Vital Force

by Trevor Scott

  “Someone must have fucked with your tower,” he said.

  She nodded her agreement.

  “Let’s go.”

  They packed up and shuffled off across the bridge. They got about halfway across when they saw the helo. Perhaps the same one that had flown over them as they flew down the mountainside into the river a few hours ago.

  They were trapped. To turn back, they might make it across the bridge before the helicopter reached them. But then what? To run straight ahead, they would be running toward the helo.

  In a split second, they had no choice. Coming from behind them was a military truck. About a mile off in the distance moving fast toward them.

  “This way,” Jake yelled, pulling her across the bridge.

  Just after they reached the other side of the bridge, the helo lowered and turned sideways, its wash blowing snow up everywhere and pushing Jake and Su together.

  Jake turned his head, his arm over his eyes, and tried to see how far away the truck was now. It was less than half a mile away.

  Turning back toward the helo, he noticed the side door had opened and someone was waving arms, wanting them to approach.

  “You know them?” Jake yelled to Su, barely above the rotors and wind.

  She looked confused, shaking her head no.

  And then he thought he heard something familiar. At first it was almost an echo, and then it became more clear. Jake. The man was yelling his name.

  He had only a few seconds to make a choice, because the truck was now on the bridge some fifty yards away. Stopped. Men hopping off with rifles.

  Jake pulled on Su’s arm and hauled her toward the helo. Things became clearer as Jake got closer. Under the hat and headphones was Brian Armstrong, the Agency officer from Beijing.

  “Get in,” Armstrong yelled at Jake.

  “How’d you find us?” Jake asked as he slung his backpack in before helping Su with hers.

  “Just get in. They don’t look too friendly.”

  As the Agency officer said that, the first bullets started hitting the side of the helo.

  Su climbed aboard, struggled to lift her frozen legs, and Jake grabbed her by the pants and shoved her inside. Then he launched himself inside.

  Armstrong slammed the door shut and yelled for the pilot to take off. Bullets smacked into the door, and they all dove to the deck.

  The helo lifted off and shook about as it turned and swept off to the south.

  Jake pulled himself to a sitting position and leaned against his backpack.

  “That was close,” he yelled to Armstrong.

  Something wasn’t right. The Agency officer lay on his stomach. Still. Then Jake saw the blood seeping from his lower back. He turned Armstrong over.

  “Armstrong. You all right?” Jake shouted.

  His eyes were open, but his face said it all. He wasn’t all right. His breathing was labored and a stream of blood trickled from the side of his mouth.

  Jake turned to Su. “Find a first aid kit. He’s been hit.”

  She searched the compartment while Jake held his hand on the blood spot.

  “Can you talk?” Jake asked him.

  “I’ll be all right,” Armstrong said, his words barely making it from his lips. “You get the photos?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t send them on the phone.”

  “Why?”

  “Compromised.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Su came to them with a first aid kit, and pulled out a bandage and tape. As she pulled up his coat to access the wound, Jake lay onto the floor next to Armstrong.

  “What do I do with the photos?” Jake asked him.

  “Shemya . . . Alaska.”

  “What about it?”

  “Bring it there.”

  “A Agency officer there?”

  “No.” He writhed in pain.

  Jake looked at Su, who was trying to cover the wound, but was losing the battle. Her hands were full of blood; the compress bandage had turned from white to completely red. And Jake realized she must be in pain herself, with her left wrist broken.

  “Who then?” Jake asked.

  “Colonel Powers. Only him.” Armstrong’s eyes started to close.

  Jake shook him. “No. Stay awake. How’d you find us?”

  “G. . . P. . .S. . . Inside backpack handle.”

  “Shit! Just hang in there, man.” The horror of this was just starting to hit Jake. He had worked with Armstrong’s brother in the Ukraine, and that officer had died. Sure Jake had had no part in that, but maybe he could have seen it coming. And now another Armstrong, who was only trying to save his ass, was now dying.

