Vital Force

by Trevor Scott

  “What?”

  They watched in horror as a second man fell.

  Then the security police returned fire in a burst and took up secure positions behind their Humvees.

  19

  Jake and Su had slept most of the day, knowing they would be up much of the night traveling through the mountains. He was certain Su’s uncle had no idea why they were there, which was a good thing, since Jake was beginning to wonder himself.

  Jake was offered a mix of winter clothes that the uncle kept around for when his relatives happened by in the colder months. Judging from their tattered state, they were probably as old as Su. The green wool pants seemed to be from Mao’s military and were a snug fit on him. His biggest concern, though, were the mukluks, which Su explained were made mostly of yak hide and fur, but were very tight on his larger feet. He wasn’t complaining, though. All of the items were made with dull colors and would keep him warm. Better yet, they might have made him stick out less, especially when he wore the thick fur hat that covered much of his face.

  Su had told her uncle that Jake was a winter survivalist, and China, and particularly Manchuria, was on his list of experiences he must accomplish before the age of fifty. The uncle had laughed at that, shaking his head as he smiled. Crazy Americans.

  Now, with the sun slowly creeping toward the western mountains, Jake and Su stood on a path at the end of a narrow road. Her uncle had just dropped them off with his little truck, still scratching his head like the two of them were complete idiots as he drove off in a plume of smoke toward town.

  “So,” Jake said, “I guess your uncle must think you’re nuts.”

  She slung her large backpack over her shoulders, and when she got it caught on her heavy coat, Jake helped her put it in place on her back.

  “Thanks. Really, he only thinks you’re crazy. I told him you paid me one thousand American to guide you here.” She smiled broadly with that revelation. “You ready?”

  “You’re a funny woman. Yeah, let’s go.” He put on his own pack and trudged off.

  The snow was only about a foot deep. Nothing compared to what he was used to in the Austrian Alps, but the cold, dry wind nearly took his breath away. They first cleared a small field and then started heading up in elevation. The trail was perhaps ten feet wide and soon started to wind through a thick, fir forest.

  Jake stopped and turned to Su. “Is this a road?”

  She reached him and halted a moment. “Kind of. In the summer the villagers lead their livestock up to high meadows to eat grass. My uncle uses the road to cut wood for his stove and fireplace. Please, Jake, we must keep moving.”

  Without a word, Jake headed out again. After a couple of miles, they reached a ridge that flattened out and appeared to rise up slightly to the west and to the north. There was a small meadow where the snow was deeper.

  Su stopped and scanned the area, uncertain. The sun was nearly history and the temperature would soon start to drop fast.

  “What’s the matter?” Jake asked.

  “Nothing. We’re about half way.” She pointed off toward the north. “You see. We walk parallel to the road some four miles north, but the road comes this way some. So, we catch up on the plateau.”

  “I take it there’s no trail now?” Jake said.

  “That’s right.” With that, she stepped off into the deeper snow and into the thickest of trees.

  With the coming darkness and the tight forest, the canopy above them let in very little light. But there was one advantage to that. The dense fir trees had let much less snow hit the ground. They would have been able to pick up their pace if it had not been for the darkness.

  His mind drifted back to America and Oregon in particular. In college he had climbed through the coast range after a heavy snowfall, the trees thick and heavy with the weight of snow. Although the forest cover was similar, the cold was not. His nostrils seemed to collapse with each breath he took. Perhaps a bigger problem, though, was his perspiration soaking into his clothes. He knew that when he stopped hiking, the wet, damp wool would freeze and drop his core temperature. They had extra clothes in the backpacks to reduce that eventuality, but that extra weight also compounded the problem. It was like hiking in the desert. The more water you carried the more water you needed.

  Jake noticed Su was starting to slump over slightly. “Su, maybe we should change packs,” he said. “Yours must weigh fifty pounds.”

  She didn’t stop, though. She straightened up and said, “I’m all right.”

  Once it was almost impossible to see in front of them, Su pulled out a small pen light and strapped it to the side of her backpack.

  Still, the going was slow. At that pace, Jake thought, they would reach their destination around midnight. Perfect timing, but their exhaustion might have a negative impact on their mission there.

  Nevertheless, they trudged on through the cold, dark forest.

  20

  They were at a standoff. Cliff sat on his friend’s sofa, and Patterson was in his recliner, his legs raised and his hands behind his head.

  Li sat on the floor, legs crossed, a laptop computer in front of her and her gun no more than a few inches from her right hand.

  “I didn’t know you had a laptop,” Cliff said to her.

  “Shut up. You asshole.” The words came out like that of a child first learning them. Stilted. Unsure.

  Both Cliff and Patterson laughed, which made Li raise her gun, not even looking in their direction. They both stopped immediately.

  “Listen,” Cliff said, his hands pleading. “I can’t give you the encryption code until you give me the money. That’s the deal.”

  “The deal changed,” she said. “You got the money.”

  “What money?” Patterson said, hunching his broad shoulders. “What the hell you guys talkin’ about?”

  “Shut fuck up,” Li yelled at him, which brought another chuckle from both men. “You won’t laugh soon,” she assured them. Then she pointed the gun at Cliff’s head. “The codes.”

