  CHAPTER 29

  Escape

  Maggie heard the detonations and fear for Hendrick nearly overwhelmed her. She almost turned back but knew that the nearly unconscious Wong wouldn’t make it if she stopped helping Loh drag him toward their only avenue of escape. The explosions ceased, and the island fell silent once again. She stumbled on, praying that Hendrick and Malik were all right.

  Hendrick rolled over the rocks away from where they had made their stand, away from the horror of Malik’s death. The flash of the grenade and the dismemberment of his friend seared into his mind. He could hear Konaka’s deep booming voice shouting to his men, exhorting them on. The disembodied voice floated to him through the fog, mocking his abortive attempt for revenge. The voice gave him the crushing realization that his obsession with Konaka had caused his friend’s death.

  He slipped and crawled, slid and stumbled in the thickening fog, the shock of seeing his friend blown apart numbing his senses. The rocks battered him, causing him to bleed in a half dozen places, but he felt nothing, his thoughts frozen with the blast of the grenade that took Joe Malik’s life.

  He fled for a seeming eternity, the night closing around him, the fog softening the edges of the world. Grief hit him. He stopped, sliding to the ground, retching with the shock and finality of Joe’s loss.

  The guards at the cove had seemingly multiplied and had dug in around the pier rather than sauntering up and down as they had before. Powerful lights turned the night into day. The small island across the cove was well lit by bright lights. The alert had been sounded. Maggie eyed the seaplane anchored near the islet across the water. Loh came up to her for a whispered conversation.

  “Can’t take the boats. They could have guards on them,” he said, thinking out loud.

  “I can fly the seaplane,” said Maggie in a weary voice. Loh gave her a look of surprise. She nodded at him to confirm her statement.

  “Let’s go,” said Loh. “We have a long swim ahead of us.”

  Maggie shook her head and looked down at her feet. “No, we have to wait for Hendrick and Malik.”

  Loh got closer to her. “We can grab the plane, then look for Hendrick.”

  Maggie looked straight into his eyes lit by the residual glow from the pier lights. “No,” she said simply.

  Loh wouldn’t give in easily. “I have to get word of this installation back to Taiwan.”

  “That intelligence business?” she asked, referring to Konaka’s comment that Loh had been an official in Taiwanese intelligence.

  Loh nodded. “This man, Konaka, poses a serious threat to Taiwan and Japan, as well as China.”

  “You would leave them here alone?” she asked with eyebrows raised, knowing that their abandonment would be a death sentence.

  Voices floated to them among the fog. The three of them looked anxiously into the dark.

  Loh put his lips to her ear. “We have to move now!” They grabbed Wong, pulling him down the hill. Maggie went willingly, driven by the fear of Konaka’s men. They had escaped death three times this night. She didn’t want to try her luck a fourth time.

  They reached the water’s edge and quickly entered the bone chilling water, the voices closing the distance swiftly behind them. The rapidly advancing guards drove them to swim at a panicked pace only slowed by the nearly unconscious Wong between them.

  Fifteen minutes later, they reached the starboard pontoon of the seaplane, lining up on the inside of the pontoon with the fuselage of the plane just above them. Maggie looked the aircraft over as Loh studied the shoreline for patrolling guards. They saw five black uniformed men walk the beach with flashlights looking for signs of their trail.

  If they are any good at all, they’ll see where we went into the water, thought Maggie. They pulled Wong out of the water and struggled to get him into the plane, settling him into the rear seat. Loh turned to Maggie who sank into the pilot’s seat.

  “No keys,” said Maggie and pointed at the dashboard. Loh took in the situation, then scrambled under the dashboard, pulling out a set of wire cutters and a pair of needle-nosed pliers out of his pocket. He turned on a small flashlight, and went to work. After five minutes he straightened up and said, “Ready.”

  “You could have a future in grand theft auto,” she said without humor, then saw movement in the distance. “Uh, oh.” The patrol along the shore had found their tracks leading into the sea. She could see two of them pointing toward the plane.

  “We’re going to get some nasty company real soon,” she whispered to Loh. She quickly got busy checking out the plane’s controls.

  “Start it now,” commanded Loh. He squirmed around to get a good view of the soldiers on the shore.

  “What about Hendrick?” she asked in a breathless tone. Loh didn’t answer. She turned to him and repeated the question through gritted teeth. Loh looked at her sadly and just shook his head.

  She turned back to her controls, despair welling up in her. Where was he? Was he still alive? She had a sudden thought. “We could -”

  “We’ll send someone back for him,” finished Loh.

  Maggie looked back at Loh and saw a boatload of guards heading toward them at high speed. She hit the starter in a panic. The engine turned over for several agonizing seconds then coughed into life. Maggie grabbed the collective and tested the controls. Loh immediately began shooting with his AK47 at the anchor lines that kept the plane from drifting away. After several shots, he yelled that they were free.

  Maggie gunned the engine, aiming the plane for the opening in the cove to the north and praying that there were no underwater obstacles to snag the plane’s pontoons.