  Su pulled on Jake’s arm. “I can’t stop it.”

  Armstrong’s eyes were now closed; his breathing had stopped. Jake checked for a carotid pulse.

  Nothing.

  Jake shook his head. “Damn it!” He slammed his hand against the deck.

  Su put her hand on Jake’s back. “You good friends?”

  He shook his head. “No, we just met a few days ago.” He hesitated and then said, “It’s a long story.”

  Jake took in deep breaths, trying his best to maintain control. He had to think about their current situation. Who was flying this beast? And where were they heading?

  He pulled the headset from Armstrong’s head and put it on. Then, through the microphone, he asked, “Hey, you speak English up there?” He could only see the back of the pilot’s head, which was covered by a helmet.

  The pilot turned around. It was a black man in his 50s. “What the fuck you think, Bitch? What’s up back there?”

  “Armstrong took a bullet in the back,” Jake said.

  “He all right?” the pilot asked.

  “He’s dead.”

  “Dat ain’t all right.” The pilot turned back to flying.

  Jake moved forward. He saw they were flying low, the trees to the side even with them. Then he saw why. They were following the river downstream.

  “I’m Jake Adams.”

  “I’d shake your hand and all that shit but I’m a little busy right now,” the pilot said. “Armstrong told me about you on the flight up. We coulda picked ya up last night in the mountains but we had no way of contacting you. Had to go back for fuel.”

  “Phones weren’t working,” Jake said.

  The pilot nodded agreement.

  “You work for the Agency?” Jake asked.

  “I work for whoever pays my ass. Been in these parts for more than thirty years. After Nam I just couldn’t go back. Damn pussy is just too damn good.” He peered around behind him toward Su. “She can’t hear this. You get any of that yet? She fine.”

  Jake changed the subject. “Where we heading?”

  “Changchun for fuel. Then Shenyang. You can catch a flight from there to Beijing.”

  “What about Armstrong?”

  “We had a contingency for all this shit. You let me take care of him. I fly. You get the hell outta China. You better bring her with you?”

  “Why?”

  The pilot hesitated and then finally said, “They been roundin’ up her relatives. She can’t go back.”

  Jake looked to the rear at Su, who was now curled up in a blanket trying to get warm.

  What in the hell was going on? This should have been a simple job. Get in, take a few photos, get out. But nothing was ever as easy as that. Now he had to tell Su that she would have to leave China with him. Would she go?

  He watched the landscape fly by below as the sun rose higher on the horizon. He had left his stuff in Beijing at the hotel, but he had no real desire to go back for it. It was only clothes. He could get those anywhere.

  Glancing back at Armstrong on the deck of the chopper, he wondered how he would ever be able to justify his death to himself or anyone else. And why Alaska of all places? Did it matter? He had already been paid quite nicely, and the job was not over.

  He never left anything undone.

  29

&n
bsp; “Where the hell is she going?” Special Agent Fisher asked aloud to himself as he turned the car onto I-205 North just south of Portland.

  It was getting dark, at that period where the eyes had not changed from day to night, and the rain had picked up some. To make matters worse, it was Friday evening and rush hour traffic would become a bigger problem as they approached Portland.

  Cliff had his eyes closed in the back seat, and Agent Harris had climbed over to the front passenger seat about ten miles back to help navigate.

  “I’m guessing the airport,” Harris said. “The two oh five bypasses most of the city and ends up right at Portland International.”

  “Great. If we don’t stick close, she’ll end up on a plane to damn near anywhere without us catching her. I say we just pull her ass over. We got her on murder and espionage. What more do we need?”

  “You know better than that,” Harris said to him. “We need to know who she’s working for; otherwise we’ll never get it out of her.”

  Agent Fisher pulled around a couple of cars to get closer to the white Trooper ahead.

  “What are you doing? Not so close.”

  “We lose her and we’re fucked.”