  “I need the money,” Cliff pleaded. “It’s not like I can ever go back to Brightstar. But I would like to go someplace warm.”

  “How ‘bout Hell,” she said, smiling. “I hear it’s warm there always.”

  “Fuckin’ A. This is going nowhere. I thought we cut a deal. Now you’re yankin’ me around.”

  “You yank me around,” she said. “Drive all over the damn country when you could have sent it to your house in the Bay Area. That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “They woulda traced that in a heartbeat. No shit.”

  Neither said a word for a moment, but she did lower her gun while she punched in a few more key strokes on the laptop. Cliff glanced at his friend, who didn’t seem too concerned.

  Finally, Li picked up her cell phone and speed dialed a number. Then she rattled off some Chinese, shook her head as she looked at the two men, and clicked off by flipping the phone shut.

  “I give you one more chance to give me encryption codes,” she said to Cliff. She raised the gun again.

  Cliff leaned forward in the chair. “I can’t. I need the money. You agreed on a mil.”

  She let out a sigh, swiveled the gun to her left, and shot twice. The first bullet hit Patterson in the middle of his chest, the shock knocking him back in his recliner. The second shot became a red spot on his forehead.

  Cliff rose to his feet. “What the fuck,” he yelled. His eyes were wide with horror. “You killed him.” His breathing increased, his heart pounding out of control. Finally, tears came to his eyes and he sobbed uncontrollably.

  Li got up from the floor and pointed the gun at Cliff now. “You need to focus, Cliff. Your life is worth a split second. That’s all it takes to pull a trigger.”

  He turned to her, his eyes red and tears streaking his face. “You didn’t have to do that, Li. I was gonna give ya the codes. I just...I just wanted some more time with you. That’s all. Ya didn’t have to do this.” He pointed at his frie
nd in the recliner, where blood had now escaped from his chest and was running down the sides to the floor.

  “I warn you, Cliff. The codes.”

  “There are no codes,” he yelled. “It’s an encryption scheme built into a program I developed. A five-twelve scheme. Do you know what that is?”

  “I know one thing,” she started, “your friend died for about a buck. I love America. Cheap bullets. Pow pow. Less than a buck. Crazy how life is so cheap.”

  “You’re fuckin’ nuts, bitch.”

  “The codes.”

  “I’m telling you there are no codes. I encrypted the entire file with a five-twelve scheme. You and your pal on the phone could try for a million years and never break that scheme.” He wiped his tears away and smiled.

  She considered what he had just said, uncertain. She pulled out the phone and made another call. This time her voice seemed more desperate. She finally let out a deep breath and hung up.

  “Give me the encryption program,” she said.

  He swiveled his head from side to side. “I do that and you kill me. You give me the money. Once that clears, then I send you the program remotely. But not until I’m out of the range of that.” He pointed at her gun.

  “You know. If I want, I could hunt you down like a dog and kill you. Even after you give me the program.”

  “I believe you, Li.” He glanced over at his old college friend.

  Finally, she said, “All right. Let’s go to the bank.”

  ●

  The two Agency officers, Harris and Fisher, were sitting in their chairs in the white Ford Taurus, less than a block from Patterson’s house. Fisher was behind the wheel trying his best to see through the rain-streaked windshield, keeping his eyes on the Trooper, and Harris was switching channels on the radio attempting to find a station that would give her a decent weather report.

  “This is bullshit,” Harris said.

  “They’re used to this crap,” Fisher said to her. “Don’t need no stinkin’ weather report in Eugene. It’s gonna rain until it stops. Wait a minute. Got something here.”

  They watched as the Asian woman and Cliff Johansen exited the house and shuffled toward the Trooper.

  Agent Harris buckled her seat belt. “Looks like we’re rolling.”

  Fisher thought as he started the engine and desperately fought to clear the foggy windshield. “You wouldn’t happen to know where the closest branch of the Bank of the Pacific is located.”

  Harris shook her head.

  “Same here. But I think we’re about to find out.”

  He pulled out after the Trooper, which was now rolling through the quiet neighborhood toward the Willamette River.

  21

  Arlington, Virginia

  Darkness was starting to settle on the capitol across the Potomac as the lone, black Mercedes pulled up to the curb at the small park two blocks from the George Washington Memorial Parkway.

  Stepping out to the pavement, Karl Oestreich, dressed in his finest gray suit, having come right from the White House, closed the door behind him and locked it electronically.

  General Wayne Boles stood fifty yards up a small hill and barely acknowledged the Chief of Staff’s arrival. His arms hung behind his back in a near parade rest. Unlike his old friend, he wore khaki pants and a Washington Redskins windbreaker.

  “This better be good,” Oestreich said as he made his way up the hill.

  When the Chief of Staff reached the retired general, Boles finally said, “Why don’t you make a little more noise? I don’t think they heard you over in Georgetown.”

  “Hey, this cloak and dagger shit was your idea,” Oestreich said. “What’s up?”

  Boles shifted his head about as a jogger passed on the road below. “Our man in China.”