  They picked up speed slowly at first, the sounds of gunfire from Konaka’s men clearly heard over the roar of the plane’s engine. One bullet went through the side window passing within an inch of Wong’s face and exiting out the windscreen, sending pieces of Plexiglas flying about the cabin. Loh leaned out the side window and fired at the oncoming guards.

  The plane picked up speed rapidly, leaving the guards behind. The sound of gunfire diminished and soon Maggie felt lift building under the wings. The aircraft climbed slowly into the night sky as relief flooded Maggie and the others. Her thoughts immediately shifted.

  Where was Hendrick?

  A large explosion suddenly ripped through the fog and lit up the night. Maggie banked the plane over to get a better view. Her spirits leaped in her. That was Hendrick! she thought excitedly to herself. He was still alive!

  She passed low over the island, the sight on the ground disturbing her. In the glow from the explosion she could see Konaka’s guards converging quickly on a spot on the side of one of the hills. The tips of their assault rifles gave off intermittent flashes of fire.

  Hendrick’s breath came in gasps as his lungs clawed at the moist night air. He stumbled along, trying to keep the hill between the guards and himself, dimly aware that he made a good target in the enemy’s infrared scopes. Konaka’s men were shooting at something, but he thanked God that it wasn’t him.

  The roar
of the last explosion rumbled across the island and shook him with powerful waves of sound. He knew it was the SAM installation going up. Any invasion force wouldn’t have to contend with that anymore.

  Hendrick had taken out almost all Konaka’s buildings, except for the hangar containing the helicopters, and the lighthouse, which he wouldn’t have destroyed anyway.

  The noise from the blast died away, leaving a fragile puttering sound in its wake. Hendrick stopped long enough to search the sky for the origin of the sound. He quickly located a silhouette against the glow from the underside of the clouds.

  A plane! Hendrick’s spirits went up a notch. Could it be Loh, Wong, and Maggie getting away from this terrible place? The aircraft was a slow, calm element of his surroundings, an oasis of hope amid the horror playing out on the island below.

  He knew it was Maggie and the others, and the thought cheered him. He started again to pick his way among the rocks made slippery by the moisture-laden air, heading for a cave he had found earlier that evening. Voices came up behind him.

  Can they see me? he asked himself in a panic. He began to run, but immediately slipped and fell.

  Gunfire erupted behind him.

  Maggie squirmed with tension as she saw the flashes of light below. Was it Hendrick they were firing at? Were they shooting at him this very moment? She plagued herself with impossible questions. She moved the stick to pass over the island again, but Loh reached over and grabbed her hand.

  “We can’t help him,” said Loh in her ear. “Go to Taiwan. The faster we get there, the faster we can get back.”

  Maggie glanced back over her shoulder at the lights still left on the island, her heart pounding with grief. She straightened the plane on the heading for Taiwan, her thoughts in turmoil. One thought surfaced.

  Forgive me, Steve.

  CHAPTER 30

  The Letter

  TAIPEI, TAIWAN

  Maggie Ramsey left the bar in a rush with two thoroughly drunk men following her into the street. Now I’ve gone and done it, she thought miserably. These two leeches think that they’re going to get into my pants tonight just because I’ve had two drinks.

  Maggie walked quickly down the street, searching for a taxi. The men got too close once, and she turned on them with a vengeance.

  “Listen you two, get lost!” she blurted out. She cursed herself under her breath. The two men, one Oriental and one Occidental, both grinned stupidly.

  “Hey baby, why don’t you come home with ush,” said the Occidental one, slurring his words.

  Maggie dismissed them with a disgusted wave, then turned and kept walking down the street. A taxi turned around the corner and proceeded slowly toward her. She walked up to the curb and waved the cab down. The cab came to a stop next to her, and she got a hand on the door, then she felt the presence of the drunks very close to her.

  Maggie turned and saw them both with imbecilic smiles not three feet from her. They were ready to get into the taxi with her. She smiled sweetly and opened the door with a flourish.

  “You convinced me, boys,” Maggie said in a loud voice. “Let’s go party.”

  The men cheered in a gurgling fashion then fell into the back seat of the taxi. Maggie went up to the driver, pulled out a wad of money, and leaned into the window.

  “Take these two idiots ten kilometers from here and drop them off. They’ll never know that they’re not home,” Maggie said in fluent Chinese. The cab driver’s eyes went wide open at both her command of Chinese and the amount of money she was waving in his face.

  The driver agreed readily, and moments later, the two men were whisked away by the taxi. Maggie waved at the departing cab. She could see the two men looking through the back window with surprise on their faces.

  “Bye, boys,” said Maggie. “Start the party without me.” Her words echoed among the dark buildings of midnight Taipei. She began to walk in the direction of her hotel, breathing deeply to control herself, taking in the smells of the city, exhaust from the tens of thousands of motor scooters, and the occasional odor of an underground sewer.