  Harris thought for a minute and then pulled out a map of Portland. She could barely read it, only seeing what she needed from the headlights of cars behind them.

  “Okay,” Harris said. “We call ahead. Have a reception waiting for her at the airport.”

  “What if she doesn’t go to the airport?” This surprised the both of them, coming from Cliff in the back.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Harris said.

  “He’s got a point,” Fisher said under his breath.

  She checked the map again. “All right, smart ass. Where do you think she’s going?” She turned directly at Cliff; a look that burned right through him.

  “Seattle.”

  “Seattle?” she asked. “Why the fuck Seattle?”

  Cliff shrugged. “That’s where I’d go. Li is Chinese, right? If she’s working for them, then she’d need a flight there to deliver the DVD she got from me.”

  “And she can’t do that from Portland?” Fisher asked.

  “There are no direct flights from Portland to China,” Cliff assured them. “You have to fly to Seattle, San Fran, or L.A. So, she’d want to pick up a direct flight.”

  “Why do you assume that?” Harris asked.

  Cliff shook his head. “She could have caught a flight to Portland in Eugene, and then another to Seattle. That’s if she had wanted a bunch of connections.”

  Fisher laughed as he pulled out and passed another car.

  “All right,” Harris said. “But why does she have to deliver the DVD? Why not just send the data over the Internet to China?”

  Cliff leaned forward in his seat against the seat belt. “Now here’s where I’m sure about her. She doesn’t trust technology. She thinks the government is tracking every transfer of data.”

  Harris glanced sideways at Fisher and then back at Cliff. “Which government?”

  “Doesn’t matter. All governments.”

  “Shit!”

  “What?” Fisher said.

  “Cliff, are you sure you don’t know who she works for?” Harris asked him.

  “Absolutely. She did make a number of phone calls, though. You might want to have those traced.”

  “How we gonna do that, dumbass?” Harris asked him. “She’s using a cell phone. Probably a throw away.”

  “Trace her number.”

  There was silence in the car as Fisher looked at Harris, and then Harris turned to Cliff.

  “You have her number?” Harris asked. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us that before?”

  “You never asked.”

  Cliff gave her the number and then Harris made a call to the Portland office to have them trace the calls and also tell them their current location.

  “How long have you had the number?” Fisher asked him.

  “Couple weeks. I stayed at her place one night, picked up her phone, thinkin’ it was mine, since it’s the same model, and turned it on to make a call. You know how the home number pops up on some models as soon as you turn them on? Well, I remembered the number.” He pulled out his cell phone from his pocket. “You wanna give her a call? We could ask her where she’s going. Save us some time.”

  Suddenly, Fisher braked hard to avoid a car that had done the same in front of them. He swerved to the fast lane to keep from hitting an old pickup truck. Then he hit the gas to get around the vehicle to keep up with the Trooper.

  “Damn it,” Fisher said. “I think she caught us. She tapped on her brakes.”

  “Let’s give her a call,” Cliff said, proud of his thought.

  “I told you to shut the fuck up,” Harris yelled back at him. “I’m gonna have to climb back there and baby-sit your ass.”

  “That’s all right,” Cliff said, rubbing his jaw, which had swollen considerably. “Got da picture.”

  Then, without warning, the white Trooper turned off onto an exit that led to an overpass and started to slow.

  “Hang on folks,” Fisher said. “Something’s up.”

  The Trooper pulled over to the side of the ramp at the top of the hill. Fisher had two choices. He could simply pull up behind her, or he could pass by and turn right. Seconds to decide.

  Pull behind her.

  He came to a stop a couple of car lengths behind the Trooper and kept the engine running, the wipers swishing to remove the rain.

  By the time anyone knew what was happening, it was too late. The driver’s door on the Trooper opened. A figure appeared for a moment. There were five flashes of light. And then the door closed and the Trooper sped off.