  “Adams?”

  “Right. He hasn’t made contact since leaving Beijing.”

  Oestreich laughed under his breath. “I thought he was an obstinate bastard. Shouldn’t come as a surprise to you.”

  “Yeah, but there was a problem with one of our agents in Harbin.”

  “Where the fuck is that?”

  “Manchuria...Northern China,” Boles said. “The Agency recruited him out of Stanford.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  Boles hesitated. “He got himself killed.”

  “Great. Any fallout on our end?”

  The general shook his head. “But we got reports that the police are after a Chinese woman accompanied by an American man. They were seen leaving the scene.”

  Oestreich turned and looked across the Potomac as the last light faded from the Washington Memorial. “Sounds like a typical Chinese set up to me. Kill the contact and grab the patsy who shows up next. I take it the woman is working for us as well?”

  “Yeah. Also recruited from Stanford. The three of them were to drive north to the site.”

  “Call them off.”

  “But...”

  “Just do it,” the Chief of Staff said. “Their mission must have been compromised. Let me guess. The agent was tortured.”

  Boles didn’t say a word.

  “Then Adams is probably fucked.”

  “Karl, we need this info. We can’t afford to pull him.”

  The Chief of Staff thought about it. “Adams is good. But what if that dead agent said where they were heading? They’d be waiting for him to show his face. And, having seen satellite shots of that region, Adams will stick out like a black man in Alaska. Which reminds me...we got a problem there as well.”

  “I heard. Lone gunman?”

  “Still not sure. The air force security police filled him so full of lead he’s likely to be the next Superfund site.”

  Boles laughed. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a master of overstatement?”

  “Just my fuckin’ liberal lesbian sister. How we gonna help Adams in Manchuria?”

  “I’m working on it,” Boles said, smiling and raising his brows.

  “Is this one of those plausible deniability scenarios? Better I don’t know all the details?”

  Hunching his shoulders, Boles said, “The Agency in China is wrapped tighter than a Baptist virgin. Let us handle it.”

  “Good. I got a dinner party.”

  “Over at the Hilton?”

  Oestreich turned to Boles. “Christ you got my entire schedule?”

  “Someone’s gotta keep track of our public officials.”

  The Chief of Staff laughed as he walked down the hill.

  The general waited for the Mercedes to pull away and then retrieved his cell phone from his pocket and punched in the long number overseas.

  When a man finally answered, he said, “Do it.” Then he flipped his phone shut and glanced across the Potomac at the buildings of power. They had a saying in the Air Force. ‘Whatever it takes.’ They were words he lived by even now.

  22

  The trek through the snowy mountains had become even more difficult as Jake and Su had gotten closer to the Chinese military site. They had been forced to turn off their light, and, since they didn’t have night vision equipment, they had to rely on the occasional flicker of moon through swirling clouds to guide them for a few unencumbered steps. Needless to say, the going had been slow.

  They had pulled a thin winter camo shell from Su’s backpack and stretched it over their other clothes, cinching ties at their ankles and wrists, the white, gray and green shades allowing them to blend into their surroundings. This wouldn’t help much in the darkness, but once it got light again, they would be almost impossible to spot among the trees. The camo would do nothing, however, should the Chinese military use infrared binoculars, Jake knew.

  Now they sat, exhausted, on a precipice among thick firs overlooking an enormous compound that Jake was sure would show up on satellite photos. But what would they see? There was a large dome that, by every stretch of the imagination, would appear as a huge telescope. The largest building resembled a monastic temple. There were at least a half a dozen
other buildings with snow-covered roofs, that, from the air, would appear to be nothing more than barracks or dormitories, depending on the interpretation of the analyst. Glancing around the entire compound, which was not enclosed by a tall fence with razor wire, or any fence at all that he could see, Jake noticed all of the vehicles were civilian. In fact, those walking from building to building wore clothes much like those he had gotten from Su’s uncle. No military uniforms at all.

  “Are we at the right place?” Jake asked Su softly.

  She nodded her head.

  “I don’t see any military here? There are no weapons.”

  “There’s one road in,” she said. “I would guess there’s a check-point at least a mile down the mountain. It would look like a Hutong from the air. Nothing more. But they would stop anyone wanting to go up the mountain. Not that anyone would want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “They think the people are stupid,” she said, her eyes still focused on the compound below. “They see the military arrive in the village by train. Then there are no more military in town. Where do they go each day?”

  Jake smiled. “They change into civilian clothes and come up here. But why all the secrecy?”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Su said.

  That got Jake thinking. And he should have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. He opened his backpack and pulled out the digital camera that the Think Tank man, Steve Anderson, had given him. The camera had an infra-red feature. He could take a photo in the darkness, without flash, and then view it on the back. Although he wouldn’t be able to see much through the lens, he hoped the viewer would reveal something.

  After messing with the buttons to make sure the flash would not go off and reveal their position, Jake aimed the camera and took a shot.

  “I’ve never seen a camera like that,” Su said. “What does it do?”

  Instead of answering, Jake shifted closer to her and showed her the image in the back of the camera. He had taken a shot of the dome in high quality setting.