  The clip clop of footsteps across the street alerted her to the approach of another person. Maggie saw a man heading in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. She suddenly looked around, aware of how dangerous the streets of Taipei could be for a woman alone. The stranger on the other side of the street - was he a danger?

  Maggie stared at the man - he also was alone. The man’s face was in the shadows until he drew directly opposite her. His face came out into the light of an overhead sign. Maggie gaped at the man’s profile.

  “Hendrick?” she exclaimed involuntarily. The man turned and looked at her full face. Maggie stepped off the foot high curb, walking halfway across the street, staring at the man who had stopped walking upon hearing her say something.

  “Well, I say, I’d rather wish I was,” said the man in a British accent.

  She gave the Englishman a disgusted wave and walked off down the street. What’s that? she thought, the fiftieth time I thought I saw Steve in the last two days? Since when did he become my obsession?

  And why am I keeping his things? A bag of his belongings had been recovered from the floating wreck that was all that remained of Loh’s boat. Loh had taken possession of them, then had turned them over to Maggie. He had told her to give them back to Hendrick when he showed up again.

  She had looked inside the bag, then turned it upside down, dumping the items on the bed. There were the necessary toilet articles, razor, shaving cream, deodorant, underwear, an extra shirt, a camera, and a Russian-English dictionary. She had closed her eyes and had held the shirt close to her, breathing in the man’s scent, a curiously exciting mixture of deodorant, sweat, and some other indefinable quantity. She had remembered how his arms went around her, the feeling of his kisses on her neck, how he bit her gently on the top of her shoulder.

  Maggie quickly opened her eyes and tried to bring herself back to reality. “I don’t believe this,” she mumbled to herself. “I’m being turned on by a dead man.” Maybe human attraction is based on chemicals, she thought. Built in aphrodisiacs - maybe that’s why some people seemed addicted to another. Am I addicted to Steve? Already?

  The events of the last few days blurred in her consciousness. They had run and rerun constantly in her mind only to leave her exhausted with guilt at leaving Konaka’s island without Hendrick and Malik. Loh had somehow gotten a covert action team to invade the island only thirty-six hours after she and her two companions had escaped. They had found nothing of consequence. Several new craters were evident, the result of Hendrick’s pyrotechnics. No bodies were found, but there was plenty of evidence of the battle they had fought there. Shell casings, blood, and some body parts were found. The boats were gone, the helicopters were gone, the freighter was gone. Konaka and his men were gone.

  And Hendrick and Malik were gone.

  Am I going to cry myself to sleep again, or will I spend another sleepless night? If you ask me, I’ll settle for crying this time, she thought with a surge of despair. I need the sleep.

  Ten minutes later, she entered the lobby of her hotel and went up the elevator to her room. She fished out her key and unlocked the door. Maggie didn’t bother to turn on the light, deciding to fall into bed in the dark. She kicked off her shoes, dropped her coat on the floor and did a belly flop on the double bed in one corner of the room.

  “Maggie,” said a soft voice three inches from her ear.

  Maggie’s head snapped upward, then the rest of her body leaped out of bed in a cat-like movement. She quickly had a handgun out and pointed into the dark.

  The lights snapped on, and Maggie blinked at the figure who was lying on one side of her bed with a smile on his face.

  “Hendrick!” she said in disbelief.

  Steve Hendrick rolled off the bed and went over to Maggie. He wrapped his arms around her and she sank into his arms.

  “I thought you were dead,” she said in an agonize
d voice. “The guards were attacking and -”

  “I hid in every rat hole on that stinking island,” replied Hendrick. “They got close a few times, but I managed to wiggle out of their way.”

  “How’s Joe? Where is he?” she asked, looking over his shoulder.

  Hendrick’s face fell with grief. He let Maggie go and turned away.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” she asked with alarm.

  “Joe didn’t make it,” he said, his voice full of emotion.

  Maggie pulled Hendrick close to her. “Oh God, no.”

  “He took a grenade for me,” said Hendrick, his voice held firm to counteract his feelings.

  Maggie put her arms around his neck and began to weep. He held her for a long moment until her emotions subsided. He began to move away, but she held him closely. She reached up and kissed him on the lips, her tears making their lips wet. His lips, cold with grief, warmed quickly under Maggie’s passionate kiss. She pulled at his shirt, yanking the buttons open, feeling his chest under her fingers.

  He pulled on a zipper, her slacks falling loose around her ankles. They went faster and faster, undressing each other in a burst of desire, clothes flying about as fast at they could get them off.

  They sank onto the bed, making love over and over until they fell asleep in each other’s arms as the early morning light sent a soft glow into the room.

  “So how did you get from that rotten little island to here?” Maggie asked as she played with the hair on Steve’s chest. She rubbed her naked body against Steve’s, memories of the previous night lingering in her mind.

  “I stole a boat and sailed it back to the Taiwanese coast,” he explained. “Konaka evacuated the island soon after you, Wong, and Loh took off.”