  There were shards of glass everywhere in the front seat. Fisher was the first to raise his head above the dash.

  The Trooper was gone.

  “What the fuck happened?” Cliff yelled from the back seat.

  Fisher put the car in gear and sped off after the Trooper. He thought he saw the tail lights go straight across the highway and back onto the freeway, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

  When he finally had a chance to look to his right, he saw that Agent Harris was slumped over.

  “Oh, God.”

  He pulled over to the side of the road on the on-ramp.

  “Harris,” he yelled at her, checking her for wounds. She had taken a round in her left shoulder. The shock had knocked her out, he was sure. He held his hand over the wound. “Use that damn phone of yours to call an ambulance,” he screamed at Cliff.

  30

  Shenyang, China

  As the chopper flew off to the southwest toward Beijing, Jake and Su shuffled with their backpacks from the field toward the narrow road that led to a small village. Jake knew they could hop a train from there. The Agency pilot had thought it best to not fly them directly to the Shenyang airport. None of them wanted the police to discover an American contract pilot flying two people on the run, not to mention the dead body of an American embassy diplomat. Besides, the air traffic controllers had undoubtedly been told of the helo that had been shot up, and would be watching for them.

  It was almost noon. Jake walked alongside the deserted road behind Su, whose left arm hung at her side as if it were dead. He knew the broken wrist would have to be set soon or it wouldn’t heal properly. If she waited much longer, the doctor would have to re-break it and then set it.

  She was having a hard time with the heavy backpack, so Jake stepped up and stopped her.

  “Let me help you with your pack,” he said to her.

  “I can handle it,” she answered emphatically. Tears streaked her face.

  “You’re not all right,” Jake said.

  “Has nothing to do with my wrist.”

  That’s what Jake thought. He had been forced to relay the information about her family being rounded up.

  “You can’t turn yourself in,” Jake told her. “You’ll never see the light of day.”
<
br />   “They never see light either.”

  Jake knew that might be true, but maybe not. “Listen, if you drop off the face of the Earth, what can they do? They can’t hold your family forever.”

  “Chinese are patient people. Communists more patient.” She started walking again, determined.

  He’d work on her. But right now they had to keep moving. In a mile or so they came across the small village that was linked better by rail than road. In fact, much of Manchuria was linked better by rail.

  It wasn’t hard to find the rail station. But after Su bought two tickets to Shenyang and came back to where Jake was sitting on a small wooden bench in the tiny terminal, she informed him they’d have an hour to wait for the next train.

  She took a seat next to him, her backpack at her feet. “Sorry about my emotions,” she said.

  “Hey, nothing to be sorry about. We don’t know for sure that the government has your family. Would they link you to your friend in Harbin?”

  She sat stone faced and said, “I know now. Heard my name on the radio when I picked up the tickets.”

  Jake let out a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “You did nothing.”

  “I got you into this.”

  “No. I did this. I could have said no.”

  That might have been true, but Jake was sure the Agency probably had some leverage against her. Something that forced her hand.

  “Will it be safe to go to Shenyang?” Jake asked her.

  “I don’t know. But we can’t get to Alaska without catching a flight from Shenyang to an international airport.”

  “Are you going with me?”

  She nodded her head. “I don’t have a choice.”

  Jake glanced across the room at the man behind the ticket counter, who had just picked up the phone and set it back down again, and was showing too much interest in their conversation. Other than the two of them, the place was empty. Something wasn’t right.

  On their way in, Jake had noticed a small car parked out back; a Volkswagen Santana, Shanghai’s version of a 1980s Jetta.

  Su glanced up at Jake as he rose and walked toward the ticket counter, not understanding what was happening.

  With one fluid motion, Jake grabbed the man by the shirt and slammed him to the counter. Then he swung his legs over the counter and punched the man once in the kidney, dropping him to his knees. Once he had the guy on his face on the floor, trying to catch his breath, Jake riffled through the man’s pockets.